Righting epistemology : Hume's revolution / Bredo Johnsen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnsen, Bredo, author.

Contributor:

Edith E. Clark Endowment Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hume, David, 1711-1776.

Hume, David.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Skepticism.

Physical Description:

xi, 303 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017]

Summary:

David Hume launched a historic revolution in epistemology when he showed that our theories about the world have no probability relative to what we think of as our evidence for them, hence that the distinction between justified and unjustified theories does not lie in their different probabilities relative to that evidence. However, allies in his revolution appeared only in the 20th century, in the persons of Sir Karl Popper, Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine. Hume's second great contribution to the field, which remains unrecognized to this day, was to propose what is now known as reflective equilibrium theory as the framework within which justified and unjustified theories are rightly distinguished. The core of this book comprises an account of these developments from Hume to Quine, an extension of reflective equilibrium theory that renders it a general theory of epistemic justification concerning our beliefs about the world, and an argument that all four of these thinkers would have endorsed that extension. 0.

Contents:

Sextus Empiricus

Descartes

Radical external world skepticism

Humean radical external world skepticism

Hume

Mainstream epistemology

Popper

Goodman

Epistemology naturalized

Quine

Reflective equilibrium

Wittgenstein

Brains in a vat

Dretske.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edith E. Clark Endowment Fund.

ISBN:

9780190662776

0190662778

OCLC:

961411425