Epistemic issues in pragmatic perspective / Nicholas Rescher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rescher, Nicholas, author.

Series:

American philosophy series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Knowledge, Theory of.

Physical Description:

xii, 228 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, [2018]

Summary:

Epistemic Issues in Pragmatic Perspective presents a nonstandard approach to epistemology. Where standard epistemology generally focuses on the certain knowledge the Greeks called epistêmê, the present focus is on some less assured modes of information. Its deliberations address such cognitively suboptimal processes as conjecture, guesswork, and plausible supposition. This shift of focus has implications for virtually every sector of information management, and this book explores some of them. Throughout, the rule of pragmatic considerations stands in the foreground. As Nicholas Rescher sets out in detail, the nature of our knowledge of reality is inherently conditioned by the fact of its being the product of what is, at best and at most, a matter of rational guesswork. And so as regards our knowledge, we had best adopt the pragmatic optimism of expecting-and hoping-that our best is good enough. Book jacket.

Contents:

Sensible conjecture

Imprecision

Truth-contextuality and plausibility

Managing imperfect information

Common sense

Terminating explanatory regress

Quantitative epistemology

On kinds of things

Prediction and knowability

Cognitive fashions

Problems of absolute truth

Unethical beliefs, reprehensible opinions

Culpable ignorance

Epistemic triage

Inconceivable possibilities

Optimalism in explaining the nature of things.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Rescher, Nicholas. Epistemic issues in pragmatic perspective.

ISBN:

9781498563536

1498563538

OCLC:

1002111961