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From Plato, through Descartes to W.V. Quine and Edmund Gettier, this concise introduction and reference guide explores the history of thinking about 'knowledge'.
Exploring what great philosophers have written about the nature of knowledge and about how we know what we know, this is a concise and accessible introduction to the field of epistemology. Epistemology: The Key Thinkers tells the story of how epistemological thinking has developed over the centuries, through the work of the finest thinkers on the topic. Chapters by leading contemporary scholars guide readers through the ideas of key philosophers, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, through Descartes and the British empiricists, to such twentieth-century thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Quine, Go.
All the great philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to the present day have been philosophers of science. However, this book concentrates on modern philosophy of science, starting in the nineteenth century and offering coverage of all the leading thinkers in the field including Whewell, Mill, Reichenbach, Carnap, Popper, Feyerabend, Putnam, van Fraassen, Bloor, Latour, Hacking, Cartwright and many more. Crucially the book demonstrates how the ideas and arguments of these key thinkers have contributed to our understanding of such central issues as experience and necessity, conventionalism, logical empiricism, induction and falsification, the sociology of science, and realism. Ideal for undergraduate students, the book lays the necessary foundations for a complete and thorough understanding of this fascinating subject.
A reference guide to the work of figures who have played an important role in the development of ideas about language. It includes 80 entries on individual thinkers in the Western tradition, ranging from antiquity to the present day, chosen because of their impact on the description or theory of language.
Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology-the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools: Chapter learning outcomes Key terms Images of philosophers and related art Useful diagrams and tables Boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material Questions for reflection Suggestions for further reading A glossary For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy series: https: //www1.rebus.community/#/project/4ec7ecce-d2b3-4f20-973c-6b6502e7cbb2.
Epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, is at the core of many of the central debates and issues in philosophy, interrogating the notions of truth, objectivity, trust, belief and perception. The Routledge Companion to Epistemology provides a comprehensive and the up-to-date survey of epistemology, charting its history, providing a thorough account of its key thinkers and movements, and addressing enduring questions and contemporary research in the field. Organized thematically, the Companion is divided into ten sections: Foundational Issues, The Analysis of Knowledge, The Structure of Knowledge, Kinds of Knowledge, Skepticism, Responses to Skepticism, Knowledge and Knowledge Attributions, Formal Epistemology, The History of Epistemology, and Metaepistemological Issues. Seventy-eight chapters, each between 5000 and 7000 words and written by the world’s leading epistemologists, provide students with an outstanding and accessible guide to the field. Designed to fit the most comprehensive syllabus in the discipline, this text will be an indispensible resource for anyone interested in this central area of philosophy. The Routledge Companion to Epistemology is essential reading for students of philosophy.
Ethics: The Key Thinkers surveys the history of Western moral philosophy, guiding students through the work and ideas of the field's most important figures, from Plato to MacIntyre. With entries written by leading contemporary scholars, the book covers the following thinkers: PlatoAristotleThe StoicsThomas AquinasDavid HumeImmanuel KantG.W.F. HegelKarl MarxJ.S. Mill Friedrich NietzscheAlasdair MacIntyre The book explores the contribution of each thinker in turn, narrating how they have changed the shape of ethical theory as a whole. The book also includes guides to the latest reading on each thinker.
Rather than just offer background readings or a survey of views on a subject, as traditional anthologies do, this volume tries to engage the reader's active participation in understanding how philosophy came to be split between analytic and continental approaches and in finding ways to reconcile the two. It does so by tracing the history of philosophy as a perennial contest between two opposing world views: one that relates change to an underlying structure of invariance, and another that sees change itself ("flux") as the basic condition of existence. The seven chapters cover the full range of major topics of philosophy, from metaphysics to epistemology to ethics, and present carefully selected readings from key thinkers--Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hegel, and Peirce up to Heidegger, Husserl, Kuhn, Kripke, and Putnam, among others--juxtaposed and introduced by the editors so as to stimulate active thinking about how the debate between these competing visions plays out in each arena. A bibliography of additional sources ends each chapter. The result is a new and inspiring tool for teaching philosophy to both beginning and advanced students. Even seasoned professionals will have much to learn about the development of philosophy and its current predicament from accepting the challenge to rethink the tradition from the perspective presented here.
"Virtue ethics has attracted a lot of attention and there has been considerable interest in virtue epistemology as an alternative to traditional approaches in that field. This book fills a gap in the literature for a text that brings virtue epistemologists and virtue ethicists together."-- Back cover.
