Most foundationalists allow that relations of coherence among antecedently justified beliefs can enhance their overall level of justification or warrant. In light of this, some coherentists ask the following question: if coherence can elevate the epistemic status of a set of beliefs, what prevents it from generating warrant entirely on its own? Why do we need the foundationalist’s basic beliefs? I address that question here, drawing lessons from an instructive series of attempts to reconstruct within the probability calculus the classical (...) problem of independent witnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony. Starred section headings indicate sections omitted here, but available on the author’s USC website. (shrink)
When we look at a tree, two images of it are formed, one on each of our retinas. Why, then, asks the child or the philosopher, do we not see two trees?1 Thomas Reid offers an answer to this question in the section of his Inquiry into the Human Mind entitled ‘Of seeing objects single with two eyes’. The principles he invokes in his answer serve at the same time to explain why we do occasionally see objects double. In Part (...) I of this essay, I examine the principles Reid uses to explain single and double vision. This part is mostly an exercise in the history of cognitive science, but it raises questions of interest to philosophers along the way. In Part II, I turn to a hard-core philosophical problem raised by double vision, namely, whether double vision constitutes an objection to the direct realist theory of perception, which was one of Reid's main philosophical purposes to promote. (shrink)
This rigorous examination of Kant's CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON provides a comprehensive analysis of the major themes of Kant's most famous work. Author James Van Cleve presents clear and detailed discussions of Kant's transcendental idealism, necessity and analyticity, space and time, substance and cause, noumena and things in themselves, problems of the self, and rational theology. He also discusses the relationship between Kant's thought and modern anti-realism, in particular the work of Putnam and Dummett. Organized around Kant's text but devoted (...) maily to philosophical understanding of Kant's problems, the book makes Kant's oft-thought impenetrable work accessible to serious students as well as scholars. (shrink)
