This article provides a straightforward diagnosis and resolution of the lottery paradox and the epistemic version of the paradox of the preface. In doing so, The article takes some steps in relating the notion of probability to the notion of epistemic justification.

Classical Modern Philosophy introduces students to the famous philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries and explores their most important works. Jeffrey Tlumak takes the reader on a chronological journey from Descartes to Kant, tracing the themes that run through the period and their interrelations. The main texts covered are: · Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy · Spinoza's Ethics · Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding · Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics and Monadology · Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (...) · Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion · Kant's C ritique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Classical Modern Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction is the ideal textbook to accompany a course in the history of modern philosophy, but each chapter can also be studied alone as an introduction to the featured philosopher or work. Jeffrey Tlumak outlines and assesses prominent interpretations of the texts, and surveys the legacy of each great thinker. (shrink)

First I delineate the three main variables which determine the basic strategies for defending descartes against the charges of circularity and inconsistency--His theory of mental activity, His interpretation of metaphysical certainty and its relation to truth, And his interpretation of compelled assent and its relation to metaphysical and moral certainty. Then I offer an account of descartes' method--Sensitive to his theories of time, Causality, And omnipotence, As well as consciousness--Which renders his descriptions of his procedure internally consistent, Mutually consistent, And (...) consistent with his practice, Which is exhibited as neither circular nor implausibly dogmatic. (shrink)

Mates’ book has already been widely read and justly praised. It is full of clear, interesting arguments on most of the topics which engage contemporary readers of Leibniz, expertly and extensively marshalls texts, and includes a short but unusually good biography and outline of Leibniz’s system. Since I write here for an unusually well-informed and well-motivate audience, I allow myself compressed formulations of controversial arguments, antecedently acknowledging need for elaboration. I focus on a cluster of interconnected, central concerns: the nature (...) and role of nominalism, individual concepts, contingency, rational explanation, bestness and perception. (shrink)

This collection of twelve essays reexamines Kant’s considered attitude toward particular sciences so as to reevaluate his natural philosophy and its relation to critique, and shows how Kant tries to develop a unified natural philosophy that nevertheless recognizes and respects the diverse standards implicit in various sciences. Manfred Kuehn outlines the intellectual situation at Königsberg at the end of Kant’s schooling, with focus on competing accounts of relations among substances—real change physical influx, occasionalism, and universal harmony—arguing centrally that Kant’s Thoughts (...) on the True Estimation of Living Forces was an act of rebellion against Martin Knutzen, leader of the dominating, anti-Wolffian Pietists, who argued for the sufficiency of influx and the dangers of preestablished harmony. Kant argued that while physical influx correctly accounts for some kinds of changes, a full account of reality requires harmony not only of the internal states of substances, but, going beyond the Leibnizians, external interactions of substances also. (shrink)

The unifying aim of this book is to defend a revised, epistemic interpretation of the relation between things in themselves and appearances which properly preserves the distinction between affection and causation, clarifies the basis of Kant’s transcendental idealism, accounts for the arguments in the First and Third Antinomies, and is philosophically plausible; and to show that the traditional alternatives—the ontological, Two Worlds Theory, on which a thing in itself is something that lacks the characteristics of our forms of intuition, whereas (...) an appearance is a numerically distinct object that has these characteristics, and the original epistemic, Two Descriptions Theory, on which there are two descriptions that one and the same object can satisfy, one description specifying our forms of intuition, the other characteristics the object may have under other forms of intuition—fail to achieve any of these desiderata. I shall sketch the project, and then make some evaluative remarks. (shrink)