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Groundless Belief

Groundless Belief
Author: Michael Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691222029

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Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation. The point of this wider-than-normal usage of the term "phenomenalism," according to which even some forms of direct realism deserve to be called phenomenalistic, is to call attention to important continuities of thought between theories often thought to be competitors. Williams's target is not phenomenalism in its classical sense-datum and reductionist form but empiricism generally. Williams examines and rejects the idea that, unless our beliefs are answerable to a "given" element in experience, objective knowledge will be impossible. Groundless Belief was first published in 1977. This second edition contains a new afterword in which Williams places his arguments in the context of some current discussions of coherentism versus the Myth of the Given and explains their relation to subsequent developments in his own epistemological views.


Groundless Belief

Groundless Belief
Author: Michael Williams
Publisher:
Total Pages: 181
Release: 1977
Genre: Knowledge, Theory of
ISBN:

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Groundless Belief

Groundless Belief
Author: Williams
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages:
Release: 1977-09-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780631174301

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Faith after Foundationalism

Faith after Foundationalism
Author: D.Z. Phillips
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1135978166

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Foundationalism is the view that philosophical propositions are of two kinds, those which need supporting evidence, and those which in themselves provide the evidence which renders them irrefutable. This book, originally published 1988, describes the battle between foundationalism, which places belief in God in the first category, and various other approaches to the problem of faith – ‘Reformed Epistemology’, hermeneutics; and sociological analysis. In the concluding section of the book, an examination of concept formation in religious belief is used to reinterpret the gap between the expressive power of language and the reality of God.


James's Will-To-Believe Doctrine

James's Will-To-Believe Doctrine
Author: James C.S. Wernham
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 141
Release: 1997-06-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 077356117X

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In 1896 William James published an essay entitled The Will to Believe, in which he defended the legitimacy of religious faith against the attacks of such champions of scientific method as W.K. Clifford and Thomas Huxley. James's work quickly became one of the most important writings in the philosophy of religious belief. James Wernham analyses James's arguments, discusses his relation to Pascal and Renouvier, and considers the interpretations, and misinterpretations, of James's major critics. Wernham shows convincingly that James was unaware of many destructive ambiguitities in his own doctrines and arguments, although clear and consistent in his view that our obligation to believe in theism is not a moral but a prudential obligation -- a foolish-not-to-believe doctrine, rather than a not-immoral-to-believe one. Wernham also shows that the doctrine is best read as affirming the wisdom of gambling that God exists, a notion which James failed to distinguish from believing and which, among other things, he explicitly identified with faith. James's pragmatism, a theory concerning the meaning of truth, is shown to be quite distinct from the doctrine of The Will to Believe. In concentrating on a careful analysis of this doctrine of the will-to-believe, Wernham not only makes a major contribution to understanding James's philosophy, but also clarifies issues in the philosophy of religion and in the analysis of belief and faith.


Wittgenstein and Natural Religion

Wittgenstein and Natural Religion
Author: Gordon Graham
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2014-09-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191023299

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Gordon Graham presents a radically innovative study of Wittgenstein's philosophy, in relation to the age-old impulse to connect ordinary human life with the transcendent reality of God. He offers an account of its relevance to the study of religion that is completely different to the standard version of 'Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion' expounded by both its adherents and critics. Graham goes on to revitalize the philosophy of 'true religion', an alternative, though not a rival, to the lively philosophical theology of Plantinga and Swinburne that currently dominates the subject. This alternative style of philosophy of religion has equally deep historical roots in the philosophical works of Spinoza, Hume, Schleiermacher, and Mill. At the same time, it is more easily connected to the psychological, sociological, and anthropological studies of William James, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, and Mary Douglas. Graham uses Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy to argue in favour of the idea that 'true religion' is to be understood as human participation in divine life.


Essays on Skepticism

Essays on Skepticism
Author: Anthony Brueckner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2010-08-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199585865

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Anthony Brueckner is recognized as one of the leading contemporary investigators of the problem of skepticism. This collection brings together Brueckner's most important work in this area, providing a connected and comprehensive guide to the complex state of play on this intensively studied area of philosophy.


Rational Belief

Rational Belief
Author: Robert Audi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190221852

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Rational Belief provides conceptions of belief and knowledge, offers a theory of how they are grounded, and connects them with the will and thereby with action, moral responsibility, and intellectual virtue. A unifying element is a commitment to representing epistemology-which is centrally concerned with belief-as integrated with a plausible philosophy of mind that does justice both to the nature of belief and to the conditions for its formation and regulation. Part One centers on belief and its relation to the will. It explores our control of our beliefs, and it describes several forms belief may take and shows how beliefs are connected with the world outside the mind. Part Two concerns normative aspects of epistemology, explores the nature of intellectual virtue, and presents a theory of moral perception. The book also offers a theory of the grounds of both justification and knowledge and shows how these grounds bear on the self-evident. Rationality is distinguished from justification; each clarified in relation to the other; and the epistemological importance of the phenomenal-for instance, of intuitional experience and other "private" aspects of mental life-is explored. The final section addresses social epistemology. It offers a theory of testimony as essential in human knowledge and a related account of the rational resolution of disagreements.


Scientific Theology: Reality

Scientific Theology: Reality
Author: Alister E. McGrath
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780567088888

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The second volume of an extended and systematic exploration of the relation between Christian theology and the natural sciences, focussing on the examination and defense of theological realism


Reflection and the Stability of Belief

Reflection and the Stability of Belief
Author: Louis E. Loeb
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2010
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0195368762

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A unifying theme of Loeb's work is epistemological - that Descartes and Hume advance theories of knowledge that rely on a substantial 'naturalistic' component, adopting one or another member of a cluster of psychological properties of beliefs as the goal of inquiry and the standard for assessing belief-forming mechanisms. Thus Loeb shows a surprising affinity between the epistemologies of the two figures -- surprising because they are often thought of as polar opposites in this respect. Descartes and Hume are unique in that their philosophical texts are accessible beyond just a narrow audience in the history of philosophy; their ideas continue to be a vital part of the field at large. This volume will thus appeal to advanced students and scholars not just in the history of early modern philosophy but in epistemology and other core areas of the discipline.