Catherine Elgin

Se considera que la ciencia es el espejo de la naturaleza, mientras que el arte imita la vida. De ser así, las representaciones en ambas disciplinas deberían asemejarse a sus objetos. En contra de tales teorías miméticas, argumento que la ejemplificación y no la simple semejanza es crucial. Explico en qué consiste la ejemplificación: una relación referencial de un ejemplar con alguna de sus características. Puesto que la ejemplificación es selectiva, un ejemplar puede diferir de su referente en aspectos no ejemplificados. Ésta es la razón por la cual una idealización, que estrictamente es falsa, puede ofrecer comprensión del fenómeno que le concierne. A partir de analogías con las representaciones pictóricas, muestro cómo un modelo ejemplifica características que comparte con su objeto, pone de relieve la importancia de tales características y con ello proporciona comprensión del sistema en cuestión

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she argues for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns.Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief.

I argue that the picture theory provides both a common referential hase and a common logical syntax for languages embodying alternative conceptual schemes. I offer an analysis of depiction, explicating the Tractarian concepts of pictorial structure, pictorial relationship, and representational form. Significant failure of reference and the existence of languages with incompatible ontological commitments show that on the molar level depiction is not required for sense. Using three premises, taken to be axiomatic for Wittgenstein, I show that analysis leads to a base of elementary propositions which must depict in order to be significant. There, the relations between pictorial structure, pictorial relationship and representational form are such that reference is secured and conceptual relativity precluded.

A challenger of traditions and boundaries A pivotal figure in 20th-century philosophy, Nelson Goodman has made seminal contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language, with surprising connections that cut across traditional boundaries. In the early 1950s, Goodman, Quine, and White published a series of papers that threatened to torpedo fundamental assumptions of traditional philosophy. They advocated repudiating analyticity, necessity, and prior assumptions. Some philosophers, realizing the seismic effects repudiation would cause, argued that philosophy should retain the familiar framework. Others considered the arguments compelling, but despaired of doing philosophy without the framework. Goodman disagreed with both factions. Rather than regretting the loss of structure, he capitalized on the opportunities that arise when the strictures of tradition are loosened.

Nelson Goodman was one of the soaring figures of twentieth century philosophy. His work radically reshaped the subject, forcing fundamental reconceptions of philosophy’s problems, ends, and means. Goodman not only contributed to diverse fields, from philosophy of language to aesthetics, from philosophy of science to mereology, his works cut across these and other fields, revealing shared features and connecting links that narrowly focused philosophers overlook. That the author of The Structure of Appearance also wrote Languages of Art is not in the end surprising.

Jonathan Bennett (1974) maintains that Huckleberry Finn’s deliberations about whether to return Jim to slavery afford insight into the tension between sympathy and moral judgment; Miranda Fricker (2007) argues that the trial scene in To Kill a Mockingbird affords insight into the nature of testimonial injustice. Neither claims merely that the works prompt an attentive reader to think something new or to change her mind. Rather, they consider the reader cognitively better off for her encounters with the novels. Nor is her cognitive improvement restricted to acquiring new justified true beliefs about the works themselves. What the reader gleans is supposed to enhance her knowledge or understanding of the ..

I argue that trustworthiness is an epistemic desideratum. It does not reduce to justified or reliable true belief, but figures in the reason why justified or reliable true beliefs are often valuable. Such beliefs can be precarious. If a belief's being justified requires that the evidence be just as we take it to be, then if we are off even by a little, the belief is unwarranted. Similarly for reliability. Although it satisfies the definition of knowledge, such a belief is not trustworthy. We ought not use it as a basis for inference or action and ought not give others to believe it. The trustworthiness of a belief, I urge, depends on its being backed by reasons—considerations that other members of the appropriate epistemic community cannot reasonably reject. Trustworthiness is intersubjective. It both depends on and contributes to the evolving cognitive values of an epistemic community

Descartes’ demon is a crafty little devil. Despite centuries of effort by exceedingly clever thinkers, he continues to elude our clutches. Skepticism endures. The reason, Richard Foley thinks, is not hard to discover. It is simply impossible to break through the Cartesian circle. Our only means of vindicating a claim to knowledge or rational belief is to show that it is produced or sustained by our best epistemic methods, that it satisfies the best standards we can devise for rational belief. That it does so is clearly better than the alternative. But the standards and methods themselves are vulnerable. How do we know that they are reliable? The point, as we all realized in Philosophy 101, is that there is no ironclad guarantee. Even if Descartes had managed to generate an unexceptionable proof that God exists and is not a deceiver, the question would arise: What insures that what we consider an unexceptionable proof actually demonstrates the truth of the conclusion? Raising our standards or improving our methods of proof will not get us out of our predicament. For no matter how high we raise our standards, the question recurs. We cannot prove that our perceptions, memories, inferences or opinions are reliable. The Cartesian circle is the epistemic circle.

A challenger of traditions and boundaries A pivotal figure in 20th-century philosophy, Nelson Goodman has made seminal contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language, with surprising connections that cut across traditional boundaries. In the early 1950s, Goodman, Quine, and White published a series of papers that threatened to torpedo fundamental assumptions of traditional philosophy. They advocated repudiating analyticity, necessity, and prior assumptions. Some philosophers, realizing the seismic effects repudiation would cause, argued that philosophy should retain the familiar framework. Others considered the arguments compelling, but despaired of doing philosophy without the framework. Goodman disagreed with both factions. Rather than regretting the loss of structure, he capitalized on the opportunities that arise when the strictures of tradition are loosened. Available individually by volume 1. Nominalism, Constructivism, and Relativism in the Work of Nelson Goodman (0-8153-2609-2) 296 pages 2. Nelson Goodman's New Riddle of Induction (0-8153-2610-6) 312 pages 3. Nelson Goodman's Philosophy of Art (0-8153-2611-4) 284 pages 4. Nelson Goodman's Theory of Symbols and its Applications (0-8153-2612-2) 344 pages.

Truth is standardly considered a requirement on epistemic acceptability. But science and philosophy deploy models, idealizations and thought experiments that prescind from truth to achieve other cognitive ends. I argue that such felicitous falsehoods function as cognitively useful fictions. They are cognitively useful because they exemplify and afford epistemic access to features they share with the relevant facts. They are falsehoods in that they diverge from the facts. Nonetheless, they are true enough to serve their epistemic purposes. Theories that contain them have testable consequences, hence are factually defeasible.

The fundamental debate in contemporary epistemology has been between foundationalists, coherentists, and contextualists. The parties in the debate generally contend that we have knowledge, that having knowledge requires justified belief, and that justified belief consists either in being rationally inferable from some special set of propositions, in cohering in a special way with other beliefs accepted by the subject, or in bearing some special relation to a context in which they are formed or the subject is situated. In this book Elgin opposes views of these kinds and defends a different sort of epistemological theory. Unlike most epistemologists, her theory is not concerned with knowledge; it is concerned with “tenable opinion.” In her view, actual knowledge is more than one can hope for in most cognitive endeavors.