David-Hillel Ruben

Book synopsis: What is the relationship between philosophy, social theory and empirical research? In what ways can we claim to 'know' the social world? What properties does the social world possess and what are their implications? This ground-breaking and multi-disciplinary book brings together a distinguished team of leading thinkers to discuss issues surrounding and informing questions such as: what is the 'social', in what ways can we 'know' it, and how can our findings be validated? These issues are discussed in an accessible way, including the relationship of philosophical and research issues to each other, the nature of social reality, properties that may be ascribed to the social, research accounts and rhetorical 'persuasion', and the relations between 'gender and knowing'. The overall concern of the book is to clarify how and in what ways we can claim to know the social world and what implications and consequences this may have for social scientific practice. For too long philosophers, social theorists and methodologists have talked past each other, often unaware of the mutually beneficial insights that each offers the other. This book is intended to contribute to a more constructive encounter and dialogue in order to advance understanding of the problems and possibilities surrounding the quest to know the social world. With this overall aim in mind, it will be essential reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students in the social sciences, as well as philosophers, social theorists, methodologists and social researchers in general.

Book synopsis: This is the first volume of a two-volume introduction to and guide through philosophy. It is intended to orientate, assist, and stimulate the reader at every stage in the study of the subject. Eleven extended essays have been specially commissioned from leading philosophers; each surveys a major area of the subject and offers an accessible but sophisticated account of the main debates. An extended introduction maps out the philosophical terrain and explains how the different subjects relate to each other. The first part of the book deals with the foundations of philosophical enquiry: epistemology; philosophical logic; methodology; metaphysics; and the philosophy of mind. The second part offers four historical chapters, two on ancient and two on modern philosophy, introducing great thinkers from the past, explaining and discussing their ideas, and showing the value of studying them today. The third part comprises two chapters devoted to questions of value, in ethics and aesthetics. Full annotated bibliographies are provided at the ends of chapters to serve as guides to further reading. This is real philosophy, not simplified philosophy; it will be accessible for the beginner but equally valuable for the third-year student. Deep and challenging questions are not shirked; the reader will be given a sense of involvement in the practice of philosophy today.

The empiricist theory of epistemological warrant is not without its attractions. If our beliefs are to be more than “hypothetical”, if they are to be beliefs about our world, then surely at some point our beliefs must be warranted by and anchored to the world by our experience. If our beliefs were not so anchored by our experience, then—to switch metaphors now with C.I. Lewis—“… the whole system of such would provide no better assurance of anything in it than that which attaches to the contents of a well-written novel.” Quinton has argued “… that it is through their connection with experience that basic statements derive that initial support without which no statement whatever would have any justification …”. Roderick Firth speaks of “the central thesis of epistemic priority—the thesis that some statements have some degree of warrant which is independent of the warrant that they derive from their coherence with other statements”. Quinton, again, has distinguished between the evidence that one proposition can lend another, i.e. propositional evidence, and the evidence that, ultimately, only experience can provide for foundation or basic propositions, experiential evidence.

The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader. The editor of each volume contributes an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading. This volume presents a selection of the most important recent writings on the nature of explanation. It covers a broad range of topics from the philosophy of science to the central philosophical terrain of the theory of knowledge. The distinguished contributors include Peter Achinstein, Wesley C. Salmon, Carl G. Hempel, Philip Kitcher, Bas C. van Fraassen, Jaegwon Kim, B. Brody, Timothy McCarthy, Peter Railton, David Lewis, Peter Lipton, James Woodward, and Robert J. Matthews

This paper, an extract from my Marxism and Materialism: Studies in Marxist Theory of Knowledge, discusses the epistemological status of philosophical realism. I take realism to be a necessary part of what Marx meant by 'materialism'. I argue that there are no valid, non-question-begging, decuctive arguments for the truth of realism; nor does empirical science inductively 'confirm' realism, in any technical sense of 'confirmation'. I argue that the relationship between realism and science is one of methodological continuity, in a sense difficult to specify exactly, since the denial of the essential independence from the mind of the material world ends in theology, at least in the tradition of absolute idealism. I then examine Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, in which I claim to find the same argument about methodological continuity, and show how this claim might be applied to the tradition of subjective idealism, with its use of counterfactuals and logically possible experiences in the 'reduction' of the physical world to experience.

Book synopsis: This collection of previously unpublished essays presents the newest developments in the thought of international scholars working on the explanation of action. The contributions focus on a wide range of interlocking issues relating to agency, deliberation, motivation, mental causation, teleology, interprative explanation and the ontology of actions and their reasons. Challenging numerous current orthodoxies, and offering positive suggestions from a variety of different perspectives, this book provides essential reading for anyone interested in the explanation of action