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55The Generation of Knowledge from Multiple TestimoniesSocial Epistemology 30 (3): 251-272. 2016.The article presents, develops, and defends a non-reductionist model of the generation of knowledge from multiple testimonies. It distinguishes the generation of knowledge from multiple testimonies from the transmission of knowledge by a single testimony. The reiteration of the generation of knowledge from multiple testimonies generates social knowledge.Critical examination of the literature about the coherence of multiple testimonies, their reliability, and independence argues in particular aga…Read more
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19Shipwrecked: Patočka's philosophy of Czech historyHistory and Theory 35 (2): 196-216. 1996.Czech history defies dominant Western progressive historical narratives and moral evolutionism. Czech free-market democracy was defeated and betrayed three times in 1938, 1948, and 1968. The Czech Protestants were defeated in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consequently, Czechs have a different perspective on the traditional questions of speculative philosophy of history: Where are we coming from? Where are we going? What does it mean? They ask further: where and why did history go wron…Read more
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124The epistemic significance of consensusInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 46 (4). 2003.Philosophers have often noted that science displays an uncommon degree of consensus on beliefs among its practitioners. Yet consensus in the sciences is not a goal in itself. I consider cases of consensus on beliefs as concrete events. Consensus on beliefs is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for presuming that these beliefs constitute knowledge. A concrete consensus on a set of beliefs by a group of people at a given historical period may be explained by different factors according…Read more
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55Scientific Historiography Revisited: An Essay on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of HistoryDialogue 37 (2): 235-. 1998.RÉSUMÉ: La pragmatique et la sémantique de l’historiographie révèlent une fragmentation croissante qui s’étend par-delà les écoles jusqu’aux historiens individuels. Alors que les scientifiques normalisent les données pour qu’elles s’ajustent aux théories, les historiens interprètent leurs théories, de manières incompatibles entre elles, pour qu’elles s’ajustent aux différents cas historiques. Les difficultés qui en découlent dans la communication historiographique remettent en cause les philosop…Read more
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3Patocka vs. Heidegger: The Humanistic DifferenceTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1992 (92): 85-98. 1992.
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76Review: Historiographical Counterfactuals and Historical Contingency (review)History and Theory 38 (2): 264-276. 1999.
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21Reflections on a Fairy Godfather (review)Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1996 (106): 195-202. 1996.In traditional Jewish funerals, beggars usually join family and friends of the deceased in the kaddish prayer. When the funeral service ends, the beggars start chanting their own prayer: Charity will Save from Death! Charity will Save from Death! (sdaka tasil mimavet!). As the dead body of communism is interred in the ground of history, East European intellectuals accompany the funeral march chanting their own version of “Charity will Save from Death” (and political instability, rabid ideologies…Read more
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21Review of Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Out of the Cave: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Dead Sea Scrolls Research (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (9). 2006.
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29Review essay: Historiographic self-consciousness (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (2): 210-228. 2007.Historians tend to present what they do in terms of prevailing epistemic values that have little to do with their actual practices. Practical knowledge of how does not generate necessarily abstract theoretical knowledge of what . Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas attempts to integrate his normative philosophy of historiography with contemporary philosophy of language and epistemology, intentionalist theory of meaning, and coherentist epistemology, on a sophisticated and well-informe…Read more
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58Plato and Vico: A Platonic Reinterpretation of VicoIdealistic Studies 23 (2-3): 139-150. 1993.Giambattista Vico referred throughout his writings to Plato as the most important single influence on his own philosophy [SN 1109]. Nevertheless, Plato’s influence on Vico has not received sufficient attention by contemporary commentators. The purpose of this paper is to suggest what aspects of Plato’s philosophy influenced which parts of Vico’s Scienza Nuova and in what fashion; to reinterpret Vico’s philosophy in light of the Platonic influence on it; to reject some interpretations of Vico tha…Read more
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9Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences (review)Dialogue 38 (2): 435-437. 1999.The philosophic distinction between the human and natural sciences was introduced by the romantics, but no sooner had the distinction been made than experimental psychology sprang into life and demolished it. Though scientific accounts of human events have been present for over a century, philosophers keep trying to exclude human affairs from the purview of science on a priori grounds. This tradition started with Hegel, who, for the duration of his professorship in Berlin, prevented the appointm…Read more
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3Patocka vs. Heidegger: The Humanistic DifferenceTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1992 (92): 85-98. 1992.
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81Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of HistoriographyCambridge University Press. 2004.How do historians, comparative linguists, biblical and textual critics and evolutionary biologists establish beliefs about the past? How do they know the past? This book presents a philosophical analysis of the disciplines that offer scientific knowledge of the past. Using the analytic tools of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science the book covers such topics as evidence, theory, methodology, explanation, determination and underdetermination, coincidence, contingency and counterfac…Read more
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O historiograficznej teorii „strudla i jabłek”. Odpowiedź Chrisowi LorenzowiRuch Filozoficzny 70 (3). 2013.
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No Czechs or Dogs Allowed: The Former "Praxis International" in PragueTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 98 (n/a): 255. 1993.
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61Memory: Irreducible, Basic, and Primary Source of KnowledgeReview of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (1): 1-16. 2018.I argue against preservationism, the epistemic claim that memories can at most preserve knowledge generated by other basic types of sources. I show how memories can and do generate knowledge that is irreducible to other basic sources of knowledge. In some epistemic contexts, memories are primary basic sources of knowledge; they can generate knowledge by themselves or with trivial assistance from other types of basic sources of knowledge. I outline an ontology of information transmission from eve…Read more
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91Miracles, historical testimonies, and probabilitiesHistory and Theory 44 (3). 2005.The topic and methods of David Hume’s "Of Miracles" resemble his historiographical more than his philosophical works. Unfortunately, Hume and his critics and apologists have shared the prescientific, indeed ahistorical, limitations of Hume’s original historical investigations. I demonstrate the advantages of the critical methodological approach to testimonies, developed initially by German biblical critics in the late eighteenth century, to a priori discussions of miracles. Any future discussion…Read more
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Knowing the Past: Philosophical Issues of History and Archeology (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2): 309. 2004.
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27Intellectual Responsibility: The Specter of Benda and the Phantom of Bakunin (review)Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1998 (110): 181-191. 1998.
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76Historiographic Counterfactuals and the Philosophy of HistoriographyJournal of the Philosophy of History 10 (3): 333-348. 2016._ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 333 - 348 Philosophers and historians debate not only the correct analysis of historiographic counterfactuals and their possible utilities for historiography and its philosophy but whether they can be more than speculative. This introduction presents the articles in the special issue on historiographic counterfactuals, show how they hang together and what are the main agreements and disagreements among the authors. Finally, it argues that the debate over histori…Read more
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46History - myth or reality: Reflections on the state of the profession (review)Journal of the Philosophy of History 1 (1): 125-135. 2007.
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6Contemporary philosophy of historiography (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 102-129. 1997.
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10Essais hérétiques sur la philosophie de l'histoire. By Jan Patocka. Translated by Erika Abrams (review)History and Theory 31 (3): 355. 1992.
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62Holistic explanations of eventsPhilosophy 79 (4): 573-589. 2004.Explanations of descriptions of events are undivided, holistic, units of analysis for the purpose of justification. Their justifications are based on the transmission of information about the past and its interpretation and analysis. Further analysis of explanations of descriptions of events is redundant. The “holistic” model of explanations fits better the actual practices of scientists, historians and ordinary people who utter explanatory propositions than competing models. I consider the “inf…Read more
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36Book ReviewSteven Wall,. Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. 244. $54.95 (review)Ethics 111 (3): 651-653. 2001.
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Czech Philosophy and Culture at the Crossroads (review)Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 101 (n/a): 83. 1994.
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91A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2008.The fifty entries in this _Companion_ cover the main issues in the philosophies of historiography and history, including natural history and the practices of historians. Written by an international and multi-disciplinary group of experts A cutting-edge updated picture of current research in the field Part of the renowned _Blackwell Companions_ series
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University of OstravaDepartment of Philosophy
Director, Center for the Philosophy of HistoriographyProfessor
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Interest
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