Georges Dicker

The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's acknowledged masterpiece, in which he tackles the question of how we can possibly have knowledge that does not rest on experience (a priori knowledge). The first half of the Critique advances a constructive theory of human cognition and defends the possibility of human knowledge against the skeptical empiricism of Hume. These sections of the Critique are difficult for beginners and for advanced students alike. While there exist many scholarly works discussing the Critique on an advanced level, this book is explicitly designed to be read alongside the text by first-time readers of Kant. Dicker makes Kant's views and arguments as accessible as possible without oversimplifying them, and synthesizes the views of contemporary scholars. Kant's Theory of Knowledge will be useful to both undergraduate and graduate students struggling with this notoriously difficult yet deeply influential thinker.

David Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_ and _Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ are amongst the most widely-studies texts on philosophy. _Hume's Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Introduction_ presents in a clear, concise and accessible manner the key themes of these texts. Georges Dicker clarifies Hume's views on meaning, knowledge, causality, and sense perception step by step and provides us with a sharp picture of how philosophical thinking has been influenced by Hume. Accessible to anyone coming to Hume for the first time, _Hume's Epistemology and Metaphysics_ is an indispensible guide to Hume's philosophical thinking.

This essay replies to criticisms of my Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination made by Margaret Atherton and Samuel Rickless. These critics both focus primarily on my treatment of Berkeley’s arguments in the opening sections of Principles Part I and the first of his Three Dialogues. They mainly agree that the arguments I attribute to Berkeley are unsound for the reasons that I give, but also argue that I misrepresent his arguments and that his real arguments are better. Here I defend both my interpretations and my assessments of Berkeley’s arguments.

This book expounds, analyzes, and appraises the constructive part of Kant’s theory of knowledge, as presented in the Prefaces, Introduction, Transcendental Aesthetic, and especially the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Drawing on the work of influential recent Kant commentators like Robert Paul Wolff, Peter F. Strawson, Paul Guyer, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, and James Van Cleve, Dicker reconstructs the central argument of the Analytic that spans the first and second edition versions of the Transcendental Deduction and the Second Analogy of Experience. The book also contains detailed analyses of key sections of the Critiquethat enrich or supplement the central argument, such as the First Analogy and the Refutation of Idealism. As well, it offers balanced and detailed analyses of sections of the Critique that Kant took to be important but that are less closely tied to its central argument, including the Metaphysical Deduction, the Schematism, the Axioms of Intuition, the Anticipations of Perception, the Postulates of Empirical Thought, and the Third Analogy. Throughout the book, the writing is both rigorous and highly accessible. All the major arguments are reconstructed in numbered steps, in such a way that their premises are perspicuous and their validity easily seen by basic rules of sentential logic. The book is designed to be read as a companion to the constructive first half the Critique, and to be useful to undergraduate and graduate students studying Kant and to their professors. Its analyses of major Kantian arguments will be of interest to Kant scholars as well.

David Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_ and _Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ are amongst the most widely-studies texts on philosophy. _Hume's Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Introduction_ presents in a clear, concise and accessible manner the key themes of these texts. Georges Dicker clarifies Hume's views on meaning, knowledge, causality, and sense perception step by step and provides us with a sharp picture of how philosophical thinking has been influenced by Hume. Accessible to anyone coming to Hume for the first time, _Hume's Epistemology and Metaphysics_ is an indispensible guide to Hume's philosophical thinking.

Locke proposes a Hobbesian definition of a free action as one such that if the agent wills to do it, then she can do it; and if she wills to "forbear" it, then she can forbear it. This has led to classifying him as a compatibilist. The author argues that he's an incompatibilist and a libertarian. Although Locke frequently refers to "what determines the will," these references are to an agent's reasons for having specific volitions, not to their causes. Locke's elaborate theory of human motivation and agency reveals that he doesn't hold that volitions are causally necessitated. There's also a neglected passage in the Essay and another in his correspondence where he denies that they are, and says that if they were, this would entail that we aren't free. The author explains why Locke didn't build the requirement that free actions can't be causally necessitated into his definition of freedom, and how he would respond to the objection that such nondetermined actions would be random events.

Like Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley before him, Hume propounds a theory of the external world or of what, in his case, is better called belief in the existence of body. The success or failure of his discussion rests not on any conclusion reached about the status of this belief—its reasonableness or unreasonableness, its truth or falsity--but only on whether, in accordance with his purpose of providing a “science of MAN,” his explanation of why we have the belief is convincing. Furthermore, Hume identifies two versions of the belief: an ordinary or “vulgar” version that we all hold until we confront the arguments that demonstrate its falsity and a “philosophical” version that we are driven to by those arguments but that has no rational foundation. This chapter analyzes Hume’s treatment of both versions and offers an internal criticism as well as some criticism from the standpoint of contemporary analytic philosophy.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action.

In this chapter, the author shows how certain deep points about temporal experience drive both versions of Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories – a transcendental argument that he called a “Deduction” not because of its deductive structure but because in German the term “Deduktion” had a legal meaning signifying establishment of the right or title to something, in this case the right to apply Kant's categorical concepts – and their sequel in the Analogies of Experience. The author also discusses Kant's “Refutation of Idealism,” a famous transcendental argument in which time also plays a key role. Kant produced two versions of his Transcendental Deduction, one for the First Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (“the A‐Deduction”) and one for the Second Edition (“the B‐Deduction”). The author also presents responses to the Stroudean objection to these transcendental arguments.

Abstract:The purpose of Hume’s argument about induction, contra “literalist” interpretations that see it merely as psychology, is to show that induction cannot be justified. Hume maintains that the only way to justify induction would be to demonstrate or to produce a good inductive argument for the uniformity principle (UP). His most famous point is that any attempt to justify UP inductively would be circular. One may retort that no inductive argument can be circular, for a circular argument must be deductively valid. But there is a sense in which a purely inductive argument for UP is circular: it uses induction for the purpose of justifying induction. Therefore, the literalist interpretation cannot be right. For if the argument can be circular only if its purpose is to justify induction, and Hume has shown that it is circular, then its purpose must be to justify induction, and Hume shows that this cannot be done.

ABSTRACT E. M. Curley has said that Descartes’ cogito, ergo sum “is as obscure on examination as it is compelling at first glance.” Why should that be? Maybe because the cogito raises so many textual and interpretive questions. Is it an argument or an intuition? If it is an argument, does it require an additional premise? Is it best interpreted as a “performance?” Is it best seen as the discovery that any reason proposed for doubting its success entails the meditator’s existence? And so on. But all these questions typically arise in the wake of worries about the cogency of the cogito when it is treated as an argument and worded in its canonical form, “I think, therefore I exist.” In this essay, I focus on what I take to be the most fundamental reason for questioning the cogito’s cogency when it is so treated—namely that the “I” in its premise is question-begging. I distinguish that reason from other reasons that are sometimes conflated with it, and I argue that it is not a good reason. I then comment on some of the questions mentioned above in light of my defense of the cogito seen in that traditional way.

A solid grasp of the main themes and arguments of the seventeenth century philosopher Rene Descartes is an essential tool towards understanding modern thought, and a necessary entree to the work of the empiricists and Immanuel Kant, and to the study of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind. Clear and accessible, this book serves as an introduction to Descartes's ideas for undergraduates and as a sophisticated companion to his Meditations for more advanced readers. After a thorough discussion of the main themes and arguments of the Meditations, the historical background of the work, and its critical reception, the author offers his own reflections on Cartesian doubt, the cogito, the causal and ontological proofs of God's existence, the Cartesian circle, Cartesian dualism, and Descartes' views of the material world. The commentary includes and cross-references the full text of Meditations I, II, and V, and most of Meditations III and VI, employing John Cottingham's highly-praised translation.