Groundless Belief

An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology - Second Edition

By: Michael Williams

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Paperback | 5 October 1999 | Edition Number 2

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216 Pages

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Revised

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21.5 x 13.9 x 216

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Michael Williams launches an attack, in this text, on what he calls "phenomenalism", the idea that 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. William's target is not phenomenalism in its classical sense-datum and reductionist form but empiricism generally, he examines and rejects the idea that, unless beliefs are answerable to a "given" element in experience, objective knowledge will be impossible. The mild version of coherentism that results from a radical rejection of empiricist foundationalism does not "cut people off from the world". Far from being an antidote to scepticism, empiricist preconceptions are scepticism's main source. This edition contains an afterword in which Michael Williams places his arguments in the context of some discussions of coherentism versus the Myth of the Given and explains their relation to subsequent developments in his own epistemological views.

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"[An] intriguing work... Williams has an array of deft, decisive arguments directed at the views of Lewis, Ayer, Chisholm, Sellars, Bennett, et al... Tightly argued."--Alan Hart, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Philosophy Epistemology & The Theory of Knowledge History of Western Philosophy

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Preface to the Second Edition	p. ix
Introduction: Epistemology and Scepticism	p. 1
The Appeal to the Given	p. 25
The Regress of Justification	p. 25
The Regress of Justification	p. 60
Meaning or Theory?	p. 116
Basic Propositions	p. 145
Afterword	p. 183
Index	p. 203
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Groundless Belief

An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology - Second Edition

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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