Jay Rosenberg offers a systematic philosophical theory of knowledge which is specifically responsive to the fact that we always engage the world from a particular perspective within it. It consequently calls into question in a fundamental way many received understandings regarding the relationships among the concepts of knowledge, belief, justification, and truth. Thinking about Knowing's leading thesis is that we correctly ascribe knowledge to those whom, from our de facto epistemic perspective, we judge able adequately to justify the corresponding belief. Since from any one epistemic perspective the judgments that a person has done everything he needs to do to be entitled to a confident belief, and that he has done everything he needs to do to establish the truth of that belief, stand or fall together, a further 'truth requirement' is vacuous and idle. On this 'perspectivalist' account, unqualified knowledge attributions are always made only from our own epistemic perspective, with reference to a determinate context of inquiry. The theory is consequently both resolutely anti-skeptical and comprehensively fallibilistic. The corresponding 'proceduralist' conception of justification, applying in the first instance to conducts of persons, carries the further 'internalist' consequence that a person's belief is justified only to the extent that he is in a position to justify it.
Reviews
... there is a great deal that is of interest in Rosenberg's book ... Throughout the discussions are thorough and scholarly, and there are some real gems to be found here. * The Philosophical Quarterly *
... this book is both genuinely interesting and original ... [Rosenberg] clearly comes to the core questions facing epistemology with a fresh eye uncontaminated by over-exposure to the specifically epistemological contemporary literature. Instead, he brings a breadth of philosophical expertise and experience which ensures that he says things that one does not always expect to hear. This is a very useful contribution for anyone to make to a philosophical debate. * The Philosophical Quarterly *
Thinking about Knowing is a forceful and refreshing call for a return to good old fashioned pragmatism in the theory of knowledge. * Jay F. Rosenberg, Times Literary Supplement23/07/2004 *
a compelling journey that makes us further appreciate the contributions Descartes, Kant, Sellars, Moore, Peirce, and others have made to the investigation of important issues in epistemology. Rosenberg, drawing in insightful, original, and provocative ways on these philosophers, gets us to think anew about the problems of skepticism, knowledge, and the aim of inquiry. Thinking About Knowing will lead its readers to some fruitful "thinking about knowing" of their own. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199251339
Author The late Jay Rosenberg
Format Hardback
Page Count 268
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 523g
Dimensions(mm) 243mm * 161mm * 20mm