Stephen Hetherington Boeken

Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge. Epistemologists seek to understand knowledge’s nature and availability. What is knowledge? There are competing theories. Can we really have knowledge? Challenges abound. In this lively book, Stephen Hetherington introduces us to epistemological theorizing. He builds a theory and tests it, refines it, and challenges it again. He explores such topics as evidence, truth and belief, different kinds of knowledge, and knowledge’s value, as well as sceptical views concerning knowledge of the physical world, one’s own mind and memory, and rational limits for observation and reason. This epistemological theorizing is then applied to some of life’s most pressing issues, such as how to live and how to understand ourselves and others. What is Epistemology?  is a practical and student-friendly guide to one of the most dynamic areas of philosophy. It will be the go-to introductory epistemology text.

Being Philosophical guides readers through the perplexing initial moments of meeting philosophy by taking them inside philosophical thinking as an activity. In a beginner-friendly voice, Stephen Hetherington elucidates how intellectual ‘tools’ from a diversity of traditions, east and west, can enable us to start doing philosophy – that is, to think ‘from scratch’ in a philosophical way. He explores many classical topics and issues that have preoccupied philosophers from Plato, early Buddhists, and Confucius to Karl Marx and beyond – selves, souls, identity, will, knowing and reasoning, among others – and presents possible methods for responding to different theories. Inviting and conversational, Being Philosophical is the book needed by every new philosophy student – or anyone wondering whether they might want to explore the world of philosophy.

This Element asks whether modalized epistemology - proposing and debating modally explicable conditionals with suitably epistemic content, as needing to be added to 'true belief' in order to define or understand knowing's nature - can succeed.