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It is Shackle's view that human conduct is chosen with a view to its consequences. But these are in the future, which cannot be directly known. Expectation will confine itself to what is deemed possible, but this leaves it free to entertain widely diverse and rival hypotheses. How can such skeins of mutually conflicting ideas serve the formation of individual or institutional policy? This is the chief question this book examines.
Whatever your reasons, kind reader, for reading these words,-what ever your premises about forewords, whatever the epistemic motivation with which you approach them-Iet me urge you to turn immediately to Kruglanski's first chapter and skim it. If any enthusiasm for sodal psy chology flows in your veins, you will certainly proceed then to read further in this important book. It represents some dozen years of Arie's thought and of his and his colleagues' research. Its intellectual scope covers 50 years of sodal psychology-from attitudes and attitude change, to balance, disso nance, and the various other cognitive consistency theories, to causal attribution, and to current cognitive sodal psych...
The effective use of development economic theories in practice is limited, the authors contend, by the lack of explicit criterion for judging their scientific content. The directional progress of critical research and teaching is also constrained by this deficiency. This study advances a meta-theory designed to assist in evaluating the scientific validity of theories in economic development and how these theories can be improved to assist social practice. Using this model, the study then examines existing theories, dividing them into explanatory and prescriptive theories. The explanatory theories include the stage-based theories of Marx, Schumpeter, and Rostow, and factor-based theories, inc...
This author explores the intersection between cognitive science, as exemplified by the computational model of mind, and epistemology specifically, epistemic justification theory. Her analysis leads to the conclusion that some very specific and somewhat technical issues in epistemic justification theory can be at least partially resolved, if not entirely cleared up, by the use of the computational model. The third and fourth chapters of this work are devoted directly to that effort. Chapter one examines in detail epistemology and cognitive sciences, while chapters two and three offer a thorough introduction to standard epistemic justification theory. Finally, chapter five is a critique of the computational model.
What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? Declan Smithies argues here that consciousness is essential to explaining how we can acquire knowledge and justified belief about ourselves and the world around us. On this view, unconscious beings cannot form justified beliefs and so they cannot know anything at all. Consciousness is the ultimate basis of all knowledge and epistemic justification. Smithies builds a sustained argument for the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness which draws on a range of considerations in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His position combines two key claims. The first is phenomenal mentalism, which says that epistemic justification is deter...
Proposing a new theory of fiction, this work reviews the confusion about perceived realism, metaphor, virtual worlds and the seemingly obvious distinction between what is true and what is false. The rise of new media, new technology, and creative products and services requires a new examination of what ‘real’ friends are, to what extent scientific novelty is ‘true’, and whether online content is merely ‘figurative’. In this transdisciplinary theory the author evaluates cognitive theories, philosophical discussion, and topics in biology and physics, and places these in the frameworks of computer science and literary theory. The interest of the reader is continuously challenged on matters of truth, fiction, and the shakiness of our belief systems.
What Knowledge Claims of God Involve. This book investigates the various traditions like monism, polytheism, pantheism, panentheism and approaches such as foundationalism, fideism, pragmatism, and rational fideism. This book was originally the PhD thesis of the writer submitted to ACTS Academy in 2007.
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Epistemic norms play an increasingly important role in current debates in epistemology and beyond. In this volume a team of established and emerging scholars presents new work on the key debates. They consider what epistemic requirements constrain appropriate belief, assertion, and action, and explore the interconnections between these standards.