One World and Our Knowledge of It: The Problematic of Realism in Post-Kantian Perspective

Description

Philosophy, Aristotle is well known to have said, begins in wonder. So, of course, does everything else. Astronomy begins in wonder at the moving lights in the sky; biology, in wonder at the living creatures of the earth; psychology, in wonder at the intricacies and eccentricities of our distinctively human form of life. So, at best, wonder is only a necessary condition for philosophy. What. is peculiar about philosophers is what we are inclined to wonder about. We wonder about everything. In particular, we wonder about astron­ omy and biology and psychology (and about philosophy) - about whether and how such disciplines are possible and, crucially, about whether and how such disciplines fit together. We don't just wonder about everything. We wonder about everything all at once. Philosophers are general practitioners. Things stand ill with our disciplme today. There was quite recently at large in America an occasional publication under the title Jobs in Philosophy. The title rested upon a confusion, and the publication furthered the confusion upon which it rested. For it did not, in fact, list jobs in philosophy. It couldn't. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-2 Epistemic Legitimacy: The Problematic of Empiricism....Pages 3-21 Things: The Micro-Ontology of Realist Consciousness....Pages 22-56 Time and the Self: The Limits of Idealist Consciousness....Pages 57-86 Correctness and Community: From the Individual to the Social....Pages 87-108 Realism and Idealism: Evolutionary Epistemology....Pages 109-128 Attribution and Appraisal: Elements of a Theory of Conduct....Pages 129-155 Communal Norms: Steps toward a Collective Pragmatics....Pages 156-169 Explanatory Realism: The Convergence of Conceptual Schemes....Pages 170-187 Retrospect: The End of a Myth and the Future of a Discipline....Pages 188-191 Back Matter....Pages 193-209