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"[Reading Ebersole] requiresand often succeeds in producinga radical reorientation of ones thinking . . . " from a book review Things We Know is a collection of fifteen essays that focus on perennial philosophical problems about knowledge. The essays let you participate in Frank Ebersoles unique struggles to come to terms with such questions as: Can we know the world? . . . the past? . . . the future? . . . of Gods existence? . . . whether our actions are free? . . . the foundations of logic and language? This is not just another philosophy book about problems of knowledge. In Things We Know, Ebersole, by carefully using examples, exposes the problems to be the products of philosophical pictures. The examples also make the pictures less compelling. Thus, by reading this philosophy book readers can join the author in working to free themselves from some perplexing philosophical concerns. How the Second Edition differs from the First Edition This edition differs from the First Edition (University of Oregon Books, 1967) in three ways. An essay is added. "Everymans Ontological Argument" has been inserted as Essay 14, following two other essays about the ontological argument. "Everymans Ontological Argument" was published in the Fall 1978 issue of Philosophical Investigations. (The original Chapter 14, "Where the Action Is," is now Chapter 15.) An essay is replaced. The original Essay 3, "How Philosophers See Stars," has been replaced by a modified version that was printed in Philosophy Today (no. 2, 1969). The replacement includes some further improvements. The text is improved. Throughout the book, the author has made corrections, stylistic improvements, and changed the wording as needed to make clearer his line of thought. Summary Each of the fifteen essays takes up a philosophical problem. In most of the essays, Ebersole first clarifies the problem and reviews common attempts to resolve the problem. Then he focuses on the central ideas and terms used to state the problem and creates examples of people using the terms under consideration. The examples are unique because of their focus on the context and point of what we say. If his investigations fail to find a use of the terms that supports the philosophical problem, he is led to conclude that the problem does not really derive from a philosophical insight but rather arises from a philosophical picture or model. Preface The essays in Things We Know address some of the perennial philosophical problems of knowledge. The essays are unified by being similar in method and philosophic aim. Ebersole exposes a picture behind each problem. In the essays he works through some of the ways that pictures control our thinking and tries to make the pictures less compelling. Chapters 1 6: Perception and Language Chapter 1: "Seeing Red in Red Things" Philosophical problem: Must words for simple visual properties (e.g., "red") refer to things because the things share some property (e.g., redness)? Can we see this property? Topics investigated: Family resemblances, properties of colors, when we regard things as the same, when we regard colors as the same, when we regard things as having common properties, language-world philosophical pictures. Philosophers discussed: A. J. Ayer, J. Herder, J. S. Mill. Chapter 2: "Seeing Things" Philosophical problem: Do hallucinations and afterimage
The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch's concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central themes in Winch's writings and that the issues which occupied him in his Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy and later papers remain central to social studies. The volume offers a careful reading of the text in alliance with Wittgensteinian insights and alongside a focus on the nature and results of social thought and inquiry. It draws parallels with other movements in the social studies, notably ethnomethodology, to demonstrate how Winch's central claim is both more significant and more difficult to transcend than sociologists and philosophers have hitherto imagined.
Departing from a concern with certain ’hard’ problems in social theory and focusing instead on the theoretical strategies employed in their solution, especially on how these strategies depend on what the author calls the theoretical attitude towards language, this book considers whether these strategies, far from being indispensable guides to thinking, might in fact lead social theorists to misunderstand the concepts constitutive of social life. Making use of the insights and practice of Ordinary Language Philosophy, understood as encompassing the work of Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin and their followers, Clarity and Confusion in Social Theory reveals the profound logical flaws in some of the central methodological procedures often employed in social theory for dealing with concepts, offering alternative approaches to social scientists and philosophers for tackling the conceptual issues that have so bedevilled social science from its inception. A lucid explication of Ordinary Language Philosophy and the potential that it offers for deepening and re-orienting theoretical work in the social sciences, this volume, apart from being a challenge to the influential Critical Realist paradigm, constitutes a radical critique of social theoretical reason. As such, it will appeal to social theorists and philosophers of social science, those with interests in research methods and theory construction, and anyone interested in thinking clearly about society.
This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks’s original analyses – concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members’ actual activities – demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing, Sacks provided for highly technical, detailed, yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social organisation. In this original collection, scholars working in a range of different fields, including sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, social psychology, and linguistics, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired, influenced, and shaped by Sacks’s approach, as well as how their current research is taking Sacks’s legacy forward in new directions. As such, the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to, and critical exploration of, the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society.
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
This book revisits the arguments by which Harvey Sacks and Harold Garfinkel opposed the widespread attempt in the social sciences to construct disciplinary theories and methods in place of common-sense knowledge of human action, and proposed instead an alternative that would investigate the organised methods of natural language use and common-sense reasoning that constitute social orders – arguments that led to the establishment and proliferation of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. As the very "constructive analysis" that they opposed has begun to be incorporated into influential lines of research in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the authors return to the founding insights of the field and reiterate the importance of Garfinkel and Sacks’ original and controversial proposals for an "alternate" sociology of practical action and practical reasoning. Showing how constructive analysis has become entrenched in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and arguing for a need to "re-boot" these approaches, this volume constitutes a call for a renewal of the radical alternative proposed by Garfinkel and Sacks.
These essays assess market liberal or libertarian political theory. They provide insights into the limits of government, develop market-oriented solutions to pressing social problems, and explore some defects in traditional libertarian theory and practice. Some of the essays deal with crucial theoretical issues, asking whether the promotion of citizens' welfare can serve as the justification for the establishment of government, or inquiring into the constraints on individual behavior that exist in a liberal social order. Some essays explore market liberal or libertarian positions on specific public policy issues, such as affirmative action, ownership of the airwaves, the provision of healthcare, or the regulation of food and drugs. Other essays look at property rights, the morality of profit-making, or the provision of public goods. Still others address libertarianism as a political movement, suggesting ways in which libertarians can reach out to those who do not share their views.
Each of the essays in this volume engages with some particular aspect of philosopher Alvin Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion.
Argues that knowledge is a kind of achievement, exploring questions of what it is and what kind of value it has.