Epistemic Pragmatism and Other Studies in the Theory of Knowledge

The core of pragmatism lies in the concept of functional efficacy-of utility in short. And epistemic pragmatism accordingly focuses on the utility of our devices and practices in relation to the aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise-answering questions, resolving puzzlement, guiding action. The present book revolves around this theme. All papers in this book bear on epistemological topics which have preoccupied Nicholas Rescher for many years. Much as with the thematic structure of this book, this interest expanded from an initial concern with the exact sciences, to encompass the epistemology of the human sciences, and ultimately the epistemology of philosophy itself.

Auteur
Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Americna Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984.

Contenu
Chapter 1: Epistemic Pragmatism Chapter 2: Linguistic Pragmatism Chapter 3: On Cognitive Finitude and Limitations Chapter 4: On Cognitive Economics Chapter 5: The Uneasy Union of Ideality and Pragmatism in Inquiry Chapter 6: On Inconsistency and Provisional Acceptance Chapter 7: On Realism and the Problem of Transparent Facts Chapter 8: On Fallacies of Aggregation Chapter 9: Leibniz and the Conditions of Identity Chapter 10: Worldly Woes: The Trouble with Possible Worlds Chapter 11: Trigraphs: A Resource for Illustration In Philosophy Chapter 12: Fragmentation and Disintegration in Philosophy (Its Grounds and it Implications)