I highly recommend Cassam's book. It provides a deep, yet admirably accessible study of self-knowledge and surrounding issues, and is full of helpful and often surprising insights.
Michael Roche, Mississippi State University, The Philosophical Quarterly
Human beings are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be careless and uncritical, and our beliefs, desires, and other attitudes aren't always as they ought rationally to be. Our beliefs can be eccentric, our desires irrational and our hopes hopelessly unrealistic. Our attitudes are influenced by a wide range of non-epistemic or non-rational factors, including our character, our emotions, and powerful unconscious biases. Yet we are rarely conscious of such influences. Self-ignorance is not something to which human beings are immune.
In this book Quassim Cassam develops an account of self-knowledge which tries to do justice to these and other respects in which humans aren't model epistemic citizens. He rejects rationalist and other mainstream philosophical accounts of self-knowledge on the grounds that, in more than one sense, they aren't accounts of self-knowledge for humans. Instead he defends the view that inferences from behavioural and psychological evidence are a basic source of human self-knowledge. On this account, self-knowledge is a genuine cognitive achievement and self-ignorance is almost always on the cards.
As well as explaining knowledge of our own states of mind, Cassam also accounts for what he calls 'substantial' self-knowledge, including knowledge of our values, emotions, and character. He criticizes philosophical accounts of self-knowledge for neglecting substantial self-knowledge, and concludes with a discussion of the value of self-knowledge.
This book tries to do for philosophy what behavioural economics tries to do for economics. Just as behavioural economics is the economics of ^homo sapiens, as distinct from the economics of an ideally rational and self homo economics, so Cassam argues that philosophy should focus on the human predicament rather than on the reasoning and self-knowledge of an idealized homo philosophicus.
Les mer
Humans are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be careless, our beliefs eccentric, and our desires irrational. Quassim Cassam develops a new account of self-knowledge which recognises this feature of human life. He argues that self-knowledge is a genuine cognitive achievement, and that self-ignorance is almost always on the cards.
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Preface
1: Homo Philosophicus
2: The Disparity
3: Substantial Self-Knowledge
4: Self-Knowledge for Philosophers
5: Reality Check
6: Psychological Rationalism
7: Normative Rationalism
8: Predictably Irrational?
9: Looking Outwards
10: Looking Inwards
11: Self-Knowledge and Inference
12: Knowing Your Evidence
13: Knowing Yourself
14: Self-Ignorance
15: The Value of Self-Knowledge
Bibliography
Index
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`Valuable for those interested in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology . . . Highly recommended.'
Choice
`a truly fine book. It is clearly and elegantly written, and metes out criticism fairly while developing a number of lines of powerful argument. It demonstrates where most philosophical discussions of self-knowledge have gone astray, puts forward a plausible positive theory of insubstantial self-knowledge, and makes an important start on the project of examining the nature and importance of substantial self-knowledge. It deserves to be widely read.'
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online
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Ambitious original work from a leading philosopher
Explores neglected types of self-knowledge, including knowledge of our characters, values, and emotions
Draws on ideas from psychology, literature, and economics
Written in an unusually clear and accessible style
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Quassim Cassam is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He was previously Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, and has also taught at Oxford and UCL. He is the author of Self and World (OUP, 1997), The Possibility of Knowledge (OUP, 2007) and, with John Campbell, Berkeley's Puzzle: What Does Experience Teach Us? (OUP, 2014).
Les mer
Ambitious original work from a leading philosopher
Explores neglected types of self-knowledge, including knowledge of our characters, values, and emotions
Draws on ideas from psychology, literature, and economics
Written in an unusually clear and accessible style
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780198776680
Publisert
2016
Utgiver
Oxford University Press
Vekt
396 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
158 mm
Dybde
14 mm
Aldersnivå
U, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
256
Forfatter