Kenneth R. Westphal is a professor of philosophy whose work delves into epistemology and moral philosophy. His research primarily explores the nature of justificatory reasoning in non-formal domains, examining concepts of realism and anti-realism. He also investigates pragmatic realism, offering a distinctive perspective on these complex philosophical ideas.
Grounds of Pragmatic Realism shows Hegel is a major epistemologist, who disentangled Kant's critique of judgment, across the Critical corpus, from transcendental idealism, and augmented its enormous evaluative and justificatory significance for commonsense knowledge, the natural sciences and freedom of action.
The book offers a fresh interpretation of the moral philosophies of Hume and Kant, emphasizing a crucial shared achievement in their constructivist approach to justice. Westphal argues that examining their differences obscures this common ground, which avoids reliance on moral realism, anti-realism, or irrealism. This perspective highlights the foundational principles of justice as rooted in constructivist thought, providing a nuanced understanding of both philosophers' contributions to moral theory.
This book is the first detailed study of Kant's method of 'transcendental reflection' and its use in the Critique of Pure Reason to identify our basic human cognitive capacities, and to justify Kant's transcendental proofs of the necessary a priori conditions for the possibility of self-conscious human experience. Kenneth Westphal, in a closely argued internal critique of Kant's analysis, shows that if we take Kant's project seriously in its own terms, the result is not transcendental idealism but (unqualified) realism regarding physical objects. Westphal attends to neglected topics - Kant's analyses of the transcendental affinity of the sensory manifold, the 'lifelessness of matter', fallibilism, the semantics of cognitive reference, four externalist aspects of Kant's views, and the importance of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations for the Critique of Pure Reason - that illuminate Kant's enterprise in new and valuable ways. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's theoretical philosophy.
Provides a succinct philosophical introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit for non-specialists and students, focusing on Hegel's unique and insightful theory of knowledge and its relations to 20th-century epistemology. schovat popis