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Contextualism
Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the action, utterance, or expression can only be understood relative to that context.Price (2008). Contextualist views hold that philosophically controversial concepts, such as "meaning P", "knowing that P", "having a reason to A", and possibly even "being true" or "being right" only have meaning relative to a specified context. Other philosophers contend that context-dependence leads to complete relativism. In ethics, "contextualist" views are often closely associated with situational ethics, or with moral relativism. Contextualism in architecture is a theory of design where modern building types are harmonized with urban forms usual to a traditional city. In epistemology, contextualism is the treatment of the word 'knows' as context-sens ...
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Contextual Architecture
Contextual architecture, also known as Contextualism is a philosophical approach in architectural theory that refers to the designing of a structure in response to the literal and abstract characteristics of the environment in which it is built. Contextual architecture contrasts modernist architecture, which value the imposition of their own characteristics and values upon the built environment. Contextual architecture is usually divided into three categories: vernacular architecture, regional architecture, and critical regionalism all of which also inform the complementary architecture movement. Etymology The term ''contextualism'' is derived from the Latin , meaning to weave together or to join. The term was first applied to the arts and architecture by the aesthetician and philosopher Stephen C. Pepper in the 1960s, who originally coined the word as applied to philosophy. History The essential ideas of Contextualism in architecture long preceded the term's coinage. The ...
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Michael Williams (philosopher)
Michael Williams (born 6 July 1947) is a British philosopher who is currently Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, noted especially for his work in epistemology. Education and career He received his BA from the University of Oxford and his PhD from Princeton University under the direction of Richard Rorty. He taught at Yale University, the University of Maryland, and Northwestern University prior to joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins. He is married to philosopher and Wittgenstein scholar Meredith Williams, a recently retired member of the Johns Hopkins philosophy faculty. In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Philosophical work Williams is best known as an epistemologist, but he also has significant interest in the philosophy of language, Wittgenstein, and the history of modern philosophy. Other scholars know him particularly for his work on philosophical skepticism. In his book ...
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Experimental Philosophy
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry Edmonds, David and Warburton, NigelPhilosophy’s great experiment, ''Prospect'', March 1, 2009 that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a philosophical methodology that relies mainly on a priori justification, sometimes called "armchair" philosophy, by experimental philosophers. Knobe, JoshuaExperimental Philosophy and Philosophical Significance ''Philosophical Explorations'' (10) 2007. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research. Disagreement about what exper ...
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Contrastivism
Contrastivism, or the contrast theory of meaning, is an epistemological theory proposed by Jonathan Schaffer that suggests that knowledge attributions have a ternary structure of the form 'S knows that p rather than q'. This is in contrast to the traditional view whereby knowledge attributions have a binary structure of the form 'S knows that p'. Contrastivism was suggested as an alternative to contextualism. Both are semantic theories that try to explain skepticism using semantic methods. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong proposed in a paper titled "A Contrastivist Manifesto" a variant of contrastivism that, he argues, differs from contextualism, invariantism, and Schaffer's contrastivism. Ernest Gellner in '' Words and Things'' "terms derive their meaning from the fact that there are or could be things which fall under them and that there are others which do not." The contrast clause The '...rather than q' part of the knowledge attribution is known as the 'contrast clause'. This is wh ...
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Relevant Alternatives Theory
Relevant alternatives theory (RAT) is an epistemological theory of knowledge, according to which to know some proposition ''p'' one must be able to rule out all the relevant alternatives to ''p''. Introduction Relevant alternatives theory was primarily developed by Fred Dretske. It states that "knowing a true proposition one believes at a time requires being able to rule out relevant alternatives to that proposition at that time." One way that Dretske attempts to motivate RAT is with examples, such as the following: You take your son to the zoo, see several zebras, and, when questioned by your son, tell him they are zebras. Do you know they are zebras? Well, most of us would have little hesitation saying that we did know this. We know what zebras look like, and, besides, this is the city zoo and the animals are in a pen clearly marked "Zebras." Yet, something's being a zebra implies that it is not a mule and, in particular, not a mule cleverly disguised by the zoo authorities to lo ...
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Gail Stine
Gail Stine (nee Caldwell, 1940–December 28, 1977) was an American philosopher who specialized in epistemology and philosophy of language. She was born in Schenectady, New York. Before her death at the age of 37, she was a professor of philosophy at Wayne State University. Wayne State now holds the annual Gail Stine Memorial Lecture in her honor. Education Stine graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1962. Stine was a student of W. V. O. Quine and received her PhD at Harvard University in 1969 under the supervision of Burton Dreben. Work Stine was an advocate of contextualism, the view that our standards for knowledge vary by situation. Stine also advocates the view that for a subject to know that p, she must rule out all relevant alternatives to p, a position also held by Alvin Goldman and Fred Dretske Frederick Irwin "Fred" Dretske (; December 9, 1932 – July 24, 2013) was an American philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Bio ...
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Keith DeRose
Keith DeRose (born April 24, 1962) is an American philosopher teaching at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he is currently Allison Foundation Professor of Philosophy. He taught previously at New York University and Rice University. His primary interests include epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, and history of modern philosophy. He is best known for his work on contextualism in epistemology, especially as a response to the traditional problem of skepticism.Michael Williams, "Knowledge, Reflection and Sceptical Hypotheses", Erkenntnis 61 (2004) Education DeRose graduated from Calvin College in 1984 with a B.A. in Philosophy. He then studied at UCLA, earning an M.A. in 1986 and a PhD in 1990; his dissertation was entitled ''Knowledge, Epistemic Possibility, and Skepticism'', under Rogers Albritton. While at UCLA, he won the Robert M. Yost Prize for Excellence in Teaching (1988), was awarded the Griffin Fellowship in 1990, and won the Ca ...
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John Hawthorne
John Patrick Hawthorne (born 1964) is an English philosopher, currently serving as Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is recognized as a leading contemporary contributor to metaphysics and epistemology. Early life and career Hawthorne was born on 25 May 1964 in Birmingham, England. He earned his PhD from Syracuse University, where he studied with William Alston and Jonathan Bennett. From 2006 to 2015, he was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has also taught at the University of New South Wales, Arizona State University, Syracuse University, Rutgers University, and Princeton University. Philosophical work Hawthorne's 2006 collection ''Metaphysical Essays'' offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation, which one reviewer called "essential ...
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Situational Ethics
Situational ethics or situation ethics takes into account ''only'' the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically, rather than judging it only according to absolute moral standards. With the intent to have a fair basis for judgments or action, one looks to personal ideals of what is appropriate to guide them, rather than an unchanging universal code of conduct, such as Biblical law under divine command theory or the Kantian categorical imperative. Proponents of situational approaches to ethics include existentialist philosophers Sartre, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Jaspers, and Heidegger. Specifically Christian forms of situational ethics placing love above all particular principles or rules were proposed in the first half of the twentieth century by liberal theologians Rudolf Bultmann, John A. T. Robinson, and Joseph Fletcher. These theologians point specifically to ''agapē'', or unconditional love, as the highest end. Other theologians who advocated si ...
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Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas: # The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification # Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony # The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs # Philosophical skepticism, which questions the pos ...
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Neurophilosophy
Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. The philosophy of neuroscience attempts to clarify neuroscientific methods and results using the conceptual rigor and methods of philosophy of science. Specific issues Below is a list of specific issues important to philosophy of neuroscience: * "The indirectness of studies of mind and brain" * "Computational or representational analysis of brain processing" * "Relations between psychological and neuroscientific inquiries" * Modularity of mind * What constitutes adequate explanation in neuroscience? * "Location of cognitive function" The indirectness of studies of mind and brain Many of the methods and techniques central to neuroscientific discovery rely on assumptions that can limit the interpretation of the data. Philosophers of neuroscience have discu ...
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