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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature,origin,and scope of knowledge,epistemic justification,the rationality of belief,and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:
Skepticism,also spelled scepticism in British English,is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example,if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases,skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief,i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally,skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy,particularly epistemology.
Truth or verity is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. In everyday language,truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it,such as beliefs,propositions,and declarative sentences.
Justification is the property of belief that qualifies it as knowledge rather than mere opinion. Epistemology is the study of reasons that someone holds a rationally admissible belief. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief,which include the ideas of warrant,knowledge,rationality,and probability,among others.
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects,including astronomy,epistemology,mathematics,political philosophy,ethics,metaphysics,ontology,logic,biology,rhetoric and aesthetics. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and later evolved into Roman philosophy.
Philosophical skepticism is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even rejects very plausible knowledge claims that belong to basic common sense. Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories:Those who deny all possibility of knowledge,and those who advocate for the suspension of judgment due to the inadequacy of evidence. This distinction is modeled after the differences between the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonian skeptics in ancient Greek philosophy. In the latter sense,skepticism is understood as a way of life that helps the practitioner achieve inner peace. Some types of philosophical skepticism reject all forms of knowledge while others limit this rejection to certain fields,for example,knowledge about moral doctrines or about the external world. Some theorists criticize philosophical skepticism based on the claim that it is a self-refuting idea since its proponents seem to claim to know that there is no knowledge. Other objections focus on its implausibility and distance from regular life.
Crispin James Garth Wright is a British philosopher,who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics,Wittgenstein's later philosophy,and on issues related to truth,realism,cognitivism,skepticism,knowledge,and objectivity. He is Professor of Philosophical Research at the University of Stirling,and taught previously at the University of St Andrews,University of Aberdeen,New York University,Princeton University and University of Michigan.
The Organon is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name Organon was given by Aristotle's followers,the Peripatetics,who maintained against the Stoics that Logic was "an instrument" of Philosophy.
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic,philosophy,and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy,with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities,and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that they are not.
Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs. It was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE,and said to have been inspired by the teachings of Pyrrho and Timon of Phlius in the fourth century BCE. Pyrrhonism is best known today through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus,writing in the late second century or early third century CE. The publication of Sextus' works in the Renaissance ignited a revival of interest in Skepticism and played a major role in Reformation thought and the development of early modern philosophy.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence,knowledge,values,reason,mind,and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by being critical and generally systematic and by its reliance on rational argument. It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.
In logic,the logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally,the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise,unambiguous logical interpretation with respect to a formal system. In an ideal formal language,the meaning of a logical form can be determined unambiguously from syntax alone. Logical forms are semantic,not syntactic constructs;therefore,there may be more than one string that represents the same logical form in a given language.
An appeal to nature is a rhetorical technique for presenting and proposing the argument that "a thing is good because it is 'natural',or bad because it is 'unnatural'." In debate and discussion,an appeal-to-nature argument is considered to be a bad argument because the implicit primary premise "What is natural is good" has no factual meaning beyond rhetoric.
Informal logic encompasses the principles of logic and logical thought outside of a formal setting. However,the precise definition of "informal logic" is a matter of some dispute. Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair define informal logic as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards,criteria,procedures for the analysis,interpretation,evaluation,criticism and construction of argumentation." This definition reflects what had been implicit in their practice and what others were doing in their informal logic texts.
Philosophy of logic is the area of philosophy that studies the scope and nature of logic. It investigates the philosophical problems raised by logic,such as the presuppositions often implicitly at work in theories of logic and in their application. This involves questions about how logic is to be defined and how different logical systems are connected to each other. It includes the study of the nature of the fundamental concepts used by logic and the relation of logic to other disciplines. According to a common characterisation,philosophical logic is the part of the philosophy of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems,often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. But other theorists draw the distinction between the philosophy of logic and philosophical logic differently or not at all. Metalogic is closely related to the philosophy of logic as the discipline investigating the properties of formal logical systems,like consistency and completeness.
Ralph Henry Johnson is a Canadian American philosopher,born in Detroit,Michigan. Johnson has been credited as one of the founding members of the informal logic movement in North America,along with J. Anthony Blair who co-published one of the movement's most influential texts,Logical Self-Defense,with Johnson. Alongside its founder,Blair,Johnson co-directed the Centre for Research in Reasoning,Argumentation,and Rhetoric at the University of Windsor. As Johnson and Blair write in the preface to the newest edition of Logical Self-Defense on the influential nature of the text:
"We might note that the theoretical perspective introduced in Logical Self-Defense has proved quite influential among textbook authors. It is to be found in modified form in A Practical Study of Argument by Trudy Govier,in Attacking Faulty Reasoning by T. Edward Damer,in Logic in Everyday Life and Open Minds and Everyday Reasoning by Zachary Seech,in Thinking Logically by James B. Freeman,and in Good Reasoning Matters by Leo Groarke and Christopher W. Tindale."
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises due to the structure of arguments alone,independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies,critical thinking,and argumentation theory. It examines arguments expressed in natural language while formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun,the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields,such as philosophy,mathematics,computer science,and linguistics.
Stathis Psillos is a Greek philosopher of science. He is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics at the University of Athens,Greece and a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy of the University of Western Ontario. In 2013–15,he held the Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Ontario,Canada.
Louis Groarke is a Canadian philosopher,author,and a professor in the Philosophy Department at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish,Nova Scotia. His work is characterized by his specialization in Western philosophy,especially the thought of Aristotle.
Christopher William Tindale is a Canadian philosopher specializing in rhetoric,argumentation theory,and ancient Greek philosophy. Tindale is an editor of the journal Informal Logic,and currently serves as the chair of the Centre for Research in Reasoning,Argumentation,and Rhetoric. He has published numerous books and articles,translated into several languages,with a focus on argumentation and rhetoric.
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