Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
The Reliability of Sense Perception, PDF eBook

The Reliability of Sense Perception PDF

PDF

Download - Immediately Available
Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

Description

Why suppose that sense perception is an accurate source of information about the physical environment? More generally, is it possible to demonstrate that our basic ways of forming beliefs are reliable? In this book, a leading analytic philosopher confronts this classic problem through detailed investigation of sense perception, the source of beliefs in which we place the most confidence. Carefully assessing the available arguments, William P. Alston concludes that it is not possible to show in any noncircular way that sense perception is a reliable source of beliefs.

Alston thoroughly examines the main arguments that have been advanced for the reliability of sense perception, including arguments from the various kinds of success we achieve by relying on the sense perception, arguments that some features of our sense experience are best explained by supposing that it is an accurate guide, and arguments that there is something conceptually incoherent about the idea that sense perception is not reliable. He concludes that all of these arguments that are not disqualified in other ways are epistemically circular, for they use premises based upon the very source in question. Alston then suggest that the most appropriate response to the impossibility of showing that our basic sources of beliefs are reliable is an appeal to the practical rationality of engaging in certain socially established belief-forming practices.

The Reliability of Sense Perception will be welcome by epistemologists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers of science.

Information

Other Formats

Save 18%

£150.00

£123.00

Download - Immediately Available
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Delivered to your inbox

to transfer to your device

eBook Help

Is this the right eBook for
my device? How do I download
this eBook? See help and FAQs pages

Information