Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Axiological Reconstruction

Author: Hacking
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This book serves as an excellent introduction to contemporary epistemology and also makes a significant contribution to it. Susan Haack meticulously articulates and convincingly defends her own position, which skillfully navigates between transcendentalism and scientism. Additionally, she discusses the views of a wide range of contemporary philosophers, such as Karl Popper, Quine, Richard Rorty, Goldman, Paul Churchland, and Patricia Churchland, among others, and offers strong and highly detailed critiques of them, to the extent that the aforementioned philosophers and their admirers are compelled to respond to these critiques. This book is an important work in contemporary epistemology. It critiques two traditional theories of cognitive justification—foundationalism and coherentism—and develops a novel theory of cognitive justification—foundational-coherentism—using the key metaphor of a crossword puzzle. This latter theory lies between foundationalism and coherentism, as well as between transcendentalism and scientism, and is fundamentally naturalistic.