Rational Belief: Structure, Grounds, and Intellectual Virtue - Hardcover

Audi, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190221844 ISBN 13: 9780190221843

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Rational Belief provides conceptions of belief and knowledge, offers a theory of how they are grounded, and connects them with the will and thereby with action, moral responsibility, and intellectual virtue. A unifying element is a commitment to representing epistemology-which is centrally concerned with belief-as integrated with a plausible philosophy of mind that does justice both to the nature of belief and to the conditions for its formation and regulation. Part One centers on belief and its relation to the will. It explores our control of our beliefs, and it describes several forms belief may take and shows how beliefs are connected with the world outside the mind. Part Two concerns normative aspects of epistemology, explores the nature of intellectual virtue, and presents a theory of moral perception. The book also offers a theory of the grounds of both justification and knowledge and shows how these grounds bear on the self-evident. Rationality is distinguished from justification; each clarified in relation to the other; and the epistemological importance of the phenomenal-for instance, of intuitional experience and other "private" aspects of mental life-is explored. The final section addresses social epistemology. It offers a theory of testimony as essential in human knowledge and a related account of the rational resolution of disagreements.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Audi is an internationally known contributor to epistemology. He has published books and numerous papers in the field, and he lectures widely in epistemology and such related areas as ethical theory and philosophy of action. His epistemological books include The Structure of Justification (1993), The Architecture of Reason (OUP, 2001), Epistemology (3rd edition, 2010), and Moral Perception (2013).

Review:

"Audi has a distinctive position, if not on all issues, then in the way in which they are put together, as evinced by his endorsement of an internalist account of justification and an externalist account of knowledge. There is much here that is instructive, illuminating, provocative and worthy of considered response." -- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0190221844
• ISBN 13: 9780190221843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296