Work on the norms of belief in epistemology regularly starts with two touchstone essays: W.K. Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief" and William James's "The Will to Believe." Discussing the central themes from these seminal essays, Evidentialism and the Will to Believe explores the history of the ideas governing evidentialism.As well as Clifford's argument from the examples of the shipowner, the consequences of credulity and his defence against skepticism, this book tackles Ja...

In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a regress of reasons looms. In t...

This book analyses the straw man fallacy and its deployment in philosophical reasoning. While commonly invoked in both academic dialogue and public discourse, it has not until now received the attention it deserves as a rhetorical device.Scott Aikin and John Casey propose that straw manning essentially consists in expressing distorted representations of one's critical interlocutor. To this end, the straw man comprises three dialectical forms, and not only the one that is usually su...

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, *Epictetus's '*Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-cont...

Why We Argue (And How We Should): A Guide to Political Disagreement in an Age of Unreason presents an accessible and engaging introduction to the theory of argument, with special emphasis on the way argument works in public political debate. The authors develop a view according to which proper argument is necessary for one’s individual cognitive health; this insight is then expanded to the collective health of one’s society. Proper argumentation, then, is seen to play a c...

L'ateismo è sempre più diffuso, ma non lo è la sua accettazione sociale. Le critiche nei suoi confronti, talvolta durissime, si sprecano, e non provengono soltanto dai fedeli più semplici, ma anche da autorevoli esponenti del mondo intellettuale. Eppure la posizione atea non è affatto estremista, anzi: è una posizione moralmente e intellettualmente rispettabile. L'ateismo è assolutamente razionale. Ma deve essere presentato in modo ragionevole. Questo libro si rivolge sia a credenti che a n...

From obnoxious public figures to online trolling and accusations of “fake news”, almost no one seems able to disagree without hostility. But polite discord sounds farfetched when issues are so personal and fundamental that those on opposing sides appear to have no common ground. How do you debate the “enemy”?Philosophers Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse show that disagreeing civilly, even with your sworn enemies, is a crucial part of democracy. Rejecting the popular view that civilit...

Thinking about Logic is an accessible and thought-provoking collection of classic articles in the philosophy of logic. An ideal companion to any formal logic course or textbook, this volume illuminates how logic relates to perennial philosophical issues about knowledge, meaning, rationality, and reality. The editors have selected each essay for its brevity, clarity, and impact and have included insightful introductions and discussion questions. The puzzles raised will help readers...

Virtue theory, natural law, deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism: these are the basic moral theories taught in “Ethics,” “History of Philosophy,” and “Introduction to Philosophy” courses throughout the United States. When the American philosopher William James (1842 – 1910) find his way into these conversations, there is uncertainty about where his thinking fits. While utilitarianism has become the default position for teaching James’s pragmatism and radical empiricism, this default ...

For the past fifteen years, Aikin and Talisse have been working collaboratively on a new vision of American pragmatism, one which sees pragmatism as a living and developing philosophical idiom that originates in the work of the "classical" pragmatisms of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, uninterruptedly develops through the later 20th Century pragmatists (C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, Nelson Goodman, W. V. O. Quine), and continues through the present day. According to Aikin an...

The Routledge Handbook of Argumentation Theory offers 43 chapters—written specifically for this volume by a team of leading international scholars—that survey a wide spectrum of research on the nature, purpose, and promise of argument and the associated practice of argumentation. Each chapter provides a state-of-the-art survey to help readers understand and engage with the field’s main ideas and problems.The book is split into two parts:Part I covers orientin...

A wide-ranging anthology of key pragmatist writingsThe Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem. The collection includes work by pragmatism's founders, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as seminal writings by mid-twentieth-century ...