Worlds of Truth

Worlds of Truth: A Philosophy of Knowledge explicates and builds upon a half century of philosophical work by the noted philosopher Israel Scheffler. Propounds a new doctrine of plurealism which maintains the existence of multiple real worlds Offers a defense of absolute truth, which denies certainty and eschews absolutism, and defends systematic relativity, objectivity, and fallibilism Emphasizes a wide range of pragmatic interests: epistemology and scientific development, cognition and emotion, science and ethics, ritual and culture, and art and science

Preface viii Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 Part I: Inquiry 5 Chapter 1: Justification 7 1. Beliefs 7 2. Access to truth 8 3. Cogito ergo sum 9 4. Mathematical certainty 11 5. Classical logic 12 6. C. I. Lewis’ empiricism 14 7. Access as a metaphor 17 8. J. F. Fries and K. Popper 18 9. Voluntarism and linearity 19 10. One-way justification 20 11. Beginning in the middle 21 12. Justification, contextual and comparative 22 13. Justification in the empirical sciences 23 14. Circularity versus linearity 25 15. Democratic controls 25 16. Interactionism 27 Chapter 2: Truth 30 1. Allergy to absolute truth 31 2. Provisionality and truth 32 3. Truth versus verification 34 4. Truth and fixity 36 5. Transparency, Tarski, and Carnap 38 6. Truth and certainty 42 7. Sentences as truth candidates 44 8. Theoretical terms 44 9. Varieties of instrumentalism 45 10. Pragmatism and instrumentalism 45 11. Systems, simplicity, reduction 46 12. Crises in science 51 13. Reduction and expansion 52 Chapter 3: Worlds 55 1. Philosophies of truth 55 2. Operationism and truth 57 3. Version-dependence 59 4. Differences among scientifically oriented philosophers 61 5. Monism, pluralism, plurealism 62 6. Realism versus irrealism 66 7. A theory of everything 72 8. The status of ethics 75 9. Emotive theories; Ayer and Stevenson 75 10. Moore’s ethical intuitionism 77 11. Dewey and ethical naturalism 79 12. Symbol, reference, and ritual 81 Part II: Related Pragmatic Themes 93 Chapter 4: Belief and Method 95 Introduction 95 1. Problems of pragmatism and pragmatic responses 98 2. Peirce’s theory of belief, doubt, and inquiry 102 3. Peirce’s comparison of methods 104 4. Difficulties in Peirce’s treatment 106 5. An epistemological interpretation 108 6. The primacy of method 109 Chapter 5: Action and Commitment 114 Chapter 6: Emotion and Cognition 125 1. Emotions in the service of cognition 126 2. Cognitive emotions 132 Index 143