The Possibility of Philosophical Understanding Reflections on the Thought of Barry Stroud

by Bridges, Jason; Kolodny, Niko; Wong, Wai-hung

• ISBN13: 9780195381658
• ISBN10: 0195381653
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Barry Stroud's work has had a profound impact on a very wide array of philosophical topics, including epistemological skepticism, the nature of logical necessity, the interpretation of Hume, the interpretation of Wittgenstein, the possibility of transcendental arguments, and the metaphysical status of color and value. And yet there has heretofore been no book-length treatment of his work. The current collection aims to redress this gap, with 13 essays on Stroud's work by a diverse group of contributors including some of his most distinguished interlocutors and promising recent students. All but one essay is new to this volume. The essays cover a range of topics, with a particular focus on Stroud's treatments of skepticism and subjectivism. There are also chapters on Stroud's views on meaning and rule-following, on Hume on personal identity, and on the role of desires in the explanation of action. Despite the diversity, the essays are unified by the thematic unity in Stroud's own writings. Stroud approaches every philosophical problem by attempting to get as clear as possible on the nature and source of that problem. He aims to determine what kind of understanding philosophical questions are after, and what the prospects for achieving that understanding might be. This theme--of the nature and possibility of philosophical understanding--is introduced in the opening essay of this volume and recurs in different ways throughout the remaining chapters. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the philosophy of philosophy. As these essays show, one important source of insight on this subject is the thought of Barry Stroud, for whom pursuit of the philosophy of philosophy has always been indistinguishable from pursuit of philosophy as such.

Author Biography

Jason Bridges is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
Niko Kolodny is Professor of Philosophy at UC Berkeley.
Wai-Hung Wong is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. vii
Introduction: The Quest to Understand Philosophy	p. 3
Hume
Rethinking Hume's Second Thoughts about Personal Identity	p. 15
Skepticism and Knowledge
External World Skepticism and the Structure of Epistemic Entitlement	p. 43
Stroud and Pyrrhonism	p. 62
Transcendental and Circular Reasoning	p. 73
Stroud's Proposal for Removing the Threat of Skepticism	p. 86
What the Skeptic Still Can't Learn from How We Use the Word "Know"	p. 124
Meaning and Reason
Inside and Outside Language: Stroud's Nonreductionism about Meaning	p. 147
Dispositions and Rational Explanation	p. 182
Subjectivism and Reality
Colors as Secondary Qualities	p. 217
Intelligible Causation	p. 232
Unsettling Subjectivism about Value	p. 249
Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Time	p. 271
Index	p. 297
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