Cart
Free Shipping in the UK
Proud to be B-Corp

Tracking Truth Sherrilyn Roush (Rice University, Texas)

Tracking Truth By Sherrilyn Roush (Rice University, Texas)

Tracking Truth by Sherrilyn Roush (Rice University, Texas)


£139.69
Condition - New
Only 2 left

Summary

Provides a unification of the concepts of knowledge and evidence. This book argues against traditional epistemological realist and anti-realist positions about scientific theories and for a piecemeal approach based on a criterion of evidence. It is aimed at epistemologists and philosophers of science.

Tracking Truth Summary

Tracking Truth: Knowledge, Evidence, and Science by Sherrilyn Roush (Rice University, Texas)

Tracking Truth presents a unified treatment of knowledge, evidence, and epistemological realism and anti-realism about scientific theories. A wide range of knowledge-related phenomena, especially but not only in science, strongly favour the idea of tracking as the key to what makes something knowledge. A subject who tracks the truth - an idea first formulated by Robert Nozick - has the ability to follow the truth through time and changing circumstances. Epistemologists rightly concluded that Nozick's theory was not viable, but a simple revision of that view is not only viable but superior to other current views. In this new tracking account of knowledge, in contrast to the old view, knowledge has the property of closure under known implication, and troublesome counterfactuals are replaced with well-defined conditional probability statements. Of particular interest are the new view's treatment of skepticism, reflective knowledge, lottery propositions, knowledge of logical truth, and the question why knowledge is power in the Baconian sense. Ideally, evidence indicates a hypothesis and discriminates it from other possible hypotheses. This is the idea behind a tracking view of evidence, and Sherrilyn Roush provides a defence of a confirmation theory based on the Likelihood Ratio. The accounts of knowledge and evidence she offers provide a deep and seamless explanation of why having better evidence makes one more likely to have knowledge. Roush approaches the question of epistemological realism about scientific theories through the question what is required for evidence, and rejects both traditional realist and traditional anti-realist positions in favour of a new position which evaluates realist claims in a piecemeal fashion according to a general standard of evidence. The results show that while anti-realists were immodest in declaring a priori what science could not do, realists were excessively sanguine about how far our actual evidence has so far taken us.

Tracking Truth Reviews

Provides a sustained and ambitious development of the basic idea that knowledge is true belief that tracks the truth... excellent. * Eric Christian Barnes, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science *
Sherrilyn Roush's exemplary breathes life into what I would have sworn was a moribund philosophical project. * Kenny Easwaran, Mind Journal *
The central ideas in Roush's book focus on applying some of Nozick's ideas both to standard epistemological conundrums and to live issues in philosophy of science. The resulting tour de force is interesting and though-provoking. * Horacio Arlo-Costa, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

Table of Contents

1. Tracking: at home on the range ; Appendix A: Knowledge without justification ; 2. Tracking with closure ; 3. Tracking: more and better ; 4. Tracking over the rivals ; Appendix B: Sensitivity and safety ; 5. What is evidence? Discrimination, indication, and leverage ; Appendix C: The likelihood ratio, high P(e), and high P(h/e) ; 6. Real anti-realism: the evidential approach

Additional information

NPB9780199274734
9780199274734
0199274738
Tracking Truth: Knowledge, Evidence, and Science by Sherrilyn Roush (Rice University, Texas)
New
Hardback
Oxford University Press
2005-11-10
248
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time

Customer Reviews - Tracking Truth