The Possibility of Knowledge
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How is knowledge of the external world possible? How is knowledge of other minds possible? How is a priori knowledge possible? These are all examples of how-possible questions in epistemology. Quassim Cassam explains how such questions arise and how they should be answered.In general, we ask how knowledge, or knowledge of some specific kind, is possible when we encounter obstacles to its existence or acquisition. So the question is: how is knowledge possible given the various factors that make it look impossible? A satisfactory answer to such a question will therefore need to do several different things. In essence, explaining how a particular kind of knowledge is possible is a matter of identifying ways of acquiring it, overcoming or dissipating obstacles to its acquisition, and figuring out what makes it possible to acquire it.
To respond to a how-possible question in this way is to go in for what might be called a "multi-levels" approach. The aim of this book is to develop and defend this approach. The first two chapters bring out its advantages and explain why it works better than more familiar "transcendental" approaches to explaining how knowledge is possible. The remaining chapters use the multi-levels framework to explain how perceptual knowledge is possible, how it is possible to know of the existence of minds other than one's own and how a priori knowledge is possible.
Features
- A new approach to epistemology
- Discusses some of the deepest questions in philosophy
- Cassam is one of Britain's leading philosophers
Reviews
"The book is very crunchy in the density of its argument, but lucidly expressed, and not without a sly humour in its choice of examples."--Steven Poole, The Guardian
"Freeman is the leading authority on the thought and writing of John Rawls, and Rawls was the leading political and social philosopher of the twentieth century. Freeman's clear, careful, and deeply informed studies in these essays offer important insight about basic questions of interpretation and justification--about Rawls' constructualism, about his relation to utilitarianism, about the idea of public reason, and about his reasons for limiting his principles of distributive justice to the self-contained nation-state."--Thomas Nagel, New York University
"Freeman's papers range over some of the most important subjects in liberal political theory: the nature and varieties of contractarianism, the meaning of the priority of right, the idea of public reason, the problem of stability, the challenge of luck egalitarianism, the democratic character of judicial review, and the demands of international justice.... The result is an extraordinarilly substantial set of papers.... This is a very valuable book."--Notre Dame Philosophical Review
"Freeman is one of the leading political philosophers of his generation. His influential papers include some of the most sophisticated and illuminating discussions of themes from Rawls' earlier and later work. This important collection will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in political philosophy."--R. Jay Wallace, University of California, Berkeley
"One great virtue of this collection of nine essays is clarification, in the face of numerous common misinterpretations, of the interraltionship of these two problems--the nature and the stability of justice--and the implications of the resulting contractarian position for such topics as public reason, consequentialism, luck egalitarianism, distributive justice, and cosmopolitanism."--Michael Howard, Philosophical Books
About the Author(s)
Quassim Cassam took up the Knightbridge Chair at Cambridge in January 2007. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at University College London (2005-2006) and Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford University (1986-2004). He is the author of Self and World (Oxford University Pr ess, 1997). He is also the editor of Self-Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1994).
