Articles

Sanford GOLDBERG ABSTRACT: Whether or not all assertion counts as testimony (a matter not addressed here), it is argued that not all testimony involves assertion. Since many views in the epistemology of testimony assume that testimony requires assertion, such views are (at best) insufficiently general. This result also points to what we might call the epistemic significance of assertion as such. …

Catherine Z. ELGIN ABSTRACT: In “Hume and Julius Caesar,” G.E.M. Anscombe argues that some historical claims, such as “Julius Caesar was assassinated,” serve as touchstones for historical knowledge. Only Cartesian doubt can call them into question. I examine her reasons for thinking that the discipline of history must be grounded in claims that it is powerless to discredit. I argue that …

Susan HAACK ABSTRACT: The present study reiterates one of the main ideas that we exposed in 1983, in the paper “Din fals rezultă orice” (“From False Follows Anything”), published in the volume Întemeieri raţionale în filosofia ştiinţei (Rational Foundations in the Philosophy of Science) when we referred to the notion of semi-truth, as a third alethic value, placed between „truth” and …

Teodor DIMA ABSTRACT: The present study reiterates one of the main ideas that we exposed in 1983, in the paper “Din fals rezultă orice” (“From False Follows Anything”), published in the volume Întemeieri raţionale în filosofia ştiinţei (Rational Foundations in the Philosophy of Science) when we referred to the notion of semi-truth, as a third alethic value, placed between „truth” and …

Panayot BUTCHVAROV ABSTRACT: The standard arguments for antirealism are densely abstract, often enigmatic, and thus unpersuasive. The ubiquity and irreducibility of what linguists call generic statements provides a clear argument from a specific and readily understandable case. We think and talk about the world as necessarily subject to generalization. But the chief vehicles of generalization are generic statements, typically of the …