Barry Stroud - Böcker

We say "the grass is green" or "lemons are yellow" to state what everyone knows. But are the things we see around us really colored, or do they only look that way because of the effects of light rays on our eyes and brains? Is color somehow "unreal" or "subjective" and dependent on our human perceptions and the conditions under which we see things? Distinguished scholar Barry Stroud investigates these and related questions in The Quest for Reality. In this long-awaited book, he examines what a person would have to do and believe in order to reach the conclusion that everyone's perceptions and beliefs about the color of things are "illusions" and do not accurately represent the way things are in the world as it is independently of us. Arguing that no such conclusion could be consistently reached, Stroud finds that the conditions of a successful unmasking of color cannot all be fulfilled. The discussion extends beyond color to present a serious challenge to many other philosophical attempts to discover the way things really are. A model of subtle, elegant, and rigorous philosophical writing, this study will attract a wide audience from all areas of philosophy.

In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry that both places this activity within the natural world and makes sense of it as an indispensable part of our lives as planners. In the second and third lectures he takes up the kind of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. Since working at cross purposes loses fruits that might stem from cooperation, he argues, any consistent ethos that meets this test would be, in a crucial way, utilitarian. It would reconcile our individual aims to establish, in Kant's phrase, a 'kingdom of ends'.The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, the volume editor, critiques by Michael Bratman (Stanford University), John Broome (Oxford University), and F. M. Kamm (Harvard University), and Gibbard's responses.THE BERKELEY TANNER LECTURESThe Tanner Lectures on Human Values, which are presented annually at each of nine universities in the United States and Great Britain, are among the most prestigious and notable events of the academic year. This volume is the latest in a new interdisciplinary series of books based on the Tanner Lectures given at the University of California, Berkeley. The series aims to make these distinguished lectures, and the lively debates stimulated by their presentation in Berkeley, available to a broad readership.

This book raises questions about the nature of philosophy by examining the source and significance of one central philosophical problem: how can we know anything about the world around us? Stroud discusses and criticizes the views of such philosophers as Descartes, Kant, J.L. Austin, G.E. Moore, R. Carnap, W.V. Quine, and others.

Meaning, Understanding, and Practice is a selection of the most notable essays of a leading contemporary philosopher on a set of central topics in analytic philosophy. Barry Stroud offers penetrating studies of meaning, understanding, necessity, and the intentionality of thought. A question which runs through much of this work is what can be expected from a philosophical account of one's understanding of the meaning of something. Five of the essays are focused specifically on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and most of the rest work with ideas derived from Wittgenstein. Stroud's introduction puts the papers in context by explaining how his ideas and aims developed over the years, and drawing out the recurring themes of the book.

Barry Stroud presents nineteen of his philosophical essays written since 2001, on topics to do with knowing, seeing, and understanding. He discusses the nature of philosophy, sense experience, the possibility of perceptual knowledge, intentional action and self-knowledge, the reality of the colours of things, alien thought and the limits of understanding, moral knowledge, meaning, use, and understanding of language.

Barry Stroud has since the 1970s been one of the most original contributors to the philosophical study of human knowledge; this volume presents the best of his essays in this area. More than half of the essays are concerned with identifying clearly the question or issue that philosophical theories of knowledge are meant to answer, and with the role of philosophical scepticism in giving the right kind of sense to that question. Another series of essays explores possibilities within the broadly Kantian or 'transcendental' project of establishing the distinctive status and therefore special invulnerability of certain aspects of our conception of the world. Stroud's discussions of these fundamental questions are essential reading for anyone interested in the possibility of philosophical theories of knowledge.

Meaning, Understanding, and Practice is a selection of the most notable essays of a leading contemporary philosopher on a set of central topics in the subject. Barry Stroud offers penetrating studies of meaning, understanding, necessity, and the intentionality of thought. One question running through many of the essays is how much can be expected from a philosophical account of a person's understanding the meaning of something, and whether it can succeed without implying that the person understands many other things as well. Five of the essays focus on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and at least that many others work with ideas derived from Wittgenstein. In a helpful introduction Stroud explains how the essays are related to one another and how some of his ideas about these questions developed over the years.

This volume of uncollected essays by Barry Stroud explores central issues and ideas in the work of individual philosophers, ranging from Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, and Hume to Quine, Burge, McDowell, Goldman, Fogelin, and Sosa in our own day. Seven of the essays focus on David Hume, and examine the sources and implications of his 'naturalism' and his 'scepticism'. Three others deal with the legacy of that 'naturalism' in the twentieth century. In each case Stroud moves beyond providing a description of historical contexts and developments, and confronts the philosophical issues as they present themselves to the philosophers in question.

We all have beliefs to the effect that if a certain thing were to happen a certain other thing would happen. We also believe that some things simply must be so, with no possibility of having been otherwise. And in acting intentionally we all take certain things to be good reason to believe or do certain things. In this book Barry Stroud argues that some beliefs of each of these kinds are indispensable to our having any conception of a world at all. That means no one could consistently dismiss all beliefs of these kinds as merely ways of thinking that do not describe how things really are in the world as it is independently of us and our responses. But the unacceptability of any such negative 'unmasking' view does not support a satisfyingly positive metaphysical 'realism'. No metaphysical satisfaction is available either way, given the conditions of our holding the beliefs whose metaphysical status we wish to understand. This does not mean we will stop asking the metaphysical question. But we need a better understanding of how it can have whatever sense it has for us. This challenging volume takes up these large, fundamental questions in clear language accessible to a wide philosophical readership.

In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry that both places this activity within the natural world and makes sense of it as an indispensable part of our lives as planners. In the second and third lectures he takes up the kind of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. Since working at cross purposes loses fruits that might stem from cooperation, he argues, any consistent ethos that meets this test would be, in a crucial way, utilitarian. It would reconcile our individual aims to establish, in Kant's phrase, a "kingdom of ends." The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, the volume editor, critiques by Michael Bratman (Stanford University), John Broome (Oxford University), and F. M. Kamm (Harvard University), and Gibbard's responses.

We all have beliefs to the effect that if a certain thing were to happen a certain other thing would happen. We also believe that some things simply must be so, with no possibility of having been otherwise. And in acting intentionally we all take certain things to be good reason to believe or do certain things. In this book Barry Stroud argues that some beliefs of each of these kinds are indispensable to our having any conception of a world at all. That means no one could consistently dismiss all beliefs of these kinds as merely ways of thinking that do not describe how things really are in the world as it is independently of us and our responses. But the unacceptability of any such negative "unmasking" view does not support a satisfyingly positive metaphysical "realism." No metaphysical satisfaction is available either way, given the conditions of our holding the beliefs whose metaphysical status we wish to understand. This does not mean we will stop asking the metaphysical question. But we need a better understanding of how it can have whatever sense it has for us. This challenging volume takes up these large, fundamental questions in clear language accessible to a wide philosophical readership.

The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance. This volume seeks to provide a comprehensive interpretation of Hume’s philosophy and to expound and discuss his central problems against the background of that general interpretation.