L. Jonathan Cohen – författare

In this incisive study one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief.Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its meembers involuntarily accept? And should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept?Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in comtemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

In this incisive new monograph one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief.Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or what they voluntarily accept? And should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept?Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

The book was planned and written as a single, sustained argument. But earlier versions of a few parts of it have appeared separately. The object of this book is both to establish the existence of the paradoxes, and also to describe a non-Pascalian concept of probability in terms of which one can analyse the structure of forensic proof without giving rise to such typical signs of theoretical misfit. Neither the complementational principle for negation nor the multiplicative principle for conjunction applies to the central core of any forensic proof in the Anglo-American legal system. There are four parts included in this book. Accordingly, these parts have been written in such a way that they may be read in different orders by different kinds of reader.

Analytical philosophy now embraces a much greater variety of topic and divergence of opinion than it once did. What presuppositions of relevance are implicit in its dialogue, what patterns of reasoning does it rely on, and why is consensus so hard to achieve? The author seeks to resolve these questions in an original and constructive way that also illuminates several important issues of philosophical substance, such as the question of whether the linguistic analysis of thought should be replaced by a computational one.

Originally published in 1973. This book presents a valid mode of reasoning that is different to mathematical probability. This inductive logic is investigated in terms of scientific investigation. The author presents his criteria of adequacy for analysing inductive support for hypotheses and discusses each of these criteria in depth. The chapters cover philosophical problems and paradoxes about experimental support, probability and justifiability, ending with a system of logical syntax of induction. Each section begins with a summary of its contents and there is a glossary of technical terms to aid the reader.

Originally published in 1973. This book presents a valid mode of reasoning that is different to mathematical probability. This inductive logic is investigated in terms of scientific investigation. The author presents his criteria of adequacy for analysing inductive support for hypotheses and discusses each of these criteria in depth. The chapters cover philosophical problems and paradoxes about experimental support, probability and justifiability, ending with a system of logical syntax of induction. Each section begins with a summary of its contents and there is a glossary of technical terms to aid the reader.

First published in 1962, The Diversity of Meaning was written to provide a more constructive criticism of the philosophy of ordinary language than the more destructive approach that it was commonly subjected to at the time of publication. The book deals with a range of philosophical problems in a way that cuts underneath the more typical orthodoxies of the time. It is concerned primarily with the concept of meaning and asks not just how people ordinarily speak or think about meanings, but also what is gained or lost by their so doing. The author challenges the assumption that there is only one way of talking about meanings and instead argues that no single analysis of meaning can suit the semantics of lexicographers, language-teachers, translators, logicians, historians of ideas, psychologists and philosophers. By examining various common concepts of meaning and their relations to one another, the book sheds light on the issues most alive in philosophical controversy at the time of publication, giving it lasting relevance for those interested in the history of philosophical thought and theory.

First published in 1962, The Diversity of Meaning was written to provide a more constructive criticism of the philosophy of ordinary language than the more destructive approach that it was commonly subjected to at the time of publication. The book deals with a range of philosophical problems in a way that cuts underneath the more typical orthodoxies of the time. It is concerned primarily with the concept of meaning and asks not just how people ordinarily speak or think about meanings, but also what is gained or lost by their so doing. The author challenges the assumption that there is only one way of talking about meanings and instead argues that no single analysis of meaning can suit the semantics of lexicographers, language-teachers, translators, logicians, historians of ideas, psychologists and philosophers. By examining various common concepts of meaning and their relations to one another, the book sheds light on the issues most alive in philosophical controversy at the time of publication, giving it lasting relevance for those interested in the history of philosophical thought and theory.

This collection of 20 papers deals with a wide range of issues in philosophy of language, epistemology, history of philosophy, philosophy of psychology, jurisprudence and philosophy of science. It should be of interest to, and prove a stimulus for new work by, researchers and practitioners working in any of these fields. Tracing a route backwards through the papers as presented here, the final group is largely concerned with how empirical knowledge may be acquired through evidence in states of uncertainty; the middle group explores how such evidence often requires or results in conceptual innovation and is given to us in language the meaning of which may be difficult to determine; the first group explores how a theory of meaning can be constructed for natural and artificial languages. The papers exhibit a distinctive analytical perspective and a great deal of thematic continuity, underpinned by commitment to the richness both of language and of enquiry and opposition to simplistic or dogmatic formalisations and analyses.