Markos Valaris - Böcker

What sets intentional actions apart from the rest has long been a central question in the philosophy of action. In this book, Markos Valaris offers a novel answer, grounded in a distinctive 'knowledge-first' conception of agential control. Rejecting decompositional accounts that analyse intentional action into separate mental and bodily components, Valaris argues that control is best understood as a capacity for knowledge of a distinctively practical kind. This framework yields a unified account of intentional action and illuminates several live debates in the field, including the ontology of actions as events, the epistemology of intentional action, and the nature of skill.

What sets intentional actions apart from the rest has long been a central question in the philosophy of action. In this book, Markos Valaris offers a novel answer, grounded in a distinctive 'knowledge-first' conception of agential control. Rejecting decompositional accounts that analyse intentional action into separate mental and bodily components, Valaris argues that control is best understood as a capacity for knowledge of a distinctively practical kind. This framework yields a unified account of intentional action and illuminates several live debates in the field, including the ontology of actions as events, the epistemology of intentional action, and the nature of skill.

To know epistemology’s history is to know better what contemporary epistemology could be and perhaps should be – and what it need not be and perhaps ought not to be. Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy introduces many of the more developed ideas, issues, and theories from this past century of epistemological reflection. By doing so, it captures the current concerns of one of Western philosophy’s greatest challenges: understanding the nature of knowledge. Covering recent discussions about scientific, social, and self-knowledge, and more, along with attempts to understand knowledge naturalistically, contextually, and modally, this volume follows conceptions of knowledge that have been proposed, defended, replaced, and proposed anew by contemporary philosophers. Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy reveals much of what is currently vital and now evolving within epistemology.

Within these four volumes, we meet much of whatever epistemology has been and is. Why is this form of historical engagement philosophically important?The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History presents the history of one of Western philosophy’s greatest challenges: understanding the nature of knowledge. To know epistemology’s history is to know better what contemporary epistemology could be and perhaps should be – and what it need not be and perhaps ought not to be. Divided chronologically into four volumes, it follows conceptions of knowledge that have been proposed, defended, replaced, and proposed anew by ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary philosophers.Each volume centers around three key questions: what conceptions of knowledge have been offered? Which have shaped epistemology in particular and philosophy in general? How is knowledge conceived by philosophers now? Together these volumes trace the historical development of knowledge for the first time, covering:- Presocratics, Sophists and treatments of knowledge offered by Socrates and Plato- The influence of Aristotle and Augustine during the Middle Ages- Questions of science and religion in the 17th, 18th and 19th century and the work of Descartes, Hobbes, Kant and Leibniz- Contemporary discussions about scientific, social and self-knowledge and attempts to understand knowledge naturalistically, contextually and normatively.With original insights into the vast sweep of ways in which philosophers have sought to understand knowledge, The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History embraces what is vital and evolving within contemporary epistemology. Overseen by an international team of leading philosophers and featuring 50 specially-commissioned chapters, this is a major collection on one of philosophy’s defining topics.