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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An eye-opening examination of knowledge, belief, and justification, November 22, 2006
This review is from: Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) (Paperback)
I read this book very carefully, covering only about four pages per day. Admittedly I learned a lot from struggling through it. For example, what is called prima facie knowledge: that is knowledge that can be defeated; it is not infallible. Almost all our knowledge is of this quality. There is also an excellent discussion of the difference between a posteriori and a priori, between analytic and synthetic. Also dealt with in detail is the subject of inference, and the difference between a deductive inference and an inductive one. The topic of justification and justified belief is also considered in great detail, and the careful reader will gain a thorough understanding of what justification means. The penultimate chapter on scientific, moral, and spiritual knowledge is first rate. The book is geared toward the current state of the art of this subject, and there is relatively little historical perspective. Audi actually is doing philosophy here, and not writing ABOUT it. That is the book's strength, and also its weakness. The other reviewers' criticism that there is virtually no discussion of the historical evolution of this branch of philosophy is a valid critique. There is in fact little mention of any philosophers at all, except for a very few contemporary ones, such as Plantinga, Quine, Davidson, mentioned not in the main text but in the footnotes. There is a lot of hair-splitting analysis going on in this text as you might expect. Many paragraphs are spent examining all the minute wrinkles of a particular argument, only to cast it aside several pages later. While it is instructive to see a first-rate philosopher at work, I do really wish Audi had injected a little more historical background into this work. I have subtracted one star for this deficiency. However, it is a minor flaw in an otherwise great book. Audi's writing is mostly a pleasure to read; he is thorough, elegant, precise. He does not repeat himself, or belabor a point repetitiously. He is an excellent teacher. As far as the book itself is concerned, there are very few typos (I counted two), the typography is excellent, the binding only OK (referring to the paperback version). The book is marketed as a Contemporary Introduction to Epistemology, but it is more a book for those who are already conversant in the subject from an earlier course or book. On the whole, it is a commendable work for those needing no historical background. Graduate students in philosophy or the sciences should greatly benefit from this book. For undergrads who tackle this book hoping to gain some perspective on the entire subject and its illustrious history, it will probably be a disappointment. However, anyone who reads the book carefully will learn a lot. In fact, it may even change some of your beliefs. It is a book which stimulates the mind, and even opens up new possibilities.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre, December 8, 2006
This review is from: Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) (Paperback)
Audi has a reputation as one of the best epistemologists working today, and this book is nothing if not thorough. If there is an angle to view, if there is a slice to be made, Audi views it or makes it. Also, I approve of his approach: He stakes out a claim and tries to support it while meticulously showing competing viewpoints and their rationales. This is superior to the agnostic or relativist position some other philosophy primers take, where the author's attempt at an unbiased approach leaves the reader unsure as to what the right answer might be, or whether there is a right answer at all. Audi's approach allows the reader to agree or disagree with his stand, and helps the reader to develop and confirm his own viewpoint. So much for the positive. Audi is very difficult to read. His writing style is at the same time effusive and dense; he makes intricate (I might even say unnecessary) distinctions on every topic and subtopic, and does so in a way that you have to pay very close attention to the precise wording he uses to have a chance of understanding the divisions he makes. He either needs to make fewer categorical distinctions, or take the time to explain them more clearly. I'm an undergraduate senior in Philosophy, and if I had been reading this book on my own instead of for a class with a professor to help interpret it for me, I would have had no chance of understanding much of it without outside reading--which a primer such as this is not supposed to need. There were times even my professor wasn't quite sure what Audi was trying to say. I also disagree with the way he attacks the subject matter. He deals with skepticism last, for one, which I think needs to be addressed (at least to some extent) first. More importantly, he goes through the book trying to analyze knowledge by appealing to a kind of common-sense generic understanding of it, and only toward the end actually tackles a definition of knowledge. Never does he even address the question of what is the ~nature~ of knowledge, whether it is something independent of us, or merely an internal concept. Perhaps other people's brains work this way, but I need to start by asking what a thing is, and trying to find a definition of it, and only then trying to analyze what it does and how it works. Audi takes the exact reverse approach. I recommend this book to someone already versed in Epistemology that wishes to expand their understanding of the field, but I do ~not~ recommend it to a beginner (even an intelligent and well-educated beginner) as an introduction to Epistemology.
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18 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unreadable, October 20, 2006
This review is from: Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) (Paperback)
I tried to read this book, I really did. I've read a fair amount of epistemology, and I'm reasonably familiar with the issues and positions that characterize the field. And I purchased the book, so I had a financial investment. But no. I can read Kant, and enjoy doing it, but I couldn't read this. What we have here is a confusingly-written compendium of the terminological quagmire into which modern epistemology has fallen, an elaboration that has yielded very, very little. It's no wonder that scientists and others who actually work and succeed with the things of the world ignore the whole epistemological enterprise as irrelevant. Audi makes it all worse by omitting the historical context and development of the field, so there is little or no reference to what was at actually at issue to make the questions worth asking. What gave rise to epistemology and made any of it interesting was, of course, the challenge of skepticism; but that's stuck at the end, by which time the poor reader is long past caring. Epistemology itself looks more and more like a dead end, at least in the way it's being pursued; maybe it's time to begin again, only starting from the ontology end. However that may be, the history of epistemological debate is fascinating and involves many very challenging and interesting questions, especially when those are considered in historical sequence against the background of the times in which they were raised. There are many excellent introductions to epistemology available that tell that story. This is not one of them.
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