Customer Reviews

Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is an excellent and relatively unpartisan account of the classical views of knowledge, where it comes from, and how it is justified. It is also very strong on explaining the reasoning behind these views.

It is also extremely frustrating if you come to this subject from a cognitive neuroscience or psychology background hoping to sort out the relationship of scientific theories of brain and mind and the classic epistemological question. I come to this book not as a philosophy student but as an interested outsider who is accustomed to interdisciplinary accounts relying on science to some extent to help address philosophical questions, and vice versa. With that expectation, this book just does not do a very good job clarifying things in terms of modern science, or even discussing the relationship of classical epistemology with science.

Much better books on modern epistemology that at discuss the relationship of classical epistemological questions and testable scientific theories include: "Inquiry and Evidence" by Susan Haack, and Alvin Goldman's work. Unfortunately, those don't serve as well as an introduction to the reasoning behind the epistemological questions, and they require some background in the basics to appreciate. Michael Williams' "Problems of Knowledge" is another good introduction that some will find a little more accessible that Audi.

If you're willing to dig in and deal with learning the foundations of epistemology independently of science, this book seems to be particularly good. However if you want a good broad overview of what we know about the mind and knowledge right now covering all disciplines, this will definitely dissappoint.

I disagree with the general tenor of even the positive reviews of this book. Yes, it is very difficult reading, and Audi makes distinctions upon distinctions. The book is thick with ideas and argumentation, and none of this is helped by the extremely dry style of writing, typical of analytic philosophers.

However, having struggled through this book, I have found that the ideas and arguments I learned about made it much easier to approach contemporary literature in epistemology. I already understood the issues quite well and, very importantly, never felt lost. When I was reading Audi, I often wondered why he was laboring over a certain point, but now I see that nothing he wrote was superfluous.

This book offers, chapter by chapter, an analysis of various aspects of our knowledge, beginning with perception, going on to justification, the Gettier problem, internalism vs. externalism, and ending with the epistemology of religious and scientific knowledge before tackling skepticism specifically. Each chapter is very carefully laid out and argued, with different opinions argued for and against, and they defy easy summary.

The sole defect of this book is that the ideas and arguments it discusses are rarely explicitly connected with individual philosophers (to be fair, Audi says in the introduction that he will not be doing this). This is a defect if you want to be able to relate the different viewpoints with specific philosophers, but it is such a small one that I don't believe it warrants taking away a star.

I sympathize with those who want a quick and dirty intro to epistemology so they can get higher grades in their undergrad classes, or a very general understanding of the "big ideas" in contemporary analytic philosophy. If that's what you want, then this book is not for you. However, if you want a real introduction that will leave you comfortable with the field the moment you begin reading other literature, then this book is wonderful, especially for autodictats.

For those of you who are just getting into epistemology this book is very excellent for you. Though it maybe hard at first to read the book explains all concepts very well. Although there is one thing that i would recommend, get the hard bound version of this book, the binding on the paperback version is very shoddy and cracks very easily. enjoy!!!!!!!!!

A good book explains a subject in understandable language. Intelligent authors translate complex subjects, when billed as introductions, into terminology understandable by neophytes. Despite the abundance of printed praise on the jacket, this book is an excellent example of the opposite.

Perhaps a passage will demonstrate: "In saying that I justifiedly believe there is a green field before me, I am implying something else, something quite different, though it sounds very similar, namely, that I am justified in believing there is a green field before me."

There is an old rule concerning definitions that states, for clarity, do not to use the same word. This passage deals with defining justification and confounds the matter by attempting to introduce as separate concepts 'justified belief' and 'justified in believing.' There is little clarity here or elsewhere in the text. I sincerely regret purchasing this book.