Knowing and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Epistemology

Frederick Ferre, Frederick Ferré

SUNY Press, Jan 1, 1998 - Philosophy - 393 pages

Modern thought, finally free from premodern excesses of belief, immediately fell prey to excesses of doubt. This book points toward a postmodern approach to knowing that moves beyond the tired choice between dogma and skepticism. Its key deconstructive aim is to help contemporary philosophers see that their paralyzing modern "epistemological gap" is a myth. Its positive outcome, however, reverses the identification of "postmodern" with deconstruction rather than construction, with the "end of philosophy" rather than renewal in philosophy.

Knowing and Value begins by tracing how we got here, and argues that much of our modern dilemma rests on choices that might have gone otherwise. Key value judgments underlying Plato's and Aristotle's epistemological norms, which still tend to govern our theories of knowledge, are clarified. Next the value-laden sources of premodern attitudes toward knowing are exposed by showing how the Christian synthesis of faith and reason was at first built by medieval Platonists and Aristotelians, then razed by premodern nominalists. This diagnostic account concludes with a close look at how modernity, from Hobbes and Descartes to Kant, designed its own epistemological trap by rejecting some premodern values, while accepting others.

The book also examines the principal ways moderns (positivists, idealists, existentialists, and pragmatists) have tried to cope with the supposed epistemological gap--each without success, but with every failure leaving resources for rebuilding.

In a constructive climax, the book shows how an ecological worldview, emphasizing real relations (the view proposed in its predecessor volume, Being and Value) can heal the needless ruptures on which modern epistemic maladies depend. A reformed account of human experience confronts modern skepticism head-on; a fresh "process" approach to language and thinking is proposed; and finally, a postmodern, pluralist view of theories and truth is offered under a guiding aesthetic metaphor: "Knowing is the music of thought."

Contents

• Why Do Epistemology?: 1
• Knowing and the Requirements of Theory: 2
• Knowing and the Variety of Life: 4
• Knowing and Basic Contracts: 9
• Knowing and Being: 13
• Knowing and Valuing: 16
• DISCOVERING THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL GAP: 21
• Ancient Knowers: 23
• Plato and His Predecessors: 24
• Aristotle and His Successors: 40
• Medieval Believers: 55
• Augustine: 56
• Between Augustine and Aquinas: 65
• Thomas Aquinas: 77
• Scotus and Ockham: 83
• Modern Doubters: 93
• Hobbes and Descartes: 94
• Locke and Berkeley: 120
• Hume and Kant: 144
• COPING WITH THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL GAP: 163
• Reducing the Gap EDUCING THE GAP: 165
• Fichte and Hegel: 168
• Comte and Mill: 170
• Mach and Aver: 174
• Problems with Reduction: 187
• Webbing the Gap: 203
• The Coherentist Pedigree: 204
• F H Bradley: 207
• Brqnd Blanshard: 214
• Problems with Coherentism: 220
• Leaping the Gap: 233
• Soren Kierkegaard: 235
• Reflecting on Kierkegaard: 243
• C S Peirce and William James: 248
• Problems with the Leap: 258
• DECONSTRUCTING THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL GAP: 265
• Experiencing the World: 267
• The Postmodern Turn: 268
• Physical Continuities in Experience: 276
• Conceptual Continuities in Experience: 284
• Spectra and Bipolarities: 291
• Some Benefits: 295
• Thinking the World: 305
• The Phases of Concrescence: 307
• The Path to Conceptual Thinking: 314
• Defining the True: 334
• Knowing the World: 341
• Practical Knowing: 344
• Observational Knowing: 347
• Theoretical Knowing: 355
• The Knowing of Beauty and the Beauty of Knowing: 366
• Works Cited: 375
• Note on Supporting Center: 381
• Index: 383

About the author

Frederick Ferre is Research Professor of Philosophy at The University of Georgia, where he co-founded the Faculty of Environmental Ethics. He has published numerous books, among them Being and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics, also published by SUNY Press.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Knowing and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Epistemology; SUNY series in constructive postmodern thought
• Authors: Frederick Ferre, Frederick Ferré
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: SUNY Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0791439895, 9780791439890
• Length: 393 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / Epistemology