Deshoulières, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde (1638—1694) A major poet during the reign of Louis XIV in France, Madame Deshoulières used her writings to defend philosophical naturalism. Like her intellectual model Lucretius, she employed verse to argue that natural causes can adequately explain such apparently spiritual phenomena as thought, volition, and love. In metaphysics, Deshoulières argues that the real is comprised of variations of

Immanuel Kant At the foundation of Kant’s system is the doctrine of “transcendental idealism,” which emphasizes a distinction between what we can experience (the natural, observable world) and what we cannot (“supersensible” objects such as God and the soul). Kant argued that we can only have knowledge of things we can experience. Accordingly, in answer to the question, “What can I know?” Kant replies that

Transmission and Transmission Failure in Epistemology An argument transmits justification to its conclusion just in case, roughly, the conclusion is justified in virtue of the premises’ being justified. An argument fails to transmit justification just in case, roughly, the conclusion is not justified in virtue of the premises’ being justified. An argument might fail to transmit justification for a variety of uncontroversial reasons, such as

The Semantic Theory of Truth The semantic theory of truth (STT, hereafter) was developed by Alfred Tarski in the 1930s. The theory has two separate, although interconnected, aspects. First, it is a formal mathematical theory of truth as a central concept of model theory, one of the most important branches of mathematical logic. Second, it is also a philosophical doctrine which elaborates the notion of