George Berkeley (1685—1753) George Berkeley was one of the three most famous British Empiricists. (The other two are John Locke and David Hume.)  Berkeley is best known for his early works on vision (An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, 1709) and metaphysics (A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713). Berkeley’s empirical theory of vision challenged the then-standard

Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics Immanuel Kant is an 18th century German philosopher whose work initated dramatic changes in the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and teleology. Like many Enlightenment thinkers, he holds our mental faculty of reason in high esteem; he believes that it is our reason that invests the world we experience with structure. In his works on aesthetics and teleology, he argues that

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

The Aesthetic Attitude Aesthetics is the subject matter concerning, as a paradigm, fine art, but also the special, art-like status sometimes given to applied arts like architecture or industrial design or to objects in nature. It is hard to say precisely what is shared among this motley crew of objects (often referred to as aesthetic objects), but the aesthetic attitude is supposed to go some

Antoine Arnauld (1612—1694) Antoine Arnauld was considered by his peers as one of the preeminent 17th century European intellectuals. Arnauld had been remembered primarily as a correspondent of René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz and Nicolas Malebranche, and as a dogmatic and uncritical Cartesian who made few if any philosophical contributions. In fact, as much newer research suggests, Arnauld was not a dogmatic and uncritical Cartesian, and

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