Emile Meyerson (1859—1933) Emile Meyerson, a chemist and philosopher of science, proposed that the explanations of science are governed by two fundamental principles of reason, namely, the principle of lawfulness and the principle of causality. While the contents of explanations change through history as the explanatory theories of science move from early atomism and qualitative theories to relativity physics and quantum mechanics, the form of

James Frederick Ferrier (1808—1864) James Frederick Ferrier was a mid-nineteenth-century Scottish metaphysician who developed the first post-Hegelian system of idealism in Britain. Unlike the British Idealists in the latter half of the nineteenth century, he was neither a Kantian nor a Hegelian. Instead, he largely develops his idealist metaphysics via his defense of Berkeley and through his rejection of Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense.

Plato: The Republic Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Republic has been Plato’s most famous and widely read dialogue.  As in most other Platonic dialogues the main character is Socrates.  It is generally accepted that the Republic belongs to the dialogues of Plato’s middle period.  In Plato’s early dialogues, Socrates refutes the accounts of his interlocutors and the discussion ends with no satisfactory answer to the

The Benacerraf Problem of Mathematical Truth and Knowledge Before philosophical theorizing, people tend to believe that most of the claims generally accepted in mathematics—claims like “2+3=5” and “there are infinitely many prime numbers”—are true, and that people know many of them.  Even after philosophical theorizing, most people remain committed to mathematical truth and mathematical knowledge. These commitments come as a package.  Those committed to mathematical

Coherentism in Epistemology Coherentism is a theory of epistemic justification. It implies that for a belief to be justified it must belong to a coherent system of beliefs. For a system of beliefs to be coherent, the beliefs that make up that system must “cohere” with one another. Typically, this coherence is taken to involve three components: logical consistency, explanatory relations, and various inductive (non-explanatory)