In his Rutgers Lectures, Timothy Williamson explains how contemporary philosophy suffers from a widespread pathology known as overfitting to natural and social scientists, but little understood by most philosophers. Overfitting involves an insufficiently critical attitude towards data, which leads to overcomplicated theories designed to fit what are in fact errors in the data. In philosophy, the data typically comprise verdicts on hypothetical or actual cases. Errors in such data can result from our reliance on heuristics, efficient cognitive shortcuts, simple to use but not fully reliable. Just as heuristics embedded in our visual system produce visual illusions, so heuristics embedded in our general cognitive systems produce philosophical paradoxes. Williamson explains the heuristics responsible for paradoxes of vagueness and identity over time, paradoxes of conditionals, paradoxes in ascribing beliefs and other mental states to others, paradoxes of truth and falsity, and paradoxes of weighing reasons and intersectionality. As a case study, Williamson shows how illusions of hyperintensionality can result from a heuristic that projects cognitively significant differences in how explanations are presented onto supposed differences in the non-linguistic world, which then form the starting point for metaphysicians' theorizing. In each case, Williamson provides independent evidence that we commonly use the heuristic, and that it sometimes leads us astray. In short, we are being suckered by our own heuristics, and the result is overfitting. Williamson discusses how philosophers can best avoid these problems.
- ISBN:
- 9780197779217
- 9780197779217
-
Category:
- Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge
- Format:
- Hardback
- Publication Date:
-
18-12-2024
- Language:
- English
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press, Incorporated
- Country of origin:
- United States
- Dimensions (mm):
- 198x137x33mm
- Weight:
- 0.43kg
This title is in stock with our Australian supplier and should arrive at our Sydney warehouse within 1 - 2 weeks of you placing an order.
Once received into our warehouse we will despatch it to you with a Shipping Notification which includes online tracking.
Please check the estimated delivery times below for your region, for after your order is despatched from our warehouse:
ACT Metro: 2 working days
NSW Metro: 2 working days
NSW Rural: 2-3 working days
NSW Remote: 2-5 working days
NT Metro: 3-6 working days
NT Remote: 4-10 working days
QLD Metro: 2-4 working days
QLD Rural: 2-5 working days
QLD Remote: 2-7 working days
SA Metro: 2-5 working days
SA Rural: 3-6 working days
SA Remote: 3-7 working days
TAS Metro: 3-6 working days
TAS Rural: 3-6 working days
VIC Metro: 2-3 working days
VIC Rural: 2-4 working days
VIC Remote: 2-5 working days
WA Metro: 3-6 working days
WA Rural: 4-8 working days
WA Remote: 4-12 working days
Share This Book: