The present book continues Rescher's longstanding practice of publishing occasional studies written for formal presentation and informal discussion with colleagues. They form part of a wider program of investigation of the scope and limits of rational inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge.
Preface
Chapter 1: INTELLIGENCE AND EVOLUTIONARY INNOVATION
Chapter 2: ON OVERSIMPLIFICATION AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE
Chapter 3: VAGUENESS: SOME VARIANT APPROACHES
Chapter 4: UNDERDETERMINATION
Chapter 5: COGNITIVE COMPROMISE: On Managing Cognitive Risk in the Face of Imperfect/Flawed
Information
Chapter 6: AUTHORITY
Chapter 7: AN EXPLANATORY CONUNDRUM
Chapter 8: THE MUSICAL CHAIRS PARADOX
Chapter 9: TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTATION AND HUMAN NATURE
Chapter 10: A MULTITUDE OF WORLDS?
Name Index
Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Americna Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. In November 2007 Nicholas Rescher was awarded by the American Catholic Philosophical Association with the "Aquinas Medal"
