We Must Have Certainty
We Must Have Certainty

Author: J. Kenneth Van Dover

Publisher: Susquehanna University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781575910918

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We Must Have Certainty surveys the development of the genre of the detective story from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century to its current profile in the early twenty-first century. It locates a principal appeal of the genre in the nature of the world that the detective necessarily inhabits: a world of more or less realistic violence and excitement and, at the same time, a world that always, in the end, makes sense. It suggests that there is a significance to a popular narrative formula that requires that an initial world of suspicion and uncertainty be inevitably transformed by the detective into a world of clarity and order. Though scholarship in the field is acknowledged, the author's citations are most often from detective stories themselves. The essays are written in an accessible style; those who have read a few novels in the genre, as well as those who have read many, will find the book stimulating and provocative.

Incomprehensible Certainty
Incomprehensible Certainty

Author: Thomas Pfau

Publisher:

Published: 2022-06

Total Pages: 784

ISBN-13: 9780268202484

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Thomas Pfau's study of images and visual experience is a tour de force linking Platonic metaphysics to modern phenomenology and probing literary, philosophical, and theological accounts of visual experience from Plato to Rilke. Incomprehensible Certainty presents a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the word "image" (eikōn) not only as the essential medium of art and literature but as foundational for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our "lifeworld," Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with Plato's later dialogues, being and appearance came to be understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study positions the image (eikōn) as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and excess reveal to us its metaphysical function, namely, as the visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus, pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins, Cézanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology, philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau's previous book, Minding the Modern, Incomprehensive Certainty is a major work. With over fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.

The Relationship Between Knowledge and Certainty
The Relationship Between Knowledge and Certainty

Author: Valery Berthoud

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2018-11-21

Total Pages: 20

ISBN-13: 3668839468

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Academic Paper from the year 2018 in the subject Philosophy - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,3, Humboldt-University of Berlin, course: Wittgenstein’s Über Gewissheit, language: English, abstract: The relationship between knowledge and certainty varies according to conception. I argue that knowledge and certainty are usually equivalent, but there are cases in which certainty is possible without knowledge and knowledge is possible without certainty. The connection between knowledge and certainty does not change much when considering René Descartes’ philosophy because methodological skepticism consists of doubting beliefs that are uncertain. That there exist external objects is uncertain because a malicious demon could be deceiving us by creating the illusion of an external world. Although Descartes suggests that we can doubt all of our beliefs, his conception of science consists of secure insight: “Omnis scientia est cognitio certa et evidens” (Descartes 1907). This means that all science is certain and evident knowledge, or a high degree of certainty. Three centuries later, G. E.Moore had another reasoning when writing “A Defense of Common Sense” and “Proof of an External World.” He suggests that doubting that the world exists is unnecessary; we must trust that the universe exists. He is against George Berkeley’s suggestion that matter does not exist; everything is just ideas of the mind of God, and to be is to perceive. This is similar to propositions from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was an idealist because he claimed that all possible worlds lie in God, and we are substances observing the best alternative (Leibniz 2014, §43-46). Moore suggests that it is irrational to believe such premises. He held intuitions that a person has in everyday life, the common sense philosophy. We cannot be certain yet we claim to know many things. Moore also purports that the external world is real and he tried to prove it (Moore 1993a). His argument goes as follows: P1: Here is one hand. P2: Here is another. C1: There are at least two external objects in the world. C2: Therefore, an external world exists. He argues that he had the experience of observing his hands and reiterates that at least his hands offer the sum of two objects, which at a specified time existed (Ibid.).

The Sin of Certainty
The Sin of Certainty

Author: Peter Enns

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2016-04-12

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0062272101

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The controversial evangelical Bible scholar and author of The Bible Tells Me So explains how Christians mistake “certainty” and “correct belief” for faith when what God really desires is trust and intimacy. With compelling and often humorous stories from his own life, Bible scholar Peter Enns offers a fresh look at how Christian life truly works, answering questions that cannot be addressed by the idealized traditional doctrine of “once for all delivered to the saints.” Enns offers a model of vibrant faith that views skepticism not as a loss of belief, but as an opportunity to deepen religious conviction with courage and confidence. This is not just an intellectual conviction, he contends, but a more profound kind of knowing that only true faith can provide. Combining Enns’ reflections of his own spiritual journey with an examination of Scripture, The Sin of Certainty models an acceptance of mystery and paradox that all believers can follow and why God prefers this path because it is only this way by which we can become mature disciples who truly trust God. It gives Christians who have known only the demand for certainty permission to view faith on their own flawed, uncertain, yet heartfelt, terms.

The Certainty of Uncertainty
The Certainty of Uncertainty

Author: Mark A. Schaefer

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 153265345X

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The world is full of people who are very certain--in politics, in religion, in all manner of things. In addition, political, religious, and social organizations are marketing certainty as a cure all to all life's problems. But is such certainty possible? Or even good? The Certainty of Uncertainty explores the question of certainty by looking at the reasons human beings crave certainty and the religious responses we frequently fashion to help meet that need. The book takes an in-depth view of religion, language, our senses, our science, and our world to explore the inescapable uncertainties they reveal. We find that the certainty we crave does not exist. As we reflect on the unavoidable uncertainties in our world, we come to understand that letting go of certainty is not only necessary, it's beneficial. For, in embracing doubt and uncertainty, we find a more meaningful and courageous religious faith, a deeper encounter with mystery, and a way to build strong relationships across religious and philosophical lines. In The Certainty of Uncertainty, we see that embracing our belief systems with humility and uncertainty can be transformative for ourselves and for our world.

On Certainty
On Certainty

Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1969-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780631120001

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The volume is full of thought-provoking insight which will prove a stimulus both to further study and to scholarly disagreement.

After Certainty
After Certainty

Author: Robert Pasnau

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-11-10

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0192521934

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No part of philosophy is as disconnected from its history as is epistemology. After Certainty offers a reconstruction of that history, understood as a series of changing expectations about the cognitive ideal that beings such as us might hope to achieve in a world such as this. The story begins with Aristotle and then looks at how his epistemic program was developed through later antiquity and into the Middle Ages, before being dramatically reformulated in the seventeenth century. In watching these debates unfold over the centuries, one sees why epistemology has traditionally been embedded within a much larger sphere of concerns about human nature and the reality of the world we live in. It ultimately becomes clear why epistemology today has become a much narrower and specialized field, concerned with the conditions under which it is true to say, that someone knows something. Based on a series of lectures given at Oxford University, Robert Pasnau's book ranges widely over the history of philosophy, and examines in some detail the rise of science as an autonomous discipline. Ultimately Pasnau argues that we may have no good reasons to suppose ourselves capable of achieving even the most minimal standards for knowledge, and the final chapter concludes with a discussion of faith and hope.

Between Probability and Certainty
Between Probability and Certainty

Author: Martin Smith

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-11-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0191071633

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Martin Smith explores a question central to philosophy—namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In the present book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it—roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond, including the relation between justification and knowledge, the force of statistical evidence, the problem of scepticism, the lottery and preface paradoxes, the viability of multiple premise closure, the internalist/externalist debate, the psychology of human reasoning, and the relation between belief and degrees of belief. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here.