Wolfgang Freitag Knihy

Scepticism, the view that knowledge is impossible, threatens our conception of ourselves as epistemic subjects as much as it endangers our conception of the external world. The book develops a modal account of knowledge and provides an answer to scepticism based on a detailed examination of the main sceptical argument. It discusses prominent contemporary theories of knowledge, in particular safety and sensitivity theories, and shows that they cannot handle Gettier-type examples of a new kind. An alternative analysis of knowledge in terms of relevantly normal possibilities is developed. The sceptical argument addressed aims to show that we cannot know ordinary things because we cannot rule out that we are in a sceptical scenario. Classical responses, like dogmatism, non-closure theories, and epistemic contextualism, are explored and rejected as unnecessary for a refutation of the sceptical argument. A detailed investigation reveals, first, that the failure to know that we are not in a sceptical scenario does not conflict with ordinary knowledge, but only with knowledge that we know, and, second, that we can indeed know that we are not in a sceptical scenario. It is therefore claimed not only that we know, but also that we know that we know.

Possibility and reference have been central topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of language in the past decades. Wolfgang Freitag’s Form and Philosophy provides a novel approach to these notions and their interrelations, based on the concept of form as the key modal concept: form is the possibility space of objects. In its historic dimension, the book analyses the role of form in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In its systematic dimension, the book offers an alternative ontological basis to David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory of possibility and rejects David Lewis’ analysis of possibility in terms of possible worlds. Representation is shown to rest on the idea of direct reference as proposed by David Kaplan and Saul Kripke. It is argued that the problem of reference links up with Wittgenstein’s rule-following problem, the nature of which is extensively discussed. It emerges that form and reference are complementary with respect to the notion of representation. Once their individual roles are seen, many metaphysical puzzles appear in a new light or disappear altogether. WOLFGANG FREITAG is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Konstanz.

Viele von uns verfolgen den täglichen Wetterbericht mit großem Interesse. Ob Sonne oder Regen, Wind, Schnee, Hitze oder Kälte - die vielfältigen Erscheinungen des Wetters prägen unseren Alltag. Unwetter können lebensbedrohlich sein: Wirbelstürme wie Hurrikane oder Tornados hinterlassen eine Spur der Verwüstung. Wie das Wetter entsteht, welche Wettererscheinungen es gibt und wie es zu Wetterkatastrophen kommt, stellt der Autor dieses WAS IST WAS-Bandes, Rainer Crummenerl, sachkundig und leicht verständlich dar. Er erklärt, was Wetterfronten sind, wie man eine Wetterkarte liest und wie moderne Wettervorhersage gemacht wird.