Faculty Publications

Book jacket: Attributing Knowledge: What It Means to Know Something

Jody Azzouni

"Attributing Knowledge: What It Means to Know Something", Oxford University Press, 2020

In "Attributing Knowledge...", Jody Azzouni challenges philosophical conventions about what it means to know something. He argues that the restrictive conditions philosophers place on knowers--that imply that only humans know things--are wrong. In fact, knowledge can be truly attributed to babies, sophisticated animals (great apes, orcas), unsophisticated animals (bees), and machinery (drones, driverless cars). Ram Neta thinks the book "is full of surprises." Indeed, Azzouni solves long-standing and recent puzzles that have perplexed philosophers--including the dogmatism paradox, Gettier puzzles, and the surprise-exam paradox.

Book jacket: "Wittgenstein on Aspect Perception"

Avner Baz

"Wittgenstein on Aspect Perception", Cambridge University Press, 2020

Avner Baz's new (second) book on aspect perception, "Wittgenstein on Aspect Perception", has just been published by Cambridge University Press. The perception of what he calls aspects preoccupied Wittgenstein and gave him considerable trouble in his final years. The Wittgensteinian aspect defies any number of traditional philosophical dichotomies: the aspect is neither subjective (inner, metaphysically private) nor objective; it presents perceivable unity and sense that are (arguably) not (yet) conceptual; it is "subject to the will", but at the same time is normally taken to be genuinely revelatory of the object perceived under it. This Element begins with a grammatical and phenomenological characterization of Wittgensteinian aspects. It then challenges two widespread ideas: that aspects are to be identified with concepts, and that aspect perception has a continuous version that is characteristic of (normal) human perception. It concludes by proposing that aspect perception brings to light the distinction between the world as perceived and the world as objectively construed, and the role we play in the constitution of the former.

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George E. Smith

"Brownian Motion and Molecular Reality",Oxford University Press, 2020.