The Philosophy of Keith Lehrer - Essays on Knowledge, Consciousness, and Freedom

This book contains eighteen original essays engaging with Keith Lehrer s contributions to philosophy. The first nine chapters focus on Lehrer s work in epistemology and philosophy of mind. These chapters examine the role of meta-justification in Lehrer s (and Thomas Reid s) epistemology, explore the epistemological significance of self-trust and how to restore self-trust to victims of epistemic injustice, challenge Lehrer s solution to the hard problem of consciousness, question Lehrer s account of the basing relation, and discuss the important role that experience and exemplarization play in Lehrer s coherence theory of justification and in philosophy of science more broadly.
The second nine chapters focus on Lehrer s work on freedom and determinism. These chapters explore the nuances of Lehrer s theory of ultimate freedom, discuss the role of power preferences in his account of free choice, explore whether free choices must be explained by power preferences, discuss Lehrer s views on scientific explanation, explore his claim that freedom of choice is consistent with determinism, challenge his response to the consequence argument, explore whether choices explained by adaptive preferences are free, and investigate whether plural subjects can choose freely.
The book concludes with Lehrer s masterful responses to each of the essays. Those interested in epistemology, philosophy of mind, freedom and moral responsibility, and the intersection of these fields should find the book of great interest.

List of contents

Preface.- 1 Introduction (Mylan Engel Jr and Joseph Campbell).- Part 1: Lehrer on Knowledge and Consciousness.- 2 Credentialist Foundationalism (Matthias Steup).- 3 Beyond Coherentism (Bruce Russell).- 4 Raco s Racism Revisited (Nicholas D Smith).- 5 Lehrer, Reid, and Trustworthiness (Patrick Rysiew).- 6 Tropes, Universals, and the Hard Problem (Leopold Stubenberg).- 7 The Keystone Loop, Self-Trust, and Epistemic Reparations to Oneself (Sarah Wright).- 8 Exemplar Representation and Explanatory Loops (James Van Cleve).- 9 Exemplarization and Generalization (Glenn Ross).- 10 Exemplarization and the Scientific Self (Otávio Bueno).- Part 2: Lehrer on Freedom and Consciousness.- 11 Lehrer on Explanation and Choice (Joseph Campbell).- 12 In Defense of Indefensible Freedom (Hoi Yee Chan).- 13 Preferences, Habits, and Free Choice (Ann Levey).- 14 Why Power Preferences Won t Set You Free (Mylan Engel Jr).- 15 Freedom of Choice, Explanation, and Ultimate Preference (Laura W. Ekstrom).- 16 The Sludge Runs Over: The Possibilities of Freedom (Ritwik Agrawal).- 17 Lehrer on the Consequence Argument (Peter van Inwagen).- 18 On Moralizing Free Will in We-Mode Groups and Plural Subjects (Angelo Corlett).- 19 Dual Freedom and the Power of Preference (Ocean Cangelosi).- Part 3: Lehrer Replies to His Critics.- 20 Lehrer on Knowledge, Consciousness, and Freedom  (Keith Lehrer).- Index.

About the author

Mylan Engel Jr. is Presidential Engagement Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. He specializes in epistemology and ethics. His work in epistemology focuses on epistemic luck, the internalism/externalism debate, the lottery paradox, the regress problem, and the role of reason and coherence in justification. His work in ethics focuses on moral epistemology and on applied ethics (especially animal ethics, environmental ethics, and the philosophy of food). Representative publications in epistemology include: “Personal and Doxastic Justification in Epistemology,” Philosophical Studies; “Is Epistemic Luck Compatible with Knowledge?” Southern Journal of Philosophy; “Positism: The Unexplored Solution to the Epistemic Regress Problem,” Metaphilosophy; “Epistemic Luck,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy; “What’s Wrong with Contextualism,” Erkenntnis; “Lotteries, Knowledge, and Inconsistent Belief,” Synthese; and “Coherentism and the Epistemic Justification of Moral Beliefs,” Southern Journal of Philosophy; “Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology,” Oxford Bibliographies; “Epistemology and the Ethics of Animal Experimentation,” in Applied Epistemology, ed. Jennifer Lackey; and “Evidence, Epistemic Luck, Reliability, and Knowledge,” Acta Analytica. He is co-editor of The Moral Rights of Animals (Lexington 2016) and co-author of The Philosophy of Animal Rights (Lantern 2010).
Joseph Campbell recently retired as Professor of Philosophy from Washington State University after teaching at WSU for twenty-six years. His interests include free will, moral responsibility, skepticism, and the philosophy of David Hume, and he is an acknowledged expert on the consequence argument for incompatibilism. Campbell is co-founder of the Northwest Philosophy Conference, and a former Program Chair and Program Committee Member of the Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association. Publications include “A Compatibilist Theory of Alternative Possibilities,” Philosophical Studies; “Free Will and the Necessity of the Past,” Analysis; “Comptatibilist Alternatives,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy; “P. F. Strawson’s Free Will Naturalism,” International Journal for the Study of Skepticism; and “Keith Lehrer on Compatibilism” (co-written with Keith Lehrer), The Journal of Ethics. Campbell was also the recipient of two of WSU’s most prestigious teaching awards: the Marion E. Smith Faculty Achievement Award (2005) and the Honors Thesis Advisor Award (2006). This is his 10th co-edited volume.

Summary

This book contains eighteen original essays engaging with Keith Lehrer’s contributions to philosophy. The first nine chapters focus on Lehrer’s work in epistemology and philosophy of mind. These chapters examine the role of meta-justification in Lehrer’s (and Thomas Reid’s) epistemology, explore the epistemological significance of self-trust and how to restore self-trust to victims of epistemic injustice, challenge Lehrer’s solution to the hard problem of consciousness, question Lehrer’s account of the basing relation, and discuss the important role that experience and exemplarization play in Lehrer’s coherence theory of justification and in philosophy of science more broadly.
The second nine chapters focus on Lehrer’s work on freedom and determinism. These chapters explore the nuances of Lehrer’s theory of ultimate freedom, discuss the role of power preferences in his account of free choice, explore whether free choices must be explained by power preferences, discuss Lehrer’s views on scientific explanation, explore his claim that freedom of choice is consistent with determinism, challenge his response to the consequence argument, explore whether choices explained by adaptive preferences are free, and investigate whether plural subjects can choose freely.
The book concludes with Lehrer’s masterful responses to each of the essays. Those interested in epistemology, philosophy of mind, freedom and moral responsibility, and the intersection of these fields should find the book of great interest.

Product details

• Assisted by: Campbell (Editor), Joseph Campbell (Editor), Mylan Engel Jr (Editor), Mylan Engel Jr. (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 31.08.2025
• EAN: 9783031960406
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3196040-6
• No. of pages: 390
• Illustrations: Approx. 390 p.
• Series: Synthese Library
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Philosophie des Geistes, Wissenschaftsphilosophie und -theorie, Analytische Philosophie und logischer Positivismus, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Knowledge, Epistemology, Philosophie: Metaphysik und Ontologie, Metaphysics, Analytic Philosophy, knowledge and freedom, Coherentism vs. Foundationalism, Manipulation and Frankfurt Cases, Keith Lehrer, Freedom and Determinism, Justification and the Skeptical Paradox