EPISTEMOLOGY: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Knowledge

About Epistemology: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Knowledge:"Epistemology" is the philosophical science of knowledge, the metaphysics or ontology of knowing. The present volume is meant to be an introductory manual in epistemology (also called "philosophy of knowledge" or "gnoseology"). It is written from a realist perspective that affirms the primacy of being over thought and the dependence of thought upon being, and also emphasizes that our knowing powers are able to reach extra-mental things, in opposition to the various immanentist idealisms and phenomenalisms which imprison the knower within his subjective consciousness and its representations, incapable of gnoseological and ontological transcendence. "Epistemology: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Knowledge" has two parts, the first historical and the second systematic. The historical part presents and critiques the various gnoseological positions of the major philosophers throughout history, while the systematic part performs an aporetic inquiry into the nature of knowledge, the process of sense and intellectual knowing (culminating in "ideogenesis" or the birth of the idea), the nature and types of consciousness, the definition and ultimate criterion of truth, as well as the various states of the mind in confrontation with truth.