Cognitive complications : epistemology in pragmatic perspective / Nicholas Rescher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Preface -- Factual knowledge in the perspective of pragmatic idealism -- Cognitive defaults -- Inescapable error -- Modes of cognitive appraisal -- Simplicity as a pragmatic conception -- Oversimplification -- The role of technology in natural science -- Creative probability -- Unanswerable questions and unknowable facts -- Indefinite knowledge, unidentifiable items, and paradoxes of vagueness -- Importance -- Cognitive complementarity -- Excellence examined -- Group knowledge -- Physical science from an alien point of view -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the author.

The prime intent of this work is one of innovation. Nicholas Rescher addresses issues that are under-examined in the present state of discussion, their inherent interest notwithstanding. The linking thread of these investigations is their pragmatic dimension, inherent in the idea that rational inquiry is itself a practice - albeit one that functions in the ideationally cognitive rather than physically manipulative realm. As a practice, it has its aims and functions that in their turn provide for the standards of adequacy and efficacy that establish the criteriological norms of our cognitive proceedings. Written for students and scholars of philosophy and of information theory.

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