Collect Knowledge And The State Of Nature: An Essay In Conceptual Synthesis Depicted By Edward Craig Issued As Textbook

is one of those philosophy books which, by trying to communicate something very clearly, serves frequently only to obscure what it is trying to say in a morass of pedantry and qualifications.
I get that this is a certain style, demanded of certain schools of philosophy, but it serves a purpose much at odds with the notion of a book being a means of clear communication.
Its a shame, because Craigs argument once unpacked from all the notpicking and tangents is a fascinating social alternative to conventional definitions of knowledge and knowing.
In this illuminating study Craig argues that the standard practice of analyzing the concept of knowledge has radical defectsarbitrary restriction of the subject matter and risky theoretical presuppositions.
He proposes a new approach similar to the "stateofnature" method found in political theory, building the concept up from a hypothesis about its social function and the needs it fulfills.
Shedding light on much that philosophers have written about knowledge, its analysis and the obstacles to its analysis, and the debate over skepticism, this compelling work will be of interest to students and scholars of epistemology and the philosophy of language.

I had to read this twice, First time I really struggled, The content is challenging and I kept thinking it was being deliberately opaque,

Second time I got a lot more out of it, The overall thesis that the concept of knowledge is tied to the requirements of being a good informant is fascinating and has intriguing implications.
I may have given itif it hadn't made me feel so stupid first time round, I have had this book on the go, as a background read for what seems like ages, I found it to be an interesting read and I have gone forstars, on the basis that there is one idea which threads its way through to book which I have found useful in my own thinking about epistemology.
That is the idea, perhaps innocuous sounding, but I think important that the idea of knowledge is intimately tied up with the idea of minds and knowers.
No knowers, no knowledge. The reason I found this useful is that much of epistemology is so wound up in rather theoretical discussions of the meaning of and conditions for knowledge, that the knower gets rather left out and the theories become highly abstract.
Linking epistemology back to knowers is important,

Nevertheless, I can't help noting I took a complete age to read this book, and that whilst Craig's writing is at times engaging, it can also wander around and it is easy to lose track of the point.
So seeas a reflection of how philosophically useful I found the book rather than how much I enjoyed reading it.
Edward John Craig was educated at Charterhouse, He read philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was Reader in Philosophy at Cambridge fromto, He became Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy in, a chair he held until his retirement in, He is a Fellow of Churchill College, He edited the journal Ratio fromto, He is also a former cricketer at first class level: a right handed batsman for Cambridge University and Lancashire, There is than one author with this name in the Goodreads database, .