Knowledge, consensus and uncertainty.

Abstract

Some months ago the editors of this journal asked me if I would undertake a series of short entries of a general sort on philosophical topics germane to current discussions in psychoanalysis. Both authors and topics were left to my discretion. I thought the series was a good idea and gladly agreed to do it. To my surprise and pleasure, all the philosophers I invited accepted I am only sorry that the series could not be longer as there are other philosophers as well who would have been splendid participants, and other topics I would like to have addressed. The essays that will follow in subsequent issues represent by and large the tradition of analytic philosophy, though this has come in the last few decades to comprise many of the themes we used to associate with the Continental tradition. Future entries, by James Conant, Donald Davison, Pascal Engel, Dagfinn Føllesdal, James Hopkins, Ernest Le Pore, Jeffrey Malpas, Jerome Neu, Brian O'Shaughnessy, Richard Rorty and Richard Wollheim, will address the following topics: intersubjectivity, meaning and language, consciousness and perception, pragmatism, knowledge and belief, norms and nature, metaphor, hermeneutics, truth, self-deception, the emotions. The essay below on knowledge, which will also be the topic of another entry by a different author later on, is the only one in the series that I will write.