Knowledge at the Boundaries

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Issues of Specification and Conception

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Default Reasoning

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 3-11

   3. Vagueness: A Variant Approach

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 13-23

   4. Conceivability

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 25-35

   5. Issues of Identity and Identification

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 37-45

3. Issues of Truth and Knowledge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 47-47

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   2. On Explanation and Understanding

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 49-62

   3. Alethic Topology

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 63-76

   4. Relevance and Its Problems

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 77-86

   5. The Logic of Knowledge Distribution

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 87-94

4. Issues of Paradox and Cognitive Incompleteness

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 95-95

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   2. Cognitive Reflexivity and Objective Knowledge

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 97-103

   3. Leibniz and “The Liar”

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 105-111

   4. Did Leibniz Anticipate Gödel?

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 113-134

   5. Reification Fallacies and Inappropriate Totalities

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 135-150

   6. Mind Questions

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 151-153

   7. Intuition and Mathematical Idealism

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 155-166

   8. Outlandish Hypotheses and the Limits of Thought Experimentation

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 167-184

   9. Limitations and the World Beyond

      • Nicholas Rescher

      Pages 185-210

The book offers a reflection on the nature, scope, and limits of knowledge that have been at the focus of the author's work over decades. The essays collected in this volume expound and extend these efforts in exploring the outer fringes of understanding: the outer boundaries of conceivability, the limits of cognition, and the ramifications of ineffability and paradox. They join in exploring the lay of the land at the boundaries of knowledge.


The first chapters address basic facts regarding the conceptualization of knowledge. This is followed by a study on how to deal with problems relating to the affirmation and considerations of truth. The final chapters scrutinize the limits of demonstration and the inherent impossibility of realizing an ideal systematization of our knowledge of totalities. The book affords novel perspectives regarding the thought of a widely appreciated philosopher. It is an original work aimed for readers interested in the theory of knowledge and philosophy of cognition.

• Boundaries to Knowledge
• Inference and Guesswork
• Philosophical Understanding
• Default Inference
• Rescher and Default Reasoning
• Variant Approach to Vagueness
• Rescher and Conceivability
• Alethic Topology
• Logic of Knowledge Distribution
• Leibniz and "the liar"
• Godel and Anticipation
• Reification Fallacies and Inappropriate Totalities
• Intuition and Mathematical Idealism
• Limits from Axiomatization and Explanation
• La Casas and Sepulveda
• Famous Philosophical Confrontations

• Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

  Nicholas Rescher

NICHOLAS RESCHER is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. In a productive research career extending over six decades he has well over one hundred books to this credit and fourteen books about Rescher’s philosophy have been published in five languages. He has served as a President of: the American Philosophical Association, the American Catholic Philosophy Association, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, the C. S. Peirce Society, and the American Metaphysical Society, as well as Secretary General of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Sciences. Rescher has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Europea, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain. He has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984, the Belgian Prix Mercier in 2005, the Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 2007, theFounder’s Medal of the Metaphysical Society of America in 2016, and the Helmholtz Medal of the Germany Academy of Sciences (Berlin/Brandenburg) in 2016. In 2011 he was awarded the premier cross of the Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse) of the Federal Republic of Germany, and honorary degrees have been awarded to him by eight universities on three continents. In 2010 the University of Pittsburgh honored him with the inauguration of a biennial Rescher Medal for distinguished lifetime contributions to systematic philosophy, and in 2018 the American Philosophical Association launched a Rescher Prize with a similar objective.

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