Conscious Experience: A Logical Inquiry, by Anil Gupta

Abstract

This dazzlingly original and ambitious book challenges the epistemological and metaphysical preconceptions of contemporary philosophers on many fronts, and proposes replacements that are beautifully articulated and on the whole quite appealing. Readers will no doubt have reservations about various themes of the book, but I predict that they will react sympathetically to many of Gupta’s ideas and arguments, and will also be grateful for his challenges to the views they decide to retain, feeling that they are in a much better position to understand the nature and value of the commitments they have undertaken. Although the book has many subordinate concerns, the principal objective is to explain empirical reasoning, and in particular, what it is for such reasoning to be good or rational. Gupta distinguishes this inquiry sharply from investigations of epistemic justification and knowledge. Allowing that epistemic justification may be externalist in character, Gupta maintains that rationality is an...