Lines of Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions is a highly innovative and powerfully argued book. According to the author, noted Brazilian philosopher Claudio Costa, many philosophical ideas that today are widely seen as old-fashioned and outdated should not be dismissed, but instead should be extensively reworked and reformulated. This also means that contemporary analytical philosophy should begin to question many of its most cherished views and reconsider some of the current ways of looking at philosophy. Following this path, in the philosophy of language, the author suggests replacing the causal - historical view of proper names with a much more sophisticated form of descriptive - internalist theory able to meet Kripke's challenges. In epistemology, he argues convincingly that we should return to the old traditional tripartite definition of knowledge, reformulated in a much more complex form in which Gettier's problem would disappear. The correct response to skepticism about the external world should not be to adopt new and more fanciful views, but rather to carefully analyze the different kinds of reality attributions implied by the argument and responsible for its equivocal character. In metaphysics, he argues for a more complex reformulation of the traditional compatibilist approach of free will, relating it intrinsically with the causal theory of action and making it powerful enough to assimilate the best elements of hierarchical views. Finally, according to the author, contemporary analytic philosophy suffers from a lack of comprehensiveness. In response to this, the papers in this collection restore something of a broader perspective, salvaging isolated insights by integrating them into more comprehensive views. The text is written in a clear and accessible style that meets the needs of not only professional philosophers, but also of contemporary students and laypersons.
About the Author: Claudio Costa was born in Rio de Janeiro and received his PhD from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Since 1992 he has worked as a University Lecturer at the UFRN in Northeastern Brazil, keeping in touch with the international philosophical community through numerous sabbaticals at the universities of Berkeley, Oxford, Munich and Konstanz. His main publication in English is The Philosophical Inquiry, which develops a general theory on the nature of philosophy. His most important publications in international journals of philosophy over the last fifteen years have been extensively revised for publication in the book Lines of Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions.