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Epistemology, as I understand it, is a branch of philosophy especially concerned with general questions about how we can know various things or at least justify our beliefs about them. It questions what counts as evidence and what are reasonable sources of doubt. Traditionally, episte-mology focuses on pervasive and apparently basic assumptions covering a wide range of claims to knowledge or justified belief rather than very specific, practical puzzles. For example, traditional epistemologists ask "How do we know there are material objects?" and not "How do you know which are the female beetles?" Similarly,moralepistemology, as I understand it, is concerned with general questions about how we can know or justify our beliefs about moral matters. Its focus, again, is on quite general, pervasive, and apparently basic assumptions about what counts as evidence, what are reasonable sources of doubt, and what are the appropriate procedures for justifying particular moral claims.

Albert Weale's Democratic Justice and the Social Contract is an important book. It offers an innovative and original (proceduralist) account of justice. In so doing, it places what Brian Barry called 'the empirical method' at the centre of normative political philosophy's attempts to generate determinate answers to moral questions. This article-written from the perspective of someone sympathetic to both the commitment to mutual advantage and the empirical method – focuses on the kind of argument it is that Weale is offering and in particular on the nature of his constructivist project. It argues that Weale's commitment to equality lies outside the constructivist project and that this undermines his aspiration to genuine constructivism. The article goes on to consider, on the basis of arguments found in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, various ways in which Weale might have grounded his egalitarian commitments from within the constructivist project.

The author of this chapter defines the tension within Oakeshott's philosophy on socio-political construction & deconstructs his conceptualization of constructivism & relativism in relationship to truth. Although Oakeshott's philosophy can relate to a strong constructivism, his anti-rationalism & conceptualization of truth preclude his acceptance of the "rational" constructivist political agenda. Various philosophers' views on truth (Hacking, McCullagh, Sellars, Goldman) are applied as problematizations of Oakeshott's worldview. Oakeshott's ambiguous relativism is recognized to have a misplaced skepticism & inconsistent relativism (Podoksik) emanating from the irreducible pluralism based on the distinct spheres of knowledge generated by separate domains of modes. The severe critiques of the sociological arenas of politics, education & science exemplify this misplacement. The irreducible plurality of his modes (science, history) require different methods of inquiry to produce knowledge, thus forbidding cross disciplinary commonalities leading to an assumption of coherentism that should direct Oakeshott to relativism. But, reciprocal relations between conceptual creativity & nature are excluded by his separation of modal knowledge. 60 References. J. Harwell

Abstract
In these comments, I share some remarks concerning two main points lying at the core of Gava's book Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics: Gava's reconstruction and account of a transcendental deduction, its relation to a metaphysical deduction, and more specifically his reading of the B-Deduction. I will discuss Gava's arguments in order to highlight the key tenets of his interpretation and raise questions related to (1) the meaning and scope of the notion of 'transcendental'; and (2) the commitment to – and the extent of – what we might call 'cognitive constructivism'.

The article is devoted to the problems of civilizational analysis of Russian his­tory. The author shows, that the "civilizational method" is not at all a panacea for ideologized unprofessionalism and a guarantee of scientific correctness. The ma­jor authors in the field of Russian history avoided using the concept of "civiliza­tion", and spoke either about Russian state (Karamzin, S. Solovyov), or about Russian people(Polevoy), or about Slavic cultural and historical type (Dani­levsky). This proves that operating with the philosophically rich concept of "civ­ilization" is fraught with its own limitations and costs, in addition to the tempta­tions and some analytical advantages. The author believes that when using the concept of "Russian civilization", it is necessary to take into account the pres­ence in our culture of a large layer of "ironic literature" on the topic of excessive generalizations: "History of the Village Goryukhino" by Pushkin, "History of the city [Glupov]" by Saltykov-Shchedrin, "History of the Village Brehov" by Mozhaev, etc. The author, relying on the typology of civilizations by A. Toyn­bee, N. Berdyaev and his own developments (since the 1980s), believes that the civilizational process in Russia took place, firstly, in the mode of "continuity through catastrophes", and, secondly, it took place not only in confrontation with other civilizations, but also in a struggle with its own, internal "barbarism".

Our actions are informed by the consideration of reasons; reasons which constructivism suggests are not simply discovered, but made by us. This book examines this view, elaborating its basic idea into a fully-fledged account of practical reasons, making its theoretical commitments explicit, and defending it against well-known objections.

InPolitical Liberalism, John Rawls employs a distinctive method of "political constructivism" to establish his well-known principles of justice, arguing that his principles are suited to bridge the ineradicable pluralism of liberal societies and so to ground an "overlapping consensus." Setting aside the question of whether Rawls's method supports his principles, I argue that he does not adequately defend reliance on this particular method rather than alternatives. If the goal of Rawls's "political" philosophy is to derive principles that are able to overcome liberal pluralism, then another and simpler method should be employed. The "method of convergence" would develop liberal principles directly from the convergence of comprehensive views in existing societies, and so give rise to quite different moral principles.

In this dissertation I show that constructivist liberal philosophers are confronted by a dilemma. On the one hand, the conceptions of persons that they appeal to are so thin that contradictory conclusions can be derived from those very same conceptions. Where one philosopher thinks that his or her conception excludes the capitalistic economic liberties from the list of basic rights, it is possible to show with great plausibility the opposite conclusion and vice-versa. The status of the capitalist economic liberties carries significant implications not only for the structure of the economy but also for the place and role of other normative values that more directly affect other areas of life. If it can be shown that a conception of persons leads to contradictory results when it comes to the status of the economic liberties in particular, then the general shape of society will change in significant and inevitable ways as well. In order to avoid this horn of the dilemma, some philosophers seek to thicken their conceptions of persons. In doing so, I maintain that they come to beg too many questions and subsequently undermine whatever normative conclusions they sought to derive from their conception of persons. I analyze this connection within the context of the theories of political philosophers writing from different traditions of liberal thought. To do so I first distinguish between how the concept of personhood has been employed in moral philosophy as opposed to political philosophy. The chapters then move from liberal theories more progressively oriented, such as John Rawls's theory of justice, to more moderate positions, such as John Tomasi's market democracy, to Robert Nozick's libertarianism. In the first two cases I argue that the conceptions of persons employed by Rawls and Tomasi are thin, and that it is possible to show that their conceptions lead to conclusions in conflict with their own stated positions. In the case of libertarianism, I argue that libertarians generally construe self-ownership thickly ...