Overview

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noted Brazilian philosopher Claudio Costa, many philosophical ideas that today are widely seen as old-fashioned and outdated should not be dismissed, but instead should be extensively reworked and reformulated.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 aim to restore something of a broader perspective, salvaging isolated insights by integrating them into more comprehensive views.

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This is an impressive contribution to answering several important questions of analytical philosophy. Claudio Costa's book is exceptional due to the extent of his knowledge of the relevant literature, the lucidity of his criticism of received views, the clearness of his analysis and the boldness of his proposed alternatives. Few philosophers have written on such difficult questions with a comparable lucidity and originality. -Guido Antonio de Almeida, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Claudio Costa's collection of philosophical essays covers many of the central problems of philosophy - the nature of philosophy and of knowledge, how names refer to individuals, freewill, and consciousness. He reminds us of some of the major insights on these issues from the early years of 'linguistic philosophy' and develops important objections to some more recent views about them. -Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Nolloth Professor of Philosophy, Oxford University

Author Information

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 this book.

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