On Reflection

Hilary Kornblith presents a new account of the role of reflection in establishing knowledge, in reasoning, in freedom, and in normativity. Philosophers have frequently extolled the value of reflective self-examination, and a wide range of philosophers have argued that reflection can help to solve a number of significant philosophical problems. Kornblith argues, to the contrary, that reflection cannot solve any of them. More than this, he suggests that the attemptto solve these problems by appealing to reflection saddles us with a mystical view of the powers of reflective self-examination. Recognition of this fact motivates a search for a demystified view of the nature of reflection, which he offers in the final chapter.

Hilary Kornblith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Inductive Inference and its Natural Ground (MIT, 1993) and Knowledge and its Place in Nature (Oxford, 2002).