The Philosophy of Keith Lehrer

This book contains eighteen original essays engaging with Keith Lehrer’s contributions to philosophy. The first nine chapters focus on Lehrer’s work in epistemology and philosophy of mind. These chapters examine the role of meta-justification in Lehrer’s (and Thomas Reid’s) epistemology, explore the epistemological significance of self-trust and how to restore self-trust to victims of epistemic injustice, challenge Lehrer’s solution to the hard problem of consciousness, question Lehrer’s account of the basing relation, and discuss the important role that experience and exemplarization play in Lehrer’s coherence theory of justification and in philosophy of science more broadly.

The second nine chapters focus on Lehrer’s work on freedom and determinism. These chapters explore the nuances of Lehrer’s theory of ultimate freedom, discuss the role of power preferences in his account of free choice, explore whether free choices must be explained by power preferences, discuss Lehrer’s views on scientific explanation, explore his claim that freedom of choice is consistent with determinism, challenge his response to the consequence argument, explore whether choices explained by adaptive preferences are free, and investigate whether plural subjects can choose freely.

The book concludes with Lehrer’s masterful responses to each of the essays. Those interested in epistemology, philosophy of mind, freedom and moral responsibility, and the intersection of these fields should find the book of great interest.