The last several decades have seen epistemology bogged down in various reductionist attempts to define knowledge in non-circular terms. Williamson adopts the view that knowledge is a primitive state. If he is right, epistemology cannot consist in the attempt to give a reductive analysis of knowledge. Williamson then demonstrates the interest of his brand of non-reductive epistemology, by drawing radical conclusions from his characteristically precise arguments about a host of topics from self-knowledge to the nature of evidence. This is the most important book in epistemology in decades, written by the leading living philosopher outside of normative ethics and history.

This may well be the most important work in epistemology to have appeared in the last decade. Like its author's other works, it is precise, deep, startlingly creative and deeply thought-provoking -- a first-rate piece of analytic philosophy!

THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF THE MOST FANTASTIC ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN. . .Until recently, I didnt realize that there was a copy of OTHER VOICES still in print. A collector of Ufo and New Age books -- a good friend of mine -- had told me about reading some of the works of the late researcher George Hunt Williamson. I was familiar with the fact that Williamson was one of the purported witnesses to the famous contact between contactee George Adamski and the space being identified as Orthon in Adamski's FLYING SAUCERS HAVE LANDED book.I was immediately turned on to this volume because I remember over a decade ago I was in North Carolina visiting relatives in the small town of Lumberton when a strange things began to happen. Mysterious voices were being picked up on the radio, tv sets and even over the telephone. The voices was very mechanical soundling -- like a computer (if anyone knew what a computer was back then). The voice always said the same thing -- something about how it was circling over head in a space craft -- and it would be about the same time at night that the voice would start talking, repeating the same thing over and over again.I read an article by editor Timothy Green Beckley that he wrote for the now defunct SAGA magazine, about how even astronauts were hearing such voices on their closely monitored wave bands only open to NASA communications. Who is behind these OTHER VOICES? And what are they really trying to say? Williamson tells his own story matter of factly, and Beckley tries to make the most of what is seemingly happening.Voices talking to us from out of thin air are nothing new. Read LOST JOURNALS OF NIKOLA TESLA and other such volumes if you want background into this type of material. Mediums have been going into trances for decades and speaking in other tongues.Its a fascinating topic and this book hopes to shead some light on this mystery out of time and space.

Since the UFO phenomenon first entered the public imagination in 1947 with pilot Kenneth Arnold's original sighting near Mount Rainier in Washington state, many different forms of contact with the UFOs and their occupants have been claimed by numerous witnesses. However, one frequently overlooked form of communication with the aliens consists primarily of that most simple of methods: voice contact, or "conversation" by means of opening one's mouth and speaking. In "Other Voices," the story of a small group of people and their brave attempt to establish a link with aliens they assumed to be benevolent Space Brothers, the idea of communication by means of the spoken word is explored and produces some surprising results.

"Other Voices" is essentially a reprint of a book entitled "The Saucers Speak," by George Hunt Williamson and Alfred Bailey. Originally published in the 1950s, it still has a great deal of relevance to today's UFO scene. Much of what the authors prophesy has indeed come to pass, and the warning the aliens send about nuclear war and environmental doom is still as urgent as it ever was in spite of the thawing process that the Cold War has undergone in recent years.

Williamson and Bailey, according to Timothy Green Beckley's new and updated introduction, "were ham radio operators who claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings who were continually broadcasting messages to them from spaceships circling in the Earth's uppermost atmosphere. At the time, these authors came under fairly heavy verbal attack as the mere idea that aliens were setting foot on our world seemed a much more remote concept than it might now be considered in this day and age."

Times may not have changed as much as Beckley would hope. Ridicule continues to be the norm for witnesses who come forward with tales of contact with aliens. Even further, Williamson and Bailey are clearly examples of what was called in the 1950s "contactees," a term that today is shunned by even the mainstream UFO community and is understood to mean people on the outer edges of the lunatic fringe.

But "Other Voices" still manages to reach impressive levels of credulity. The authors at one point say that the aliens instruct them to project their own thoughts onto the message to a lesser degree, implying that the human mind tends to cloud the transmission. That looks very much like a telltale realistic detail that separates alien intent from the "psycho-babble" of mere mortals.

At another juncture, the authors say that the young people of their time are beginning to be schooled in the true doctrines of the aliens, receiving a message about peace, love and brotherhood. That statement, first made in the early 1950s, seems uncanny when one recalls the blossoming of the Flower Children in the next decade, armed with their message of pacifism that could conceivably really have come from outer space because it was so alien to the mindset of America's youth prior to those times.

Beckley's introduction also recounts numerous other instances of radios and televisions being jammed with strange voices speaking messages about impending doom, so it is apparent that the phenomenon continues unabated to the present day. While "Other Voices" serves on one level as a refreshing bit of 1950s contactee nostalgia, it also stands the test of time and continues to breathe life into the idea that radio and television voice contact with the Space Brothers may one day be the method by which their existence is finally proven and the deliverance they promise is actually realized.

If you want to learn how not to do philosophy, read this book (if you can). In his later work genius Ludwig Wittgenstein taught that philosophical problems only appear when a writer is cavalier with the meaning and usage of words. Mr Williamson can only write about "the philosophical problem of vagueness" by ignoring Wittgenstein's dictum.

Suppose I stand in front of a pile of sand and someone removes grains a teaspoonful at a time. I am asked "When does it cease to be a pile?" How to answer this? The answer would have to be something like this. After a certain quantity of sand has been removed I might say "Maybe it is reaching the point where someone could question whether it is a pile or not." More sand removed..."I am not sure whether it is a pile or not." More sand removed... "I think many people would not call this a pile." More sand removed ..."Definitely not a pile now."

To ask "Exactly when does it cease to be a pile?" is to ignore the linguistic conventions and contexts concerning the phrase "a pile of sand." It is to be careless with language. So taught Wittgenstein more than fifty years ago.

According to Mr Williamson, vagueness is an epistemic phenomenon. "In cases of unclarity, statements remain true or false, but speakers of the language have no way of knowing which." Consider what this means. Some people say Pluto is a planet in the solar system. Others say Pluto is too small to be a planet, it is merely an asteroid. Thus according to Mr Williamson, the statement "Pluto is a planet" must either be true or false but we do not know which. Mr Williamson then correctly writes that such a view of vagueness appears incredible.

How does Mr Williamson create such a pickle? The answer is found in the first sentence of Chapter 9 where we read the incredible statement that "Words are objects;". Let me give the definitions of word and object in my dictionary. Word : "An articulate sound or combination of sounds uttered by the human voice or written, printed etc, expressing an idea or ideas..." Object : "Anything presented to the senses or the mind, especially anything visible or tangible; a material thing..." Mr Williamson uses object in the sense of material thing whether it be piles of sand, heads with few hairs, or Europe. So Mr Williamson creates his philosophical problem by wrongly stating that a sound (or written word) is the same as a material object. He has been cavalier with the meanings of words as given in the dictionary. He has made a very elementary error that most school children would not make. However this error is the postulate behind three hundred pages of dense argument leading to the so-called epistemic view of vagueness which Mr Williamson admits is, at first sight, incredible.

You would think that if Mr Williamson reaches a conclusion that appears incredible, he might wish to enquire if there is an elementary error in his postulates. However Mr Williamson embarks on no such enquiry.

My edition has a blurb on the cover by Mr Adam Morton who writes in Philosophical Books "Not for a long time have I read anything which was at the same time so easy and pleasant to read and so stimulating." Don't you believe it! I'd like to see Mr Morton stand up and say this under oath in a court of law; he would be prosecuted for perjury!

Wittgenstein once told a prospective philosophy student to forget philosophy and go and study an honest subject like medicine. In this spirit I give the book one star only.

If you took grains of sand away from a pile of sand, when would it cease to be a pile? The paradox of the sorites goes back to early Greek philosophers, and recent metaphysicians have revived the debate after a couple thousand years of philosophers ignoring it. According to Timothy Williamson, there is an exact point when every pile ceases to be a pile, and we could never know what that point is. If a man loses a certain number of hairs, he will be bald, and just one hair makes the difference. Williamson's epistemic view of vagueness has now come to occupy the front stage. Everyone wants to show why such a wacky view just can't be right, but no one seems to have a convincing reply to his arguments. His book covers the main views for dealing with problems of vagueness, and it goes through basic reasons deriving just from standard logic, showing why the other views are seriously inadequate unless they revise our standard logic to the point of absurdity. This book isn't easy even for trained philosophers, but it's well worth it for anyone who wants to delve into this fundamental issue in metaphysics and philosophy of language.