Download or read book A Case for Necessitarianism written by Amy Karofsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-29 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first detailed and focused defense of necessitarianism. The author’s original account of necessitarianism encourages a reexamination of commonly held metaphysical positions as well as important issues in other, related areas of philosophy. Necessitarianism is the view that absolutely nothing about the world could have been otherwise in any way, whatsoever. Most philosophers believe that necessitarianism is just plain false and presume that some things could have been otherwise than what they are. In this book, the author argues that necessitarianism is true and the view that some things in the world are contingent—what the author terms contingentarianism—is false. The author assesses various theories of contingency, including the possible worlds theory, combinatorialism, and dispositionalism, and argues that no theory can successfully explain why an entity is such as it is rather than not. She then lays out a case for necessitarianism and provides responses to various objections. The book concludes with an explanation of the ways in which necessitarianism is relevant to issues in ethics, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. A Case for Necessitarianism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of science.
Download or read book A Case for Necessitarianism written by Amy Karofsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-29 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first detailed and focused defense of necessitarianism. The author’s original account of necessitarianism encourages a re-examination of commonly held metaphysical positions as well as important issues in other, related areas of philosophy.
Download or read book Truth and Ontology written by Trenton Merricks and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That there are no white ravens is true because there are no white ravens. And so there is a sense in which that truth 'depends on the world'. But this sort of dependence is trivial. After all, it does not imply that there is anything that is that truth's 'truthmaker'. Nor does it imply that something exists to which that truth corresponds. Nor does it imply that there are properties whose exemplification grounds that truth. Trenton Merricks explores whether and how truth depends substantively on the world or on things or on being. And he takes a careful look at philosophical debates concerning, among other things, modality, time, and dispositions. He looks at these debates because any account of truth's substantive dependence on being has implications for them. And these debates likewise have implications for how and whether truth depends on being. Along the way, Merricks makes a number of new points about each of these debates that are of independent interest, of interest apart from the question of truth's dependence on being. Truth and Ontology concludes that some truths do not depend on being in any substantive way at all. One result of this conclusion is that it is a mistake to oppose a philosophical theory merely because it violates truth's alleged substantive dependence on being. Another result is that the correspondence theory of truth is false and, more generally, that truth itself is not a relation of any sort between truth-bearers and that which 'makes them true'.
Download or read book Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism written by Paul Forster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was a thinker of extraordinary depth and range - he wrote on philosophy, mathematics, psychology, physics, logic, phenomenology, semiotics, religion and ethics - but his writings are difficult and fragmentary. This book provides a clear and comprehensive explanation of Peirce's thought. His philosophy is presented as a systematic response to 'nominalism', the philosophy which he most despised and which he regarded as the underpinning of the dominant philosophical worldview of his time. The book explains Peirce's challenge to nominalism as a theory of meaning and shows its implications for his views of knowledge, truth, the nature of reality, and ethics. It will be essential reading both for Peirce scholars and for those new to his work.
Download or read book The Law Governed Universe written by John T. Roberts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-27 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John T. Roberts presents and defends a radical new theory of laws of nature. His Measurability Account affirms that there is an important sense in which laws govern the universe, rather than simply describing it economically. He argues that what is essential to laws is that they guarantee the reliability of methods of measuring natural quantities.
Download or read book The Sea Battle and the Master Argument written by Richard Gaskin and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series, founded in 1970, publishes works which either combine studies in the history of philosophy with a systematic approach or bring together systematic studies with reconstructions from the history of philosophy. Monographs are published in English as well as in German. The founding editors are Erhard Scheibe (editor until 1991), Günther Patzig (until 1999) and Wolfgang Wieland (until 2003). From 1990 to 2007, the series had been co-edited by Jürgen Mittelstraß.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Truth written by Michael Glanzberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-04 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Truth is one of the central concepts in philosophy, and has been a perennial subject of study. Michael Glanzberg has brought together 36 leading experts from around the world to produce the definitive guide to philosophical issues to do with truth. They consider how the concept of truth has been understood from antiquity to the present day, surveying major debates about truth during the emergence of analytic philosophy. They offer critical assessments of the standard theories of truth, including the coherence, correspondence, identity, and pragmatist theories. They explore the role of truth in metaphysics, with lively discussion of truthmakers, proposition, determinacy, objectivity, deflationism, fictionalism, relativism, and pluralism. Finally the handbook explores broader applications of truth in philosophy, including ethics, science, and mathematics, and reviews formal work on truth and its application to semantic paradox. This Oxford Handbook will be an invaluable resource across all areas of philosophy.
Download or read book New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism written by Casey Doyle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-29 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume dedicated solely to the topic of epistemological disjunctivism. The original essays in this volume, written by leading and up-and-coming scholars on the topic, are divided into three thematic sections. The first set of chapters addresses the historical background of epistemological disjunctivism. It features essays on ancient epistemology, Immanuel Kant, J.L. Austin, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second section tackles a number contemporary issues related to epistemological disjunctivism, including its relationship with perceptual disjunctivism, radical skepticism, and reasons for belief. Finally, the third group of essays extends the framework of epistemological disjunctivism to other forms of knowledge, such as testimonial knowledge, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge. Epistemological Disjunctivism is a timely collection that engages with an increasingly important topic in philosophy. It will appeal to researches and graduate students working in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of perception.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding written by Michael Raven and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-04 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of philosophy’s biggest questions, both historically and today, are in-virtue-of questions: In virtue of what is an action right or wrong? In virtue of what am I the same person my mother bore? In virtue of what is an artwork beautiful? Philosophers attempt to answer many of these types of in-virtue-of questions, but philosophers are also increasingly focusing on what an in-virtue-of question is in the first place. Many assume, at least as a working hypothesis, that in-virtue-of questions involve a distinctively metaphysical kind of determinative explanation called “ground.” This Handbook surveys the state of the art on ground as well as its connections and applications to other topics. The central issues of ground are discussed in 37 chapters, all written exclusively for this volume by a wide range of leading experts. The chapters are organized into the following sections: I. History II. Explanation and Determination III. Logic and Structure IV. Connections V. Applications Introductions at the start of each section provide an overview of the section’s contents, and a list of Related Topics at the end of each chapter points readers to other germane areas throughout the volume. The resulting volume is accessible enough for advanced students and informative enough for researchers. It is essential reading for anyone hoping to get clearer on what the biggest questions of philosophy are really asking.
Download or read book Getting Causes from Powers written by Stephen Mumford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we understand it? Here, the authors develop a new theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. They provide the first detailed outline of a thoroughly dispositional approach, and explore its surprising features.
Download or read book Leibniz God and Necessity written by Michael V. Griffin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a necessitarian interpretation of Leibniz which grounds modal concepts in theology.
Download or read book Metaphysics Sophistry and Illusion written by Mark Balaguer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions. It also explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism.
Download or read book On History and Philosophers of History written by William H. Dray and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1989 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with theoretical problems that arise at points of contact between the concerns of philosophers and historians about the practice of historiography. In bringing together these critical studies on diverse but related themes, the book offers insight into the aims and methods of those working in theory of historiography in recent years, especially in English-speaking countries.
Download or read book Nature s Metaphysics written by Alexander Bird and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-08-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bird, a world-leader in the field, offers an original approach to key issues in philosophy. He discusses hot topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of science.
Download or read book A Referential Theory of Truth and Falsity written by Ilhan Inan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a novel theory of truth and falsity. It argues that truth is a form of reference and falsity is a form of reference failure. Most of the philosophical literature on truth concentrates on certain ontological and epistemic problems. This book focuses instead on language. By utilizing the Fregean idea that sentences are singular referring expressions, the author develops novel connections between the philosophical study of truth and falsity and the huge literature in in the philosophy of language on the notion of reference. The first part of the book constructs the author’s theory and argues for it in length. Part II addresses the ways in which the theory relates to, and is different from, some of the basic theories of truth. Part III takes up how to account for the truth of sentences with logical operators and quantifiers. Finally, Part IV discusses the applications and implications of the theory for longstanding problems in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. A Referential Theory of Truth and Falsity will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and linguistics.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Properties written by A.R.J. Fisher and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophical questions regarding both the existence and nature of properties are ubiquitous in ordinary life, the sciences, and philosophical theorising. In philosophy, it is one of the oldest topics discussed in various intellectual traditions – East and West – reaching back to Plato and Aristotle. Today, in the analytic tradition, properties continue to be a core area of study and research. The Routledge Handbook of Properties is an outstanding reference source to this perennial topic and is the first major volume of its kind. It contains forty specially commissioned chapters written by an international team of expert contributors, and is divided into nine clear parts: Methodology and Metaontology Distinctions Realism about Universals Nominalism Trope Theory Properties in Causation, Time, and Modality Properties in Science Properties in Language and Mind Properties in the Normative Realm, the Social World, and Aesthetics The Routledge Handbook of Properties is essential reading for anyone studying and researching metaphysics, metametaphysics, and ontology, and will also be of interest to those in closely related areas such as philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics.
Download or read book Nature and Necessity in Spinoza s Philosophy written by Don Garrett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spinoza's guiding commitment to the thesis that nothing exists or occurs outside of the scope of nature and its necessary laws makes him one of the great seventeenth-century exemplars of both philosophical naturalism and explanatory rationalism. Nature and Necessity in Spinoza's Philosophy brings together for the first time eighteen of Don Garrett's articles on Spinoza's philosophy, ranging over the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. Taken together, these influential articles provide a comprehensive interpretation of that philosophy, including Spinoza's theories of substance, thought and extension, causation, truth, knowledge, individuation, representation, consciousness, conatus, teleology, emotion, freedom, responsibility, virtue, contract, the state, and eternity-and the deep interrelations among them. Each article aims to resolve significant problems in the understanding of Spinoza's philosophy in such a way as to make evident both his reasons for his views and the enduring value of his ideas. At the same time, Garrett's articles elucidate the relations between his philosophy and those of predecessors and contemporaries like Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. Lastly, the volume offers important and substantial replies to leading critics on four crucial topics: the necessary existence of God (Nature), substance monism, necessitarianism, and consciousness.
