Download or read book A Relational Metaphysic written by H.H. Oliver and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C. S. Peirce's indictment that "the chief cause of [metaphysics'] backward condition is that its leading professors have been theo (Collected Papers 6:3) falls heavily at my door. For it logians" was out of reflection upon religious experience and its meaning that the present relational metaphysic was conceived. My hope, however, is that its scope is sufficiently wider than its theological origins to justify its appearance as a work in philosophy. Having been nurtured in existential philosophy and having reached some measure of maturity with the wise counsel of Professor Dr. Fritz Buri, of Basel, I came to feel that theology as a modern discipline had reached an impasse owing to its overextended commitments to a subject-object paradigm of thought. Even those theologians who despaired of these ties seemed unable to find an independent alternative idiom for their ideas. A second tension in my thinking resulted from the inordinate neglect by theologians of the natural world. Also, my natural interest in physical understanding seemed unfulfilled within the narrow confines of theology, even of philosophical theology as then practiced. As I turned decisively toward the study of modern physics, and especially of cosmology, a new world seemed to open up to me. After extensive study with prominent astronomers and physicists, it began to dawn on me that the new physics has devised conceptual paradigms of thought which could be generalized into a metaphysical system of universal interest.
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Relations written by Anna Marmodoro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents thirteen original essays which explore both traditional and contemporary aspects of the metaphysics of relations. It is uncontroversial that there are true relational predications-'Abelard loves Eloise', 'Simmias is taller than Socrates', 'smoking causes cancer', and so forth. More controversial is whether any true relational predications have irreducibly relational truthmakers. Do any of the statements above involve their subjects jointly instantiating polyadic properties, or can we explain their truths solely in terms of monadic, non-relational properties of the relata? According to a tradition dating back to Plato and Aristotle, and continued by medieval philosophers, polyadic properties are metaphysically dubious. In non-symmetric relations such as the amatory relation, a property would have to inhere in two things at once-lover and beloved-but characterise each differently, and this puzzled the ancients. More recent work on non-symmetric relations highlights difficulties with their directionality. Such problems offer clear motivation for attempting to reduce relations to monadic properties. By contrast, ontic structural realists hold that the nature of physical reality is exhausted by the relational structure expressed in the equations of fundamental physics. On this view, there must be some irreducible relations, for its fundamental ontology is purely relational. The Metaphysics of Relations draws together the work of a team of leading metaphysicians, to address topics as diverse as ancient and medieval reasons for scepticism about polyadic properties; recent attempts to reduce causal and spatiotemporal relations; recent work on the directionality of relational properties; powers ontologies and their associated problems; whether the most promising interpretations of quantum mechanics posit a fundamentally relational world; and whether the very idea of such a world is coherent. From those who question whether there are relational properties at all, to those who hold they are a fundamental part of reality, this book covers a broad spectrum of positions on the nature and ontological status of relations, from antiquity to the present day.
Download or read book Real Metaphysics written by Hallvard Lillehammer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Real Metaphysics brings together new articles by leading metaphysicians to honour Hugh Mellor's outstanding contribution to metaphysics. Some of the most outstanding minds of current times shed new light on all the main topics in metaphysics: truth, causation, dispositions and properties, explanation, and time. At the end of the book, Hugh Mellor responds to the issues raised by each of the thirteen contributors and gives us new insight into his own highly influential work on metaphysics.
Download or read book The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science written by Theodore Sider and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased consideration of concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality has transformed the debate over structuralism in many ways. Sider then examines three structuralist positions through a postmodal lens. First, nomic essentialism, which says that scientific properties are secondary and lawlike relationships among them are primary. Second, structuralism about individuals, a general position of which mathematical structuralism and structural realism are instances, which says that scientific and mathematical objects are secondary and the pattern of relations among them is primary. And third, comparativism about quantities, which says that particular values of scientific quantities, such as having exactly 1000g mass, are secondary, and quantitative relations, such as being-twice-as-massive-as, are primary. Sider concludes these discussions by considering the meta-question of when theories are equivalent and how that impacts the debate over structuralism.
Download or read book A Relational Metaphysic written by Harold H. Oliver and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Every Thing Must Go written by James Ladyman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
Download or read book Metaphysics written by Robert C. Koons and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics: The Fundamentals presents readers with a systematic, comprehensive introductory overview of modern analytic metaphysics. Presents an accessible, up-to-date and broad-ranging survey of one of the most dynamic and often daunting sub-fields in contemporary philosophy Introduces readers to the seminal works of contemporary and historic philosophers, including Descartes, Leibniz, Russell, David Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Kit Fine, Peter van Inwagen, John Hawthorne and many others Explores key questions while identifying important assumptions, axioms, and methodological principles Addresses topics in ontology, modality, causality, and universals; as well as issues surrounding material composition, persistence, space, and time
Download or read book Necessary Intentionality written by Ori Simchen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible for the name of a particular person not to refer to that person? Ori Simchen defends a negative answer to this question, and presents a new account of aboutness, or intentionality. He argues that intentional items—such as words, thoughts, photos—are about whatever they are about as a matter of necessity, rather than contingency.
Download or read book Time Change and Freedom written by L. Nathan Oaklander and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in an engaging dialogue style, Smith and Oaklander cover metaphysical topics from a student's perspective and introduce key concepts through a process of explanation, reformulation and critique.
Download or read book Bradley and the Problematic Status of Metaphysics written by Damian Ilodigwe and published by Cambridge Scholars Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bradley is a much neglected philosopher. The neglect is hardly justifiable, considering what Bradley actually wrote. However, the situation has improved in the last couple of decades, as there are signs of renewed interest in Bradley. Indeed, a basic consensus among Bradley scholars is the need for a reassessement of his philosophy and his place in the history of philosophy. In this interpretive and critical work, Ilodigwe undertakes an appraisal of Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy. He argues that Bradleyâ (TM)s metaphysics of the absolute is the core of his philosophical system This means that we cannot understand Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy unless we do justice to this aspect of his thought. Nor would it be possible to gain a full conspectus of the varied ramification of his thought if dissociated from the larger milieu relative to which they subsist and have their being. Unfortunately, much of the contemporary rejection of Bradleyâ (TM)s metaphysics is predicted on this sort of fragementary appreciation, as evidenced by Russell and Jamesâ (TM)s reception of Bradley. Bradley and the Problematic Status of Metaphysics tries to redress this imbalance. Ilodigwe here makes a case for a fundamental reassessment of Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy by taking his account of the Absolute as point of reference for receiving other aspects of his thought. In keeping with this strategy, Part 1 and 2 focuses on a number of themes in Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy such as his account of immediate experience, his theory of Judgement, his analysis of the essence of thought and his account of truth as appearance. In each case Ilodigwe shows how the themes illutrate a two-fold thesis that permeate Bradleyâ (TM)s thought: the claim as to the immanence of the Absolute in its appearances, and the further claim that the Absolute is irreducible to to any of its apperances. Part 3 relates Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy to the situation of contemporary philosophy by assessing Russell and Jamesâ (TM)s appraisal of Bradley.
Download or read book An Actological Metaphysic written by Malcolm Torry and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-12-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An actology—introduced by the first book in this series, Actology: Action, Change and Diversity in the Western Philosophical Tradition—understands reality as action in changing patterns. Actological Readings in Continental Philosophy reads a number of continental philosophers through this lens, and An Actology of the Given explores the concepts of the gift, givenness, and giving in the light of reality understood as action in changing patterns. Mark’s Gospel: An Actological Reading is what it says it is. This fifth book in the series, An Actological Metaphysic, is a more systematic treatment of cosmology and of such concepts as truth, knowledge, causality, time, space, life, and society, to see what happens when they are understood actologically: that is, with reality understood as action in changing patterns.
Download or read book God after Metaphysics written by John Panteleimon Manoussakis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-23 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While philosophy believes it is impossible to have an experience of God without the senses, theology claims that such an experience is possible, though potentially idolatrous. In this engagingly creative book, John Panteleimon Manoussakis ends the impasse by proposing an aesthetic allowing for a sensuous experience of God that is not subordinated to imposed categories or concepts. Manoussakis draws upon the theological traditions of the Eastern Church, including patristic and liturgical resources, to build a theological aesthetic founded on the inverted gaze of icons, the augmented language of hymns, and the reciprocity of touch. Manoussakis explores how a relational interpretation of being develops a fuller and more meaningful view of the phenomenology of religious experience beyond metaphysics and onto-theology.
Download or read book The Possibility of Metaphysics written by E. J. Lowe and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1998-10-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of rational inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by idetifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency between entities of different categories. He proceeds to set out a unified and original metaphysical system: he defends a substance ontology, according to which the existence of the world s one world in time depends upon the existence of persisting things which retain their identity over time and through processes of qualitative change. And he contends that even necessary beings, such as the abstract objects of mathematics, depend ultimately for their existence upon there being a concrete world of enduring substances. Within his system of metaphysics Lowe seeks to answer many of the deepest and most challenging questions in philosophy.
Download or read book Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics written by Tuomas E. Tahko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-08 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotelian (or neo-Aristotelian) metaphysics is currently undergoing something of a renaissance. This volume brings together fourteen essays from leading philosophers who are sympathetic to this conception of metaphysics, which takes its cue from the idea that metaphysics is the first philosophy. The primary input from Aristotle is methodological, but many themes familiar from his metaphysics will be discussed, including ontological categories, the role and interpretation of the existential quantifier, essence, substance, natural kinds, powers, potential, and the development of life. The volume mounts a strong challenge to the type of ontological deflationism which has recently gained a strong foothold in analytic metaphysics. It will be a useful resource for scholars and advanced students who are interested in the foundations and development of philosophy.
Download or read book Metaphysics Theology and Self written by Harold H. Oliver and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Oliver's essays propose a system of relational philosophy and theology, extending his monograph, A Relational Metaphysic, along new lines. Themes developed include the following: on the issue of truth in scientific and religious discourse as seen from the claim of their complementarity; the problem of Western substantialism as answered by a proposed non- and antisubstantialist theory of selfhood as an alternative to the Western ego; certain hermeneutical themes; and several themes introducing new facets of relational thought.
Download or read book Prince of Networks Bruno Latour and Metaphysics written by Graham Harman and published by re.press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prince of Networks is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher. It has been eagerly awaited by readers of both Latour and Harman since their public discussion at the London School of Economics in February 2008. Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central figures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centered in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance. In Part Two, Harman summarizes Latour’s most important philosophical insights, ...
Download or read book The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship written by Wolfgang Vondey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-06-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship, Wolfgang Vondey and Martin William Mittelstadt gather a table of experts on one of the most influential voices in current Pentecostal theology. The authors provide an introduction and critical assessment of Yong’s biblical foundations, hermeneutics, epistemology, philosophical presuppositions, trinitarian theology, theology of religions, ecumenical and interfaith relations, theology of disability, engagement with contemporary culture, and participation in the theology and science conversation. These diverse topics are pursued through the complementary perspectives that together shape Yong’s methodology: pneumatology, pentecostalism, and the possibility of renewal. The contributors invite a more thorough reading of Yong’s work and propose a more substantial engagement with the new face of Pentecostal scholarship. Contributors include Andrew Carver, Jacob D. Dodson, Jeff Hittenberger, Mark Mann, Martin William Mittelstadt, L. William Oliverio, Jr., David A. Reed, Tony Richie, Christopher A. Stephenson, Steven M. Studebaker, Paraskevè (Eve) Tibbs, and Wolfgang Vondey.
