Download or read book The Knowledge Book written by Steve Fuller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Knowledge Book" is a unique interdisciplinary reference work for students and researchers concerned with the nature of knowledge. It is the first work of its kind to be organized on the assumption that whatever else knowledge might be, it is intrinsically social. The book consists of 42 alphabetically arranged entries on key concepts at the intersection of philosophy and sociology - what used to be called "sociology of knowledge" but is now increasingly called "social epistemology". The entries include concepts common to disciplines that in recent years have devoted more of their attention to knowledge: cultural studies, communication studies, information science, education, policy studies and business studies. Special attention is given to concepts from the emerging field of science and technology studies. Each entry presents a short, self-contained essay providing an overview of a concept and concludes with suggestions for further reading. All the entries are fully cross-referenced, allowing readers to both make connections and follow their own interests.
Download or read book Epistemology Key Concepts in Philosophy written by Christopher Norris and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-09-15 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Key Concepts in Philosophy is a series of concise, accessible and engaging introductions to the core ideas and topics encountered in the study of philosophy. Specially written to meet the needs of students and those with little prior knowledge of the subject, these books open up a whole range of important, yet often difficult ideas. The series builds to give a solid grounding in philosophy and each book is also ideal as a companion to further study. Epistemology - inquiry into the nature, possibility and scope of human knowledge - has been at the heart of the philosophy from ancient Greek times to the present. Christopher Norris provides a lucid survey and analysis of the issues that have shaped that enterprise and continue to dominate present-day discussion. He also brings out with exceptional clarity the ways in which certain 'technical' issues in epistemology can have a decisive bearing on matters of practical concern. The text highlights continuities and contrasts between early and contemporary approaches, and between the sorts of thinking that have typified the mainstream analytic and the modern 'continental' lines of descent. Norris introduces the main topics of debate, among them arguments for and against adopting a realist position with regard to various fields of knowledge, from mathematics to the physical sciences and history. Philosophy undergraduates will find this an invaluable aid to study, one that goes beyond simple definitions and summaries to open up a new and stimulating range of ideas.
Download or read book Conceptions of Truth written by Kunne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Truth is one of the most debated topics in philosophy; Wolfgang Künne presents a comprehensive critical examination of all major theories. Conceptions of Truth is organized around a flow-chart comprising sixteen key questions, ranging from 'Is truth a property?' to 'Is truth epistemically constrained?' Künne expounds and engages with the ideas of many thinkers, from Aristotle and the Stoics, to Continental analytic philosophers like Bolzano, Brentano, andKotarbinski, to such leading figures in current debates as Dummett, Putnam, Wright, and Horwich. He explains many important distinctions (between varieties of correspondence, for example, between different conceptions of making true, between various kinds of eternalism and temporalism) which have so far been neglected in theliterature. Künne argues that it is possible to give a satisfactory 'modest' account of truth without invoking problematic notions like correspondence, fact, or meaning. And he offers a novel argument to support the realist claim that truth outruns justifiability.The clarity of exposition and the wealth of examples will make Conceptions of Truth an invaluable and stimulating guide for advanced students and scholars in metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of language.
Download or read book The Logic of Information written by Luciano Floridi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luciano Floridi presents an innovative approach to philosophy, conceived as conceptual design. He explores how we make, transform, refine, and improve the objects of our knowledge. His starting point is that reality provides the data, to be understood as constraining affordances, and we transform them into information, like semantic engines. Such transformation or repurposing is not equivalent to portraying, or picturing, or photographing, or photocopying anything. It is more like cooking: the dish does not represent the ingredients, it uses them to make something else out of them, yet the reality of the dish and its properties hugely depend on the reality and the properties of the ingredients. Models are not representations understood as pictures, but interpretations understood as data elaborations, of systems. Thus, he articulates and defends the thesis that knowledge is design and philosophy is the ultimate form of conceptual design. Although entirely independent of Floridi's previous books, The Philosophy of Information (OUP 2011) and The Ethics of Information (OUP 2013), The Logic of Information both complements the existing volumes and presents new work on the foundations of the philosophy of information.
Download or read book Shifting Concepts written by Teresa Marques and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together leading philosophers and psychologists to present novel accounts of concepts, communication, and conceptual change and variability, with the aim to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing, reasoning, and social interaction.
Download or read book Science Key Concepts in Philosophy written by Steven French and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great text for students wishing to examine the questions raised in the philosophy of science. An ideal first guide to this challenging subject.
Download or read book The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy written by André Laks and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we talk about Presocratic philosophy, we are speaking about the origins of Greek philosophy and Western rationality itself. But what exactly does it mean to talk about “Presocratic philosophy” in the first place? How did early Greek thinkers come to be considered collectively as Presocratic philosophers? In this brief book, André Laks provides a history of the influential idea of Presocratic philosophy, tracing its historical and philosophical significance and consequences, from its ancient antecedents to its full crystallization in the modern period and its continuing effects today. Laks examines ancient Greek and Roman views about the birth of philosophy before turning to the eighteenth-century emergence of the term “Presocratics” and the debates about it that spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He analyzes the intellectual circumstances that led to the idea of Presocratic philosophy—and what was and is at stake in the construction of the notion. The book closes by comparing two models of the history of philosophy—the phenomenological, represented by Hans-Georg Gadamer, and the rationalist, represented by Ernst Cassirer—and their implications for Presocratic philosophy, as well as other categories of philosophical history. Other figures discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Nietzsche, Max Weber, and J.-P. Vernant. Challenging standard histories of Presocratic philosophy, the book calls for a reconsideration of the conventional story of early Greek philosophy and Western rationality.
Download or read book Key Concepts in Philosophy written by Rafael Ferber and published by . This book was released on 2014-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christian Philosophy written by J. Aaron Simmons and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the marks of being a philosopher is participating in debates about what counts as "philosophy." Of particular note in such debates is the question of how to distinguish philosophy from theology. Although a variety of answers to this question have been offered in the history of philosophy, in recent decades, the prominence of Christian philosophy has been heralded by many as a genuine triumph over the problematic narrowness of strong foundationalism, positivism, and scientism. For others, however, it signals that philosophy continues to risk being replaced by confessional theology. Wherever one comes down on such issues, and however one interprets recent trends in philosophy of religion, the idea of Christian philosophy continues to present pressing questions for those working in meta-philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, hermeneutics, and value theory. In this volume, established scholars representing a variety of cultural traditions, religious perspectives, and philosophical priorities all wrestle with how the idea of Christian philosophy should be understood, appropriated, and engaged in light of where philosophy is and where it is likely to go. The volume includes classical essays that have deeply marked the field and also new essays that explore the relevance of Christian philosophy to issues in disability studies, engaged pedagogy, lived phenomenology, the academic study of religion, and the workings of social power. Rather than offer a unified view that seeks to settle things, the contributors demonstrate that Christian philosophy remains a topic of lively debate. Wherever one comes down on the issues considered here, this volume shows that Christian philosophy is neither merely of historical interest, nor of interest only to Christians, but instead remains a thoroughly philosophical topic worthy of serious consideration and substantive critique. With a Foreword by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University; Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia; and Honorary Professor of Australian Catholic University.
Download or read book Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy written by Karin de Boer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does philosophical critique have a future? What are its possibilities, limits and presuppositions? This collection by outstanding scholars from various traditions, responds to these questions by examining the forms of philosophical critique that have shaped continental thought from Spinoza and Kant to Marx, Foucault, Derrida and Rancière.
Download or read book Consciousness written by Josh Weisberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-11-07 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of us, right now, is having a unique conscious experience. Nothing is more basic to our lives as thinking beings and nothing, it seems, is better known to us. But the ever-expanding reach of natural science suggests that everything in our world is ultimately physical. The challenge of fitting consciousness into our modern scientific worldview, of taking the subjective “feel” of conscious experience and showing that it is just neural activity in the brain, is among the most intriguing explanatory problems of our times. In this book, Josh Weisberg presents the range of contemporary responses to the philosophical problem of consciousness. The basic philosophical tools of the trade are introduced, including thought experiments featuring Mary the color-deprived super scientist and fearsome philosophical “zombies”. The book then systematically considers the space of philosophical theories of consciousness. Dualist and other “non-reductive” accounts of consciousness hold that we must expand our basic physical ontology to include the intrinsic features of consciousness. Functionalist and identity theories, by contrast, hold that with the right philosophical stage-setting, we can fit consciousness into the standard scientific picture. And “mysterians” hold that any solution to the problem is beyond such small-minded creatures as us. Throughout the book, the complexity of current debates on consciousness is handled in a clear and concise way, providing the reader with a fine introductory guide to the rich philosophical terrain. The work makes an excellent entry point to one of the most exciting areas of study in philosophy and science today.
Download or read book Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy written by Martin Heidegger and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents Heidegger’s 1924 Marburg lectures which lay the intellectual groundwork for his magnum opus, Being and Time. Here are the seeds of the ideas that would become Heidegger’s unique and highly influential phenomenology. Heidegger interprets Aristotle’s Rhetoric and looks closely at the Greek notion of pathos. These lectures offer special insight into the development of his concepts of care and concern, being-at-hand, being-in-the-world, and attunement, which were later elaborated in Being and Time. Available in English for the first time, these lectures make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology.
Download or read book Language Key Concepts in Philosophy written by Jose Medina and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inquiry into the nature and purpose of language has long been a central concern of Western philosophy, within both the analytic, Anglo-American tradition, and its Continental counterpart. Language: Key Concepts in Philosophy explains and explores the principal ideas, theories and debates in the philosophy of language, providing a clear and authoritative account of the discipline. The text covers the work on language of the major philosophers in both traditions, including Frege, Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, Davidson, Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida and Butler. The book equips readers with the requisite philosophical tools to get to grips with central concepts and key issues, and raises challenging questions students can then explore on their own. Coverage of each issue provides the reader with a full account of the state of the question and a thorough assessment of the arguments entailed in the available literature on that subject. Philosophy undergraduates will find this an invaluable aid to study, one that goes beyond simple definitions and summaries to really open up fascinating and important ideas and arguments.
Download or read book Conceptions of Philosophy written by Anthony O'Hear and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Royal Institute of Philosophy has challenged distinguished philosophers to reflect on the nature, scope and possibility of philosophy.
Download or read book Conceptions of Set and the Foundations of Mathematics written by Luca Incurvati and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a detailed and critical examination of the available conceptions of set and proposes a novel version.
Download or read book Hegel s Concept of Life written by Karen Ng and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karen Ng sheds new light on Hegel's famously impenetrable philosophy. She does so by offering a new interpretation of Hegel's idealism and by foregrounding Hegel's Science of Logic, revealing that Hegel's theory of reason revolves around the concept of organic life. Beginning with the influence of Kant's Critique of Judgment on Hegel, Ng argues that Hegel's key philosophical contributions concerning self-consciousness, freedom, and logic all develop around the idea of internal purposiveness, which appealed to Hegel deeply. She charts the development of the purposiveness theme in Kant's third Critique, and argues that the most important innovation from that text is the claim that the purposiveness of nature opens up and enables the operation of the power of judgment. This innovation is essential for understanding Hegel's philosophical method in the Differenzschrift (1801) and Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), where Hegel, developing lines of thought from Fichte and Schelling, argues against Kant that internal purposiveness constitutes cognition's activity, shaping its essential relation to both self and world. From there, Ng defends a new and detailed interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, arguing that Hegel's Subjective Logic can be understood as Hegel's version of a critique of judgment, in which life comes to be understood as opening up the possibility of intelligibility. She makes the case that Hegel's theory of judgment is modelled on reflective and teleological judgments, in which something's species or kind provides the objective context for predication. The Subjective Logic culminates in the argument that life is a primitive or original activity of judgment, one that is the necessary presupposition for the actualization of self-conscious cognition. Through bold and ambitious new arguments, Ng demonstrates the ongoing dialectic between life and self-conscious cognition, providing ground-breaking ways of understanding Hegel's philosophical system.
Download or read book The Historiographical Concept System of Philosophy written by Leo Catana and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-03-31 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jacob Brucker (1696-1770) established the history of philosophy as a philosophical discipline in the 1740s. In order to separate this new discipline from other historical disciplines, he introduced the historiographical concept ‘system of philosophy’. The historian of philosophy should use this concept as a criterion of inclusion of past philosophies, and as an ideal form of exposition. The present book describes the origin of this historiographical notion, its implicit Protestant assumptions, and it traces the concept’s impact upon the methods of history of philosophy and history of ideas, as developed over the following centuries. Finally, it discusses the concept’s strenghts and weaknesses as a historiographical tool, arguing that it ought to be given up.
