Download or read book Descartes s Gambit written by Peter J. Markie and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Descartes Gambit written by Peter J. Markie and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Ren Descartes written by Stephen Voss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-02-04 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major contribution to Descartes studies, this book provides a panorama of cutting-edge scholarship ranging widely over Descartes's own primary concerns: metaphysics, physics, and its applications. It is at once a tool for scholars and--steering clear of technical Cartesian science--an accessible resource that will delight nonspecialists. The contributors include Edwin Curley, Willis Doney, Alan Gabbey, Daniel Garber, Marjorie Grene, Gary Hatfield, Marleen Rozemond, John Schuster, Dennis Sepper, Stephen Voss, Stephen Wagner, Margaret Welson, Jean Marie Beyssade, Michelle Beyssade, Michel Henry, Evert van Leeuwen, Jean-Luc Marion, Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, and Jean-Pierre Séris. Combining new textual sensitivity with attentiveness to history, they represent the best established scholars and most exciting new voices, including both English speaking and newly-translated writers. Part I examines the foundations of Descartes's philosophy: Cartesian certainty; the phenomenology of the cogito and its modulations in the passions; and the defensibility and comprehensibility of the Cartesian God. The second part examines Descartes's groundbreaking metaphysics: mind's distinctness from and interaction with body; imagination; perception; and language. Part III examines Cartesian science: the revolutionary rhetoric of the Rules and the Discourse; the metaphysical foundations of physics; the interplay of rationalism and empiricism; the mechanics and human biology that flow from Descartes's physics.
Download or read book Descartes Agonistes written by John Schuster and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reconstructs key aspects of the early career of Descartes from 1618 to 1633; that is, up through the point of his composing his first system of natural philosophy, Le Monde, in 1629-33. It focuses upon the overlapping and intertwined development of Descartes’ projects in physico-mathematics, analytical mathematics, universal method, and, finally, systematic corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy. The concern is not simply with the conceptual and technical aspects of these projects; but, with Descartes’ agendas within them and his construction and presentation of his intellectual identity in relation to them. Descartes’ technical projects, agendas and senses of identity shifted over time, entangled and displayed great successes and deep failures, as he morphed from a mathematically competent, Jesuit trained graduate in neo-Scholastic Aristotelianism to aspiring prophet of a systematised corpuscular-mechanism, passing through stages of being a committed physico-mathematicus, advocate of a putative ‘universal mathematics’, and projector of a grand methodological dream. In all three dimensions—projects, agendas and identity concerns—the young Descartes struggled and contended, with himself and with real or virtual peers and competitors, hence the title ‘Descartes-Agonistes’.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Descartes written by John Cottingham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-09-25 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descartes occupies a position of pivotal importance as one of the founding fathers of modern philosophy; he is, perhaps the most widely studied of all philosophers. In this authoritative collection an international team of leading scholars in Cartesian studies present the full range of Descartes' extraordinary philosophical achievement. His life and the development of his thought, as well as the intellectual background to and reception of his work, are treated at length. At the core of the volume are a group of chapters on his metaphysics: the celebrated 'Cogito' argument, the proofs of God's existence, the 'Cartesian circle' and the dualistic theory of the mind and its relation to his theological and scientific views. Other chapters cover the philosophical implications of his work in algebra, his place in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, the structure of his physics, and his work on physiology and psychology.
Download or read book Descartes and Augustine written by Stephen Menn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-28 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a systematic study of Descartes' relation to Augustine. It offers a complete reevaluation of Descartes' thought and as such will be of major importance to all historians of medieval, neo-Platonic, or early modern philosophy. Stephen Menn demonstrates that Descartes uses Augustine's central ideas as a point of departure for a critique of medieval Aristotelian physics, which he replaces with a new, mechanistic anti-Aristotelian physics. Special features of the book include a reading of the Meditations, a comprehensive historical and philosophical introduction to Augustine's thought, a detailed account of Plotinus, and a contextualization of Descartes' mature philosophical project which explores both the framework within which it evolved and the early writings, to show how the collapse of the early project drove Descartes to the writings of Augustine.
Download or read book Descartes and the Modern written by Gordon McOuat and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descartes is not simply our iconic modern philosopher, mathematician or scientist. He stands as the cultural symbol for modernity itself. As such, Descartes is widely read in and out of universities as the definitive moment in the birth of what we take to be the Modern. Yet, recent scholarship has presented numerous challenges to the Cartesian image. Some question the legitimacy of calling Descartes a founder of modernity. Others have questioned the very legitimacy of Modernity itself, using Descartes as a way into that critique This collection of original papers by leading philosophers and historians of early modern thought opens up these questions, exploring them in new and markedly interdisciplinary ways, offering fresh insights into the important relationship between Descartes and the Modern, and the very meaning and status of Modernity itself. This collection assembles together for the first time leading representatives from what might be called the “naturalist” or Anglo-American school with those of the continental “phenomenological” school in a dialogue concerning Descartes’ place. The papers explore crucial questions and recent disputes regarding Descartes’ relationship to his predecessors, to his contemporaries and to modern thought, to the philosophy of mind, to questions of metaphysics and natural philosophy. Descartes and the Modern helps bridge solitudes drawn between these traditional approaches to Descartes.
Download or read book The Rationalists written by Derk Pereboom and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1999 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together thirteen articles on the most discussed thinkers in the rationalist movement: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche. These articles address the topics in metaphysics and epistemology that figure most prominently in contemporary work on these philosophers. The articles have all been produced since 1980, and their authors are among the most respected in the field.
Download or read book How To Read Descartes written by John G. Cottingham and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2014-04-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I realized it was necessary to demolish everything and start again right from the foundations, if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.' Ren Descartes Revered as the 'father of modern philosophy', Descartes is one of the most influential philosophers of all time, but his ideas are also highly controversial and have been subjected to intense criticism by present-day philosophers. John Cottingham examines Descartes's remarkable attempt to construct a new basis for scientific understanding, his famous first principle, 'I am thinking, therefore I exist,' and his notorious and often misunderstood account of the relation between mind and body. He also tackles fascinating and lesser-known aspects of Descartes's philosophy, including his views on language, human and animal nature, the role of the emotions in the good life, and the place of God in science and ethics. Extracts are taken from the whole range of Descartes's writings, including the Discourse on the Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, Principles of Philosophy and his last book, the Passions of the Soul, as well as extracts from his philosophical letters.
Download or read book The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy written by Roger Ariew and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy includes many entries on Descartes's writings, concepts, and findings. Since it is historical, there are other entries on those who supported him, those who criticized him, those who corrected him, and those who together formed one of the major movements in philosophy, Cartesianism. To better understand the period, the authors drew up a brief chronology, and to see how Descartes and Cartesianism fit into the general picture, they have written an introduction and a biography. Since everything cannot be summed up in one volume, a bibliography directs readers to numerous other sources on issues of particular interest.
Download or read book Descartes Deontological Turn written by Noa Naaman-Zauderer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-04 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a way of approaching the place of the will in Descartes' mature epistemology and ethics. Departing from the widely accepted view, Noa Naaman-Zauderer suggests that Descartes regards the will, rather than the intellect, as the most significant mark of human rationality, both intellectual and practical. Through a close reading of Cartesian texts from the Meditations onward, she brings to light a deontological and non-consequentialist dimension of Descartes' later thinking, which credits the proper use of free will with a constitutive, evaluative role. She shows that the right use of free will, to which Descartes assigns obligatory force, constitutes for him an end in its own right rather than merely a means for attaining any other end, however valuable. Her important study has significant implications for the unity of Descartes' thinking, and for the issue of responsibility, inviting scholars to reassess Descartes' philosophical legacy.
Download or read book Descartes and Method written by Clarence A. Bonnen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rene Descartes credited his success in philosophy, mathematics, and physics to the discovery of a universal method of inquiry, but he provided no systematic description of his method. Descartes and Method carefully examines Descartes' scattered remarks on his application and puts forward a systematic account of his method with particular attention to the role it plays in the Meditations. Daniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen boldly and convincingly argue against the orthodox conception that Descartes had no method. Through a rigorous and thorough examination, Flage and Bonnen unearth and explain the role of the method of analysis in the Meditations. Descartes and Method is a ground-breaking book that is sure to make a considerable impact on the philosophy community. Anyone wishing to gain a new understanding of Descartes's Meditations should read this book.
Download or read book In Praise of Reason written by Michael P. Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-03-16 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spirited defense of the relevance of reason for an era of popular skepticism over such matters as climate change, vaccines, and evolution. Why does reason matter, if (as many people seem to think) in the end everything comes down to blind faith or gut instinct? Why not just go with what you believe even if it contradicts the evidence? Why bother with rational explanation when name-calling, manipulation, and force are so much more effective in our current cultural and political landscape? Michael Lynch's In Praise of Reason offers a spirited defense of reason and rationality in an era of widespread skepticism—when, for example, people reject scientific evidence about such matters as evolution, climate change, and vaccines when it doesn't jibe with their beliefs and opinions. In recent years, skepticism about the practical value of reason has emerged even within the scientific academy. Many philosophers and psychologists claim that the reasons we give for our most deeply held views are often little more than rationalizations of our prior convictions. In Praise of Reason gives us a counterargument. Although skeptical questions about reason have a deep and interesting history, they can be answered. In particular, appeals to scientific principles of rationality are part of the essential common currency of any civil democratic society. The idea that everything is arbitrary—that reason has no more weight than blind faith—undermines a key principle of a civil society: that we owe our fellow citizens explanations for what we do. Reason matters—not just for the noble ideal of truth, but for the everyday world in which we live.
Download or read book Austin s Way with Skepticism written by Mark Kaplan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. L. Austin is famous for writing as if he thought it a condition, on the adequacy of what we say while doing epistemology, that it accord faithfully with what we would say in ordinary circumstances. A durable consensus formed after Austin's death that his pursuit of epistemology faithful to 'ordinary language' was fundamentally misguided. While critics saw his methods as resulting from a failure properly to understand the nature of the epistemologist's project, Mark Kaplan argues that this consensus arose from a misreading of Austin. In Austin's Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method, he sets out his stance that both the condition of adequacy to which Austin was committed and his reason for being committed to it, have been misunderstood by his critics. Starting by carefully analysing what Austin said about knowledge in 'Other Minds,' examining the response to skeptical arguments, and taking seriously the methodological remarks Austin scattered in his corpus, Kaplan demonstrates that Austin's methods were not born of a misunderstanding of the project of epistemology. Rather, Austin was a powerful critique of how that project has been conceived though was not against epistemological theorizing itself. Kaplan concludes that Austin understood himself to be offering substantive answers to key epistemological questions and defending a way of doing epistemology that is fully capable of providing these important answers.
Download or read book The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic written by Jaakko Hintikka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Somewhat like Henkin's nonstandard interpretation of higher-order logics, while the right semantics [or logical modalities is an analogue to the standard of type theory in Henkin's sense. interpretation Another possibility would be to follow W.V. Quine's advice to give up logi cal modalities as being beyond repair. Or we could also try to develop a logic of conceptual possibility, restricting the range of our "possible worlds" to those compatible with the transcendental presuppositions of our own conceptual sys tem. This looks in fact like one of the most interesting possible theories I have dreamt of developing but undoubtedly never will. Its kinship with Kant's way of thinking should be obvious. Besides putting the entire enterprise of possible-worlds semantics into a perspective, we can also see that the actual history of possible-worlds seman tics is more complicated than it might first appear to be. For the standard in terpretation of modal logics has reared its beautiful head repeatedly in the writings of Stig Kanger, Richard Montague the pre-Montague-semantics theorist, and Nino Cocchiarella.
Download or read book Enlightenment and Action from Descartes to Kant written by Michael Losonsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-13 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book systematically traces the development of the idea that the improvement of human understanding requires public activity.
