Download or read book Metaphysics of Natural Complexes written by Justus Buchler and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past two decades Metaphysics of Natural Complexes has exerted a strong a growing influence on the continuing development of contemporary philosophy. This new and expanded edition acknowledges this influence and brings together much material. Included are the previously published articles “On the Concept of ‘the World,’” and “Probing the Idea of Nature,” which Buchler wrote subsequent to Metaphysics of Natural Complexes as extensions and completions of the system. Previously unpublished work on the key concept of contour has also been added. In addition there are excerpts from Buchler’s replies to his critics, a set of editors’ notes to facilitate cross-referencing, and an updated index. This work presents a bold and forceful metaphysics and general ontology. It provides a systematic framework for understanding the broadest features of the world and nature, and for locating our understanding of human nature, selfhood, and society as complexes in and of nature. Buchler’s detailed analysis of identity, ordinality, nature, world, and validation advance our understanding of the basic categories to be used in defining and exploring whatever is. Unlike other contemporary philosophers that confine themselves to narrowly defined problems in hermeneutics or theory of knowledge, Buchler is unrelenting in his drive toward a more encompassing perspective, simultaneously combining interpretive precision with sheer breadth of vision.

Download or read book Metaphysics of Natural Complexes written by Justus Buchler and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past two decades Metaphysics of Natural Complexes has exerted a strong a growing influence on the continuing development of contemporary philosophy. This new and expanded edition acknowledges this influence and brings together much material. Included are the previously published articles "On the Concept of 'the World,'" and "Probing the Idea of Nature," which Buchler wrote subsequent to Metaphysics of Natural Complexes as extensions and completions of the system. Previously unpublished work on the key concept of contour has also been added. In addition there are excerpts from Buchler's replies to his critics, a set of editors' notes to facilitate cross-referencing, and an updated index. This work presents a bold and forceful metaphysics and general ontology. It provides a systematic framework for understanding the broadest features of the world and nature, and for locating our understanding of human nature, selfhood, and society as complexes in and of nature. Buchler's detailed analysis of identity, ordinality, nature, world, and validation advance our understanding of the basic categories to be used in defining and exploring whatever is. Unlike other contemporary philosophers that confine themselves to narrowly defined problems in hermeneutics or theory of knowledge, Buchler is unrelenting in his drive toward a more encompassing perspective, simultaneously combining interpretive precision with sheer breadth of vision.

Download or read book Naturalism s Philosophy of the Sacred written by Martin O. Yalcin and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Naturalism’s Philosophy of the Sacred: Justus Buchler, Karl Jaspers, and George Santayana offers an interpretation of the sacred based on the ordinal naturalism of Justus Buchler, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century whose work is experiencing a renaissance. This book seeks to find common ground between theists and atheists by arguing that religious beliefs should be retained because they provide a poetic response to nature’s mysteries, while also addressing the atheist’s concerns regarding the tendency of religious believers to demonize nonbelievers and to idolize their own conceptions of the sacred. The heart of Martin O. Yalcin’s argument is that religious violence can be traced to the belief that God is far more real and therefore far more valuable than nature. In contrast to this view, he develops a philosophy of the sacred from the perspective of ontological parity which holds that all things are equally real. He argues that when the sacred is leveled to the plane of nature as one of its innumerable orders, then the virtues of piety and charity replace the vices of demonization and idolization so evident in religions that insist on the utter incommensurability of God with respect to the created order. In the course of developing an aesthetic interpretation of the sacred, Yalcin explores not only the metaphysical categories of Justus Buchler, but also those of Karl Jaspers and George Santayana. The dialogue with Jaspers unearths the absolute otherness of the sacred as the intrinsically unethical dimension of any variant of theism. Having undermined the total absolution of the sacred, Naturalism’s Philosophy of the Sacred suggests an alternative aesthetic form of sacred engagement that piggybacks on Santayana’s thoroughly natural poetic rendition of the sacred. This book will be of great value to students and scholars working in departments of religion, philosophy, and theology.

Download or read book The Nature of Human Persons written by Jason T. Eberl and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a shared nature common to all human beings? What essential qualities might define this nature? These questions are among the most widely discussed topics in the history of philosophy and remain subjects of perennial interest and controversy. The Nature of Human Persons offers a metaphysical investigation of the composition of the human essence. For a human being to exist, does it require an immaterial mind, a physical body, a functioning brain, a soul? Jason Eberl also considers the criterion of identity for a developing human being—that is, what is required for a human being to continue existing as a person despite undergoing physical and psychological changes over time? Eberl's investigation presents and defends a theoretical perspective from the thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas. Advancing beyond descriptive historical analysis, this book places Aquinas’s account of human nature into direct comparison with several prominent contemporary theories: substance dualism, emergentism, animalism, constitutionalism, four-dimensionalism, and embodied mind theory. These theories inform various conclusions regarding when human beings first come into existence—at conception, during gestation, or after birth—and how we ought to define death for human beings. Finally, each of these viewpoints offers a distinctive rationale as to whether, and if so how, human beings may survive death. Ultimately, Eberl argues that the Thomistic account of human nature addresses the matters of human nature and survival in a much more holistic and desirable way than the other theories and offers a cohesive portrait of one’s continued existence from conception through life to death and beyond.

Download or read book Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics written by Stephen David Ross and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1980-06-30 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the principles and categories of an ordinal metaphysics in relation to the metaphysical tradition and contemporary issues. It represents the only current systematic and metaphysical effort to resolve the difficulties that have made metaphysics suspect through most of the twentieth century. Ross begins with a summary of Justus Buchler's Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, where the theory was first formulated, and then expands and develops Buchler's ideas in important new directions. He seeks to replace the "cosmological view" that reality is single-valued and wholly determinate with a plural, functional, and ordinal ontology that avoids the major deficiencies of the metaphysical tradition and resolves many contemporary issues.

Download or read book Metaphysical Emergence written by Jessica M. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.

Download or read book Two Metaphysical Naturalisms written by Victorino Tejera and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two Metaphysical Naturalisms: Aristotle and Justus Buchler provides an American naturalist reading of Aristotle's "Metaphysics" with extensive literary-philological considerations of the original Greek text. Victorino Tejera defines and evaluates the underpinnings of the systematic metaphysics of Justus Buchler through the American tradition of reading Aristotle. The book expands on classical Greek thought and develops a matured stance on Aristotle's modes of knowing and Justus Buchler's systematic metaphysics. Tejera extracts from the Aristotelian-Peripatetic metaphysics the core of Aristotle's discussion of existence as existence by keeping track of the Peripatetic and Platonist interpolations of the editors who brought the text into being. The book also summarizes Buchler's Metaphysics of Natural Complexes in less technical terms to make it more accessible. With the help of Justus Buchler, Tejera reintroduces the concept of metaphysics as coordinative analysis. Finally bridging the classical with the modern, Tejera reveals a cohesive revitalization of metaphysical naturalism for contemporary scholars and students of both ancient and modern philosophy.

Download or read book The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy written by Armen T. Marsoobian and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy offers the mostambitious survey to date of American philosophical thought. Provides a comprehensive history of philosophical thought inAmerica. Brings together 24 newly commissioned essays written by leadingscholars in American philosophy. Covers all of the major eighteenth-, nineteenth- andtwentieth-century philosophical movements in America includingidealism, pragmatism and naturalism. Examines the major figures and themes in American philosophicalthought. Includes useful bibliographies.

Download or read book The Metaphysics Within Physics written by Tim Maudlin and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does physics tell us about metaphysics? Tim Maudlin's philosophical examination of the fundamental structure of the world as presented by physics challenges the most widely accepted philosophical accounts of laws of nature, universals, the direction of time and causation.

Download or read book The Nature of Metaphysical Knowledge written by George F. McLean and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Power and Influence written by Richard Corry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is a complex place, and this complexity is an obstacle to our attempts to explain, predict, and control it. In Power and Influence, Richard Corry investigates the assumptions that are built into the reductive method of explanation—the method whereby we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. He investigates the metaphysical presuppositions built into the reductive method, seeking to ascertain what the world must be like in order that the method could work. Corry argues that the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest causal influence—a relatively unrecognised ontological category, of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influences. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of causal powers, laws of nature, causation, emergence, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical worldview that is grounded in an ontology of power and influence.

Download or read book A Philosophy of Sacred Nature written by Leon Niemoczynski and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Philosophy of Sacred Nature introduces Robert Corrington’s philosophical thought, “ecstatic naturalism,” which seeks to recognize nature’s self-transforming potential. Ecstatic naturalism is a philosophical-theological perspective, deeply seated in a semiotic cosmology and psychosemiosis, and it radically and profoundly probes into the mystery of nature’s perennial self-fissuring of nature natured and nature naturing. Edited by Leon Niemoczynski and Nam T. Nguyen, this collection aims to allow readers to see what can be done with ecstatic naturalism, and what directions, interpretations, and creative uses that doing can take. A thorough exploration of the prospects of ecstatic naturalism, this book will appeal to scholars of Continental philosophy, religious naturalism, and American pragmatism.

Download or read book Nature s Primal Self written by Nam T. Nguyen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature's Primal Self examines Corrington's thought, called "ecstatic naturalism," in juxtaposition to both C. S. Peirce's pragmatic and semiotic concept of the self and Karl Jaspers' existential elucidation of Existenz. Peirce's and Jaspers' anthropocentrism is thus corrected by Corrington's ecstatic naturalism. Ecstatic naturalism, as a new movement, is both a semiotic theoretical method and a metaphysics that probes deeply into the ontological divide between nature naturing and nature natured. Author Nam T. Nguyen attempts to achieve three goals: first, to present and elucidate the underlying philosophical concepts of Charles Peirce, Karl Jaspers, and Robert Corrington; second, to critique the anthropocentric self of Peirce's semiotic pragmatism and of Jaspers' existential anthropology (periechontology) from the standpoint of ecstatic naturalism; and third, to introduce the concept of nature's primal self, radically grounded in the perspective of ecstatic naturalism, as a judicious, more encompassing, and richer framework compared to Peirce's semiotic construction of the self and Jaspers' existential concept of Existenz.

Download or read book Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics written by Marcus Willaschek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detailed exploration of the Transcendental Dialectic, in which Kant uncovers the sources of metaphysics in human reason.

Download or read book Nature s Perspectives written by Armen Marsoobian and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Orders of Nature written by Lawrence Cahoone and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic theory of naturalism, bridging metaphysics and the science of complexity and emergence.

Download or read book Beyond Mechanism written by Brian G. Henning and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang "in the air" (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed "the New Frontiers" of biology, namely contemporary areas of research that appear to call an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the Modern Synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: Emergence Theory, Systems Biology, Biosemiotics, Homeostasis, Symbiogenesis, Niche Construction, the Theory of Organic Selection (also known as "the Baldwin Effect"), Self-Organization and Teleodynamics, as well as Epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to a greater degree of inclusivity as well as to a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences.