Download or read book An Inquiry on Modal Metaphysical Puzzling Possible Worlds written by Valery Berthoud and published by Anchor Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of possible worlds is useful because it defines the four modalities – possibility, necessity, contingency, and impossibility – but a challenge lies in defining it. David Lewis’ polemical hypothesis (“genuine modal realism” as it is called) succeeds in it. Lewis’ modal realism stirred controversy because he maintains that a plurality of worlds exists. Some philosophers suggest that the Lewisian view is a violation to the law of parsimony, also known as Ockham’s Razor, i.e. not multiply entities beyond necessity. While avoiding a circular definition, Lewis constructs an inflated ontology. Is it worth it, and if we do not want to assume too many Lewisian worlds, what alternatives remain? Actualist modal realism and modal antirealism are the most relevant alternatives because modal abstentionism simply will not progress in this direction. This study evaluates the theories of possible worlds.
Download or read book Modal metaphysical puzzling possible words An inquiry written by Valery Berthoud and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), grade: 1,7, University of Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: The concept of possible worlds is useful because it defines the four modalities – possibility, necessity, contingency, and impossibility – but a challenge lies in defining it. The polemical hypothesis from David Lewis (“genuine modal realism“ as it is called) succeeds in it. Lewis’ modal realism stirred controversy because he maintains that a plurality of worlds exists. Some philosophers suggest that the Lewisian view is a violation to the law of parsimony, also known as Ockham’s Razor, that is to say not multiply entities beyond necessity. While avoiding a circular definition, Lewis constructs an inflated ontology. Is it worth it, and if we do not want to assume too many Lewisian worlds, what alternatives remain? Actualist modal realism and modal antirealism are the most relevant alternatives because modal abstentionism simply will not progress in this direction. This thesis evaluates theories of possible worlds.
Download or read book Modal Logic as Metaphysics written by Timothy Williamson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Philosophy written by Timothy Williamson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The expanded new edition of one of the most influential and controversial books about the nature of philosophy published in the past several decades The Philosophy of Philosophy presents an original, unified concept of philosophy as a non-natural science. In this provocative work, distinguished philosopher Timothy Williamson challenges widely-held assumptions and clarifies long-standing misconceptions about the methodology and nature of philosophical inquiry. The author rejects the standard narratives of contemporary philosophy developed from naturalism, the linguistic turn, postmodern irony, and other prominent trends of the twentieth century. Viewing the method of philosophy as evolving from non-philosophical pursuits, Williamson provides readers with fresh insight into the “self-image” of philosophy and offers new ways of understanding what philosophy is and how it actually works. Now in its second edition, this landmark volume comprises the original book and the author’s subsequent work. New topics include the recent history of analytic philosophy, assessments of experimental philosophy, theories of concepts and understanding, Wittgensteinian approaches, popular philosophy, naturalism, morally-loaded examples in philosophy, philosophical applications of scientific methods, and many more. This edition features the author’s latest thoughts on a variety of issues, autobiographical reflections, and replies to critics. Proposes an alternative narrative about the nature of philosophy Argues that the common assumption of philosophical exceptionalism is false Highlights the similarities between philosophy and the other sciences in both methodology and subject matter Explores why contemporary philosophy has failed to articulate an adequate methodology Emphasizes increasing the methodological standards of reasoning in philosophy The Philosophy of Philosophy, Second Edition remains essential reading for philosophers, scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in philosophy, and other readers with a sustained interest in the method and rationale of the doing of philosophy.
Download or read book The Brentano Puzzle written by Roberto Poli and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even if the width and the depth of Brentano’s intellectual legacy are now quite well known, those asked to list the principal philosophers of the 19th century, very rarely do mention his name. We may call this puzzle the problem of Brentano’s 'invisibility'. One component of the Brentano’s puzzle is that a number of Brentano’s outstanding pupils achieved their own success and founded their own schools. Suffice to mention Husserl’s phenomenology, Twardowski’s Lvov-Warsaw school and Meinong’s Graz school. The personal success and academic recognition attained by these exponents of Brentano’s school (in the broad sense) have come to obscure their common origins. The oblivion into which Franz Brentano’s thought fell was in part due also to the subsequent split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The book reconstructs elements of the 'map' of the Brentanists, revitalizing knowledge of the theoretical complexity of their debates, of their unitariness, and of their style. Last but not least, analyses of the relevance of those discussions for contemporary philosophical and scientific debate are also considered.
Download or read book Meaning Diminished written by Kenneth A. Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning Diminished examines the complex relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry. Kenneth A. Taylor argues that we should expect linguistic and conceptual analysis of natural language to yield far less metaphysical insight into what there is - and the nature of whatthere is - than many philosophers have imagined. Taking a strong stand against the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy, Taylor contends that philosophers as diverse as Kant, with his Transcendental Idealism, Frege, with his aspirational Platonism, Carnap with his distinction between internal andexternal questions, and Strawson, with his descriptive metaphysics, have placed too much confidence in the ability of linguistic and conceptual analysis to achieve deep insight into matters of ultimate metaphysics. He urges philosophers who seek such insight to turn away from the interrogation oflanguage and concepts and back to the more direct interrogation of reality itself. In doing so, he maps out the way forward toward a metaphysically modest semantics, in which semantics carries less weighty metaphysical burdens, and toward a revisionary and naturalistic metaphysics, untethered to thea priori analysis of ordinary language.
Download or read book The Bounds of Possibility written by Cian Dorr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In general, a given object could have been different in certain respects. For example, the Great Pyramid could have been somewhat shorter or taller; the Mona Lisa could have had a somewhat different pattern of colours; an ordinary table could have been made of a somewhat different quantity of wood. But there seem to be limits. It would be odd to suppose that the Great Pyramid could have been thimble-sized; that the Mona Lisa could have had the pattern of colours that actually characterizes The Scream; or that the table could have been made of the very quantity of wood that in fact made some other table. However, there are puzzling arguments that purport to show that so long as an object is capable of being somewhat different in some respect, it is capable of being radically different in that respect. These arguments rely on two tempting thoughts: first, that an object's capacity for moderate variation is a non-contingent matter, and second, that what is possibly possible is simply possible. The Bounds of Possibility systematically investigates competing strategies for resolving these puzzles, and defends one of them. Along the way it engages with foundational questions about the metaphysics of modality.
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 Identity and Discrimination written by Timothy Williamson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity and Discrimination This updated edition of Identity and Discrimination, first published in 1990 and the first book by well-known philosopher Timothy Williamson, is now reissued with the inclusion of significant new material. This major work – influential in philosophy of perception and the theory of vagueness – continues in an original and rigorous way to highlight the necessity of discrimination and the thresholds which determine the approximate criteria of identity. Williamson’s proposal for an original and rigorous theory links identity, a relation central to metaphysics, and indiscriminability, a relation central to epistemology. He provides a distinctive cognitive account of the nature of discrimination, with important applications to the philosophy of perception and the theory of vagueness. The book pioneers the use of epistemic logic to solve the notorious paradoxes of indiscriminability, and develops the application of techniques from mathematical logic to understand issues about identity over time and across possible worlds.
Download or read book Mind Modality Meaning and Method written by Richard M. Martin and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Discourse on Metaphysics written by Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibniz and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Impossible Worlds written by Francesco Berto and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latter half of the 20 ...
Download or read book On the Plurality of Worlds written by David Lewis and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2001-02-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Modality written by Otávio Bueno and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modality - the question of what is possible and what is necessary - is a fundamental area of philosophy and philosophical research. The Routledge Handbook of Modality is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into seven clear parts: worlds and modality essentialism, ontological dependence, and modality modal anti-realism epistemology of modality modality in science modality in logic and mathematics modality in the history of philosophy. Within these sections the central issues, debates and problems are examined, including possible worlds, essentialism, counterfactuals, ontological dependence, modal fictionalism, deflationism, the integration challenge, conceivability, a priori knowledge, laws of nature, natural kinds, and logical necessity. The Routledge Handbook of Modality is essential reading for students and researchers in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. It will also be very useful for those in related fields in philosophy such as philosophy of mathematics, logic and philosophy of science.
Download or read book Metaphysics Meaning and Modality written by Mircea Dumitru and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book on the provocative and innovative contributions to philosophy of language, metaphysics, the philosophy of mathematics, and logic made by Kit Fine, one of the world's foremost philosophers. Topics covered include meaning and representation, arbitrary objects, essence, ontological realism, and the metaphysics of modality.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Metaphilosophy written by Paul Horwich and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Horwich presents a bold new interpretation of Wittgenstein's later work. He argues that it is Wittgenstein's radically anti-theoretical metaphilosophy - and not his identification of the meaning of a word with its use - that underpins his discussions of specific issues concerning language, the mind, mathematics, knowledge, art, and religion.
Download or read book Epistemic Modality written by Andy Egan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's a lot we don't know, which means that there are a lot of possibilities that are, epistemically speaking, open. What these epistemic possibilities are, and how we understand the semantics of epistemic modals, are explored here through a variety of philosophical approaches.
