Download or read book Natural Laws as Dispositions written by Florian Fischer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a novel account of laws of nature via dispositions. Laws of nature play a paramount role in philosophy, science and everyday life. Understanding laws of nature is philosophically interesting on its own right but also many important notions belonging to philosophy of science, like causation, prediction and explanation, are intimately related to the laws of nature. The book outlines the alleged characteristics of the laws of nature and introduces the main families of theories of laws of nature – neo-humean, ADT and dispositional theories. It then develops an account of dispositions the `triadic process picture of dispositions’ (TPD) and applies it to the debate about laws of nature. Finally, the (TPD) account of the necessity of the laws of nature is presented: laws of nature are naturally necessary and metaphysically contingent. Thus the book provides an introduction to the debates about laws of nature as well as dispositions, while at the same time developing a novel theory and thus is interesting for the beginner as well as expert in these fields.
Download or read book Laws of Nature Laws of God written by Louise Hickman and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Up until the time of Newton, scientists regarded the understandings of the physical world, at which they were arriving, as glimpses of the working of the Creator’s mind. Thus, the generalisations being formulated about the behaviour of matter – the “Laws of Nature” – were seen as the Creator's injunctions, to created matter, as to how it was to act. They were “laws” in the same sense as laws, Divine or human, about how people should behave: that is why the same word was used for both. And even now, scientific laws are occasionally spoken of as being “obeyed”! However, it is doubtful whether any practising scientist, religious believer or not, now thinks of laws in the way that the word literally implies. How, instead, scientists do or should view scientific laws has been debated since the time of Hume and Kant, and it is a vigorous field of investigation among current philosophers of science. In this book, scientists (physical and biological), historians and students of ideas, all of them theologically informed, tackle this topic from many angles. They do so in relation to the lead public lecture at the conference from which the book stems, given by the eminent and iconoclastic philosopher of science, Professor Nancy Cartwright. She asked the question, “How could laws make things happen?”, and her answer was “They couldn’t!”
Download or read book Debating Dispositions written by Gregor Damschen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ordinary language and scientific discourse are filled with linguistic expressions for dispositional properties such as “soluble,” “elastic,” “reliable,” and “humorous.” We characterize objects in all domains – physical objects as well as human persons – with the help of dispositional expressions. Hence, the concept of a disposition has historically and systematically played a central role in different areas of philosophy ranging from metaphysics to ethics. The contributions of this volume analyze the ancient foundations of the discussion about disposition, examine the problem of disposition within the context of the foundation of modern science, and analyze this dispute up to the 20th century. Furthermore, articles explore the contemporary theories of dispositions.
Download or read book Dispositional Pluralism written by Jennifer McKitrick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jennifer McKitrick offers an opinionated guide to the philosophy of dispositions. In her view, when an object has a disposition, it is such that, if a certain type of circumstance were to occur, a certain kind of event would occur. Since it is very common for this to be the case for a variety of reasons, dispositions are very abundant and diverse. They include such varied properties as character traits like a hero's courage, characteristics of physical objects like a wine glass's fragility, and characteristics of microphysical entities like an electron's charge. Some dispositions are natural while others are non-natural. Some dispositions called "powers" are ungrounded while non-fundamental dispositions are grounded in other properties. Some dispositions manifest constantly, some of them manifest spontaneously, while others manifest only when they are triggered to do so. Some dispositions manifest by causing another dispositional property to be instantiated, while others have manifestations that involve non-dispositional properties and relations. Some dispositions are intrinsic to their bearers while others are extrinsic. Some of them are causally relevant to their manifestations while others are not. Some dispositions manifest in some particular way in particular circumstances, while other dispositions manifest in various ways in various circumstances. What makes all of these diverse properties dispositions is their connection to a certain kind of counterfactual fact. Nevertheless, disposition ascriptions are not semantically reducible to counterfactual claims.
Download or read book The Providence of God Manifested in Natural Law written by John Duncanson and published by . This book was released on 1861 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Artificial Dispositions written by William A. Bauer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We inhabit a world not only full of natural dispositions independent of human design, but also artificial dispositions created by our technological prowess. How do these dispositions, found in automation, computation, and artificial intelligence applications, differ metaphysically from their natural counterparts? This collection investigates artificial dispositions: what they are, the roles they play in artificial systems, and how they impact our understanding of the nature of reality, the structure of minds, and the ethics of emerging technologies. It is divided into four parts covering the following interconnected themes: (i) Artificial and Natural Dispositions, (ii) Artificial Systems and Their Dispositions, (iii) Agency, Mind, and Artificial Dispositions, and (iv) Artificial Moral Dispositions. This is a groundbreaking and thought-provoking resource for any student or scholar of philosophy of science, contemporary metaphysics, applied ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of technology.
Download or read book Physical Computation written by Gualtiero Piccinini and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gualtiero Piccinini articulates and defends a mechanistic account of concrete, or physical, computation. A physical system is a computing system just in case it is a mechanism one of whose functions is to manipulate vehicles based solely on differences between different portions of the vehicles according to a rule defined over the vehicles. The Nature of Computation discusses previous accounts of computation and argues that the mechanistic account is better. Many kinds of computation are explicated, such as digital vs. analog, serial vs. parallel, neural network computation, program-controlled computation, and more. Piccinini argues that computation does not entail representation or information processing although information processing entails computation. Pancomputationalism, according to which every physical system is computational, is rejected. A modest version of the physical Church-Turing thesis, according to which any function that is physically computable is computable by Turing machines, is defended.
Download or read book Nature s Challenge to Free Will written by Bernard Berofsky and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a defense of humean compatibilism, which bases the belief in the compatibility of free will and determinism on David Hume's idea that laws do not uphold the existence of necessary connections in nature.
Download or read book Dispositions written by Stephen Mumford and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mumford puts forward a new theory of dispositions, showing how central their role in metaphysics and philosophy of science is. Much of our understanding of the physical and psychological world is expressed in terms of dispositional properties--from the spin of a sub-atomic particle to the solubility of sugar. Mumford discusses what it means to say that something has a property of this kind and how dispositions can possibly be real things in the world.
Download or read book Dispositions written by D.M. Armstrong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. Dispositions: A Debate is an extended dialogue between three distinguished philosophers - D.M. Armstrong, C.B. Martin and U.T. Place - on the many problems associated with dispositions, which reveals their own distinctive accounts of the nature of dispositions. These are then linked to other issues such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation.
Download or read book A Metaphysics of Platonic Universals and their Instantiations written by José Tomás Alvarado and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a detailed defense of a metaphysics of Platonic universals and a conception of particular objects that is coherent with said metaphysics. The work discusses all the main alternatives in metaphysics of properties and tries to show why universals are the entities that best satisfy the theoretical roles required for a property. The work also explains the advantages of Platonic over Aristotelian universals in the metaphysics of modality and natural laws. Moreover, it is argued that only Platonic universals are coherent with the grounding profile required for universals. The traditional objections against Platonism are discussed and answered. The third part of the book, finally, offers a conception of particular objects as nuclear bundles of tropes that is coherent with the Platonic ontology of universals. This book is of interest to anyone that wants to understand the current –and intricate– debate in metaphysics of properties and its incidence in many other areas in philosophy.
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Contingency written by Ferenc Huoranszki and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers approach the problem of possibility in two markedly different ways: with reference to worlds, whereby an event is possible if there is a world in which it occurs, and with reference to modal properties, whereby an event is a possible manifestation of a property of some substance or object. Showing how the world-account cannot properly explain the nature of possibilities within worlds, Ferenc Huoranszki argues that the latter approach is more plausible. He develops a theory of contingent possibilities grounded in a distinction between abilities and dispositions as real, first-order modal properties of objects, with fundamentally distinct ontological roles. By understanding abilities as first-order modal properties, and by linking such modal properties to counterfactual conditionals, Huoranszki argues we can distinguish between variably generic or specific abilities and identify more or less abstract possibilities in a world. In doing so, he furthers our understanding of how we reason with possibilities in both ordinary and theoretical contexts. Providing a novel account of dispositions, abilities and their capacity to explain modality, this book advances current debates in contemporary metaphysics.
Download or read book Laws in Nature written by Stephen Mumford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book outlines a major new theory of natural laws and addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians.
Download or read book The Natural Law written by Heinrich Albert Rommen and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in German in 1936, The Natural Law is the first work to clarify the differences between traditional natural law as represented in the writings of Cicero, Aquinas, and Hooker and the revolutionary doctrines of natural rights espoused by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Beginning with the legacies of Greek and Roman life and thought, Rommen traces the natural law tradition to its displacement by legal positivism and concludes with what the author calls "the reappearance" of natural law thought in more recent times. In seven chapters each Rommen explores "The History of the Idea of Natural Law" and "The Philosophy and Content of the Natural Law." In his introduction, Russell Hittinger places Rommen's work in the context of contemporary debate on the relevance of natural law to philosophical inquiry and constitutional interpretation. Heinrich Rommen (1897–1967) taught in Germany and England before concluding his distinguished scholarly career at Georgetown University. Russell Hittinger is William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa.
Download or read book Divine Action Determinism and the Laws of Nature written by Jeffrey Koperski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A longstanding question at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology is how God might act, or not, when governing the universe. Many believe that determinism would prevent God from acting at all, since to do so would require violating the laws of nature. However, when a robust view of these laws is coupled with the kind of determinism now used in dynamics, a new model of divine action emerges. This book presents a new approach to divine action beyond the current focus on quantum mechanics and esoteric gaps in the causal order. It bases this approach on two general points. First, that there are laws of nature is not merely a metaphor. Second, laws and physical determinism are now understood in mathematically precise ways that have important implications for metaphysics. The explication of these two claims shows not only that nonviolationist divine action is possible, but there is considerably more freedom available for God to act than current models allow. By bringing a philosophical perspective to an issue often dominated by theologians and scientists, this text redresses an imbalance in the discussion around divine action. It will, therefore, be of keen interest to scholars of Philosophy and Religion, the Philosophy of Science, and Theology.
Download or read book Rules and Dispositions in Language Use written by Florian Demont-Biaggi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rules and Dispositions in Language Use explains how correct language use is governed by both rules and general human dispositions. It does so by bringing together themes from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Noam Chomsky, which for many years have been thought to be incompatible.
Download or read book A Case for Necessitarianism written by Amy Karofsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-29 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first detailed and focused defense of necessitarianism. The author’s original account of necessitarianism encourages a reexamination of commonly held metaphysical positions as well as important issues in other, related areas of philosophy. Necessitarianism is the view that absolutely nothing about the world could have been otherwise in any way, whatsoever. Most philosophers believe that necessitarianism is just plain false and presume that some things could have been otherwise than what they are. In this book, the author argues that necessitarianism is true and the view that some things in the world are contingent—what the author terms contingentarianism—is false. The author assesses various theories of contingency, including the possible worlds theory, combinatorialism, and dispositionalism, and argues that no theory can successfully explain why an entity is such as it is rather than not. She then lays out a case for necessitarianism and provides responses to various objections. The book concludes with an explanation of the ways in which necessitarianism is relevant to issues in ethics, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. A Case for Necessitarianism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of science.
