Download or read book Ockham s Razor as a Principle and Method in His Nominalist Philosophy written by Noel Vincent B. Abalajon and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William of Ockham is considered as the founder of nominalism - the modern way (via moderna) of philosophizing. He remains up to the present moment either an innovator or a destroyer of Scholasticism, depending on the biases and prejudices of his commentators and scholars. The problem of universals has been a perennial problem since the time of the acient Greek philosophers. It deals with the nature of the object of man's knowledge. There are three main schools of thought that emerged from the problem of universals, namely: Realism, Nominalism, and Conceptualism. Ockham is a nominalist because of his outright denial of universals as entities existing in reality. He considered them mental terms, instead, that have existence only in the mind. In fact, they are identical with the mind through its act of understanding. Furthermore, according to him, these universal are, in fact, particulars because they are numerically one.
Download or read book Ockham s Razors written by Elliott Sober and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-23 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ockham's razor, the principle of parsimony, states that simpler theories are better than theories that are more complex. It has a history dating back to Aristotle and it plays an important role in current physics, biology, and psychology. The razor also gets used outside of science - in everyday life and in philosophy. This book evaluates the principle and discusses its many applications. Fascinating examples from different domains provide a rich basis for contemplating the principle's promises and perils. It is obvious that simpler theories are beautiful and easy to understand; the hard problem is to figure out why the simplicity of a theory should be relevant to saying what the world is like. In this book, the ABCs of probability theory are succinctly developed and put to work to describe two 'parsimony paradigms' within which this problem can be solved.
Download or read book KNOW ABOUT WILLIAM OF OCKHAM written by Saurabh Singh Chauhan and published by Saurabh Singh Chauhan. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the captivating journey through the life and mind of one of history's most intriguing figures—William of Ockham. In the pages that follow, we will delve into the remarkable story of a man whose ideas have left an indelible mark on philosophy, theology, and the way we understand the world. Born in a time of shifting paradigms and profound intellectual exploration, William of Ockham emerged as a beacon of intellectual courage and curiosity. His life's journey takes us through the corridors of medieval thought, where he challenged conventions, questioned established norms, and dared to carve his own path through the complexities of the age. As we embark on this exploration, we'll uncover the threads that wove the fabric of Ockham's life—the circumstances of his birth, the crucible of his upbringing, and the profound influences that shaped his worldview. We'll journey with him through the hallowed halls of academia, where he honed his formidable intellect and developed ground-breaking ideas that continue to resonate to this day. Ockham's journey was not only one of academic pursuits but also a spiritual voyage. His entry into the Franciscan Order added a layer of complexity to his character, intertwining his devotion to religious life with his insatiable thirst for intellectual inquiry. These dual pursuits propelled him into the heart of philosophical and theological discourse, where he contributed to defining debates and daringly challenging established norms. At the core of Ockham's legacy stands his razor-sharp principle—Ockham's Razor. This principle, advocating for simplicity in explanations, has transcended the confines of medieval thought and found its way into the very fabric of modern science and philosophy. Throughout this journey, we'll trace the evolution of this principle and witness its profound impact on shaping our understanding of the world around us. As we venture further, we'll witness Ockham's engagements with power and authority—his clashes with the Church, his exile from Avignon, and his pursuit of intellectual freedom. We'll explore his perspectives on Church and State, his theological disputes, and the lasting echoes of his ideas in our contemporary world. Throughout this biography, we aim to bring you closer to the man behind the ideas, to paint a vivid portrait of a philosopher whose legacy endures through the centuries. This is not just a tale of dates and events; it's a journey into the mind of a thinker who dared to challenge, to question, and to simplify. So, let us embark on this enthralling voyage, unwrapping the layers of history, philosophy, and humanity that make up the life of William of Ockham.
Download or read book Ockham Explained written by Rondo Keele and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ockham Explained is an important and much-needed resource on William of Ockham, one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. His eventful and controversial life was marked by sharp career moves and academic and ecclesiastical battles. At 28, Ockham was a conservative English theologian focused obsessively on the nature of language, but by 40, he had transformed into a fugitive friar, accused of heresy, and finally protected by the German emperor as he composed incendiary treatises calling for strong limits on papal authority. This book provides a thorough grounding in Ockham's life and his many contributions to philosophy. It begins with an overview of the philosopher's youth and the Aristotelian philosophy he studied as a boy. Subsequent chapters cover his ideas on language and logic; his metaphysics and vaunted "razor," as well as his opponents' "anti-razor" theories; his invention of the church-state separation; and much more. The concluding chapter sums up Ockham's compelling philosophical personality and explains his modern appeal.
Download or read book Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking written by Charles Sanders Peirce and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-04-24 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study edition of Charles Sanders Peirce's manuscripts for lectures on pragmatism given in spring 1903 at Harvard University. Excerpts from these writings have been published elsewhere but in abbreviated form. Turrisi has edited the manuscripts for publication and has written a series of notes that illuminate the historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts of Peirce's references in the lectures. She has also written a Preface that describes the manner in which the lectures came to be given, including an account of Peirce's life and career pertinent to understanding the philosopher himself. Turrisi's introduction interprets Peirce's brand of pragmatism within his system of logic and philosophy of science as well as within general philosophical principles.
Download or read book Philosophical Principles of the History and Systems of Psychology written by Frank Scalambrino and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking philosophical principles as a point of departure, this book provides essential distinctions for thinking through the history and systems of Western psychology. The book is concisely designed to help readers navigate through the length and complexity found in history of psychology textbooks. From Plato to beyond Post-Modernism, the author examines the choices and commitments made by theorists and practitioners of psychology and discusses the philosophical thinking from which they stem. What kind of science is psychology? Is structure, function, or methodology foremost in determining psychology's subject matter? Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is not the same as the psychoanalyst's view of it, or the existentialist's, so how may contemporary psychology philosophically-sustain both pluralism and incommensurability? This book will be of great value to students and scholars of the history of psychology.
Download or read book The Philosophy of William of Ockham written by Armand Augustine Maurer and published by PIMS. This book was released on 1999 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ockham s Nominalism written by Claude Panaccio and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William of Ockham is a towering figure in the history of philosophy and he is commonly seen as the most important nominalist thinker of the Middle Ages. His nominalism basically consists in three theses: there are no universals in the external world, no relations either, and no quantities considered as distinct entities. This book provides an introduction to Ockham's defence of these positions and to what they amount to in metaphysics, semantics, and epistemology. It thus displays the outlines of a rich and carefully crafted nominalist system that is still of great philosophical interest today. All along in so doing, it situates Ockham's thought with respect to several salient contemporary debates in philosophy"--
Download or read book Being and Knowing written by Armand Augustine Maurer and published by PIMS. This book was released on 1990 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nominalism and Its Aftermath The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman written by Dena Shottenkirk and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nelson Goodman’s disparate writings are often written about only within their own particular discipline, such that the epistemology is discussed in contrast to others’ epistemology, the aesthetics is contrasted with more traditional aesthetics, and the ontology and logic is viewed in contrast to both other contemporary philosophers and to Goodman’s historical predecessors. This book argues that that is not an adequate way to view Goodman. The separate disciplines of ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics should be viewed as sequential steps within his thought, such that each provides the ground rules for the next section and, furthermore, providing the reasons for limitations on the terms available to the subsequent writing(s). This is true not merely because this is the general chronology of his writing, but more importantly because within his metaphysics lies Goodman’s basic nominalist ontology and logic, and it is upon those principles that he builds his epistemology and, furthermore, it is the sum of both the metaphysics and the epistemology, with the nominalist principle as the guiding force, which constructs the aesthetics. At the end of each section of this book, the consequent limitations imposed on his terms and concepts available to him are explicated, such that, by the end of the book, the book delineates the constraints imposed upon the aesthetics by both the metaphysics and the epistemology. This book will benefit not only the professionals in the field of philosophy, but will also help both graduate and upper level undergraduate students understand Goodman’s disparate writings within their proper context, and hopefully will also encourage them to view philosophical thinking in a less truncated and departmentalized way.
Download or read book Neo scholastic Essays written by Edward Feser and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a series of publications over the course of a decade, Edward Feser has argued for the defensibility and abiding relevance to issues in contemporary philosophy of Scholastic ideas and arguments, and especially of Aristotelian-Thomistic ideas and arguments. This work has been in the vein of what has come to be known as "analytical Thomism," though the spirit of the project goes back at least to the Neo-Scholasticism of the period from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Neo-Scholastic Essays collects some of Feser's academic papers from the last ten years on themes in metaphysics and philosophy of nature, natural theology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Among the diverse topics covered are: the relationship between Aristotelian and Newtonian conceptions of motion; the varieties of teleological description and explanation; the proper interpretation of Aquinas's Five Ways; the impossibility of a materialist account of the human intellect; the philosophies of mind of Kripke, Searle, Popper, and Hayek; the metaphysics of value; the natural law understanding of the ethics of private property and taxation; a critique of political libertarianism; and the defensibility and indispensability to a proper understanding of sexual morality of the traditional "perverted faculty argument.""--
Download or read book The Theological Origins of Modernity written by Michael Allen Gillespie and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.
Download or read book Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking written by Charles Sanders Peirce and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study edition of Charles Sanders Peirce's manuscripts for lectures on pragmatism given in spring 1903 at Harvard University. Excerpts from these writings have been published elsewhere but in abbreviated form. Turrisi has edited the manuscripts for publication and has written a series of notes that illuminate the historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts of Peirce's references in the lectures. She has also written a Preface that describes the manner in which the lectures came to be given, including an account of Peirce's life and career pertinent to understanding the philosopher himself. Turrisi's introduction interprets Peirce's brand of pragmatism within his system of logic and philosophy of science as well as within general philosophical principles.
Download or read book Anathem written by Neal Stephenson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For ten years Fraa Erasmas, a young avout, has lived in a cloistered sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside world. But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change—and Erasmas will become a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world, as he follows his destiny to the most inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond. Anathem is the latest miraculous invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle—a work of astonishing scope, intelligence, and imagination.
Download or read book Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy Art and Science of Chemistry written by Roald Hoffmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-23 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known; this Nobel laureate has published more than 500 articles and two books. As an "applied theoretical chemist," he has made significant contributions to our understanding of chemical bonding and reactivity, and taught two generations of chemists how to use molecular orbitals for real chemistry. Less well known, however, are Hoffmann's important and insightful contributions to the areas of scholarship surrounding chemistry. Over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Roald Hoffmann has thought and written copiously about the broader context of chemistry and its relationship to the arts and poetry. This book contains Hoffmann's essays and is organized around several major themes: chemical reasoning and explanation, writing and communicating in science, ethics, art and science, and chemical education. A few are unpublished lectures that are valuable additions to the volume. The editors have the full cooperation of Roald Hoffmann in this project. Most of the published work will be reprinted verbatim, but a few of the essays will be revised to eliminate redundancy. The unpublished lectures will also be edited since they were originally intended to be delivered orally at specific occasions. The editors will provide an introduction to the book, and some introductory material for each section. In introducing the material, they will highlight the intrinsic importance and interest of the ideas, as well as the places where Hoffmann's thought makes novel contributions to cognate areas"--
Download or read book Ockham on Concepts written by Claude Panaccio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William of Ockham (c.1287-1347) is known to be one of the major figures of the late Middle Ages. The scope and significance of his doctrine of human thought, however, has been a controversial issue among scholars in the last decade, and this book presents a full discussion of recent developments. Claude Panaccio proposes a richly documented and entirely original reinterpretation of Ockham's theory of concepts as a coherent blend of representationalism, conceptual atomism, and non reductionist nominalism, stressing in the process its special interest for current discussions in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences.
Download or read book A Companion to the Responses to Ockham written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects twelve chapters that present the multifaceted responses to the works of the William of Ockham in Oxford, Paris, Italy, and at the papal court in Avignon in the 14th century, and it assembles contributions on philosophers and theologians who all have criticized Ockham’s works at different points. In individual case studies it gives an exemplary overview over the reactions the Venerable Inceptor has provoked and also serves to better understand Ockham’s thought in its historical context. The topics range from ontology, psychology, theory of cognition, epistemology, and natural science to ethics and political philosophy. This volume demonstrates that the reactions to Ockham’s philosophy and theology were manifold, but one particular kind of reception is missing: unanimous approval. Contributors include Fabrizio Amerini, Stephen F. Brown, Nathaniel Bulthuis, Stefano Caroti, Laurent Cesalli, Alessandro D. Conti, Thomas Dewender, Isabel Iribarren, Isabelle Mandrella, Aurélien Robert, Christian Rode, and Sonja Schierbaum
