Download or read book Studies in Metaphysical Optimalism written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For about a decade Nicholas Rescher directed the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Philosophy of Science and he has published instructive studies in this field since the 1950’s. Some dozen of the contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to illustrate his characteristic approach of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.
Download or read book On Explaining Existence written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No short book on the explanation of existence can afford the hubris of claiming to accomplish this task. And certainly no such claim can be or is being made here. What is at issue is not—and cannot be—an actual explanation. Rather, what is attempted here is at the very most a rough sketch of the conceptual architecture that an adequate explanation can be expected to exhibit. No more is achieved than a rough and general indication of the direction in which a satisfactory explanation can unfold. A vast amount of detail will have to be filled in to provide a tenable explanation. Only the rough shape that the explanation will have to take is something that one can map out in the basis of considerations of general principles, giving reasons why alternative directions are less promising and how objection to the indicated direction can be removed or mitigated. But the move from a general direction to a specific and detailed pathway calls for more than is—or can be—attempted here.
Download or read book The Principle of Sufficient Reason written by Alexander R. Pruss and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-20 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) says that all contingent facts must have explanation. In this 2006 volume, which was the first on the topic in the English language in nearly half a century, Alexander Pruss examines the substantive philosophical issues raised by the Principle Reason. Discussing various forms of the PSR and selected historical episodes, from Parmenides, Leibnez, and Hume, Pruss defends the claim that every true contingent proposition must have an explanation against major objections, including Hume's imaginability argument and Peter van Inwagen's argument that the PSR entails modal fatalism. Pruss also provides a number of positive arguments for the PSR, based on considerations as different as the metaphysics of existence, counterfactuals and modality, negative explanations, and the everyday applicability of the PSR. Moreover, Pruss shows how the PSR would advance the discussion in a number of disparate fields, including meta-ethics and the philosophy of mathematics.
Download or read book Symposium on Nicholas Rescher written by John R. Shook and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Being and Value and Other Philosophical Essays written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being and Value collects together fifteen essays by Nicholas Rescher on salient issue in metaphysics, axiology and metaphilosophy. In the way in which they shed new light on significant philosophical issues, these deliberations are emblematic of Rescher’s characteristic way of illuminating timeless issues and historical perspectives in a reciprocal interrelationship. The chapter of the book are as follows: Being and Value: On the Prospect of Optimalism; On Evolution and Intelligent Design; Mind and Matter; Fallacies Regarding Free Will; Sophisticating Naïve Realism; Taxonomic Complexity and the Laws of Nature; Practical Vs. Theoretical Reason; Pragmatism as a Growth Industry; Cost Benefit Epistemology; Quantifying Quality; Explanatory Surdity; Can Philosophy be Objective?; On Ontology in Cognitive Perspective; Plenum Theory [Essay Written Jointly with Patrick Grim]; and Onometrics (On Referential Analysis in Philosophy)
Download or read book Evolutionary Explanation in the Social Sciences written by Philippe van Parijs and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1981 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In broad, nonmathematical terms, the author explains how evolutionary ideas can be applied in the social sciences. The book was one of the early attempts to publicise the rise of sociobiology.
Download or read book On certainty and other philosophical essays on cognition written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Certainty continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing occasional studies that form part of a wider program of investigation of the scope and limits of rational inquiry in the pursuit of understanding. And pragmatism forms a subtextual Leitmotiv of these essays, seeing that the linking idea at work throughout is that knowledge is a tool for the management of our theoretical and practical affairs, and that what we ask of it is serviceability for the uses we have in view.
Download or read book Challenging Perfectionism written by Dawn Starley and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2020-10-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfectionism is frequently seen as a positive trait but it can have a stifling effect on young people's education and growth and can negatively impact any student regardless of their level of ability. This guide offers professionals working with teenagers the latest research into perfectionism alongside tried-and-tested strategies to alleviate the anxiety associated with it. The first section addresses the theory and context behind perfectionism, including definitions, prevalence, links to other conditions and causal factors. The second section offers easy-to-use activities based on CBT, ACT and DBT to help young people and the professionals working with them to address the tendencies which negatively impact students' lives and academic progress.
Download or read book Nature and Understanding written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rescher explores the prospect of looking from a scientific point of view at such central ideas of traditional metaphysics as the simplicity of nature, its comprehensibility, or its systematic integrity.
Download or read book Philosophy Examined written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents a detailed examination of many key aspects of philosophizing, ranging from the mission of philosophy, its method, its dialectic, and its epistemology. It conveys to the reader, student and scholar alike, a clear account of the aspirations and potential of the discipline. Readers will come away with a clearer understanding of the promise and challenges of philosophizing.
Download or read book The Divine Nature written by Simon Kittle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first systematic treatment of the strengths and limitations of personal and a-personal conceptions of the divine. It features contributions from Jewish, Islamic, Chinese, Indian and naturalistic backgrounds in addition to those working within a decidedly Christian framework. This book discusses whether the concept of God in classical theism is coherent at all and whether the traditional understanding of some of the divine attributes need to be modified. The contributors explore what the proposed spiritual and practical merits and demerits of personal and a-personal conceptions of God might be. Additionally, their diverse perspectives reflect a broader trend within the analytic philosophy of religion to incorporate various non-Western religious traditions. Tackling these issues carefully is needed to do justice to the strengths and limitations of personal and a-personal accounts to the divine. The Divine Nature: Personal and A-Personal Perspectives will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.
Download or read book The Ultimate Why Question written by John F. Wippel and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers studies by prominent scholars and philosophers about the question how have major figures from the history of philosophy, and some contemporary philosophers, addressed "the ultimate why question": why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
Download or read book Value Matters written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years value theory has figured high on the agenda of my interests, a fact attested by Introduction to Value Theory published by Prentice Hall in 1969. This interest has continued in recent years inter alia, finding earlier expressions in the articles constituting chapters 2-4 of the present book. (See the footnotes for publication details.) The remaining six chapters are new, and combine to form overall a synoptic overview of fundamental issues in the theory of value. 1. BY THE STANDARDS OF THEIR DAY 2. ON THE IMPORT AND RATIONALE OF VALUE ATTRIBUTION 3. NOMIC HIERACHIES AND PROBLEMS OF RELATIVISM 4. IS REASONING ABOUT VALUES VICIOUSLY CIRCULAR? 5. RATIONAL ECONOMY AND THE EVOLUTIONARY IMPETUS 6. EVALUATION AND THE FALLACY OF RESPECT NEGLECT 7. CREDIT FOR MAKING A DISCOVERY 8. OPTIMALISM AND THE RATIONALITY OF THE REAL (ON THE PROSPECT OF AXIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION) 9. THE REVOLT AGAINST ABSOLUTES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
Download or read book Epistemic Issues in Pragmatic Perspective written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a nonstandard approach to epistemology. Where standard epistemology generally focuses on the certain knowledge the Greeks called epistêmê, the present focus is on some less assured modes of information. Its deliberations will focus on such cognitively suboptimal processes as conjecture, guesswork, and plausible supposition. This shift of focus has implications for virtually every sector of information management, and the book’s instigations presented here will explore some of them. Throughout the rule of pragmatic considerations stand in the foreground.As the book’s deliberations set out in detail, the nature of our knowledge of reality is inherently conditioned by the fact of its beings the product of what is, at best and at most, a matter of rational guesswork. And so as regards our knowledge, we had best adopt the pragmatic optimism of expecting—and hoping—that our best is good enough.
Download or read book Axiogenesis written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-08-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicholas Rescher's book Axiogenesis: An Essay in Metaphysical Optimalism is a detailed exposition of axiogenerts: the philosophical theory seeking to explain the world's facts on the basis of evaluative considerations. In classical antiquity, this theory was espoused by Plato (in the Timaeus) and neo-Platonic tradition; in early modern times, it was revived by Leibniz and continued to find favor in the development of rational mechanics from Maupertuis to William Hamilton. However, since then the principles behind axiogenesis and similar theories have fallen out of fashion. This book is therefore unique in that it argues in detail that this metaphysical approach still has traction and endeavors to formulate the theory in a manner that makes it available as a live option for contemporary thinkers. Advanced students of philosophy and professionals in this field, as well as anyone interested in the issue of speculative metaphysics, will find Rescher's contemporary refashioning of axiogenesis a distinctly compelling read.
Download or read book Philosophical Episodes written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophical work comes in different sizes: there are systemic treatises, monographic surveys, philosopher-expanding texts. But there is also room for smaller studies that focus on highly particularized ideas and issues: studies that deal not with entire continents but with mere reefs and estuaries. The present essays are of this limited nature. Their aim is less to give a view of the overall lay of the land than to give a tranistic view of the diversity of the landscape. The present book continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays that originated in occasional lecture and conference presentations. Notwithstanding their topical diversity the essays exhibit a uniformity of method in a common attempt to view historically significant philosophical issues in the light of modern perspectives opened up thorough conceptual clarification.
Download or read book Quo Vadis Metaphysics written by Mirosław Szatkowski and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The old philosophical discipline of metaphysics – after having been pronounced dead by many – has enjoyed a significant revival within the last thirty years, due to the application of the methods of analytic philosophy. One of the major contributors to this revival is the outstanding American metaphysician Peter van Inwagen. This volume brings together twenty-two scholars, who, in commemoration of Prof. van Inwagen's 75th birthday, ponder the future prospects of metaphysics in all the richness to which it has now returned. It is only natural that logical and epistemological reflections on the significance of metaphysics – sometimes called “meta-metaphysics” – play a considerable role in most of these papers. The volume is further enriched by an interview with Peter van Inwagen himself.
