Download or read book Powers Time and Free Will written by Christopher J. Austin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together twelve original contributions by leading scholars on the much-debated issues of what is free will and how can we exercise it in a world governed by laws of nature. Which conception of laws of nature best fits with how we conceive of free will? And which constraints does our conception of the laws of nature place on how we think of free will? The metaphysics of causation and the metaphysics of dispositions are also explored in this edited volume, in relation to whether they may or may not be game-changers in how we think about both free will and the laws of nature. The volume presents the views of a range of international experts on these issues, and aims at providing the reader with novel approaches to a core problem in philosophy. The target audience is composed by academics and scholars who are interested in an original and contemporary approach to these long-debated issues. Chapters [2] and [4] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Download or read book The Creative Mind written by Henri Bergson and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nobel Laureate discusses not only how and why he became a philosopher but also his conception of philosophy as a field distinct from science and literature.
Download or read book Fate Time and Language written by David Foster Wallace and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents David Foster Wallace critiques philosopher Richard Taylor's work implying that humans have no control over the future and includes essays linking Wallace's critique with his later works of fiction.
Download or read book The Powers Metaphysic written by Neil E. Williams and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil E. Williams develops a systematic metaphysics centred on the idea of powers, as a rival to neo-Humeanism, the dominant systematic metaphysics in philosophy today. Williams takes powers to be inherently causal properties and uses them as the foundation of his explanations of causation, persistence, laws, and modality.
Download or read book Freedom and Neurobiology written by John R. Searle and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the second half of the book, Searle applies his theory of social reality to the problem of political power, explaining the role of language in the formation of our political reality. The institutional structures that organize, empower, and regulate our lives - money, property, marriage, government - consist in the assignment and collective acceptance of certain statuses to objects and people. Whether it is the president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, or private property, these entities perform functions as determined by their status in our institutional reality. Searle focuses on the political powers that exist within these systems of status functions and the way in which language constitutes them."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Free Will written by Sam Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Download or read book Four Views on Free Will written by John Martin Fischer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-01-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and engaging debate between four representative views on free will, completely revised and updated with new perspectives Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. Substantially revised throughout, this new volume contains eight in-depth chapters, almost entirely rewritten for the new edition, in which the authors state their different positions on the debate, offer insights into how their views have evolved over the past fifteen years, respond to recent critical literature in the field, and interact and engage with each other in dialogue. In the first four chapters the authors defend their distinctive views about free will: libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism. The subsequent four chapters consist of direct replies by each of the authors to the other three. Offering a one-of-a-kind interactive conversation about the most recent work on the subject, Four Views on Free Will, Second Edition provides a balanced and enlightening discussion on all the key concepts and conflicts in the free will debate. Part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophy series, it remains essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers and scholars in philosophy, ethics, free will, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, law, and related subjects.
Download or read book Time and Free Will written by Henri Bergson and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most remarkable philosophers of the early 20th century, Henri Bergson attempted to blend the new understandings of biological sciences with concepts of human consciousness in such books as 1907's Creative Evolution. With this extraordinary work, first published in French in 1889, Bergson anticipates Einstein's theory of relativity and the coming revolution in theoretical physics with his exploration of free will as a function of time. Time and Free Will-first translated in English by FRANK LUBECKI POGSON (d. 1910) in 1910-served as Bergson's doctoral thesis, and offered the foundations of his highly influential theory of "Duration," a defense of free will that solves the "problems" with the concept that previous philosophers had encountered with it. Students of modern philosophy and high-end physics alike will find this a challenging but rewarding read. French philosopher HENRI BERGSON (1859-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, and is said to have influenced thinkers such as Marcel Proust, William James, Santayana, and Martin Heidegger. Among his works are Matter and Memory (1896), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932).
Download or read book The 48 Laws of Power written by Robert Greene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.
Download or read book Thinking about Free Will written by Peter van Inwagen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together van Inwagen's most significant essays in this major field, addressing key topics and including two entirely new chapters.
Download or read book Mind Brain and Free Will written by Richard Swinburne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Swinburne presents a powerful case for substance dualism and libertarian free will. He argues that pure mental and physical events are distinct, and defends an account of agent causation in which the soul can act independently of bodily causes. We are responsible for our actions, and the findings of neuroscience cannot prove otherwise.
Download or read book Causation and Free Will written by Carolina Sartorio and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carolina Sartorio argues that only the actual causes of our behaviour matter to our freedom. Although this simple view of freedom clashes with most theories of responsibility, including the most prominent 'actual sequence' theories currently on offer, Sartorio argues for its truth. The key, she claims, lies in a correct understanding of the role played by causation in a view of that kind. Causation has some important features that make it a responsibility-grounding relation, and this to the success of the view. Also, when agents act freely, the actual causes are richer than they appear to be at first sight; in particular, they reflect the agents' sensitivity to reasons, where this includes both the existence of actual reasons and the absence of other (counterfactual) reasons. So acting freely requires more causes and quite complex causes, as opposed to fewer causes and simpler causes, and is compatible with those causes being deterministic. The book connects two different debates, the one on causation and the one on the problem of free will, in new and illuminating ways.
Download or read book Powers Parts and Wholes written by Christopher J. Austin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-25 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts–whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic, and yet what they can do—and what can happen to them—is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first part of this book explores how powers divide; the second part, how powers compose. The final part showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic.
Download or read book Powers and Capacities in Philosophy written by Ruth Groff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 2012, Powers and Capacities in Philosophy is a valuable contribution to the field of Philosophy.
Download or read book Causes Laws and Free Will written by Kadri Vihvelin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book rescues compatibilists from the familiar charge of 'quagmire of evasion' by arguing that the problem of free will and determinism is a metaphysical problem with a metaphysical solution. There is no good reason to think that determinism would rob us of the free will we think we have.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Free Will written by Robert Kane and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive reference work that provides an exhaustive guide to scholarship on the perennial problem of free will.
Download or read book Nuel Belnap on Indeterminism and Free Action written by Thomas Müller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to further the use of formal methods in clarifying one of the central problems of philosophy: that of our free human agency and its place in our indeterministic world. It celebrates the important contributions made in this area by Nuel Belnap, American logician and philosopher. Philosophically, indeterminism and free action can seem far apart, but in Belnap’s work, they are intimately linked. This book explores their philosophical interconnectedness through a selection of original research papers that build forth on Belnap’s logical and philosophical work. Some contributions take the form of critical discussions of Belnap's published work, some develop points made in his publications in new directions, and others provide additional insights on the topics of indeterminism and free action. In Nuel Belnap’s work on indeterminism and free action, three formal frameworks figure prominently: the simple branching histories framework known as "branching time;" its relativistic spatio-temporal extension, branching space-times; and the “seeing to it that” (stit ) logic of agency. As those frameworks provide the formal background for the contributed papers, the volume introduction gives an overview of the current state of their development. It also introduces case-intensional first order logic (CIFOL), a general intensional logic offering resources for a first-order extension of the mentioned frameworks and a recent research focus of Belnap’s. The volume also contains an extended biographical interview with Nuel Belnap.