Download or read book The Problems of Philosophy written by Bertrand Russell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic work, first published in 1912, has never been supplanted as an approachable introduction to the theory of philosophical enquiry. It gives Russell's views on such subjects as the distinction between appearance and reality, the existence and nature of matter, idealism, knowledge by acquaintance and by description, induction, truth and falsehood, the distinction between knowledge, error and probable opinion, and the limits and value of philosophical knowledge.
Download or read book Some Problems of Philosophy written by William James and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the clarity that James deemed obligatory, Some Problems of Philosophy outlines his theory of perception. The early chapters expose the defects of intellectualism and monism and the advantages of empiricism and pluralism. The novelty that enters into concrete perceptual experience, and that is disallowed by the rationalizing intellect, suggests exciting possibilities. Denied any absolute truth in an ever-changing world, privy to only a piece of the truth at any given moment, the individual can, with faith and good will, help create order out of chaos. Some Problems in Philosophy, published posthumously, represents an important advance in William James’s thought.
Download or read book Some Main Problems of Philosophy written by Moore, George Edward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2002. This title collates a number of the late G. E. Moore's lectures on philosophy with the inclusion of his audience's questions and his answers that would bookend each session. Moore manages to present central, limiting, typical problems discussed in the study of philosophy in such a way that the reader begins to feel them despite themselves. Moore's introduction to philosophical difficulties can help students and scholars alike to judge and understand the most modern attempts to resolve these problems.
Download or read book The Problems of Philosophy written by Bertrand Russell and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Enduring Questions written by Melvin Miller Rader and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rationalism Empiricism and Idealism written by British Academy and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lectures, most of which were delivered in the last 15 years to the British Academy as Dawes Hicks lectures. Includes index. Locke's logical atavism / Michael Ayres -- Locke and the ethics of belief / J.A. Passmore -- Leibniz and Descartes / Ian Hacking -- Pre-established harmony versus constant conjunction / Hid©♭ Ishiguro -- Times, beginnings, and causes / G.E.M. Anscombe -- The naturalism of Book I of Hume's Treatise of human nature / David Pears -- Absolute idealism / A.M. Quinton --The good self and the bad self / Richard Wollheim.
Download or read book Universals written by James Porter Moreland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Things are particulars and their qualities are universals, but do universals have an existence distinct from the particular things describable by those terms? And what must be their nature if they do? This book provides a careful and assured survey of the central issues of debate surrounding universals, in particular those issues that have been a crucial part of the emergence of contemporary analytic ontology. The book begins with a taxonomy of extreme nominalist, moderate nominalist, and realist positions on properties, and outlines the way each handles the phenomena of predication, resemblance, and abstract reference. The debate about properties and philosophical naturalism is also examined. Different forms of extreme nominalism, moderate nominalism, and minimalist realism are critiqued. Later chapters defend a traditional realist view of universals and examine the objections to realism from various infinite regresses, the difficulties in stating identity conditions for properties, and problems with realist accounts of knowledge of abstract objects. In addition, the debate between Platonists and Aristotelians is examined alongside a discussion of the relationship between properties and an adequate theory of existence. The book's final chapter explores the problem of individuating particulars. The book makes accessible a difficult topic without blunting the sophistication of argument required by a more advanced readership.
Download or read book Problems from Philosophy written by James Rachels and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. This book was released on 2008-03-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This [text] is an introduction to some of the main problems of philosophy—the existence of God, the nature of the mind, human freedom, the limits of knowledge, and the truth about ethics. The chapters may be read independently of one another, but when read in order, they tell a more or less continuous story. We begin with some reflections on the life of Socrates and then go on to the existence of God, which is the most basic philosophical question, because our answer to it affects everything else. This leads naturally to a discussion of death and the soul, and then to more modern ideas about the nature of persons. The later chapters are about whether we can have objective knowledge in either science or ethics." -from the Preface Problems from Philosophy represents the final work of author and philosopher James Rachels. In it, he brings the same liveliness and clarity to the introduction of philosophy that he brings to his best-selling ethics text, The Elements of Moral Philosophy. This second edition has been revised by Rachels' son Stuart, who carefully has carefully refined his father's work to further strengthen its clarity and accessibility.
Download or read book Plato Etc written by Roy Bhaskar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this concise text, Roy Bhaskar sets out to diagnose, explain and resolve the "problems of philosophy". Plato Etc. reviews all the main areas of the subject: the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science; the philosophy of logic and language; the philosophies of space, time and causality; the philosophy of the social and life sciences and of dialectic; ethics, politics and aesthetics; and the history and sociology of philosophy. Among the issues discussed are the problems of induction and universals, the question of relativism, Heidegger’s "scandal of philosophy" (the search for a proof of the reality of the external world), the nature of moral truth and the conundrum of free will and determinism. The last two chapters consist of a synoptic account of the development of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to poststructuralism. Plato Etc. seeks to revindicate the philosophical project, and to demonstrate that the author’s "dialectical critical realism" has the categorical power to remedy the problem fields of philosophy. The book serves both as a critical introduction to philosophy and as an invaluable resource for the scholar.
Download or read book Substance written by Joshua Hoffman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-02-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Substance has been a leading idea in the history of Western philosophy. Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz explain the nature and existence of individual substances, including both living things and inanimate objects. Specifically written for students new to this important and often complex subject, Substance provides both the historical and contemporary overview of the debate. Great Philosophers of the past, such as Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, and Berkeley were profoundly interested in the concept of substance. And, the authors argue, a belief in the existence of substances is an integral part of our everyday world view. But what constitutes substance? Was Aristotle right to suggest that artefacts like tables and ships don't really exist? Substance: Its Nature and Existence is one of the first non-technical, accessible guides to this central problem and will be of great use to students of metaphysics and philosophy.
Download or read book The Nature of Philosophical Problems written by John Kekes and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We must all make choices about how we want to live. We evaluate our possibilities by relying on historical, moral, personal, political, religious, and scientific modes of evaluations, but the values and reasons that follow from them conflict. Philosophical problems are forced on us when we try to cope with such conflicts. There are reasons for and against all proposed ways of coping with the conflicts, but none of them has been generally accepted by reasonable thinkers. The constructive aim of The Nature of Philosophical Problems is to propose a way of understanding the nature of such philosophical problems, explain why they occur, why they are perennial, and propose a pluralist approach as the most reasonable way of coping with them. This approach is practical, context-dependent, and particular. It follows from it that the recurrence of philosophical problems is not a defect, but a welcome consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live. The critical aim of the book is to give reasons against both the absolutist attempt to find an overriding value or principle for resolving philosophical problems and of the relativist claim that reasons unavoidably come to an end and how we want to live is ultimately a matter of personal preference, not of reasons.
Download or read book The Value of Philosophy written by Bertrand Russell and published by . This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Value of Philosophy" is one of the most important chapters of Bertrand's Russell's magnum Opus, The Problems of Philosophy. As a whole, Russell focuses on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of sense data.
Download or read book Man is the Measure written by Reuben Abel and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intelligently truthful book that explores the uneven landscape of the human intellect. An accessible introduction to philosophy, this book narrows the gap between the general reader and intellectual inquiry. Its points are illustrated with concrete examples that should call the reader to a higher level of critical thinking and self-perception.
Download or read book Empty Ideas written by Peter Unger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers generally agreed that, by contrast with science, philosophy should offer no substantial thoughts about the general nature of concrete reality. Instead, philosophers offered conceptual truths. It is widely assumed that, since 1970, things have changed greatly. This book argues that's an illusion that prevails because of the failure to differentiate between "concretely substantial" and "concretely empty" ideas.
Download or read book Vagueness written by Timothy Williamson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you keep removing single grains of sand from a heap, when is it no longer a heap? From discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece, to modern formal approaches like fuzzy logic, Timothy Williamson traces the history of the problem of vagueness. He argues that standard logic and formal semantics apply even to vague languages and defends the controversial, realist view that vagueness is a form of ignorance - there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we can never know exactly which one it is.
Download or read book What Do Philosophers Do written by Penelope Maddy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you know the world around you isn't just an elaborate dream, or the creation of an evil neuroscientist? If all you have to go on are various lights, sounds, smells, tastes and tickles, how can you know what the world is really like, or even whether there is a world beyond your own mind? Questions like these -- familiar from science fiction and dorm room debates -- lie at the core of venerable philosophical arguments for radical skepticism: the stark contention that we in fact know nothing at all about the world, that we have no more reason to believe any claim -- that there are trees, that we have hands -- than we have to disbelieve it. Like non-philosophers in their sober moments, philosophers, too, find this skeptical conclusion preposterous, but they're faced with those famous arguments: the Dream Argument, the Argument from Illusion, the Infinite Regress of Justification, the more recent Closure Argument. If these can't be met, they raise a serious challenge not just to philosophers, but to anyone responsible enough to expect her beliefs to square with her evidence. What Do Philosophers Do? takes up the skeptical arguments from this everyday point of view, and ultimately concludes that they don't undermine our ordinary beliefs or our ordinary ways of finding out about the world. In the process, Maddy examines and evaluates a range of philosophical methods -- common sense, scientific naturalism, ordinary language, conceptual analysis, therapeutic approaches -- as employed by such philosophers as Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin. The result is a revealing portrait of what philosophers do, and perhaps a quiet suggestion for what they should do, for what they do best.
Download or read book Problems and Theories of Philosophy written by K. Ajdukiewicz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1973-11-29 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Polish philosophy has an impressive record as a powerful, innovating tradition, in many respects parallel to but independent of the development of analytical philosophy in Britain and America. Owing to an absence of adequate translations however, the work of its leading exponents has generally only been encountered second-hand. To remedy this, Quinton and Skolimowski have translated an introduction to philosophy written by Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, probably the outstanding representative of the generation. Problems and Theories of Philosophy surveys concisely and, so far as possible, systematically the main problems in epistemology and metaphysics and the most historically important of the solutions proposed to them. The book still reads freshly and displays many of the characteristic intellectual virtues of Polish philosophy: clarity and straightforwardness of presentation combined with a bracing rigour and precision. It is in no sense parochial to its Polish origins and can stand beside the classic English introductions to the subject as stimulating and lucid analysis of perennial philosophical problems and strategies.
