Download or read book Models and Theories written by Roman Frigg and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Models and theories are of central importance in science, and scientists spend substantial amounts of time building, testing, comparing and revising models and theories. It is therefore not surprising that the nature of scientific models and theories has been a widely debated topic within the philosophy of science for many years. The product of two decades of research, this book provides an accessible yet critical introduction to the debates about models and theories within analytical philosophy of science since the 1920s. Roman Frigg surveys and discusses key topics and questions, including: What are theories? What are models? And how do models and theories relate to each other? The linguistic view of theories (also known as the syntactic view of theories), covering different articulations of the view, its use of models, the theory-observation divide and the theory-ladenness of observation, and the meaning of theoretical terms. The model-theoretical view of theories (also known as the semantic view of theories), covering its analysis of the model-world relationship, the internal structure of a theory, and the ontology of models. Scientific representation, discussing analogy, idealisation and different accounts of representation. Modelling in scientific practice, examining how models relate to theories and what models are, classifying different kinds of models, and investigating how robustness analysis, perspectivism, and approaches committed to uncertainty-management deal with multi-model situations. Models and Theories is the first comprehensive book-length treatment of the topic, making it essential reading for advanced undergraduates, researchers, and professional philosophers working in philosophy of science and philosophy of technology. It will also be of interest to philosophically minded readers working in physics, computer sciences and STEM fields more broadly.
Download or read book Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality written by Eric Watkins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context.
Download or read book Philosophy and Model Theory written by Tim Button and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Model theory is used in every theoretical branch of analytic philosophy: in philosophy of mathematics, in philosophy of science, in philosophy of language, in philosophical logic, and in metaphysics. But these wide-ranging uses of model theory have created a highly fragmented literature. On the one hand, many philosophically significant results are found only in mathematics textbooks: these are aimed squarely at mathematicians; they typically presuppose that the reader has a serious background in mathematics; and little clue is given as to their philosophical significance. On the other hand, the philosophical applications of these results are scattered across disconnected pockets of papers. The first aim of this book, then, is to explore the philosophical uses of model theory, focusing on the central topics of reference, realism, and doxology. Its second aim is to address important questions in the philosophy of model theory, such as: sameness of theories and structure, the boundaries of logic, and the classification of mathematical structures. Philosophy and Model Theory will be accessible to anyone who has completed an introductory logic course. It does not assume that readers have encountered model theory before, but starts right at the beginning, discussing philosophical issues that arise even with conceptually basic model theory. Moreover, the book is largely self-contained: model-theoretic notions are defined as and when they are needed for the philosophical discussion, and many of the most philosophically significant results are given accessible proofs.
Download or read book Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities written by Gabriele De Anna and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the metaphysics of political communities. It discusses how and why a plurality of individuals becomes a political unity, what principles or forces keep that unity together, and what threats that unity can be faced with. In Part I, the author justifies the need for the notion of substance in metaphysics in general and in the metaphysics of politics in particular. He spells out a moderately realist theory of substances and of their principles of unity, which supports substantial gradualism. Part II concerns action theory and the nature of practical reason. The author claims that the acknowledgement of reasons by agents is constitutive of action and that normativity depends on the role of the good in the formation of reasons. Finally, in Part III the author addresses the notion of political community. He claims that the principle of unity of a political community is its authority to give members of the community moral reasons for action. This suggests a middle way between liberal individualism and organicism, and the author demonstrates the significance of this view by discussing current political issues such as the role of religion in the public sphere and the political significance of cultural identity. Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in social metaphysics, political philosophy, philosophy of action, and philosophy of the social sciences.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology written by Herman Cappelen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology (including logical empiricism, phenomenology, and ordinary language philosophy). The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience.
Download or read book Modal Logic as Metaphysics written by Timothy Williamson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.
Download or read book Quantum Ontology written by Peter J. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-13 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.
Download or read book Power and Influence written by Richard Corry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is a complex place, and this complexity is an obstacle to our attempts to explain, predict, and control it. In Power and Influence, Richard Corry investigates the assumptions that are built into the reductive method of explanation—the method whereby we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. He investigates the metaphysical presuppositions built into the reductive method, seeking to ascertain what the world must be like in order that the method could work. Corry argues that the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest causal influence—a relatively unrecognised ontological category, of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influences. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of causal powers, laws of nature, causation, emergence, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical worldview that is grounded in an ontology of power and influence.
Download or read book Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics written by Immanuel Kant and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Metaphysics Within Physics written by Tim Maudlin and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does physics tell us about metaphysics? Tim Maudlin's philosophical examination of the fundamental structure of the world as presented by physics challenges the most widely accepted philosophical accounts of laws of nature, universals, the direction of time and causation.
Download or read book How to Do Science with Models written by Axel Gelfert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking scientific practice as its starting point, this book charts the complex territory of models used in science. It examines what scientific models are and what their function is. Reliance on models is pervasive in science, and scientists often need to construct models in order to explain or predict anything of interest at all. The diversity of kinds of models one finds in science – ranging from toy models and scale models to theoretical and mathematical models – has attracted attention not only from scientists, but also from philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science. This has given rise to a wide variety of case studies that look at the different uses to which models have been put in specific scientific contexts. By exploring current debates on the use and building of models via cutting-edge examples drawn from physics and biology, the book provides broad insight into the methodology of modelling in the natural sciences. It pairs specific arguments with introductory material relating to the ontology and the function of models, and provides some historical context to the debates as well as a sketch of general positions in the philosophy of scientific models in the process.
Download or read book Every Thing Must Go written by James Ladyman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
Download or read book Diagrammatic Immanence written by Rocco Gangle and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rocco Gangle addresses the methodological questions raised by a commitment to immanence in terms of how diagrams may be used both as tools and as objects of philosophical investigation. Gangle integrates insights from Spinoza, Pierce and Deleuze in conjunction with the formal operations of category theory.
Download or read book The Metaphysic of Ethics written by Immanuel Kant and published by . This book was released on 1836 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Kant s Metaphysics of Morals written by Lara Denis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-28 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (1797), containing the Doctrine of Right and Doctrine of Virtue, is his final major work of practical philosophy. Its focus is not rational beings in general but human beings in particular, and it presupposes and deepens Kant's earlier accounts of morality, freedom and moral psychology. In this volume of newly-commissioned essays, a distinguished team of contributors explores the Metaphysics of Morals in relation to Kant's earlier works, as well as examining themes which emerge from the text itself. Topics include the relation between right and virtue, property, punishment, and moral feeling. Their diversity of questions, perspectives and approaches will provide new insights into the work for scholars in Kant's moral and political theory.
Download or read book Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science written by Matthew H. Slater 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: This volume of new essays, written by leading philosophers of science, explores a broadly methodological question: what role should metaphysics play in our philosophizing about science? The essays address this question both through ground-level investigations of particular issues in the metaphysics of science and by more general methodological investigations.
Download or read book Models written by Marx W. Wartofsky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marx Wartofsky has been working for many years within an unusual confluence of philosophical problems. He brings to these intersecting problems his comprehensive intelligence, at once imaginative and rigorous, analytic and historical. He is a philosopher's philosopher, but also Everyman's. Wartofsky is philosopher of the natural and the social sciences, of perception, esthetics and the creative arts, of the 18th century French and the 19th century Germans, of politics and morality, ofthe methods and morals of medicine, and it is plain, of all human existence. To a colleague, he seems Jack-of-all-philosophical-trades, and master of them too. The reader soon will learn that Wartofsky is a genial, lucid and relaxed philosophical companion, deeply serious but without noticeable anxiety. I need not highlight these selected epistemological papers gathered as, and about, Models, since Wartofsky's own introductory remarks are helpful and stimulating in that respect. I need only, after 21 years of friendship and collaboration with him, warn the reader to beware of how profound and provocative these papers will show themselves to be beneath their good-humored and swiftly-flowing surface. And I must publicly note the pleasure with which I welcome Marx Wartofsky's volume to our Boston Studies. Boston University R.S.C. Center for the Philosophy and History of Science September 1979 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE VII xi AC K NOWLEDGEMENTS xiii INTRODUCTION The Model Muddle: Proposals for an Immodest Realism 1.
