Download or read book The Problem of Existence written by Arthur Witherall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the question of why there is something instead of nothing. Several responses to this question are possible, but only some of them address the question seriously, respecting its emotional aspects as well as its cognitive dimension. The author carefully distinguishes those answers that are truly satisfactory, in both respects, from those that are inadequate. It can be argued that the existence of the world has no explanation at all, or that there is a necessary being whose existence is self-explanatory, or that the world exists because it has value. Each kind of response is defensible to some degree, and it is argued that where they are defensible, they have a common content. Incorporating aspects of both the 'analytical' and 'continental' traditions, this book also responds to several historical philosophers concerned with these questions, including Plato, Leibniz, Kant and Nietzsche.
Download or read book The Problem of Existence written by Arthur Witherall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the question of why there is something instead of nothing. Several responses to this question are possible, but only some of them address the question seriously, respecting its emotional aspects as well as its cognitive dimension. The author carefully distinguishes those answers that are truly satisfactory, in both respects, from those that are inadequate. It can be argued that the existence of the world has no explanation at all, or that there is a necessary being whose existence is self-explanatory, or that the world exists because it has value. Each kind of response is defensible to some degree, and it is argued that where they are defensible, they have a common content. Incorporating aspects of both the 'analytical' and 'continental' traditions, this book also responds to several historical philosophers concerned with these questions, including Plato, Leibniz, Kant and Nietzsche.
Download or read book The Existence of the World written by Reinhardt Grossmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1992. The history of Western philosophy can be seen as a battle between those that insist that the "physical universe" exists and those would claim that there is a much larger "world" which contains atemporal and nonspatial things as well. The central part of this book, and the battle, concerns the existence of universals. Starting with the mediaeval definition of the issue found in Porphry and Boethius, the author then considers modern and contemporary versions of the battle. He concludes that what is at stake between naturalists and ontologists is the existence and nature of a number of important categories, like structures, relations, sets, numbers and so on.
Download or read book The Problem of God written by Mark Clark and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Problem of God explores answers to the most difficult questions raised against Christianity. A skeptic who became a Christian and then a pastor, author Mark Clark grew up in an atheistic home. After his father's death, he began a skeptical search for truth through the fields of science, philosophy, and history, eventually finding answers in the last place he expected: Christianity. In a winsome, persuasive, and humble voice, The Problem of God responds to the top ten interrogations people bring against God, and Christianity, including: Does God even exist in the first place? What do we do with Christianity's violent history? Is Jesus just another myth? Can the Bible be trusted? Why should we believe in Hell anymore today? Each chapter answers the specific challenge using a mix of theology, philosophy, and science. Filled with compelling stories and anecdotes, The Problem of God presents an organized and easy-to-understand range of apologetics, focused on both convincing the skeptic and informing the Christian. The book concluding with Christianity's most audacious assertion: how should we respond to Jesus' claim that he is God and the only way to salvation.
Download or read book Better Never to Have Been written by David Benatar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. David Benatar presents a startling challenge to these assumptions. He argues that people systematically overestimate the quality of their life, and suffer quite serious harms by coming into existence.
Download or read book The Puzzle of Existence written by Tyron Goldschmidt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume investigates the most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is explored from diverse and radical perspectives: religious, naturalistic, platonistic and skeptical. Does science answer the question? Or does theology? Does everything need an explanation? Or can there be brute, inexplicable facts? Could there have been nothing whatsoever? Or is there any being that could not have failed to exist? Is the question meaningful after all? The volume advances cutting-edge debates in metaphysics, philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion, and will intrigue and challenge readers interested in any of these subjects.
Download or read book The Mystery of Existence written by John Leslie and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling study of the origins of all that exists, including explanations of the entire material world, traces the responses of philosophers and scientists to the most elemental and haunting question of all: why is anything here—or anything anywhere? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why not nothing? It includes the thoughts of dozens of luminaries from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas and Leibniz to modern thinkers such as physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, philosophers Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit, philosophers of religion Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, and the Dalai Lama. The first accessible volume to cover a wide range of possible reasons for the existence of all reality, from over 50 renowned thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, and the Dalai Lama Features insights by scientists, philosophers, and theologians Includes informative and helpful editorial introductions to each section Provides a wealth of suggestions for further reading and research Presents material that is both comprehensive and comprehensible
Download or read book A Paradigm Theory of Existence written by W.F. Vallicella and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heart of philosophy is metaphysics, and at the heart of the heart lie two questions about existence. What is it for any contingent thing to exist? Why does any contingent thing exist? Call these the nature question and the ground question, respectively. The first concerns the nature of the existence of the contingent existent; the second concerns the ground of the contingent existent. Both questions are ancient, and yet perennial in their appeal; both have presided over the burial of so many of their would-be undertakers that it is a good induction that they will continue to do so. For some time now, the preferred style in addressing such questions has been deflationary when it has not been eliminativist. Ask Willard Quine what existence is, and you will hear that "Existence is what existential quantification expresses. "! Ask Bertrand Russell what it is for an individual to exist, and he will tell you that an individual can no more exist than it can be numerous: there 2 just is no such thing as the existence of individuals. And of course Russell's eliminativist answer implies that one cannot even ask, on pain of succumbing to the fallacy of complex question, why any contingent individual exists: if no individual exists, there can be no question why any individual exists. Not to mention Russell's modal corollary: 'contingent' and 'necessary' can only be said de dicto (of propositions) and not de re (of things).
Download or read book Reference and Existence written by Saul A. Kripke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work can be read as a sequel to Kripke's classic Naming and Necessity, confronting important issues left open in that work and developing a novel approach to questions concerning empty names and existence. It provides along the way novel treatments of fictional and mythological discourse, the pragmatics of definite and indefinite descriptions and the language of sense data.
Download or read book Riddles of Existence A Guided Tour of Metaphysics written by Earl Conee and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The questions of metaphysics are among the deepest and most puzzling. What is time? Am I free in my actions? What makes me the same person I was as a child? Why is there something rather than nothing? Riddles of Existence makes metaphysics genuinely accessible, even fun. Its lively, informal style brings the riddles to life and shows how stimulating they can be to think about. No philosophical background is required to enjoy this book: anyone wanting to think about life's most profound questions will find Riddles of Existence provocative and entertaining.
Download or read book Reasonable Faith written by William Lane Craig and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2008 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition by one of the world's leading apologists presents a systematic, positive case for Christianity that reflects the latest work in the contemporary hard sciences and humanities. Brilliant and accessible.
Download or read book The Paradoxical Structure of Existence written by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For metaphysicians who have imbibed the sober and inebriating teachings of Thomas Aquinas, existence is an act, the act which makes all things actually to be. As the act of existence makes things to be, essence makes them to be what they are. Essence and the act of existence, in other words, are really distinct yet together they compose each of the things that are.Such an understanding involves a number of paradoxes, and Frederick D. Wilhelmsen's articulation of them reveals his philosophical genius. These paradoxes include the fact that the act of existence does not exist, that it can be thought but not conceived by the mind, and that truths about God can be known while He himself remains absolutely unknown. Wilhelmsen argues the notion that the Christian faith and philosophical reason harmonize while remaining completely distinct from each other.Writing in a captivating style, Wilhelmsen begins with a discussion of the development, strengths, and limitations of the ancient Greek philosophical accounts of being. Following that, he develops such key topics as the problem of existence, St. Thomas Aquinas' understanding of being, critical analyses of Hegel's and Heidegger's doctrines of being, existence as "towards God," and a metaphysical approach to the human person. The final two chapters develop the sense in which metaphysical thinking is and is not shaped by historical and social factors.
Download or read book Some Problems of Existence written by Norman Pearson and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Modern Existence written by Vine Deloria, Jr. and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vine Deloria Jr., named one of the most influential religious thinkers in the world by Time, shares a framework for a new vision of reality. Bridging science and religion to form an integrated idea of the world, while recognizing the importance of tribal wisdom, The Metaphysics of Modern Existence delivers a revolutionary view of our future and our world.
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 On the Problem of Existence written by Titus Lucretius Carus and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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.
