Download or read book The Question of Reality written by Milton K. Munitz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we read that scientists have come close to pinpointing the "origin of the universe" by means of a Big Bang cosmology, or are engaged in formulating a "theory of everything," as in current ten-dimensional superstring theories of particle physics, can we doubt that such inquiries or their results inevitably raise important philosophical questions? In the present book, as well as in his previous work Cosmic Understanding, the renowned philosopher Milton Munitz attempts to answer some of these questions by examining recent scientific theories of cosmology in a philosophical context.
Download or read book Reality Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy written by David J. Chalmers and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it. Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis. Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come.
Download or read book Captive Audience written by Lucas Mann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the national bestselling author of Lord Fear and Class A comes "a tender, humane, comic, brainy, unsettling achievement” (Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship) about what it means to live an authentic life and what it means to love a person. In Lucas Mann's trademark vein—fiercely intelligent, self-deprecating, brilliantly observed, idiosyncratic, personal, funny, and infuriating—Captive Audience is an appreciation of reality television wrapped inside a love letter to his wife, with whom he shares the guilty pleasure of watching "real" people bare their souls in search of celebrity. Captive Audience resides at the intersection of popular culture with the personal; the exhibitionist impulse, with the schadenfreude of the vicarious, and in confronting some of our most suspect impulses reveals surprising connections and the meaning of an authentic life.
Download or read book Appearance in Reality written by John Heil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Appearance in Reality, John Heil addresses a question at the heart of metaphysics: how are the appearances related to reality, how does what we find in the sciences comport with what we encounter in everyday experience and in the laboratory? Objects, for instance, appear to be colourful, noisy, self-contained, and massively interactive. Physics tells us they are dynamic swarms of colourless particles, or disturbances in fields, or something equally strange. Is what we experience illusory, present only in our minds? But then what are minds? Do minds elude physics? Or are the physicist's depictions mere constructs with no claim to reality? Perhaps reality is hierarchical: physics encompasses the fundamental things, the less than fundamental things are dependent on, but distinct from these. Heil's investigation advances a fourth possibility: the scientific image (what we have in physics) affords our best guide to the nature of what the appearances are appearances of.
Download or read book Information and the Nature of Reality written by Paul Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From quantum to biological and digital, here eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians chart various aspects of information.
Download or read book Theory and Reality written by Peter Godfrey-Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-07-16 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is “really” like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of more than a hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Examples and asides engage the beginning student, a glossary of terms explains key concepts, and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. The second edition is thoroughly updated and expanded by the author with a new chapter on truth, simplicity, and models in science.
Download or read book Knowledge Reality and Value written by Michael Huemer and published by . This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's best introduction to philosophy, Knowledge, Reality, and Value explains basic philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, such as: How can we know about the world outside our minds? Is there a God? Do we have free will? Are there objective values? What distinguishes morally right from morally wrong actions? The text succinctly explains the most important theories and arguments about these things, and it does so a lot less boringly than most books written by professors."My work is all a series of footnotes to Mike Huemer." -Plato"This book is way better than my lecture notes." -Aristotle"When I have a little money, I buy Mike Huemer's books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes." -ErasmusContentsPreface Part I: Preliminaries 1. What Is Philosophy? 2. Logic 3. Critical Thinking, 1: Intellectual Virtue 4. Critical Thinking, 2: Fallacies 5. Absolute Truth Part II: Epistemology 6. Skepticism About the External World 7. Global Skepticism vs. Foundationalism 8. Defining "Knowledge" Part III: Metaphysics 9. Arguments for Theism 10. Arguments for Atheism 11. Free Will 12. Personal Identity Part IV: Ethics 13. Metaethics 14. Ethical Theory, 1: Utilitarianism 15. Ethical Theory, 2: Deontology 16. Applied Ethics, 1: The Duty of Charity 17. Applied Ethics, 2: Animal Ethics 18. Concluding Thoughts Appendix: A Guide to Writing GlossaryMichael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, where he has taught since the dawn of time. He is the author of a nearly infinite number of articles in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy, in addition to seven other amazing and brilliant books that you should immediately buy.
Download or read book When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People written by Steven Nadler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book the philosophers Steve Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro will explain why bad thinking happens to good people. Why is it, they ask, that so large a segment of public can go so wrong in both how they come to form the opinions they do and how they fail to appreciate the moral consequences of acting on them."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Why Does the World Exist written by Jim Holt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-07-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.
Download or read book God and the Knowledge of Reality written by Thomas Molnar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written simply yet comprehensively, Molnar's anlaysis of the history of philosophy and false mysticism leads him to conclude that a return to a moderate realism will save the philosophical enterprise from a series of epistemological and societal absolutes that are embodied in contemporary rationalism and mysticism alike. Issues that have been systematically excluded from discourse will have to be reintroduced into the discussion of person and providence Molnar divided the philosophical systems into two groups according to their vision of God, and consequently of reality One group removes God from the human scope, therefore rendering the world unreal, unknowable, and meaningless. The second group holds that God is immanent in the human soul, thereby emphasizing the human attainment of divine status, and reducing the extra-mental world to a condition of utter imperfection. Either way, the result is a pseudo-mysticism, a denial of the creaturely status of human beings What is most needed, Molnar claims, is a theory of knowledge whose ideal is not fusion but distinction-between God and Man, subject and object, the self and the society. By thus raising the question of philosophy over against magic Molnar seeks to awaken the reader from neo-dogmatic assumptions and restore speculative thought to its traditional place.
Download or read book Mathematics and Reality written by Mary Leng and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-04-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Leng offers a defense of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (at least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focussed on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. Leng, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized.
Download or read book The Road to Reality written by Roger Penrose and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-09 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **WINNER OF THE 2020 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS** The Road to Reality is the most important and ambitious work of science for a generation. It provides nothing less than a comprehensive account of the physical universe and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory. It assumes no particular specialist knowledge on the part of the reader, so that, for example, the early chapters give us the vital mathematical background to the physical theories explored later in the book. Roger Penrose's purpose is to describe as clearly as possible our present understanding of the universe and to convey a feeling for its deep beauty and philosophical implications, as well as its intricate logical interconnections. The Road to Reality is rarely less than challenging, but the book is leavened by vivid descriptive passages, as well as hundreds of hand-drawn diagrams. In a single work of colossal scope one of the world's greatest scientists has given us a complete and unrivalled guide to the glories of the universe that we all inhabit. 'Roger Penrose is the most important physicist to work in relativity theory except for Einstein. He is one of the very few people I've met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius' Lee Smolin
Download or read book Light From Many Lamps written by Lillian Watson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1988-01-15 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic treasury of inspiration featuring hundreds of passages and quotations—selected from the wisdom of the ages—offering invaluable insight and guidance on the challenges of daily life. Here are not only the best of the world’s most inspiring thoughts and ideas, but the stories behind them: how they came to be written and what their impact has been on others. A storehouse of inspired and inspiring reading, it is a collection of brief, stimulating biographies as well. There are selections from John Burroughs, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Shakespeare, Hippocrates, Confucius, and many others. A distillation of the greatest thoughts, ideas, and philosophies that have been handed down to us through the ages, this is a book to turn to over and over again—a book of moral, spiritual, and ethical guidance—an unfailing source of comfort and inspiration for all.
Download or read book Basic Structures of Reality written by Colin McGinn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Basic Structures of Reality, Colin McGinn deals with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind from the vantage point of physics. Combining general philosophy with physics, he covers such topics as the definition of matter, the nature of space, motion, gravity, electromagnetic fields, the character of physical knowledge, and consciousness and meaning. Throughout, McGinn maintains an historical perspective and seeks to determine how much we really know of the world described by physics. He defends a version of "structuralism": the thesis that our knowledge is partial and merely abstract, leaving a large epistemological gap at the center of physics. McGinn then connects this element of mystery to parallel mysteries in relation to the mind. Consciousness emerges as just one more mystery of physics. A theory of matter and space is developed, according to which the impenetrability of matter is explained as the deletion of volumes of space. McGinn proposes a philosophy of science that distinguishes physics from both psychology and biology, explores the ontology of energy, and considers the relevance of physics to seemingly remote fields such as the theory of meaning. In the form of a series of aphorisms, the author presents a metaphysical system that takes laws of nature as fundamental. With its broad scope and deep study of the fundamental questions at the heart of philosophy of physics, this book is not intended primarily for specialists, but for the general philosophical reader interested in how physics and philosophy intersect.
Download or read book The Case Against Reality Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes written by Donald Hoffman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth? Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. From examining why fashion designers create clothes that give the illusion of a more “attractive” body shape to studying how companies use color to elicit specific emotions in consumers, and even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality, The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see.
Download or read book The Conceptual Structure of Reality written by Gal Yehezkel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes a novel conception of reality, one that uniquely incorporates an idealistic view of existence with an account of objectivity. It introduces a general model of conceptual analysis and demonstrates its effectiveness in exposing and establishing the existence of conceptual ties. The book begins by introducing the tools and principles needed for the conceptual analysis undertaken in chapters that follow. Next, it presents a detailed examination into existence, contingency, idealism, self-consciousness and natural laws. In the process, the author critically examines the conceptions of existence held by Kant, Frege and Russell; argues that the determinations of past, present and future are subjective in the sense that they imply the existence of consciousness in relation to which they are fixed; shows that every possible reality includes sufficient conditions for self-consciousness; and confronts the question of the "uniformity of nature," which states that reality is subject to natural laws. In the end, the idealistic conception of reality developed in this book implies that existence is relative, rather than absolute, in the sense that it is determined in relation to a point of view internal to reality. This view of existence implies that reality necessarily exists.
Download or read book From Truth to Reality written by Heather Dyke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions about truth and questions about reality are intimately connected. One can ask whether numbers exist by asking "Are there numbers?" But one can also ask what arguably amounts to the same question by asking "Is the sentence 'There are numbers' true?" Such semantic ascent implies that reality can be investigated by investigating our true sentences. This line of thought was dominant in twentieth century philosophy, but is now beginning to be called into question. In From Truth to Reality, Heather Dyke brings together some of the foremost metaphysicians to examine approaches to truth, reality, and the connections between the two. This collection features new and previously unpublished material by JC Beall, Mark Colyvan, Michael Devitt, John Heil, Frank Jackson, Fred Kroon, D. H. Mellor, Luca Moretti, Alan Musgrave, Robert Nola, J. J. C. Smart, Paul Snowdon, and Daniel Stoljar.
