Download or read book Unknowability written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The realities of mankind's cognitive situation are such that our knowledge of the world's ways is bound to be imperfect. None the less, the theory of unknowability--agnoseology as some have called it--is a rather underdeveloped branch of philosophy. In this philosophically rich and groundbreaking work, Nicholas Rescher aims to remedy this. As the heart of the discussion is an examination of what Rescher identifies as the four prime reasons for the impracticability of cognitive access to certain facts about the world: developmental inpredictability, verificational surdity, ontological detail, and predicative vagrancy. Rescher provides a detailed and illuminating account of the role of each of these factors in limiting human knowledge, giving us an overall picture of the practical and theoretical limits to our capacity to know our world.
Download or read book On the Absence and Unknowability of God written by Christos Yannaras and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, one of the earliest by Christos Yannaras, was first published in 1967 and has become a contemporary classic. Yannaras begins by outlining Heidegger's analysis of the fate of western metaphysics, which ends, he argues, in a nihilistic atheism. Yannaras's response is largely to accept Heidegger's analysis, but to argue that, although it applies to the western tradition of what Heidegger calls "onto theology" (which regards God as a 'being', even if the highest), it does not take account of the Orthodox tradition of apophatic theology, of which Dionysius the Areopagite is a pre-eminent example. A God 'beyond being' escapes the criticism of Heidegger, and provides an alternative to Heidegger's nihilistic conclusion.
Download or read book On the Borders of Being and Knowing written by John P. Doyle and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the Borders of Being and Knowing begins with Greeks distinguishing "being" from "something" and proceeds to the late Scholastic doctrine of "supertranscendental being," which embraces both.
Download or read book Atheism at the Agora written by James C Ford and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-11 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fresh, comprehensive study of ancient Greek atheism aims to dismantle the current consensus that atheism was ‘unthinkable’ in ancient Greece, demonstrating instead that atheism was not only thinkable but inextricably embedded in the Greek religious environment. Through careful analysis of a wide range of source material provided in modern English translation, and drawing on philosophy, theology, sociology, and other disciplines, Ford unpicks a two and a half thousand-year history of marginalisation, clearing the way for a new analysis. He lays out in clear terms the nature and form of ancient Greek atheism as the ancient Greeks conceived of it, through a series of themes and lenses. Topics such as religious socialisation, the interaction of atheist philosophy and theology, identity formation through alterity, and the use of atheism in scapegoating are considered not only in broad terms, using a synthesis of modern scholarship to mark out an overview in line with modern consensus, but also by drawing on the unique perspective of ancient atheism Ford is able to provide innovative theories about a range of subjects. Atheism at the Agora is of interest to students and scholars in Classics, particularly Greek religion and culture, as well as those studying atheism in other historical and contemporary areas, religious studies, philosophy, and theology.
Download or read book The Palgrave Hegel Handbook written by Marina F. Bykova and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook presents the conceptions and principles central to every aspect of Hegel’s systematic philosophy. In twenty-eight thematically linked chapters by leading international experts, The Palgrave Hegel Handbook provides reliable, scholarly overviews of each subject, illuminates the main issues and debates, and details concisely the considered views of each contributor. Recent scholarship challenges traditional, largely anti-Kantian, readings of Hegel, focusing instead on Hegel’s appropriation of Kantian epistemology to reconcile idealism with the rejection of foundationalism, coherentism and skepticism. Focused like Kant on showing how fundamental unities underlie the profusion of apparently independent events, Hegel argued that reality is rationally structured, so that its systematic structure is manifest to our properly informed thought. Accordingly, this handbook re-assesses Hegel’s philosophical aims, methods and achievements, and re-evaluates many aspects of Hegel’s enduring philosophical contributions, ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, and dialectic, to moral and political philosophy and philosophy of history. Each chapter, and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook as a whole, provides an informed, authoritative understanding of each aspect of Hegel’s philosophy.
Download or read book The Primacy of Metaphysics written by Christopher Peacocke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new view of the relation between metaphysics and the theory of meaning, broadly construed. Christopher Peacocke develops a general claim that metaphysics is always involved, either as explanatorily prior, or in a no-priority relationship, to the theory of meaning and content. Meaning and intentional content are never explanatorily prior to the metaphysics. He aims to show, in successive chapters of The Primacy of Metaphysics, how the general view holds for magnitudes, time, the self, and abstract objects. For each of these cases, the metaphysics of the entities involved is explanatorily prior to an account of the nature of our language and thought about them. Peacocke makes original contributions to the metaphysics of these topics, and offers consequential new treatments of analogue computation and representation. In the final chapter, he argues that his approach generates a new account of the limits of intelligibility, and locates his account in relation to other treatments of this classical conundrum.
Download or read book Being Known written by Christopher Peacocke and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1999-03-25 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being Known is a response to a philosophical challenge which arises for every area of thought. The challenge is one of reconciling our conception of truth in an area with the means by which we think we come to know truth about that area. Meeting the challenge may require a revision of our conception of truth in that area; or a revision of our theory of knowledge for that area; or a revision in our conception of the relations between the two. Christopher Peacocke presents a framework for addressing the challenge, a framework which links both the theory of knowledge and the theory of truth with the theory of concept-possession. It formulates a set of constraints and a general form of solution for a wide range of topics. He goes on to propose specific solutions within this general form for a series of classically problematic subjects: the past; metaphysical necessity; the intentional contents of our own mental states; the self; and freedom of the will. Being Known will interest anyone concerned with those individual topics, as well as those concerned more generally with meaning and understanding, metaphysics and epistemology, and their interrelations.
Download or read book The Unknowable written by Gregory J. Chaitin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1999-07-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential companion to Chaitins highly successful The Limits of Mathematics, gives a brilliant historical survey of important work on the foundations of mathematics. The Unknowable is a very readable introduction to Chaitins ideas, and includes software (on the authors website) that will enable users to interact with the authors proofs. "Chaitins new book, The Unknowable, is a welcome addition to his oeuvre. In it he manages to bring his amazingly seminal insights to the attention of a much larger audience His work has deserved such treatment for a long time." JOHN ALLEN PAULOS, AUTHOR OF ONCE UPON A NUMBER
Download or read book Vagueness as Arbitrariness written by Sagid Salles and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-12 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new solution to the problem of vagueness. There are several different ways of addressing this problem and no clear agreement on which one is correct. The author proposes that it should be understood as the problem of explaining vague predicates in a way that systematizes six intuitions about the phenomenon and satisfies three criteria of adequacy for an ideal theory of vagueness. The third criterion, which is called the “criterion of precisification”, is the most controversial one. It is based on the intuition that a predicate is vague only if it is imprecise. The author considers some different definitions of linguistic imprecision, proposing that a predicate is imprecise if and only if there is no sharp boundary between objects to which its application yields some particular truth-value and objects to which its application does not yield that truth-value. The volume critically reviews the current theories of vagueness and proposes a new one, the Theory of Vagueness as Arbitrariness, which defines a vague predicate as an arbitrary predicate that must be precisified in order to contribute to a sentence that has truth-conditions. The main advantages of this theory over the current alternatives are that it satisfies all three criteria and systematizes the relevant intuitions.
Download or read book Knowing the Unknowable written by John Bowker and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2009 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Albert Einstein once remarked that behind all observable things lay something quite unknowable. This book explores that special territory perceived by Einstein: where the unknown takes over from everything that is understandable, familiar, explicable
Download or read book The Journal of Philosophy written by and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers topics in philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods. Vols. 31- include "A Bibliography of philosophy," 1933-
Download or read book The Hypersexuality of Race written by Celine Parreñas Shimizu and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-30 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the Asian woman as sexual icon in visual culture.
Download or read book Knowing the Unknowable God written by David B. Burrell C.S.C. and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 1992-01-31 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Knowing the Unknowable God, David Burrell traces the intellectual intermingling of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions that made possible the medieval synthesis that served as the basis for Western theology. He shows how Aquinas's study of the Muslim philosopher Ibn-Sina and the Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides affected the disciplined use of language when speaking of divinity and influenced his doctrine of God.
Download or read book Hidden and Revealed written by Dmytro Bintsarovskyi and published by Lexham Press. This book was released on 2021-07-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major contribution to ecumenical reflection on the doctrine of God. The past century has seen renewed interest in the doctrine of God. While theological traditions disagree, their shared commitment to Nicene orthodoxy provides a common language for thinking and speaking about God. This dialogue has deepened our understanding of this shared way of thinking about God, but little has been done across ecumenical lines to explore God's hiddenness in revelation. In Hidden and Revealed, Dmytro Bintsarovskyi explores the hiddenness and revelation of God in two separate theological streams—Reformed and Orthodox. Bintsarovskyi shows that an understanding of both traditions reflects a deep structure of shared language, history, and commitments, while nevertheless reflecting real differences. With Herman Bavinck and John Meyendorff as his guides, Bintsarovskyi advances ecumenical dialogue on a doctrine central to our knowledge of God.
Download or read book Negating Negation written by Timothy D. Knepper and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-12-20 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Negating Negation critically examines key concepts in the corpus of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: divine names and perceptible symbols, removal and negation, hierarchy and hierurgy, ineffability and incomprehensibility. In each case it argues that the Dionysian corpus does not negate all things of an absolutely ineffable God; rather it negates few things of a God that is effable in important ways. Dionysian divine names are not inadequate metaphors or impotent attributes but transcendent divine causes. Divine names are not therefore flatly negated of God but removed as ordinary properties to be revealed as divine causes. The hierurgical rituals and hierarchical ranks of the church are also not negated or bypassed but serve as the necessary means of return to God. This Dionysian God is therefore not absolutely unknowable and ineffable but extraordinarily knowable and sayable as scripturally revealed and hierarchically conveyed. Negating Negation concludes that since the Dionysian corpus does not abandon all things to apophasis, it cannot be called to testify on behalf of (post)modern projects in religious pluralism and anti-ontotheology. Quite the contrary, the Dionysian corpus gives reason for suspicion of such projects, especially when they relativize or metaphorize religious belief and practice in the name of absolute ineffability.
Download or read book The World According to Kant written by Anja Jauernig and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world, according to Kant, is made up of two levels of reality: the transcendental and the empirical. The transcendental level is a mind-independent level at which things in themselves exist. The empirical level is a fully mind-dependent level at which appearances exist, which are intentional objects of experience. The distinction between appearances and things in themselves lies at the heart of Kant's critical philosophy and has been the focus of fierce debate among scholars for over two hundred years. Anja Jauernig offers this interpretation of Kant's critical idealism as an ontological position, which comprises transcendental idealism, empirical realism, and a number of other basic ontological theses, as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason and associated texts. In this interpretation Kant is a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is due to both the special character of experience compared to other kinds of representations such as illusions or dreams, and to the grounding of appearances in things themselves. This is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant's case for critical idealism thus understood, pinpoints the differences between critical idealism and ordinary idealism, and clarifies the relation between Kant's conception of things in themselves and the conception of things in themselves by other philosophers, in particular Kant's Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.
Download or read book Indiscretion written by Thomas A. Carlson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999-02-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can one think and name an inconceivable and ineffable God? Christian mystics have approached the problem by speaking of God using "negative" language—devices such as grammatical negation and the rhetoric of "darkness" or "unknowing"—and their efforts have fascinated contemporary scholars. In this strikingly original work, Thomas A. Carlson reinterprets premodern approaches to God's ineffability and postmodern approaches to the mystery of the human subject in light of one another. The recent interest in mystical theological traditions, Carlson argues, is best understood in relation to contemporary philosophy's emphasis on the idea of human finitude and mortality. Combining both historical research in theology (from Pseudo-Dionysius to Aquinas to Eckhart) and contemporary philosophical analysis (from Hegel and Nietzsche to Heidegger, Derrida, and Marion), Indiscretion will interest philosophers, theologians, and other scholars concerned with the possibilities and limits of language surrounding both God and human subjectivity.
