Download or read book Volition and Allied Causal Concepts written by Avi Sion and published by Avi Sion. This book was released on 2004-07-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volition and Allied Causal Concepts is a work of aetiology and metapsychology. Aetiology is the branch of philosophy and logic devoted to the study of causality (the cause-effect relation) in all its forms; and metapsychology is the study of the basic concepts common to all psychological discourse, most of which are causal. This is a work of ambitious scope, intent on finally resolving philosophical and logical issues that have always impeded progress in psychology.
Download or read book Volition s Face written by Andrew Escobedo and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2017-04-30 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern readers and writers find it natural to contrast the agency of realistic fictional characters to the constrained range of action typical of literary personifications. Yet no commentator before the eighteenth century suggests that prosopopoeia signals a form of reduced agency. Andrew Escobedo argues that premodern writers, including Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, understood personification as a literary expression of will, an essentially energetic figure that depicted passion or concept transforming into action. As the will emerged as an isolatable faculty in the Christian Middle Ages, it was seen not only as the instrument of human agency but also as perversely independent of other human capacities, for example, intellect and moral character. Renaissance accounts of the will conceived of volition both as the means to self-creation and the faculty by which we lose control of ourselves. After offering a brief history of the will that isolates the distinctive features of the faculty in medieval and Renaissance thought, Escobedo makes his case through an examination of several personified figures in Renaissance literature: Conscience in the Tudor interludes, Despair in Doctor Faustus and book I of The Faerie Queen, Love in books III and IV of The Faerie Queen, and Sin in Paradise Lost. These examples demonstrate that literary personification did not amount to a dim reflection of “realistic” fictional character, but rather that it provided a literary means to explore the numerous conundrums posed by the premodern notion of the human will. This book will be of great interest to faculty and graduate students interested in medieval studies and Renaissance literature.
Download or read book Locke written by E. Jonathan Lowe and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this superb introduction to Locke's thought, EJ Lowe covers all the major aspects of his philosophy. He concentrates on introducing and assessing Locke in a contemporary philosophical setting, explaining why he is so important today.
Download or read book The Rediscovery of the Highest Good written by Stuart C. Hackett and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stuart Hackett's The Rediscovery of the Highest Good, originally handwritten in spiral notebooks, is a masterwork of philosophical ethics that guides readers through 2300 years of discourse on the issue of morality, from Plato through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. "It is the destiny of every human person to decide," Hackett opens. "Whether our choices are genuinely free or inevitably determined, invariably trivial or occasionally momentous, carelessly settled or reflectively reasoned, at least in one sense all this makes no difference: for the one thing about which persons have no choice is that we unavoidably and necessarily must choose, and cannot therefore escape our responsibility to do so." From this matter-of-fact beginning, Hackett builds a coherent case for "a modified teleological position" while providing fleeting personal glimpses into his "lifelong romance with philosophical contemplation." From the opening page, all the arguments are set down in a steady line of development, aimed unerringly toward a preconceived goal. At various points Hackett's summations produce a cerebral satisfaction that could almost be described as aesthetic, a kind of sheer intellectual pleasure akin to beauty. Recovery of the Highest Good is the culmination of forty years of reflection from a theistic perspective and is likely to be an invaluable handbook for inquirers in future generations.
Download or read book Personal Agency written by E. J. Lowe and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will—a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world—with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind—one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively—is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.
Download or read book Free Will Agency and Meaning in Life written by Derk Pereboom and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Derk Pereboom articulates and defends an original conception of moral responsibility. He argues that if determinism were true we would not be morally responsible in the key basic-desert sense at issue in the free will debate, but that we would also lack this kind of moral responsibility if indeterminism were true and the causes of our actions were exclusively states or events. It is possible that if we were undetermined agent causes—if we as substances had the power to cause decisions without being causally determined to cause them—we would have this kind of free will. But although our being undetermined agent causes has not been ruled out as a coherent possibility, it's not credible given our best physical theories. Pereboom then contends that a conception of life without the free will required for moral responsibility in the basic-desert sense would nevertheless allow for a different, forward-looking conception of moral responsibility. He also argues that our lacking this sort of free will would not jeopardize our sense of ourselves as agents capable of rational deliberation, that it is compatible with adequate measures for dealing with crime and other threatening behavior, and that it allows for a robust sense of achievement and meaning in life. Pereboom's arguments for this position are reconfigured relative to those presented in Living without Free Will (2001), important objections to these arguments are answered, and the development of the positive view is significantly embellished.
Download or read book Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality written by William L. Rowe and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this succinct and well-written book, one of our most eminent philosophers provides a fresh reading of the view of freedom and morality developed by Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Although contemporary theorists have written extensively about the Scottish philosopher's contributions to the theory of knowledge, this is the first book-length study of his contributions to the controversy over freedom and necessity. William L. Rowe argues that Reid developed a subtle, systematic theory of moral freedom based on the idea of the human being as a free and morally responsible agent. He carefully reconstructs the theory and explores the intellectual background to Reid's views in the work of John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and Anthony Collins. Rowe develops a novel account of Reid's conception of free action and relates it to contemporary arguments that moral responsibility for an action implies the power to have done otherwise. Distilling from Reid's work a viable version of the agency theory of freedom and responsibility, he suggests how Reid's theory can be defended against the major objections--both historical and contemporary--that have been advanced against it. Blending to good effect historical and philosophical analysis, Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality should interest philosophers, political theorists, and intellectual historians.
Download or read book Syllabus and Notes of the Course of Systematic and Polemic Theology Taught in Union Theological Seminary Virginia written by Robert Lewis Dabney and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Salience written by Christian Chiarcos and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume addresses the role of salience in discourse and provides broad coverage of various perspectives on and functions of discourse salience. The range of multidisciplinary approaches adopted in the volume differ with regard to the underlying theoretical proposals and foci of research. The topics range from (i) entity-based salience to (ii) discourse-structural salience of utterances to (iii) extra-linguistic factors of salience in discourse. Accordingly, the volume is organized into three sections. Part I focuses on discourse referents and the choice of referring expressions. The contributions cover issues such as salience and demonstrativity in Russian, discourse salience and grammatical voice in the West Siberian language Eastern Khanty, the joined information of syntactic and semantic prominence, and a computational framework of salience metrics. The contributions to Part II are concerned with linguistic structures at or above the clause level. The salience of discourse segments is addressed with respect to the translation of discourse relations and position of verb arguments in Old High German. Part III extends the scope beyond purely linguistic phenomena and deals with the role of extra-linguistic salience in discourse processing. Visual salience in a situated-dialog context, salience marking by hypertextual links, and extra-linguistic salience derived from a mental representation of the described situation are all discussed here. The notion of salience is of relevance to discourse studies in theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, as well as psycholinguistics.
Download or read book Semantics and The Lexicon written by James Pustejovsky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this book is to integrate the research being carried out in the field of lexical semantics in linguistics with the work on knowledge representation and lexicon design in computational linguistics. Rarely do these two camps meet and discuss the demands and concerns of each other's fields. Therefore, this book is interesting in that it provides a stimulating and unique discussion between the computational perspective of lexical meaning and the concerns of the linguist for the semantic description of lexical items in the context of syntactic descriptions. This book grew out of the papers presented at a workshop held at Brandeis University in April, 1988, funded by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. The entire workshop as well as the discussion periods accom panying each talk were recorded. Once complete copies of each paper were available, they were distributed to participants, who were asked to provide written comments on the texts for review purposes. VII JAMES PUSTEJOVSKY 1. INTRODUCTION There is currently a growing interest in the content of lexical entries from a theoretical perspective as well as a growing need to understand the organization of the lexicon from a computational view. This volume attempts to define the directions that need to be taken in order to achieve the goal of a coherent theory of lexical organization.
Download or read book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding written by John Locke and published by . This book was released on 1849 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reason Value and Respect written by Mark Timmons and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 13 specially written essays, leading philosophers explore Kantian themes in moral and political philosophy that are prominent in the work of Thomas E. Hill, Jr., such as respect and self-respect, practical reason, conscience, and duty. In conclusion Hill offers an overview of his work and responses to the preceding essays.
Download or read book Ontology of Divinity written by Mirosław Szatkowski and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-04-22 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The volume includes 35 contributions. It is divided into nine parts: 1. Who Created the Concept of God; 2. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Timelessness and Spacelessness of God; 3. God and Perfect Goodness, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Freedom; 4. God, Fundamentality and Creation of All Else; 5. Simplicity and Ineffability of God; 6. God, Necessity and Abstract Objects; 7. God, Infinity, and Pascal’s Wager; 8. God and (Meta-)Mathematics; and 9. God and Mind.
Download or read book Preface by the editor Life of the author Analysis of Mr Locke s doctrine of ideas fold tab Essay concerning human understanding Book I book III chap VI written by John Locke and published by . This book was released on 1824 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book British Moralists written by Sir Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Can God Be Free written by William L. Rowe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-22 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the three major religions of the West, God is understood to be a being whose goodness, knowledge, and power is such that it is impossible for any being, including God himself, to have a greater degree of goodness, knowledge, and power. This book focuses on God's freedom and praiseworthiness in relation to his perfect goodness. Given his necessary perfections, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. For, as Leibniz tells us, 'todo less good than one could is to be lacking in wisdom or in goodness.' But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely. And, if that is so, it may be argued that we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since, as parts ofthe best possible world, God was simply unable to do anything other than create us - he created us of necessity, not freely. Moreover, we are confronted with the difficulty of having to believe that this world, with its Holocaust, and innumerable other evils, is the best that an infinitely powerful, infinitely good being could do in creating a world. Neither of these conclusions, taken by itself, seems at all plausible. Yet each conclusion appears to follow from the conception of God nowdominant in the great religions of the West.William Rowe presents a detailed study of this important problem, both historically in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, Samuel Clarke, Thomas Aquinas, and Jonathan Edwards, as well as in the contemporary philosophical literature devoted to the issue. Rowe argues that this problem is more serious than is commonly thought and may require some significant revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God.
Download or read book Containing book III chapter VI and last The foundations of ethic And book IV The real universe written by Shadworth Hollway Hodgson and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
