Download or read book What are Coincidences A Philosophical Guide Between Science and Common Sense written by Alessandra Melas and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a common opinion that chance events cannot be understood in causal terms. Conversely, according to a causal view of chance, intersections between independent causal chains originate accidental events, called “coincidences”. Firstly, this book explores this causal conception of chance and tries to shed new light on it. Such a view has been defended by authors like Antoine Augustine Cournot and Jacques Monod. Second, a relevant alternative is provided by those accounts that, instead of acknowledging an intersection among causal lines, claim to track coincidences back to some common cause. Third, starting from Herbert Hart and Anthony Honoré’s view of coincidences (Causation in the Law. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1959). This book provides a more detailed account of coincidences, according to which coincidental events are hybrids constituted by ontic (physical) components, which is the intersection between independent causal chains, plus epistemic aspects, including but not limited to, access to information, expectations, relevance, significance, desires, which in turn are psychological aspects. The main target of the present work is to show that the epistemic aspects of coincidences are, together with the independence between the intersecting causal chains, a constitutive part of coincidental phenomena. This book aims to introduce and discuss recent work in psychology concerning one’s judgment about coincidences; this data offers further materials and reasons to reflect upon our understanding of coincidences and to refine our hybrid conception.
Download or read book Guide to Philosophy written by Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1957-01-01 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant British expositor surveys various problems, explanations, solutions, systematizations of great philosophers. Three parts include "Theory of Knowledge," "Critical Metaphysics," and "Constructive Metaphysics."
Download or read book Common Sense and Science from Aristotle to Reid written by Benjamin W. Redekop and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common Sense and Science from Aristotle to Reid reveals that thinkers have pondered the nature of common sense and its relationship to science and scientific thinking for a very long time. It demonstrates how a diverse array of neglected early modern thinkers turn out to have been on the right track for understanding how the mind makes sense of the world and how basic features of the human mind and cognition are related to scientific theory and practice. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and scholarship from the history of ideas, cognitive science, and the history and philosophy of science, this book helps readers understand the fundamental historical and philosophical relationship between common sense and science.
Download or read book Philosophical Theology written by Frederick Robert Tennant and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1928 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Duties and the Rights of Man written by J. B. Austin and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics written by Douglas Kutach and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.
Download or read book Causes and Coincidences written by David Owens and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-28 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an important departure from theories of causation, David Owens proposes that coincidences have no causes, and that a cause is something which ensures that its effects are no coincidence. In Causes and Coincidences, he elucidates the idea of a coincidence as an event which can be analysed into constituent events, the nomological antecedents of which are independent of each other. He also suggests that causal facts can be analysed in terms of non-causal facts, including relations of necessity. Thus, causation is defined in terms of coincidence, and coincidence without reference to causation. David Owens challenges the ideas associated with Hume, Davidson and Lewis, constructing a theory which distinguishes nomological necessity and sufficiency from their logical counterparts. He is able to offer novel solutions to the major problems of causation, including the direction of causation, the logical form of causal statements, the distinction betwen causal connections and logical connections, and the relationship between psychological and physical causation.
Download or read book The Common Sense of Science written by Jacob Bronowski and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1953 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses science as a characteristic part of human activity and as an effort to render the world predictable.
Download or read book Our Library written by Library Association (Portland, Or.) and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Photography and Surrealism written by David Bate and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Bate examines automatism and the photographic image, the Surrealist passion for insanity, ambivalent use of Orientalism, use of Sadean philosophy and the effect of fascism of the Surrealists. The book is illustrated wtih a wide range of surrealist photographs.
Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Download or read book How is Nature Possible written by Daniel N. Robinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-09 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is Nature Possible?: Kant's Project in the First Critique presents a clear and systematic appraisal of what is perhaps the most difficult treatise in the philosophical canon. Daniel N. Robinson situates Kant's undertaking in the First Critique within the context of the history of philosophy and as a response to the challenges of scepticism. Kant's central task in the First Critique is to tie his metaphysical analysis to the very possibility of nature itself. Where others assumed the validity or the weakness of perception and reason, Kant presents a critical appraisal of both, thereby establishing the very limits of sense and reason as instruments of discovery. Ideal for students at all levels, this fascinating introduction clarifies the aims and significance of Kant's project, locates its place within the history of philosophy and identifies the strengths and weaknesses reasonably attributed to this most significant contribution to the history of philosophical reflection.
Download or read book Small Miracles written by Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 2 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we integrate both the experience and the meaning of coincidences into our own lives, we open ourselves to the enriching possibilities, the blessings, and the sense of harmony with the universe that they offer. "Small Miracles" presents 60 real-life coincidences--some heartwarming, some strange, some awe-inspiring.
Download or read book Contemporary Science and Natural Explanation written by Denis J. Hilton and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Meaningful Coincidence written by Jan Cederquist and published by Marshall Cavendish Corporation. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book recounts true stories of mathematically improbable, oftentimes incredible, instances of Meaningful Coincidence, and takes the
Download or read book Sense and Goodness Without God written by Richard Carrier and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2005-02-23 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If God does not exist, then what does? Is there good and evil, and should we care? How do we know what’s true anyway? And can we make any sense of this universe, or our own lives? Sense and Goodness answers all these questions in lavish detail, without complex jargon. A complete worldview is presented and defended, covering every subject from knowledge to art, from metaphysics to morality, from theology to politics. Topics include free will, the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, and much more, arguing from scientific evidence that there is only a physical, natural world without gods or spirits, but that we can still live a life of love, meaning, and joy.
Download or read book Causation written by L. A. Paul and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Many believe that the causal relation is not directly observable, but that we nevertheless can somehow detect its presence in the world. Common sense seems to have a firm grip on causation, and much work in the natural and social sciences relies on the idea. Yet neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Contemporary debates are driven by opposing motivations, conflicting intuitions, and unarticulated methodological assumptions. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of examples as landmarks. Special attention is given to counterfactual and related analyses of causation. Using a methodological principle based on the close examination of potential counterexamples, they clarify the central themes of the debate about causation, and cover questions about causation involving omissions or absences, preemption and other species of redundant causation, and the possibility that causation is not transitive. Along the way, Paul and Hall examine several contemporary proposals for analyzing the nature of causation and assess their merits and overall methodological cogency. The book is designed to be of value both to trained specialists and those coming to the problem of causation for the first time. It provides the reader with a broad and sophisticated view of the metaphysics of the causal relation.
