Download or read book Idealization and the Laws of Nature written by Billy Wheeler and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new study provides a refreshing look at the issue of exceptions and shows that much of the problem stems from a failure to recognize at least two kinds of exception-ridden law: ceteris paribus laws and ideal laws. Billy Wheeler offers the first book-length discussion of ideal laws. The key difference between these two kinds of laws concerns the nature of the conditions that need to be satisfied and their epistemological role in the law’s formulation and discovery. He presents a Humean-inspired approach that draws heavily on concepts from the information and computing sciences. Specifically, Wheeler argues that laws are best seen as algorithms for compressing empirical data and that ideal laws are needed as 'lossy compressors' for complex data. Major figures in the metaphysics of science receive special attention such as Ronald Giere, Bas van Fraassen, Nancy Cartwright, David Lewis and Marc Lange. This book is essential reading for philosophers of science and will interest metaphysicians, epistemologists and others interested in applying concepts from computing to traditional philosophical problems.
Download or read book Reconsidering Causal Powers written by Henrik Lagerlund and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.
Download or read book Reconsidering Causal Powers written by Henrik Lagerlund and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science to fill explanatory gaps seen to be left by reductivist and eliminativist accounts of previous generations. This volume revisits the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles across history to foster deeper discussions about their metaphysical natures
Download or read book Ceterus Paribus Laws written by John Earman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural and social sciences seem very often, though usually only implicitly, to hedge their laws by ceteris paribus clauses - a practice which is philosophically very hard to understand because such clauses seem to render the laws trivial and unfalsifiable. After early worries the issue is vigorously discussed in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind since ca. 15 years. This volume collects the most prominent philosophers of science in the field and presents a lively, controversial, but well-integrated, highly original and up-to-date discussion of the issue. It will be the reference book in the coming years concerning ceteris paribus laws.
Download or read book Memories Revisited written by Vijay Joshi and published by Vijay Joshi. This book was released on with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Book is based on real life stories, almost all the protagonists in the articles that i have penned till date are every day common people, people whom we meet in our day to day life. These everyday common people have much much more to share, for they are the once who face all kind of hardships in their lives and survive, for people like me to tell their tales. All the tales in this book are real life stories that i’ve experienced. Each story gives you some moral, some thought to ponder over.
Download or read book Content and Consciousness Revisited written by Carlos Muñoz-Suárez and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the grounds for the distinction between the mental and the physical? What is it the relation between ascribing mental states to an organism and understanding its behavior? Are animals and complex systems vehicles of inner evolutionary environments? Is there a difference between personal and sub-personal level processes in the brain? Answers to these and other questions were developed in Daniel Dennett’s first book, Content and Consciousness (1969), where he sketched a unified theoretical framework for views that are now considered foundational in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Content and Consciousness Revisited is devoted to reconsider the ideas and ideals introduced in Dennett’s seminal book, by covering its fundamental concepts, hypotheses and approaches and taking into account the findings and progress which have taken place during more than four decades. This book includes original and critical contributions about the relations between science and philosophy, the personal/sub-personal level distinction, intelligence, learning, intentionality, rationality, propositional attitudes, among other issues of scientific and philosophical interest. Each chapter embraces an updated approach to several disciplines, like cognitive science, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive psychiatry.
Download or read book Metaphysics of Science written by Markus Schrenk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics and science have a long but troubled relationship. In the twentieth century the Logical Positivists argued metaphysics was irrelevant and that philosophy should be guided by science. However, metaphysics and science attempt to answer many of the same, fundamental questions: What are laws of nature? What is causation? What are natural kinds? In this book, Markus Schrenk examines and explains the central questions and problems in the metaphysics of science. He reviews the development of the field from the early modern period through to the latest research, systematically assessing key topics including: dispositions counterfactual conditionals laws of nature causation properties natural kinds essence necessity. With the addition of chapter summaries and annotated further reading, Metaphysics of Science is a much-needed, clear and informative survey of this exciting area of philosophical research. It is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of science and metaphysics.
Download or read book Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered written by V. Kerry Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current views on resource availability are examined, along with the original Barnett-Morse thesis of resource supply. Originally published in 1979
Download or read book How the Laws of Physics Lie written by Nancy Cartwright and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1983-06-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, Nancy Cartwright argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe the regularities that exist in nature. Yet she is not `anti-realist'. Rather, she draws a novel distinction, arguing that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but that the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.
Download or read book Copyright s Excess written by Glynn Lunney and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tests copyright's fundamental premise that more money will increase creative output using the US recording industry from 1962-2015.
Download or read book Revisiting Crimes of the Powerful written by Steven Bittle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank Pearce was the first scholar to use the term 'crimes of the powerful.' His ground-breaking book of the same name provided insightful critiques of liberal orthodox criminology, particularly in relation to labelling theory and symbolic interactionism, while making important contributions to Marxist understandings of the complex relations between crime, law and the state in the reproduction of the capitalist social order. Historically, crimes of the powerful were largely neglected in crime and deviance studies, but there is now an important and growing body of work addressing this gap. This book brings together leading international scholars to discuss the legacy of Frank Pearce’s book and his work in this area, demonstrating the invaluable contributions a critical Marxist framework brings to studies of corporate and state crimes, nationally, internationally and on a global scale. This book is neither a hagiography, nor a review of random areas of social scientific interest. Instead, it draws together a collection of scholarly and original articles which draw upon and critically interrogate the continued significance of the approach pioneered in Crimes of the Powerful. The book traces the evolution of crimes of the powerful empirically and theoretically since 1976, shows how critical scholars have integrated new theoretical insights derived from post-structuralism, feminism and critical race studies and offers perspectives on how the crimes of the powerful - and the enormous, ongoing destruction they cause - can be addressed and resisted.
Download or read book Laws Mind and Free Will written by Steven W. Horst and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of scientific laws that vindicates the status of psychological laws and shows natural laws to be compatible with free will. In Laws, Mind, and Free Will, Steven Horst addresses the apparent dissonance between the picture of the natural world that arises from the sciences and our understanding of ourselves as agents who think and act. If the mind and the world are entirely governed by natural laws, there seems to be no room left for free will to operate. Moreover, although the laws of physical science are clear and verifiable, the sciences of the mind seem to yield only rough generalizations rather than universal laws of nature. Horst argues that these two familiar problems in philosophy--the apparent tension between free will and natural law and the absence of "strict" laws in the sciences of the mind--are artifacts of a particular philosophical thesis about the nature of laws: that laws make claims about how objects actually behave. Horst argues against this Empiricist orthodoxy and proposes an alternative account of laws--an account rooted in a cognitivist approach to philosophy of science. Horst argues that once we abandon the Empiricist misunderstandings of the nature of laws there is no contrast between "strict" laws and generalizations about the mind ("ceteris paribus" laws, laws hedged by the caveat "other things being equal"), and that a commitment to laws is compatible with a commitment to the existence of free will. Horst's alternative account, which he calls "cognitive Pluralism," vindicates the truth of psychological laws and resolves the tension between human freedom and the sciences.
Download or read book Revisiting Searle on Deriving Ought from Is written by Paolo Di Lucia and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reconsiders the supposed impossibility of deriving "Ought" from "Is". John R. Searle’s 1964 article How to Derive "Ought " from "Is’’ sent shockwaves through the philosophical community by offering a straightforward counterexample to this claim of impossibility: from your promising something- and this is an "is" - it simply follows that you "ought" to do it. This volume opens with a brand new chapter from Searle who, in light of his subsequent philosophical developments, expounds the reasons for the validity of that derivation and its crucial significance for social ontology and moral philosophy. Then, in a fresh interview with the editors of this volume, Searle explores a range of topics including how his derivation relates to constitutive rules, and how he views Wittgenstein’s philosophy, deontic logic, and the rationality of action. The remainder of the volume is dedicated to a deep dive into Searle’s essay and its implications by international scholars with diverse backgrounds ranging from analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and logic, to moral philosophy and the philosophy and sociology of law. With thirteen original chapters, the contributors provide fresh and timely insights on hotly debated issues: the nature of "Ought"; the logical structure of the social world; and the possibility of deriving not only "Ought" from "Is", but "Is" from "Ought".
Download or read book The Case Against Consequentialism Reconsidered written by Nikil Mukerji and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that critics of consequentialism have not been able to make a successful and comprehensive case against all versions of consequentialism because they have been using the wrong methodology. This methodology relies on the crucial assumption that consequentialist theories share a defining characteristic. This text interprets consequentialism, instead, as a family resemblance term. On that basis, it argues quite an ambitions claim, viz. that all versions of consequentialism should be rejected, including those that have been created in response to conventional criticisms. The book covers a number of classic themes in normative ethics, metaethics and, particularly, ethical methodology and also touches upon certain aspects of experimental moral philosophy. It is written in clear language and is analytic in its argumentative style. As such, the book should appeal to students, graduate students as well as professional academics with an interest in analytic moral philosophy.
Download or read book Revisiting Imaginary Worlds written by Mark Wolf and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of world and the practice of world creation have been with us since antiquity, but they are now achieving unequalled prominence. In this timely anthology of subcreation studies, an international roster of contributors come together to examine the rise and structure of worlds, the practice of world-building, and the audience's reception of imaginary worlds. Including essays written by world-builders A.K. Dewdney and Alex McDowell and offering critical analyses of popular worlds such as those of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Minecraft, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the issues and concepts involved in imaginary worlds across media platforms.
Download or read book A Sceptical Guide to Meaning and Rules written by Martin Kusch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other recent book in Anglophone philosophy has attracted as much criticism and has found so few friends as Saul Kripke's "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language". Amongst its critics, one finds the very top of the philosophical profession. Yet, it is rightly counted amongst the books that students of philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American world, have to read at some point in their education. Enormously influential, it has given rise to debates that strike at the very heart of contemporary philosophy of mind and language. In this major new interpretation, Martin Kusch defends Kripke's account against the numerous weighty objections that have been put forward over the past twenty years and argues that none of them is decisive. He shows that many critiques are based on misunderstandings of Kripke's reasoning; that many attacks can be blocked by refining and developing Kripke's position; and that many alternative proposals turn out either to be unworkable or to be disguised variants of the view they are meant to replace. Kusch argues that the apparent simplicity of Kripke's text is deceptive and that a fresh reading gives Kripke's overall argument a new strength.
Download or read book A Theory of Causation in the Social and Biological Sciences written by A. Reutlinger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first full length treatment of interventionist theories of causation in the social sciences, the biological sciences and other higher-level sciences the presents original counter arguments to recent trends in the debate and serves as useful introduction to the subject.
