Download or read book Metaphysics and Its Task written by Jorge J. E. Gracia and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1999-07-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By offering the first systematic analysis of the nature of the discipline, Metaphysics and Its Task answers why metaphysics always recovers from the attacks it has been subjected to throughout its history. This is done by examining its object, method, aim, and the kind of propositions of which it is composed. In addition to presenting a new conception of metaphysics and an explanation of the resilience of the discipline, the book offers a novel understanding of the nature and ontological status of categories, an analysis of the nature of reductionism and its role in philosophy, and a discussion and criticism of the main views concerning the nature of metaphysics developed in the history of philosophy. In this nonsectarian book Gracia uses sources ranging from Plato and Aquinas, to Collingwood and Strawson. Written in nontechnical language, it is accompanied by detailed bibliographical references.
Download or read book Metaphysics and Its Task written by Jorge J. E. Gracia and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1999-07-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systematically analyzes the nature of metaphysics.
Download or read book The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science written by Theodore Sider and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics has shifted ground, moving away from necessity and possibility as the lens through which we look at things. Ted Sider shapes the agenda for the subject by exploring how this shift transforms the project of understanding the objects, properties, and quantities of the universe, and the relations between them, in terms of structures.
Download or read book The Logical Basis of Metaphysics written by Michael Dummett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This performance of the Richard Strauss opera Arabella with the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera features vocalists such as Emily Magee, Genia Kuhmeier, and Tomasz Konieczny in the leading roles. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi
Download or read book Every Thing Must Go written by James Ladyman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
Download or read book The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics written by A. W. Moore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the evolution of metaphysics since Descartes and provides a compelling case for why metaphysics matters.
Download or read book The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics written by Martin Heidegger and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-22 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . an important addition to the translations of Heidegger's lecture-courses . . Heidegger's voice can be heard with few of the jolting Germanicisms with which so many translations of Heidegger's texts have been burdened. . . ." —International Philosophical Quarterly "The translators of these lectures have succeeded splendidly in giving readers an intimation of the tensely insistent tone of the original German. Heidegger's concern with a linguistic preconsciousness and with our entrancement before the enigma of existence remains intensely contemporary." —Choice "There is much that is new and valuable in this book, and McNeill and Walker's faithful translation makes it very accessible." —Review of Metaphysics "Whoever thought that Heidegger . . . has no surprises left in him had better read this volume. If its rhetoric is 'hard and heavy' its thought is even harder and essentially more daring than Heideggerians ever imagined Heidegger could be." —David Farrell Krell First published in German in 1938 as volume 29/30 of Heidegger's collected works, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics includes an extended treatment of the history of metaphysics and an elaboration of a philosophy of life and nature. Heidegger's concepts of organism, animal behavior, and environment are uniquely developed and defined with intensity. This work, the text of Martin Heidegger's lecture course of 1929/30, is crucial for an understanding of Heidegger's transition from the major work of his early years, Being and Time, to his later preoccupations with language, truth, and history. First published in German in 1983 as volume 29/30 of Heidegger's collected works, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics includes an extended treatment of the history of metaphysics and an elaboration of a philosophy of life and nature. Heidegger's concepts of organism, animal behavior, and environment are uniquely developed and defined with intensity.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology written by Giuseppina D'Oro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-16 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume provides clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The book gives equal weight to analytical and continental approaches, and pays attention to approaches that are often overlooked.
Download or read book Doing Philosophy written by Timothy Williamson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are philosophers trying to achieve? How can they succeed? Does philosophy make progress? Is it in competition with science, or doing something completely different, or neither? Timothy Williamson tackles some of the key questions surrounding philosophy in new and provocative ways, showing how philosophy begins in common sense curiosity, and develops through our capacity to dispute rationally with each other. Discussing philosophy's ability to clarify our thoughts, he explains why such clarification depends on the development of philosophical theories, and how those theories can be tested by imaginative thought experiments, and compared against each other by standards similar to those used in the natural and social sciences. He also shows how logical rigour can be understood as a way of enhancing the explanatory power of philosophical theories. Drawing on the history of philosophy to provide a track record of philosophical thinking's successes and failures, Williamson overturns widely held dogmas about the distinctive nature of philosophy in comparison to the sciences, demystifies its methods, and considers the future of the discipline. From thought experiments, to deduction, to theories, this little book will cause you to totally rethink what philosophy is.
Download or read book The End of Philosophy written by Martin Heidegger and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-04-15 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joan Stambaugh's translations of the works of Heidegger, accomplished with his guidance, have made key aspects of his thought and philosophy accessible to readers of English for many years. This collection, writes Stambaugh, contains Heidegger's attempt "to show the history of Being as metaphysics," combining three chapters from the philosopher's Nietzsche ("Metaphysics as a History of Being," "Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics," and "Recollection in Metaphysics") with a selection from Vorträge und Aufsätze ("Overcoming Metaphysics").
Download or read book Metaphysics and Explanation written by W. H. Capitan and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 1966-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an unusual variety of topics presented during the fifth annual Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy. Essays topics include: a dispute of the standard deductivist account of scientific testability; two definitions of “nonsense” that are closely related and correlate to science's concern with truth and philosophy's concern with concepts; contesting the causes of voluntary actions purported in Hart and Honoré's Causation and the Law; distinguishing two kinds of metaphysical tasks-—taxonomic and evaluative; and discussions of “what a thing is” in terms of its qualities and particulars and the distinction between numerical and conceptual differences, universals and individuation.
Download or read book Metaphysical Emergence written by Jessica M. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.
Download or read book Centering and Extending written by Steven G. Smith and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original metaphysical proposal building on classical and contemporary sources. In Centering and Extending, Steven G. Smith retrieves and refashions some of the best ideas of classical and early modern metaphysics to support insight into the natures of mental and material beings and their relations. Avoiding what he critiques as distortive paths of idealism, materialism, repressive monism, and overly permissive pluralism, Smith builds his framework on centering and extending as universal principles of formation. Identifying the basic consistency of being with these principles in symmetrical partnership enables a naturalist process view that, unlike Whiteheads, does not overbalance toward the subjective and teleological and, unlike Deleuze and Guattaris, does not overbalance toward the material and chaotic. This view supports useful conceptions of mind and matter, form and energy, reason and cause, and a layered world order without relying on a blind concept of supervenience or emergence. It also respects and reinforces a division of roles between metaphysical sense-making and spiritual determinations of meaningfulness. This is a highly original, speculative, and deeply learned metaphysical treatise on the basic categories of existence needed to account for human experience of the world. It contributes to the contemporary metaphysical discussion in Western philosophy by adding a new, intelligent, and interesting voice. Robert Cummings Neville, author of Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One
Download or read book The Problem of Metaphysics and the Meaning of Metaphysical Explanation written by Hartley Burr Alexander and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-05-02 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Problem of Metaphysics and the Meaning of Metaphysical Explanation: An Essay in Definitions In this preface it may not be amiss explicitly to state cer tain convictions implied in the thinking here out-wrought. First there is a conviction that metaphysic is not a science of things ultimate in the cosmos, but of things ultimate in human life and destiny and ultimate only for human in sight; that consequently, metaphysical solutions must change as the human outlook changes, and that the way of our thought must develop as our powers of intuition become enlarged. No final metaphysical solution is possible, because so long as human intelligence broadens metaphysical truth must alter. It is not independent nor static, but exists for knowledge alone. That there is need to-day of a new metaphysic, a new vision of man's destiny, a new and virile exaltation of his ideals, - this, too, is a conviction underlying these writings. But the time for the great work is not yet. First must be written. As unmistakably as the century past has written the body's genesis, the genesis and evolution of the mind. To this task the natural sciences and the science of history, the varied branches of anthropology, psychology, philosophy in its manifold fields, all must contribute. And when the task is performed, or even in large part performed, forth shall arise the new synthesis, the new world-vision, and it shall be in evitable in its inspiration. But before that day we who hope for the advent must cleanse and order our house of thought, we must come to an understanding with ourselves and achieve some sane understanding of the metaphysic where with we were born. It is for the furthering of this humbler, but not unessential end, that this essay was written. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Download or read book Metaphysics written by T. Ando and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1960 I visited Oxford and stayed there several months. This book was written as some slight memorial of my days in that ancient seat of learning. It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge the great debt I own to Mr. D. Lyness in the task of putting it into English. In addition I remember with gratitude Dr. J. L. Ackrill of Brasenose College, who gave me unfailing encouragement, and also Dr. R. A. Rees of Jesus College, who read my manuscript through and subjected it to a minute revision. Lastly for permission to quote from Sir W. D. Ross' translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, I have to thank the editors of Oxford University Press. Kyoto, Japan T.A. 61 Sep.19 . To answer the readers' complaints that the first edition did not ex plain the author's attitude towards metaphysics, one more chapter on new positivism was written in 1966, but the publication was delayed till the second edition. Special thanks are due to Mr. E. B. Brooks for his assistance in writing English, to Prof. Philip P. Wiener, and to Dr. R. A. Rees, both for some kind services. T. A. Okayama 1973 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I I. THE ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT OF METAPHYSICS I. Reimer's Theory 3 2. Aristotle's Metaphysics 6 II. THE TRADITION OF THE CONCEPT OF METAPHYSICS Ancient Interpretations 1.
Download or read book The Metaphysics written by Aristotle and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-05-27 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hardheaded view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy.
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.
