Download or read book Process Metaphysics written by Nicholas Rescher and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1996-02-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a synoptic, compact, and accessible exposition for readers who want to inform themselves regarding this influential and interesting sector of twentieth-century American philosophy.

Download or read book Empiricism and the Problem of Metaphysics written by Paul Studtmann and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-10-11 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empiricism and the Problem of Metaphysics develops and defends an empiricist solution to the problem of metaphysics, then examines the implications of such a solution for skeptical arguments and the is-ought gap. At the heart of the solution is an empirically verifiable empiricist view of the a priori.

Download or read book Beyond Matter written by Roger Trigg and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does science have all the answers? Can it even deal with abstract reasoning beyond the world we experience? How can we ensure that the physical world is sufficiently ordered to be intelligible to humans? How can mathematics, a product of human minds, unlock the secrets of the physical universe? Should all such questions be considered inadmissible if science cannot settle them? Metaphysics has traditionally been understood as reasoning beyond the reach of science, sometimes even claiming realities beyond its grasp. Because of this, metaphysics is often contemptuously dismissed by scientists and philosophers who wish to remain within the bounds of what can be scientifically proven. Yet scientists at the frontiers of physics unwittingly engage in metaphysics, as they are now happy to contemplate whole universes that are, in principle, beyond human reach. Roger Trigg challenges those who deny that science needs philosophical assumptions. Trigg claims that the foundations of science themselves have to lie beyond science. It takes reasoning apart from experience to discover what is not yet known and this metaphysical reasoning to imagine realities beyond what can be accessed. “In Beyond Matter, Roger Trigg advances a powerful, persuasive, fair-minded argument that the sciences require a philosophical, metaphysical foundation. This is a brilliant book for newcomers to the philosophy of science and experts alike.” —Charles Taliaferro, professor of philosophy, St. Olaf College

Download or read book The Metaphysics of Quantities written by J. E. Wolff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-27 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are physical quantities, and in particular, what makes them quantitative? This book articulates and defends an original answer to this important, insufficiently understood question through the novel position of substantival structuralism. This position argues that quantitativeness is an irreducible feature of attributes, and quantitative attributes are best understood as substantival structured spaces. The book first explores what it means for an attribute to be quantitative, and what metaphysical implications a commitment to quantitative attributes has. It then sets the stage to address the metaphysical and ontological consequences of the existence of quantitative attributes.

Download or read book A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind Uploading written by Keith Wiley and published by Humanity+ Press and Alautun Press. This book was released on 2014-09-13 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MIND-UPLOADING: the process of transferring one’s mind from the brain to a new substrate, generally a computer. It is the stuff of science fiction, immediately recognizable in contemporary literature and cinema. However, it has also become increasingly respectable—or at least approachable—within technological, neurological, and philosophical circles. This book begins with a rich taxonomy of hypothetical procedures by which mind-uploading might be achieved, even if only in the realm of thought experiment. This is likely the most thorough collection of such procedures yet compiled and should form the basis of any reader’s personal philosophy of mind and mind-uploading. It then offers one such philosophy of mind, along with an analysis and interpretation of the scenarios in the taxonomy through the lens of this philosophy. This book will be an important component of any curious reader’s developing philosophy of mind and mind-uploading. Please note that this book is copublished by Humanity+ Press and Alautun Press, even though Google's "publisher" entry may only state one publisher. Praise for A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading “Starting with a very useful description of the ways that minds may be uploaded in the future, this book steps through some of the key philosophical issues that mind uploading poses. What is consciousness? Is there personal identity? What would the relationship of an organic person be to his mind clone? If we can copy minds would that mean there is no free will? This book makes a useful contribution to a debate that our children will undoubtedly have a stake in.” —JAMES J. HUGHES PH.D. • Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies • Author, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future “Along with AGI, life extension and cyborgs, mind uploading is going to be one of the major transformative technologies in the next century. Keith Wiley has done us all a favor by providing the most careful conceptual analysis of mind uploading that I've seen. The book is bound to become the standard reference regarding the various types of possible mind uploading, and the philosophical and scientific issues involved with each. As mind uploading moves closer to reality, his analysis and others inspired by it will provide valuable practical guidance to scientists and engineers working on the technology, as well as ordinary people making decisions about their own potential uploading to alternate physical substrates.” —BEN GOERTZEL PH.D. • CEO of Novamente • Vice Chair at Humanity+ Magazine • Chief Scientist at Aidyia Holdings • Advisor to the Singularity Institute “Keith Wiley artfully blends key concepts, philosophy, and nascent technologies together in a fascinating work on mind uploading. His coverage of the field is broad and deep, and jolts readers to see that a spark at the end of the tunnel can now be seen in moving this technology from science fiction to science reality.” —ERIC KLIEN • President of the Lifeboat Foundation “Keith Wiley has been involved with the pursuit of technology to accomplish mind uploading or whole brain emulation almost since the very moment those ideas crystalized and the terminology was born. In this book, he has diligently applied that long experience and his attention to detail. Carefully separating and describing the different paths and possible issues on the way to mind uploading, Wiley anchors the science and its philosophy. If you have ever been confused by the cornucopia of concepts bandied about, or if you want to dig deeply into the possibilities and consequences of mind uploading, then this book is for you.” —RANDAL A. KOENE PH.D. • Founder & CEO of Carboncopies.org • Founder of Minduploading.org • Science Director for the 2045 Initiative • Co-founder of the Neural Engineering Corporation • past Director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia

Download or read book Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics written by Hans Joachim Kramer and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1990-10-09 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the relationship of the two traditions of Platonic interpretation -- the indirect and the direct traditions, the written dialogues and the unwritten doctrines. Kramer, who is the foremost proponent of the Tubingen School of interpretation, presents the unwritten doctrines as the crown of Plato's system and the key revealing it. Kramer unfolds the philosophical significance of the unwritten doctrines in their fullness. He demonstrates the hermeneutic fruitfulness of the unwritten doctrines when applied to the dialogues. He shows that the doctrines are a revival of the presocratic theory renovated and brought to a new plane through Socrates. In this way, Plato emerges as the creator of classical metaphysics. In the Third Part, Kramer compares the structure of Platonism, as construed by the Tubingen School, with current philosophical structures such as analytic philosophy, Hegel, phenomenology, and Heidegger. Of the five appendices, the most important presents English translations of the ancient testimonies on the unwritten doctrines. These include the "self-testimonies of Plato." There is also a bibliography on the problem of the unwritten doctrines.

Download or read book Process Metaphysics and Mutative Life written by Wahida Khandker and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a survey of key process-philosophical approaches that, in conversation with selected concepts across the biological and physical sciences, help us to think about living processes, or ‘lived time,’ at different scales of functioning. The first part is written from an opening perspective on the question of the differing scales of analysis provided by Alfred North Whitehead. In particular, his interest in questions arising from the quantum mechanical reconciliation with classical mechanics informs the first two chapters that address problematic categorizations of life as variously ‘despotic,’ ‘invasive,’ or as primitive (in the radically more-than-human case of micro-organisms), whose potential recategorization relies on our willingness to acknowledge changes in value depending on the scale at which we view them. The second part of the book concerns methodologies, in the light of works by Henri Bergson, whose intertwining concerns with epistemology and ontology in his theories of mind and life serve as a model for a process philosophy of biology. The chapters focus on techniques used across philosophy and the sciences to visualize processes that are otherwise unavailable to us due to the limitations of our perceptual faculties, no matter how sophisticated the tools for analysis, from microscopes to telescopes, have become. This book concludes with a consideration of the relations between parts and wholes in process, panpsychist, and ecological terms. It revisits the question of ecological balance and the place of human activities in relation to it, with reference to works of Charles Hartshorne and William James.

Download or read book The Power of Miracle Metaphysics written by Robert B Stone and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book introduces you to the miraculous metaphysical powers within you right now, by giving you the methods you need to put them into positive action. In a few days you can be demonstrating these powers in many ways. If I tell you in what ways now it will astound you. But these incredible happenings will become commonplace for you by the time you finish this book." (From the introduction by Dr. Stone.)

Download or read book From Morality to Metaphysics written by Angus Ritchie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Angus Ritchie offers an argument for the existence of God, which is based on our most fundamental moral beliefs. He argues for the 'deliberative indispensability' of moral realism, and asserts that only theism can adequately explain our capacity for knowledge of objective moral truths.

Download or read book Sir Thomas Gresham and Gresham College written by Francis Ames-Lewis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 1997 the Society for Renaissance Studies and Gresham College together organised a conference to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Gresham College’s foundation. The papers delivered at that conference and assembled in this book examine why Gresham College was established, and how its purposes and activities dovetailed with the socio-cultural life of Elizabethan and Stuart London. The first group of papers considers the social and mercantile career of Sir Thomas Gresham within the commercial centre of Elizabethan London; why he wished to establish Gresham College; and what functions he may have intended it to serve. The second group sets the academic activities of the College and its professors within the broader context of contemporary intellectual life. Papers in this group consider in what ways early Gresham professors contributed in particular to developments in the more practical disciplines such as geometry and astronomy.

Download or read book Orthogonal Procedures written by Adam Rothstein and published by Resurrection House. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything you are about to read is true. Mostly. After US Postmaster Theodore Roosevelt showed the Nazis who was boss in 1942, the Postal Bureau--part of the Department of Transportation--ushered in an era of scientific marvels: simulcast via satellite, sub-orbital transnational flights, dazzle pistols, and electromagnetic driverless cars. However, long-simmering feuds between the Shamans of Commerce and the Wizards of Technology were not forgotten, and it isn't until the age of Sputnik and the Space Race that the secret organizations buried deep within the US Weather Service and Census Bureau make their move against the Department of Transportation. To regain control of the Administration, they'll need to rely on older--more esoteric--technologies: astrology, blood rituals, and strange creatures long thought extinct. It's up to G-man Fred Mackey of the Electromagnetic Bureau, Domestic Interference Engineering Section, to figure out how to science America back on track. With the assistance of the enigmatic Assistant Secretary for Innovation and the world's leading specialist in rocket science and all-around occultnik, Mackey tackles the byzantine bureaucracy of a vast government conspiracy that extends from deep space to deep beneath the earth. Welcome to 1970. This is the history you were never taught . . .

Download or read book Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory written by Barry Barnes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1974.

Download or read book Beyond the Necessary God written by Paul J. DeHart and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Necessary God examines the trinitarian thought of German theologian Eberhard Jungel. One of the most creative theologians working with the legacy of Karl Barth, Jungel combines the critical interaction of his doctrine with metaphysical traditions, philosophical anthropology, and reflection on language. In this accessibly written book, Paul DeHart offers an elegant introduction, exposition, and interpretation of the work of a theologian who is only beginning to be translated and understood in the English-speaking world. By carefully guiding the reader through Jungel's assessment of crucial theological questions, DeHart makes a significant scholarly contribution and fills a gap in English-language scholarship on Jungel. "In light of the death of the God of metaphysical theism, Eberhard Jungel creatively develops the theological concept of God--the God who comes to human speech--in a manner conversant with modern and post-modern traditions. Useful both to the theological scholar and the advanced student, Paul DeHart's book is a careful and important exposition of Jungel's theological contributions, with special attention given to his doctrine of God."--Paul E. Stroble

Download or read book With Poetry and Philosophy written by David Miller and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking its point of initiation from the long-standing dialogue between poetry and philosophy concerning their respective claims to contrasting orders of insight, this book tackles issues relating to the differing conditions of knowledge and insights relating to language and thought imparted by ‘modern’ poets and philosophers, from Kant and Wordsworth to Adorno and Hardy. The book draws on recent debates in literary theory and philosophy in order to outline a new ‘dialogic’ approach for conducting comparative criticism and literary history. The poets and the philosophers appear under configurations of reading that produce considerations that are unexpected, yet strangely fitting.

Download or read book An Introductory Philosophy of Medicine written by James A. Marcum and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-05-07 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author explores the shifting philosophical boundaries of modern medical knowledge and practice occasioned by the crisis of quality-of-care, especially in terms of the various humanistic adjustments to the biomedical model. To that end he examines the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical boundaries of these medical models. He begins with their metaphysics, analyzing the metaphysical positions and presuppositions and ontological commitments upon which medical knowledge and practice is founded. Next, he considers the epistemological issues that face these medical models, particularly those driven by methodological procedures undertaken by epistemic agents to constitute medical knowledge and practice. Finally, he examines the axiological boundaries and the ethical implications of each model, especially in terms of the physician-patient relationship. In a concluding Epilogue, he discusses how the philosophical analysis of the humanization of modern medicine helps to address the crisis-of-care, as well as the question of “What is medicine?” The book’s unique features include a comprehensive coverage of the various topics in the philosophy of medicine that have emerged over the past several decades and a philosophical context for embedding bioethical discussions. The book’s target audiences include both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as healthcare professionals and professional philosophers. “This book is the 99th issue of the Series Philosophy and Medicine...and it can be considered a crown of thirty years of intensive and dynamic discussion in the field. We are completely convinced that after its publication, it can be finally said that undoubtedly the philosophy of medicine exists as a special field of inquiry.”

Download or read book The Metaphysics of Trust written by Philip Goodchild and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Credit and Faith and Economic Theology, this third volume in the series develops a metaphysics which is missing when trust is ordered around economic theories and institutions. Human existence may be conceived according to its temporal dimensions of appropriation, participation, and offering. Engaging with the Western philosophical tradition from the Neo-Pythagoreans and Plato to Heidegger and Arendt, drawing especially from Augustine and Weil, Goodchild offers striking reconstructions of the meanings of economic, political and religious dimensions of life. The outcome is an elaboration of conceptions of wealth, power, contingency, necessity and grace which give a new orientation to human life and endeavour. Goodchild situates this discussion within the current historical era of the breakdown of global financial capitalism. He draws from the Financial Revolution in England as a time of crisis which illuminates our own. Faced with a range of global crises, Goodchild proposes an alternative between strategies for survival: either submission before a Great Machine of Credit as an autonomous, unthinking system for regulating human behaviour or accession to the necessity of grace as a way of empowering the pursuit of wealth, justice and thought.

Download or read book Aristotle s Metaphysics written by Roberto Radice and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-03-27 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors collaborated with 50 scholars from around the world to produce an exhaustive annotated bibliography on the central work of the Aristotelian corpus. It brings together signed descriptions of more than 3200 books and articles, as well as several thousand reviews and notes, originally published in English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Russian. Descriptions are fully cross-referenced to one another. The first [Italian] edition (Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1996) has been thoroughly revised, corrected and updated, and is complemented by an index of the most important loci Aristotelici.