Download or read book Semantic Challenges to Realism written by Mark Quentin Gardiner and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although many philosophers espouse anti-realism, the only sustained arguments for the position are due to Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Gardiner's unpretentious style and lucid organization make sense of Dummett's and Putnam's discourse.

Download or read book Semantic Realism and the Anti realist Challenge written by Carsten Martin Hansen and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scientific Realism written by Frederick Suppe and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An authoritative account of the semantic conception of theories by one of its chief developers. Suppe has always seen the semantic conception as providing a way of moving beyond empiricist philosophies of science. This book provides the definitive account of his views not only on the issue of realism, but also on a variety of other issues central to the philosophy of science." -- Ronald N. Giere, author of Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach

Download or read book Austere Realism written by Terence E. Horgan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-08-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative ontological-cum-semantic position asserting that the right ontology is austere in its exclusion of numerous common-sense and scientific posits and that many statements employing such posits are nonetheless true. The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence Horgan and Matjaz Potrc argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call “blobjectivism”—the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos (“the blobject”), which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts. The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach—products of a decade-long collaboration—will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy.

Download or read book Semantics and Truth written by Jan Woleński and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a historical (with an outline of the history of the concept of truth from antiquity to our time) and systematic exposition of the semantic theory of truth formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1930s. This theory became famous very soon and inspired logicians and philosophers. It has two different, but interconnected aspects: formal-logical and philosophical. The book deals with both, but it is intended mostly as a philosophical monograph. It explains Tarski’s motivation and presents discussions about his ideas (pro and contra) as well as points out various applications of the semantic theory of truth to philosophical problems (truth-criteria, realism and anti-realism, future contingents or the concept of correspondence between language and reality).

Download or read book Realistic Rationalism written by Jerrold J. Katz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997-12-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerrold Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. In Realistic Rationalism, Jerrold J. Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, that numbers are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, he develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology, and philosophical skepticism. Philosophers will use this fresh treatment of realism and rationalism as a starting point for new directions in their own research.

Download or read book The Limits of Realism written by Tim Button and published by . This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tim Button explores the relationship between minds, words, and world. He argues that the two main strands of scepticism are deeply related and can be overcome, but that there is a limit to how much we can show. We must position ourselves somewhere between internal realism and external realism, and we cannot hope to say exactly where.

Download or read book Realism and Antirealism written by William P. Alston and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the past century, a debate has raged over the thesis of realism and its alternatives. Realism—the seemingly commonsensical view that all or most of what we encounter in the world exists and is what it is independently of human thought—has been vigorously denied by such prominent intellectuals as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary Putnam, and Nelson Goodman. The opponents of realism, among them historians and social scientists who support social constructionism, hold that all or most of reality depends on human conceptual schemes and beliefs. In this volume of original essays, a group of philosophers explores the ongoing controversy. The book opens with an introduction by William P. Alston, whose writing on the subject has been widely influential. Selected essays then compare and contrast aspects of the arguments put forward by the realists with those of the antirealists. Other chapters discuss the importance of the debate for philosophical topics such as epistemology and for domains ranging from religion, literature, and science to morality.

Download or read book Moral Disagreement written by Folke Tersman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-13 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Folke Tersman explores the nature of moral thinking by examining moral disagreement.

Download or read book Three Challenges to Moral Realism written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the philosophical position known as moral realism, morality is a robustly objective domain of fact about which many of us have justified beliefs. This dissertation consists of three papers, each of which presents an independent line of argument against this position. In the first paper, I examine Sharon Street's "Darwinian Dilemma," which claims that realists can give no adequate account of the relation between the (supposed) objective moral truths and the evolutionary pressures that have influenced our moral judgments. I develop a general strategy for constructing a realist response that avoids both horns of Street's dilemma. Then, I argue that while such a response escapes the specific critique presented by Street, it fails to adequately rescue moral realism from the epistemological challenges raised by the (putative) fact of widespread evolutionary influence. In the second paper, I consider whether widespread, intractable moral disagreement raises an additional epistemological challenge for moral realists. First, I isolate exactly what sort of disagreement would pose the most serious threat to justified beliefs about objective moral truths, and develop an account of such fundamental disagreements. Next, I examine several popular anti-realist arguments from disagreement, and argue that they fail to undermine the realist position. Finally, I develop a novel argument for the claim that moral disagreement of a particular sort would undermine our ability to attain justified beliefs about objective moral facts. In the final paper, I once again explore the implications of widespread ethical disagreement, but this time through the lens of moral semantics. Realists hold that moral terms such as "good" and "right" refer to objective moral properties, and that different parties to serious moral disputes refer to the same properties as one another when they use these words. I argue that we have excellent reason to doubt that co-reference obtains in cases of fundamental disagreement. The semantic challenge, if successful, undermines the realist's contention that there is a distinct moral reality that we are all attempting to accurately describe when we engage in moral thought and discourse.

Download or read book Meaning Diminished written by Kenneth A. Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning Diminished examines the complex relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry. Kenneth A. Taylor argues that we should expect linguistic and conceptual analysis of natural language to yield far less metaphysical insight into what there is - and the nature of whatthere is - than many philosophers have imagined. Taking a strong stand against the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy, Taylor contends that philosophers as diverse as Kant, with his Transcendental Idealism, Frege, with his aspirational Platonism, Carnap with his distinction between internal andexternal questions, and Strawson, with his descriptive metaphysics, have placed too much confidence in the ability of linguistic and conceptual analysis to achieve deep insight into matters of ultimate metaphysics. He urges philosophers who seek such insight to turn away from the interrogation oflanguage and concepts and back to the more direct interrogation of reality itself. In doing so, he maps out the way forward toward a metaphysically modest semantics, in which semantics carries less weighty metaphysical burdens, and toward a revisionary and naturalistic metaphysics, untethered to thea priori analysis of ordinary language.

Download or read book Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn written by John P. O’Callaghan and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers will be richly rewarded by reading John O’Callaghan’s new book, Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn. Based on his broad knowledge of Aristotle and Aquinas, O’Callaghan provides not only an excellent treatment of Aquinas’s epistemology but also a superb demonstration of just how Aquinas might contribute to contemporary debates. Traditionally, the camps of realism and idealism fiercely engaged one another in the field of epistemology. Thomists participated in confronting idealism from their unique realist position. Post-Wittgenstein, the conflict has been dominated by a form of epistemology that grounds all knowledge in linguistic practice. Since Thomists work in a textual and historical mode, their response to the technical approach of the analytic philosophy in which most of the linguistic epistemologists write has been slow in coming. O’Callaghan expertly closes that gap by successfully bringing together these fields.

Download or read book Realism Rescued written by Jerrold L. Aronson and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 1995 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does science give us a progressively more accurate and objective account of the world? This book by three leading philosophers of science presents a new defense of scientific realism against skeptical and positivist attacks. While positivists view scientific theories as devices for predicting observable phenomena, realists maintain that theories describe hidden processes which account for observable phenomena. This problem raises the question: What are scientific theories about? Do they refer to an unobservable yet real realm of physical processes? It seems undeniable that the scientific endeavor has in some sense made progress. But is the increasing practical success of the physical sciences good grounds for believing that their theories and techniques lead us nearer to the truth? According to Aronson, Harre, and Way, past failures to answer these questions have been due in large part to the assumption that knowledge is expressed in propositions and organized by the canons of logic. On the assumption that science must meet the world in a correspondence between statements and states of affairs, realism turns out to be difficult to defend. Realism Rescued offers a new direction, relying on the importance of models in scientific work. Theories are not to be thought of as sets of propositions, though they can be expressed propositionally. Rather they are models, chunks of orderings of natural kinds. For the first time, the indispensability of models is turned into a powerful argument for realism, an argument that confronts the skeptic on his own ground. By drawing on a new technique of knowledge representation developed in Artificial Intelligence, the dynamic type-hierarchy, the authorsgive a convincing account of the central role of models. Such concepts as verisimilitude, natural kind, natural necessity, and natural law can then be presented far more clearly than ever before.

Download or read book Reality Lost and Found written by Søren Harnow Klausen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a world out there, independent of the way we experience it, think of it or talk about it? If so, can we know how it is? These questions have been a central concern of philosophy throughout most of its history, and they continue to be the subject of an intense debate between realists and antirealists. In this clearly written and comprehensive book, Søren Harnow Klausen presents an argument for realism about the external world, but also attempts to take the antirealist challenge seriously: a sensible realist must acknowledge the force of the skeptical objections and avoid overstating her own case. The book covers a wide range of themes, from the historical origins of antirealism and the views of Berkeley, Kant, Husserl and the logical positivists, to the most recent developments in epistemology and relevant empirical research in psychology, anthropology and linguistics. Topics also include the definition of realism and its relationship to semantics and theories of truth, the prospect of providing a transcendental argument for realism, inference to the best explanation, externalist theories of justification, the basis of our understanding of mind-independent reality, the relevance of evolutionary biology to the realism issue, and theories of intentionality and perception.

Download or read book Global Anti realism written by Andrew Joseph Cortens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an idea on what a defense of realism must involve, discussing specific positions to help readers use it as a guide to identifying anti-realism in all its various guises. It offers a way of understanding anti-realism, both in its local versions and global versions.

Download or read book Defending Realism written by Guido Bonino and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-12-11 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume, first presented at an international conference held at the University of Urbino, Italy, in 2011, explore the different senses of realism, arguing both for and against its distinctive theses and considering these senses from a historical point of view. The first sense is the metaphysical thesis that whatever exists does so, and has the properties it has, independently of whether it is the object of a person's thought or perception. The second sense of realism is epistemological, wherein realism claims that, in some cases, it is possible to know the world as it exists in and of itself. A third sense, which has become known as ontological realism, states that universals exist as well as individuals. The essays collected here make new contributions to these fundamental philosophical issues, which have largely defined western analytic philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to the present day.

Download or read book Anti realism written by Christina M. Slade and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: