Download or read book Solipsism and Induction written by E. Teensma and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences MITECS written by Robert A. Wilson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-09-04 with total page 1106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences have offered multidisciplinary ways of understanding the mind and cognition. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) is a landmark, comprehensive reference work that represents the methodological and theoretical diversity of this changing field. At the core of the encyclopedia are 471 concise entries, from Acquisition and Adaptationism to Wundt and X-bar Theory. Each article, written by a leading researcher in the field, provides an accessible introduction to an important concept in the cognitive sciences, as well as references or further readings. Six extended essays, which collectively serve as a roadmap to the articles, provide overviews of each of six major areas of cognitive science: Philosophy; Psychology; Neurosciences; Computational Intelligence; Linguistics and Language; and Culture, Cognition, and Evolution. For both students and researchers, MITECS will be an indispensable guide to the current state of the cognitive sciences.
Download or read book Analytical Solipsism written by William Lewis Todd and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers usually have been anxious to avoid solipsism. A large number of good and great philosophers have tried to refute it. Of course, these philosophers have not always had the same target in mind and, like everything else, solipsism over the centuries has become increasingly elusive and subtle. In this book I undertake to state the position in its most modern and what I take to be its most plausible form. At some points in the history of philosophy the solipsist has been one who denied the existence of everything except himself or even the existence of everything except his own present sensations. At other times, the solipsist instead of doubting these things has merely insisted that there could be no good reason for believing in the existence of anything beyond one's own present sensations. Roughly, this doubt is aimed at reasons rather than at things. A solipsist of this sort appears in Santayana's Scepticism and Animal Faith.
Download or read book Why Solipsism Matters written by Sami Pihlström and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solipsism is one of the philosophical thesis or ideas that has generally been regarded as highly implausible, or even crazy. The view that the world is “my world” in the sense that nothing exists independently of my mind, thought, and/or experience is, understandably, frowned up as a genuine philosophical position. For this reason, solipsism might be regarded as an example of a philosophical position that does not “matter” at all. It does not seem to play any role in our serious attempts to understand the world and ourselves. However, by arguing that solipsism does matter, after all, Why Solipsism Matters more generally demonstrates that philosophy, even when dealing with highly counterintuitive and “crazy” ideas, may matter in surprising, unexpected ways. It will be shown that the challenge of solipsism should make us rethink fundamental assumptions concerning subjectivity, objectivity, realism vs. idealism, relativism, as well as key topics such as ethical responsibility – that is, our ethical relations to other human beings – and death and mortality. Why Solipsism Matters is not only an historical review of the origins and development of the concept of solipsism and a exploration of some of its key philosophers (Kant and Wittgenstein to name but a few) but it develops an entirely new account of the idea. One which takes seriously the global, socially networked world in which we live in which the very real ramifications of solipsism - including narcissism - can be felt.
Download or read book The Problem of Free Will in David Foster Wallace written by Paolo Pitari and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-27 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that David Foster Wallace failed to provide a response to the existential predicament of our time. Wallace wanted to confront despair through art, but he remained trapped, and his entrapment originates in the "existentialist contradiction": the impossibility of affirming the meaningfulness of life and an ethics of compassion while believing in free will. To substantiate this thesis, the analysis reads Wallace in conversation with the existentialist philosophers and writers who influenced him: Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It compares his non-fiction with the sociologies of Christopher Lasch, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, and Anthony Giddens. And it finds inspiration in Giacomo Leopardi, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Emanuele Severino to conclude that the philosophy which pervades Wallace’s works entails despair and represents the essence of our civilization’s interpretation of the world.
Download or read book Rationalized Epistemology written by Albert A. Johnstone and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1991-10-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines skeptical problems originally raised by Descartes and Hume and currently discussed in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. It answers the basic skeptical questions concerning the existence of what is now unperceived, the reality of what is perceived, and the existence of an external world. Johnstone shows how the recently proposed solutions to these skeptical problems— pragmatic, coherentist, linguistic, and new-Kantian — do not and cannot work, and how only a return to foundational investigation on the terrain of the radical skeptic is adequate to the task. His analyses make for a valuable summary of every significant argument brought against skepticism. In the course of his investigation, Johnstone probes a number of topical issues: knowledge, rationality, the nature of meaning, nonverbal thinking, the bodily nature of the thinking self, parasitism, the role of the tactile-kinesthetic body in feeling and belief, and the necessary role of free will in epistemology.
Download or read book Personality Disorders and States of Aloneness written by John G. McGraw and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the second volume of an interdisciplinary study, chiefly one of philosophy and psychology, which concerns personality, especially the abnormal in terms of states of aloneness, primarily that of the negative emotional isolation customarily known as loneliness. Other states of aloneness investigated include solitude, reclusiveness, seclusion, desolation, isolation, and what the author terms “aloneliness,” “alonism,” “lonism,” and “lonerism.” Insofar as this study most explicitly focuses on abnormal personalities, it employs the general and specific definitions of personality aberrations as formulated by the American Psychiatric Association in its latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). The author views personality as preeminently comprised of the individual's interpersonal relationships. Unlike the DSM-IV, he proposes that people with personality disorders not only possibly but necessarily manifest deviancy regarding interpersonal functioning via serious shortcomings in shared inwardness, paramountly reciprocated intimacy. This work also engages in an analysis of five social factors that are conducive to predisposing, precipitating, and maintaining negative kinds of personality and aloneness. The author has formed these factors into an acronym titled SCRAM since when they are present, intimacy scurries away and in its absence, loneliness and other sorts of unwanted aloneness scamper in and fill the person with unhappiness via, for instance, sadness and self-worthlessness. The constituents of SCRAM are the following social illnesses: Successitis (for example, the fixation on fame and fortune), Capitalitis (greed-driven, unfettered capitalism), Rivalitis (competitivitis), Atomitis (hyper-individualism), and Materialitis (for example, the anti-spirituality of consumeritis). In sum, this book provides a different perspective on personality via the lenses of various types of aloneness and their lack of public and private intimacy, especially love.
Download or read book Minding Dogs written by Michele Merritt and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the past decade has seen a surge of research regarding canine cognition, this newfound interest has not caught the attention of many philosophers. Studies pertaining to dog minds have been pouring out of canine cognition labs all over the world, but they remain relatively ensconced within the scientific, sociological, and anthropological communities, and very little philosophical thought on dog cognition exists. Philosophers certainly have not shied away from theorizing about the nature of nonhuman animal cognition generally. Theories range from Cartesian disavowal of all nonhuman intelligence to arguments that even fish have complex minds and therefore humans should not eat them. Serious philosophical considerations about dogs and their relationship to humans, however, remain incredibly rare. Even less common, if not entirely nonexistent, is a critical examination of the question “What are dogs thinking?” and what asking and attempting to answer this question reveals, not so much about dogs, but about us. With Minding Dogs Michele Merritt attempts to fill two significant gaps in the philosophy of animal cognition. First, she adds to the growing discussion on canine cognition, which has been overlooked until recently and requires more consideration. Second, she takes seriously our dynamic collaborations with our canine friends as crucial to understanding both their minds and our own.
Download or read book The Turing Test written by James H. Moor and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives the most comprehensive, in depth and contemporary assessment of this classic topic in artificial intelligence. It is the first to elaborate in such detail the numerous conflicting points of view on many aspects of this multifaceted, controversial subject. It offers new insights into Turing's own interpretation and is essential reading for research on the Turing test and for teaching undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, computer science, and cognitive science.
Download or read book An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge written by Dan O'Brien and published by Polity. This book was released on 2006-12-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge guides the reader through the key issues and debates in contemporary epistemology. Lucid, comprehensive and accessible, it is an ideal textbook for students who are new to the subject and for university undergraduates. The book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses the concept of knowledge and distinguishes between different types of knowledge. Part II surveys the sources of knowledge, considering both a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Parts III and IV provide an in-depth discussion of justification and scepticism. The final part of the book examines our alleged knowledge of the past, other minds, morality and God. O'Brien uses engaging examples throughout the book, taking many from literature and the cinema. He explains complex issues, such as those concerning the private language argument, non-conceptual content, and the new riddle of induction, in a clear and accessible way. This textbook is an invaluable guide to contemporary epistemology.
Download or read book Medical Reasoning written by Erwin B. Montgomery (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern medicine is one of humankind's greatest achievements.Yet today, frequent medical errors and irreproducibility in biomedical research suggest that tremendous challenges beset it. Understanding these challenges and trying to remedy them have driven considerable and thoughtful critical analyses, but the apparent intransigence of these problems suggests a different perspective is needed. Now more than ever, when we see options and opportunities for healthcare expanding while resources are diminishing, it is extremely important that healthcare professionals practice medicine wisely. In Medical Reasoning, neurologist Erwin B. Montgomery, Jr. offers a new and vital perspective. He begins with the idea that the need for certainty in medical decision-making has been the primary driving force in medical reasoning. Doctors must routinely confront countless manifestations of symptoms, diseases, or behaviors in their patients. Therefore, either there are as many different "diseases" as there are patients or some economical set of principles and facts can be combined to explain each patient's disease. The response to this epistemic conundrum has driven medicine throughout history: the challenge is to discover principles and facts and then to develop means to apply them to each unique patient in a manner that provides certainty. This book studies the nature of medical decision making systematically and rigorously in both an analytic and historical context, addressing medicine's unique need for certainty in the face of the enormous variety of diseases and in the manifestations of the same disease in different patients. The book also examines how the social, legal, and economic circumstances in which medical decision-making occurs greatly influence the nature of medical reasoning. Medical Reasoning is essential for those at the intersection of healthcare and philosophy.
Download or read book Induction Probability and Skepticism written by Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Chattopadhyaya examines the epistemological and methodological implications of induction and probability. Opposed to foundationalism and the thesis of certainty of human knowledge, he has defended a qualified form of fallibilism and constructive kind of skepticism.
Download or read book The Analysis of Matter written by Bertrand Russell and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Russell Arg Philosophers written by Sainsbury and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-07-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Bertrand Russell Memorial Volume written by Roberts, George W and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Volume XXII of twenty-two in a collection on 20th Century Philosophy. Originally published in 1979, this volume attempts to assess some of the achievements of Bertrand Russell in philosophy, logic and mathematics, ethics and politics.
Download or read book The Analysis of Matter written by Bertrand Russell and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `The whole book is candid and stimulating and, for both its subject and its treatment, one of the best that Mr Russell has given us.' - The Times
Download or read book Causation Freedom and Determinism written by Mortimer Taube and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1936, divides into roughly two parts: a re-examination of historical material; and a positive theory of causation suggested by the results of this re-examination. The historical study discloses an ambiguity in the meanings of causation and determinism; it discloses also that this ambiguity is transferred to the meaning of freedom.
