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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Metaphysics & ontology
Until the publication of this Liberty Fund edition, the works
contained in "Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of
Mankind" were available only to that elite group of scholars and
readers who could read Latin. This milestone English translation
will provide a general audience with insight into Hutchesons
thought. In the words of the editors: "Hutchesons Latin texts in
logic (Logicae Compendium) and metaphysics (Synopsis Metaphysicae)
form an important part of his collected works. Published
respectively in 1756 and, in its second edition, 1744, these works
represent Hutchesons only systematic treatments of logic, ontology,
and pneumatology, or the science of the soul. They were considered
indispensable texts for the instruction of students in the
eighteenth century. Any serious study of Hutchesons moral and
political philosophy must take into account his understanding of
logic (of ideas, judgments, propositions, and reasoning) and
metaphysics (of existence, individuation, causation, substance, the
soul, and the attributes of God)." The introduction and notes to
this translation provide context to Hutchesons moral philosophy and
thus provide a setting for his philosophy as a whole. The
introduction and notes also provide links to Hutchesons teaching of
logic and metaphysics during his career in Dublin in the 1720s and
to his teaching of moral philosophy at Glasgow from 1730 until his
death in 1746.
Franz Brentano (1838-1917) was a leading philosopher and
psychologist of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the impact of his
scholarship was so great that he became synonymous with a school of
thought and a new approach in scientific philosophy. The Brentano
School stood against the Idealistic and post-Kantian German
tradition and Brentano played a crucial role in the founding of
Austrian philosophy. He had an enormous impact on the work of
Husserl and Heidegger, as well as on Moore's Ethics and Stout and
Russell's analysis of mind. In particular, situated between the
phenomenology movement and the analytic tradition, the concept of
intentionality was redefined by Brentano and has been-and remains-a
key concept of twentieth- and twentieth-first century philosophy of
mind. But Brentano not only reshaped philosophy of mind; he was
also a remarkable and innovative thinker in several other fields of
philosophy, and recent debate in metaethics, metaphysics, and the
history of analytic philosophy shows a strong resurgence of
interest in Brentano's thought. Published to coincide with the
centenary of Brentano's death, this four-volume collection, a new
title from Routledge Major Works, provides an essential
intellectual tool for the exegetical evaluation of all aspects of
Brentano's work. Bringing together early reviews and reactions from
his contemporaries-many of which have never before been translated
into English-as well as the best critical assessments of Brentano's
work, this 'mini library' provides Brentano scholars, historians of
philosophy and psychology, and phenomenologists, with a rigorous
historical appraisal of Brentano's thought and influence.
Brentano's relationships with Husserl, Heidegger, and the
phenomenological tradition are examined in depth, alongside
investigations of key themes from his work on Aristotle, medieval
and modern philosophy, philosophy of mind, logic, ontology, ethics,
aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history.
Carlo Diano's Form and Event has long been known in Europe as a
major work not only for classical studies but even more for
contemporary philosophy. Already available in Italian, French,
Spanish, and Greek, it appears here in English for the first time,
with a substantial Introduction by Jacques Lezra that situates the
book in the genealogy of modern political philosophy. Form and
Event reads the two classical categories of its title
phenomenologically across Aristotle, the Stoics, and especially
Homer. By aligning Achilles with form and Odysseus with event,
Diano links event to embodied and situated subjective experience
that simultaneously finds its expression in a form that objectifies
that experience. Form and event do not exist other than as
abstractions for Diano but they do come together in an
intermingling that Diano refers to as the "eventic form." On
Diano's reading, eventic forms interweave subjectively situated and
embodied experiences, observable in all domains of human and
nonhuman life. A stunning interpretation of Greek antiquity that
continues to resonate since its publication in 1952, Form and Event
anticipates the work of such French and Italian post-war thinkers
as Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Roberto Esposito, and Giorgio
Agamben.
Metaphysical theories are beautiful. At the end of this book, Jiri
Benovsky defends the view that metaphysical theories possess
aesthetic properties and that these play a crucial role when it
comes to theory evaluation and theory choice.Before we get there,
the philosophical path the author proposes to follow starts with
three discussions of metaphysical equivalence. Benovsky argues that
there are cases of metaphysical equivalence, cases of partial
metaphysical equivalence, as well as interesting cases of theories
that are not equivalent. Thus, claims of metaphysical equivalence
can only be raised locally. The slogan is: the best way to do
meta-metaphysics is to do first-level metaphysics.To do this work,
Benovsky focuses on the nature of primitives and on the role they
play in each of the theories involved. He emphasizes the utmost
importance of primitives in the construction of metaphysical
theories and in the subsequent evaluation of them.He then raises
the simple but complicated question: how to make a choice between
competing metaphysical theories? If two theories are equivalent,
then perhaps we do not need to make a choice. But what about all
the other cases of non-equivalent "equally good" theories? Benovsky
uses some of the theories discussed in the first part of the book
as examples and examines some traditional meta-theoretical criteria
for theory choice (various kinds of simplicity, compatibility with
physics, compatibility with intuitions, explanatory power, internal
consistency,...) only to show that they do not allow us to make a
choice.But if the standard meta-theoretical criteria cannot help us
in deciding between competing non-equivalent metaphysical theories,
how then shall we make that choice? This is where Benovsky argues
that metaphysical theories possess aesthetic properties - grounded
in non-aesthetic properties - and that these play a crucial role in
theory choice and evaluation. This view, as well as all the
meta-metaphysical considerations discussed throughout the book,
then naturally lead the author to a form of anti-realism, and at
the end of the journey he offers reasons to think better of the
kind of anti-realist view he proposes to embrace.
www.jiribenovsky.org
Deleuze's publications have attracted enormous attention, but scant
attention has been paid to the existential relevance of Deleuze's
writings. In the lineage of Nietzsche, Life Drawing develops a
fully affirmative Deleuzean aesthetics of existence. For Foucault
and Nehamas, the challenge of an aesthetics of existence is to make
your life, in one way or another, a work of art. In contrast, Bearn
argues that art is too narrow a concept to guide this kind of
existential project. He turns instead to the more generous notion
of beauty, but he argues that the philosophical tradition has
mostly misconceived beauty in terms of perfection. Heraclitus and
Kant are well-known exceptions to this mistake, and Bearn suggests
that because Heraclitean becoming is beyond conceptual
characterization, it promises a sensualized experience akin to what
Kant called free beauty. In this new aesthetics of existence, the
challenge is to become beautiful by releasing a Deleuzean becoming:
becoming becoming. Bearn's readings of philosophical texts-by
Wittgenstein, Derrida, Plato, and others-will be of interest in
their own right.
Space and time are the most fundamental features of our experience
of the world, and yet they are also the most perplexing. Does time
really flow, or is that simply an illusion? Did time have a
beginning? What does it mean to say that time has a direction? Does
space have boundaries, or is it infinite? Is change really
possible? Could space and time exist in the absence of any objects
or events? Are our space and time unique, or could there be other,
parallel worlds with their own space and time? What, in the end,
are space and time? Do they really exist, or are they simply the
constructions of our minds? Robin Le Poidevin provides a clear,
witty, and stimulating introduction to these deep questions, and
many other mind-boggling puzzles and paradoxes. He gives a vivid
sense of the difficulties raised by our ordinary ideas about space
and time, but he also gives us the basis to think about these
problems independently, avoiding large amounts of jargon and
technicality. His book is an invitation to think philosophically
rather than a sustained argument for particular conclusions, but Le
Poidevin does advance and defend a number of controversial views.
He argues, for example, that time does not actually flow, that it
is possible for space and time to be both finite and yet be without
boundaries, and that causation is the key to an understanding of
one of the deepest mysteries of time: its direction. Travels in
Four Dimensions draws on a variety of vivid examples and stories
from science, history, and literature to bring its questions to
life. No prior knowledge of philosophy is required to enjoy this
book. The universe might seem very different after reading it.
This book challenges common debates in philosophy of mind by
questioning the framework of placement problems in contemporary
metaphysics. The author argues that placement problems arise when
exactly one fundamental ontology serves as the base for all
entities, and will propose a pluralist alternative that takes the
diversity of our conceptual resources and ontologies seriously.
This general pluralist account is applied to issues in philosophy
of mind to argue that contemporary debates about the mind-body
problem are built on this problematic framework of placement
problems. The starting point is the plurality of ontologies in
scientific practice. Not only can we describe the world in terms of
physical, biological, or psychological ontologies, but any serious
engagement with scientific ontologies will identify more specific
ontologies in each domain. For example, there is not one unified
ontology for biology, but rather a diversity of scientific
specializations with different ontological needs. Based on this
account of scientific practice the author argues that there is no
reason to assume that ontological unification must be possible
everywhere. Without this ideal, the scope of ontological
unification turns out to be an open empirical question and there is
no need to present unification failures as philosophically puzzling
"placement problems".
In fifteen essays-one new, two newly revised and expanded, three
with new postscripts-Kendall L. Walton wrestles with philosophical
issues concerning music, metaphor, empathy, existence, fiction, and
expressiveness in the arts. These subjects are intertwined in
striking and surprising ways. By exploring connections among them,
appealing sometimes to notions of imagining oneself in shoes
different from one's own, Walton creates a wide-ranging mosaic of
innovative insights.
It has rarely been recognized that the Christian writers of the
first millennium pursued an ambitious and exciting philosophical
project alongside their engagement in the doctrinal controversies
of their age. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient
Metaphysics offers, for the first time, a full analysis of this
Patristic philosophy. It shows how it took its distinctive shape in
the late fourth century and gives an account of its subsequent
development until the time of John of Damascus. The book falls into
three main parts. The first starts with an analysis of the
philosophical project underlying the teaching of the Cappadocian
fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of
Nazianzus. This philosophy, arguably the first distinctively
Christian theory of being, soon became near-universally shared in
Eastern Christianity. Just a few decades after the Cappadocians,
all sides in the early Christological controversy took its
fundamental tenets for granted. Its application to the
Christological problem thus appeared inevitable. Yet it created
substantial conceptual problems. Parts two and three describe in
detail how these problems led to a series of increasingly radical
modifications of the Cappadocian philosophy. In part two, Zachhuber
explores the miaphysite opponents of the Council of Chalcedon,
while in part three he discusses the defenders of the Council from
the early sixth to the eighth century. Through this overview, the
book reveals this period as one of remarkable philosophical
creativity, fecundity, and innovation.
The Clarendon Aristotle Series is designed for both students and
professionals. It provides accurate translations of selected
Aristotelian texts, accompanied by incisive commentaries that focus
on philosophical problems and issues. The volumes in the series
have been widely welcomed and favourably reviewed. Important new
titles are being added to the series, and a number of
well-established volumes are being reissued with revisions and/or
supplementary material. Laura M. Castelli presents a new
translation and comprehensive commentary of the tenth book (Iota)
of Aristotle's Metaphysics, which provides Aristotle's most
systematic account of what it is for something to be one, what it
is for something to be a unit of measurement, what contraries are,
and what the function of contraries is in shaping the structure of
reality into genera and species. There are some objective
difficulties in making sense of Iota as a part of the Metaphysics
and as a piece of Aristotelian philosophy. Castelli's Introduction
tackles such general difficulties, while the commentary provides a
detailed analysis of the arguments, of the more specific issues and
of the philosophical points emerging from Aristotle's text. The
English translation, based on Ross' critical edition, is meant as a
tool for readers with or without knowledge of ancient Greek.
Although they were not written by Kant himself, the transcripts of
his lectures constitute an important source for philosophical
research today. Some of the contributions presented in this volume
discuss the authenticity and significance of these transcripts, for
example the status of Kant's lectures on logic and anthropology,
while others shed light on the historical formation of specific
writings, for instance the texts on the philosophy of religion. The
contributions provide new insights into Kant's philosophy, that, if
looking at Kant's published writings alone, we would not be able to
gain. In a number of cases, a critical analysis of Kant's lectures
gives us a better understanding of his published works. Thus his
lectures on metaphysics shed new light on his Critique of Pure
Reason, while the lecture on natural law is a valuable source for
the understanding of his published legal writings.
The book contains a systematical investigation of the ethics from a
scholastic standpoint. It begins by examining the fundamental
theory of action. After that the author develops the conceptions of
duty and laws as concrete duties. Finally the book examines social
ethics as embracing all the rights and duties of men in their
relations with other men, both as individualsand as groups, either
in the family or in the state. The author offers a very
comprehendible text that can be read with profit by undergraduates.
The Continuum Companion to Metaphysics offers the definitive guide
to a key area of contemporary philosophy. The book covers all the
fundamental questions asked in metaphysics - areas that have
continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that
have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Eleven
specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts
discuss research problems and methods in metaphysics, reveal where
important work continues to be done in the area and, most valuably,
indicate exciting new directions the field is taking. The Companion
explores issues pertaining to modality, universals and abstract
objects, naturalism and physicalism, mind, material constitution,
endurantism and perdurantism, personal identity, personal identity,
free will, and God. Featuring a series of indispensable research
tools, including an A to Z index of key terms and concepts, a
detailed list of research resources and a fully annotated
bibliography, this is the essential reference tool for anyone
working in contemporary metaphysics.
This anthology is about the signal change in Leibniz's metaphysics
with his explicit adoption of substantial forms in 1678-79. This
change can either be seen as a moment of discontinuity with his
metaphysics of maturity or as a moment of continuity, such as a
passage to the metaphysics from his last years. Between the end of
his sejour at Paris (November 1676) and the first part of the
Hanover period, Leibniz reformed his dynamics and began to use the
theory of corporeal substance. This book explores a very important
part of the philosophical work of the young Leibniz. Expertise from
around the globe is collated here, including Daniel Garber's work
based on the recent publication of Leibniz's correspondence from
the late 1690s, examining how the theory of monads developed during
these crucial years. Richard Arthur argues that the introduction of
substantial forms, reinterpreted as enduring primitive forces of
action in each corporeal substance, allows Leibniz to found the
reality of the phenomena of motion in force and thus avoid reducing
motion to a mere appearance. Amongst other themes covered in this
book, Pauline Phemister's paper investigates Leibniz's views on
animals and plants, highlighting changes, modifications and
elaborations over time of Leibniz's views and supporting arguments
and paying particular attention to his claim that the future is
already contained in the seeds of living things. The editor, Adrian
Nita, contributes a paper on the continuity or discontinuity of
Leibniz's work on the question of the unity and identity of
substance from the perspective of the relation with soul (anima)
and mind (mens).
How do we explain the truth of true propositions? Truthmaker theory
is the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships
between what is true and what exists. It plays an important role in
contemporary debates about the nature of metaphysics and
metaphysical enquiry. In this book Jonathan Tallant argues,
controversially, that we should reject truthmaker theory. In its
place he argues for an 'explanationist' approach. Drawing on a
deflationary theory of truth he shows that it allows us to explain
the truth of true propositions and respond to recent arguments that
purport to show otherwise. He augments this with a distinction
between internally and externally quantified claims: externally
quantified claims are claims that quantify over elements of our
ontology that play an indispensable explanatory role; internally
quantified claims do not. He deploys this union of deflationism and
a distinction between kinds of quantification to pursue
metaphysical inquiry, sketching the implications for a number of
first-order debates, including those in the philosophy of time,
modality and mathematics, and also shows how this explanationist
model can be used to solve the key problems that afflicted
truthmaker theory. Truth and the World is an important contribution
to debates about truth and truthmaker theory as well as
metametaphysics, the metaphysics of time and the metaphysics of
mathematics, and is essential reading for students and scholars
engaged in the study of these topics.
The current volume of the Parmenides Series "On Thinking" addresses
our deepest and most personal experience of the world, the
experience of "the present," from a modern perspective combining
physics and philosophy. Many prominent researchers have contributed
articles to the volume, in which they present models and express
their opinions on and, in some cases, also their skepticism about
the subject and how it may be (or may not be) addressed, as well as
which aspects they consider most relevant in this context. While
Einstein might have once hoped that "the present" would find its
place in the theory of general relativity, in a later discussion
with Carnap he expressed his disappointment that he was never able
to achieve this goal. This collection of articles provides a unique
overview of different modern approaches, representing not only a
valuable summary for experts, but also a nearly inexhaustible
source of profound and novel ideas for those who are simply
interested in this question.
As a philosopher, psychologist, and physician, the German thinker
Hermann Lotze (1817-81) defies classification. Working in the
mid-nineteenth-century era of programmatic realism, he critically
reviewed and rearranged theories and concepts in books on
pathology, physiology, medical psychology, anthropology, history,
aesthetics, metaphysics, logic, and religion. Leading anatomists
and physiologists reworked his hypotheses about the central and
autonomic nervous systems. Dozens of fin-de-siecle philosophical
contemporaries emulated him, yet often without acknowledgment,
precisely because he had made conjecture and refutation into a
method. In spite of Lotze's status as a pivotal figure in
nineteenth-century intellectual thought, no complete treatment of
his work exists, and certainly no effort to take account of the
feminist secondary literature. Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual
Biography is the first full-length historical study of Lotze's
intellectual origins, scientific community, institutional context,
and worldwide reception.
Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to
articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through
which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will
look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore
Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual
tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and
mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased
consideration of concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality
has transformed the debate over structuralism in many ways. Sider
then examines three structuralist positions through a postmodal
lens. First, nomic essentialism, which says that scientific
properties are secondary and lawlike relationships among them are
primary. Second, structuralism about individuals, a general
position of which mathematical structuralism and structural realism
are instances, which says that scientific and mathematical objects
are secondary and the pattern of relations among them is primary.
And third, comparativism about quantities, which says that
particular values of scientific quantities, such as having exactly
1000g mass, are secondary, and quantitative relations, such as
being-twice-as-massive-as, are primary. Sider concludes these
discussions by considering the meta-question of when theories are
equivalent and how that impacts the debate over structuralism.
What are phenomenal qualities, the qualities of conscious
experiences? How do the phenomenal aspects of conscious experiences
relate to brain processes? To what extent do experiences represent
the things around us, or the states of our own bodies? Are
phenomenal qualities subjective, belonging to inner mental episodes
of some kind, and merely dependent on our brains? Or should they be
seen as objective, belonging in some way to the physical things in
the world around us? Are they physical properties at all? The
problematic nature of phenomenal qualities makes it hard to
understand how the mind is related to the physical world. There is
no settled view about these issues, which concern some of the
deepest, and most central, problems in philosophy. Fourteen
original papers, written by a team of distinguished philosophers
and psychologists and set in context by a full introduction,
explore the ways in which phenomenal qualities fit in with our
understanding of mind and reality. The topics covered include:
phenomenal concepts, the relation of sensory qualities to the
modalities, the limits of current theories about physical matter;
problems about the nature of perceptual experience, projectivism,
and the extent to which perception is direct; non-conceptual
content, the representational nature of pain experience, and the
phenomenology of thought; and issues relating to empirical work on
synaesthesia, psychological theories of attention, and prospects
for unifying the phenomenal array with neurophysiological accounts
of the brain. This volume offers an indispensable resource for
anyone wishing to understand the nature of conscious experience.
This is a major new introduction to metaphysics, designed
specifically to meet the needs of undergraduate students. This is
the definitive companion to the study of metaphysics. It provides
students with an accessible, comprehensive and philosophically
rigorous introduction to all the key concepts, issues and debates.
Ideal for use on undergraduate courses, the structure and content
of this textbook closely reflect the way metaphysics is studied.
Thematically structured, the text introduces all the various
philosophical problems addressed by metaphysics through the idea of
truth-making, a useful lens through which the topic is clearly and
concisely explicated. With a particular focus on method in
contemporary metaphysics, the book examines a variety of
metaphysical topics, including the nature of properties, time,
causation and objects. The book offers lucid and incisive coverage
of the field of metaphysics, its key concepts and current debates.
Jonathan Tallant's cogent and thorough analysis is supplemented by
student-friendly features, including chapter summaries, study
questions and a comprehensive guide to further reading. Each
chapter includes a series of specially designed mind-maps to help
students visualise the logical space being explored and how the
arguments push in different directions.
Edited by a renowned scholar in the field, this anthology provides
an extensive and varied collection of classical and contemporary
readings in the philosophy of mind. Especially noteworthy are the
substantial authoritative introductions to each section, which set
extracts in context and guide the reader through them. The volume
is organised into 12 sections, providing instructors with
flexibility in designing and teaching a variety of courses. It
contains 50 important writings on the philosophy of mind, with
introductions to each section, discussion questions and guides to
further reading. Perfect for undergraduate courses, this book
offers the ideal, self-contained introduction to the philosophy of
mind.
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