Author : P. F. Strawson
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 47,50 MB
Release : 1992
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198751182
Professor Strewson draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed what he regards as the most productive route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking.
Author : Michael Frede
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 15,48 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198237648
A distinguished group of scholars of ancient philosophy here presents a systematic study of the twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Lambda, which can be regarded as a self-standing treatise on substance, has been attracting particular attention in recent years, and was chosen as the focusof the fourteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, from which this volume derives. At the Symposium, each of Lambda's ten chapters was taken in turn as the subject of a session at which a specially written paper was read to and discussed by the assembled symposiasts. (The ninth chapter commanded twosessions by dint of its particular difficulty.) The papers have been revised in the light of discussion, and are now offered to a wider audience as a discursive commentary on points of particular philosophical interest covering all of Lambda. Michael Frede's extensive Introduction aims to give abroader view of Lambda as a whole and the problems it raises, and thus to provide the context for the discussion of each of the chapters. This volume will be a resource of great value and interest for anyone working on ancient metaphysics and theology.
Author : Theodore Scaltsas
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 18,24 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780801476358
In this book, Theodore Scaltsas brings the insights of contemporary philosophy to bear on a classic problem in metaphysics that stems from Aristotle's theory of substance. Scaltsas provides an analysis of the enigmatic notions of potentiality and actuality, which he uses to explain Aristotle's substantial holism by showing how the concrete and the abstract parts of a substance form a dynamic, diachronic whole.
Author : John Haldane
Publisher :
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 46,73 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Philosophy
ISBN :
Contemporary western philosophy divides into three broad traditions: the analytical, the continental, and the historical. In the latter half of the twentieth century, analytical philosophy was dominant in the English-speaking world and tended to ignore the other two traditions. Now, however, analytical philosophy is less isolationist. It has come to appreciate the vitality of historical philosophy. Given their commonality of interests and shared appreciation of the values of conceptual clarity and argumentative rigour, it is particularly appropriate that there should be engagement between the main English-language tradition and the philosophy of Aquinas and, more broadly, of Thomism. The essays in this collection range widely across the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, and theory of value with most linking analytical and Aristotelian-Thomistic ideas and some focusing on Aquinas in particular. This collection is distinctive in content and unusual in North American publishing in the areas of medieval philosophy, scholasticism, and Thomism in that the majority of the contributors are based in Europe--many at medieval universities in which scholasticism had a historical presence, and in some cases a prominent and distinguished one. Mind, Metaphysics, and Value brings together the interests, knowledge, and expertise of a wide range of scholars to form a broad and exciting intellectual community.
Author : J. Robert G. Williams
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 41,10 MB
Release : 2020-01-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 019259060X
Representing the world is a puzzling thing. How can it be that mundane events such as processing a thought--and from there putting those thoughts into words--acquire this property of 'aboutness'? How can expressions, which depend on anything from the most fundamental regularities in the universe to trivial matters of gossip, be either true or false? In The Metaphysics of Representation, J. Robert G. Williams tells a story about how representational properties arise out of a fundamentally non-representational world. The representational properties of language are reduced, via convention, to the representational properties of thoughts. The representational properties of thoughts are reduced, via principles of rationalization, to the representational properties of perception and intention. And this most fundamental layer of representation is explained in terms of the functions they have to communicate. Williams integrates work from rival traditions to present a combined perspective in the metaphysics of representation, give new predictions and explanations of representational phenomena, and offer new solutions to long-standing problems.
Author : Don Ross
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 19,18 MB
Release : 2013-01-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199696497
Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalised - conducted as part of natural science. They engage with a range of approaches and disciplines to argue that if metaphysics is to be capable of identifying objective truths, it must be continuous with and inspired by science.
Author : Thomas Hofweber
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 47,84 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0198769830
Many significant problems in metaphysics are tied to ontological questions, but ontology and its relation to larger questions in metaphysics give rise to a series of puzzles that suggest that we don't fully understand what ontology is supposed to do, nor what ambitions metaphysics can have for finding out about what the world is like. Thomas Hofweber aims to solve these puzzles about ontology and consequently to make progress on four central metaphysical problems: the philosophy of arithmetic, the metaphysics of ordinary objects, the problem of universals, and the question whether reality is independent of us. Crucial parts of the proposed solution include considerations about quantification and its relationship to ontology, the place of reference in natural languages, the possibility of ineffable facts, the extent of empirical evidence in metaphysics, and whether metaphysics can properly be esoteric. Overall, Hofweber defends a rationalist account of arithmetic, an empiricist picture in the philosophy of ordinary objects, a restricted from of nominalism, and realism about reality, understood as all there is, but idealism about reality, understood as all that is the case. He defends metaphysics as having some questions of fact that are distinctly its own, with a limited form of autonomy from other parts of inquiry, but rejects several metaphysical projects and approaches as being based on a mistake.
Author : Stephen Mumford
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 10,32 MB
Release : 2012-08-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199657122
An introduction to metaphysics offers questions and answers covering such issues as properties, changes, time, personal identity, nothingness, and consciousness.
Author : Marcus Willaschek
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 43,96 MB
Release : 2018-10-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 110859607X
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously criticizes traditional metaphysics and its proofs of immortality, free will and God's existence. What is often overlooked is that Kant also explains why rational beings must ask metaphysical questions about 'unconditioned' objects such as souls, uncaused causes or God, and why answers to these questions will appear rationally compelling to them. In this book, Marcus Willaschek reconstructs and defends Kant's account of the rational sources of metaphysics. After carefully explaining Kant's conceptions of reason and metaphysics, he offers detailed interpretations of the relevant passages from the Critique of Pure Reason (in particular, the 'Transcendental Dialectic') in which Kant explains why reason seeks 'the unconditioned'. Willaschek offers a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic, pointing up its 'positive' side, while at the same time it uncovers a highly original account of metaphysical thinking that will be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates.
Author : Robert Wisnovsky
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 15,36 MB
Release : 2018-05-31
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1501711520
The eleventh-century philosopher and physician Abu Ali ibn Sina (d. A.D. 1037) was known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna. An analysis of the sources and evolution of Avicenna's metaphysics, this book focuses on the answers he and his predecessors gave to two fundamental pairs of questions: what is the soul and how does it cause the body; and what is God and how does He cause the world? To respond to these challenges, Avicenna invented new concepts and distinctions and reinterpreted old ones. The author concludes that Avicenna's innovations are a turning point in the history of metaphysics. Avicenna's metaphysics is the culmination of a period of synthesis during which philosophers fused together a Neoplatonic project (reconciling Plato with Aristotle) with a Peripatetic project (reconciling Aristotle with himself). Avicenna also stands at the beginning of a period during which philosophers sought to integrate the Arabic version of the earlier synthesis with Islamic doctrinal theology (kalam). Avicenna's metaphysics significantly influenced European scholastic thought, but it had an even more profound impact on Islamic intellectual history—the philosophical problems and opportunities associated with the Avicennian synthesis continued to be debated up to the end of the nineteenth century.
