Author : Tim Crane
Publisher :
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 28,16 MB
Release : 2013-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199682747
Tim Crane addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. He argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that to understand thought's representational power ('intentionality') we need to understand the representation of the non-existent.
Author : Tim Crane
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 47,92 MB
Release : 2013-10-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 019150520X
The Objects of Thought addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. Tim Crane argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that we will not adequately understand thought's representational power ('intentionality') unless we have understood the representation of the non-existent. Intentionality is conceived by Crane in terms of the direction of the mind upon an object of thought, or an intentional object. Intentional objects are what we think about. Some intentional objects exist and some do not. Non-existence poses a problem because there seem to be truths about non-existent intentional objects, but truths are answerable to reality, and reality contains only what exists. The proposed solution is to accept that there are some genuine truths about non-existent intentional objects, but to hold that they must be reductively explained in terms of truths about what does exist. The Objects of Thought offers both an original account of the nature of intentionality and a solution to the problem of thought about the non-existent.
Author : Arthur N. Prior
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 44,63 MB
Release : 1971
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN :
Divided into two parts, the first concentrates on the logical properties of propositions, their relation to facts and sentences, and the parallel objects of commands and questions. The second part examines theories of intentionality and discusses the relationship between different theories of naming and different accounts of belief.
Author : Domenico Bertoloni Meli
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 13,54 MB
Release : 2006-11-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780801884276
'Bertoloni Meli reexamines such major texts as Galileo's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, and Newton's Principia, and in them finds a reliance on objects that has escaped proper understanding. From Pappus of Alexandria to Guidobaldo dal Monte, Bertoloni Meli sees significant developments in the history of mechanical experimentation, all of them crucial for understanding Galileo. Bertoloni Meli uses similarities and tensions between dal Monte and Galileo as a springboard for exploring the revolutionary nature of seventeenth-century mechanics.' (Back cover)
Author : Levi R. Bryant
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 371 pages
File Size : 42,24 MB
Release : 2023-11-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN :
Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought of Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls "onticology". This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. Drawing on the work of the systems theorists and cyberneticians, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he is able to integrate the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. Contents: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object Grounds For a Realist Ontology The Paradox of Substance Virtual Proper Being The Interior of Objects Regimes of Attraction, Parts, and Structure The Four Theses of Flat Ontology
Author : Glenn Adamson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 27,6 MB
Release : 2018-08-07
Category : Art
ISBN : 1632869667
From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.
Author : Nicholas Rimell
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 21,14 MB
Release : 2022-10-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789811635199
This book defends a novel view of mental representation—of how, as thinkers, we represent the world as being. The book serves as a response to two problems in the philosophy of mind. One is the problem of first-personal, or egocentric, belief: how can we have truly first personal beliefs—beliefs in which we think about ourselves as ourselves—given that beliefs are supposed to be attitudes towards propositions and that propositions are supposed to have their truth values independent of a perspective? The other problem is how we can think about nonexistents (e.g., Santa Claus) given the widespread view that thought essentially involves a relation between a thinker and whatever is being thought about. The standard responses to this puzzle are either to deny that thought is essentially relational or to insist that it is possible to stand in relations to nonexistents. This book offers an error theory to the problem. The responses from this book arise from the same commitment: a commitment to treating talk of propositions—as the things towards which our beliefs are attitudes—as talk of entities that actually exist and that play a constitutive and explanatory role in the activity of thought.
Author : Paul Needham
Publisher : Springer
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 21,1 MB
Release : 2018-01-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 3319709992
This book is about our ordinary concept of matter in the form of enduring continuants and the processes in which they are involved in the macroscopic realm. It emphasises what science rather than philosophical intuition tells us about the world, and chemistry rather than the physics that is more usually encountered in philosophical discussions. The central chapters dealing with the nature of matter pursue key steps in the historical development of scientific conceptions of chemical substance. Like many contemporary discussions of material objects, it relies heavily on mereology. The classical principles are applied to the mereological structure of regions of space, intervals of time, processes and quantities of matter. Quantities of matter, which don’t gain or lose parts over time, are distinguished from individuals, which are typically constituted of different quantities of matter at different times. The proper treatment of the temporal aspect of the features of material objects is a central issue in this book, which is addressed by investigating the conditions governing the application of predicates relating time and other entities. Of particular interest here are relations between quantities of matter and times expressing substance kind, phase and mixture. Modal aspects of these features are taken up in the final chapter.
Author : Charles Parsons
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 32,11 MB
Release : 2007-12-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 1139467271
Charles Parsons examines the notion of object, with the aim to navigate between nominalism, denying that distinctively mathematical objects exist, and forms of Platonism that postulate a transcendent realm of such objects. He introduces the central mathematical notion of structure and defends a version of the structuralist view of mathematical objects, according to which their existence is relative to a structure and they have no more of a 'nature' than that confers on them. Parsons also analyzes the concept of intuition and presents a conception of it distantly inspired by that of Kant, which describes a basic kind of access to abstract objects and an element of a first conception of the infinite.
Author : Tero Tulenheimo
Publisher : Springer
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 25,1 MB
Release : 2017-03-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3319531190
This book develops a novel generalization of possible world semantics, called ‘world line semantics’, which recognizes worlds and links between world-bound objects (world lines) as mutually independent aspects of modal semantics. Addressing a wide range of questions vital for contemporary debates in logic and philosophy of language and offering new tools for theoretical linguistics and knowledge representation, the book proposes a radically new paradigm in modal semantics. This framework is motivated philosophically, viewing a structure of world lines as a precondition of modal talk. The author provides a uniform analysis of quantification over individuals (physical objects) and objects of thought (intentional objects). The semantic account of what it means to speak of intentional objects throws new light on accounts of intentionality and singular thought in the philosophy of mind and offers novel insights into the semantics of intensional transitive verbs.
