Is it possible to apply a theoretical approach to ethics? The French philosopher Catherine Chalier addresses this question with an unusual combination of traditional ethics and continental philosophy. In a powerful argument for the necessity of moral reflection, Chalier counters the notion that morality can be derived from theoretical knowledge.

Chalier analyzes the positions of two great moral philosophers, Kant and Levinas. While both are critical of an ethics founded on knowledge, their criticisms spring from distinctly different points of view. Chalier reexamines their conclusions, pitting Levinas against (and with) Kant, to interrogate the very foundations of moral philosophy and moral imperatives. She provides a clear, systematic comparison of their positions on essential ideas such as free will, happiness, freedom, and evil. Although based on a close and elegant presentation of Kant and Levinas, Chalier's book serves as a context for the development of the author's own reflections on the question "What am I supposed to do?" and its continued importance for contemporary philosophy.

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two pieces of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects.

"Minds, Causes, and Mechanisms" questions the internal consistency of causal physicalism, and vindicates a novel approach to mental causation. Through a series of original and detailed arguments, it is made clear that many difficulties in the physicalist picture derive from an implausible view about causality. An alternative approach is defended which shows how mental contents, as opposed to functional properties, may be causally efficacious without having an implementing mechanism.

This volume includes a lucid discussion of recent developments by philosophers such as Block, Davidson, Fodor, Kim, Lewis, Mellor, Putnam, Schiffer, Shoemaker, and Yablo.

No one who wants to deal with the issue of mental causation, or causation in general, will be able to ignore the strong case against physicalism that this book makes.

This text provides a unique and compelling account of Wittgenstein's impact upon twentieth-century analytic philosophy, from its inception at the turn of the century to its subsequent decline.

Psychosemantics explores the relation between commonsense psychological theories and problems that are central to semantics and the philosophy of language. Building on and extending Fodor's earlier work it puts folk psychology on firm theoretical ground and rebuts externalist, holist, and naturalist threats to its position.

"This book is included in the series Explorations in Cognitive Science, edited by Margaret A. Boden.

A Bradford Book."

Ludwig Wittgenstein destroyed a large number of his notebooks, but by accident three of them remain. They serve to show what problems were occupying him in connection with many of the paragraphs of the Tractatus which are found in the notebooks as a first draft. They serve as a testimony to the thought processes of the Austrian philosopher.

Does historical perspective contribute to today's philosophy? If so, what is the contribution of this perspective, and how does relating it to current philosophy bring this contribution about? Since the rise of analytical philosophy, debates on historical perspective have intensified and widened in scope. In Philosophy and the Historical Perspective, these questions, and more, are answered via a range of philosophical strands, topics and debates. Based on the hope that philosophical debates could benefit from taking methodological and meta-philosophical questions into account, the volume concerns the historical perspective of current philosophical debates and as a result, the methods and nature of philosophy. With contributions from leading experts, Philosophy and the Historical Perspective encompasses the history of philosophy, its sub-disciplines, and approaches and proposes that such questions deserve to be addressed in their own right, not just as an adjunct to other discussions.

Metaphysics asks questions about existence: for example, do numbers really exist? Metametaphysics asks questions about metaphysics: for example, do its questions have determinate answers? If so, are these answers deep and important, or are they merely a matter of how we use words? What is the proper methodology for their resolution? These questions have received a heightened degree of attention lately with new varieties of ontological deflationism and pluralism challenging the kind of realism that has become orthodoxy in contemporary analytic metaphysics.
This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline. It brings together many of the central figures in the debate with their most recent work on the semantics, epistemology, and methodology of metaphysics.

In diesem Buch diskutiert Oliver Schott verschiedene metaethische Ansatze ausgehend von der Kontroverse zwischen Internalismus und Externalismus bezuglich praktischer Grunde. Er entwickelt eine nichtkantianische Variante des Konstruktivismus, der sich sowohl phanomenologisch als auch hinsichtlich einer Grundlegung der Moralphilosophie als uberzeugendste Alternative erweist.

Saul Kripke has been a major influence on analytic philosophy and allied fields for a half-century and more. His early masterpiece, "Naming and Necessity," reversed the pattern of two centuries of philosophizing about the necessary and the contingent. Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection "Philosophical Troubles."In this book Kripke's long-time colleague, the logician and philosopher John P. Burgess, offers a thorough and self-contained guide to all of Kripke's published books and his most important philosophical papers, old and new. It also provides an authoritative but non-technical account of Kripke's influential contributions to the study of modal logic and logical paradoxes. Although Kripke has been anything but a system-builder, Burgess expertly uncovers the connections between different parts of his oeuvre. Kripke is shown grappling, often in opposition to existing traditions, with mysteries surrounding the nature of necessity, rule-following, and the conscious mind, as well as with intricate and intriguing puzzles about identity, belief and self-reference. Clearly contextualizing the full range of Kripke's work, Burgess outlines, summarizes and surveys the issues raised by each of the philosopher's major publications. "Kripke" will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of analytic philosophy's greatest living thinkers.

Dieses Buch zeigt die ideen- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Entwicklung des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs vom Mittelalter bis zum 20. Jhd. auf. Dabei geht Sebastian Simmert vertieft auf die epistemische Bedeutung der Wahrscheinlichkeit als qualitative Bestimmung von Wissen ein. Hierbei untersucht er die Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit quantitativer Wahrscheinlichkeit. Im Zentrum steht die UEberlegung, dass die elementare Ebene qualitativer Wahrscheinlichkeiten keine Gleichwahrscheinlichkeiten zulasst. Denn sie baut auf einer zweiwertigen Logik auf. Mit dieser Pramisse werden die Grenzen des durch Wahrscheinlichkeiten Aussagbaren aufgezeigt; unter anderem, dass die Anwendung des Gesetzes der grossen Zahl keine empirischen Aussagen rechtfertigt.

Logical Atomism is a philosophy that sought to account for the world in all its various aspects by relating it to the structure of the language in which we articulate information. In The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Bertrand Russell, with input from his young student Ludwig Wittgenstein, developed the concept and argues for a reformed language based on pure logic. Despite Russell’s own future doubts surrounding the concept, this founding and definitive work in analytical philosophy by one of the world’s most significant philosophers is a remarkable attempt to establish a novel way of thinking.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918) 1. Facts and Propositions 2. Particulars, Predicates, and Relations 3. Atomic and Molecular Propositions 4. Propositions and Facts with More than One Verb: Beliefs, Etc 5. General Propositions and Existence 6. Descriptions and Incomplete Symbols 7. The Theory of Types and Symbolism: Classes 123 8. Excursions into Metaphysics: What There Is Logical Atomism (1924) Bibliography Chronological Tables Index

This is a guide to the thought and ideas of Gottlob Frege, one of the most important but also perplexing figures in the history of analytic philosophy. Gottlob Frege is regarded as one of the founders of modern logic and analytic philosophy, indeed as the greatest innovator in logic since Aristotle. His groundbreaking work identified many of the basic conceptions and distinctions that later came to dominate analytic philosophy. The literature on him is legion and ever-growing in complexity, representing a considerable challenge to the non-expert. The details of his logic, which have come into focus in recent research, are particularly difficult to grasp, although they are crucial to the development of his grand project, the reduction of arithmetic to logic, and the associated philosophical innovations. This book offers a lucid and accessible introduction to Frege's logic, taking the reader directly to the core of his philosophy, and ultimately to some of the most pertinent issues in contemporary philosophy of language, logic, mathematics, and the mind. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Das biomedizinische Verstandnis der modernen (Schul-)Medizin darf als Resultat einer seit uber 160 Jahren andauernden Ver-Naturwissenschaftlichung der Medizin verstanden werden. Infolgedessen resumiert Petra Lenz eine "Krise der Medizin", die sich im Vertrauensverlust der Menschen in das Medizinsystem zeigt. Es wird gezeigt, dass der theoretische Krankheitsbegriff als sinnspezifischer Faktenbegriff der Naturwissenschaften nicht als Hoffnungstrager fur Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik infrage kommt, sondern erst durch ihn medizinethische und gesundheitspolitische Herausforderungen entstehen.

In this illuminating guide to the criteria of rational theorizing, Michael Shepanski identifies, defends and applies W. V. Quine's epistemic norms - the norms that best explain Quine's decisions to accept some theories and not others. Parts I and II set out the doctrines of this epistemology, demonstrating their potential for philosophical application. The third part is a case study in which Shepanski develops a theory of the propositional attitudes by the method of formulating inferences to behaviour. Finally, he presents critiques of popular alternative views, including foundationalism, the centrality of knowledge and Quine's own epistemological naturalism. By reassessing Quine's normative epistemology, Shepanski advances our understanding of Quine's philosophy whilst providing a guide for our own theorizing.

This volume is the first English resource to shed light on the philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt (1862-1929), the main pupil of Ernst Mach and founder of the Gesellschaft fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie, later the association of Berlin logical positivists. A central figure in the early debate on the theory of relativity, his work was praised by Einstein himself. Tracing the development of Petzoldt's ideas, starting from his early acceptance of materialism and Kantian agnosticism, Chiara Russo Krauss presents a comprehensive reconstruction of his philosophy in the context of the German milieu. She examines his attempt to develop a new philosophy following Gustav Fechner and the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach. In the final chapter, she sets out how Petzoldt proposed relativistic positivism as the official interpretation of Einstein's relativity. By illuminating key elements of Petzoldt's work, this is a valuable case study for students and scholars of philosophy of science and late 19th-century and early 20th-century philosophy. It reveals the complex interplay of two different tendencies of the time: neo-Kantianism and its struggle to overcome the notion of thing-in-itself, as well as the need for an epistemological foundation for the new advances of science.

Spanning the period between Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929 and the first version of Philosophical Investigations in 1936, Piotr Dehnel explores the middle stage in Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical development and identifies the major issues which engrossed him, including phenomenology, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of language. Contrary to the dominant perspective, Dehnel argues that this period was intrinsically different from the early and late stages and should not be viewed as a mere transitional phase. The distinctiveness of Wittgenstein's middle work can be seen in his philosophical thinking as it unfolds in a non-linear trajectory: thoughts do not follow upon each other, ideas do not appear sequentially one by one, and insights do not form a straight chain. Dehnel portrays the diffused and multifarious quality of Wittgenstein's middle thinking, enabling readers to form a more comprehensive view of his entire philosophy and acquire a better grasp of his conceptual trajectory, complete with the intricacies and challenges that it poses.

Along with Why I Am Not a Christian, this essay must rank as the most articulate example of Russell's famed atheism. It is also one of the most notorious. Used as evidence in a 1940 court case in which Russell was declared unfit to teach college-level philosophy, What I Believe was to become one of his most defining works. The ideas contained within were and are controversial, contentious and - to the religious - downright blasphemous. A remarkable work, it remains the best concise introduction to Russell's thought.

Table of Contents

PREFACE TO THE ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS EDITION, PREFACE, 1. NATURE AND MAN, 2. THE GOOD LIFE, 3. MORAL RULES, 4. SALVATION: INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL, 5. SCIENCE AND HAPPINESS, INDEX