This book offers a new way of doing African philosophy by building on an analysis of the way people talk. The author bases his investigation on the belief that traditional African philosophy is hidden in expressions used in ordinary language. As a result, he argues that people are engaging in a philosophical activity when they use expressions such as taboos, proverbs, idioms, riddles, and metaphors. The analysis investigates proverbs using the ordinary language approach and Speech Act theory. Next, the author looks at taboos using counterfactual logic, which studies the meaning of taboo expressions by departing from a consideration of their structure and use. He argues that the study of these figurative expressions using the counterfactual framework offers a particular understanding of African philosophy and belief systems. The study also investigates issues of meaning and rationality departing from a study on riddles, explores conceptual metaphors used in conceptualizing the notion of politics in modern African political thought, and examines language and marginalization of women and people with disabilities. The book differs from other works in African philosophy in the sense that it does not claim that Africans have a philosophy as is commonly done in most studies. Rather, it reflects and unfolds philosophical elements in ordinary language use. The book also builds African Conception of beauty and truth through the study of language.

From the 19th century the philosophy of science has been shaped by a group of influential figures. Who were they? Why do they matter? This introduction brings to life the most influential thinkers in the philosophy of science, uncovering how the field has developed over the last 200 years. Taking up the subject from the time when some philosophers began to think of themselves not just as philosophers but as philosophers of science, a team of leading contemporary philosophers explain, criticize and honour the giants. Now updated and revised throughout, the second edition includes: * Easy-to-follow overviews of pivotal thinkers including John Stuart Mill, Rudolf Carnap, Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and many more * Coverage of central issues such as experience and necessity, logical empiricism, falsifiability, paradigms, the sociology of science, realism, and feminist critiques * An afterword looking ahead to emerging research trends * Study questions and further reading lists at the end of each chapter Philosophy of Science: The Key Thinkers demonstrates how the ideas and arguments of these figures laid the foundations of our understanding of modern science.

In thinking about ontology as the study of being or what fundamentally exists, we can adopt an ontology that either takes substances or processes as primary. There are, however, both commonsense and naturalistic reasons for not fully adopting a substance ontology, which indicate that we ought to suspend judgment with respect to the acceptance of a substance ontology. Doing so allows room to further explore other ontologies. In this book, Andrew M. Winters argues that there are both commonsense and naturalistic reasons for further pursuing a process ontology. Adopting a process ontology allows us to overcome many of the difficulties facing a substance ontology while also accommodating many of the phenomenon that substance ontologies were appealed to for explanation. Given these reasons, we have both commonsense and naturalistic reasons for pursuing and developing a metaphysics without substance.

Philosophy of religion in the Anglo-American tradition experienced a 'rebirth' following the 1955 publication of New Essays in Philosophical Theology (eds. Antony Flew and Alisdair MacIntyre). Fifty years later, this volume of essays offers a sampling of the best work in what is now a very active field, written by some of its most prominent members. A substantial introduction sketches the developments of the last half-century, while also describing the 'ethics of belief' debate in epistemology and showing how it connects to explicitly religious concerns and to the topics of the individual contributions. These topics include: the relationship between God and the natural laws; the metaphysics of bodily resurrection; the role of appeal to 'mystery' in the religious life; the justification of both theistic belief generally and more specific doctrinal beliefs; and the social-political aspects of religious faith and practice.

This book is a collection of all the single authored essays by Paul Cilliers, published between 1990-2011. Being one of few authors who approached the study of complexity from a philosophical perspective, the main themes in these papers explore: - Qualitative characterization of complexity and the normative implications of studying complex adaptive systems, - the philosophical and conceptual similarity to post-structural approaches - how any engagement with complexity leads to a critical engagement with how we do science and design interventions - critical and normative implications for how to engage with complex socio-political concerns in the world. What makes this book unique is that it consolidates a body of work that is distributed over a wide range of academic journals. Although his book "Complexity and Postmodernism" (Routledge, 1998) remains a cornerstone in the field of complexity studies, Cilliers' journal essays really explore the application of the theoretical concepts in more depth. His ground-breaking ideas conceptualized in these essays have served as a continual source of novelty and inspiration in the process of applying complexity thinking to other fields of study.

Where much contemporary philosophy seeks to stave off the 'threat' of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning - characterized as the defining feature of human existence - from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment, this book attempts to push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by forging a link between revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy and anti-phenomenological realism in recent French philosophy. Contrary to an emerging 'post-analytic' consensus which would bridge the analytic-continental divide by uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against the twin perils of scientism and scepticism, this book short-circuits both traditions by plugging eliminative materialism directly into speculative realism.

This is a collection of eleven original essays in analytical philosophy by British and American philosophers, centring on the connection between mind and language. Two themes predominate: how it is that thoughts and sentences can represent the world; and what having a thought - a belief, for instance - involves. Developing from these themes are the questions: what does having a belief require of the believer, and of the way he or she relates to the environment? In particular, does having a belief require speaking a language? The volume concludes the informal series stemming from the meetings sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation. It will interest analytical philosophers, students doing courses in philosophy of mind within the analytical tradition and philosophically interested researchers in cognitive psychology.

Frege's puzzle concerning belief reports has been in the middle of the discussion on semantics and pragmatics of attitude reports: The intuition behind the opacity does not seem to be consistent with the thesis of semantic innocence according to which the semantic value of proper names is nothing but their referent. Main tasks of this book include providing truth-conditional content of belief reports. Especially, the focus is on semantic values of proper names. The key aim is to extend Crimmins's basic idea of semantic pretense and the introduction of pleonastic entities proposed by Schiffer. They enable us to capture Frege's puzzle in the analysis without giving up semantic innocence. To reach this conclusion, two issues are established. First, based on linguistic evidence, the frame of belief reports functions adverbially rather than relationally. Second, the belief ascriptions, on which each belief report is made, must be analyzed in terms of the measurement-theoretic analogy.

The history of interwar Polish logic, including philosophical logic, is still a relatively little known area, especially if compared with the movement's well-documented contemporaries - the Vienna Circle or the Berlin Circle, for instance. The book aims to address this lacuna, by presenting the state of the art of research into this part of the history of analytic philosophy. It comprises thirteen essays, written by outstanding philosophers and exemplifying different approaches to the history of philosophy. One approach focuses on some little known aspects of Polish philosophy (e.g., Lesniewski's arithmetic, Tarski's geometry, philosophy of mathematics in interwar Krakow), analyzing it in great detail, sometimes by using current formal techniques. Another group of papers looks at the inspiration the Poles got from the founding fathers of analytic philosophy (Frege, Husserl, Wittgenstein), and locates Polish philosophy in the larger landscape of European analytic philosophy. Finally, some contributors pick a topic from the Polish school (sometimes only mentioned, but not developed by the Poles), and construct an alternative account which is then compared with the earlier account. Most of the papers were presented at a symposium celebrating the 70th birthday of Jan Wolenski, whose book "Logic and Philosophy of the Lvov-Warsaw School" has played a substantial role in sparking contemporary interest in Polish analytic philosophy.

This book develops a new Wittgenstein interpretation called Wittgenstein's Metametaphysics. The basic idea is that one major strand in Wittgenstein's early and later philosophy can be described as undermining the dichotomy between realism and idealism. The aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between language and reality and to open up avenues of dialogue to overcome deep divides in the research literature. In the course of developing a comprehensive and in-depth interpretation, the author provides fresh and original analyses of the latest issues in Wittgenstein scholarship and gives new answers to both major exegetical and philosophical problems. This makes the book an illuminating study for scholars and advanced students alike.

Supervenience is one of the 'hot discoveries' of analytic philosophy, and this collection of essays on the topic represents an examination of it and its application to major areas of philosophy. The interest in supervenience has much to do with the flexibility of the concept. To say that x supervenes on y indicates a degree of dependence without committing one to the view that x can be reduced to y. Thus supervenience is a relationship that has the potential of replacing the traditional notion of dependence, while performing at least part of the function reductive relationships were supposed to fulfil. Moreover, since it is a topic-neutral concept, supervenience has a wide range of applicability.

This book is an important contribution to the philosophy of art that bridges the disciplines of philosophy and art. It engages with a long-standing debate about what it is that bestows the designation 'art' on an artwork. Tiffany Sutton shows how the history of art should influence the classification of visual art. She considers the various theories that have been put forward to define the nature of the artwork and then offers her own set of classificatory norms. Amongst the critical questions that are addressed in the process are: how important is patronage in the contemporary visual arts, and what lends conceptual art its specific aura?

This volume examines the question "Do abstract objects exist?", presenting new work from contributing authors across different branches of philosophy. The introduction overviews philosophical debate which considers: what objects qualify as abstract, what do we mean by the word "exist" and indeed, what evidence should count in favor or against the thesis that abstract objects exist. Through subsequent chapters readers will discover the ubiquity of abstract objects as each philosophical field is considered. Given the ubiquitous use of expressions that purportedly refer to abstract objects, we think that it is relevant to attend to the controversy between those who want to advocate the existence of abstract objects and those who stand against them. Contributions to this volume depict positions and debates that directly or indirectly involve taking one position or other about abstract objects of different kinds and categories. The volume provides a variety of samples of how positions for or against abstract objects can be used in different areas of philosophy in relation to different matters.

In The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, Timothy D. Knepper advances a new, historically grounded and religiously diverse program for the philosophy of religion. Knepper first critiques existing efforts in analytic and continental philosophy of religion for neglect of diversity among its objects and subjects of inquiry, as well as for failing to thickly describe, formally compare, and critically evaluate historical acts of reason-giving in the religions of the world. Knepper then constructs an alternative vision for the philosophy of religion, one in which religious reason-giving is described with empathetic yet suspicious sensitivity, compared with methodological and categorical awareness, and explained and evaluated with a plurality of resources and criteria."The Ends of Philosophy of Religion casts a critical eye over both analytic and continental philosophy of religion and finds an ailment that besets them both. Knepper provides an analysis that is not only clear and eloquent but also sometimes frustrated and angry one. This gives his book the feeling of a manifesto, something I judge that the discipline needs." - Kevin Schilbrack, Professor, Philosophy and Religion Department, Western Carolina University, USA"Philosophy of religion is entering a new dawn, beyond the Western confines of bare theism and pale postmodernism, and towards the religions of the world, Eastern and Western, in all their rich diversity and complexity. Knepper's timely and insightful book outlines these broad and deep changes that have yet to be acknowledged by practitioners from both the analytic and Continental schools." - Nick Trakakis, Assistant Director of the Centre for the Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion, Australian Catholic University, Australia"Those of us who believe philosophy of religion should be about religion in all its complexity and diversity will welcome this book with relief. Knepper attacks the pretense of using the phrase 'philosophy of religion' to describe parochial philosophy of western theism or the disorganized religious insights of postmodern philosophers. He argues for historically grounded philosophy of religions, up-to-date on religious studies, and fearless about analyzing reasons for religious beliefs and practices. This is the kind of philosophy of religion that belongs in university religious studies departments. Here's hoping it catches on quickly." - Wesley J. Wildman, Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics, Boston University School of Theology, US

This book examines epistemic pluralism, a brand new area of research in epistemology with dramatic implications for the discipline. Challenging traditional assumptions about the nature of justification, an expert team of contributors explores pluralism about justification, with compelling first-order results - including analysis of the various requisites one might want to impose on the notion of justification (and therefore of knowledge) and why. It is shown why a long-lasting dispute within epistemology about the nature of justification has reached a stalemate and how embracing a different overarching outlook might lead to progress and aid better appreciation of the relationship between the various epistemic projects scholars have been pursuing. With close connections to the idea of epistemic relativism, and with specific applications to various areas of contemporary epistemology (such as the debate over epistemic norms of action and assertion, epistemic peers' disagreement, self-knowledge and the status of philosophical disputes about ontology) this fascinating new volume is essential reading for scholars, researchers and advanced students in the discipline.

Presumption is a remarkably versatile and pervasively useful resource. Firmly grounded in the law of evidence from its origins in classical antiquity, it made its way in the days of medieval scholasticism into the theory and practice of disputation and debate. Subsequently, it extended its reach to play an increasingly significant role in the philosophical theory of knowledge. It has thus come to represent a region where lawyers, debaters, and philosophers can all find some common ground. In Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition, Nicholas Rescher endeavors to show that the process of presumption plays a role of virtually indispensable utility in matters of rational inquiry and communication. The origins of presumption may lie in law, but its future is assured by its service to the theory of information management and the philosophy of science.

When this book was originally published in 2006, Epistemetrics was not as yet a scholarly discipline. With regard to scientific information there was the discipline of scientometrics, represented by a journal of that very name. Science, however, had a monopoly on knowledge. Although it is one of our most important cognitive resources, it is not our only one. While scientometrics is a centerpiece of epistemetrics, it is not the whole of it. Nicholas Rescher's endeavor to quantify knowledge is not only of interest in itself, but is also instructive in bringing into sharper relief the nature of and the explanatory rationale for the limits that unavoidably confront our efforts to advance the frontiers of knowledge. In particular, his book demonstrates the limitations of human knowledge and will be of great value to scholars working in this area.

A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook intended for students in philosophy, communications studies and linguistics who have completed at least one course in argumentation theory, information logic, critical thinking or formal logic. Containing nearly 400 exercises, Mark Vorobej develops a novel approach to argument interpretation and evaluation. One of the key themes of the book is that we cannot succeed in distinguishing good argument from bad arguments until we learn to listen carefully to others. Part I develops a relativistic account of argument cogency that allows for rational disagreement. Part II offers a comprehensive and rigorous account of argument diagramming. Hybrid arguments are contrasted with linked and convergent arguments, and a novel technique is introduced for graphically recording disagreements with authorial claims.

This impressive edited collection investigates the relationship between British Pop Art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. At this time, when Paolozzi's oeuvre is in the process of being rediscovered, his long-time fascination with Wittgenstein requires thorough exploration, as it discloses a deeper understanding of his artistic production, further helping to reassess the philosopher's actual impact on visual arts and its theory in the second half of the 20th century. With 13 diverse and comprehensive chapters, bringing together philosophers and art historians, this volume aims at retracing and pondering the influence of Wittgenstein on the idea of art in Paolozzi, thus giving an unprecedented insight into Wittgenstein's philosophy as employed by contemporary artists.

This book brings together a selection of essays by one of the pre-eminent scholars of informal logic. Following an approach that is empirical but not psychological; dialectical but not dialogical, and focused on interpretation without neglecting evaluation, Maurice Finocchiaro defines concepts such as reasoning, argument, argument analysis, critical reasoning, methodological reflection, judgment, critical thinking, and informal logic. He defends ideas about the rarity of fallacies but frequently of fallacious reasoning; the asymmetry of positive and negative in argumentation, interpretation and evaluation and the role of critical thinking in science, among other topics. Containing extended critiques of the views of many contemporary scholars, he also integrates into the discussion Arnauld's Post-Royal Logic, Gramsci's theory of intellectuals, and case studies from the history of science, particularly the work of Galileo, Newton, Huygens, and Lavoisier.

This volume examines the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas's work to recent developments in analytic philosophy. Contemporary analytic philosophers working in metaethics, the philosophy of mind, and the metaphysic of personal identity have argued for views similar to those espoused by Levinas. Often disparately pursued, Levinas's account of "ethics as first philosophy" affords a way of connecting these respective enterprises and showing how moral normativity enters into the structure of rationality and personal identity. In metaethics, the volume shows how Levinas's moral phenomenology relates to recent work on the normativity of rationality and intentionality, and how it can illuminate a wide range of moral concepts including accountability, moral intuition, respect, conscience, attention, blame, indignity, shame, hatred, dependence, gratitude and guilt. The volume also tests Levinas's innovative claim that ethical relations provide a way of accounting for the irreducibility of personal identity to psychological identity. The essays here contribute to ongoing discussions about the metaphysical significance and sustainability of a naturalistic but nonreductive account of personhood. Finally, the volume connects Levinas's second-person standpoint with analogous developments in moral philosophy.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in contemporary philosophy of religion, Linda Zagzebski has written a new book that will be seen as a major contribution to ethical theory and theological ethics. At the core of the book lies a new form of virtue theory based on the emotions. Quite distinct from deontological, consequentialist and teleological virtue theories, this one has a particular theological, indeed Christian, foundation. The new theory helps to resolve philosophical problems and puzzles of various kinds: the dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in moral psychology, the claims and counterclaims of realism and anti-realism in the metaphysics of value, and paradoxes of perfect goodness in natural theology, including the problem of evil. As with Zagzebski's previous Cambridge book Virtues of the Mind, this new book will be sought out eagerly by a broad swathe of professionals and graduate students in philosophy and religious studies.

How do we think about what we plan to do? One dominant answer is that we select the best possible option available. However, a growing number of philosophers would offer a different answer: since we are not equipped to maximize we often choose the next best alternative, one that is no more than satisfactory. This strategy choice is called satisficing (a term coined by the economist Herb Simon). This new collection of essays explores both these accounts of practical reason, examining the consequences for adopting one or the other for moral theory in general and the theory of practical rationality in particular. It aims to address a constituency larger than contemporary moral philosophers and bring these questions to the attention of those interested in the applications of decision theory in economics, psychology and political science.

This volume deals with the relation between faith and reason, and brings the latest developments of modern logic into the scene. Faith and rationality are two perennial key concepts in the history of ideas. Philosophers and theologians have struggled to bring into harmony these otherwise conflicting concepts. Despite the diversity of approaches about what rationality effectively means, logic remains the cannon of objective and rational thought. The chapters in this volume analyze several issues pertaining to the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology from the perspective of their relation to logic and the benefit they can derive from the use of modern logic tools. The book is divided into five parts: (I) Introduction, (II) Analytic Philosophy of Religion, (III) Logical Philosophy of Religion, (IV) Computational Philosophy and Religion and (V) Logic, Language and Religion. This text appeals to students and researchers in the field.