Stephen Schiffer presents a groundbreaking account of meaning and belief, and shows how it can illuminate a range of crucial problems regarding language, mind, knowledge, and ontology. He introduces the new doctrine of 'pleonastic propositions' to explain what the things we mean and believe
are. He discusses the relation between semantic and psychological facts, on the one hand, and physical facts, on the other; vagueness and indeterminacy; moral truth; conditionals; and the role of propositional content in information acquisition and explanation. This radical new treatment of meaning
will command the attention of everyone who works on fundamental questions about language, and will attract much interest from other areas of philosophy.

Included in this volume is an introduction by the translator, J.M.D. Meiklejohn. Revised edition, originally published by The Colonial Press in 1899.

Included in this volume is an introduction by the translator, J.M.D. Meiklejohn. Revised edition, originally published by The Colonial Press in 1899.

The book gathers several contributions by historians of physics, philosophers of science and scientists as new essays in the history of physics ranging across the entire field, related in most instances to the works of Salvo D'Agostino (1921-2020), one of the field's most prominent scholars since the second half of the past century. A phenomenon is an observable measurable fact, including data modelling, assumptions/laws. A mechanical phenomenon is associated to equilibrium/motion. Are all mechanisms mechanisms of a phenomenon? Scholars with different backgrounds discuss mechanism/phenomena from an historical point of view. The book is also devoted to understanding of causations of disequilibrium (shock, gravitational, attraction/repulsion, inertia, entropy, etc.), including changes/interaction in the framework of irregular cases of modern physics as well. The book is an accessible avenue to understanding phenomena, ideas and mechanisms by leading authorities who offer much-needed historical insights into the field and on the relationship Physics–Mathematics. It provides an absorbing and revealing read for historians, philosophers and scientists alike.

Analytical philosophy now embraces a much greater variety of topic and divergence of opinion than it once did. What presuppositions of relevance are implicit in its dialogue, what patterns of reasoning does it rely on, and why is consensus so hard to achieve? The author seeks to resolve these questions in an original and constructive way that also illuminates several important issues of philosophical substance, such as the question of whether the linguistic analysis of thought should be replaced by a computational one.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? In The Practical Origins of Ideas Matthieu Queloz presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, this book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having.

Notes from the Crawl Room employs the lens and methods of horror writing to critique the excesses and absurdities of philosophy. Each story reveals disastrous and de-humanising effects of philosophies that are separated from real, lived experience (e.g. the absurdity of arguing over a sentence in Kant while the world burns around us). From a Kafkaesque exploration of administrative absurdities to the horrors of discursive violence, white supremacy and the living spectres of patriarchy, A.M. Moskovitz doesn't shy away from addressing the complex aspects of our lives. In addition to offering often humourous critiques of philosophy, these works are also, somewhat ironically, pieces of philosophy themselves. Each story seeks to move a subject area forward offering the reader the capacity to think through ideas in a weirder and more open way than traditional philosophy usually allows. An antidote to philosophy that seeks to close down and shut off the imaginative potential of human thought, Notes from the Crawl Room revels in the unsettling and creative potential of stories for revealing what thinking philosophically might really mean.

Challenging existing methodological conceptions of the analytic approach to aesthetics, Jukka Mikkonen brings together philosophy, literary studies and cognitive psychology to offer a new theory on the cognitive value of reading fiction. Philosophy, Literature and Understanding defends the epistemic significance of narratives, arguing that it should be explained in terms of understanding rather than knowledge. Mikkonen formulates understanding as a cognitive process, which he connects to narrative imagining in order to assert that narrative is a central tool for communicating understanding. Demonstrating the effects that literary works have on their readers, he examines academic critical analysis, responses of the reading public and nonfictional writings that include autobiographical testimony to their writer's influences and attitudes to life. In doing so, he provides empirical evidence of the cognitive benefits of literature and of how readers demonstrate the growth of their understanding. By drawing on the written testimony of the reader, this book is an important intervention into debates on the value of literature that incorporates understanding in new and imaginative ways.

This collection provides the first in-depth introduction to the theory of the religious imagination put forward by renowned philosopher Douglas Hedley, from his earliest essays to his principal writings. Featuring Hedley's inaugural lecture delivered at Cambridge University in 2018, the book sheds light on his robust concept of religious imagination as the chief power of the soul's knowledge of the Divine and reveals its importance in contemporary metaphysics, ethics and politics. Chapters trace the development of the religious imagination in Christian Platonism from Late Antiquity to British Romanticism, drawing on Origen, Henry More and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before providing a survey of alternative contemporary versions of the concept as outlined by Karl Rahner, Rene Girard and William P. Alston, as well as within Indian philosophy. By bringing Christian Platonist thought into dialogue with contemporary philosophy and theology, the volume systematically reveals the relevance of Hedley's work to current debates in religious epistemology and metaphysics. It offers a comprehensive appraisal of the historical contribution of imagination to religious understanding and, as such, will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians and historians alike.

The second edition of this popular text, updated throughout and now including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, Uscinski and Enders address the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing. They rigorously analyze the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.

The Essential Berkeley and Neo-Berkeley is an introduction to the life and work of one of the most significant thinkers in the history of philosophy and a penetrating philosophical assessment of his lasting legacy. Written in clear and user-friendly style, Berman provides: * A concise summary of George Berkeley (1685-1753)'s life and writings * An accessible introduction to the structure of Berkeley's most authoritative work, The Principles of Human Knowledge * An overview of common misunderstandings of Berkeley's philosophy, and how to avoid them Beyond solely an introduction, Berman also gives us a broader and deeper appreciation of Berkeley as a philosopher. He argues for Berkeley's work as a philosophical system with coherence and important key themes hitherto unexplored and provides an analysis of why he thinks Berkeley's work has had such lasting significance. With a particular focus on Berkeley's dualist thinking and theories of 'mental types', Berman provides students and scholars with a key to unlocking the significance of this work. This introductory text will provide an insight into Berkeley's full body of work, the distinctiveness of his thinking and how deeply relevant this key thinker is to contemporary philosophy.

Cultural values and structures differ in societies throughout the world. For example, the traditional conformism of Confucian countries is vastly dissimilar from the individualistic values of Western societies. In today's globalized environment, the greatest challenge is the collaboration of diverse cultures. The comprehension of global epistemology and the understanding of diverse cultural perspectives is needed in order to sustain global harmony and intercultural congruence. Cultural Perspectives on Global Research Epistemology: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a pivotal reference source that discusses the effect of globalization on intercultural communication and critical thinking and analyzes Eastern and Western societies from an epistemological standpoint. While highlighting topics including uncertainty avoidance, Confucianism, and cultural heritage, this book is ideally designed for researchers, scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, educators, practitioners, and students seeking current research on epistemic discordance in global research.

What does it mean to be an expert? What sort of authority do experts really have? And what role should they play in today's society? Addressing why ever larger segments of society are skeptical of what experts say, Expertise: A Philosophical Introduction reviews contemporary philosophical debates and introduces what an account of expertise needs to accomplish in order to be believed. Drawing on research from philosophers and sociologists, chapters explore widely held accounts of expertise and uncover their limitations, outlining a set of conceptual criteria a successful account of expertise should meet. By providing suggestions for how a philosophy of expertise can inform practical disciplines such as politics, religion, and applied ethics, this timely introduction to a topic of pressing importance reveals what philosophical thinking about expertise can contribute to growing concerns about experts in the 21st century.