This book highlights the importance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings on psychology and psychological phenomena for the historical development of contemporary psychology. It presents an insightful assessment of the philosopher's work, particularly his later writings, which draws on key interpretations that have informed our understanding of metapsychological and psychological issues. Wittgenstein's Philosophy in Psychology engages with both critics and followers of the philosopher's work to demonstrate its enduring relevance to psychology today. Sullivan presents a novel examination of Wittgenstein's later writings by providing historical detail about the uptake, understanding and use of Wittgenstein's remarks and method in psychology and related areas of social science, examining persistent sources of conceptual confusion and showing how to apply his insights in investigations of collectives, social life, emotions, subjectivity, and development. In doing so, he reveals the value for psychologists in adopting a philosophical method of conceptual investigation to work through and become more reflexive about prominent theories, methods, therapies and practices in their respective, multiple fields and thereby create a resource for future theoretical, empirical and applied psychologists. This work will be of particular relevance to students and academics engaged in the history of psychology and to practitioners interested in understanding the continued importance of Wittgenstein's work within the practices of psychology.

Studying with Husserl in Goettingen, becoming a Carmelite nun, and finally meeting her death in Auschwitz, the multifaceted life of Edith Stein (1891-1942) is well known. But what about her writing? Have the different aspects of her scholarship received sufficient attention? Peter Tyler thinks not, and by drawing on previously untranslated and neglected sources, he reveals how Stein's work lies at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and theology. Bringing Stein into conversation with a range of scholars and traditions, this book investigates two core elements of her thinking. From Nietzsche to Aquinas, psychoanalysis to the philosophy of the soul, and even the striking parallels between Stein's thought and Buddhist teaching, Tyler first unveils the interdisciplinary nature of what he terms her 'spiritual anthropology'. Second, he also explores her symbolic mentality. Articulating its poetic roots with the help of English poetry and medieval theology, he introduces Stein's self-named 'philosophy of life'. Considered in the context of her own times, The Living Philosophy of Edith Stein unearths Stein's valuable contributions to numerous subjects that are still of great importance today, including not only the philosophies of mind and religion, but also social and political thought and the role of women in society. By examining the richness of her thinking, informed by three disciplines and the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century, Tyler shows us how Edith Stein is the guide we all need, as we seek to develop our own philosophy for life in the contemporary world.

This volume congregates articles of leading philosophers about potentials and potentiality in all areas of philosophy and the empirical sciences in which they play a relevant role. It is the first encompassing collection of articles on the metaphysics of potentials and potentiality. Potentials play an important role not only in our everyday understanding of objects, persons and systems but also in the sciences. An example is the potential to become an adult human person. Moreover, the attribution of potentials involves crucial ethical problems. Bioethics makes references to the theoretical concept "potential" without being able to clarify its meaning. However, despite its relevance it has not been made subject of philosophical investigation. Mostly, potentials are regarded as a subspecies of dispositions. Whilst dispositions are a flourishing field of research, potentials as such have not come into focus. Potentials like dispositions are modal properties. But already a first glance at the metaphysics of potentials shows that concerning their ascription potentials are more problematic than dispositions since "potential" means that an entity has the potential to acquire a property in the future. Therefore, potentials involve a time structure of the entities in question that is much more complex than those of dispositions. This handbook brings this important concept into focus in its various aspects for the first time. It covers the history of the concept as well as contemporary systematic problems and will be of special interest for philosophers in the fields of general metaphysics, philosophy of science and ethics, especially bioethics. It will also be of interest to scientists and persons concerned with bioethical problems.

This collection of original articles, written by leading contemporary philosophers of religion, is presented in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Following the Introduction, in which the Editor develops the changing philosophical context for the creation and development of the journal, articles by William Rowe, William Alston and Bowman Clarke focus on the concept of God. Rowe considers what conceptions of God may fit with the tradition of American naturalism. Alston argues that irrealism is subversive of the Christian conception of God, and Bowman Clarke analyzes two different process conceptions of God and their metaphysical frameworks. Next, Richard Swinburne argues that God can allow creatures to suffer evils so long as on balance the package of their lives is good. The next four essays are concerned with the role of philosophical reason in the analysis of religion. John Smith argues for a position in which philosophy and religion are understood to be complementary and Robert Scharlemann analyzes and expands upon Paul Tillich's understanding of philosophy of religion. David Burrell takes up the question of the relation between reason, faith and analogical language and Merold Westphal explores the postmodern critique of metaphysics and religion. The last two essays are concerned with the issue of religious pluralism. Philip Quinn analyzes John Hick's and William Alston's approach to religious diversity and argues for an approach which does not impugn the rationality of those who lean towards thicker religious phenomenologies and thinner theologies. Robert Neville argues for a new and comparative approach to thephilosophy of religion which takes into account our increased knowledge of the major religious faiths. The book also includes a twenty-five year index of articles and reviews published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.

This book presents contemporary perspectives of scholars working on different aspects of the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo- the idea of evolution, integral yoga, the transformation of the individual, society and earth, theories of nation and human unity, philosophy of emotions and ethics of the environment. Contributors examine Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, its close conceptual relationship to classical Indian philosophy and its relevance. It sheds light on how his philosophy deals with the twenty-first century's fundamental problems and offers possible solutions. The book brings out the modern debate in Western philosophy involving thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, and their predecessors, such as Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. This book is an exercise in comparative Philosophy,one that unpacks the mind of Sri Aurobindo in the context of Indian, European and Anglo-American philosophical discourse. It is of great relevance for a new generation of students, scholars of Indian philosophy, politics, religious studies and those interested in knowing the thought and practice of the twentieth-century Indian, thinker and yogi, Sri Aurobindo.

George Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge is a crucial text in the history of empiricism and in the history of philosophy more generally. Its central and seemingly astonishing claim is that the physical world cannot exist independently of the perceiving mind. The meaning of this claim, the powerful arguments in its favour, and the system in which it is embedded, are explained in a highly lucid and readable fashion and placed in their historical context. Berkeley's philosophy is, in part, a response to the deep tensions and problems in the new philosophy of the early modern period and the reader is offered an account of this intellectual milieu. The book then follows the order and substance of the Principles whilst drawing on materials from Berkeley's other writings. This volume is the ideal introduction to Berkeley's Principles and will be of great interest to historians of philosophy in general.

This volume handles in various perspectives the concept of function and the nature of functional explanations, topics much discussed since two major and conflicting accounts have been raised by Larry Wright and Robert Cummins papers in the 1970s. Here, both Wright s etiological theory of functions and Cummins systemic conception of functions are refined and elaborated in the light of current scientific practice, with papers showing how the etiological theory faces several objections and may in reply be revisited, while its counterpart became ever more sophisticated, as researchers discovered fresh applications for it.

Relying on a firm knowledge of the original positions and debates, this volume presents cutting-edge research evincing the complexities that today pertain in function theory in various sciences. Alongside original papers from authors central to the controversy, work by emerging researchers taking novel perspectives will add to the potential avenues to be followed in the future. Not only does the book adopt no a priori assumptions about the scope of functional explanations, it also incorporates material from several very different scientific domains, e.g. neurosciences, ecology, or technology.

In general, functions are implemented in mechanisms; and functional explanations in biology have often an essential relation with natural selection. These two basic claims set the stage for this book s coverage of investigations concerning both functional explanations, and the metaphysics of functions. It casts new light on these claims, by testing them through their confrontation with scientific developments in biology, psychology, and recent developments concerning the metaphysics of realization. Rather than debating a single theory of functions, this book presents the richness of philosophical issues raised by functional discourse throughout the various sciences. "

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in dialogues in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. Key Features Draws on a wide range of types of narrative fiction, from Harry Potter to Breakfast of Champions to Parks and Recreation. Explores how fiction, despite its detachment from truth, is often best able to teach us important things about the world in which we live. Concludes by asking in the final chapter whether we all might be fictions. Includes bibliographies and suggested reading lists in each chapter

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in dialogues in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. Key Features Draws on a wide range of types of narrative fiction, from Harry Potter to Breakfast of Champions to Parks and Recreation. Explores how fiction, despite its detachment from truth, is often best able to teach us important things about the world in which we live. Concludes by asking in the final chapter whether we all might be fictions. Includes bibliographies and suggested reading lists in each chapter

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the foot of each page. There are now over 100 volumes, representing the greater part of classical Greek and Latin literature.

Reading Mill begins with the idea that political theory, as it is understood and practised in Anglophone Universities, is not one practice but a set of four alternative practices marked by divergent ontologies and epistemologies. Three of the conceptions of political theory identified are applied to produce markedly different readings of the works of John Stuart Mill. The work is designed to demonstrate that the alternative conceptions of political theory are coherent and offer different insights into Mill's works.

This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided 'agent' causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.

Published in honor of Sergio Galvan, this collection concentrates on the application of logical and mathematical methods for the study of central issues in formal philosophy. The volume is subdivided into four sections, dedicated to logic and philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. The contributions adress, from a logical point of view, some of the main topics in these areas. The first two sections include formal treatments of: truth and paradoxes; definitions by abstraction; the status of abstract objects, such as mathematical objects and universal concepts; and the structure of explicit knowledge. The last two sections include papers on classical problems in philosophy of science, such as the status of subjective probability, the notion of verisimilitude, the notion of approximation, and the theory of mind and mental causation, and specific issues in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, such as the ontology of species, actions, and intelligible worlds, and the logic of religious belonging.

More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; and yet, we lack a unifying theory which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time. Why, when movement has always been central to human societies, did a philosophy based on movement never take hold? This book finally overturns this long-standing metaphysical tradition by placing movement at the heart of philosophy. In doing so, Being and Motion provides a completely new understanding of the most fundamental categories of ontology from a movement-oriented perspective: quality, quantity, relation, modality, and others. It also provides the first history of the philosophy of motion, from early prehistoric mythologies up to contemporary ontologies. Through its systematic ontology of movement, Being and Motion provides a path-breaking historical ontology of our present.

This important new book is the first of a series of volumes collecting the essential articles by the eminent and highly influential philosopher Saul A. Kripke. It presents a mixture of published and unpublished articles from various stages of Kripke's storied career.
Included here are seminal and much discussed pieces such as "Identity and Necessity," "Outline of a Theory of Truth," "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference," and "A Puzzle About Belief." More recent published articles include "Russell's Notion of Scope" and "Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference" among others. Several articles are published here for the first time, including both older works ("Two Paradoxes of Knowledge," "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities," "Nozick on Knowledge") as well as newer ("The First Person" and "Unrestricted Exportation"). "A Puzzle on Time and Thought" was written expressly for this volume.
Publication of this volume -- which ranges over epistemology, linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy, theory of truth, and metaphysics -- represents a major event in contemporary analytic philosophy. It will be of great interest to the many who are interested in the work of one its greatest living figures.

When a doctor tells you there's a one percent chance that an operation will result in your death, or a scientist claims that his theory is probably true, what exactly does that mean? Understanding probability is clearly very important, if we are to make good theoretical and practical choices. In this engaging and highly accessible introduction to the philosophy of probability, Darrell Rowbottom takes the reader on a journey through all the major interpretations of probability, with reference to real-world situations. In lucid prose, he explores the many fallacies of probabilistic reasoning, such as the 'gambler's fallacy' and the 'inverse fallacy', and shows how we can avoid falling into these traps by using the interpretations presented. He also illustrates the relevance of the interpretation of probability across disciplinary boundaries, by examining which interpretations of probability are appropriate in diverse areas such as quantum mechanics, game theory, and genetics. Using entertaining dialogues to draw out the key issues at stake, this unique book will appeal to students and scholars across philosophy, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.

The correspondence between Meinong and Kazimierz Twardowski highlights the relationship between two philosophers who influenced the history of philosophy and psychology in Austria and Poland. The two correspondents discuss, among other things, their epistemological approach and the university politics of their times. In addition, there is an extensive introduction that places the correspondence in its proper historical and philosophical context.

In Predication and Ontology A. Kalbarczyk provides the first monograph-length study of the Arabic reception of Aristotle's Categories. At the center of attention is the critical reappraisal of that treatise by Ibn Sina (d. 428 AH/1037 AD), better known in the Latin West as Avicenna. Ibn Sina's reading of the Categories is examined in the context of his wider project of rearranging the transmitted body of philosophical knowledge. Against the background of the late ancient commentary tradition and subsequent exegetical efforts, Ibn Sina's Kitab al-Maqulat of the Sifa' is interpreted as a milestone in the gradual reshuffle of the relationship between logic proper and ontology. In order to assess the philosophical impact of this realignment, some of the subsequent developments in Ibn Sina's writings and in the emerging post-Avicennian tradition are also taken into account. The thematic focus lies on the two fundamental classification schemes which Aristotle introduces in the treatise: the fourfold division of Cat. 2 ("of a subject"/"in a subject") and the tenfold scheme of Cat. 4 (i.e., substance and the nine genera of accidents). They both pose the question of whether and how the manner in which an expression is predicated relates to extra-linguistic reality. As the study intends to show, this question is one of the driving forces of Ibn Sina's momentous reform of the Aristotelian curriculum. This monograph has been awarded the Iran World Award for Book of the Year (2020).

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals was Iris Murdoch's major philosophical testament and a highly original and ambitious attempt to talk about our time. Yet in the scholarship on her philosophical work thus far it has often been left in the shade of her earlier work. This volume brings together 16 scholars who offer accessible readings of chapters and themes in the book, connecting them to Murdoch's larger oeuvre, as well as to central themes in 20th century and contemporary thought. The essays bring forth the strength, originality, and continuing relevance of Murdoch's late thought, addressing, among other matters, her thinking about the Good, the role and nature of metaphysics in the contemporary world, the roles of art in human understanding, questions of unity and plurality in thinking, the possibilities of spiritual life without God, and questions of style and sensibility in intellectual work.

Pragmatists have traditionally been enemies of representationalism but friends of naturalism, when naturalism is understood to pertain to human subjects, in the sense of Hume and Nietzsche. In this volume Huw Price presents his distinctive version of this traditional combination, as delivered in his Rene Descartes Lectures at Tilburg University in 2008. Price contrasts his view with other contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism, comparing it with other pragmatist and neo-pragmatist views such as those of Robert Brandom and Simon Blackburn. Linking their different 'expressivist' programmes, Price argues for a radical global expressivism that combines key elements from both. With Paul Horwich and Michael Williams, Brandom and Blackburn respond to Price in new essays. Price replies in the closing essay, emphasising links between his views and those of Wilfrid Sellars. The volume will be of great interest to advanced students of philosophy of language and metaphysics.

Indigenous Education and the Metaphysics of Presence: A worlded philosophy explores a notion of education called 'worldedness' that sits at the core of indigenous philosophy. This is the idea that any one thing is constituted by all others and is, therefore, educational to the extent that it is formational. A suggested opposite of this indigenous philosophy is the metaphysics of presence, which describes the tendency in dominant Western philosophy to privilege presence over absence. This book compares these competing philosophies and argues that, even though the metaphysics of presence and the formational notion of education are at odds with each other, they also constitute each other from an indigenous worlded philosophical viewpoint. Drawing on both Maori and Western philosophies, this book demonstrates how the metaphysics of presence is both related and opposed to the indigenous notion of worldedness. Mika explains that presence seeks to fragment things in the world, underpins how indigenous peoples can represent things, and prevents indigenous students, critics, and scholars from reflecting on philosophical colonisation. However, the metaphysics of presence, from an indigenous perspective, is constituted by all other things in the world, and Mika argues that the indigenous student and critic can re-emphasise worldedness and destabilise presence through creative responses, humour, and speculative thinking. This book concludes by positioning well-being within education, because education comprises acts of worldedness and presence. This book will be of key interest to indigenous as well as non-indigenous academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, indigenous and Western philosophy, political strategy and post-colonial studies. It will also be relevant for those who are interested in philosophies of language, ontology, metaphysics and knowledge.

This book explores the dispositional and categorical debates on the metaphysics of properties. It defends the view that all fundamental properties and relations are contingently categorical, while also examining alternative accounts of the nature of properties. Drawing upon both established research and the author's own investigation into the broader discipline of the metaphysics of science, this book provides a comprehensive study of the many views and opinions regarding a most debatable topic in contemporary metaphysics. Science in Metaphysics will be of interest to metaphysicians of science, analytic metaphysicians and philosophers of science and physics alike.

This book is an exploration and defense of the coherence of classical theism's doctrine of divine aseity in the face of the challenge posed by Platonism with respect to abstract objects. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, the book engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. It addresses absolute creationism, non-Platonic realism, fictionalism, neutralism, and alternative logics and semantics, among other topics. The book offers a helpful taxonomy of the wide range of options available to the classical theist for dealing with the challenge of Platonism. It probes in detail the diverse views on the reality of abstract objects and their compatibility with classical theism. It contains a most thorough discussion, rooted in careful exegesis, of the biblical and patristic basis of the doctrine of divine aseity. Finally, it challenges the influential Quinean metaontological theses concerning the way in which we make ontological commitments.