The first collection devoted to salience, a topic very close to key debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind and psychology and ethics Very strong line up of contributors who have been approached specially for this collection Includes chapters on salience in ethics, feminist philosophy and aesthetics, which widens the potential readership.

This volume collects fifteen original essays on E. J. Lowe's work on metaphysics and ontology. The essays connect Lowe's insights with contemporary issues in metaphysics. E. J. Lowe (1950-2014) was one of the most influential analytical philosophers of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Drawing inspiration from Aristotle's thought, E. J. Lowe treated metaphysics as an autonomous discipline concerned with the fundamental structure of reality. The chapters in this volume reflect on his path-breaking work. They deal with a wide range of metaphysical issues including four-category ontology, the causal and non-causal aspects of agency, categorial fundamentality and non-fundamentality, the existence of relations, property dualism, powers and abilities, personal identity, predication, and topological ontology. Taken together, the chapters reflect the liveliness of contemporary debates in metaphysics and the enduring impact of Lowe's thought on them. E. J. Lowe and Ontology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

what makes a property intrinsic? What exactly does the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction rest upon, and how can we reasonably justify this distinction? These questions bear great importance on central debates in such diverse philosophical fields as ethics (What is the nature of intrinsic value?), philosophy of mind (Does mental content supervene on internal bodily features?), epistemology (Can intrinsic duplicates differ in the justification of their beliefs?) and philosophy of science (Do the causal powers of an object depend on its extrinsic features?) - to only name a few. Given the central relevance of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction to philosophical research, a collection of pertinent essays on the topic is an essential addition to the literature. It helps to identify more clearly the problems and arguments that are at stake. The anthology provides a comprehensive overview of central facets of the debates, including both crucial earlier and important new contributions by leading philosophers. As such it constitutes an indispensable component of any serious study of the topic.

Whitehead and the Pittsburgh School: Preempting the Problem of Intentionality proposes a revisionary history of the relationship between Alfred North Whitehead and analytic philosophy, as well as a constructive proposal for how thinking with Whitehead can help disabuse analytic philosophy of the problem of intentionality. Lisa Landoe Hedrick defines "analytic" philosophy as primarily the intellectual tradition that runs from Gottlob Frege to Bertrand Russell to Wilfrid Sellars, or, geographically speaking, from Vienna to Cambridge to Pittsburgh between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As key members of the Pittsburgh School of philosophy, Robert Brandom and John McDowell pick up the Sellarsian project of reconciling nature and normativity in different ways, yet each of them presupposes a problematic relationship between language and the world precisely bequeathed to them by an implicit metaphysics of subjecthood that characterized analytic thinkers of the early twentieth century. Hedrick both investigates Whitehead's published and archived critiques of early analytic thought-as an extension of a wider critique of modern philosophy-and employs Whitehead to reimagine nature and normativity after the problem of intentionality by way of his aesthetics of symbolism. This book thereby builds upon a burgeoning effort among philosophers to interface process and analytic thought, but it is the first to focus on contemporary analytic thinkers.

During the seventies, there was a revival of systematic philosophy in general and of ontology in particular. At the same time, especially in Anglo-Saxon thinking, systematic philosophy interacted very creatively with the history of medieval philosophy. It seems to us that the work of John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) could substantially benefit these develop ments. Not only this, but his works cries out to be developed across the whole spectrum of theology -that science which, in the Middle Ages, ruled all others ('regina scientiarum'). This book is the outcome of several years of scholarship and friend ship during which, guided by Dr. A. Vos, we have studied the work of Scotus. Our research group is connected to the Theological Faculty of Utrecht and to the Dutch Franciscan Study Centre (Stichting Francis caans Studiecentrum). This study presents a translation and commentary of Lectura I 39, which, in our view, is noteable as one of the key texts in the history of systematic theology and philosophy. In this book we have used specialist language and argumentation, but at the same time have taken pains to make it useful to a circle of in terested readers wider than simply that of those well-versed in medieval scholasticism. In this way, we hope to present the difficult but instruc tive work of the 'subtle master' ('doctor subtilis') in such a way as to make it attractive to other scholars and students in theology and philoso phy."

A Chance for Possibility defends the view that the objective modal realm is tripartite: truths about possible worlds supervene on modal truths, which in turn supervene on truths about objective chances. An understanding of supervenience in terms of grounding is developed which - unlike the standard modal characterization - allows the question of what modal truths supervene on to have a non-trivial answer. Relying on this understanding, a negative result is established: modal truths do not supervene on truths about possible worlds, whether possible worlds are conceived of as Lewisian concreta or as abstract objects of some kind. Instead, a conception of pleonastic possible worlds is developed that reverses the direction of supervenience. On the basis of linguistic considerations concerning our use of natural language 'might' and 'might have' sentences, Steinberg finally argues that truths about objective chances are able to provide a supervenience base for modal truths. A Chance for Possibility is an investigation in analytic metaphysics, drawing on related work in the philosophy of logic and language as well as linguistics. It provides a detailed case study for the fruitful use of a notion of grounding in the clarification and evaluation of longstanding philosophical issues.

Philosophers have met with many problems in discussing the interconnected concepts being, identity, and truth, and have advanced many theories to deal with them. Professor Williams argues that most of these problems and theories result from an inadequate appreciation of the ways in which the words `be', `same', and `true' work. By means of linguistic analysis he shows that being and truth are not properties, and identity is not a relation. He is thus able to demystify a number of metaphysical issues concerning the meaning of the word `I', the relation between the mental and the physical, objects of thought, times and places, and the nature of reality. Williams presents his views clearly, with a minimum of technicality, and with rich and apt examples, so that they will be accessible to readers not versed in symbolic logic.

Accessible and wide-ranging, this introduction to contemporary Philosophy of Action guides the reader through the major views and arguments. The topics addressed include the nature of intentional action and its explanation, the nature of reasons, the role of desire and intention in action, the nature of autonomy and the possibility of group agents.

This edited collection presents the latest cutting-edge research in the philosophy and cognitive science of temporal illusions. Illusion and error have long been important points of entry for both philosophical and psychological approaches to understanding the mind. Temporal illusions, specifically, concern a fundamental feature of lived experience, temporality, and its relation to a fundamental feature of the world, time, thus providing invaluable insight into investigations of the mind and its relationship with the world. The existence of temporal illusions crucially challenges the naive assumption that we can simply infer the temporal nature of the world from experience. This anthology gathers eighteen original papers from current leading researchers in this subject, covering four broad and interdisciplinary topics: illusions of temporal passage, illusions and duration, illusions of temporal order and simultaneity, and the relationship between temporal illusions and the cognitive representation of time.

This book is about the idea that some true statements would have been true no matter how the world had turned out, while others could have been false. It develops and defends a version of the idea that we tell the difference between these two types of truths in part by reflecting on the meanings of words. It has often been thought that modal issues-issues about possibility and necessity-are related to issues about meaning. In this book, the author defends the view that the analysis of meaning is not just a preliminary to answering modal questions in philosophy; it is not merely that before we can find out whether something is possible, we need to get clear on what we are talking about. Rather, clarity about meaning often brings with it answers to modal questions. In service of this view, the author analyzes the notion of necessity and develops ideas about linguistic meaning, applying them to several puzzles and problems in philosophy of language. Meaning and Metaphysical Necessity will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic.

This book defends a relational theory of the passage of time. It argues that the B-theory of time-and its close affiliate, the eternalist-relativistic account of time-does not predicate an utterly static view of reality.

Theories about the ontological structure of the world have generally been described in informal, intuitive terms, and the arguments for and against them, including their consistency and adequacy as explanatory frameworks, have generally been given in even more informal terms. The goal of formal ontology is to correct for these deficiencies. By formally reconstructing an intuitive, informal ontological scheme as a formal ontology we can better determine the consistency and adequacy of that scheme; and then by comparing different reconstructed schemes with one another we can much better evaluate the arguments for and against them and come to a decision as to which system it is best to adopt. Conceptual realism, which is defended here as the best system to adopt, contains both an intensional and a natural realism as well as an Aristotelian essentialism based on a logic of natural kinds.

We share the capacity for knowledge with animals, but it is the nature and the scope of what we may rationally believe that makes us human. Yet what kind of beliefs do qualify as 'rational'? This challenging and refreshingly innovative book addresses certain fundamental questions concerning rational legitimacy of some widely held beliefs and provides argument-based answers to such questions, while at the same time encouraging the reader to actively engage with the views put forward and form his/her own judgement. The book is typically discursive rather than simply informative, and introduces philosophy by doing it.

This book examines the unique views of philosopher Jacob Sigismund Beck, a student of Immanuel Kant who devoted himself to an exploration of his teacher's doctrine and to showing that Kant s transcendental idealism is, contra to the common view, both internally consistent and is not a form of subjective idealism. In his attempt to explain away certain apparent contradictions found in Kant's system, Beck put forward a new reading of Kant s critical theory, a view, which came to be known as the "Standpunctslehre, the "Doctrine of the Standpoint.

Author Lior Nitzan reconstructs, step by step, the historical development of Beck s doctrine. He shows how Beck's unique view is drastically different from that of his contemporaries and presents the relevance of Beck to contemporary debates about the proper interpretation of Kant s notion of objectivity, the refutation of idealism and the role of the thing in itself in Kant s transcendental idealism. In doing so, Nitzan presents a defense of Beck's radical perspective of Kant s theory and claims that some of Kant s negative responses to it may in fact be due more to the adversary academic environment at the time than to Kant s true, well considered, opinion.

"Jacob Sigismund Beck s "Standpunctslehre challenges the two dominant schools in the interpretation of Kant s transcendental idealism the "two world" and the "two aspect" view. It presents a new way of understanding Kant s transcendental idealism, according to which the thing in itself plays no positive role in relation to the possibility of experience. Moreover, it claims that eliminating the thing in itself as the ultimate object of knowledge is not to admit idealism but in fact is the only way to consistently uphold realism. In addition, the book also addresses the question why, assuming that the proposed interpretation is correct, Kant had chosen not to make his true intentions clear."

This lucid and original book offers a detailed and critical exposition of German metaphysics and philosophy of logic during the past century. Julian Roberts sets his argument in the context of the current debate between "analytical" and "continental" philosophers. the book centers on the problem of reflection-exploration of the boundaries of rationality, or (in analytical terms) of the "limits of thought"-which Roberts claims lies at the heart of both traditions. Roberts concentrates on the work of Frege, Wittengenstein, Husserl, the Erlangen School, and Habermas. In the course of his examination, however, he also considers philosophers ranging from Russell and Quine to Putnam and Heidegger. Roberts argues that the technical advances of modern logic have not, as is sometimes believed by analytical thinkers, generated uniquely modern problems that can only be dealt with by a correspondingly modernist philosophy, for the problem of reflection was already at the heart of Kant's critical project and of his confrontation with Leibniz. If we recover this earlier debate, says Roberts, we can develop a more adequate understanding not merely of its echoes in the twentieth century, but of the role and contribution of metaphysics and of philosophy in general.

The current volume is comparative and inter-disciplinary, and it provides a reflection on what thinking might become after Heidegger's philosophy. Its aim is to critically expand the current field of research by presenting unfamiliar and unchartered avenues that will guide and carry the Heidegger scholarship into the twenty-first century. By doing so, it addresses fundamental questions in the Heideggerian scholarship, including its problems, restraints, and future direction. It also engages and broadens the increasingly disparate approaches to Heidegger's work, whether those approaches are traditional in their employment of phenomenology and hermeneutics or whether they apply to Heidegger's thinking in new and surprising ways. The first section of the volume emphasizes the importance of methodology for the future of Heidegger studies while the second section examines the historical, ethical and vocal-poetical in Heidegger's thought and draws conclusions relevant to the Heidegger scholar of today. The final section demonstrates Heidegger's appeal to a variety of other discourses besides philosophy and the way his thinking could be creatively approached, utilized and implemented in our century. Contributions come from cutting-edge scholars such as Babette E. Babich, Dermot Moran, Francois Raffoul and Trish Glazebrook.

This book presents a systematic unifying-pluralist account-a "constructive-engagement" account-of how cross-tradition engagement in philosophy is possible. The goal of this "constructive-engagement" account is, by way of reflective criticism, argumentation, and methodological guiding principles, to inquire into how distinct approaches from different philosophical traditions can talk to and learn from each other for the sake of making joint contributions to the contemporary development of philosophy. In Part I of the book, Bo Mou explores a range of fundamental theoretic and methodological issues in cross-tradition philosophical engagement and philosophical interpretation. In Part II, he analyzes several representative case studies that demonstrate how relevant resources in the Western and Chinese philosophical traditions can constructively engage with each other. These studies cover issues in philosophical methodology, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics. The book's theoretical and practical approaches expand the vision, coverage, and agenda of doing philosophy comparatively, and promote worldwide joint efforts of cross-tradition philosophical inquiries. Cross-Tradition Engagement in Philosophy will be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in comparative philosophy and the intersection of Chinese and Western philosophy. It will also appeal to those who are interested in the ways in which cross-tradition philosophical engagement can enhance contemporary philosophical debates in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics.

This book is a defence of a form of realism which stands closest to that upheld by the Nyaya-Vaisesika school in classical India. The author presents the Nyaya view and critically examines it against that of its traditional opponent, the Buddhist version of phenomenalism and idealism. His reconstruction of Nyaya arguments meets not only traditional Buddhist objections but also those of modern sense-data representationalists. The dispute between the Buddhist and Nayaya schools of thought lasted over 12 centuries, and although Professor Matilal's approach is mainly historical, it is made in the belief that the philosophical issues raised by this dispute are universal, rather than simply traditional, and have a significant contribution to make to modern philosophical concerns.

Solipsism is one of the philosophical thesis or ideas that has generally been regarded as highly implausible, or even crazy. The view that the world is "my world" in the sense that nothing exists independently of my mind, thought, and/or experience is, understandably, frowned up as a genuine philosophical position. For this reason, solipsism might be regarded as an example of a philosophical position that does not "matter" at all. It does not seem to play any role in our serious attempts to understand the world and ourselves. However, by arguing that solipsism does matter, after all, Why Solipsism Matters more generally demonstrates that philosophy, even when dealing with highly counterintuitive and "crazy" ideas, may matter in surprising, unexpected ways. It will be shown that the challenge of solipsism should make us rethink fundamental assumptions concerning subjectivity, objectivity, realism vs. idealism, relativism, as well as key topics such as ethical responsibility - that is, our ethical relations to other human beings - and death and mortality. Why Solipsism Matters is not only an historical review of the origins and development of the concept of solipsism and a exploration of some of its key philosophers (Kant and Wittgenstein to name but a few) but it develops an entirely new account of the idea. One which takes seriously the global, socially networked world in which we live in which the very real ramifications of solipsism - including narcissism - can be felt.

A wide-ranging and important collection of Broad's unpublished writings, shedding new light on his work Includes writings on topics that are not found in any of Broad's published work Broad is increasingly recognized as having made important contributions to philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and metaphysics that were overlooked in his own time Helpful introductions to each section set Broad's thought in context and includes a new foreword by Simon Blackburn

In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember. In some afterlives you are split into all your different ages; in some you are recreated based on your credit-card records; and in others you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been. In these wonderfully imagined tales - at once funny, wistful and unsettling - Eagleman kicks over the chessboard of traditional notions and offers us a dazzling lens through which to see ourselves here and now. His stories are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of hope, love and death that cuts through human nature at innovative angles.

In God's World and the Great Awakening, Professor Clark's main concern is with the way we can `turn aside' to the Truth from the normal delusions of self-concern. He restates a traditional, Neoplatonic metaphysics as the proper context for scientific and religious practice, and defends a serious Platonic realism against both scientism and anti-realism. Neither scientism, which identifies Truth with what can be revealed to the objectifying gaze, nor fashionable anti-realism, which equates Truth simply with what `we' choose to take seriously, offer an adequate ground for our scientific or religious faith. The primary faith of humankind is that there is a real world which is more than an obsequious shadow of our desires and fancies, and this real world can be discovered through right reason. The defence of this faith requires a properly worked, Platonic metaphysic of just the kind discernible in Christian orthodoxy. The other two volumes are: Civil Peace and Sacred Order (1989) and A Parliament of Souls (1990).

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.

Much of the recent literature published on Plato's metaphysics has involved the Third Man Argument found in his dialogue Parmenides. This argument depends upon construing Forms both as universals and as paradigm examples, and thus as being subject to self-predication. Professor Malcolm first presents a new and radical interpretation of Plato's earlier dialogues. He argues that the few cases of self-predication contained therein are acceptable simply as statements concerning universals (for example, `beauty is beautiful'), and that therefore Plato is not vulnerable in these cases to the Third Man Argument. In considering the middle dialogues, Professor Malcolm takes a conservative stance, rejecting influential current doctrines which portray the Forms as being not self-predicative. He shows that the middle dialogues do indeed take Forms to be both universals and paradigms, and thus to exemplify themselves. The author goes on to consider why Plato should have been unsuccessful in avoiding self-predication. He shows that Plato's concern to explain how the truths of mathematics can indeed be true played an important role in his postulation of the Form as an Ideal Individual. The author concludes with the claim that reflection on the ambiguity of such notions as the `Standard Yard' may help us to appreciate why Plato failed to distinguish Forms as universals from Forms as paradigm cases.

In this study, Oaklander's primary aim is to examine critically C.D. Broad's changing views of time and in so doing clarify the central disputes in the philosophy of time, explicate the various positions Broad took regarding them, and develop his own responses both to Broad and the issues debated.