This work presents and philosophically analyzes the early modern and modern history of the theory concerning the soul of the world, anima mundi. The initial question of the investigation is why there was a revival of this theory in the time of the early German Romanticism, whereas the concept of the anima mundi had been rejected in the earlier, classical period of European philosophy (early and mature Enlightenment). The presentation and analysis starts from the Leibnizian-Wolffian school, generally hostile to the theory, and covers classical eighteenth-century physico-theology, also reluctant to accept an anima mundi. Next, it discusses early modern and modern Christian philosophical Cabbala (Bohme and Otinger), an intellectual tradition which to some extent tolerated the idea of a soul of the world. The philosophical relationship between Spinoza and Spinozism on the one hand, and the anima mundi theory on the other is also examined. An analysis of Giordano Bruno s utilization of the concept anima del mondo is the last step before we give an account of how and why German Romanticism, especially Baader and Schelling asserted and applied the theory of the Weltseele. The purpose of the work is to prove that the philosophical insufficiency of a concept of God as an ens extramundanum instigated the Romantics to think an anima mundi that can act as a divine and quasi-infinite intermediary between God and Nature, as a locum tenens of God in physical reality."

A wide-ranging and important collection of Broad's unpublished writings, shedding new light on his work Includes writings on topics that are not found in any of Broad's published work Broad is increasingly recognized as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

* Fourteen scholars engage Kearney's work to plumb the depths of our experience of the lived body * Seeks to engage a form of otherness that is becoming unconcealed, problematized and integrated into current scholarly work and more broadly into our general psychological awareness and our social and political projects * First project to engage with Kearney's Touch (2021) in the broader context of his oeuvre, and engage that body of work with novel approaches that Kearney himself has not deployed.

The book surveys the key metaphysical contributions of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614-1687). It deals with such interwoven topics as: the natures of body and spirit, and the question of whether or not there is a sharp ontological division between them; the nature of spatial extension in relation to each; the composition and governance of the physical world, including More's theories of Hyle, atoms, vacuum, and the Spirit of Nature; and the life of the human soul, including its pre-existence. It approaches these topics and the systematic connections between them both historically and analytically, and seeks to do justice to the ways in which More's system developed and changed-sometimes quite dramatically-over the course of his long career. It also explores More's intellectual relations with both his own inspirations (Plotinus, Origen, Ficino, Descartes, etc.) and with those who responded, whether positively or negatively, to his work (Leibniz, Locke, Boyle, Newton, etc.).

This book offers a unique perspective on one of the deepest questions about the world we live in: is reality multi-leveled, or can everything be reduced to some fundamental 'flat' level? This deep philosophical issue has widespread implications in philosophy, since it is fundamental to how we understand the world and the basic entities in it. Both the notion of 'levels' within science and their ontological implications are issues that are underexplored in the philosophical literature. The volume reconsiders the view that reality contains many levels and opens new ways to understand the ontological status of the special sciences. The book focuses on major open questions that arise at the foundations of cognitive science, cognitive psychology, brain science and other special sciences, in particular with respect to the physical foundations of these sciences. For example: Is the mental computational? Do brains compute? How can the special sciences be autonomous from physics, grounded in, or based on, physics and at the same time irreducible to physics? The book is an important read for scientists and philosophers alike. It is of interest to philosophers of science, philosophers of mind and biology interested in the notion of levels, but also to psychologists, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists investigating such issues as the precise relation of the mental to the underlying neural structures and the appropriate approach to study it.

This book discusses the philosophy of influential contemporary philosopher Peter van Inwagen. Looking at perennial philosophical problems from a modern point of view, Peter van Inwagen's philosophy masterfully combines positions that have been considered irreconcilable: incompatibilism concerning free will, materialism, organicism, theism and realism concerning fictional entities. As readers will discover, his arguments are witty, surprising and deep. The book includes Peter van Inwagen's Munster Lecture of 2015 on free will, as well as eleven papers from the Munster colloquium discussing central themes of his philosophy, and a reply to each paper by Peter van Inwagen himself. Introducing his philosophy and relating his work to other contemporary views, this book is of interest to graduate students and professionals in philosophy alike.

One of the most remarkable features of mid-to-late twentieth century analytic philosophy is the revival of interest in the traditional problems of metaphysics. However, given the long period of neglect from which metaphysics in only now emerging, it is perhaps not surprising that philosophers in the analytic tradition are still finding their metaphysical feet, particularly on meta-metaphysical and methodological matters. Thus contemporary metaphysicians find themselves in an exciting but ultimately unstable position: We are convinced that metaphysical questions are worth pursing, but we still lack a convincing story to offer our detractors about how we conduct our business "qua" metaphysicians. This essay is an attempt to provide such a story. The core recommendation is that we need not re-invent the discipline out of whole cloth if we are willing to learn from the past masters, particularly the Scholastics. What ultimately emerges is a defense of Scholastic metaphysical principles based on contemporary evolutionary biology.

One of the most difficult problems challenging the human mind is knowledge of the world in its human, natural, and supra-natural dimensions: what is the nature of this multidimensional reality? How do we know and verify the truth of our knowledge claims of this reality? A contemporary Polish philosopher, Malgorzata Czarnocka, has advanced one of the most comprehensive and insightful studies of the cognitive act and the conditions under which it takes place. The proposition explicated in this book is that Czarnocka's analysis of perception functions as a model of explanation in our attempt to know the nature of the being that underlies the universe. This analysis becomes the basis of the author's discussion of symbolic truth as a model of explanation and its other applications.

This book provides the foundations of trust amidst radical uncertainty. Specifically, it addresses the question of under what condition it is possible to trust relative strangers. As the first logical investigation of its kind, the book breaks with many preconceived ideas we have about trust and the scientific method that leads to its clarification. It builds on the insight that, contrary to widespread belief, it is not risk but freedom that is most fundamental for explaining trust. In fact, trust is the giving of freedom, out of freedom, and one's consciousness of the potential risks involved merely disturbs one's ability to trust. The book makes the twofold normative claim that any legitimate scientific preoccupation with trust must necessarily include the concept of freedom in its account, and that theories of trust that run against the logical prerequisites of freedom are a-priori falsified. It presents a theoretical proposal that makes sure that trust, instead of being constructed as a passive and functional "illusion" of natural love, is understood as the necessary product of an active reason that is oriented towards developing human autonomy.

This work deals with the applications of Semantic Publishing technologies in the legal domain, i.e., the use of Semantic Web technologies to address issues related to the Legal Scholarly Publishing. Research in the field of Law has a long tradition in the application of semantic technologies, such as Semantic Web and Linked Data, to real-world scenarios. This book investigates and proposes solutions for three main issues that Semantic Publishing needs to address within the context of the Legal Scholarly Publishing: the need of tools for linking document text to a formal representation of its meaning; the lack of complete metadata schemas for describing documents according to the publishing vocabulary and the absence of effective tools and user interfaces for easily acting on semantic publishing models and theories.

In particular, this work introduces EARMARK, a markup meta language that allows one to create markup documents without the structural and semantic limits imposed by markup languages such as XML. EARMARK is a platform to link the content layer of a document with its intended formal semantics and it can be used with the Semantic Publishing and Referencing (SPAR) Ontologies, another topic in this book. SPAR Ontologies are a collection of formal models providing an upper semantic layer for describing the publishing domain. Using EARMARK as a foundation for SPAR descriptions opens up to a semantic characterisation of all the aspects of a document and of its parts. Finally, four user-friendly tools are introduced: LODE, KC-Viz, Graffoo and Gaffe. They were expressly developed to facilitate the interaction of publishers and domain experts with Semantic Publishing technologies by shielding such users from the underlying formalisms and semantic models of such technologies.

Mental action deserves a place among foundational topics in action theory and philosophy of mind. Recent accounts of human agency tend to overlook the role of conscious mental action in our daily lives, while contemporary accounts of the conscious mind often ignore the role of mental action and agency in shaping consciousness. This collection aims to establish the centrality of mental action for discussions of agency and mind. The thirteen original essays provide a wide-ranging vision of the various and nuanced philosophical issues at stake. Among the questions explored by the contributors are: Which aspects of our conscious mental lives are agential? Can mental action be reduced to and explained in terms of non-agential mental states, processes, or events? Must mental action be included among the ontological categories required for understanding and explaining the conscious mind more generally? Does mental action have implications for related topics, such as attention, self-knowledge, self-control, or the mind-body problem? By investigating the nature, scope, and explanation of mental action, the essays presented here aim to demonstrate the significance of conscious mental action for discussions of agency and mind. Mental Action and the Conscious Mind will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and philosophy of agency, as well as to philosophically inclined cognitive scientists.

This book presents a philosophical study of the idea of reenchantment and its merits in the interrelated fields of philosophical anthropology, ethics, and ontology. It features chapters from leading contributors to the debate about reenchantment, including Charles Taylor, John Cottingham, Akeel Bilgrami, and Jane Bennett. The chapters examine neglected and contested notions such as enchantment, transcendence, interpretation, attention, resonance, and the sacred or reverence-worthy-notions that are crucial to human self-understanding but have no place in a scientific worldview. They also explore the significance of adopting a reenchanting perspective for debates on major concepts such as nature, naturalism, God, ontology, and disenchantment. Taken together, they demonstrate that there is much to be gained from working with a more substantial and affirmative concept of reenchantment, understood as a fundamental existential orientation towards what is seen as meaningful and of value. The Philosophy of Reenchantment will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in philosophy-especially those working in moral philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and sociology.

In this fascinating and timely book, Maren Behrensen facilitates a conversation between philosophy and the 'practitioners' of identity. What makes a person the same person over time? This question has been studied throughout the history of philosophy. Yet philosophers have never fully engaged with the 'practitioners' of identity, namely technology developers, lawyers, politicians, sociologists and applied ethicists. The book offers an answer to the metaphysical question of personal identity and tries to show how this question is of immediate relevance to the various practices of identity management - particularly in the fields of administration, counter-terrorism activities, and gender reassignment. Behrensen argues that identity documents and other markers of identity (such as biometric samples) are not merely representations of, but actually help constitute, personal identity. The metaphysical fact of personal identity lies in these supposedly 'external' features. The book goes on to focus on issues relating to 'trust' and 'security', terms central to the ethics of new technologies and in work on new identity management technologies.

The Sublime in Schopenhauer's Philosophy transforms our understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics and anthropology. Vandenabeele seeks ultimately to rework Schopenhauer's theory into a viable form so as to establish the sublime as a distinctive aesthetic category with a broader existential and metaphysical significance.

The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris's process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This book's contention is that Harris's work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness.

This volume, edited by Dorota Probucka, criticizes the modern approach to hunting by incorporating legal, ethical, cultural, social, theological, and linguistic perspectives into the analysis. The collection of articles contains thorough argumentation against hunting and determines social change strategies for eliminating it from cultural behavior patterns. It utilizes the expertise of Polish experts from many fields to describe and criticize the practice of hunting, illustrate its inhumane nature and unimaginable cruelty, and condemn the devastation of the natural environment that comes as a direct consequence of the actions of hunters. This volume argues that, unless dictated by biological need, hunting as a practice ought to be outlawed and culturally shunned, much like slavery.

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.

This book explores the relevance of naturalism and theories of nature to Classical German Philosophy. It presents new readings on Kant, Jacobi, Goethe, the Romantic tradition, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, which highlight the relevance of Classical German Philosophy's considerations of nature and naturalism for contemporary concerns.

Brian Loar (1939-2014) was an eminent and highly respected philosopher of mind and language. He was at the forefront of several different field-defining debates between the 1970s and the 2000s-from his earliest work on reducing semantics to psychology, through debates about reference, functionalism, externalism, and the nature of intentionality, to his most enduringly influential work on the explanatory gap between consciousness and neurons. Loar is widely credited with having developed the most comprehensive functionalist account of certain aspects of the mind, and his 'phenomenal content strategy' is arguably one of the most significant developments on the ancient mind/body problem. This volume of essays honours the entirety of Loar's wide-ranging philosophical career. It features sixteen original essays from influential figures in the fields of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, including those who worked with and were taught by Loar. The essays are divided into three thematic sections covering Loar's work in philosophy of language, especially the relations between semantics and psychology (1970s-80s), on content in the philosophy of mind (1980s-90s), and on the metaphysics of intentionality and consciousness (1990s and beyond). Taken together, this book is a fitting tribute to one of the leading minds of the latter-20th century, and a timely reflection on Loar's enduring influence on the philosophy of mind and language.

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 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.

Social functions and functional explanations play a prominent role not only in our everyday reasoning but also in classical as well as contemporary social theory and empirical social research. This volume explores metaphysical, normative, and methodological perspectives on social functions and functional explanations in the social sciences. It aims to push the philosophical debate on social functions forward along new investigative lines by including up-to-date discussions of the metaphysics of social functions, questions concerning the nature of functional explanations within the social domain, and various applications of functionalist theorising. As such, this is one of the first collections to exclusively address a variety of philosophical questions concerning the nature and relevance of social functions.

This book explores the metaphysics of political communities. It discusses how and why a plurality of individuals becomes a political unity, what principles or forces keep that unity together, and what threats that unity can be faced with. In Part I, the author justifies the need for the notion of substance in metaphysics in general and in the metaphysics of politics in particular. He spells out a moderately realist theory of substances and of their principles of unity, which supports substantial gradualism. Part II concerns action theory and the nature of practical reason. The author claims that the acknowledgement of reasons by agents is constitutive of action and that normativity depends on the role of the good in the formation of reasons. Finally, in Part III the author addresses the notion of political community. He claims that the principle of unity of a political community is its authority to give members of the community moral reasons for action. This suggests a middle way between liberal individualism and organicism, and the author demonstrates the significance of this view by discussing current political issues such as the role of religion in the public sphere and the political significance of cultural identity. Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in social metaphysics, political philosophy, philosophy of action, and philosophy of the social sciences.