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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Metaphysics & ontology
A philosophical study by W.W. Atkinson, Suggestion and
Auto-Suggestion is written, in his usual style, like an essay on
suggestion. In other words, he discusses the definition of
suggestion, the different forms it takes (such as authority, habit,
imitation, character, and so on), the influence of suggestion, and
how suggestion can be healthy and therapeutic, plus build
character. As always, Atkinson is descriptive and holds the readers
attention with anecdotes and examples. American writer WILLIAM
WALKER ATKINSON (1862-1932) was editor of the popular magazine New
Thought from 1901 to 1905, and editor of the journal Advanced
Thought from 1916 to 1919. He authored dozens of New Thought books
under numerous pseudonyms, including "Yogi," some of which are
likely still unknown today.
Over the last two decades the distinguished philosopher Philip
Kitcher has started to make a serious case for pragmatism as the
source of a new life in contemporary philosophy. There are some,
like Kitcher, who view today's analytic philosophy as mired in
narrowly focused, technical disputes of little interest to the
wider world. What is the future of philosophy, and what would it
look like? While Classical Pragmatism - the American philosophy
developed by John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James in the
19th century- has a mixed reputation today, Kitcher admires the way
its core ideas provide a way to prioritize avenues of inquiry. As
he points out, both James and Dewey shared a wish to eliminate
'insignificant questions' from philosophy, and both harbored
suspicion of 'timeless' philosophical problems handed down
generation after generation. Rather, they saw philosophy as
inherently embedded in its time, grappling with pressing issues in
religion, social life, art, politics, and education. Kitcher has
become increasingly moved by this reformist approach to philosophy,
and the published essays included here, alongside a detailed
introduction setting out Kitcher's views, provide motivation for
his view of the "reconstruction of philosophy." These essays try to
install the pragmatic spirit into contemporary philosophy, renewing
James and Dewey for our own times.
Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by identifying the categories of being and the relations between them. He sets out his own original metaphysical system, within which he seeks to answer many of the deepest questions in philosophy.
From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent work in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (colour, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness).
F. H. Bradley was the greatest of the British Idealists, but for
much of this century his views have been neglected, primarily as a
result of the severe criticism to which they were subjected by
Russell and Moore. In recent years, however, there has been a
resurgence of interest in and a widespread reappraisal of his work.
W. J. Mander offers a general introduction to Bradley's metaphysics
and its logical foundations, and shows that much of his philosophy
has been seriously misunderstood. Dr Mander argues that any
adequate treatment of Bradley's thought must take full account of
his unique dual inheritance from the traditions of British
empiricism and Hegelian rationalism. The scholarship of recent
years is assessed, and new interpretations are offered of Bradley's
views about truth, predication, and relations, and of his arguments
for idealism. This book is a clear and helpful guide for those new
to this difficult but fascinating thinker, and at the same time an
original and stimulating contribution to the re-evaluation of his
work.
Joshua Gert presents an original and ambitious theory of the
normative. Expressivism and non-reductive realism represent two
very widely separated poles in contemporary discussions of
normativity. But the domain of the normative is both large and
diverse; it includes, for example, the harmful, the fun, the
beautiful, the wrong, and the rational. It would be extremely
surprising if either expressivism or non-reductive realism managed
to capture all--or even the most important--phenomena associated
with all of these notions. Normative Bedrock defends a
response-dependent account of the normative that accommodates the
kind of variation in response that some non-reductive realists
downplay or ignore, but that also allows for the sort of
straightforward talk of normative properties, normative truth, and
substantive normative disagreement that expressivists have had a
hard time respecting.
One of the distinctive features of Gert's approach is his reliance,
throughout, on an analogy between color properties and normative
properties. He argues that the appropriate response to a given
instance of a normative property may often depend significantly on
the perspective one takes on that instance: for example, whether
one views it as past or future. Another distinctive feature of
Normative Bedrock is its focus on the basic normative property of
practical irrationality, rather than on the notion of a normative
reason or the notion of the good. This simple shift of focus allow
for a more satisfying account of the link between reasons and
motivation, and helps to explain why and how some reasons can
justify far more than they can require, and why we therefore need
two strength values to characterize the normative capacities of
practical reasons.
Doob's central thesis is that some beliefs function mainly to help
the believer cope with life's uncertainties. The coping mechanism
that is the focus of Doob's book is a belief that certain things in
life are inevitable. . . . Doob methodically explores the origin
and nature of inevitablility beliefs, and like his pervious titles
in social psychology, this is a theoretical analysis. . . . The
book is well written and carefully organized but demanding to read;
Doob attributes this to the inherent difficulty of the subject--he
is probably right. Choice This book examines the ways in which
human beings seek to cope with uncertainty by means of doctrines
that postulate degrees of inevitability. These doctrines originate
in natural science, social science, philosophy, and religion. Their
adequacies and inadequacies are carefully assessed, with special
reference to the ways in which they deal with intervention by the
very persons who would reduce uncertainty. The possibility of
intervention in turn raises questions concerning freedom and
responsibility that challenge people in all societies and
throughout the lifespan.
Nature mysteries are discovered and shared in the context of this
autobiography from a passionate nature lover. See and learn about
experiences you may not even be able to imagine. See amazing photos
you have never seen before. It is a story of love and hope with
answers to questions many never think of asking.
www.naturesgotmiracles.com
This book is an edited collection of papers from international
experts in philosophy and psychology concerned with time. The
collection aims to bridge the gap between these disciplines by
focussing on five key themes and providing philosophical and
psychological perspectives on each theme. The first theme is the
concept of time. The discussion ranges from the folk concept of
time to the notion of time in logic, philosophy and psychology. The
second theme concerns the notion of present in the philosophy of
mind, metaphysics, and psychology. The third theme relates to
continuity and flow of time in mind. One of the key questions in
this section is how the apparent temporal continuity of conscious
experience relates to the possibly discrete character of underlying
neural processes. The fourth theme is the timing of experiences,
with a focus on the perception of simultaneity and illusions of
temporal order. Such effects are treated as test cases for
hypotheses about the relationship between the subjective temporal
order of experience and the objective order of neural events. The
fifth and the final theme of the volume is time and
intersubjectivity. This section examines the role of time in
interpersonal coordination and in the development of social skills.
The collection will appeal to both psychologists and philosophers,
but also to researchers from other disciplines who seek an
accessible overview of the research on time in psychology and
philosophy.
This series is dedicated to the timely publication of new work in
this highly fertile field of philosophy. The subject is broadly
construed, taken to include not only perennially central topics
(modality, ontology, and mereology; metaphysical theories of
causation, laws of nature, persistence through time, and time
itself; and realism and anti-realism in the many senses of these
terms); but also the rich clusters of metaphysical questions that
open up within other subfields, such as philosophy of mind and
philosophy of science (questions about supervenience and
materialism, the nature of qualia, mental causation, metaphysical
implications of relativity and quantum physics, mereological
theories of biological species, and so on). Besides independent
essays, volumes are likely to contain a critical essay on a recent
book, or a symposium that allows participants to respond to one
another's criticisms and questions. Each volume will also include
an essay by the winner of the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics younger
scholar award, a prize inaugurated with this first issue.
The Realm of Reason develops a new, general theory of what it is
for a thinker to be entitled to form a given belief. The theory
locates entitlement in the nexus of relations between truth,
content, and understanding. Peacocke formulates three principles of
rationalism that articulate this conception. The principles imply
that all entitlement has a component that is justificationally
independent of experience. The resulting position is thus a form of
rationalism, generalized to all kinds of content.
To show how these principles are realized in specific domains,
Peacocke applies the theory in detail to several classical problems
of philosophy, including the nature of perceptual entitlement,
induction, and the status of moral thought. These discussions
involve an elaboration of the structure of entitlement in ways that
have applications in many other areas of philosophy. He also
relates the theory to classical and recent rationalist thought, and
to current issues in the theory of meaning, reference and
explanation. In the course of these discussions, he proposes a
general theory of the a priori.
The focus of the work lies in the intersection of epistemology,
metaphysics, and the theory of meaning, and will be of interest
both to students and researchers in these areas, and to anyone
concerned with the idea of rationality.
Telepathy: Its Theory, Facts, and Proof discusses the theme of
telepathy and its existence. Focusing on proving that telepathy is
real, author W.W. Atkinson first defines his subject, telepathy,
and goes on to describe a series of scientific experiments and
their results to theorize that telepathy is real and useful. While
focusing on the realm of the otherworldly and therefore introducing
debate, Atkinson's work is enjoyable to read either for pleasure or
study, and as always he includes useful examples and stories for
the reader to follow. American writer WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON
(1862-1932) was editor of the popular magazine New Thought from
1901 to 1905, and editor of the journal Advanced Thought from 1916
to 1919. He authored dozens of New Thought books under numerous
pseudonyms, including "Yogi," some of which are likely still
unknown today.
Dana Kay Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom
and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety of
challenges to the idea that we are free and responsible, before
ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as agents.
Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility begins with a defense of
the rational abilities view, according to which one is responsible
for an action if and only if one acts with the ability to recognize
and act for good reasons. The view is compatibilist - that is, on
the view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism -
and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry: it
requires the ability to do otherwise for responsibility when
actions are praiseworthy, but not when they are blameworthy. In
defending and elaborating the view, Nelkin questions long-held
assumptions such as those concerning the relation between fairness
and blame and the nature of so-called reactive attitudes such as
resentment and forgiveness. Her argument not only fits with a
metaphysical picture of causation - agent-causation - often assumed
to be available only to incompatibilist accounts, but receives
positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought Implies Can
Principle, and establishes a new interpretation of freedom and
moral responsibility that dovetails with a compelling account of
our inescapable commitments as rational agents.
This book presents a new way to understand human-animal
interactions. Offering a profound discussion of topics such as
human identity, our relationship with animals and the environment,
and our culture, the author channels the vibrant Italian traditions
of humanism, materialism, and speculative philosophy. The research
presents a dialogue between the humanities and the natural
sciences. It challenges the separation and oppression of animals
with a post-humanism steeped in the traditions of the Italian
Renaissance. Readers discover a vision of the human as a species
informed by an intertwining with animals. The human being is not
constructed by an onto-poetic process, but rather by close
relations with otherness. The human system is increasingly unstable
and, therefore, more hybrid. The argument it presents interests
scholars, thinkers, and researchers. It also appeals to anyone who
wants to delve into the deep animal-human bond and its
philosophical, cultural, political instances. The author is a
veterinarian, ethologist, and philosopher. He uses cognitive
science, zooanthropology, and philosophy to engage in a series of
empirical, theoretical, and practice-based engagements with animal
life. In the process, he argues that animals are key to human
identity and culture at all levels.
Paul Abela presents a powerful, experience-sensitive form of realism about the relation between mind and world, based on an innovative interpretation of Kant. Abela breaks with tradition in taking seriously Kant's claim that his Transcendental Idealism yields a form of empirical realism, and giving a realist analysis of major themes of the Critique of Pure Reason. Abela's blending of Kantian scholarship with contemporary epistemology offers a new way of resolving philosophical debates about realism.
This book presents a collection of authoritative contributions on
the concept of time in early twentieth-century philosophy. It is
structured in the form of a thematic atlas: each section is
accompanied by relevant elementary logic maps that reproduce in a
"spatial" form the directionalities (arguments and/or discourses)
reported on in the text. The book is divided into three main
sections, the first of which covers phenomenology and the
perception of time by analyzing the works of Bergson, Husserl,
Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Guattari and Derrida. The second
section focuses on the language and conceptualization of time,
examining the works of Cassirer, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Lacan,
Ricoeur and Foucault, while the last section addresses the science
and logic of time as they appear in the works of Guillaume,
Einstein, Reichenbach, Prigogine and Barbour. The purpose of the
book is threefold: to provide readers with a comprehensive overview
of the concept of time in early twentieth-century philosophy; to
show how conceptual reasoning can be supported by accompanying
linguistic and spatial representations; and to stimulate novel
research in the humanistic field concerning the complex role of
graphic representations in the comprehension of concepts.
Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the great English
idealist thinker T. H. Green (1836-82) as philosophers have begun
to overturn received opinions of his thought and to rediscover his
original and important contributions to ethics, metaphysics, and
political philosophy. This collection of essays by leading experts,
all but one published here for the first time, introduces and
critically examines his ideas both in their context and in their
relevance to contemporary debates.
Sudduth provides a critical exploration of classical empirical
arguments for survival arguments that purport to show that data
collected from ostensibly paranormal phenomena constitute good
evidence for the survival of the self after death. Utilizing the
conceptual tools of formal epistemology, he argues that classical
arguments are unsuccessful.
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