The correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke was the most influential philosophical exchange of the eighteenth century, and indeed one of the most significant such exchanges in the history of philosophy. Carried out in 1715 and 1716, the debate focused on the clash between Newtonian and Leibnizian world systems, involving disputes in physics, theology, and metaphysics. The letters ranged over an extraordinary array of topics, including divine immensity and eternity, the relation of God to the world, free will, gravitation, the existence of atoms and the void, and the size of the universe.
This penetrating book is the first to offer a comprehensive overview and commentary on the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. Building his narrative around general subjects covered in the exchange--God, the soul, space and time, miracles and nature, matter and force--Ezio Vailati devotes special attention to a question crucial for Leibniz and Clarke alike. Both philosophers, worried by the advance of naturalism and its consequences for morality, devised complex systems to counter naturalism and reinforce natural religion. However, they not only deeply disagreed on how to answer the naturalist threat, but they ended up seeing in each other's views the germs of naturalism itself. Vailati rigorously tracks the twists and turns of this argument, shedding important new light on a critical moment in modern philosophy.
Lucid, taut, and energetically written, this book not only examines the Leibniz-Clarke debate in unprecedented depth but also situates the views advanced by the two men in the context of their principal writings. An invaluable reference to a fascinating exchange of ideas, Leibnizand Clarke makes vital reading for philosophers and historians of science and theology.

Randolph Clarke examines free will in the context of determinism on the one hand, and the notion that this choice may in fact be random and arbitrary on the other. In the first half of the book, he provides a careful, 'conceptual' assessment of the various libertarian theories that do not appeal to agent causation, and contends that they fail to provide an adequate account of the control required by free will. The second half is a development of his own theory of causation, where he suggests that a satisfactory account of this type of control is possible and necessary, constituting a significant advance in our understanding of free will and the moral responsibility that follows from it.

The capacity to represent things to ourselves as possible plays a crucial role both in everyday thinking and in philosophical reasoning; this volume offers much-needed philosophical illumination of conceivability, possibility, and the relations between them.

- Your true essence survives the physical death of your body - Your soul is the true essence of who you are; not your body - In all likelihood, you have lived before in a much different body - All souls originated from the same God-sourced energy - As humans living on Earth, we are "ONE" big, soul family This book combines science and spirituality in a unique way. It contains carefully documented descriptions by a trained research scientist of visions, which I received as a result of prayers and requests for information. Science of Prayer validates the usefulness of walking a path of spiritual wholeness. The author describes his search for answers to help explain his experiences. This journey takes us through the study of consciousness, psychic development classes, training in an energy healing modality, and much more. It describes what the author did, and suggests exercises to help put you in the best possible position to receive the guidance that you are given. Richard Rominger "This remarkable story gives us all a glimpse into what is possible when you allow your six sensory abilities to open up to Spirit." --Sonia Choquette, New York Times bestselling author

What is truth? Michael Lynch defends a bold new answer to this question. Traditional theories of truth hold that truth has only a single uniform nature. All truths are true in the same way. More recent deflationary theories claim that truth has no nature at all; the concept of truth is of no real philosophical importance. In this concise and clearly written book, Lynch argues that we should reject both these extremes and hold that truth is a functional property. To understand truth we must understand what it does, its function in our cognitive economy. Once we understand that, we'll see that this function can be performed in more than one way. And that in turn opens the door to an appealing pluralism: beliefs about the concrete physical world needn't be true in the same way as our thoughts about matters -- like morality -- where the human stain is deepest.

Barry Stroud's work has had a profound impact on a very wide array of philosophical topics, including epistemological skepticism, the nature of logical necessity, the interpretation of Hume, the interpretation of Wittgenstein, the possibility of transcendental arguments, and the metaphysical status of color and value. And yet there has heretofore been no book-length treatment of his work. The current collection aims to redress this gap, with 13 essays on Stroud's work by a diverse group of contributors including some of his most distinguished interlocutors and promising recent students. All but one essay is new to this volume.
The essays cover a range of topics, with a particular focus on Stroud's treatments of skepticism and subjectivism. There are also chapters on Stroud's views on meaning and rule-following, on Hume on personal identity, and on the role of desires in the explanation of action. Despite the diversity, the essays are unified by the thematic unity in Stroud's own writings. Stroud approaches every philosophical problem by attempting to get as clear as possible on the nature and source of that problem. He aims to determine what kind of understanding philosophical questions are after, and what the prospects for achieving that understanding might be. This theme--of the nature and possibility of philosophical understanding--is introduced in the opening essay of this volume and recurs in different ways throughout the remaining chapters.
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the philosophy of philosophy. As these essays show, one important source of insight on this subject is the thought of Barry Stroud, for whom pursuit of the philosophy of philosophy has always been indistinguishable from pursuit of philosophy as such.

Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both "actuality" and "activity" as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables Beere to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8) and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).

During the seventeenth century Francisco Suarez was considered one of the greatest philosophers of the age. He was the last great Scholastic thinker and profoundly influenced the thought of his contemporaries within both Catholic and Protestant circles. Suarez contributed to all fields of philosophy, from natural law, ethics, and political theory to natural philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology, and-most importantly-to metaphysics, and natural theology. Echoes of his thinking reverberate through the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and beyond. Yet curiously Suarez has not been studied in detail by historians of philosophy. It is only recently that he has emerged as a significant subject of critical and historical investigation for historians of late medieval and early modern philosophy. Only in recent years have small sections of Suarez's magnum opus, the Metaphysical Disputations, been translated into English, French, and Italian. The historical task of interpreting Suarez's thought is still in its infancy. The Philosophy of Francisco Suarez is one of the first collections in English written by the leading scholars who are largely responsible for this new trend in the history of philosophy. It covers all areas of Suarez's philosophical contributions, and contains cutting-edge research which will shape and frame scholarship on Suarez for years to come-as well as the history of seventeenth-century generally. This is an essential text for anyone interested in Suarez, the seventeenth-century world of ideas, and late Scholastic or early modern philosophy.

To what extent are meaning, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other, determined by aspects of the 'outside world'? Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology presents twelve specially written essays exploring these debates in metaphysics and epistemology and the connections between them. In so doing, it examines how issues connected with the nature of mind and language bear on issues about the nature of knowledge and justification (and vice versa). Topics discussed include the compatibility of semantic externalism and epistemic internalism, the variety of internalist and externalist positions (both semantic and epistemic), semantic externalism's implications for the epistemology of reasoning and reflection, and the possibility of arguments from the theory of mental content to the theory of epistemic justification (and vice versa).

Is everything just as it should be, or is the world spiraling out of control and we must try to save it? Is life simple, once we understand how it works, or is it so complicated only a nuclear physicist could understand it? The authors claim that life is simple, but only if we accept what we encounter with equanimity and are willing to replace old ideas with new ones that make more sense. Attachment, resistance, and emotional reactions are what make life difficult. Is there a personal God? Does Satan exist? Do politics have a role in the spiritual development of our world? What part does sex play in our spiritual development? This is not a "safe" book. The authors have answers for all these questions and more, but not all readers will agree with them. And that is as it should be, according to them. Their concepts of how life works, based on Ancient Wisdom teachings, will make you analyze, ponder over, and re-assess your entire belief system. The overall message is one of assurance. As one reader said, "It gave me hope. I never considered myself a spiritual person until I read this book." "This book speaks in today's language to seekers of all ages. Whether a seasoned student or a beginner, it opens new doors and fresh vistas on the soul's journey to wisdom. It is indeed a practical guide, at the same time surveying all the principles necessary for understanding the wisdom-tradition we know as Theosophy. This book brings the Ancient Wisdom into the 21st century " - Joy Mills, author of Reflections on an Ancient Wisdom "Ancient Wisdom for a New Age provides some very important advice for those who want to live the spiritual life. The chapter on reincarnation is especially well-done. Hunt and Benedict are to be commended for making a noble effort to help spiritual pilgrims on their way. By far the most practical chapter in the book is 'Your Spiritual Practice'." - Quest Magazine

Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language, and has been the main focus of discussion about how language relates to the world. R. M. Sainsbury sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory. There is a single category of referring expressions, all of which deserve essentially the same kind of semantic treatment. Included in this category are both singular and plural referring expressions ('Aristotle', 'The Pleiades'), complex and non-complex referring expressions ('The President of the USA in 1970', 'Nixon'), and empty and non-empty referring expressions ('Vulcan', 'Neptune'). Referring expressions are to be described semantically by a reference condition, rather than by being associated with a referent. In arguing for these theses, Sainsbury's book promises to end the fruitless oscillation between Millian and descriptivist views. Millian views insist that every name has a referent, and find it hard to give a good account of names which appear not to have referents, or at least are not known to do so, like ones introduced through error ('Vulcan'), ones where it is disputed whether they have a bearer ('Patanjali') and ones used in fiction. Descriptivist theories require that each name be associated with some body of information. These theories fly in the face of the fact names are useful precisely because there is often no overlap of information among speakers and hearers. The alternative position for which the book argues is firmly non-descriptivist, though it also does not require a referent. A much broader view can be taken of which expressions are referring expressions: not just names and pronouns used demonstratively, but also some complex expressions and some anaphoric uses of pronouns. Sainsbury's approach brings reference into line with truth: no one would think that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth value, but it is commonly held that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth condition, a condition which an arbitrary state of the world would have to satisfy in order to make the sentence true. The right analogy is that a semantic theory should associate a referring expression with a reference condition, a condition which an arbitrary object would have to satisfy in order to be the expression's referent. Lucid and accessible, and written with a minimum of technicality, Sainsbury's book also includes a useful historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics as well as essential reading for philosophers of language.

Not all scientific explanations work by describing causal connections between events or the world's overall causal structure. Some mathematical proofs explain why the theorems being proved hold. In this book, Marc Lange proposes philosophical accounts of many kinds of non-causal explanations in science and mathematics. These topics have been unjustly neglected in the philosophy of science and mathematics. One important kind of non-causal scientific explanation is termed explanation by constraint. These explanations work by providing information about what makes certain facts especially inevitable - more necessary than the ordinary laws of nature connecting causes to their effects. Facts explained in this way transcend the hurly-burly of cause and effect. Many physicists have regarded the laws of kinematics, the great conservation laws, the coordinate transformations, and the parallelogram of forces as having explanations by constraint. This book presents an original account of explanations by constraint, concentrating on a variety of examples from classical physics and special relativity. This book also offers original accounts of several other varieties of non-causal scientific explanation. Dimensional explanations work by showing how some law of nature arises merely from the dimensional relations among the quantities involved. Really statistical explanations include explanations that appeal to regression toward the mean and other canonical manifestations of chance. Lange provides an original account of what makes certain mathematical proofs but not others explain what they prove. Mathematical explanation connects to a host of other important mathematical ideas, including coincidences in mathematics, the significance of giving multiple proofs of the same result, and natural properties in mathematics. Introducing many examples drawn from actual science and mathematics, with extended discussions of examples from Lagrange, Desargues, Thomson, Sylvester, Maxwell, Rayleigh, Einstein, and Feynman, Because Without Cause's proposals and examples should set the agenda for future work on non-causal explanation.

El proyecto hist rico de Occidente denominado Modernidad en el mbito de lo jur dico, ha legado una construcci n metaf sica del concepto de Derecho, desde el cual se construyen los sistemas jur dicos occidentales. Sin embargo, esa concepci n metaf sica ha dado lugar a una construcci n ontol gica del Derecho que abre paso a una concepci n fundamental, a un fundamento ltimo, y que tal construcci n permite una concepci n totalitaria. Una superaci n metaf sica del Derecho, es una exposici n de la forma en que se ha llegado a una concepci n metaf sica y ontol gica del Derecho, y una propuesta para poder lograr su superaci n en la afirmaci n de un proyecto democr tico y libertario.

This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4-6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices.

Gary Kemp presents a penetrating investigation of key issues in the philosophy of language, by means of a comparative study of two great figures of late twentieth-century philosophy. So far as language and meaning are concerned, Willard Van Orman Quine and Donald Davidson are usually regarded as birds of a feather. The two disagreed in print on various matters over the years, but fundamentally they seem to be in agreement; most strikingly, Davidson's thought experiment of Radical Interpretation looks to be a more sophisticated, technically polished version of Quinean Radical Translation. Yet Quine's most basic and general philosophical commitment is to his methodological naturalism, which is ultimately incompatible with Davidson's main commitments. In particular, it is impossible to endorse, from Quine's perspective, the roles played by the concepts of truth and reference in Davidson's philosophy of language: Davidson's employment of the concept of truth is from Quine's point of view needlessly adventurous, and his use of the concept of reference cannot be divorced from unscientific 'intuition'. From Davidson's point of view, Quine's position looks needlessly scientistic, and seems blind to the genuine problems of language and meaning. Gary Kemp offers a powerful argument for Quine's position, and in favour of methodological naturalism and its corollary, naturalized epistemology. It is possible to give a consistent and explanatory account of language and meaning without problematic uses of the concepts truth and reference, which in turn makes a strident naturalism much more plausible.

F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854) stands alongside J.G. Fichte and G.W.F. Hegel as one of the great philosophers of the German idealist tradition. The Schelling Reader introduces students to Schelling's philosophy by guiding them through the first ever English-language anthology of his key texts-an anthology which showcases the vast array of his interests and concerns (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of nature, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion and mythology, and political philosophy). The reader includes the most important passages from all of Schelling's major works as well as lesser-known yet illuminating lectures and essays, revealing a philosopher rigorously and boldly grappling with some of the most difficult philosophical problems for over six decades, and constantly modifying and correcting his earlier thought in light of new insights. Schelling's evolving philosophies have often presented formidable challenges to the teaching of his thought. For the first time, The Schelling Reader arranges readings from his work thematically, so as to bring to the fore the basic continuity in his trajectory, as well as the varied ways he tackles perennial problems. Each of the twelve chapters includes sustained readings that span the whole of Schelling's career, along with explanatory notes and an editorial introduction that introduces the main themes, arguments, and questions at stake in the text. The Editors' Introduction to the volume as a whole also provides important details on the context of Schelling's life and work to help students effectively engage with the material.

This renowned introduction - already a standard text in Europe - is translated here for the first time. Vattimo uses Heideggerean and cultural-critical perspectives to reassess the work and thought of Nietzsche.

Die Philosophie wurde von so unterschiedlichen Philosophen wie Wolff und Russell als Moglichkeitswissenschaft bezeichnet. Doch erwiesen sich die modalen Konzepte von Moglichkeit und Notwendigkeit als sperrig und vieldeutig, und ihr Verhaltnis zum Wirklichkeitsbegriff bleibt problematisch. Die vorliegende Sammlung beleuchtet die Metaphysik und Logik von Moglichkeit und Wirklichkeit aufs Neue und betrachtet sie aus unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven jenseits der Dichotomie von analytischer und kontinentaler Philosophie. Die Philosophiegeschichte (von der griechischen Antike bis zu David Lewis) kommt ebenso zu Wort wie die Semantik moglicher Welten; Logik, Mathematik und Computerwissenschaft ebenso wie Literatur und Neue Medien; Formen des wissenschaftlichen ebenso wie des fiktionalen Diskurses. Philosophy has been called the science of the possible by philosophers as diverse as Christian Wolff and Bertrand Russell. The modal concepts of possibility and necessity, however, have proved to be ambiguous and recalcitrant to analysis, and their relation to the concept of reality have remained problematic up to the present day. Transcending the worn-out dichotomy between analytic and continental philosophy, this collection of papers takes a fresh look at the metaphysics and logic of possibility and reality, and illuminates them from a great variety of perspectives. Topics include the history of philosophy (from Greek antiquity to David Lewis) as well as the semantics of possible worlds; logic, mathematics and computer science as well as literature and the new media; forms of scientific as well as fictional discourse."

In this book Douglas Ehring shows the inadequacy of received theories of causation and, introducing conceptual devices of his own, provides a wholly new account of causation as the persistence over time of individual properties, or "tropes".

Contents: Introduction; I. ONTOLOGY; 1. Existence (1987); 2. Nonexistence (1998); 3. Mythical Objects (2002); II. NECESSITY; 4. Modal Logic Kalish-and-Montague Style (1994); 5. Impossible Worlds (1984); 6. An Empire of Thin Air (1988); 7. The Logic of What Might Have Been (1989); III. IDENTITY; 8. The fact that x=y (1987); 9. This Side of Paradox (1993); 10. Identity Facts (2003); 11. Personal Identity: What's the Problem? (1995); IV. PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS; 12. Wholes, Parts, and Numbers (1997); 13. The Limits of Human Mathematics (2001); V. THEORY OF MEANING AND REFERENCE; 14. On Content (1992); 15. On Designating (1997); 16. A Problem in the Frege-Church Theory of Sense and Denotation (1993); 17. The Very Possibility of Language (2001); 18. Tense and Intension (2003); 19. Pronouns as Variables (2005)