Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.

The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century is the first collective critical study of this important period in intellectual history. The volume is divided into four parts. The first part explores individual philosophers, including Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, amongst other great thinkers of the period. The second addresses key philosophical movements: Idealism, Romanticism, Neo-Kantianism, and Existentialism. The essays in the third part engage with different areas of philosophy that received particular attention at this time, including philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of history, and hermeneutics. Finally, the contributors turn to discuss central philosophical topics, from skepticism to mat-erialism, from dialectics to ideas of historical and cultural Otherness, and from the reception of antiquity to atheism. Written by a team of leading experts, this Handbook will be an essential resource for anyone working in the area and will lead the direction of future research.

This book introduces and explores the role of apprehension in reasoning - setting out the problems, determining the vocabulary, fixing the boundaries, and questioning what is often taken for granted. Lynn Holt argues that a robust conception of rationality must include intellectual virtues which cannot be reduced to a set of rules for reasoners, and argues that the virtue of apprehension, an acquired disposition to see things correctly, is required if rationality is to be defensible. Drawing on an Aristotelian conception of intellectual virtue and examples from the sciences, Holt shows why impersonal standards for rationality are misguided, why foundations for knowledge are the last elements to emerge from inquiry not the first, and why intuition is a poor substitute for virtue. By placing the current scene in historical perspective, Holt displays the current impasse as the inevitable outcome of the replacement of intellectual virtue with method in the early modern philosophical imagination. Written in an engaging and jargon-free style, this book is of interest to a wide range of readers, particularly epistemologists and philosophers of science concerned with the fate of reason.

Three-fourths of scientific research in the United States is funded by special interests. Many of these groups have specific practical goals, such as developing pharmaceuticals or establishing that a pollutant causes only minimal harm. For groups with financial conflicts of interest, their scientific findings often can be deeply flawed.
To uncover and assess these scientific flaws, award-winning biologist and philosopher of science Kristin Shrader-Frechette uses the analytical tools of classic philosophy of science. She identifies and evaluates the concepts, data, inferences, methods, models, and conclusions of science tainted by the influence of special interests. As a result, she challenges accepted scientific findings regarding risks such as chemical toxins and carcinogens, ionizing radiation, pesticides, hazardous-waste disposal, development of environmentally sensitive lands, threats to endangered species, and less-protective standards for workplace-pollution exposure. In so doing, she dissects the science on which many contemporary scientific controversies turn. Demonstrating and advocating "liberation science," she shows how practical, logical, methodological, and ethical evaluations of science can both improve its quality and credibility -- and protect people from harm caused by flawed science, such as underestimates of cancers caused by bovine growth hormones, cell phones, fracking, or high-voltage wires.
This book is both an in-depth look at the unreliable scientific findings at the root of contemporary debates in biochemistry, ecology, economics, hydrogeology, physics, and zoology -- and a call to action for scientists, philosophers of science, and all citizens.

This book introduces and explores the role of apprehension in reasoning - setting out the problems, determining the vocabulary, fixing the boundaries, and questioning what is often taken for granted. Lynn Holt argues that a robust conception of rationality must include intellectual virtues which cannot be reduced to a set of rules for reasoners, and argues that the virtue of apprehension, an acquired disposition to see things correctly, is required if rationality is to be defensible. Drawing on an Aristotelian conception of intellectual virtue and examples from the sciences, Holt shows why impersonal standards for rationality are misguided, why foundations for knowledge are the last elements to emerge from inquiry not the first, and why intuition is a poor substitute for virtue. By placing the current scene in historical perspective, Holt displays the current impasse as the inevitable outcome of the replacement of intellectual virtue with method in the early modern philosophical imagination. Written in an engaging and jargon-free style, this book is of interest to a wide range of readers, particularly epistemologists and philosophers of science concerned with the fate of reason.

A lively account of how Darwin’s work on natural selection transformed science and society, and an investigation into the mysterious illness that plagued its author.

By early morning of June 30, 1860, a large crowd began to congregate in front of Oxford University’s brand-new Museum of Natural History. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the subject of discussion was Charles Darwin’s new treatise: fact or fiction?

Darwin, a simultaneously reclusive and intellectually audacious squire from Kent, claimed to have solved “that mystery of mysteries,” introducing a logical explanation of the origin of species―how they adapted, even transmogrified, through natural selection. At stake, on that summer’s day of spirited debate, was the very foundation of modern biology, not to mention the future of the church. Without fear of exaggeration, Darwin’s thesis would forever change our understanding of the life sciences and the natural world. And yet the author himself was nowhere to be found in the debate hall―instead, he was miles away, seeking respite from a spate of illnesses that had plagued him for much of his adult life.

In Origin Story, medical historian Howard Markel recounts the two-year period (1858 to 1860) of Darwin’s writing of On the Origin of Species through its spectacular success and controversy. Simultaneously, Markel delves into the mysterious health symptoms Darwin developed, combing the literature to emerge with a cogent diagnosis of a case that has long fascinated medical historians. The result is a colorful portrait of the man, his friends and enemies, and his seminal work, which resonates to this day.

Thomas C. Vinci aims to reveal and assess the structure of Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure Reason called the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories." At the end of the first part of the Deduction in the B-edition Kant states that his purpose is achieved: to show that all intuitions in general are subject to the categories. On the standard reading, this means that all of our mental representations, including those originating in sense-experience, are structured by conceptualization. But this reading encounters an exegetical problem: Kant states in the second part of the Deduction that a major part of what remains to be shown is that empirical intuitions are subject to the categories. How can this be if it has already been shown that intuitions in general are subject to the categories? Vinci calls this the Triviality Problem, and he argues that solving it requires denying the standard reading. In its place he proposes that intuitions in general and empirical intuitions constitute disjoint classes and that, while all intuitions for Kant are unified, there are two kinds of unification: logical unification vs. aesthetic unification. Only the former is due to the categories. A second major theme of the book is that Kant's Idealism comes in two versions-for laws of nature and for objects of empirical intuition-and that demonstrating these versions is the ultimate goal of the Deduction of the Categories and the similarly structured Deduction of the Concepts of Space, respectively. Vinci shows that the Deductions have the argument structure of an inference to the best explanation for correlated domains of explananda, each arrived at by independent applications of Kantian epistemic and geometrical methods.

What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many others. Starting with a statement of the "hard problem" of consciousness, Chalmers builds a positive framework for the science of consciousness and a nonreductive vision of the metaphysics of consciousness. He replies to many critics of The Conscious Mind, and then develops a positive theory in new directions. The book includes original accounts of how we think and know about consciousness, of the unity of consciousness, and of how consciousness relates to the external world. Along the way, Chalmers develops many provocative ideas: the "consciousness meter", the Garden of Eden as a model of perceptual experience, and The Matrix as a guide to the deepest philosophical problems about consciousness and the external world. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the problems of mind, brain, consciousness, and reality.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

In this landmark new book, Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces – ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time? Is the cosmos without purpose or value? Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?

In doing so, he argues that we have become enslaved to an account of things dominated by the brain’s left hemisphere, one that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality that is all around us, had we but eyes to see it. He suggests that in order to understand ourselves and the world we need science and intuition, reason and imagination, not just one or two; that they are in any case far from being in conflict; and that the brain’s right hemisphere plays the most important part in each. And he shows us how to recognise the ‘signature’ of the left hemisphere in our thinking, so as to avoid making decisions that bring disaster in their wake.

Following the paths of cutting-edge neurology, philosophy and physics, he reveals how each leads us to a similar vision of the world, one that is both profound and beautiful – and happens to be in line with the deepest traditions of human wisdom. It is a vision that returns the world to life, and us to a better way of living in it: one we must embrace if we are to survive.

Theories of Emotion is a philosophical introduction to the most influential theories of emotion of the past 60 years in philosophy, psychology, and biology. This multi-disciplinary approach provides the reader with a one-stop shop for encountering the key debates and cutting-edge ideas in what is becoming a central focus of contemporary thought. An introductory chapter on definitions of emotion is followed by three main sections on the way emotions are expressed, subjectively experienced, and related to action and motivation. This accessible but probing approach integrates philosophical analysis with innovative research in psychology and cognitive science, contextualizing current debates in the history of ideas from Darwin to pragmatism. Each section is introduced by a detailed illustration of a foundational thinker's work on emotion (Charles Darwin, William James, and John Dewey, respectively), showing how their insights and discoveries have shaped current views and suggesting ways in which they might still enrich contemporary approaches.

This book introduces the reader to the exciting new field of plant philosophy and takes it in a new direction to ask: what does it mean to say that plants are sexed? Do 'male' and 'female' really mean the same when applied to humans, trees, fungi and algae? Are the zoological categories of sex really adequate for understanding the - uniquely 'dibiontic' - life cycle of plants? Vegetal Sex addresses these questions through a detailed analysis of major moments in the history of plant sex, from Aristotle to the modern day. Tracing the transformations in the analogy between animals and plants that characterize this history, it shows how the analogy still functions in contemporary botany and asks: what would a non-zoocentric, plant-centred philosophy of vegetal sex be like? By showing how philosophy and botany have been and still are inextricably entwined, Vegetal Sex allows us to think vegetal being and, perhaps, to recognize the vegetal in us all.

What is morality? Do we have free will? Are there any limits to what the human mind can understand? How is it that humans speak? Why do we die? What is it that transcendental meditation transcends?Reverse Engineering God proposes rational and science-based answers to these and many other related and similar questions. It does so in a series of short 'stories.' Each story presents one question, describes the scientific data available for its solution, shows how these data, when combined with logical inferences, can be used to answer the question, and points to its relation with other questions.

This open access collection brings together a team of leading scholars and rising stars to consider what experimental philosophy of medicine is and can be. While experimental philosophy of science is an established field, attempts to tackle issues in philosophy of medicine from an experimental angle are still surprisingly scarce. A team of interdisciplinary scholars demonstrate how we can make progress by integrating a variety of methods from experimental philosophy, including experiments, sociological surveys, simulations, as well as history and philosophy of science, in order to yield meaningful results about the core questions in medicine. They focus on concepts central to philosophy of medicine and medical practice, such as death, pain, disease and disorder, advance directives, medical explanation, disability and informed consent. Presenting empirical findings and providing a crucial foundation for future work in this dynamic field, this collection explores new ways for philosophers to cooperate with scientists and reveals the value of these collaborations for both philosophy and medicine. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council Starting Grant.

The literary arts represent and provoke experiences of understanding and emotion, and this open access study examines how the practical pursuit of well-being in healthcare reveals purposes at the core of our engagements with and understanding of literature itself. During the past twenty years, much admirable work in the "health humanities" has focused upon what studies of literature contribute to the understandings and the practical work-the "worldly work"-of healthcare. Such a project aims at developing healthcare practitioners who bring greater care to those who come to them ailing or in fear or faced with terrible suffering. Literary Studies and Well-Being turns this inside out by examining the intergenerational caretaking of healthcare in a manner which allows us to comprehend the nature and discipline of literary studies in new ways. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The University of Oklahoma.