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This book is an original-the first-ever treatment of the
mathematics of Luck. Setting out from the principle that luck can
be measured by the gap between reasonable expectation and eventual
realization, the book develops step-by-step a mathematical theory
that accommodates the entire range of our pre-systematic
understanding of the way in which luck functions in human affairs.
In so moving from explanatory exposition to mathematical treatment,
the book provides a clear and accessible account of the way in
which luck assessment enters into the calculations of rational
decision theory.
This book covers a varied spectrum of ethical topics, ranging from
the fundamental considerations regarding ethical values, to the
rationale of obligation, and the ethical management of societal and
personal affairs. Nicholas Rescher shows how fundamental general
principles underpin the pragmatic stance we can appropriately take
on questions of specific ethical detail. His work on these issues
is pervaded by a certain pragmatic point of view. As the popular
dictum has it, we humans come this way but once, with just a single
lifetime available, to each one of us. Rescher argues that it is a
matter of rational self-interest and ethical obligation to use this
opportunity for doing something towards making the world a better
home for ourselves and our posterity.
The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the
themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the
metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and
religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic
mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical
elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this
methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.
This book continues Rescher's longstanding practice of publishing
groups of philosophical essays. Notwithstanding their thematic
diversity, these discussions exhibit a uniformity of method in
addressing philosophical issues via a mixture of historical
contextualization, analytical scrutiny, and common-sensical
concern. Their interest, such as it is, lies not just in what they
do but in how they do it.
The book seeks to characterize reflexive conceptual structures more
thoroughly and more precisely than has been done before, making
explicit the structure of paradox and the clear connections to
major logical results. The goal is to trace the structure of
reflexivity in sentences, sets, and systems, but also as it appears
in propositional attitudes, mental states, perspectives and
processes. What an understanding of patterns of reflexivity offers
is a deeper and de-mystified understanding of issues of semantics,
free will, and the nature of consciousness.
Logic is of course a general resource for reasoning at large. But
in the first half of the twentieth century, it developed
particularity with a view to mathematical applications, and the
field of mathematical logic came into being and flourished. In the
second half of the century, much the same happened with regard to
philosophical applications. Hence philosophical logic. The
deliberations of this book cover a varied but interrelated array of
key issues in the field. They address the representation of
information in linguistic formulation, and modes of cogent
demonstration in logic, mathematics, and empirical investigation,
as well as the role of logic in philosophical deliberations.
Overall, the book seeks to demonstrate and illustrate the utility
of logic as a productive resource for rational inquiry at large.
A doctrine of intelligent design through evolution is not going to
find many friends. It is destined to encounter opposition on all
sides. Among scientists the backlog of evolution will have little
patience for intelligent design. Among religiousists, many who form
intelligent design have their doubts about evolution. In the
general public s mind there is a diametrical opposition between
evolution and intelligent design: one excludes the other. This book
will argue that this view of the matter is not correct, and that in
actuality one can regard evolution itself as a pathway to
intelligent design. We would do well to go beyond The Origin of
Species and taking as our guide such works as W. Wentworth Thomson
s On Growth and Form acknowledging that evolutionary adaptation can
result in solutions of a sort that intelligence could readily
ratify. Accordingly, what the present book seeks is a
naturalization of Intelligent Design that sees such design as
itself the result of natural and evolutionary processes."
Knowledge of facts is essential for the management of life. Most
studies of the subject examine how we go about trying to obtain it;
they describe the processes and proceedings of rational inquiry.
The present work steps back from this to inquire into the limits
and limitations of such processes and to identify the assets and
the limitabilities of what they are able to supply for us. It
examines how knowledge of facts is secured and consolidated as
such, and what the resulting information can and cannot provide. It
argues that the unavoidable incompleteness of our factual
information also endows it with an element of incorrectness. By
looking also at the negative side of human inquiry the book's
perspective clarifies the nature of our grip on the facts that
constitute our view of the reality of things.
The book offers a reflection on the nature, scope, and limits of
knowledge that have been at the focus of the author's work over
decades. The essays collected in this volume expound and extend
these efforts in exploring the outer fringes of understanding: the
outer boundaries of conceivability, the limits of cognition, and
the ramifications of ineffability and paradox. They join in
exploring the lay of the land at the boundaries of knowledge. The
first chapters address basic facts regarding the conceptualization
of knowledge. This is followed by a study on how to deal with
problems relating to the affirmation and considerations of truth.
The final chapters scrutinize the limits of demonstration and the
inherent impossibility of realizing an ideal systematization of our
knowledge of totalities. The book affords novel perspectives
regarding the thought of a widely appreciated philosopher. It is an
original work aimed for readers interested in the theory of
knowledge and philosophy of cognition.
The present book continues Rescher's longstanding practice of
publishing groups of philosophical essays that originated in
occasional lecture and conference presentations. Notwithstanding
their topical diversity they exhibit a uniformity of method in a
common attempt to view historically significant philosophical
issues in the light of modern perspectives opened up through
conceptual clarification.
Over the years Nicholas Rescher has published various essays on
religious issues from a philosophical point of view. The chapters
of the present volume collect these together, joining to them four
further pieces which appear here for the first time (Chapters 3, 7,
and 8). While these studies certainly do not constitute a system of
religious philosophy, they do combine to give a vivid picture of a
well-defined point of view on the subject-the viewpoint of a Roman
Catholic philosopher who, in the longstanding manner of this
tradition, seeks to harmonize the commitments of faith with the
fruits of inquiry proceeding under the auspices of reason.
The book aims to provide a process-philosophical perspective
philosophizing itself. It employs the perspectives of process
philosophy for elucidating the historical development of
philosophical ideas. The doctrine of historicism in the history of
ideas has it that each era and perhaps even each thinker employs
philosophical ideas in such a user-idiosyncratic way that there is
no continuity and indeed no connectivity of public access across
the divides of space, time, and culture. In opposition to such a
view, the present processist deliberations see the development of
ideas as a matter of generic processes that have ample room for
connectivity and recurrence, permitting the very self-same
conception to be shared by philosophers of different settings.
Beyond arguing this histico-processism on general principles, the
book presents a series of case studies of significant philosophical
topics that illustrate and elaborate upon the developmental
connectivities at issue.
The core of pragmatism lies in the concept of functional
efficacy-of utility in short. And epistemic pragmatism accordingly
focuses on the utility of our devices and practices in relation to
the aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise-answering
questions, resolving puzzlement, guiding action. The present book
revolves around this theme. All papers in this book bear on
epistemological topics which have preoccupied Nicholas Rescher for
many years. Much as with the thematic structure of this book, this
interest expanded from an initial concern with the exact sciences,
to encompass the epistemology of the human sciences, and ultimately
the epistemology of philosophy itself.
During 2005-2006 I continued my longstanding practice of writing
occasional studies on philosophical topics, both for formal
presentation and for informal discussion with colleagues. While my
forays of this kind have usually issued in journal publications,
this has not been so in the preset case so that the studies offered
here encompass substantially new material. Notwithstanding their
thematic variation, they manifest a uniformity of treatment and
method in a way that is characteristic of my philosophical modus
operandi and inherent is its endeavors to treat classical issues
from novel points of view.' Nicholas Rescher
Presents a study in philosophical methodology aimed at providing a
view of the scope and limits of philosophical inquiry.
This book is a survey of key issues in the theory of evaluation
aimed at exhibiting and clarifying the rational nature of the
thought-procedures involved. By means of theoretical analysis and
explanatory case studies, this volume shows how evaluation is-or
should be-a rational procedure directed at appropriate objectives.
Above all, it maintains the objectivity of rational evaluation.
The six studies comprising this volume deal with some fundamental
issues in early Greek thought: cosmic evaluation in Anaximander,
the theory of opposites from the Pre-Socratics to Plato and
Aristotle, thought experimentation in Pre-Socratic thought, the
origins of Greek Scepticism among the Sophisists, the prehistory of
"Buridan's Ass" speculation, and the role of esthesis in
Aristotle's theory of science. In each case the early discussion
seeks to show how certain ideas bore unexpected fruit during the
subsequent development of philosophical thought.
This book is avowedly written in what has been rather patronizingly
called "the affable spirit of compromise or conciliation" between
science and religion. Its key thesis is that these two enterprises
can-and should be-seen as complementary in addressing different
albeit interrelated questions: on the one side the nature of the
natural world and our place in it, and on the other how we should
proceed and act so as to capitalize on the opportunities that our
place in the world affords to us for shaping our lives in a
meaningful and satisfying way. How the world works is the crux of
the one enterprise and how we are to live is that of the other.
Philosophical Deliberations continues for the 2011/12 biennium
Rescher longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical
essays. Notwithstanding their thematic diversity, these discussions
exhibit a uniformity of method in addressing philosophical issues
and a commonality of objective: the elucidation of philosophically
pivotal ideas.
The future obviously matters to us. It is, after all, where we'll
be spending the rest of our lives. We need some degree of foresight
if we are to make effective plans for managing our affairs. Much
that we would like to know in advance cannot be predicted. But a
vast amount of successful prediction is nonetheless possible,
especially in the context of applied sciences such as medicine,
meteorology, and engineering. This book examines our prospects for
finding out about the future in advance. It addresses questions
such as why prediction is possible in some areas and not others;
what sorts of methods and resources make successful prediction
possible; and what obstacles limit the predictive venture.
Nicholas Rescher develops a general theory of prediction that
encompasses its fundamental principles, methodology, and practice
and gives an overview of its promises and problems. Predicting the
future considers the anthropological and historical background of
the predictive enterprise. It also examines the conceptual,
epistemic, and ontological principles that set the stage for
predictive efforts. In short, Rescher explores the basic features
of the predictive situation and considers their broader
implications in science, in philosophy, and in the management of
our daily affairs.
This book presents a series of coordinated studies that explain and
illustrate how philosophy must be developed systematically with its
problems and topics bound together by links of reciprocal
interconnection. The book consists of two parts: The first part
consists of a series of case studies which illustrate how
philosophical issues do not remain in neatly separated compartments
but reach out in interrelationship with one another. The second
part analyzes the principle resources of philosophical methodology
and shows in detail how and why they can only be implemented in a
systemically interrelated manner. Overall, the book demonstrates
and illustrates the systemic and holistic nature of philosophical
inquiry.
Metaphilosophy is philosophy's poor and neglected cousin.
Philosophers are on the whole too busy doing philosophy to take
time to stand back and consider reflectively how the project itself
actually works. And they lead tend to produce texts without too
much consideration of how this looks from the standpoint of the
consumer. All this, it seems to be, affords good reason for
attending to philosophical hermeneutics, reflecting on the issue of
how philosophical texts are to be understood and interpreted.
Philosophical work comes in different sizes: there are systemic
treatises, monographic surveys, philosopher-expanding texts. But
there is also room for smaller studies that focus on highly
particularized ideas and issues: studies that deal not with entire
continents but with mere reefs and estuaries. The present essays
are of this limited nature. Their aim is less to give a view of the
overall lay of the land than to give a tranistic view of the
diversity of the landscape. The present book continues Rescher's
longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays
that originated in occasional lecture and conference presentations.
Notwithstanding their topical diversity the essays exhibit a
uniformity of method in a common attempt to view historically
significant philosophical issues in the light of modern
perspectives opened up thorough conceptual clarification.
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