Author: Bob Hale
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199669570
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Bob Hale presents a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another. He argues that facts about what kinds of things exist depend on facts about what is possible. Modal facts are fundamental, and have their basis in the essences of things—not in meanings or concepts.
Author: Sophie Allen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147257558X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
What do blue things have in common? Or electrons? Or planets? Distinct things appear to share properties; but what are properties and what is the best philosophical account of them? A Critical Introduction to Properties introduces different ontological accounts of properties, exploring how their formulation is shaped by the explanatory demands placed upon them. This accessible introduction begins with a discussion of universals, tropes, sets and resemblance classes, the major objections to them and their responses, providing readers with a firm grasp on the competing ontological accounts of what (if anything) grounds similarity and difference. It then explores issues concerning the formulation and justification of property theories such as: how many properties are there? Should we accept a sparse ontology of properties, or an abundant one? Can we make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties? Do properties have their causal roles necessarily? What is the relationship between properties and other metaphysical phenomena such as causality, laws and modality? These questions get to the heart of why a coherent theory of properties is so important to metaphysics, and to philosophy more generally. By concluding with the question of the ontological status of properties, the reader is introduced to some Carnapian and contemporary themes about the content and methodology of metaphysics. For students looking for an accessible resource and a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary metaphysics, A Critical Introduction to Properties is a valuable starting point.
Author: Jamin Asay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108604048
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
The theory of truthmaking has long aroused skepticism from philosophers who believe it to be tangled up in contentious ontological commitments and unnecessary theoretical baggage. In this book, Jamin Asay shows why that suspicion is unfounded. Challenging the current orthodoxy that truthmaking's fundamental purpose is to be a tool for explaining why truths are true, Asay revives the conception of truthmaking as fundamentally an exercise in ontology: a means for coordinating one's beliefs about what is true and one's ontological commitments. He goes on to show how truthmaking connects to analyticity, truth, and realism, and how it contributes to debates over nominalism, presentism, mathematical objects, and fictional characters. His book is the most comprehensive exploration to date into what truthmaking is and how it contributes to metaphysical debates across philosophy, and will interest a wide range of readers in metaphysics and beyond.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 682
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Book Description
Author: Sean Bowden
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748668330
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
This collection of thirteen essays engages directly with the work of Alain Badiou, focusing specifically on the philosophical content of his work and the various connections he established with both his contemporaries and his philosophical heritage.
Author: Daniel Stoljar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192522434
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And - amazingly - many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar arguesargues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through exactly what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields.
Author: Mariusz Maziarz
Publisher: Polski Instytut Ekonomiczny
ISBN: 836128463X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 43
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Book Description
Author: A. J. Cotnoir
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191648396
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Composition is the relation between a whole and its parts—the parts are said to compose the whole; the whole is composed of the parts. But is a whole anything distinct from its parts taken collectively? It is often said that 'a whole is nothing over and above its parts'; but what might we mean by that? Could it be that a whole just is its parts? This collection of essays is the first of its kind to focus on the relationship between composition and identity. Twelve original articles—written by internationally renowned scholars and rising stars in the field—argue for and against the controversial doctrine that composition is identity. An editor's introduction sets out the formal and philosophical groundwork to bring readers to the forefront of the debate.
Author: J. Heil
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401197342
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
T is said that there is no progress in philosophy. The illusion of standing I still, however, arises only when we lose sight of our history and so fail to notice the distance we have travelled. Philosophers nowadays find obvious ideas and themes that, as it happens, emerged slowly and painfully and largely in reaction to prevailing sensibilities. The essays here honour a man to whom present-day philosophy owes much: Charles Burton Martin. In reflecting on my own on-going and somewhat chaotic philosophical education, I find considerable evidence of Charlie Martin's influence. After departing graduate school, one of the first papers I succeeded in publishing consisted of an attack on Martin and Deutscher's 'Remembering'. ' After that, Charlie more or less vanished from my conscious awareness until the winter of 1985, when we appeared together in a colloquium at the Eastern Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association. Although Charlie was nominally a commentator on a paper I was delivering, his 'comments' contained more philosophy and went considerably beyond the tentative and highly circumscribed thesis I had elected to defend. Whereas my focus had been on a tiny feature of Hilary Putnam's argument against realism, Charlie went straight for the jugular, addressing matters that immediately took us into deep water.
Author: Jody Azzouni
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195159888
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
If we take mathematical statements to be true, must we also believe in the existence of abstract invisible mathematical objects? This text claims that the way to escape such a commitment is to accept true statements which are about objects that don't exist in any sense at all.
