Author: D. M. Walsh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521003733
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume examines the impact of concepts from evolutionary biology on the philosophy of mind.

Author: Jillian Scott McIntosh
Publisher: Calgary : University of Calgary Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of essays concerning the mind that explores the prospects for, and limits of, appealing to facts about evolutionary history and current environment-organism interaction in explaining the nature and workings of the mental. Includes papers in ethology, psychology, neuroscience. Each paper contributes to the discussion of what discoveries in this field can tell us about particular issues in the philosophy of mind. Some of the papers in this issue have had a high profile: Mel Goodale was recently on the CBC talking about how each of us has two types of vision (it was a fascinating piece that is not actually written by a philosopher ).

Author: James K. Beilby
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487637
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
Plantinga's argument is aimed at metaphysical naturalism or roughly the view that no supernatural beings exist. Naturalism is typically conjoined with evolution as an explanation of the existence and diversity of life. Plantinga's claim is that one who holds to the truth of both naturalism and evolution is irrational in doing so. More specifically, because the probability that unguided evolution would have produced reliable cognitive faculties is either low or inscrutable, one who holds both naturalism and evolution acquires a "defeater" for every belief he/she holds, including the beliefs associated with naturalism and evolution.

Author: Roy Wood Sellars
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Robert Leonard Carneiro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979773129
Category : Brain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first single book to document the evolution in human thinking from a belief in supernaturalism to a belief in naturalism.

Author: Charles Taliaferro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441148825
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
A philosophical inquiry into the strengths and weaknesses of theism and naturalism in accounting for the emergence of consciousness, the visual imagination and aesthetic values. The authors begin by offering an account of modern scientific practice which gives a central place to the visual imagination and aesthetic values. They then move to test the explanatory power of naturalism and theism in accounting for consciousness and the very visual imagination and aesthetic values that lie behind and define modern science. Taliaferro and Evans argue that evolutionary biology alone is insufficient to account for consciousness, the visual imagination and aesthetic values. Insofar as naturalism is compelled to go beyond evolutionary biology, it does not fare as well as theism in terms of explanatory power.

Author: Jim Slagle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350173126
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contemporary discussions in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind are dominated by the presupposition of naturalism. Arguing against this established convention, Jim Slagle offers a thorough defence of Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (EAAN) and in doing so, reveals how it shows that evolution and naturalism are incompatible. Charting the development of Plantinga's argument, Slagle asserts that the probability of our cognitive faculties reliably producing true beliefs is low if ontological naturalism is true, and therefore all other beliefs produced by these faculties, including naturalism itself, are self-defeating. He critiques other well-known epistemological approaches, including those of Descartes and Quine, and deftly counters the many objections against the EAAN to conclude that metaphysical naturalism should be rejected on the grounds of self-defeat. By situating Plantinga's argument within a wider context and showing that science and evolution cannot entail naturalism, Slagle renders this most common metaphysical view irrational. As such, the book advocates an important reconsideration of contemporary thought at the intersection of philosophy, science and religion.

Author: Thomas Nagel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199919755
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Get Book Here

Book Description
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199812101
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this long-awaited book, pre-eminent analytical philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.

Author: Paul F. Boller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Naturalism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description