Philosophical Explanations

Philosophical Explanations PDF Author: Robert Nozick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674664791
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
Nozick develops new views on philosophy’s central topics and weaves them into a unified perspective. He ranges widely over philosophy’s fundamental concerns: the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, the foundations of ethics, the meaning of life.

Philosophical Explanations

Philosophical Explanations PDF Author: Robert Nozick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674664791
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 788

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nozick develops new views on philosophy’s central topics and weaves them into a unified perspective. He ranges widely over philosophy’s fundamental concerns: the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, the foundations of ethics, the meaning of life.

Philosophical Clarifications

Philosophical Clarifications PDF Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030152693
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book is an integrated series of philosophical investigations that offers significant new insights into key philosophical concerns ranging from methodological issues to substantive doctrines. Consisting of three sections, it first deals with the nature of philosophizing itself and seeks to illustrate the project from the angle of the pragmatic tradition. The second section is devoted to issues of knowledge and how the cognitive project goes about producing results that are cogent and objective. The third and closing section considers how the ideas and perspectives of these considerations can be applied and implemented in various matters of personal judgment and practice.

Philosophical Explanations

Philosophical Explanations PDF Author: Robert Nozick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674266277
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
In this highly original work, Robert Nozick develops new views on philosophy’s central topics and weaves them into a unified philosophical perspective. It is many years since a major work in English has ranged so widely over philosophy’s fundamental concerns: the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, the foundations of ethics, the meaning of life. Writing in a distinctive and personal philosophical voice, Mr. Nozick presents a new mode of philosophizing. In place of the usual semi-coercive philosophical goals of proof, of forcing people to accept conclusions, this book seeks philosophical explanations and understanding, and thereby stays truer to the original motivations for being interested in philosophy. Combining new concepts, daring hypotheses, rigorous reasoning, and playful exploration, the book exemplifies how philosophy can be part of the humanities.

Philosophical Method: a Very Short Introduction

Philosophical Method: a Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Timothy Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198810008
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
What are philosophers trying to achieve? How can they succeed? Does philosophy make progress? Is it in competition with science, or doing something completely different, or neither? Timothy Williamson tackles some of the key questions surrounding philosophy in new and provocative ways, showing how philosophy begins in common sense curiosity, and develops through our capacity to dispute rationally with each other. Discussing philosophy's ability to clarify our thoughts, he explains why such clarification depends on the development of philosophical theories, and how those theories can be tested by imaginative thought experiments, and compared against each other by standards similar to those used in the natural and social sciences. He also shows how logical rigour can be understood as a way of enhancing the explanatory power of philosophical theories. Drawing on the history of philosophy to provide a track record of philosophical thinking's successes and failures, Williams overturns widely held dogmas about the distinctive nature of philosophy in comparison to the sciences, demystifies its methods, and considers the future of the discipline. From thought experiments, to deduction, to theories, this Very Short Introduction will cause you to totally rethink what philosophy is. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. Previously published in hardback as Doing Philosophy

Confusions and Clarifications

Confusions and Clarifications PDF Author: F. F. Centore
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761809685
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This book brings together the chief elements of 3,000 years of philosophy as found mainly in Western thought in a highly readable form. The work concentrates on problems and issues much more than on names, dates and places. he book includes an extensive bibliography of works related to the main themes of the text, followed by a long list of names and dates of leading historical figures in various fields, especially in science, philosophy, and theology.

Elucidating the Tractatus

Elucidating the Tractatus PDF Author: Marie McGinn
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191529591
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task.

Examined Life

Examined Life PDF Author: Robert Nozick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671725017
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
An exploration of topics of everyday importance in the Socratic tradition.

Essays in Philosophical Synthesis

Essays in Philosophical Synthesis PDF Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031342879
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
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.

A Confusion of the Spheres

A Confusion of the Spheres PDF Author: Genia Sch?nbaumsfeld
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191614831
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship of their ideas. Genia Sch?nbaumsfeld closes this gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. In chapter four, Sch?nbaumsfeld develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism' and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.

Style, Method and Philosophy in Wittgenstein

Style, Method and Philosophy in Wittgenstein PDF Author: Alois Pichler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108960618
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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Book Description
This Element provides a comprehensive explanation of Wittgenstein's philosophy. It introduces distinctions that are essential for approaching the multilayered complex of Wittgenstein's oeuvre. One is the distinction between writing philosophical clarifications for himself and forming philosophical books for his reader.