The Logical Structure of Kinds

The Logical Structure of Kinds PDF Author: Eric Funkhouser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191781681
Category : Classification
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Eric Funkhouser uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, classificatory systems, given by the determination dimensions of kinds. His account of multiple realisability provides standards for establishing the autonomy of the sciences.

The Logical Structure of Kinds

The Logical Structure of Kinds PDF Author: Eric Funkhouser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191781681
Category : Classification
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
Eric Funkhouser uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, classificatory systems, given by the determination dimensions of kinds. His account of multiple realisability provides standards for establishing the autonomy of the sciences.

The Logical Structure of Kinds

The Logical Structure of Kinds PDF Author: Eric Funkhouser
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191053287
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Eric Funkhouser uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, classificatory systems or taxonomies. Every conceptual scheme—including the sciences, mathematics, and ethics—classifies things into kinds. Given their ubiquity across theoretical contexts, we would benefit from understanding the nature of such kinds. Significantly, most conceptual schemes posit kinds that vary in their degree of specificity. Species-genus taxonomies provide us with familiar examples, with the species classification being more specific than the genus classification. This book instead focuses on adjectival kinds—classifications picked out by kind-terms like 'mass', 'shape', or 'belief', to give but a few examples. Some adjectival kinds specify others—for example, scarlet is a specific kind of red. This is an instance of the determinate-determinable relation. One of the fundamental claims of this book is that studying the determination relation provides deep insight into the essences of adjectival kinds and their instances (properties). The determination relation is found to contain two components, which are employed to structure kinds at the same level of abstraction into property spaces. In turn, these property space models lead to a theory for individuating properties, which has profound consequences when it comes to reduction, autonomy, and causation. Determination relations are contrasted with realization relations, the latter being the favored way of understanding how the mental and the physical are related. Particular attention is given to the distinction between multiple realizability and multiple determination, and it is argued that determination and realization are mutually exclusive relations. This has been overlooked in many discussions of multiple realizability, but it is central to maintaining the connection between multiple realizability and autonomy. The claim that multiple realizability entails various senses of autonomy is defended from various reductionist challenges. These theories of determination and realization ultimately provide general standards for establishing the autonomy of the special sciences or, conversely, their reduction.

The Logical Structure of Kinds

The Logical Structure of Kinds PDF Author: Eric Funkhouser
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198713304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Eric Funkhouser uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, classificatory systems or taxonomies. Every conceptual scheme--including the sciences, mathematics, and ethics--classifies things into kinds. Given their ubiquity across theoretical contexts, we would benefit from understanding the nature of such kinds. Significantly, most conceptual schemes posit kinds that vary in their degree of specificity. Species-genus taxonomiesprovide us with familiar examples, with the species classification being more specific than the genus classification. This book instead focuses on adjectival kinds--classifications picked out by kind-terms like'mass', 'shape', or 'belief', to give but a few examples. One of its fundamental claims is that studying the determination relation provides deep insight into the essences of adjectival kinds and their instances (properties). The determination relation is found to contain two components, which are employed to structure kinds at the same level of abstraction into property spaces. In turn, these property space models lead to a theory for individuating properties, which has profound consequenceswhen it comes to reduction, autonomy, and causation. Funkhouser argues that determination and realization are mutually exclusive relations. He defends the claim that multiple realizability entailsvarious senses of autonomy from various reductionist challenges. These theories of determination and realization ultimately provide general standards for establishing the autonomy of the special sciences or, conversely, their reduction.

The Logical Structure of Science

The Logical Structure of Science PDF Author: A. Cornelius Benjamin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000735494
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book addresses the argument in the history of the philosophy of science between the positivists and the anti-positivists. The author starts from a point of firm conviction that all science and philosophy must start with the given... But that the range of the given is not definite. He begins with an examination of science from the outside and then the inside, explaining his position on metaphysics and attempts to formulate the character of operational acts before a general theory of symbolism is explored. The last five chapters constitute a treatise to show that the development from one stage of symbolismto the next is inevitable, consequently that explanatory science represents the culmination of knowledge.

The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics

The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics PDF Author: Joseph D. Sneed
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401030669
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book is about scientific theories of a particular kind - theories of mathematical physics. Examples of such theories are classical and relativis tic particle mechanics, classical electrodynamics, classical thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, hydrodynamics, and quantum mechanics. Roughly, these are theories in which a certain mathematical structure is employed to make statements about some fragment of the world. Most of the book is simply an elaboration of this rough characterization of theories of mathematical physics. It is argued that each theory of mathematical physics has associated with it a certain characteristic mathematical struc ture. This structure may be used in a variety of ways to make empirical claims about putative applications of the theory. Typically - though not necessarily - the way this structure is used in making such claims requires that certain elements in the structure play essentially different roles. Some playa "theoretical" role; others playa "non-theoretical" role. For example, in classical particle mechanics, mass and force playa theoretical role while position plays a non-theoretical role. Some attention is given to showing how this distinction can be drawn and describing precisely the way in which the theoretical and non-theoretical elements function in the claims of the theory. An attempt is made to say, rather precisely, what a theory of mathematical physics is and how you tell one such theory from anothe- what the identity conditions for these theories are.

The Logical Structure of the World

The Logical Structure of the World PDF Author: Rudolf Carnap
Publisher: Open Court Publishing
ISBN: 9780812695236
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle. In The Logical Structure of the World, Carnap adopts the position of "methodological solipsism" and shows that it is possible to describe the world from the immediate data of experience. In his Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, he asserts that many philosophical problems are meaningless.

The Logical Structure of Consciousness

The Logical Structure of Consciousness PDF Author: Michael Starks
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781081170295
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative linguistic System 2 and unconscious automated prelinguistic System 1 actions or reflexes.I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of two of the most eminent students of behavior of modern times, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, on the logical structure of intentionality (mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein's fundamental discovery -that all truly 'philosophical' problems are the same-confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same-looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I analyze various writings by and about them from the modern perspective of the two systems of thought (popularized as 'thinking fast, thinking slow'), employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. I show that this is a powerful heuristic for describing behavior.Thus, all behavior is intimately connected if one takes the correct viewpoint. The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it's clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people's time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant's future.

Central Works of Philosophy

Central Works of Philosophy PDF Author: John Shand
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773530177
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description


Hegel and the Logical Structure of Love

Hegel and the Logical Structure of Love PDF Author: Toula Nicolacopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429828527
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
First published in 1999, this is an interesting and significantly valuable example of how Hegel’s Logic can be applied to his own interpretation of his time to produce a contemporary Hegelian view of our world and its problems. The authors show that by the logic of the family, as conceived by Hegal, contemporary views about same sec and single parent families can be justified and defunded. The male-dominance and heterosexual orientation taken for granted by Hegal’s own world is not mandated by the Logic. I find their argument completely convincing. They demonstrate beyond dispute that Hegel’s speculative philosophy remains relevant for us, a very fruitful in its applications.

The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory

The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description