Author: C. J. Ducasse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317440412
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Originally published in 1969. This book examines the fundamental concepts of metaphysics and of theory of knowledge. Topics treated include the nature of substance and of causation; their relation to natural laws, dispositions, and attributes; the nature of consciousness and purposiveness; of symbols, signs, and signals, and their relation to interpretation and objective reference; and the nature and criteria of truth. The author holds that philosophy is by intent a science and that its becoming so requires precise and non-arbitrary semantical analysis of basic philosophical terms. He argues that philosophy then, like the other sciences, has practical importance: in its case this consists in its capacity to give to difficult practical decisions not only the efficacy insured by its application of the findings of the other sciences, but in addition some of the wisdom which is philosophy’s distinctive ultimate aim.
Author: C. J. Ducasse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317440404
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
Originally published in 1969. This book examines the fundamental concepts of metaphysics and of theory of knowledge. Topics treated include the nature of substance and of causation; their relation to natural laws, dispositions, and attributes; the nature of consciousness and purposiveness; of symbols, signs, and signals, and their relation to interpretation and objective reference; and the nature and criteria of truth. The author holds that philosophy is by intent a science and that its becoming so requires precise and non-arbitrary semantical analysis of basic philosophical terms. He argues that philosophy then, like the other sciences, has practical importance: in its case this consists in its capacity to give to difficult practical decisions not only the efficacy insured by its application of the findings of the other sciences, but in addition some of the wisdom which is philosophy’s distinctive ultimate aim.
Author: Christoph Hoerl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199590699
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
Twelve essays explore what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify issues in empirical work on the relationships between causal and counterfactual thought.
Author: Douglas Kutach
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745685846
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
In most academic and non-academic circles throughout history, the world and its operation have been viewed in terms of cause and effect. The principles of causation have been applied, fruitfully, across the sciences, law, medicine, and in everyday life, despite the lack of any agreed-upon framework for understanding what causation ultimately amounts to. In this engaging and accessible introduction to the topic, Douglas Kutach explains and analyses the most prominent theories and examples in the philosophy of causation. The book is organized so as to respect the various cross-cutting and interdisciplinary concerns about causation, such as the reducibility of causation, its application to scientific modeling, its connection to influence and laws of nature, and its role in causal explanation. Kutach begins by presenting the four recurring distinctions in the literature on causation, proceeding through an exploration of various accounts of causation including determination, difference making and probability-raising. He concludes by carefully considering their application to the mind-body problem. Causation provides a straightforward and compact survey of contemporary approaches to causation and serves as a friendly and clear guide for anyone interested in exploring the complex jungle of ideas that surround this fundamental philosophical topic.
Author: Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521083041
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
Author: Andrea Kern
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674416112
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
How can human beings, who are liable to error, possess knowledge, since the grounds on which we believe do not rule out that we are wrong? Andrea Kern argues that we can disarm this skeptical doubt by conceiving knowledge as an act of a rational capacity. In this book, she develops a metaphysics of the mind as existing through knowledge of itself.
Author: Albert Michotte
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315519038
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
Originally published in 1963, this is a classic work on the psychology of perception. By means of suitable patterns on a partly concealed rotating disc Michotte was able to give the impression of objects in movement; and where certain conditions of speed, position, and time-interval were satisfied, his subjects received the impression of a causal interaction between two objects – for example, the impression that one object has ‘bumped into’ another (the ‘Launching Effect’) or is carrying it along (the ‘Entraining Effect’). In a further group of experiments Michotte studies the conditions in which moving objects look as though they are alive. A large number of experiments are described, and on the basis of them Michotte formulates a theory as to the conditions in which causal impressions occur. He also compares his own views on causality with those of Hume, Maine de Biran, and Piaget.
Author: Eric Marcus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065336
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
We explain what people think and do by citing their reasons, but how do such explanations work, and what do they tell us about the nature of reality? Contemporary efforts to address these questions are often motivated by the worry that our ordinary conception of rationality contains a kernel of supernaturalism-a ghostly presence that meditates on sensory messages and orchestrates behavior on the basis of its ethereal calculations. In shunning this otherworldly conception, contemporary philosophers have focused on the project of "naturalizing" the mind, viewing it as a kind of machine that converts sensory input and bodily impulse into thought and action. Eric Marcus rejects this choice between physicalism and supernaturalism as false and defends a third way. He argues that philosophers have failed to take seriously the idea that rational explanations postulate a distinctive sort of causation-rational causation. Rational explanations do not reveal the same sorts of causal connections that explanations in the natural sciences do. Rather, rational causation draws on the theoretical and practical inferential abilities of human beings. Marcus defends this position against a wide array of physicalist arguments that have captivated philosophers of mind for decades. Along the way he provides novel views on, for example, the difference between rational and nonrational animals and the distinction between states and events.
Author: D. M. Armstrong
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521087063
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
A wide-ranging study of the central concepts in epistemology - belief, truth and knowledge. Professor Armstrong offers a dispositional account of general beliefs and of knowledge of general propositions. Belief about particular matters of fact are described as structures in the mind of the believer which represent or 'map' reality, while general beliefs are dispositions to extend the 'map' or introduce casual relations between portions of the map according to general rules. 'Knowledge' denotes the reliability of such beliefs as representations of reality. Within this framework Professor Armstrong offers a distinctive account of many of the main questions in general epistemology - the relations between beliefs and language, the notions of proposition, concept and idea, the analysis of truth, the varieties of knowledge, and the way in which beleifs and knowledge are supported by reasons. The book as a whole if offered as a contribution to a naturalistic account of man.
Author: Sherrilyn Roush
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199274738
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Tracking Truth presents a unified treatment of knowledge, evidence, and epistemological realism and anti-realism about scientific theories. A wide range of knowledge-related phenomena, especially but not only in science, strongly favour the idea of tracking as the key to what makes something knowledge. A subject who tracks the truth - an idea first formulated by Robert Nozick - has the ability to follow the truth through time and changing circumstances. Epistemologistsrightly concluded that Nozick's theory was not viable, but a simple revision of that view is not only viable but superior to other current views. In this new tracking account of knowledge, in contrast to the old view, knowledge has the property of closure under known implication, and troublesome counterfactualsare replaced with well-defined conditional probability statements. Of particular interest are the new view's treatment of skepticism, reflective knowledge, lottery propositions, knowledge of logical truth, and the question why knowledge is power in the Baconian sense.Ideally, evidence indicates a hypothesis and discriminates it from other possible hypotheses. This is the idea behind a tracking view of evidence, and Sherrilyn Roush provides a defence of a confirmation theory based on the Likelihood Ratio. The accounts of knowledge and evidence she offers provide a deep and seamless explanation of why having better evidence makes one more likely to have knowledge. Roush approaches the question of epistemological realism about scientific theories through thequestion what is required for evidence, and rejects both traditional realist and traditional anti-realist positions in favour of a new position which evaluates realist claims in a piecemeal fashion according to a general standard of evidence. The results show that while anti-realists were immodest indeclaring a priori what science could not do, realists were excessively sanguine about how far our actual evidence has so far taken us.
