Author: Fred Wilson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442692448
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 825
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Book Description
David Hume is often considered to have been a sceptic, particularly in his conception of the individual's knowledge of the external world. However, a closer examination of his works gives a much different impression of this aspect of Hume's philosophy, one that is due for a thorough scholarly analysis. This study argues that Hume was, in fact, a critical realist in the early twentieth-century sense, a period in which the term was used to describe the epistemological and ontological theories of such philosophers as Roy Wood Sellars and Bertrand Russell. Carefully situating Hume in his historical context, that is, relative to Aristotelian and rationalist traditions, Fred Wilson makes important and unique insights into Humean philosophy. Analyzing key sections of the Treatise, the Enquiry, and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Wilson offers a deeper understanding of Hume by taking into account the philosopher's theories of the external world. Such a reading, the author explains, is not only more faithful to the texts, but also reinforces the view of Hume as a critical realist in light of twentieth-century discussions between externalism and internalism, and between coherentists and foundationalists. Complete with original observations and ideas, this study is sure to generate debates about Humean philosophy, critical realism, and the limits of perceptual knowledge.
Author: Javier Cumpa
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311032959X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
This volume is about ontological categories. The categories of an ontology are designed to classify all existents. They are crucial and characterize an ontology.
Author: Fred Wilson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110327015
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 752
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Book Description
These essays bring together forty years of work in ontology. Intentionality, negation, universals, bare particulars, tropes, general facts, relations, the myth of the 'myth of the given', are among the topics covered. Bergmann, Quine, Sellars, Russell, Wittgenstein, Hume, Bradley, Hochberg, Dummett, Frege, Plato, are among the philosophers discussed. The essays criticize non-Humean notions of cause; they criticize the notion that besides simple atomic facts there are also negative facts and general facts. They defend a realism of properties as universals, against nominalism; bare particulars; a (qualified) realism with regard to logical form; a Russellian account of relations; and an account of minds and intentionality, which is opposed to materialism, but is also a form of (methodological) behaviourism. In general, the ontology is one of logical atomism and empiricist throughout, rooted in a Principle of Acquaintance.
Author: Fred Wilson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110327074
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 553
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Book Description
This essay proposes that Hume’s non-substantialist bundle account of minds is basically correct. The concept of a person is not a metaphysical notion but a forensic one, that of a being who enters into the moral and normative relations of civil society. A person is a bundle but it is also a structured bundle. Hume’s metaphysics of relations is argued must be replaced by a more adequate one such as that of Russell, but beyond that Hume’s account is essentially correct. In particular it is argued that it is one’s character that constitutes one’s identity; and that sympathy and the passions of pride and humility are central in forming and maintaining one’s character and one’s identity as a person. But also central is one’s body: a person is an embodied consciousness: the notion that one’s body is essential to one’s identity is defended at length. Various concepts of mind and consciousness are examined - for example, neutral monism and intentionality - and also the concept of privacy and our inferences to other minds.
Author: Marc A. Hight
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047658
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
"A wide-ranging study of the 'way of ideas' and its metaphysics, culminating in a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley."
Author: Grega Jakus
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461478227
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 71
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Book Description
Recording knowledge in a common framework that would make it possible to seamlessly share global knowledge remains an important challenge for researchers. This brief examines several ideas about the representation of knowledge addressing this challenge. A widespread general agreement is followed that states uniform knowledge representation should be achievable by using ontologies populated with concepts. A separate chapter is dedicated to each of the three introduced topics, following a uniform outline: definition, organization, and use. This brief is intended for those who want to get to know the field of knowledge representation quickly, or would like to be up to date with current developments in the field. It is also useful for those dealing with implementation as examples of numerous operational systems are also given.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004415270
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
Idealist Alternatives to Materialist Philosophies of Science (ed. Philip MacEwen) makes the case that there are other, and arguably better, ways of understanding science than materialism. Philosophical idealism leads the list of challengers but critical realism and various forms of pluralism are fully articulated as well. To ensure that the incumbent is adequately represented, the volume includes a major defence of materialism/naturalism from Anaxagoras to the present. Contributors include Leslie Armour, John D. Norton, and Fred Wilson with a Foreword by Nicholas Rescher. For anyone interested in whether materialism has a monopoly on science, this volume presents a good case for materialism but a better one for its alternatives.
Author: Erwin Tegtmeier
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110330555
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
Herbert Hochberg is one of the most influential analytical philosophers and one of the most influential critics of analytical philosophy. He disputed with almost all leading analytical philosophers, from Quine, Goodman and Wilfrid Sellars to David Lewis and David Armstrong. His point of view is ontological and he harks back to the origins of analytical philosophy where he finds unknown precursors of current views. And he finds parallels to contemporary non-analytic philosophies. In his own ontology he tries to dispense with simple particulars.
Author: Neil H. Kessler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319992740
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
In Ontology and Closeness in Human-Nature Relationships, Neil H. Kessler identifies the preconceptions which can keep the modern human mind in the dark about what is happening relationally between humans and the more-than-human world. He has written an accessible work of environmental philosophy, with a focus on the ontology of human-nature relationships. In it, he contends that large-scale environmental problems are intimate and relational in origin. He also challenges the deeply embedded, modernist assumptions about the relational limitations of more-than-human beings, ones which place erroneous limitations on the possibilities for human/more-than-human closeness. Diverging from the posthumanist literature and its frequent reliance on new materialist ontology, the arguments in the book attempt to sweep away what ecofeminists call “human/nature dualisms. In doing so, conceptual avenues open up that have the power to radically alter how we engage in our daily interactions with the more-than-human world all around us. Given the diversity of fields and disciplines focused on the human-nature relationship, the topics of this book vary quite broadly, but always converge at the nexus of what is possible between humans and more-than-human beings. The discussion interweaves the influence of human/nature dualisms with the limitations of Deleuzian becoming and posthumanism’s new materialism and agential realism. It leverages interhuman interdependence theory, Charles Peirce’s synechism of feeling and various treatments of Theory of Mind while exploring the influence of human/nature dualisms on sustainability, place attachment, common worlds pedagogy, emergence, and critical animal studies. It also explores the implications of plant electrical activity, plant intelligence, and plant “neurobiology” for possibilities of relational capacities in plants while even grappling with theories of animism to challenge the animate/inanimate divide. The result is an engaging, novel treatment of human-nature relational ontology that will encourage the reader to look at the world in a whole new way.
Author: Guido Bonino
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614516650
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
The essays in this volume, first presented at an international conference held at the University of Urbino, Italy, in 2011, explore the different senses of realism, arguing both for and against its distinctive theses and considering these senses from a historical point of view. The first sense is the metaphysical thesis that whatever exists does so, and has the properties it has, independently of whether it is the object of a person's thought or perception. The second sense of realism is epistemological, wherein realism claims that, in some cases, it is possible to know the world as it exists in and of itself. A third sense, which has become known as ontological realism, states that universals exist as well as individuals. The essays collected here make new contributions to these fundamental philosophical issues, which have largely defined western analytic philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to the present day.
