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Author: Frode Kjosavik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000727416
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
This collection addresses metaphysical issues at the intersection between philosophy and science. A unique feature is the way in which it is guided both by history of philosophy, by interaction between philosophy and science, and by methodological awareness. In asking how metaphysics is possible in an age of science, the contributors draw on philosophical tools provided by three great thinkers who were fully conversant with and actively engaged with the sciences of their day: Kant, Husserl, and Frege. Part I sets out frameworks for scientifically informed metaphysics in accordance with the meta-metaphysics outlined by these three self-reflective philosophers. Part II explores the domain for co-existent metaphysics and science. Constraints on ambitious critical metaphysics are laid down in close consideration of logic, meta-theory, and specific conditions for science. Part III exemplifies the role of language and science in contemporary metaphysics. Quine’s pursuit of truth is analysed; Cantor’s absolute infinitude is reconstrued in modal terms; and sense is made of Weyl’s take on the relationship between mathematics and empirical aspects of physics. With chapters by leading scholars, Metametaphysics and the Sciences is an in-depth resource for researchers and advanced students working within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the history of philosophy.
Author: Frode Kjosavik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000727130
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
This collection addresses metaphysical issues at the intersection between philosophy and science. A unique feature is the way in which it is guided both by history of philosophy, by interaction between philosophy and science, and by methodological awareness. In asking how metaphysics is possible in an age of science, the contributors draw on philosophical tools provided by three great thinkers who were fully conversant with and actively engaged with the sciences of their day: Kant, Husserl, and Frege. Part I sets out frameworks for scientifically informed metaphysics in accordance with the meta-metaphysics outlined by these three self-reflective philosophers. Part II explores the domain for co-existent metaphysics and science. Constraints on ambitious critical metaphysics are laid down in close consideration of logic, meta-theory, and specific conditions for science. Part III exemplifies the role of language and science in contemporary metaphysics. Quine’s pursuit of truth is analysed; Cantor’s absolute infinitude is reconstrued in modal terms; and sense is made of Weyl’s take on the relationship between mathematics and empirical aspects of physics. With chapters by leading scholars, Metametaphysics and the Sciences is an in-depth resource for researchers and advanced students working within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the history of philosophy.
Author: David Chalmers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199546045
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 540
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Book Description
Metaphysics asks questions about existence: for example, do numbers really exist? Metametaphysics asksquestions about metaphysics: for example, do its questions have determinate answers? If so, are these answers deep and important, or are they merely a matter of how we use words? What is the proper methodology for their resolution? These questions have received a heightened degree of attention lately with new varieties of ontological deflationism and pluralism challenging the kind of realism that has become orthodoxy in contemporary analytic metaphysics.This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline. It brings together many of the central figures in the debate with their most recent work on the semantics, epistemology, and methodology of metaphysics.
Author: Tuomas E. Tahko
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110707729X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This is the first systematic student introduction to metametaphysics, examining the nature, foundations and methodology of metaphysical inquiry.
Author: Ricki Bliss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351622498
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1031
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Book Description
Philosophical questions regarding the nature and methodology of philosophical inquiry have garnered much attention in recent years. Perhaps nowhere are these discussions more developed than in relation to the field of metaphysics. The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics is an outstanding reference source to this growing subject. It comprises thirty-eight chapters written by leading international contributors, and is arranged around five themes: • The history of metametaphysics • Neo-Quineanism (and its objectors) • Alternative conceptions of metaphysics • The epistemology of metaphysics • Science and metaphysics. Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophical methodology, and ontology, The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as philosophy of language, logic, and philosophy of science.
Author: Jiri Benovsky
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319253344
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
Metaphysical theories are beautiful. At the end of this book, Jiri Benovsky defends the view that metaphysical theories possess aesthetic properties and that these play a crucial role when it comes to theory evaluation and theory choice.Before we get there, the philosophical path the author proposes to follow starts with three discussions of metaphysical equivalence. Benovsky argues that there are cases of metaphysical equivalence, cases of partial metaphysical equivalence, as well as interesting cases of theories that are not equivalent. Thus, claims of metaphysical equivalence can only be raised locally. The slogan is: the best way to do meta-metaphysics is to do first-level metaphysics.To do this work, Benovsky focuses on the nature of primitives and on the role they play in each of the theories involved. He emphasizes the utmost importance of primitives in the construction of metaphysical theories and in the subsequent evaluation of them.He then raises the simple but complicated question: how to make a choice between competing metaphysical theories? If two theories are equivalent, then perhaps we do not need to make a choice. But what about all the other cases of non-equivalent "equally good" theories? Benovsky uses some of the theories discussed in the first part of the book as examples and examines some traditional meta-theoretical criteria for theory choice (various kinds of simplicity, compatibility with physics, compatibility with intuitions, explanatory power, internal consistency,...) only to show that they do not allow us to make a choice.But if the standard meta-theoretical criteria cannot help us in deciding between competing non-equivalent metaphysical theories, how then shall we make that choice? This is where Benovsky argues that metaphysical theories possess aesthetic properties – grounded in non-aesthetic properties – and that these play a crucial role in theory choice and evaluation. This view, as well as all the meta-metaphysical considerations discussed throughout the book, then naturally lead the author to a form of anti-realism, and at the end of the journey he offers reasons to think better of the kind of anti-realist view he proposes to embrace. www.jiribenovsky.org
Author: Jessica M. Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198823746
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Both the special sciences and ordinary experience present us with a world of macro-entities - trees, birds, lakes, mountains, humans, houses, and sculptures, to name a few - which materially depend on lower-level configurations, but which are also distinct from and distinctively efficacious ascompared to those configurations. This give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there actually any metaphysical emergence? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear, compelling, and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that thereare two and only two forms of metaphysical emergence that make sense of the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a macro-entity or feature has a proper subset of the powers of its base-level configuration, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a macro-entity or feature has a new power as compared toits base-level configuration. Given that the lower-level configurations are physical, Weak emergence unifies and accommodates diverse accounts of realization associated with varieties of non-reductive physicalism, whereas Strong emergence unifies and accommodates anti-physicalist views according towhich there may be fundamentally novel features, forces, interactions, or laws at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending each form of emergence from various objections, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually eitherWeakly or Strongly metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that Strong emergence, while in most cases at best a live empirical possibility, is instantiated for the important case of free will.
Author: Craig Dilworth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739177230
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Simplicity presents a new, wide-ranging philosophical theory, one that concerns how reality is conceived. In so doing it also provides a new logic with which to approach conceptual situations. In this book, Craig Dilworth replaces the dualistic, true/false approach of formal logic with a three-part basis for thought. This basis consists of the categories of simplicity, complexity, and nothingness. The category of simplicity is paradoxical, while that of complexity is unproblematic, and that of nothingness is self-contradictory. When applied to ontological categories, such as those of substance, self, or causality, these categories of reason can resolve, rather than solve, intellectual issues. The notion of perspective is integral to the simplicity way of thinking. A particular entity--such as the self--may be conceived as simple in one perspective, while being complex or nothing in another. Combined with the categories of the simplicity theory, Dilworth uses the notion of perspective to reveal a type of conceptual conflict that differs from contradiction. So, for example, simplicity better represents the relation between competing scientific theories--such as the wave and particle theories of radiation--as a form of perspectival incompatibility. The book distinguishes between two forms of simplicity: analytic and synthetic, which can respectively be conceived of as a point and a whole. Again, the notion of perspective is employed: what is analytically simple in one perspective may well be synthetically simple in another. In this book, the simplicity way of thinking is applied to intellectual issues in philosophy, set theory, and physics. These applications show how simplicity can provide real insight into a wide variety of conceptually complex situations.
Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192539450
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased consideration of concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality has transformed the debate over structuralism in many ways. Sider then examines three structuralist positions through a postmodal lens. First, nomic essentialism, which says that scientific properties are secondary and lawlike relationships among them are primary. Second, structuralism about individuals, a general position of which mathematical structuralism and structural realism are instances, which says that scientific and mathematical objects are secondary and the pattern of relations among them is primary. And third, comparativism about quantities, which says that particular values of scientific quantities, such as having exactly 1000g mass, are secondary, and quantitative relations, such as being-twice-as-massive-as, are primary. Sider concludes these discussions by considering the meta-question of when theories are equivalent and how that impacts the debate over structuralism.
Author: Frode Kjosavik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000727416
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
This collection addresses metaphysical issues at the intersection between philosophy and science. A unique feature is the way in which it is guided both by history of philosophy, by interaction between philosophy and science, and by methodological awareness. In asking how metaphysics is possible in an age of science, the contributors draw on philosophical tools provided by three great thinkers who were fully conversant with and actively engaged with the sciences of their day: Kant, Husserl, and Frege. Part I sets out frameworks for scientifically informed metaphysics in accordance with the meta-metaphysics outlined by these three self-reflective philosophers. Part II explores the domain for co-existent metaphysics and science. Constraints on ambitious critical metaphysics are laid down in close consideration of logic, meta-theory, and specific conditions for science. Part III exemplifies the role of language and science in contemporary metaphysics. Quine’s pursuit of truth is analysed; Cantor’s absolute infinitude is reconstrued in modal terms; and sense is made of Weyl’s take on the relationship between mathematics and empirical aspects of physics. With chapters by leading scholars, Metametaphysics and the Sciences is an in-depth resource for researchers and advanced students working within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the history of philosophy.
Author: Markus Schrenk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317273052
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Metaphysics and science have a long but troubled relationship. In the twentieth century the Logical Positivists argued metaphysics was irrelevant and that philosophy should be guided by science. However, metaphysics and science attempt to answer many of the same, fundamental questions: What are laws of nature? What is causation? What are natural kinds? In this book, Markus Schrenk examines and explains the central questions and problems in the metaphysics of science. He reviews the development of the field from the early modern period through to the latest research, systematically assessing key topics including: dispositions counterfactual conditionals laws of nature causation properties natural kinds essence necessity. With the addition of chapter summaries and annotated further reading, Metaphysics of Science is a much-needed, clear and informative survey of this exciting area of philosophical research. It is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of science and metaphysics.
