Natural Laws as Dispositions

Natural Laws as Dispositions PDF Author: Florian Fischer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110592908
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The book provides a novel account of laws of nature via dispositions. Laws of nature play a paramount role in philosophy, science and everyday life. Understanding laws of nature is philosophically interesting on its own right but also many important notions belonging to philosophy of science, like causation, prediction and explanation, are intimately related to the laws of nature. The book outlines the alleged characteristics of the laws of nature and introduces the main families of theories of laws of nature – neo-humean, ADT and dispositional theories. It then develops an account of dispositions the `triadic process picture of dispositions’ (TPD) and applies it to the debate about laws of nature. Finally, the (TPD) account of the necessity of the laws of nature is presented: laws of nature are naturally necessary and metaphysically contingent. Thus the book provides an introduction to the debates about laws of nature as well as dispositions, while at the same time developing a novel theory and thus is interesting for the beginner as well as expert in these fields.

Natural Laws as Dispositions

Natural Laws as Dispositions PDF Author: Florian Fischer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110592908
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book provides a novel account of laws of nature via dispositions. Laws of nature play a paramount role in philosophy, science and everyday life. Understanding laws of nature is philosophically interesting on its own right but also many important notions belonging to philosophy of science, like causation, prediction and explanation, are intimately related to the laws of nature. The book outlines the alleged characteristics of the laws of nature and introduces the main families of theories of laws of nature – neo-humean, ADT and dispositional theories. It then develops an account of dispositions the `triadic process picture of dispositions’ (TPD) and applies it to the debate about laws of nature. Finally, the (TPD) account of the necessity of the laws of nature is presented: laws of nature are naturally necessary and metaphysically contingent. Thus the book provides an introduction to the debates about laws of nature as well as dispositions, while at the same time developing a novel theory and thus is interesting for the beginner as well as expert in these fields.

Dispositions and Causes

Dispositions and Causes PDF Author: Toby Handfield
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191565415
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
In recent decades, the analysis of causal relations has become a topic of central importance in analytic philosophy. More recently, dispositional properties have also become objects of intense study. Both of these phenomena appear to be intimately related to counterfactual conditionals and other modal phenomena such as objective chance, but little work has been done to directly relate them. Dispositions and Causes contains ten essays by scholars working in both metaphysics and in philosophy of science, examining the relation between dispositional and causal concepts. Particular issues discussed include the possibility of reducing dispositions to causes, and vice versa; the possibility of a nominalist theory of causal powers; the attempt to reduce all metaphysical necessity to dispositional properties; the relationship between dispositions, causes, and laws of nature; the role of causal capacities in explaining the success of scientific inquiry; the grounding of dispositions and causes in objective chances; and the type of causal power required for free agency. The introductory chapter contains a detailed overview of recent work in the area, providing a helpful entry to the literature for non-specialists.

Natural Law and the Nature of Law

Natural Law and the Nature of Law PDF Author: Jonathan Crowe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498302
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Presents a systematic, contemporary defence of the natural law outlook in ethics, politics and jurisprudence.

Laws in Nature

Laws in Nature PDF Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134386516
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book outlines a major new theory of natural laws and addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians.

Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment

Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment PDF Author: Michael Alexander Stewart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198249665
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This is the first volume of the series Oxford Studies in the History of Philosophy. Each volume of the series is organized around a particular theme, and is cross-disciplinary in its approach. In this collection of substantial new studies in Scottish Philosophy in the age of Hutcheson andHume, close attention is given to the study of context and the use of original historical sources as a key to philosophical interpretation. The collection includes revolutionary research on Hume's early reading in science and religion and its impact on his philosophy.

Nature's Challenge to Free Will

Nature's Challenge to Free Will PDF Author: Bernard Berofsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199640017
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book offers a defense of humean compatibilism, which bases the belief in the compatibility of free will and determinism on David Hume's idea that laws do not uphold the existence of necessary connections in nature.

Dispositions

Dispositions PDF Author: D.M. Armstrong
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134761295
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. Dispositions: A Debate is an extended dialogue between three distinguished philosophers - D.M. Armstrong, C.B. Martin and U.T. Place - on the many problems associated with dispositions, which reveals their own distinctive accounts of the nature of dispositions. These are then linked to other issues such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation.

Islamic Natural Law Theories

Islamic Natural Law Theories PDF Author: Anver M. Emon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199579008
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This book offers the first sustained jurisprudential inquiry into Islamic natural law theory. It introduces readers to competing theories of Islamic natural law theory based on close readings of Islamic legal sources from as early as the 9th and 10th centuries CE. In popular debates about Islamic law, modern Muslims perpetuate an image of Islamic law as legislated by God, to whom the devout are bound to obey. Reason alone cannot obligate obedience; at most it can confirm or corroborate what is established by source texts endowed with divine authority. This book shows, however, that premodern Sunni Muslim jurists were not so resolute. Instead, they asked whether and how reason alone can be the basis for asserting the good and the bad, thereby justifying obligations and prohibitions under Shari'a. They theorized about the authority of reason amidst competing theologies of God. For premodern Sunni Muslim jurists, nature became the link between the divine will and human reason. Nature is the product of God's purposeful creation for the benefit of humanity. Since nature is created by God and thereby reflects His goodness, nature is fused with both fact and value. Consequently, as a divinely created good, nature can be investigated to reach both empirical and normative conclusions about the good and bad. They disagreed, however, whether nature's goodness is contingent upon a theology of God's justice or God's potentially contingent grace upon humanity, thus contributing to different theories of natural law. By recasting the Islamic legal tradition in terms of legal philosophy, the book sheds substantial light on an uncharted tradition of natural law theory and offers critical insights into contemporary global debates about Islamic law and reform.

After the Natural Law

After the Natural Law PDF Author: John Lawrence Hill
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1621640175
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The "natural law" worldview developed over the course of almost two thousand years beginning with Plato and Aristotle and culminating with St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. This tradition holds that the world is ordered, intelligible and good, that there are objective moral truths which we can know and that human beings can achieve true happiness only by following our inborn nature, which draws us toward our own perfection. Most accounts of the natural law are based on a God-centered understanding of the world. After the Natural Law traces this tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and then describes how and why modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Hobbes began to chip away at this foundation. The book argues that natural law is a necessary foundation for our most important moral and political values – freedom, human rights, equality, responsibility and human dignity, among others. Without a theory of natural law, these values lose their coherence: we literally cannot make sense of them given the assumptions of modern philosophy. Part I of the book traces the development of natural law theory from Plato and Aristotle through the crowning achievement of Thomas Aquinas. Part II explores how modern philosophers have systematically chipped away at the only coherent foundation for these values. As a result, our most important moral and political ideals today are incoherent. Modern political and moral thinkers have been led either to dilute the meaning of such terms as freedom or the moral good – or abandon these ideas altogether. Thus, modern philosophy and political thought are leading us either toward anarchy or totalitarianism. The conclusion, entitled "Why God Matters", shows how even the philosophical assumptions of the natural law depend on a personal God.

A Case for Necessitarianism

A Case for Necessitarianism PDF Author: Amy Karofsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000529738
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
This book is the first detailed and focused defense of necessitarianism. The author’s original account of necessitarianism encourages a reexamination of commonly held metaphysical positions as well as important issues in other, related areas of philosophy. Necessitarianism is the view that absolutely nothing about the world could have been otherwise in any way, whatsoever. Most philosophers believe that necessitarianism is just plain false and presume that some things could have been otherwise than what they are. In this book, the author argues that necessitarianism is true and the view that some things in the world are contingent—what the author terms contingentarianism—is false. The author assesses various theories of contingency, including the possible worlds theory, combinatorialism, and dispositionalism, and argues that no theory can successfully explain why an entity is such as it is rather than not. She then lays out a case for necessitarianism and provides responses to various objections. The book concludes with an explanation of the ways in which necessitarianism is relevant to issues in ethics, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. A Case for Necessitarianism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of science.