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Author: Ruth Groff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041588988X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Published in 2012, Powers and Capacities in Philosophy is a valuable contribution to the field of Philosophy.
Author: Ruth Groff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041588988X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Published in 2012, Powers and Capacities in Philosophy is a valuable contribution to the field of Philosophy.
Author: Bruno Gnassounou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317149491
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Dispositions are everywhere. We say that a wall is hard, that water quenches thirst and is transparent, that dogs can swim and oak trees can let their leaves fall, and that acid has the power to corrode metals. All these statements express attributions of dispositions, be they physical, physiological or psychological, yet there is much philosophical debate about how far, if at all, dispositional predicates can have complete meaning or figure in causal explanations. This collection of essays, by leading international researchers, examine the case for realism with respect to dispositions and causal powers in both metaphysics and science. Among the issues debated in this book is whether dispositions can be analyzed in terms of conditionals, whether all dispositions have a so-called categorical basis and, if they do, what is the relation between the disposition and its basis.
Author: Jonathan D. Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198796579
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
We use concepts of causal powers and their relatives-dispositions, capacities, and abilities-to describe the world around us, both in everyday life and in scientific practice. This volume presents new work on the nature of causal powers, and their connections with other phenomena within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind.
Author: Thomas Kjeller Johansen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191633011
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
Aristotle is considered by many to be the founder of 'faculty psychology'—the attempt to explain a variety of psychological phenomena by reference to a few inborn capacities. In The Powers of Aristotle's Soul, Thomas Kjeller Johansen investigates his main work on psychology, the De Anima, from this perspective. He shows how Aristotle conceives of the soul's capacities and how he uses them to account for the souls of living beings. Johansen offers an original account of how Aristotle defines the capacities in relation to their activities and proper objects, and considers the relationship of the body to the definition of the soul's capacities. Against the background of Aristotle's theory of science, Johansen argues that the capacities of the soul serve as causal principles in the explanation of the various life forms. He develops detailed readings of Aristotle's treatment of nutrition, perception, and intellect, which show the soul's various roles as formal, final and efficient causes, and argues that the so-called 'agent' intellect falls outside the scope of Aristotle's natural scientific approach to the soul. Other psychological activities, various kinds of perception (including 'perceiving that we perceive'), memory, imagination, are accounted for in their explanatory dependency on the basic capacities. The ability to move spatially is similarly explained as derivative from the perceptual or intellectual capacities. Johansen claims that these capacities together with the nutritive may be understood as 'parts' of the soul, as they are basic to the definition and explanation of the various kinds of soul. Finally, he considers how the account of the capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's biological and minor psychological works.
Author: Ruth Groff
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781472526830
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A Critical Introduction to Causation and Causal Powers responds to a groundswell of interest in the topic of causal powers in contemporary metaphysics, presenting a fresh systematic overview of the realist literature,debates and arguments. Introducing the topic via the lens of a contrast between passivism and anti-passivism, the contrast is established in the opening historical overview, plotting the course from Aristotle to early modern rationalism, through to Hume, Reid, Kant and Mill. As well as covering contemporary and 20th century neo-Humean accounts, this introduction includes a review of foundational work on causal powers and dispositional properties in the 1970s, taking care to include both a descriptive and an analytic component. Exploring contemporary anti-passivist thinking about causation, it covers leading theories of causation and provides powers-based approaches to matters such as laws, essences, necessitation, determinism, pandispositionalism, transitivity and induction. The ascription of causal powers to different kinds of potential causal bearer is also addressed: individual agents, sociological phenomena; abstractions and absences. Offering a balanced approach to this key metaphysical topic, A Critical Introduction to Causation and Causal Powers not only introduces debates amongst anti-passivists, but explains throughout how the same issues are handled by passivists. With study questions and references for further reading at the end of each chapter, this is an accessible, up-to-date overview designed for students and researchers working in metaphysics today.
Author: Russell DiSilvestro
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048185378
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Many debates about the moral status of things—for example, debates about the natural rights of human fetuses or nonhuman animals—eventually migrate towards a discussion of the capacities of the things in question—for example, their capacities to feel pain, think, or love. Yet the move towards capacities is often controversial: if a human’s capacities are the basis of its moral status, how could a human having lesser capacities than you and I have the same "serious" moral status as you and I? This book answers this question by arguing that if something is human, it has a set of typical human capacities; that if something has a set of typical human capacities, it has serious moral status; and thus all human beings have the same sort of serious moral status as you and I. Beginning from what our common intuitions tell us about situations involving "temporary incapacitation"—where a human organism has, then loses, then regains a certain capacity—this book argues for substantive conclusions regarding human fetuses and embryos, humans in a permanent vegetative state, humans suffering from brain diseases, and humans born with genetic disorders. Since these conclusions must have some impact on our ongoing moral and political debates about the proper treatment of such humans, this book will be useful to professionals and students in philosophy, bioethics, law, medicine, and public policy.
Author: John Gibson Macvicar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cosmology
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Author: Dd John G. Macvicar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781021272423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Neil E. Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198833571
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Systematic metaphysics is defined by its task of solving metaphysical problems through the repeated application of single, fundamental ontology. The dominant contemporary metaphysic is that of neo-Humeanism, built on a static ontology typified by its rejection of basic causal and modalfeatures. This book offers a radically distinct metaphysic, one that turns the status quo on its head. Starting with a foundational ontology of inherently causal properties known as "powers", Neil E. Williams develops a metaphysic that appeals to powers in explanations of causation, persistence,laws, and modality. Powers are properties that have their causal natures internal to them: they are responsible for the effects in the world. A unique account of powers is advanced, one that understands this internal nature in terms of blueprint of potential interaction types. After the presentationof the powers ontology, Williams offers solutions to broad metaphysical puzzles, some of which take on different forms in light of the new tools that are available. The defence of the ontology comes from the virtues of metaphysic it can be used to develop. Particular attention is paid to theproblems of causation and persistence, simultaneously solving them as is casts them in a new light. The resultant powers metaphysic is offered as a systematic alternative to neo-Humeanism.
Author: Carl Gillett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316776646
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
Grand debates over reduction and emergence are playing out across the sciences, but these debates have reached a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory on empirical grounds. In this book, Carl Gillett provides theoretical frameworks with which to understand these debates, illuminating both the novel positions of scientific reductionists and emergentists and the recent empirical advances that drive these new views. Gillett also highlights the flaws in existing philosophical frameworks and reorients the discussion to reflect the new scientific advances and issues, including the nature of 'parts' and 'wholes', the character of aggregation, and thus the continuity of nature itself. Most importantly, Gillett shows how disputes about concrete scientific cases are empirically resolvable and hence how we can break the scientific stalemate. Including a detailed glossary of key terms, this volume will be valuable for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and scientific researchers working in the area.
