Author: Amie L. Thomasson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019009821X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
Claims about what is metaphysically necessary or possible have long played a central role in metaphysics and other areas of philosophy. Such claims are traditionally thought of as aiming to describe a special kind of modal fact or property, or perhaps facts about other possible worlds. But that assumption leads to difficult ontological, epistemological, and methodological puzzles. Should we accept that there are modal facts or properties, or other possible worlds? If so, what could these things be? How could we come to know what the modal facts or properties are? How can we resolve philosophical debates about what is metaphysically necessary or possible? Norms and Necessity develops a new approach to understanding our claims about metaphysical possibility and necessity: Modal Normativism. The Normativist rejects the assumption that modal claims aim to describe modal features or possible worlds, arguing instead that they serve as useful ways of conveying, reasoning with, and renegotiating semantic rules and their consequences. By dropping the descriptivist assumption, the Normativist is able to unravel the notorious ontological problems of modality, and provide a clear and plausible story about how we can come to know what is metaphysically necessary or possible. Most importantly, this approach helps demystify philosophical methodology. It reveals that resolving metaphysical modal questions does not require a special form of philosophical insight or intuition. Instead, it requires nothing more mysterious than empirical knowledge, conceptual mastery, and an ability to explicitly convey and renegotiate semantic rules.
Author: Wouter Floris Kalf
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319772880
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
This book provides a novel formulation and defence of moral error theory. It also provides a novel solution to the so-called now what question; viz., the question what we should do with our moral thought and talk after moral error theory. The novel formulation of moral error theory uses pragmatic presupposition rather than conceptual entailment to argue that moral judgments carry a non-negotiable commitment to categorical moral reasons. The new answer to the now what question is pragmatic presupposition substitutionism: we should substitute our current moral judgments, which pragmatically presuppose the existence of categorical moral reasons with ‘schmoral’ judgments that pragmatically presuppose the existence of a specific class of prudential reasons. These are prudential reasons that, when we act on them, contribute to the satisfaction of what the author calls ‘the fundamental desire’; namely, the desire to live in a world with mutually beneficial cooperation.
Author: Carolyn Korsmeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190904879
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Things: In Touch with the Past explores the value of artifacts that have survived from the past and that can be said to embody their histories. Such genuine or real things afford a particular kind of aesthetic experience-an encounter with the past-despite the fact that genuineness is not a perceptually detectable property. Although it often goes unnoticed, the sense of touch underlies such encounters, even though one is often not permitted literal touch. Carolyn Korsmeyer begins her account with the claim that wonder or marvel at old things fits within an experiential account of the aesthetic. She then presents her main argument regarding the role of touch-both when literal contact is made and when proximity suffices, for touch is a fundamental sense that registers bodily position and location. Correct understanding of the identity of objects is presumed when one values things just because of what they are, and with discovery that a mistake has been made, admiration is often withdrawn. Far from undermining the importance of the genuine, these errors of identification confirm it. Korsmeyer elaborates this position with a comparison between valuing artifacts and valuing persons. She also considers the ethical issues of genuineness, for artifacts can be harmed in various ways ranging from vandalism to botched restoration. She examines the differences between a real thing and a replica in detail, making it clear that genuineness comes in degrees. Her final chapter reviews the ontology that best suits an account of persistence over time of things that are valued for being the real thing.
Author: Mark Richard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192580566
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
Mark Richard presents an original picture of meaning according to which a word's meaning is analogous to the biological lineages we call species. His primary thesis is that a word's meaning - in the sense of what one needs to track in order to be a competent speaker - is the collection of assumptions its users make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is something that is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and typically evolving in so far as what constitutes a meaning changes in virtue of the interactions of speakers with their (linguistic and social) environment. Meanings as Species develops and defends the analogy between the biological and the linguistic, and includes a discussion of the senses in which the processes of meaning change are and are not like evolution via natural selection. Richard argues that thinking of meanings as species supports Quine's insights about analyticity without rendering talk about meaning theoretically useless. He also discusses the relations between meaning as what the competent speaker knows about her language, meaning as the determinant of reference and truth conditions, and meaning qua what determines what sentence uses say. This book contains insightful discussions of a wide range of topics in the philosophy of language, including: relations between meaning and philosophical analysis, the project of 'conceptual engineering', the senses in which meaning is and is not compositional, the degree to which to which referential meaning is indeterminate, and what such indeterminacy might tells us about propositional attitudes like belief and assertion.
Author: George Hull
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 149851572X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 363
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Book Description
Equality is a widely championed social ideal. But what is equality? And what action is required if present-day societies are to root out their inequalities? The Equal Society collects fourteen philosophical essays, each with a fresh perspective on these questions. The authors explore the demands of egalitarian justice, addressing issues of distribution and rectification, but equally investigating what it means for people to be equals as producers and communicators of knowledge or as members of subcultures, and considering what it would take for a society to achieve gender and racial equality. The essays collected here address not just the theory but also the practice of equality, arguing for concrete changes in institutions such as higher education, the business corporation and national constitutions, to bring about a more equal society. The Equal Society offers original approaches to themes prominent in current social and political philosophy, including relational equality, epistemic injustice, the capabilities approach, African ethics, gender equality and the philosophy of race. It includes new work by respected social and political philosophers such as Ann E. Cudd, Miranda Fricker, Charles W. Mills, and Jonathan Wolff.
Author: Hud Hudson
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198712693
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Frequently, alleged irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion are instead misdescribed battles concerning negotiable philosophical assumptions--conflicts between metaphysics and metaphysics. Hud Hudson provides a two-stage illustration of this claim with respect to the putative inconsistency between the doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin and the deliverances of contemporary science. The tension in question emerges through a study of the many forms the religious doctrines have assumed over the centuries and through a review of some well-established scientific lessons on the origin and history of the universe and of human persons. The first stage After surveying various paths of retreat which involve reinterpreting and impoverishing Original Sin and minimizing and dehistoricizing The Fall, one version of moderate realism about the doctrines is articulated, critically evaluated, and found both consistent with contemporary science and suitable to play a crucial role in the theist's confrontation with the Problem of Evil. The second stage Recent work in the philosophy of time and in the philosophy of religion provides intriguing support for a Hypertime Hypothesis (a species of multiverse hypothesis), distinctive for positing a series of successive hypertimes, each of which hosts a spacetime block. After arguing that the Hypertime Hypothesis is a genuine epistemic possibility and critically discussing its impact on a number of debates in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, Hudson reveals a strategy for unabashed, extreme literalism concerning The Fall and Original Sin which nevertheless has the extraordinary and delightful feature of being thoroughly consistent with the reigning scientific orthodoxy.
Author: Emily Thomas
Publisher:
ISBN: 019883540X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
How can we think more deeply about our travels? This was the question that inspired Emily Thomas' journey into the philosophy of travel. Part philosophical ramble, part travelogue, The Meaning of Travel begins in the Age of Discovery, when philosophers first started taking travel seriously. It meanders forward to consider Montaigne on otherness, John Locke on cannibals, and Henry Thoreau on wilderness. On our travels with Thomas, we discover the dark side of maps, how the philosophy of space fuelled mountain tourism, and why you should wash underwear in woodland cabins... We also confront profound issues, such as the ethics of 'doom tourism' (travel to 'doomed' glaciers and coral reefs), and the effect of space travel on human significance in a leviathan universe. The first ever exploration of the places where history and philosophy meet, this book will reshape your understanding of travel.
Author: Maria Baghramian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000691101
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Relativism, an ancient philosophical doctrine, is once again a topic of heated debate. In this book, Maria Baghramian and Annalisa Coliva present the recent arguments for and against various forms of relativism. The first two chapters introduce the conceptual and historical contours of relativism. These are followed by critical investigations of relativism about truth, conceptual relativism, epistemic relativism, and moral relativism. The concluding chapter asks whether it is possible to make sense of relativism as a philosophical thesis. The book introduces readers to the main types of relativism and the arguments in their favor. It also goes beyond the expository material to engage in more detailed critical responses to the key positions and authors under discussion. Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary, Relativism is essential reading for students of philosophy as well as those in related disciplines where relativism is studied, such as anthropology, sociology, and politics.
Author: John Kekes
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191040908
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
We must all make choices about how we want to live. We evaluate our possibilities by relying on historical, moral, personal, political, religious, and scientific modes of evaluations, but the values and reasons that follow from them conflict. Philosophical problems are forced on us when we try to cope with such conflicts. There are reasons for and against all proposed ways of coping with the conflicts, but none of them has been generally accepted by reasonable thinkers. The constructive aim of The Nature of Philosophical Problems is to propose a way of understanding the nature of such philosophical problems, explain why they occur, why they are perennial, and propose a pluralist approach as the most reasonable way of coping with them. This approach is practical, context-dependent, and particular. It follows from it that the recurrence of philosophical problems is not a defect, but a welcome consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live. The critical aim of the book is to give reasons against both the absolutist attempt to find an overriding value or principle for resolving philosophical problems and of the relativist claim that reasons unavoidably come to an end and how we want to live is ultimately a matter of personal preference, not of reasons.
Author: Declan Smithies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199917671
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? Declan Smithies argues here that consciousness is essential to explaining how we can acquire knowledge and justified belief about ourselves and the world around us. On this view, unconscious beings cannot form justified beliefs and so they cannot know anything at all. Consciousness is the ultimate basis of all knowledge and epistemic justification. Smithies builds a sustained argument for the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness which draws on a range of considerations in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His position combines two key claims. The first is phenomenal mentalism, which says that epistemic justification is determined by the phenomenally individuated facts about your mental states. The second is accessibilism, which says that epistemic justification is luminously accessible in the sense that you're always in a position to know which beliefs you have epistemic justification to hold. Smithies integrates these two claims into a unified theory of epistemic justification, which he calls phenomenal accessibilism. The book is divided into two parts, which converge on this theory of epistemic justification from opposite directions. Part 1 argues from the bottom up by drawing on considerations in the philosophy of mind about the role of consciousness in mental representation, perception, cognition, and introspection. Part 2 argues from the top down by arguing from general principles in epistemology about the nature of epistemic justification. These mutually reinforcing arguments form the basis for a unified theory of the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, one that bridges the gap between epistemology and philosophy of mind.
