Experience and Beyond: The Outline of a Darwinian Metaphysics

ISBN-13: 9783319310763 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 350 str.

Jan Faye

Opis

This book presents a persuasive argument in favour of evolutionary naturalism and outlines what such a stance means for our capacity of observation and understanding reality.

Spis treści

On Evolutionary Naturalism         

Contents             

Preface                

1 Evolutionary Naturalism            

The manifest image        

The scientific image        

Kant’s metaphysical dualism      

Evolutionary epistemology          

2 Evolution and Human Cognition             

The Darwinian legacy     

Setting the legacy straight            

A fallacy of naturalization             

Intention and innate dispositions             

3 Sensation, Perception, and Observation            

Perception as belief acquisition 

From perception to observation               

Theory-ladenness           

Instrumental observation            

Observability     

4 Theory and Reality       

Forms of realism              

Conceptual frameworks and external commitments       

Scientific realism              

The success argument   

Constructive empiricism               

Structural realism             

The failure of representationalism           

5 Truth, Language, and Objectivity           

What is truth?   

Truth and meaning          

Non-realism concerning Truth    

A naturalized notion of truth      

Semantics and ontology                

6 Abstraction and Reification      

Common sense and externality 

What makes an entity abstract?                

Abstract objects and abstracted concepts            

Why did abstracted concepts evolve?   

7 In Defence of Nominalism        

Concrete, artificial, and nominal particulars          

Universals or particulars                

Conceptualism 

8 Space, Time, and Space-time  

Kant on space and time 

The existence of space  

The existence of time    

Space-time substantivalism         

Space-time relationism 279

Space-time as an abstracted concept      

Are space and time invented or discovered?       

9 Causality and Contrafactuality 

The concept       

Regularity            

Modality              

10 Human Evolution and Mathematical Physics  

Mathematics and representational knowledge  

Mathematics – the language of quantities            

Possible worlds, many worlds and multiverses   

The Copenhagen interpretation: instrumentalism versus representationalism    

11 Conclusion    

Bibliography      

O autorze

Jan Faye teaches epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has published extensively within these areas in Danish as well as English. Some of his latest books include After Postmodernism (2012) and The Nature of Scientific Thinking (2014).

Blurb

This book presents a persuasive argument in favour of evolutionary naturalism and outlines what such a stance means for our capacity of observation and understanding reality. The author discusses how our capacity of knowledge is adapted to handle sensory information about the environment in the light of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The implication of this is that much of our thinking in science and philosophy that goes beyond our immediate experience rests on abstractions and hypostatization. This book rejects the possibility of having any knowledge of reality as it is in itself, while not denying that our capacity of conceptual abstractions is of great benefit for our survival.