Will and World: A Study in Metaphysics

ISBN-13: 9780198239543 / Angielski / Twarda / 1992 / 192 str.

N. M. L. Nathan

Opis

Beneath metaphysical problems there often lies a conflict between what we want to be true and what we believe to be true. Nathan provides a general account of the resolution of this conflict as a philosophical objective, showing that there are ways of thinking it through systematically with a view to resolving or alleviating it. The author also studies in detail a set of interrelated conflicts about the freedom and the reality of the will. He shows how difficult it is to find a freedom either of decision or of action which is both an object of reflective desire and an object of rational belief. He also examines conflicts about volition as such, contending that the veridicality of volitional experience is no less easy to doubt than the veridicality of our experience of colors. In this context, arguments emerge for a voluntarist theory of the self. Nathan's important book will be essential reading for all philosophers interested in free will, volition, the self, and the methodology of metaphysics.

Recenzje

'Nathan's bold and imaginative book is full of interesting philosophy rigorously worked out. Those concerned about the freedom and reality of the will or about philosophical methodology can surely profit from studying it.' Raymond Martin, University of Maryland, The Philosophical Quarterly, 1994

Spis treści

Introduction; Want and belief conflicts; Free will; Coherence and internal propositions; Freedom and natural order; Palliatives; Free will and free action; Volition; Evidence; A programme subsumed