Wyniki wyszukiwania:

Set of studies of various movements and developments in 20th century philosophy in which Nicholas Rescher was involved as a participant.

During 2005-2006 I continued my longstanding practice of writing occasional studies on philosophical topics, both for formal presentation and for informal discussion with colleagues. While my forays of this kind have usually issued in journal publications, this has not been so in the preset case so that the studies offered here encompass substantially new material. Notwithstanding their thematic variation, they manifest a uniformity of treatment and method in a way that is characteristic of my philosophical modus operandi and inherent is its endeavors to treat classical issues from novel...

The core of pragmatism lies in the concept of functional efficacy-of utility in short. And epistemic pragmatism accordingly focuses on the utility of our devices and practices in relation to the aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise-answering questions, resolving puzzlement, guiding action. The present book revolves around this theme. All papers in this book bear on epistemological topics which have preoccupied Nicholas Rescher for many years. Much as with the thematic structure of this book, this interest expanded from an initial concern with the exact sciences, to encompass the...

While philosophers from Plato to Kant and beyond have discussed the mission and methodology of philosophy, this area of deliberation has only recently been acknowledged as a distinctive branch of philosophy as such, duly entitled metaphilosophy. There are, as yet, very few books on the subject so that the present volume joins a rather select group. Professor Rescher has published in the field for some thirty years and this book gathers together a representative sampling of his contributions. Taken together these pieces convey an instructive overview of the field, as well as vividly...

For about a decade Nicholas Rescher directed the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science and he has published instructive studies in this field since the 1950's. Some dozen of the contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to illustrate his characteristic approach of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.

This book is the product of a collaboration stretching the years 2007-10, whose initial fruit was a paper on "Plenum Theory" published in Nous. The work grew out of the author's conviction that standard set theory, which had evolved to meet the needs of mathematics, was not fully adequate to the less abstractly geared and rigidly determine needs of less finalized ranges of inquiry and deliberation.

Human finitude and its implications have long been one of the central themes of Western philosophy. The essays gathered together in this volume explore various facets of this not altogether pleasing fact with which we must realistically come to terms.

Logic is of course a general resource for reasoning at large. But in the first half of the twentieth century, it developed particularity with a view to mathematical applications, and the field of mathematical logic came into being and flourished. In the second half of the century, much the same happened with regard to philosophical applications. Hence philosophical logic.

The deliberations of this book cover a varied but interrelated array of key issues in the field. They address the representation of information in linguistic formulation, and modes of cogent...

The present book brings together several case studies, dealing with relevant facets of the work of some of philosophy's all-time greats. The subject-matter topic being addressed differs significantly, but in each case there is an attempt to apply mathematical methods and perspectives to the solution of a key philosophical issue in a way that throws instructive light upon it. On this basis it emerges that the question "Are mathematical methods useful in philosophy?" finds a suggestive response in the fact that over two millennia key figures in the history of the subject have indeed thought...

Since the late 1960's Professor Rescher has carried on a series of investigations in value theory in an endeavor to clarify the nature of values and the ways in which they impact on human affairs.

This book collects together some dozen of these studies in a way that showcases the author's characteristic perspective on this important range of basic philosophy issues. It bring clearly to view the author's characteristic combinations of analytical accuracies within a broad luminative outlook.

For over thirty years Professor Rescher has been preoccupied with exploring the scope and limits of human knowledge from an array of different points of view. This book collects together these various threads into a unified treatment of this overall terrain. It argues in detail that while scepticism is about the prospect of factual knowledge about the world is emphatically unwarranted, nevertheless the project of amplifying this knowledge does encounter some specifiable and insuperable limits.

No short book on the explanation of existence can afford the hubris of claiming to accomplish this task. And certainly no such claim can be or is being made here. What is at issue is not--and cannot be--an actual explanation. Rather, what is attempted here is at the very most a rough sketch of the conceptual architecture that an adequate explanation can be expected to exhibit. No more is achieved than a rough and general indication of the direction in which a satisfactory explanation can unfold. A vast amount of detail will have to be filled in to provide a tenable explanation. Only the...

set of studies of various central problems in contemporary philosophy--particularly issues relating to the theory of knowledge and to philosophical inquiry itself (metaphilosophy).

This revised edition of his Autobiography brings up-to-date Rescher's account of his life and work. The passage of years since the publication of an autobiographical work makes for its growing incompleteness. Moreover, the passage of time is bound to bring some new perspectives to view. This new edition comes to terms with these circumstances. Since the publication of the previous version Rescher's philosophical work has made substantial progress, betokened by the publication of over a score of new books that mark an ongoing expansion of his philosophical range. Then too, the internet has...