This volume includes a series of essays about the nature of belief and desire, the status of normative judgment, and the relevance of the views we take on both these topics to the accounts we give of our nature as free and responsible agents. The long awaited collection comprises some of the most influential of Michael Smith's essays written over a period of fifteen years and will be of interest to students in philosophy and psychology.
This volume includes a series of essays about the nature of belief and desire, the status of normative judgment, and the relevance of the views we tak...
This work presents a version of the correspondence theory of truth based on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Russell's theory of truth and discusses related metaphysical issues such as predication, facts, and propositions. Like Russell and one prominent interpretation of the Tractatus, it assumes a realist view of universals and argues that facts as real entities are not needed. It will intrigue teachers and advanced students of philosophy interested in the conception of truth and in the metaphysics related to the correspondence theory of truth.
This work presents a version of the correspondence theory of truth based on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Russell's theory of truth and discusses relat...
In Living Without Free Will, Derk Pereboom argues that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform, and that because of this, we are not morally responsible for any of them. He seeks to defend the view that morality, meaning, and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible, and furthermore, that adopting this perspective would provide significant benefit for our lives.
In Living Without Free Will, Derk Pereboom argues that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produc...
In this innovative study E.J. Lowe demonstrates the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest, nonreductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings as subjects of experience, thought and action. He shows how an attribution of independent causal powers to the mental states of human subjects is perfectly consistent with a thoroughly natural world view, and examines the role that conscious mental states play in the human subject's exercise of its most central capacities for perception, action, thought and self-knowledge.
In this innovative study E.J. Lowe demonstrates the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest, nonreductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifi...
Vague expressions, such as "heap," "red" and "child," proliferate throughout natural languages, and an increasing amount of philosophical attention is being directed at theories of the logic and semantics associated with them. In this book Rosanna Keefe explores the questions of what we should want from theories of vagueness and how we should compare them. Her powerful and original study will be of interest to readers in philosophy of language and of mind, philosophical logic, epistemology and metaphysics.
Vague expressions, such as "heap," "red" and "child," proliferate throughout natural languages, and an increasing amount of philosophical attention is...
Rules proliferate; some are kept with a bureaucratic stringency bordering on the absurd, while others are manipulated and ignored in ways that injure our sense of justice. Under what conditions should we make exceptions to rules, and when should they be followed despite particular circumstances? The two dominant models in the current literature on rules are the particularist account and that which sees the application of rules as normative. Taking a position that falls between these two extremes, Alan Goldman is the first to provide a systematic framework to clarify when we need to follow...
Rules proliferate; some are kept with a bureaucratic stringency bordering on the absurd, while others are manipulated and ignored in ways that injure ...
Current approaches to the question of our position in time--such as those seen in disputes between tensed and tenseless theories, and between realist and anti-realist treatments of past and future--misconstrue the relation between metaphysics and ethics, and the way to characterize the kind of sense which tensed language has. In this original and thought-provoking study, David Cockburn argues that the notion of "reasons for emotion" must have a central place in any account of meaning, and that the present should have no priority in our understanding of tense.
Current approaches to the question of our position in time--such as those seen in disputes between tensed and tenseless theories, and between realist ...
This book offers a comprehensive and broadly rationalist theory of the mind that continually tests itself against experimental results and clinical data. Taking issue with both Empiricists and Externalists, Norton Nelkin argues that perception is cognitive, constructive and proposition-like, and that meaning is determined "in the head." Finally, he offers an account of how we acquire some of our most basic concepts, including the concept of the self and that of other minds.
This book offers a comprehensive and broadly rationalist theory of the mind that continually tests itself against experimental results and clinical da...
Richard Joyce argues in this study that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgments is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. He asserts, moreover, that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. This original and innovative book will appeal to readers interested in the problems of moral philosophy.
Richard Joyce argues in this study that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgments is a notion of moral inescapabi...
