Philip Kitcher has deeply influenced many of the current debates in the philosophy of biology. He has also made groundbreaking contributions to the philosophy of science, to ethics, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mathematics, and, most recently, to pragmatism. This volume results from the 15th Munster Lectures in Philosophy. It contains an original article by Kitcher and eight critical papers on a wide range of topics.

Richard Swinburne is one of the most influential contemporary proponents of the analytical philosophy of religion. He is, above all, a traditional theist, i.e. he believes, that there exists an eternal, uncreated and immaterial perfect soul called "God" which is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free, morally perfect and the creator and sustainer of the universe. However, his interests are very wide-ranging. He has written on almost every central theological and philosophical issue such as epistemology, metaphysics, theory of mind and ethics. Swinburne is particularly well-known for his...

"Participation in the Munstersche Vorlesungen zur Philosophie 2005 was an honor and a genuine intellectual pleasure for me. The symposium, with all its contributions by the Munster faculty and students, was a wonderfully valuable experience. I can hardly do justice to its spirit of free discussion, or adequately express my thanks, by these short replies. But I think that they will testify clearly to the stimulation the symposium provided and to how much I learned from this exchange." Bas van Fraassen

Robert Brandom is one of the most renowned philosophers in the analytic tradition today. This volume contains his programmatic essay 'Towards an Analytic Pragmatism', in which Brandom shows how analytic philosophy can broaden ist perspective so as to incorporate important insights of pragmatism.

In addition, this volume contains nine papers dealing critically with themes from Brandom's writings, ranging from his 1994 book Making it Explicit to Between Saying and Doing, last year's Locke Lectures. Finally, there are replies by Robert Brandom to these papers.

Otfried Hoffe kann ohne Zweifel als einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Philosophen der Gegenwart ansehen werden. Den Schwerpunkt seiner Arbeit bildet die Beschaftigung mit Fragen der Praktischen Philosophie, die er in Form einer Fundamentalphilosophie zu begrunden versucht. Hierbei erstreckt sich das Spektrum von Fragen der Handlungstheorie als Ausgangspunkt der Uberlegungen zur Ethik uber Fragen der angewandten Ethik bis hin zu Fragen nach Recht, Staat und Politik, mit denen sich Hoffe in jungster Zeit vor allem vor dem Hintergrund der Herausforderungen der Globalisierung befasst. Typisch...

Without doubt Richard Rorty is one of the most honored, famous and disputed philosophers of our days. All over the world interest in his inspiring and provoking thoughts goes beyond the circles of academic philosophy. The present volume includes "The Brain as Hardware, Culture as Software" and "Philosophy-Envy" of Richard Rorty, papers presented by students of the philosophy department at university of Munster and Rorty's responses to and comments on them. Rorty's lecture has been publicly presented at the 8. Munstersche Vorlesungen zur Philosophie on may 26th 2004. The students presented...