The question of how language relates to the world is one of the most important problems of philosophy. What the word God refers to and the question Does God exist? are clearly linked. The existence or non-existence of God (or electrons or unicorns) is directly related to the issue of what and how a name names.

Potboilers looks at the many forms of popular narrative - in print, film and TV. It considers the ways in they have been analysed in literary criticism, sociology, communications, media and cultural studies.
The book introduces and summarizes two decades of debate about mass-produced fictions and their position within popular culture. It assesses the methods that have been used in these debates, focussing both on narrative analysis and the communications process. It explores generic conventions, the role of commercial strategies, and the nature of the audience with reference to...

Knowledge, from Plato onwards, has been considered in relation to justified belief. Current debate has centred around the nature of the justification and whether justified belief can be considered an internal or extenal matter. Epistemological internalists argue that the subject must be able to reflect upon a belief to complete the process of justification. The externalists, on the other hand, claim that it is only necessary to consider whether the belief is reliably formed, and argue that the ability to know by reflection is not required for a justified belief.
In the historical section...

This book examines the underlying theoretical issues concerning the nature of political freedom. Arguing that most previous discussions of such freedom have been too narrowly focused, it explores both conservativism from Edmund Burke to its present resurgence, the radical tradition of Karl Marx, as well as the orthodox liberal model of freedom of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin. Political Freedom argues that these three accounts of political freedom - conservative, liberal and radical - all have internal weaknesses which render them unsatisfactory.
In the second...

Since before Plato, philosophers have puzzled over why it is that people will sometimes deliberately take the worst course of action. The book begins by examining the various theories put forward by Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and a selection of medieval philosophers and discusses how and why later philosophers avoid the problem. In the second section, Justin Gosling argues that familiar ways of viewing the problem mislocate the apparent irrationality of weakness. The author then moves on to the traditional cases of being overcome by passion to argue for a further sense in which weakness may...

This analysis of knowledge of the external world, a central problem in philosophy, considers the history of the problem in the work of such modern philosophers as Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Kant and Mill. Turning to current debates, the author then argues that the problem has re-emerged. He undertakes a revision of empiricist epistemology and the development of the required theory of inference, basing the logical structure of the latter on probability calculus and on a conception of justifiable belief formation.

In this volume, each of the living Slavonic languages are analyzed and described in depth, together with the two extinct languages - Old Church Slavonic and Polabian. In addition, the various alphabets of the Slavonic languages - particularly Roman, Cyrillic and Glagolitic - are discussed, and the relationships of the Slavonic languages to other Indo-European languages and to one another, are explored. The last chapter provides an account of those Slavonic languages in exile, for example, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and Slovak in the USA. Each language chapter is written in a format...

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the re-emergence of central Europe and moves towards monetary, economic and political union within the European Union, Europe in the 1990s is at a crossroads. But what does Europe, and being European mean? What kind of Europe are we building and why? How does this new Europe relate to the Europe of the past? This book puts the idea of Europe in its historical context, tracing it back to the ancient Greeks and their association of Europe with political freedom. From this starting point the first essay shows how Europe became identified with Christendom in...

Substance has been a leading idea in the history of Western philosophy. Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz explain the nature and existence of individual substances, including both living things and inanimate objects. Specifically written for students new to this important and often complex subject, Substance provides both the historical and contemporary overview of the debate.
Great Philosophers of the past, such as Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, and Berkeley were profoundly interested in the concept of substance. And, the authors argue, a...