In this major re-examination of Descartes's founding principle, cogito, ergo sum, Murray Miles presents a portrait of Descartes as the Father of Modern Philosophy that is very different from the standard one.
Viewing Descartes in both a historical and a systematic perspective, Miles presents a wealth of original analyses, arguments, and re-interpretations of key texts. The result is a fresh and illuminating account of Descartes's metaphysical project and theory of the mind. Descartes's achievement is a radical reversal of the order of knowing, a subjectivism that places...
In this major re-examination of Descartes's founding principle, cogito, ergo sum, Murray Miles presents a portrait of Descartes as the Fat...
Issues of free will and determinism, with their far-reaching practical implications, hold a central place in the history of philosophy. In this book Jordan Howard Sobel looks at the many and varied approaches to this complex topic.
The arguments analysed fall into two main groups: those from within the literature of fatalism or logical determinism, claiming that free will is impossible, and those from the field of causal determinism, granting that free will is logically possible but showing that we lack free will owing to certain contingent facts about the world. Sobel considers some...
Issues of free will and determinism, with their far-reaching practical implications, hold a central place in the history of philosophy. In this boo...
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Aristotelian notions of logic and causation came under serious attack. Traditional philosophy speaks of this period as marking a revolution in scientific thought. In this book Fred Wilson reinstates and extends the traditional conception of the scientific revolution and its significance, and explores the goals and directions of the new science according to the differing interpretations of rationalist and empiricist thinkers.
Wilson argues for an empiricist approach to scientific method and explanation, and defends an empiricist as...
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Aristotelian notions of logic and causation came under serious attack. Traditional philosophy spea...
Widely admired as one of Canada's leading philosophers, Francis Sparshott is a major figure in postwar philosophical aesthetics. In this book he presents an annotated version of the text of the four 1996 Ryle Lectures that he gave at Trent University.
Addressing the nature and prospects of aesthetics as a discipline, Sparshott discusses beauty, taste, and the place of imagination, fiction, and fine art in societies. He investigates the place of such a discipline in the broad social structures provided by universities and civilizations, and tackles many perennially interesting...
Widely admired as one of Canada's leading philosophers, Francis Sparshott is a major figure in postwar philosophical aesthetics. In this book he pr...
Recent critiques of the foundations of liberalism from communitarian, socialist, postmodern, and other philosophical circles have served to remind liberals of several problematic assumptions at the heart of liberal doctrine from its inception to the present day. Such critiques necessitate a rethinking of the foundations of liberalism, and in particular those regarding the self and rationality that liberal politics presupposes.
Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers - including Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Green, Mill, and Rawls - Paul Fairfield proposes that...
Recent critiques of the foundations of liberalism from communitarian, socialist, postmodern, and other philosophical circles have served to remind ...
Anti-realism entered the philosophical scene some twenty years ago, and has since become a widely accepted view. But although many philosophers espouse anti-realism, the only sustained arguments for the position are due to Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Much discussion of their views has appeared in the journals, especially concerning some of Putnam's pithy and memorable expositions, like the 'Brain in the Vat'; however, this is the first book to provide a thorough examination and rebuttal of their arguments.
Dummett's and Putnam's arguments are long, complex, and often...
Anti-realism entered the philosophical scene some twenty years ago, and has since become a widely accepted view. But although many philosophers esp...
In this compelling work, Peter Lopston provides an accessible exploration of the major topics in metaphysics. He considers problems such as essence, existence, substance, purpose, space, time, mind, causality, God, freedom and the possibilities of immortality. In addition, he looks at the major historical metaphysical systems and defends the metaphysical project as a whole.
The book offers both historical and contemporary perspectives and includes Lopston's lucid arguments, in which he propounds a naturalist and common-sense view of the world. Lopston defends the ineliminability and...
In this compelling work, Peter Lopston provides an accessible exploration of the major topics in metaphysics. He considers problems such as essence...
Utilitarianism, belaboured by repeated counterexamples, has fallen out of favour as an ethical theory. In Utilitarianism: Restorations; Repairs; Renovations, noted Canadian philosopher David Braybrooke revisits Jeremy Bentham's master idea that statistical evidence should determine social policies, and - perhaps surprisingly, given Braybooke's recent championship of natural law - dispels the discredit that standard versions of utilitarianism have invited.
On the issue between rule-utilitarianism (which gives due weight to rules) and act-utilitarianism (which does not),...
Utilitarianism, belaboured by repeated counterexamples, has fallen out of favour as an ethical theory. In Utilitarianism: Restorations; Repairs;...
Kant considered it to be scandalous that philosophy still had not found a rational proof of the existence of the external world during his time. Arguably, the scandal continues today because scepticism remains a widely debated and extremely divisive issue among contemporary thinkers. Although scholars have devoted considerable attention to Kant's arguments against Cartesian scepticism, the literature still presents gaps and inaccuracies that obscure a full understanding of this issue and its significance for contemporary philosophy. In Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy, Luigi...
Kant considered it to be scandalous that philosophy still had not found a rational proof of the existence of the external world during his time. Ar...
There exists a very particular grasp of the relation between language and objectivity in the work of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), one that rejects the idea of truth as the reflection between words and what they represent.
Jeffrey Reid's Real Words is an examination of Hegel's notion of scientific language (i.e. the language of his system) and its implications to a type of discourse that is itself true objectivity. Hegel sees scientific logos as real, actual, and true, where there is no distance between signifier and signified and where the word is the effective thing. The words...
There exists a very particular grasp of the relation between language and objectivity in the work of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), one that rejects the...
