Stuart Brock and Edwin Mares offer a clear introduction to different realist and anti-realist positions and arguments in five key domains - science, ethics, mathematics, modality, and fictional objects. Realism and Anti-Realism focuses on the core concept of realism, taking the perspective that, for each domain considered, there are facts or entities distinctive to that domain whose existence and nature is in some important sense objective and mind-independent. For each of the five areas the authors examine the various styles of argument in support of and against realism and anti-realism,...

Here is a comprehensive overview of paraconsistent logical systems, offering chapters contributed by many authorities in the field. The focus is on big picture ideas: different treatments of paradoxes, and application to mathematics, language and metaphysics.

A logic is called 'paraconsistent' if it rejects the rule called 'ex contradictione quodlibet', according to which any conclusion follows from inconsistent premises. While logicians have proposed many technically developed paraconsistent logical systems and contemporary philosophers like Graham Priest have advanced the view that some contradictions can be true, and advocated a paraconsistent logic to deal with them, until recent times these systems have been little understood by philosophers. This book presents a comprehensive overview on paraconsistent logical systems to change this...

Introduces readers to the history of necessity and possibility, two modal concepts which play a key role in philosophy.

The essays in this volume examine the theories about the logical modalities (necessity and possibility) held by leading philosophers from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Rudolf Carnap in the twentieth century. The volume is intended for those with an interest in the logic and philosophy of modality.