In this volume a group of distinguished aestheticians consider the distinctive ways painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the cinema approach their subject matter and add to our aesthetic understanding. In addition these are discussions of artistic value and artistic truth, of the value of performance and of the problem of fakes, all of which contribute to a volume which will be of interest both to aestheticians and philosophers more generally.

This balanced and up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of science covers all the main topics in the area, and initiates the student into the moral and social reality of science. O'Hear discusses the growth of knowledge of science, the status of scientific theories and their relationship to observational data, the extent to which scientific theories rest on unprovable paradigms, and the nature of scientific explanations. In later chapters he considers probability, scientific reductionism, the relationship between science and technology, and the relationship between scientific and other...

Is philosophy capable of establishing truths scientifically? If not, what can it do? What is its standing and what are its credentials? Is philosophy an essential element in humane study? Can philosophy establish anything at all? Philosophy asks questions about all areas of experience, but what about philosophy itself? In 2007-8, The Royal Institute of Philosophy, in its annual lecture series, asked distinguished philosophers to reflect on the nature, scope and possibility of philosophy. Contributors include Peter van Inwagen, Stephen Clark, John Cottingham, P. M. S. Hacker, Michela Massimi,...

Philosophy and Sport brings together the lectures given in the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2012-13. In the Olympic year, it seemed fitting to consider some of the many philosophical and ethical questions raised by sport, and to bring together contributors from both philosophical and sporting worlds. This ground-breaking volume considers many different areas connected to sports and its practice. These include the watching of sport, drugs in sport, the Olympic spirit, sport and risk, sport as a moral practice, rivalry and glory in sport and the importance of sport...

History of Philosophy: Twentieth-Century Perspectives is based on the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2014 15. A group of eminent scholars consider important figures in the history of philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to twentieth-century philosophers including Frank Ramsey and Wittgenstein. Along the way, there are considerations of Plotinus and Aquinas, the Rationalists and Empiricists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Frege and the Analytic Revolution. Readers will find new perspectives on the thought of these...