Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Epistemology

A Critical Introduction to Fictionalism provides a clear and comprehensive understanding of an important alternative to realism. Drawing on questions from ethics, the philosophy of religion, art, mathematics, logic and science, this is a complete exploration of how fictionalism contrasts with other non-realist doctrines and motivates influential fictionalist treatments across a range of philosophical issues.

Defending and criticizing influential as well as emerging fictionalist approaches, this accessible overview discuses physical objects, universals, God, moral properties,...

Science finds that the reasoning process involving the left brain of humans is objectively driven, while the right brain is subjectively driven. While keeping this in mind, as aspects of Sigmund Freud's model of the human psyche are discussed in relation to the fullness of Biblical Truth, an insightful look about the relationship between thought and behavior can be explored.

SOLIDUS illustrates how the pinnacle for human understanding can only be achieved by the arisen state - that is, the arisen state of mind. The process for arising as such is long-term and cannot be achieved...

With Making Trouble, sociologist and...

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our...

This book offers the most complete and up-to-date overview of the philosophical work of Evandro Agazzi, presently the most important Italian philosopher of science and one of the most influential in the world. Scholars from seven countries explore his contributions in areas ranging from philosophy of physics and general philosophy of science to bioethics, philosophy of mathematics and logic, epistemology of the social sciences and history of science, philosophy of language and artificial intelligence, education and anthropology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Agazzi developed a...

Downward causation plays a fundamental role in many theories of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is strictly connected with many topics in philosophy, including but not limited to: emergence, mental causation, the nature of causation, the nature of causal powers and dispositions, laws of nature, and the possibility of ontological and epistemic reductions. Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation brings together experts from different fields including William Bechtel, Stewart Clark and Tom Lancaster, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Robin F. Hendry, Max Kistler,...

This book explores the rise of theoretical physics in 19th century Germany. The authors show how the junior second physicist in German universities over time became the theoretical physicist, of equal standing to the experimental physicist. Gustav Kirchhoff, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Max Planck are among the great German theoretical physicists whose work and career are examined in this book.

Physics was then the only natural science in which theoretical work developed into a major teaching and research specialty in its own right. Readers will discover how German physicists...

The founder of both American pragmatism and semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 1914) is widely regarded as an enormously important and pioneering theorist. In this book, scholars from around the world examine the nature and significance of Peirce s work on perception, iconicity, and diagrammatic thinking. Abjuring any strict dichotomy between presentational and representational mental activity, Peirce s theories transform the Aristotelian, Humean, and Kantian paradigms that continue to hold sway today and, in so doing, forge a new path for understanding the centrality of visual...

Addressing Merleau-Ponty's work Phenomenology of Perception, in dialogue with The Visible and the Invisible, his lectures at the College de France, and his reading of Proust, this book argues that at play in his thought is a philosophy of "ontological lateness." This describes the manner in which philosophical reflection is fated to lag behind its objects; therefore an absolute grasp on being remains beyond its reach.

Merleau-Ponty articulates this philosophy against the backdrop of what he calls "cruel thought," a style of reflecting that seeks resolution by limiting,...

Published in honor of Sergio Galvan, this collection concentrates on the application of logical and mathematical methods for the study of central issues in formal philosophy. The volume is subdivided into four sections, dedicated to logic and philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. The contributions adress, from a logical point of view, some of the main topics in these areas. The first two sections include formal treatments of: truth and paradoxes; definitions by abstraction; the status of abstract objects, such as...