Hard Truths is a groundbreaking new work in which noted philosopher Elijah Millgram advances a new approach to truth and its role in our day-to-day reasoning. Takes up the hard truths of real reasoning and draws out their implications for logic and metaphysics Introduces and takes issue with prevailing views of the purpose of truth and the way we reason, including deflationism about truth, possible worlds treatments of modality, and antipsychologism in philosophy of logic Develops philosophically ambitious ideas in a style accessible to non-specialists Will make us rethink the place of metaphysics in our daily lives
Might we be parts of a divine mind? Could anything like an afterlife make sense? Starting with a Platonic answer to why the world exists, Immortality Defended suggests we could well be immortal in all of three separate ways. Tackles the fundamental questions posed by our very existence, among them, «why does the cosmos exist?», «is there a divine mind or God?», and «in what sense might we have afterlives?» Defends a belief in immortality, without the need for a religious affiliation or rejection of modern science Explores the ideas of «Einsteinian immortality», the divine afterlife, and the theory of an infinite and divine mind Draws from the work of a wide-range of philosophers, from ancient Greece to the present day, and incorporates up-to-date scientific findings Written in a thought-provoking and engaging manner, accessible to anyone intrigued by the wonder of our being
John McDowell: Experience, Norm, and Nature combines original essays by leading contemporary philosophers with point by point responses by McDowell himself to explore the central themes of one of the most innovative philosophers of our day. Provides original and critical essays examining McDowell’s reading and appropriation of Sellars, Kant, and Hegel in his own philosophy Explores McDowell’s notions of perceptual experience and his proposed rethinking of our conception of nature in light of the challenges that reason and normativity introduce Includes an original essay by McDowell that includes significant developments of his conception of perceptual experience Offers thorough and penetrating responses by McDowell to his critics
This collection of philosophical papers reflects on the existence and nature of the self. A collection of philosophical papers devoted to the subject of the self. Reflects on key questions about the existence and nature of the self. Comprises contributions from leading authorities in the field: Barry Dainton, Ingmar Persson, Marya Schechtman, Galen Strawson, Bas van Fraassen, and Peter van Inwagen.
Presupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding. There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John Searle's attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer.
This new introduction to ethics is written for students who are approaching philosophy for the first time.
This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author of the monumental 4 volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell Publishing, 1980-2004) Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters
Introducing a new and ambitious position in the field, Kit Fine’s Semantic Relationism is a major contribution to the philosophy of language. Written by one of today’s most respected philosophers Argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought Proposes that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves Forms part of the prestigious new Blackwell/Brown Lectures in Philosophy series, based on an ongoing series of lectures by today’s leading philosophers
Insensitive Semantics is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well
Morality still matters, argues philosopher Roger Trigg, in this accessible introduction to moral thinking. Written for general readers with no background in philosophy. Argues that we need a shared moral vision in order to live together, both nationally and internationally. Considers the need for a shared morality in relation to subjects of vital importance such as human rights. Stresses that private behaviour cannot be kept separate from public choices. Discusses matters of topical debate on both sides of the Atlantic.