Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
A Non Philosophical Theory Of Nature
Download A Non Philosophical Theory Of Nature full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online A Non Philosophical Theory Of Nature ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature by : A. Smith
Download or read book A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature written by A. Smith and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing François Laruelle's "non-philosophical" method, Smith constructs a unified theory of philosophical theology and ecology by challenging environmental philosophy and theology, claiming that and engagement with scientific ecology can radically change the standard metaphysics of nature, as well as ethical problems related to "the natural".
Book Synopsis A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature by : A. Smith
Download or read book A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature written by A. Smith and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing François Laruelle's "non-philosophical" method, Smith constructs a unified theory of philosophical theology and ecology by challenging environmental philosophy and theology, claiming that and engagement with scientific ecology can radically change the standard metaphysics of nature, as well as ethical problems related to "the natural".
Book Synopsis Rethinking Order by : Nancy Cartwright
Download or read book Rethinking Order written by Nancy Cartwright and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse, piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined. In each chapter expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws of nature, and explore the diverse sorts of order actually presupposed by work in physics, biology, and the social sciences. They consider how human freedom might be understood, and explore how Newton's idea of a 'universal designer' might be revised, in this new context. They argue that there is not one unified totalizing program of science, aiming at the completion of one closed causal system. We live in an ordered universe, but we need to rethink the classical idea of the 'laws of nature' in a more dynamic and creatively diverse way.
Book Synopsis Systematicity by : Paul Hoyningen-Huene
Download or read book Systematicity written by Paul Hoyningen-Huene and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Systematicity, Paul Hoyningen-Huene answers the question "What is science?" by proposing that scientific knowledge is primarily distinguished from other forms of knowledge, especially everyday knowledge, by being more systematic. "Science" is here understood in the broadest possible sense, encompassing not only the natural sciences but also mathematics, the social sciences, and the humanities. The author develops his thesis in nine dimensions in which it is claimed that science is more systematic than other forms of knowledge: regarding descriptions, explanations, predictions, the defense of knowledge claims, critical discourse, epistemic connectedness, an ideal of completeness, knowledge generation, and the representation of knowledge. He compares his view with positions on the question held by philosophers from Aristotle to Nicholas Rescher. The book concludes with an exploration of some consequences of Hoyningen-Huene's view concerning the genesis and dynamics of science, the relationship of science and common sense, normative implications of the thesis, and the demarcation criterion between science and pseudo-science.
Book Synopsis The Nature of Normativity by : Ralph Wedgwood
Download or read book The Nature of Normativity written by Ralph Wedgwood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of Normativity presents a complete theory about the nature of normative thought — that is, the sort of thought that is concerned with what ought to be the case, or what we ought to do or think. Ralph Wedgwood defends a kind of realism about the normative, according to which normative truths or facts are genuinely part of reality. Anti-realists often complain that realism gives rise to demands for explanation that it cannot adequately meet. What is the nature of these normative facts? How we could ever know them or even refer to them in language or thought? Wedgwood accepts that any adequate version of realism must answer these explanatory demands. However, he seeks to show that these demands can be met - in large part by relying on a version of the idea, which has been much discussed in recent work in the philosophy of mind, that the intentional is normative - that is, that there is no way of explaining the nature of the various sorts of mental states that have intentional or representational content (such as beliefs, judgments, desires, decisions, and so on), without stating normative facts. On the basis of this idea, Wedgwood provides a detailed systematic theory that deals with the following three areas: the meaning of statements about what ought to be; the nature of the facts stated by these statements; and what justifies us in holding beliefs about what ought to be.
Book Synopsis Politics of Nature by : Bruno Latour
Download or read book Politics of Nature written by Bruno Latour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.
Download or read book What is Nature written by Kate Soper and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1995-09-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This is an excellent book. It addresses what, in both conceptual and political terms, is arguably the most important source of tension and confusion in current arguments about the environment, namely the concept of nature; and it does so in a way that is both sensitive to, and critical of, the two antithetical ways of understanding this that dominate existing discussions.' Russell Keat, University of Edinburgh
Book Synopsis New Thinking about Propositions by : Jeffrey C. King
Download or read book New Thinking about Propositions written by Jeffrey C. King and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy, science, and common sense all refer to propositions—things we believe and say, and things which are true or false. But there is no consensus on what sorts of things these entities are. Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames, and Jeff Speaks argue that commitment to propositions is indispensable, and each defend their own views on the debate.
Download or read book Beyond Versus written by James Tabery and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the “nature versus nurture” debate persists despite widespread recognition that human traits arise from the interaction of nature and nurture. If everyone now agrees that human traits arise not from nature or nurture but from the interaction of nature and nurture, why does the “nature versus nurture” debate persist? In Beyond Versus, James Tabery argues that the persistence stems from a century-long struggle to understand the interaction of nature and nurture—a struggle to define what the interaction of nature and nurture is, how it should be investigated, and what counts as evidence for it. Tabery examines past episodes in the nature versus nurture debates, offers a contemporary philosophical perspective on them, and considers the future of research on the interaction of nature and nurture. From the eugenics controversy of the 1930s and the race and IQ controversy of the 1970s to the twenty-first-century debate over the causes of depression, Tabery argues, the polarization in these discussions can be attributed to what he calls an “explanatory divide”—a disagreement over how explanation works in science, which in turn has created two very different concepts of interaction. Drawing on recent developments in the philosophy of science, Tabery offers a way to bridge this explanatory divide and these different concepts integratively. Looking to the future, Tabery evaluates the ethical issues that surround genetic testing for genes implicated in interactions of nature and nurture, pointing to what the future does (and does not) hold for a science that continues to make headlines and raise controversy.
Book Synopsis Knowledge and Its Place in Nature by : Hilary Kornblith
Download or read book Knowledge and Its Place in Nature written by Hilary Kornblith and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers have traditionally used conceptual analysis to investigate knowledge. Hilary Kornblith argues that this is misguided: it is not the concept of knowledge that we should be investigating, but knowledge itself, a robust natural phenomenon, suitable for scientific study. Cognitive ethologists not only attribute intentional states to non-human animals, they also speak of such animals as having knowledge; and this talk of knowledge does causal and explanatory work withintheir theories. The account of knowledge which emerges from this literature is a version of reliabilism: knowledge is reliably produced true belief.This account of knowledge is not meant merely to provide an elucidation of an important scientific category. Rather, Kornblith argues that knowledge, in this very sense, is what philosophers have been talking about all along. Rival accounts are examined in detail and it is argued that they are inadequate to the phenomenon of knowledge (even of human knowledge).One traditional objection to this sort of naturalistic approach to epistemology is that, in providing a descriptive account of the nature of important epistemic categories, it must inevitably deprive these categories of their normative force. But Kornblith argues that a proper account of epistemic normativity flows directly from the account of knowledge which is found in cognitive ethology. Knowledge may be properly understood as a real feature of the world which makes normative demands uponus.This controversial and refreshingly original book offers philosophers a new way to do epistemology.
Book Synopsis Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by : Richard Rorty
Download or read book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature written by Richard Rorty and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1980 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Strange Tools written by Alva Noë and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.
Book Synopsis The Sublime in Modern Philosophy by : Emily Brady
Download or read book The Sublime in Modern Philosophy written by Emily Brady and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy (with a focus on Kant), nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world.
Book Synopsis Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature by : James Wilberding
Download or read book Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature written by James Wilberding and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume dispels the idea that Platonism was an otherworldly enterprise which neglected the study of the natural world. Leading scholars examine how the Platonists of late antiquity sought to understand and explain natural phenomena: their essays offer a new understanding of the metaphysics of Platonism, and its place in the history of science.
Book Synopsis Natural Law and the Nature of Law by : Jonathan Crowe
Download or read book Natural Law and the Nature of Law written by Jonathan Crowe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a systematic, contemporary defence of the natural law outlook in ethics, politics and jurisprudence.
Book Synopsis Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference by : Justin Smith-Ruiu
Download or read book Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference written by Justin Smith-Ruiu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.
Book Synopsis Respect for Nature by : Paul W. Taylor
Download or read book Respect for Nature written by Paul W. Taylor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. Respect for Nature provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature. This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of Respect for Nature has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today.
