The Natural World As A Philosophical Problem

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The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem

Author : Jan Patocka
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810133636
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem by : Jan Patocka

Download or read book The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem written by Jan Patocka and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first text to critically discuss Edmund Husserl’s concept of the "life-world," The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem reflects Jan Patocka's youthful conversations with the founder of phenomenology and two of his closest disciples, Eugen Fink and Ludwig Landgrebe. Now available in English for the first time, this translation includes an introduction by Landgrebe and two self-critical afterwords added by Patocka in the 1970s. Unique in its extremely broad range of references, the work addresses the views of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap alongside Husserl and Heidegger, in a spirit that considerably broadens the understanding of phenomenology in relation to other twentieth-century trends in philosophy. Even eighty years after first appearing, it is of great value as a general introduction to philosophy, and it is essential reading for students of the history of phenomenology as well as for those desiring a full understanding of Patocka’s contribution to contemporary thought.

The Nature of Philosophical Problems

Author : John Kekes
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191040908
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nature of Philosophical Problems by : John Kekes

Download or read book The Nature of Philosophical Problems written by John Kekes and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We must all make choices about how we want to live. We evaluate our possibilities by relying on historical, moral, personal, political, religious, and scientific modes of evaluations, but the values and reasons that follow from them conflict. Philosophical problems are forced on us when we try to cope with such conflicts. There are reasons for and against all proposed ways of coping with the conflicts, but none of them has been generally accepted by reasonable thinkers. The constructive aim of The Nature of Philosophical Problems is to propose a way of understanding the nature of such philosophical problems, explain why they occur, why they are perennial, and propose a pluralist approach as the most reasonable way of coping with them. This approach is practical, context-dependent, and particular. It follows from it that the recurrence of philosophical problems is not a defect, but a welcome consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live. The critical aim of the book is to give reasons against both the absolutist attempt to find an overriding value or principle for resolving philosophical problems and of the relativist claim that reasons unavoidably come to an end and how we want to live is ultimately a matter of personal preference, not of reasons.

A Minimalist Ontology of the Natural World

Author : Michael Esfeld
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351392174
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis A Minimalist Ontology of the Natural World by : Michael Esfeld

Download or read book A Minimalist Ontology of the Natural World written by Michael Esfeld and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-25 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to work out which commitments are minimally sufficient to obtain an ontology of the natural world that matches all of today’s well-established physical theories. We propose an ontology of the natural world that is defined only by two axioms: (1) There are distance relations that individuate simple objects, namely matter points. (2) The matter points are permanent, with the distances between them changing. Everything else comes in as a means to represent the change in the distance relations in a manner that is both as simple and as informative as possible. The book works this minimalist ontology out in philosophical as well as mathematical terms and shows how one can understand classical mechanics, quantum field theory and relativistic physics on the basis of this ontology. Along the way, we seek to achieve four subsidiary aims: (a) to make a case for a holistic individuation of the basic objects (ontic structural realism); (b) to work out a new version of Humeanism, dubbed Super-Humeanism, that does without natural properties; (c) to set out an ontology of quantum physics that is an alternative to quantum state realism and that avoids any ontological dualism of particles and fields; (d) to vindicate a relationalist ontology based on point objects also in the domain of relativistic physics.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Author : Richard Rorty
Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN 13 : 9780631128380
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (283 download)

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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:

Thinking like a Mall

Author : Steven Vogel
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262529718
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Thinking like a Mall by : Steven Vogel

Download or read book Thinking like a Mall written by Steven Vogel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”

Human Life and the Natural World

Author : Owen Goldin
Publisher : Broadview Press
ISBN 13 : 9781551111070
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Life and the Natural World by : Owen Goldin

Download or read book Human Life and the Natural World written by Owen Goldin and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 1997-04-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human concern over the urgency of current environmental issues increasingly entails wide-ranging discussions of how we may rethink the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. In order to provide a context for such discussions this anthology provides a selection of some of the most important, interesting and influential readings on the subject from classical times through to the late nineteenth century. Included are such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Hildegard of Bingen, St Francis of Assisi, Bacon, Descartes, Kant, Mill, Emerson and Thoreau. As the collection as a whole amply demonstrates, the history of western philosophical accounts of nature can help us to better understand current attitudes and problems. Human Life and the Natural World may also be of interest to a broad range of philosophers and students of philosophy, and more generally to those with a concern for the environment that engages the intellect as well as the heart.

The Really Hard Problem

Author : Owen Flanagan
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262262754
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis The Really Hard Problem by : Owen Flanagan

Download or read book The Really Hard Problem written by Owen Flanagan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-02-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted philosopher proposes a naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) way to solve the "really hard problem": how to live in a meaningful way—how to live a life that really matters—even as a finite material being living in a material world. If consciousness is "the hard problem" in mind science—explaining how the amazing private world of consciousness emerges from neuronal activity—then "the really hard problem," writes Owen Flanagan in this provocative book, is explaining how meaning is possible in the material world. How can we make sense of the magic and mystery of life naturalistically, without an appeal to the supernatural? How do we say truthful and enchanting things about being human if we accept the fact that we are finite material beings living in a material world, or, in Flanagan's description, short-lived pieces of organized cells and tissue? Flanagan's answer is both naturalistic and enchanting. We all wish to live in a meaningful way, to live a life that really matters, to flourish, to achieve eudaimonia—to be a "happy spirit." Flanagan calls his "empirical-normative" inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing eudaimonics. Eudaimonics, systematic philosophical investigation that is continuous with science, is the naturalist's response to those who say that science has robbed the world of the meaning that fantastical, wishful stories once provided. Flanagan draws on philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology, as well as on transformative mindfulness and self-cultivation practices that come from such nontheistic spiritual traditions as Buddhism, Confucianism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, in his quest. He gathers from these disciplines knowledge that will help us understand the nature, causes, and constituents of well-being and advance human flourishing. Eudaimonics can help us find out how to make a difference, how to contribute to the accumulation of good effects—how to live a meaningful life.

Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane

Author : Franklin Perkins
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253011760
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane by : Franklin Perkins

Download or read book Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane written by Franklin Perkins and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE), a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.

A Philosopher Looks at the Natural World

Author : Daniel C. Fouke
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527573672
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis A Philosopher Looks at the Natural World by : Daniel C. Fouke

Download or read book A Philosopher Looks at the Natural World written by Daniel C. Fouke and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book interweaves the author’s personal story and observations of nature, with scientific research, and philosophical reflection. It tells the story of nearly three decades of labor to ecologically restore twenty-one acres of ruined land near Dayton, Ohio. This story and what the author has observed motivate reflection on the human relationship to soil, the inner lives of animals, the intelligence of plants, and human psychology. The book advances the case for the intelligence and kinship of all living things, an ethic of respect for life, and the need to radically rethink how human societies live on Earth.

Philosophy of the Brain

Author : Georg Northoff
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027295875
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Philosophy of the Brain by : Georg Northoff

Download or read book Philosophy of the Brain written by Georg Northoff and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-23 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What is the mind?" "What is the relationship between brain and mind?" These are common questions. But "What is the brain?" is a rare question in both the neurosciences and philosophy. The reason for this may lie in the brain itself: Is there a "brain problem"? In this fresh and innovative book, Georg Northoff demonstrates that there is in fact a "brain problem". He argues that our brain can only be understood when its empirical functions are directly related to the modes of acquiring knowledge, our epistemic abilities and inabilities. Drawing on the latest neuroscientific data and philosophical theories, he provides an empirical-epistemic definition of the brain. Northoff reveals the basic conceptual confusion about the relationship between mind and brain that has so obstinately been lingering in both neuroscience and philosophy. He subsequently develops an alternative framework where the integration of the brain within body and environment is central. This novel approach plunges the reader into the depths of our own brain. The "Philosophy of the Brain" that emerges opens the door to a fascinating world of new findings that explore the mind and its relationship to our very human brain. (Series A)

Sophie's World

Author : Jostein Gaarder
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466804270
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Sophie's World by : Jostein Gaarder

Download or read book Sophie's World written by Jostein Gaarder and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Before she knows it she is enrolled in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher. Thus begins Jostein Gaarder's unique novel, which is not only a mystery, but also a complete and entertaining history of philosophy.

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Author : Michael Murray
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN 13 : 0199237271
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature Red in Tooth and Claw by : Michael Murray

Download or read book Nature Red in Tooth and Claw written by Michael Murray and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2008-06-19 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Those who believe in God often puzzle over how God could permit evil and suffering in the world. Nature Red in Tooth and Claw focuses specifically on non-human animal suffering, and whether or not it raises problems for belief in the existence of a perfectly good creator.

Feline Philosophy

Author : John Gray
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374718792
Total Pages : 99 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Feline Philosophy by : John Gray

Download or read book Feline Philosophy written by John Gray and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats--the animal that has most captured our imagination--than from the great thinkers of the world. In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness, showing how they embody answers to the big questions of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose un-examined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy. Exploring the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, Gray offers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on the follies of human exceptionalism and our fundamentally vulnerable and lonely condition. He charts a path toward a life without illusions and delusions, revealing how we can endure both crisis and transformation, and adapt to a changed scene, as cats have always done.

Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds

Author : John Earman
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 0822970341
Total Pages : 642 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds by : John Earman

Download or read book Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds written by John Earman and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1994-04-01 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This inaugural volume of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the History and Philosophy of Science is devoted to the work of philosopher Adolf Grünbaum, and encompasses the philosophical problems of space, time, and cosmology, the nature of scientific methodology, and the foundations of psychoanalysis.

Thinking Faith After Christianity

Author : Martin Koci
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438478933
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Thinking Faith After Christianity by : Martin Koci

Download or read book Thinking Faith After Christianity written by Martin Koci and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the work of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka from the largely neglected perspective of religion. Patočka is known primarily for his work in phenomenology and ancient Greek philosophy, and also as a civil rights activist and critic of modernity. In this book, Martin Koci shows Patočka also maintained a persistent and increasing interest in Christianity. Thinking Faith after Christianity examines the theological motifs in Patočka's work and brings his thought into discussion with recent developments in phenomenology, making a case for Patočka as a forerunner to what has become known as the theological turn in continental philosophy. Koci systematically examines his thoughts on the relationship between theology and philosophy, and his perennial struggle with the idea of crisis. For Patočka, modernity, metaphysics, and Christianity were all in different kinds of crises, and Koci demonstrates how his work responded to those crises creatively, providing new insights on theology understood as the task of thinking and living transcendence in a problematic world. It perceives the un-thought element of Christianity--what Patočka identified as its greatest resource and potential--not as a weakness, but as a credible way to ponder Christian faith and the Christian mode of existence after the proclaimed death of God and the end of metaphysics.

Environmental Philosophy

Author : Christopher Belshaw
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317490037
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Environmental Philosophy by : Christopher Belshaw

Download or read book Environmental Philosophy written by Christopher Belshaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to the philosophy of the environment examines current debates on how we should think about the natural world and our place within it. The subject is examined from a determinedly analytic philosophical perspective, focusing on questions of value, but taking in attendant issues in epistemology and metaphysics as well. The book begins by considering the nature, extent and origin of the environmental problems with which we need to be concerned. Chapters go on to consider familiar strategies for dealing with environmental problems, and then consider what sort of things are of direct moral concern, examining in turn at animals, non-sentient life-forms, natural but non-living things and deep ecology. The final part of the book investigates notions of value, natural beauty and the place of human beings in the scheme of things.

The Philosophy of Living Nature

Author : Kratochvíl, Zdeněk
Publisher : Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press
ISBN 13 : 8024631318
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (246 download)

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Book Synopsis The Philosophy of Living Nature by : Kratochvíl, Zdeněk

Download or read book The Philosophy of Living Nature written by Kratochvíl, Zdeněk and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zdenek Kratochvil's publication focuses on the approach of the Western philosophical tradition to physis, or nature. The scholar reveals, on a philosophical level, the roots of today's environmental crisis, calling his text "an attempt to descend to the uncertain and rich lands of nature's experience, to the lands of natural experience." The introduction presents an etymological explanation of the notion of "nature," analyzing its aspects. The scholar points out that neglecting the appreciation of nature results in harm to the world. It is therefore necessary to focus on the world and its plurality - as the background for phenomena and the context of things, as a unity of horizons, as a paradigm for understanding nature. However, the natural world exists not merely as a philosophical problem, but also one concerning real life. Kratochvil also explains the categories related to the perception of the world: matter, space and time. Other chapters deal with living nature (he ask about the identity of a living organism, about the relation of life and being), evolution (he attempts to provide "a description of evolutionary events based on experience, analyzes Darwin and neo-Darwinian evolutionism) and the epistemological issues (of the ability to know the living). He discusses the paradigms of the reality, while focusing on modern paradigms.