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The Tools Of Metaphysics And The Metaphysics Of Science
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Book Synopsis The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science by : Theodore Sider
Download or read book The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science written by Theodore Sider and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased consideration of concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality has transformed the debate over structuralism in many ways. Sider then examines three structuralist positions through a postmodal lens. First, nomic essentialism, which says that scientific properties are secondary and lawlike relationships among them are primary. Second, structuralism about individuals, a general position of which mathematical structuralism and structural realism are instances, which says that scientific and mathematical objects are secondary and the pattern of relations among them is primary. And third, comparativism about quantities, which says that particular values of scientific quantities, such as having exactly 1000g mass, are secondary, and quantitative relations, such as being-twice-as-massive-as, are primary. Sider concludes these discussions by considering the meta-question of when theories are equivalent and how that impacts the debate over structuralism.
Book Synopsis The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science by : Theodore Sider
Download or read book The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science written by Theodore Sider and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased consideration of concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality has transformed the debate over structuralism in many ways. Sider then examines three structuralist positions through a postmodal lens. First, nomic essentialism, which says that scientific properties are secondary and lawlike relationships among them are primary. Second, structuralism about individuals, a general position of which mathematical structuralism and structural realism are instances, which says that scientific and mathematical objects are secondary and the pattern of relations among them is primary. And third, comparativism about quantities, which says that particular values of scientific quantities, such as having exactly 1000g mass, are secondary, and quantitative relations, such as being-twice-as-massive-as, are primary. Sider concludes these discussions by considering the meta-question of when theories are equivalent and how that impacts the debate over structuralism.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science by : Matthew Slater
Download or read book Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science written by Matthew Slater and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of the proper role of metaphysics in philosophy of science is both significant and contentious. The last few decades have seen considerable engagement with philosophical projects aptly described as "the metaphysics of science:" inquiries into natural laws and properties, natural kinds, causal relations, and dispositions. At the same time, many metaphysicians have begun moving in the direction of more scientifically-informed ("scientistic" or "naturalistic") metaphysics. And yet many philosophers of science retain a deep suspicion about the significance of metaphysical investigations into science. This volume of new essays explores a broadly methodological question: what role should metaphysics play in our philosophizing about science? These new essays, written by leading philosophers of science, address this question both through ground-level investigations of particular issues in the metaphysics of science and by more general methodological inquiry.
Book Synopsis Metametaphysics and the Sciences by : Frode Kjosavik
Download or read book Metametaphysics and the Sciences written by Frode Kjosavik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection addresses metaphysical issues at the intersection between philosophy and science. A unique feature is the way in which it is guided both by history of philosophy, by interaction between philosophy and science, and by methodological awareness. In asking how metaphysics is possible in an age of science, the contributors draw on philosophical tools provided by three great thinkers who were fully conversant with and actively engaged with the sciences of their day: Kant, Husserl, and Frege. Part I sets out frameworks for scientifically informed metaphysics in accordance with the meta-metaphysics outlined by these three self-reflective philosophers. Part II explores the domain for co-existent metaphysics and science. Constraints on ambitious critical metaphysics are laid down in close consideration of logic, meta-theory, and specific conditions for science. Part III exemplifies the role of language and science in contemporary metaphysics. Quine’s pursuit of truth is analysed; Cantor’s absolute infinitude is reconstrued in modal terms; and sense is made of Weyl’s take on the relationship between mathematics and empirical aspects of physics. With chapters by leading scholars, Metametaphysics and the Sciences is an in-depth resource for researchers and advanced students working within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the history of philosophy.
Book Synopsis Dispositionalism and the Metaphysics of Science by : Travis Dumsday
Download or read book Dispositionalism and the Metaphysics of Science written by Travis Dumsday and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dispositionalism is the view that causal powers are among the irreducible properties of nature. It has long been among the core competing positions in the metaphysics of laws, but its potential implications for other key debates within metaphysics and the philosophy of science have remained under-explored. Travis Dumsday fills this major gap in the literature by establishing new connections between dispositionalism and such topics as substance ontology, ontic structural realism, material composition, emergentism, natural-kind essentialism, perdurantism, time travel, and spacetime substantivalism. He also puts forward a novel view concerning the precise relationship between causal powers and the fundamental laws of nature. His rich and accessible study will appeal to readers interested in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science.
Book Synopsis A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice by : Andreas Hüttemann
Download or read book A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice written by Andreas Hüttemann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the metaphysical commitments which best 'make sense' of our scientific practice (rather than our scientific theories)? In this book, Andreas Hüttemann provides a minimal metaphysics for scientific practice, i.e. a metaphysics that refrains from postulating any structure that is explanatorily irrelevant. Hüttemann closely analyses paradigmatic aspects of scientific practice, such as prediction, explanation and manipulation, to consider the questions whether and (if so) what metaphysical presuppositions best account for these practices. He looks at the role which scientific generalisation (laws of nature) play in predicting, testing, and explaining the behaviour of systems. He also develops a theory of causation in terms of quasi-inertial processes and interfering factors, and he proposes an account of reductive practices that makes minimal metaphysical assumptions. His book will be valuable for scholars and advanced students working in both philosophy of science and metaphysics.
Book Synopsis Writing the Book of the World by : Theodore Sider
Download or read book Writing the Book of the World written by Theodore Sider and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theodore Sider presents a broad new vision of metaphysics centred on the idea of structure. To describe the world well we must use concepts that 'carve at the joints', so that conceptual structure matches reality's structure. This approach illuminates a wide range of topics, such as time, modality, ontology, and the status of metaphysics itself.
Book Synopsis Physics and Metaphysics by : Jennifer Trusted
Download or read book Physics and Metaphysics written by Jennifer Trusted and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jennifer Trusted's new book argues that metaphysical beliefs are essential for scientific inquiry. The theories, presuppositions and beliefs that neither science nor everyday experience can justify are the realm of metaphysics, literally `beyond physics'. These basic beliefs form a framework for our activities and can be discovered in science, common sense and religion. By examining the history of science from the eleventh century to the present, this book shows how religious and mystical beliefs, as well as philosophical speculation have had a considerable role in motivating scientists and inspiring scientific inquiry. Physics and Metaphysics presupposes no technical knowledge of either philosophy or science. It is an ideal introduction to science and the important forces that have shaped its history and ideas.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths by : Fabio Bacchini
Download or read book Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths written by Fabio Bacchini and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics and ontology feature among the traditional and fundamental concerns of philosophers. Gaining a picture of the world and the kind of objects that exist out there is for most philosophers (past and present) a preliminary aim upon which other theoretical activities depend. In fact, it seems that sound conclusions on topics relevant to ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and common and scientific knowledge can be achieved only after one has been given a picture of that sort. What is worth stressing, though, is that from time to time the tribunal of history has managed to put its finger on some flawed conclusions. To take a time-worn example, who would now accept Plato’s claim that the spatiotemporal world is just an imperfect copy of a world of abstract objects conceived of as perfect unchanging models of concrete things? The picture Plato gave us is nothing but a myth – an account which is too far away from what common sense and science could accept, too detached from the usual ways of conducting a rational discussion. Therefore, pictures of this kind appear to be supported by nothing but dogmas, i.e. uncompromising principles taken as true without any previous critical analysis. And Plato has no shortage of company. Issues of this kind revolving around metaphysics and ontology are tackled in the essays in this volume, which approach a secular debate in fresh and original ways, providing the necessary tools for clearing the field of unpalatable metaphysical and ontological items.
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Science by : Craig Dilworth
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Science written by Craig Dilworth and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The roots of this work lie in my earlier book, Scientific Progress, which first appeared in 1981. One of its topics, the distinction between scientific laws and theories, is there treated with reference to the same distinction as drawn by N. R. Campbell in his Physics: The Elements. Shortly after completing Scientific Progress, I read Rom Harre's The Principles of Scientific Thinking, in which the concept of theory is even more clearly delineated than in Campbell, being directly con nected to the notion of a model - as it was in my book. In subsequent considerations regarding science, Harre's work thus became my main source of inspiration with regard to theories, while Campbell's re mained my main source with respect to empiricallaws. Around the same time I also read William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. In this work, Whewell depicts principles as playing a central role in the formation of science, and conceives of them in much the same way as Kant conceives of fundamental syn thetic a priori judgements. The idea that science should have principles as a basic element immediately made sense to me, and from that time I have thought of science in terms of laws, theories and principles.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics in Science by : Katherine Hawley
Download or read book Metaphysics in Science written by Katherine Hawley and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Every Thing Must Go by : James Ladyman
Download or read book Every Thing Must Go written by James Ladyman and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysicscompatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously,Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects.Everything Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role ofcausation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
Download or read book Emergence written by Mariusz Tabaczek and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last several decades, the theories of emergence and downward causation have become arguably the most popular conceptual tools in scientific and philosophical attempts to explain the nature and character of global organization observed in various biological phenomena, from individual cell organization to ecological systems. The theory of emergence acknowledges the reality of layered strata or levels of systems, which are consequences of the appearance of an interacting range of novel qualities. A closer analysis of emergentism, however, reveals a number of philosophical problems facing this theory. In Emergence, Mariusz Tabaczek offers a thorough analysis of these problems and a constructive proposal of a new metaphysical foundation for both the classic downward causation-based and the new dynamical depth accounts of emergence theory, developed by Terrence Deacon. Tabaczek suggests ways in which both theoretical models of emergentism can be grounded in the classical and the new (dispositionalist) versions of Aristotelianism. This book will have an eager audience in metaphysicians working both in the analytic and the Thomistic traditions, as well as philosophers of science and biology interested in emergence theory and causation.
Book Synopsis The Short History of Science by : Tuomo Suntola
Download or read book The Short History of Science written by Tuomo Suntola and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Short History of Science - or the long path to the union of metaphysics and empiricism" offers a guided tour of the path of development of natural sciences from antique philosophical concepts to the precise empirical theories in modern physics and cosmology, and their relation to a scientific picture of physical reality. Arising out of the author's deep-probing work on the Dynamic Universe theory, the book discusses the possibility of uniting present theories by restructuring the empirically driven solutions at a deeper metaphysical level. In addition to a study of the development path itself, the book presents a biographical gallery of more than a hundred scientists who contributed majorly to scientific development as well as a long list of references with links to original texts by the pioneers. The book is not only a source of information - but also challenges the reader to consider for himself this scientific evolution, the basis of prevailing theories and the picture of reality. "The Short History of Science - or the long path to the union of metaphysics and empiricism" provides a tool and a source of inspiration for both teachers and students of natural sciences as well as for individuals willing to deepen their understanding of the universe we live in. In the 3rd complemented edition, Chapters 2-4 have been rewritten for easier reading.
Book Synopsis Scientific Metaphysics by : Don Ross
Download or read book Scientific Metaphysics written by Don Ross and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalised - conducted as part of natural science. They engage with a range of approaches and disciplines to argue that if metaphysics is to be capable of identifying objective truths, it must be continuous with and inspired by science.
Book Synopsis The Unexplained Intellect by : Christopher Mole
Download or read book The Unexplained Intellect written by Christopher Mole and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between intelligent systems and their environment is at the forefront of research in cognitive science. The Unexplained Intellect: Complexity, Time, and the Metaphysics of Embodied Thought shows how computational complexity theory and analytic metaphysics can together illuminate long-standing questions about the importance of that relationship. It argues that the most basic facts about a mind cannot just be facts about mental states, but must include facts about the dynamic, interactive mental occurrences that take place when a creature encounters its environment. In a discussion that is organised into four clear parts, Christopher Mole begins by examining the mathematics of computational complexity, arguing that the results from complexity theory create a puzzle about how human intelligence could possibly be explained. Mole then uses the tools of analytic metaphysics to draw a distinction between mental states and dynamic mental entities, and shows that, in order to answer the complexity-theoretic puzzle, dynamic entities must be understood to be among the most basic of mental phenomena. The picture of the mind that emerges has important implications for our understanding of intelligence, of action, and of the mind’s relationship to the passage of time. The Unexplained Intellect is the first book to bring insights from the mathematics of computational complexity to bear in an enquiry into the metaphysics of the mind. It will be essential reading for scholars and researchers in the philosophy of mind and psychology, for cognitive scientists, and for those interested in the philosophical importance of complexity.
Book Synopsis Experimental Metaphysics by : David Rose
Download or read book Experimental Metaphysics written by David Rose and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics, almost entirely neglected by experimental philosophers, is the central focus of Experimental Metaphysics. The volume brings together a range of views aimed at addressing the question of how cognitive science might be relevant to metaphysics. With contributions from cognitive scientists and philosophers, chapters focus on theoretical and empirical issues involving the potential role of cognitive science in metaphysics. Alongside topics such as free will, objects and causation, in which relevant empirical evidence is discussed and connected to relevant metaphysical issues, more programmatic papers explore theoretical issues centered on the connection between cognitive science and metaphysics. This balanced approach exposes metaphysicians to philosophically relevant work in cognitive science, while showing cognitive scientists the ways in which their work might be important for philosophers. Presenting cutting-edge empirical and theoretical research, Experimental Metaphysics pushes forward the discussion and encourages further engagement with issues at the intersection of cognitive science and metaphysics.
