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Living Doubt
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 317

Living Doubt

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839--1914) has often been referred to as one of the most important North American philosophers, but the real extent of his philosophical importance is only now beginning to emerge. Peirce's `pragmaticism' (his own term) may provide the key to an epistemological theory which avoids both the Scylla of foundationalism and the Charybdis of relativism. Peirce's `Logic', linked to a conception of knowledge and of science, is increasingly coming to be recognised as the only possible one. In Living Doubt, 26 papers are presented by some of the world's leading philosophers, demonstrating the rich and cosmopolitan variety of approach to Peirce's epistemology. The contributions are grouped under three general headings: Knowledge, truth and the pragmatic principle; Peirce and the epistemological tradition; and Knowledge, language and semeiotic.

I Am You
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 679

I Am You

Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them tremendous significance. Along them we draw supposedly uncrossable boundaries within which we believe our individual identities begin and end, erecting the metaphysical dividing walls that enclose each one of us into numerically identical, numerically distinct, entities: persons. Do the borders between us - physical, psychological, neurological, causal, spatial, temporal, etc. - merit the metaphysical significance ordinarily accorded them? The central thesis of I Am You is that our borders do not signify boundaries between persons. We are all the same person. Variations on this heretical theme have been voiced periodically throughout the age...

The Withdrawal of Rights
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 316

The Withdrawal of Rights

Like most discussions within the tradition of rights-talk, this study is motivated by the desire to promote the idea that rights are moral assets that people should acquire in the course of their membership within social and political frameworks. However, while most participants in rights-talk concentrate on the safety and protection constraints required for a successful exercising of rights, the present study inquires into the circumstances under which people's rights lose their validity. The author believes that if we want to prevent the erosion of the role of rights within society and to encourage their obligatory status, we should prevent their misuse, or their unjustified or excessive use. Those who have interests in rights, and are concerned about their withdrawal or denial, will find a unique and inventive way of dealing both with the use, as well as the abuse of rights.

Thought-Contents
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 380

Thought-Contents

This book provides a formal ontology of senses and the belief-relation that grounds the distinction between de dicto, de re, and de se beliefs as well as the opacity of belief reports. According to this ontology, the relata of the belief-relation are an agent and a special sort of object-dependent sense (a "thought-content"), the latter being an "abstract" property encoding various syntactic and semantic constraints on sentences of a language of thought.

Moralities
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 179

Moralities

This essay is the product of years of distaste for, and dissatisfaction with, the efforts of moral philosophers. It can be tiresome to attend to details, to spell out the obvious, but moral philosophy is such an abysmally difficult subject that faster than a creeping slug is breakneck reckless speed. One simply must content oneself with a slow slimy trail painfully drawn and cautiously constrained. Generally speaking, philosophy, and, in particular, moral philosophy, is too hard fot philosophers. Even though publishing is spitting in the ocean, and even though my sour sweet spittle will not alter the ocean's salinity, I am somehow inclined to publish this essay. Acknowledgments: I began this essay in 1956. During the years, I have discussed many of the topics in this volume with a great many philosophers. I am indebted to all of them, especially those with whom I disagreed and those who disagreed with me. One learns nothing from agreement, whereas disagreement provokes one to look more closely and more carefully at what is at issue: if a philosopher is to profit from discussion, someone must be disagreeable.

Terrorism
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 252

Terrorism

This is a unique book on terrorism that openly, rationally and passionately delves into what underlies terrorism, what in some cases justifies it on ethical grounds, and how terrorism might be dealt with successfully. Rather than assuming from the start a particular point of view about terrorism, this book uniquely engages the reader in a series of critical discussions that unveil the ethical problems underlying terrorism. A must-read for everyone interested in understanding the depths of terrorism.

Dependencies, Connections, and Other Relations
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 308

Dependencies, Connections, and Other Relations

This work covers, in its subsequent parts, ontology, the metaphysics of causation, and the philosophy of mind. It provides a firm theoretical basis for believing that in our all-physical world mental causation is perfectly real, and that it can be understood.

Locke on Essence and Identity
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 218

Locke on Essence and Identity

This book is a study of John Locke's metaphysics of organisms and persons, with particular emphasis on his theory of identity through time and his conventionalism with respect to kinds and essences. After presenting three arguments for thinking that the organisms and persons in Locke's ontology have both spatial and temporal extent, the author argues that on a four-dimensional ontology there is no contradiction between Locke's theory of identity and his rejection of essentialism.

Wholes, Sums and Unities
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 324

Wholes, Sums and Unities

In this work, the author formulates a critique of widely accepted mereological assumptions, presents a new conception of wholes as ‘Unities’, and demonstrates the advantages of this new conception in treating a variety of metaphysical puzzles (such as that of Tibbles the cat). More generally he suggests that conceiving wholes as Unities offers us a new way of understanding the world in non-reductive terms.

A Hundred Years of English Philosophy
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 324

A Hundred Years of English Philosophy

This investigation is a historical review of twentieth-century analytical philosophy in England. In seven chapters, the intellectual development of its most prominent representatives - Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, Strawson, Dummett - is traced. The book offers synopses of the main philosophical texts of these seven philosophers. It will serve as a reference book covering all the central problems discussed by these seven authors.