Author: Kelly James Clark Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019992130X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith.
Author: William Jaworski Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198749562 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 376
Book Description
William Jaworski provides an elegant solution to the question of how mental phenomena fit into the physical world by defending an original account of hylomorphism: the idea that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. On his view, mental phenomena are structural phenomena, and are uncontroversially part of the physical world.
Author: Jaegwon Kim Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 019162506X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
Jaegwon Kim presents a selection of his essays from the last two decades. The volume includes three new essays, on an agent-centered first-person account of action explanation, the concepts of realization and their bearings on the mind-body problem, and the nonexistence of laws in the special sciences. Among other topics covered are emergence and emergentism, the nature of explanation and of theories of explanation, reduction and reductive explanation, mental causation and explanatory exclusion. Kim tackles questions such as: How should we understand the concept of "emergence", and what are the prospects of emergentism as a doctrine about the status of minds? What does an agent-centered, first-person account of explanation of human actions look like? Why aren't there strict laws in the special sciences - sciences like biology, psychology, and sociology? The essays will be accessible to attentive readers without an extensive philosophical background.
Author: E. J. Lowe Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191550906 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will—a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world—with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind—one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively—is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.
Author: Michael E. Levin Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
Defends the ancient thesis that man is a piece of matter, that all his states are physical states, and all his properties physical properties. This is done in a metaphysical framework which accommodates talk of the identity and diversity of such 'virtual entites' as states and properties without being committed to their actual existence.
Author: Janet Levin Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108944205 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 142
Book Description
The Metaphysics of Mind presents and discusses the major contemporary theories of the nature of mind, including Dualism, Physicalism, Role-Functionalism, Russellian Monism, Panpsychism, and Eliminativism. Its primary goal is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question, including their prospects for explaining the special qualitative character of sensations and perceptual experiences, the special outer-directedness of beliefs, desires, and other intentional states, and—more generally—the place of mind in the world of nature, and the relation between mental states and the behaviors that they (seem to) cause. It also discusses, briefly, some further questions about the metaphysics of mind, namely, whether groups of individuals, or entire communities, can possess mental states that cannot be reduced to the mental states of the individuals in those communities, and whether the boundaries between mind and world are as sharp as they may seem.
Author: John Haugeland Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674004159 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 402
Book Description
The unifying theme of these thirteen essays is understanding. Haugeland addresses mind and intelligence; intelligibility; analog and digital systems and supervenience; presuppositions about the foundational notions of intentionality and representation; and the essential character of understanding in relation to what is understood.
Author: Yaron M. Senderowicz Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027218889 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 249
Book Description
Since ancient times, metaphysical theories have been shaped by the dialectical relations between metaphysical positions. The present book offers a new account of the role of controversies in the evolution of ideas in current metaphysics of mind. Part One develops a pragmatic theory of metaphysical controversies that combines Kantian themes and themes from current argumentation theory. The theory developed in this book underscores the role of a unique type of dialectical arguments which establish metaphysical positions as "controversial relevant alternatives "in the evolution of "chains of debates" in metaphysics. In Part Two and Part Three, this theory is applied to chains of debates in present day metaphysics of mind which address the problems of consciousness and personal identity. One of the contentions defended in this book is that the intellectual history of metaphysics is not a process in which positions are replaced by opposite positions, but rather, "a history of their status as relevant alternatives." The book analyzes in detail and demonstrates how "progress" in contemporary metaphysics of mind consists in a dialectical process through which challenges to extant positions lead to innovative alternatives that are intrinsically relevant to advancing the understanding of the issues under discussion.
Author: Michael Della Rocca Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0195095626 Category : Mind and body Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
This book offers a powerful new reading of Spinoza's philosophy of mind, the aspect of Spinoza's thought often regarded as the most profound and perplexing. Michael Della Rocca argues that interpreters of Spinoza's philosophy of mind have not paid sufficient attention to his causal barrier between the mental and the physical. The first half of the book shows how this barrier generates Spinoza's strong requirements for having an idea about an object. The second half of the book explains how this causal separation underlies Spinoza's intriguing argument for mind-body identity. Della Rocca concludes his analysis by solving the famous problem of whether for Spinoza the distinction between attributes is real or somehow merely subjective.
Author: Anthony Norvell Publisher: David De Angelis ISBN: Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 458
Book Description
Throughout history there have been great and illumined souls who have been able to use the power of their higher minds to perform seeming miracles. These men and women used a Cosmic Force which is in the universe and which anyone may use, when he once learns how to focus this higher power within his own mind. There are stupendous miracles such as healing the sick; causing the blind to see; making the crippled walk, but these are not the only miracles with which we are concerned in this Metaphysical study. There are the little, every-day miracles, which you may begin to perform immediately that relate to your health, to your work, to increasing your income, to finding happiness in love and marriage and to healing your mind of confusion, discord, and unhappiness, so that you may find inner peace and security. You will learn in this study that you too may become a miracle-worker; that you may wave the mental wand of Faith and create out of the substance of your thoughts and inner dreams the concrete things that you desire in your life. You may tap the power of this higher Cosmic Mind and create magnificent works, even as did the geniuses of the past who used this Miracle-working power. Beethoven used this higher mind within to create beautiful music, even though he was deaf; Edison tapped this power of the higher Cosmic Mind within and created over three hundred inventions, from the motion picture camera to the electric light bulb, which bless our lives today. Edison used the power which we shall study together, and there is no reason why YOU may not achieve greatness through this self-same Metaphysical power. Lincoln was a miracle-worker, and although a martyr, like Gandhi and John F. Kennedy, he brought the miracle of unity and greatness to a strife ridden nation. J.P. Morgan was a financier and industrialist, but he used the Metaphysical Miracle power which we shall study together to build one of the great financial empires of all time. This miracle power is not dead today; it is still being used by men like Paul G. Getty and Howard Hughes, Ford and Rockefeller to create wealth that not only benefits the ones who create it, but also blesses the world through the public libraries they endow, the research foundations they create and the artistic gifts and treasures which they give to our great art galleries and museums. The Miracles of Lourdes are well known, and I have stood in the sacred Grotto and I have seen the discarded crutches, wheel chairs and braces that the sick have left there when their miracles of healing came and they walked away healed by a miracle power that worked for them, but which does not seem to work for others. The spectacular miracles that the Master Metaphysician Jesus performed, and which we see at places like Lourdes, are not the only evidences that this Metaphysical Miracle Power exists and may be tapped by ordinary mortals; there are other evidences in our own age that this power is alive today and may be used to heal millions of still unborn persons and to save the lives of hundreds of millions today. Salk used this higher Miracle Power to develop his vaccine for polio; Fleming developed penicillin through this higher intuitive mind; Mme. and M. Curie discovered radium by listening to the inner Cosmic Voice that guided them; and Pasteur certainly was a miracle-worker unequalled in history for the perception that caused him to perfect the use of vaccines in the treatment and prevention of disease.
Author: Kelly James Clark
Author: William Jaworski
Author: Jaegwon Kim
Author: E. J. Lowe
Author: Michael E. Levin
Author: Janet Levin
Author: John Haugeland
Author: Yaron M. Senderowicz
Author: Michael Della Rocca
Author: Anthony Norvell