General

Language, Names, and Information is an important contribution to philosophy of language by one of its foremost scholars, challenging the pervasive view that the description theory of proper names is dead in the water, and defending a version of the...

The Matter of the Mind addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the fieldDiscusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews...

The ethics of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), and virtue ethics in general, have seen a resurgence of interest over the past few decades. No longer do utilitarianism and Kantian ethics on their own dominate the moral landscape. In addition, Aristotelian themes...

Philosophers have almost always relegated the topic of revision to the sidelines of their discipline, if they have thought about it at all. This book contends that acts of revision are central and indispensable to the project of philosophizing and that...

Recognized in his day as a man of letters equaling Rousseau and Voltaire in France and rivaling Samuel Johnson, David Hume passed from favor in the Victorian age--his work, it seemed, did not pursue Truth but rather indulged in popularization. Although...

Although philosophical semantics has become both a discipline in its own right and the source of the analytic techniques used in the rest of philosophy, its foundations have themselves been problematic. To provide a unified account of the field, John L...

This is the fifth volume in a six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who has had a significant, and continuing, influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a...

The code of conduct for a leading tech company famously says "Don't Be Evil." But what exactly is evil? Is it just badness by another name-the shadow side of good? Or is it something more substantive-a malevolent force or power at work in the...

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that...

This volume presents lucid and insightful lectures on three great figures from the history of political thought, by John Plamenatz (1912-1975), a leading political philosopher of his time. He explores a range of themes in the political thought of...

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This set comprises the two volumes of texts and editorial material, which are also available for purchase separately...

Philosophy written in English is overwhelmingly analytic philosophy, and the techniques and predilections of analytic philosophy are not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary. Analytic usually aspires to a very high...

Paul Guyer is acknowledged as one of the world's foremost Kant specialists, and he collects here some of his most celebrated essays from the past decade and a half. The governing theme of the volume is the role of systematicity in Kant's theoretical and...

The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naive realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, which underwrote it. This created...

What is reduction? Must all discussions of the mind, value, colour, biological organisms, and persons aim to reduce these to objects and properties that can be studied by more basic, physical science? Conversely, does failure to achieve a reduction...

Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews invites us to view...

The Philosophers introduces some of the most brilliant minds in history and shows the enduring fascination of their ideas, which shaped our civilization. An illustrious team of authors offer concise and illuminating tours through the lives and thought of...

Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews invites us to view...

Pascal's Pens'ees is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest masterpieces of seventeenth-century France, an unfinished work which has both inspired and perplexed readers in succeeding centuries. Playing with Truth is the first comprehensive book...

What does it mean to be human? Is there something that makes us distinct from computers, other great apes, Martians, gods? Is there philosophical, ethical, or political value in continuing to think in terms of a common human nature? Or should we rather...

Process philosophy is fundamentally a metaphysical position. Its doctrine is that the universe is essentially to be understood not as substance and causality, as in the Cartesian tradition, but as process and creativity. Since the publication of the...

A distinguished panel of essayists address many key issues in Peirce's thought.Book InformationISBN 9780823215539Author Kenneth Laine KetnerFormat HardbackPage Count 444Imprint Fordham University PressPublisher Fordham University Press

The two volumes of Philosophical Essays bring together the most important essays written by one of the world's foremost philosophers of language. Scott Soames has selected thirty-one essays spanning nearly three decades of thinking about linguistic...

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Rudolf Makkreel interprets Dilthey's philosophy...

Thoughts and other mental states are defined by their role in a functional system. Since it is easier to determine when we have knowledge than when reasoning has occurred, Gilbert Harman attempts to answer the latter question by seeing what assumptions...

The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir has yet to be properly assessed and explored. The 50th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex inspired this volume which brings together philosophers and literary critics, some of whom are well known for their...

These twelve new studies illustrate some of the techniques employed in intellectual history today. Exploring themes and issues pertaining to religion, philosophy, and their interrelations, as they exercised British thinkers in the long eighteenth...

Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; Karl Ameriks examines how. He compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers before and after Kant. Individual essays provide case...

Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a...

Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defence of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves. Kant distinguishes things in themselves from phenomena, and in so doing he makes a metaphysical distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of...

Analytical philosophy now embraces a much greater variety of topic and divergence of opinion than it once did. What presuppositions of relevance are implicit in its dialogue, what patterns of reasoning does it rely on, and why is consensus so hard to...

Seven of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers describe how they arrived at the ideas for which they are known. In their own words, universally admired intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein. Bertrand Russell, and Martin Buber trace...

Essays on Ethics and Method is a selection of the shorter writings of the great nineteenth-century moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick. Sidgwick's monumental work The Methods of Ethics is a classic of philosophy; this new volume is a fascinating complement...

Sanchez and Sanchez have selected, edited, translated, and introduced some of the most influential texts in Mexican philosophy, which constitute a unique and robust tradition that will challenge and complicate traditional conceptions of philosophy. The...

Can human history as a whole be interpreted in any meaningful way? Has there been real progress between stone age and space age? Does history repeat itself? Is there evidence of divine providence? Questions such as these have fascinated thinkers, and...

The World We Want compares the future world that Enlightenment intellectuals had hoped for with our own world at present. In what respects do the two worlds differ, and why are they so different? To what extent is and isn't our world the world they...

What is a person? Why do we count certain beings as persons and others not? How is the concept of a person distinct from the concept of a human being, or from the concept of the self? When and why did the concept of a person come into existence? What...

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' theory of causation and its relation to the medieval and early modern scholastic philosophy that provides its proper historical context. The argument presented here is that even though Descartes offered a...

John Locke (1632-1704) was a prolific correspondent and left behind him over 3,600 letters, a collection almost unmatched in pre-modern times. A man of insatiable curiosity and wide social connections, his letters open up the cultural, social,...

Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, Second Edition chronicles the life and thoughts of the great Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55). What makes this volume essential is its extensive scope: it provides a glossary of concepts,...