Yasuo Deguchi, Jay L. Garfield, Graham Priest, and Robert H. Sharf
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197526187
- eISBN:
- 9780197526217
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197526187.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Paradox drives a good deal of philosophy in every tradition. In the Indian and Western traditions, there is a tendency among many (but not all) philosophers to run from contradiction and paradox. If ...
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Paradox drives a good deal of philosophy in every tradition. In the Indian and Western traditions, there is a tendency among many (but not all) philosophers to run from contradiction and paradox. If and when a contradiction appears in a theory, it is regarded as a sure sign that something has gone amiss. This aversion to paradox commits them, knowingly or not, to the view that reality must be consistent. In East Asia, however, philosophers have reacted to paradox differently. Many East Asian philosophers—both in the Daoist and the Buddhist traditions—have openly embraced paradox. They have taken compelling arguments for contradictory positions to suggest that the world is—at least in some respects, and often in very deep respects—inconsistent, and that our best theories of the world will therefore be inconsistent. This book is an initial survey of the writings of some influential East Asian thinkers who were committed to paradox, and for good reason. Their acceptance of contradiction allowed them to develop important insights that evaded those who consider paradox out of bounds.Less
Paradox drives a good deal of philosophy in every tradition. In the Indian and Western traditions, there is a tendency among many (but not all) philosophers to run from contradiction and paradox. If and when a contradiction appears in a theory, it is regarded as a sure sign that something has gone amiss. This aversion to paradox commits them, knowingly or not, to the view that reality must be consistent. In East Asia, however, philosophers have reacted to paradox differently. Many East Asian philosophers—both in the Daoist and the Buddhist traditions—have openly embraced paradox. They have taken compelling arguments for contradictory positions to suggest that the world is—at least in some respects, and often in very deep respects—inconsistent, and that our best theories of the world will therefore be inconsistent. This book is an initial survey of the writings of some influential East Asian thinkers who were committed to paradox, and for good reason. Their acceptance of contradiction allowed them to develop important insights that evaded those who consider paradox out of bounds.
Dean Moyar
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197532539
- eISBN:
- 9780197532621
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197532539.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
It has long been recognized that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right offers the only systematic alternative to the dominant social contract tradition in modern political philosophy. The difficulty has been ...
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It has long been recognized that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right offers the only systematic alternative to the dominant social contract tradition in modern political philosophy. The difficulty has been to characterize Hegel’s view of justice as having the same kind of intuitive appeal that has made social contract theory, with its voluntary consent and assignment of rights and privileges, such an attractive model. Hegel’s Value argues that Hegelian justice depends on a proper understanding of Hegel’s theory of value and on the model of life through which the overall conception of value, the Good, is operationalized. Through an examination of key episodes in Phenomenology of Spirit and a detailed reading of the entire Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s Value shows how Hegel develops his account of justice through an inferentialist method whereby the content of right unfolds into increasingly thick normative structures. The theory of value that Hegel develops in tandem with the account of right relies on a productive unity of self-consciousness and life, of pure thinking and the natural drives. The book argues that Hegel’s expressive account of the free will enables him to theorize rights not simply as abstract claims, but rather as realizations of value in social contexts of mutual recognition. Hegel’s account of justice is a living system of institutions centered on a close relation of the economic and political spheres and on an understanding of the law as developing through practices of public reason.Less
It has long been recognized that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right offers the only systematic alternative to the dominant social contract tradition in modern political philosophy. The difficulty has been to characterize Hegel’s view of justice as having the same kind of intuitive appeal that has made social contract theory, with its voluntary consent and assignment of rights and privileges, such an attractive model. Hegel’s Value argues that Hegelian justice depends on a proper understanding of Hegel’s theory of value and on the model of life through which the overall conception of value, the Good, is operationalized. Through an examination of key episodes in Phenomenology of Spirit and a detailed reading of the entire Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s Value shows how Hegel develops his account of justice through an inferentialist method whereby the content of right unfolds into increasingly thick normative structures. The theory of value that Hegel develops in tandem with the account of right relies on a productive unity of self-consciousness and life, of pure thinking and the natural drives. The book argues that Hegel’s expressive account of the free will enables him to theorize rights not simply as abstract claims, but rather as realizations of value in social contexts of mutual recognition. Hegel’s account of justice is a living system of institutions centered on a close relation of the economic and political spheres and on an understanding of the law as developing through practices of public reason.
Henrik Lagerlund, Benjamin Hill, and Stathis Psillos (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198869528
- eISBN:
- 9780191905858
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198869528.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. They were once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes but were banished ...
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Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. They were once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes but were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this collection of essays, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each author is focused on the philosophical role(s) causal powers was/were thought at the time to play and the reasons offered in support of, or against, their coherence and ability to perform their role(s). By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analysed. Canvassed are the thoughts of such important philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, and Ockham and Buridan, then on through Suárez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists, Goodman and Lewis.Less
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. They were once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes but were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this collection of essays, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each author is focused on the philosophical role(s) causal powers was/were thought at the time to play and the reasons offered in support of, or against, their coherence and ability to perform their role(s). By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analysed. Canvassed are the thoughts of such important philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, and Ockham and Buridan, then on through Suárez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists, Goodman and Lewis.
Wayne C. Myrvold
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198865094
- eISBN:
- 9780191897481
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198865094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
Probability concepts permeate physics. This is obvious in statistical mechanics, in which probabilities appear explicitly. But even in cases when predictions are made with near-certainty, there is ...
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Probability concepts permeate physics. This is obvious in statistical mechanics, in which probabilities appear explicitly. But even in cases when predictions are made with near-certainty, there is are implicit probabilistic assumptions in play, as it is assumed that molecular fluctuations can be neglected. How are we to understand these probabilistic concepts? This book offers a fresh look at these familiar topics, urging readers to see them in a new light. It argues that the traditional choices between probabilities as objective chances or degrees of belief is too limiting, and introduces a new concept, called epistemic chances, that combines physical and epistemic considerations. Thinking of probabilities in this way solves some of the puzzles associated with the use of probability and statistical mechanics. The book includes some history of discussions of probability, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and introductions to conceptual issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. It should be of interest to philosophers interested in probability, and to physicists and philosophers of physics interested in understanding how probabilistic concepts apply to the physical world.Less
Probability concepts permeate physics. This is obvious in statistical mechanics, in which probabilities appear explicitly. But even in cases when predictions are made with near-certainty, there is are implicit probabilistic assumptions in play, as it is assumed that molecular fluctuations can be neglected. How are we to understand these probabilistic concepts? This book offers a fresh look at these familiar topics, urging readers to see them in a new light. It argues that the traditional choices between probabilities as objective chances or degrees of belief is too limiting, and introduces a new concept, called epistemic chances, that combines physical and epistemic considerations. Thinking of probabilities in this way solves some of the puzzles associated with the use of probability and statistical mechanics. The book includes some history of discussions of probability, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and introductions to conceptual issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. It should be of interest to philosophers interested in probability, and to physicists and philosophers of physics interested in understanding how probabilistic concepts apply to the physical world.
Neil Sinclair
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198866107
- eISBN:
- 9780191898327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198866107.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Morality is a human institution that can be adequately understood as a naturalistically explicable coordination device, whereby human beings work towards, sustain, and refine mutually beneficial ...
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Morality is a human institution that can be adequately understood as a naturalistically explicable coordination device, whereby human beings work towards, sustain, and refine mutually beneficial patterns of action and reaction. This morality owes nothing to an ethical reality that exists outside of human inclination: moral judgements and argument do not (attempt to) discover, describe or cognize a robust realm of moral facts or properties. Rather, such judgements express affective or practical states of mind, similar to preferences, desires, policies, or plans. Practical Expressivism argues that the locating of this expression within the wider coordinating practice of morality provides an attractive explanation and partial vindication of the forms and assumptions of this uniquely human institution. This book therefore defends a version of expressivism about morality, and one that embraces the ‘quasi-realist’ project of showing how an expressivist understanding of morality is consistent with the judgements of that practice being potentially disagreed with, logically regimented, and mind-independently true. In doing so it provides domesticating accounts of disagreement, logic, truth, and mind-independence, and shows how expressivism is compatible with truth-conditional semantics. The version of expressivism defended is ‘practical’ both insofar as it emphasizes the importance of the practical, coordinating, role of moral practice in pursuing the quasi-realist project, and insofar as it generates recipes and strategies that expressivists can repeatedly deploy to explain the forms and assumptions of our moral practice.Less
Morality is a human institution that can be adequately understood as a naturalistically explicable coordination device, whereby human beings work towards, sustain, and refine mutually beneficial patterns of action and reaction. This morality owes nothing to an ethical reality that exists outside of human inclination: moral judgements and argument do not (attempt to) discover, describe or cognize a robust realm of moral facts or properties. Rather, such judgements express affective or practical states of mind, similar to preferences, desires, policies, or plans. Practical Expressivism argues that the locating of this expression within the wider coordinating practice of morality provides an attractive explanation and partial vindication of the forms and assumptions of this uniquely human institution. This book therefore defends a version of expressivism about morality, and one that embraces the ‘quasi-realist’ project of showing how an expressivist understanding of morality is consistent with the judgements of that practice being potentially disagreed with, logically regimented, and mind-independently true. In doing so it provides domesticating accounts of disagreement, logic, truth, and mind-independence, and shows how expressivism is compatible with truth-conditional semantics. The version of expressivism defended is ‘practical’ both insofar as it emphasizes the importance of the practical, coordinating, role of moral practice in pursuing the quasi-realist project, and insofar as it generates recipes and strategies that expressivists can repeatedly deploy to explain the forms and assumptions of our moral practice.
Mark Balaguer
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198868361
- eISBN:
- 9780191904813
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198868361.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, ...
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This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question (more specifically, the book argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind). Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.Less
This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question (more specifically, the book argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind). Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.
Jessica Moss
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198867401
- eISBN:
- 9780191904141
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198867401.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book argues that Plato’s epistemology is radically different from our own. Unlike knowledge and belief as nowadays conceived, the central players in his epistemology are each essentially to be ...
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This book argues that Plato’s epistemology is radically different from our own. Unlike knowledge and belief as nowadays conceived, the central players in his epistemology are each essentially to be understood as cognition of a certain kind of object. Epistêmê is cognition of what Is—where this turns out to mean that it is a deep grasp of ultimate reality. Doxa is cognition of what seems—where this turns out to mean that it is atheoretical thought that mistakes images for reality. These objects-based characterizations, inchoate in the earlier dialogues and fully developed in the Republic, are the bedrock conceptions of epistêmê and doxa that explain all their other features, including the restriction of epistêmê to Forms and doxa to perceptibles. Moreover, Plato does epistemology this way because his epistemological projects are motivated by his central ethical and metaphysical views. He holds that there is a crucial metaphysical distinction between two levels of reality: genuine Being, which is hidden and difficult to access, and something ontologically inferior but readily apparent, presenting itself to us as real. He also holds that there is a crucial ethical distinction stemming from this metaphysical one: to be in contact with Being is to be living well, while to rest content with the inferior level is not only to fail to live well, but to hinder oneself from aspiring to do so. Therefore, when Plato turns to epistemological investigations, the distinction he finds most salient is that between cognitive contact with what Is and cognitive contact with what seems.Less
This book argues that Plato’s epistemology is radically different from our own. Unlike knowledge and belief as nowadays conceived, the central players in his epistemology are each essentially to be understood as cognition of a certain kind of object. Epistêmê is cognition of what Is—where this turns out to mean that it is a deep grasp of ultimate reality. Doxa is cognition of what seems—where this turns out to mean that it is atheoretical thought that mistakes images for reality. These objects-based characterizations, inchoate in the earlier dialogues and fully developed in the Republic, are the bedrock conceptions of epistêmê and doxa that explain all their other features, including the restriction of epistêmê to Forms and doxa to perceptibles. Moreover, Plato does epistemology this way because his epistemological projects are motivated by his central ethical and metaphysical views. He holds that there is a crucial metaphysical distinction between two levels of reality: genuine Being, which is hidden and difficult to access, and something ontologically inferior but readily apparent, presenting itself to us as real. He also holds that there is a crucial ethical distinction stemming from this metaphysical one: to be in contact with Being is to be living well, while to rest content with the inferior level is not only to fail to live well, but to hinder oneself from aspiring to do so. Therefore, when Plato turns to epistemological investigations, the distinction he finds most salient is that between cognitive contact with what Is and cognitive contact with what seems.