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Dawkin's militant atheism is well known; his profound faith less well known In this book, atheist philosopher Eric Steinhart explores the spiritual dimensions of Richard Dawkins’ books, which are shown to encompass: · the meaning and purpose of life · an appreciation of Platonic beauty and truth · a deep belief in the rationality of the universe · an aversion to both scientism and nihilism As an atheist, Dawkins strives to develop a scientific alternative to theism, and while he declares that science is not a religion, he also proclaims it to be a spiritual enterprise. His books are filled with fragmentary sketches of this ‘spiritual atheism’, resembling a great unfinished cathedral. This book systematises and completes Dawkins’ arguments and reveals their deep roots in Stoicism and Platonism. Expanding on Dawkins’ ideas, Steinhart shows how atheists can develop powerful ethical principles, compelling systems of symbols and images, and meaningful personal and social practices. Believing in Dawkins is a rigorous and potent entreaty for the use of science and reason to support spiritually rich and optimistic ways of thinking and living.
More Precisely provides a rigorous and engaging introduction to the mathematics necessary to do philosophy. It is impossible to fully understand much of the most important work in contemporary philosophy without a basic grasp of set theory, functions, probability, modality and infinity. Until now, this knowledge was difficult to acquire. Professors had to provide custom handouts to their classes, while students struggled through math texts searching for insight. More Precisely fills this key gap. Eric Steinhart provides lucid explanations of the basic mathematical concepts and sets out most commonly used notational conventions. Furthermore, he demonstrates how mathematics applies to many fundamental issues in branches of philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and ethics.
1. Metaphors and Logic Metaphors are among the most vigorous offspring of the creative mind; but their vitality springs from the fact that they are logical organisms in the ecology of l- guage. I aim to use logical techniques to analyze the meanings of metaphors. My goal here is to show how contemporary formal semantics can be extended to handle metaphorical utterances. What distinguishes this work is that it focuses intensely on the logical aspects of metaphors. I stress the role of logic in the generation and int- pretation of metaphors. While I don't presuppose any formal training in logic, some familiarity with philosophical logic (the propositional calculus and the predicate c- culus) i...
More Precisely provides a rigorous and engaging introduction to the mathematics necessary to do philosophy. It is impossible to fully understand much of the most important work in contemporary philosophy without a basic grasp of set theory, functions, probability, modality and infinity. Until now, this knowledge was difficult to acquire. Professors had to provide custom handouts to their classes, while students struggled through math texts searching for insight. More Precisely fills this key gap. Eric Steinhart provides lucid explanations of the basic mathematical concepts and sets out most commonly used notational conventions. Furthermore, he demonstrates how mathematics applies to many fundamental issues in branches of philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and ethics.
Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment offers authoritative, jargon-free essays and critical commentaries on accelerating technological progress and the notion of technological singularity. It focuses on conjectures about the intelligence explosion, transhumanism, and whole brain emulation. Recent years have seen a plethora of forecasts about the profound, disruptive impact that is likely to result from further progress in these areas. Many commentators however doubt the scientific rigor of these forecasts, rejecting them as speculative and unfounded. We therefore invited prominent computer scientists, physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists and other thinkers to assess the singularity hypotheses. Their contributions go beyond speculation, providing deep insights into the main issues and a balanced picture of the debate.
Atheistic Platonism is an alternative to both theism and nihilistic atheism. It shows how any jobs allegedly done by God are better done by impersonal Platonic objects. Without Platonic objects, atheism degenerates into an illogical nihilism. Atheistic Platonism instead provides reality with foundations that are eternal, necessary, rational, beautiful, and utterly mindless. It argues for a plenitude of mathematical objects, and an infinite plurality of possible universes. It provides mindless rational grounds for objective values, and for objective moral laws for the persons who evolve in universes. It defines a meaningful way of life, which facilitates self-improvement. Atheistic Platonists argue for computational theories of life after death. Atheistic Platonism includes a rich system of spiritual symbols. It values transformational practices and ecstatic experiences. Where atheisms based on materialism fail, atheisms based on Platonism succeed.
The essays in The Philosophy of Spirituality explore a new field in philosophy. Until recently, most philosophers in the analytic and continental Western traditions treated spirituality as a religious concept. Any non-religious spirituality tended to be neglected or dismissed as irremediably vague. Here, from various philosophical and cultural perspectives, it is addressed as a subject of independent interest. This is a philosophical response to increasing numbers of spiritual but not religious people inhabiting secular societies and the heightened interaction between a multitude of spiritual traditions in a globalized age. A provocative array of approaches (African, Indigenous, Indian, Stoic, and Sufic perspectives, as well as Western analytic and continental views) offer fresh insights, many articulated by emerging voices. Contributors are Mariapaola Bergomi, Moses Biney, Christopher Braddock, Drew Chastain, Kerem Eksen, Nikolay Milkov, Roderick Nicholls, Jerry Piven, Heather Salazar, Eric Steinhart, Richard White, Mark Wynn and Eric Yang.
PROSE 2020 Single Volume Reference Finalist! Philosophers throughout history have debated the existence of gods, but it is only in recent years that the absence of such a belief has become a significant topic of philosophical analysis, in particular for philosophers of religion. Although it is difficult to trace the historical contours of atheism as the lack of belief in a higher power, the reasoned, reflective, and thoughtful rejection of theism has become commonplace in many modern intellectual circles, including academic philosophy where disciplinary data indicates that a large majority of philosophers self-identify as atheists. As the first book of its kind to bring together a collection...
This book probes the local dynamics of the German occupation and the collaboration in the Holocaust in southern Ukraine.
Metaphor is one of the most frequently evoked but at the same time most poorly understood concepts in philosophy and literary theory. In recent years, several interesting approaches to metaphor have been presented or outlined. In this volume, authors of some of the most important new approaches re-present their views or illustrate them by means of applications, thus allowing the reader to survey some of the prominent ongoing developments in this field. These authors include Robert Fogelin, Susan Haack, Jaakko Hintikka (with Gabriel Sandu), Bipin Indurkhya and Eva Kittay (with Eric Steinhart). Their stance is in the main constructive rather than critical; but frequent comparisons of different views further facilitate the reader's overview. In the other contributions, metaphor is related to the problems of visual representation (Noël Carroll), to the open class test (Avishai Margalit and Naomi Goldblum) as well as to Wittgenstein's idea of `a way of life' (E.M. Zemach).