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The Natural Background of Meaning
In The Natural Background to Meaning Denkel argues that meaning in language is an outcome of the evolutionary development of forms of animal communication, and explains this process by naturalising the Locke-Grice approach. The roots of meaning are contained in observable regularities, which are manifestations of objective connections such as essences and causal relations. Denkel's particularistic ontology of properties and causation leads to a view of time that harmonises B-theory with transience. Time's passage, he argues, is a necessary condition of communication and meaning. The book connects some central topics in the philosophies of language, science and ontology, treating them within the framework of a single theory. It will interest not only professional philosophers doing research on meaning, universals, causation and time, but also students, who can consult it as a textbook examining Grice's theory of meaning.
The Metaphysics of Science
The roots of this work lie in my earlier book, Scientific Progress, which first appeared in 1981. One of its topics, the distinction between scientific laws and theories, is there treated with reference to the same distinction as drawn by N. R. Campbell in his Physics: The Elements. Shortly after completing Scientific Progress, I read Rom Harre's The Principles of Scientific Thinking, in which the concept of theory is even more clearly delineated than in Campbell, being directly con nected to the notion of a model - as it was in my book. In subsequent considerations regarding science, Harre's work thus became my main source of inspiration with regard to theories, while Campbell's re mained m...
Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought
This book is unusual in many respects. It was written by a prolific author whose tragic untimely death did not allow to finish this and many other of his undertakings. It was assembled from numerous excerpts, notes, and fragments according to his initial plans. Zilberman’s legacy still awaits its true discovery and this book is a second installment to it after The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought (Kluwer, 1988). Zilberman’s treatment of analogy is unique in its approach, scope, and universality for Western philosophical thought. Constantly compared to eastern and especially classical Indian interpretations, analogy is presented by Zilberman as an important and in many ways primary method of philosophizing or philosophy-building. Due to its universality, this method can be also applied in linguistics, logic, social analysis, as well as historical and anthropological research. These applications are integral part of Zilberman’s book. A prophetic leap to largely uncharted territories, this book could be of considerable interest for experts and novices in the field of analogy alike.
Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance
Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance is a book for theoretical physicists and philosophers of modern physics. It treats a puzzling and provocative aspect of recent quantum physics: the apparent interaction of certain physical events that cannot share any causal connection. These are said to be `entangled' in some way, but an explanation remains elusive. Abner Shimony - to whom the book is dedicated - and others suggest the need to revive the category of what may be seen as a metaphysical potentiality. Abner has described these events without actions to link them as `passion at a distance': not active, but passive. The discussions gathered here are written by a truly remarkable cast of scientists and philosophers and shed new light on the most profound puzzles of our times.
Meta Medical Ethics
What is Bioethics? What are its goals and theoretical assumptions? Is it a unique discipline? Must medical ethics be grounded in clinical experience? How can ethical inquiry inform medicine's theory and practice? Must one have a definition of medicine before one can have a medical ethic? Does medicine have a unique or demarcating body of knowledge, methodology, or philosophy? These troubling questions are addressed by a distinguished roster of philosophers, theologians, lawyers, social scientists, physicians and scientists. The unifying theme of this text is a philosophical exploration of the history, nature, scope and foundations of bioethics. There is a critical evaluation of principled, communitarian, legal, narrative and feminist approaches. The book's interdisciplinary focus allows for a lively dialogue which includes papers and accompanying commentaries. Audience: Philosophers of science and medical ethicists, physicians, lawyers, policy makers.
The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe
This book collects contributions by some of the leading scholars working on seventeenth-century mechanics and the mechanical philosophy. Together, the articles provide a broad and accurate picture of the fortune of Galileo's theory of motion in Europe and of the various physical, mathematical, and ontological arguments that were used in favour and against it. Were Galileo's contemporaries really aware of what Westfall has described as "the incompatibility between the demands of mathematical mechanics and the needs of mechanical philosophy"? To what extent did Galileo's silence concerning the cause of free fall impede the acceptance of his theory of motion? Which methods were used, before the invention of the infinitesimal calculus, to check the validity of Galileo's laws of free fall and of parabolic motion? And what sort of experiments were invoked in favour or against these laws? These and related questions are addressed in this volume.
Ludwig Boltzmann: His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900-1906
After his failure to replace metaphysics by a linguistic approach, Ludwig Boltzmann came to identify the philosophy of science with methodology which, in turn, he considered to be part of science itself, and thus not part of philosophy at all. His definition of philosophy as metaphysics meant that, from his point of view, all philosophers were metaphysicians, himself included. Boltzmann the philosopher was advised on the improvement of his Weltanschauung by Franz Brentano; to such effect that, by the summer of 1905, Boltzmann appeared to be close to a form of critical realism. However, the stronger this realism became, the more inconsistent it seemed to be with his `Mach plus pictures' metho...
Fact, Faith and Fiction in the Development of Science
In this posthumous book, the late Professor R. Hooykaas (1906-1994) conveys a lifetime of historical thought about modes of scientific advance over the centuries. In what variety of ways has the human mind, with all its subjectivity and its capacity for self-deception, but also its piercing gifts of discovery, managed to come to terms with `the whimsical tricks of nature'? Central to this erudite, penetrating, and widely ranging study is Hooykaas's distinction between facts (given by nature yet entirely subject to our mode of interpreting them), faith (broad conceptions like the idea of order, of simplicity, or of harmony), and fictions in the sense of those daring intellectual tools, such as theories and hypotheses and models, which reflect the scientist's creative imagination. Case studies drawn from the history of all branches of science (including chemistry and the earth sciences) and from Antiquity to the present day, serve to widen and to deepen the understanding of every reader (whether a historian of science or not) with a desire to learn more about the realities of the scientific pursuit.
Abstraction and Representation
This book deals with the development of thinking under different cultural conditions, focusing on the evolution of mathematical thinking in the history of science and education. Starting from Piaget's genetic epistemology, it provides a conceptual framework for describing and explaining the development of cognition by reflective abstractions from systems of actions.
National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology
To some philosophers, seeking to understand the human condition, technology is a necessary guide. But to think through the complex human phenomenon of technology we must tackle philosophy of science, philosophy of culture, moral issues, comparative civilizational studies, and the economics of specific industrial and military technologies in their historical contexts. The philoso pher wants to grasp the technological factor in this troubled world, even as we see it is only one factor, and that it does not speak openly for itself. Put directly, our human troubles to a considerable extent have been transformed, exaggerated, distorted, even degraded, perhaps transcended, by what engi neers and s...
