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The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds represents a new wave of interest in 'the metaphysical Kant'. In recent decades Kant scholars have increasingly become skeptical of interpreting Kant as a philosopher who wished to truly "leave metaphysics behind". The contributors to this volume share a common commitment to the idea that Kant's philosophy cannot be properly understood without careful attention to its metaphysical presuppositions and, in particular, to how those metaphysical presuppositions are compatible with Kant's critique of more "dogmatic" forms of metaphysical thought. The authors approach Kant's thought from a wide variety of different perspectives - emphasizing not just the famili...
Essays on Existence and Essence presents a series of writings--including several previously unpublished--by Bob Hale on the topics of ontology and modality. The essays develop and elucidate Hale's work on essence, truthmakers, and several other topics. Also included are an introduction by Kit Fine and a bibliography of Hale's work.
Modality is a vast phenomenon. In fact, it is arguably a plurality of phenomena. Within it, one type of modality warrants distinctive interest in philosophy and, in particular, in metaphysics. In view of this, this Element has a first part devoted to modality as a general phenomenon, where different types of modalities are distinguished, and where the question of unification is raised. Following this, the second part is focused on metaphysical modality: the type of modality that is of distinctive interest in metaphysics, and thus for the series of this Element. In this second part, the overarching question is about the source of metaphysical modality, and the discussion here informs back, and is informed by, the question of unification from the first part. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Philosophical questions regarding the nature and methodology of philosophical inquiry have garnered much attention in recent years. Perhaps nowhere are these discussions more developed than in relation to the field of metaphysics. The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics is an outstanding reference source to this growing subject. It comprises thirty-eight chapters written by leading international contributors, and is arranged around five themes: • The history of metametaphysics • Neo-Quineanism (and its objectors) • Alternative conceptions of metaphysics • The epistemology of metaphysics • Science and metaphysics. Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophical methodology, and ontology, The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as philosophy of language, logic, and philosophy of science.
The Actual and the Possible presents new essays by leading specialists on modality and the metaphysics of modality in the history of modern philosophy from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It revisits key moments in the history of modern modal doctrines, and illuminates lesser-known moments of that history. The ultimate purpose of this historical approach is to contextualise and even to offer some alternatives to dominant positions within the contemporary philosophy of modality. Hence the volume contains not only new scholarship on the early-modern doctrines of Baruch Spinoza, G. W. F. Leibniz, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, but also work relating to less familiar nineteenth-century thinkers such as Alexius Meinong and Jan Lukasiewicz, together with essays on celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell, whose modal doctrines have not previously garnered the attention they deserve. The volume thus covers a variety of traditions, and its historical range extends to the end of the twentieth century, addressing the legacy of W. V. Quine's critique of modality within recent analytic philosophy.
Epistemology is currently in ferment. Ever since Plato, the textbook story goes, knowledge has been conceived as justified true belief; but in 1963 Edmund Gettier blew a huge hole in this supposedly traditional account. Six decades later, however, ongoing attempts to identify the conditions which turn belief into knowledge continue to face counterexamples and charges of circularity. In response to this recurrent failure, leading philosophers have begun exploring alternative accounts of knowledge. This ground-breaking book pushes the revolt against post-Gettier epistemology in a radically new direction. It begins by challenging the crude history of philosophy underling the entire Gettier para...
Only Imagine offers a theory of fictional content or, as it is sometimes known, 'fictional truth'. The theory of fictional content Kathleen Stock argues for is known as 'extreme intentionalism'; the idea that the fictional content of a particular work is equivalent to exactly what the author of the work intended the reader to imagine. Historically, this sort of view has been highly unpopular. Literary theorists and philosophers alike have poured scorn upon it. The first half of this book attempts to argue that it should in fact be taken very seriously as an adequate account of fictional truth: better, in fact, than many of its more popular rivals. The second half explores various explanatory benefits of extreme intentionalism for other issues in the philosophy of fiction and imagination. Namely, can fiction give us reliable knowledge? Why do we 'resist' imagining certain fictions? What, in fact, is a fiction? And, how should the imagination be characterised?
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) is considered the father of modern logic and one of the founding figures of analytic philosophy. He was first and foremost a mathematician, but his major works also made important contributions to the philosophy of language. Frege’s writings are difficult and deal with technical, abstract concepts. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Frege On Sense and Reference helps the student to get to grips with Frege’s thought, and introduces and assesses: the background of Frege’s philosophical work Frege’s main papers and arguments, focussing on his distinction between sense and reference the continuing importance of Frege’s work to philosophy of logic and language. Ideal for those coming to Frege for the first time, and containing fresh insights for anyone interested in his philosophy, this Guidebook is essential reading for all students of philosophy of language, philosophical logic and the history of analytic philosophy.
This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the problem of a priori knowledge from a historical as well as a systematic perspective. The author explores Kant’s views in connection with the possibility of revision, something hardly, if at all, done in philosophical literature. Furthermore, the views of well-renowned philosophers such as Quine, Putnam, Kitcher, and Hale are discussed in detail and are put into a historical and systematic perspective. Finally, this book contains a glossary of important notions offering illuminating accounts of a priori knowledge and related notions and explains the relationship between a priori knowledge, fallibility and revision. The detailing of concepts such as ‘defeasibility’, ‘infallibility’, ‘falsifiability’ helps anyone reading philosophical literature to pin down the meaning of the terms and its implications in this context. The enriched and dual approach the author takes makes the book a very useful and lucid guide to the problem of a priori knowledge.
This book offers a plurality of perspectives on the historical origins of logicism and on contemporary developments of logicist insights in philosophy of mathematics. It uniquely provides up-to-date research and novel interpretations on a variety of intertwined themes and historical figures related to different versions of logicism. The essays, written by prominent scholars, are divided into three thematic sections. Part I focuses on major authors like Frege, Dedekind, and Russell, providing a historical and theoretical exploration of such figures in the philosophical and mathematical milieu in which logicist views were first expounded. Part II sheds new light on the interconnections between...