A coherent treatment of the flow of ideas throughout Darwin's works, this volume presents a unified theoretical system that explains Darwin's investigations, evaluating the literature from a historical, scientific, and philosophical perspective.

Science and philosophy study well-being with different but complementary methods. Marry these methods and a new picture emerges: To have well-being is to be "stuck" in a positive cycle of emotions, attitudes, traits and success. This book unites the scientific and philosophical worldviews into a powerful new theory of well-being.

The book has two parts: one metaphysical, the other epistemological. The metaphysical part is largely concerned with realism issues. It starts with realism about universals, dismissing Plato's notorious ‘one over many’ problem. Several chapters argue for a fairly uncompromisingly realist view of the external physical world of commonsense and science. Both the nonfactualism of moral noncognitivism and positivistic instrumentalism, and deflationism about truth, are found to rest on antirealisms about their subject matters that are hard to characterize. A case is (...) presented for moral realism. Various biological realisms are considered. Finally, an argument is presented for an unfashionable biological essentialism. The epistemological part of the book argues against the a priori and for a Quinean naturalism. The intuitions that so dominate ‘armchair philosophy’ are empirical not a priori. There is an emphasis throughout the book on distinguishing metaphysical issues about what there is and what it's like from semantic issues about meaning, truth, and reference. Another central theme, captured in the title, is that we should ‘put metaphysics first’. We should approach epistemology and semantics from a metaphysical perspective rather than vice versa. The epistemological turn in modern philosophy and the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy were something of disasters. (shrink)

However, other leading philosophers of the era--such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J.G. Herder--placed greater emphasis on feeling, seeing moral and political ...

This paper raises a problem for the pair of views that universals are immanent in their instantiations and that these instantiations, or states of affairs, are somehow constructed from the instantiated universals. It is argued that the pair is inconsistent. The first view implies that universals are prior to states of affairs, whereas the second view implies that states of affairs are prior to universals. This paper does not attempt to solve this problem, but rather to formulate it precisely. That (...) promises to illuminate how to solve the problem if it can be solved, or why it cannot be solved if it is unsolvable. (shrink)

English summary: A liberal market society is often critized as being a society in which morality and virtues are crowded out by increasing egoism and utility-maximization. Michael Baurmann develops quite a different picture. He shows that anonymous market-relations and competition are by no means the only traits of a liberal society. Freedom of cooperation and association is one of its main characteristics as well. This freedom lays the fundament for the emergence of moral commitment and civil virtues which are (...) needed to provide the public goods a free society is based on - in particular the limitation of state power by the rule of law. Close German description: Es ist der beste deutsche Beitrag zur theoretischen Soziologie, den ich seit langer Zeit gelesen habe.Erich Weede in Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 1996, S. 762Der Gedankengang des Buches ist klar und uberzeugend. Insbesondere die Passagen daruber, was universalistische Normen auszeichnet, und uber die Bedingungen, unter denen die Orientierung an universalistischen Normen gelernt werden kann, verdienen es, sozialwissenschaftliches Gemeingut zu werden.Reinhard Zintl in Associations 1998, S. 294 f.Das Buch von Baurmann entwickelt mit Bedacht und auf hohem Niveau einen rechts- und staatstheoretischen, soziologisch fundierten Losungsvorschlag fur eine aktuelle, viel diskutierte Problematik.... Gegenuber manchen modischen Verfallszenarien wirkt der Ansatz Baurmanns... erfrischend und ermutigend...Gerhard Dilcher in Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1998, S. 3692Dem, der die okonomische Theorie der sozialen Ordnung auf der Hohe ihrer Leistungsfahigkeit erleben mochte,... wird mit diesem ausgeklugelten Festival des Kontrafaktischen viel geboten.Wolfgang Kersting in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 29.4.1997, S. 12. (shrink)

Various ideals of purity are surveyed and discussed. These include the classical Aristotelian ideal, as well as certain neo-classical and contemporary ideals. The focus is on a type of purity ideal I call topical purity. This is purity which emphasizes a certain symmetry between the conceptual resources used to prove a theorem and those needed for the clarification of its content. The basic idea is that the resources of proof ought ideally to be restricted to those which determine its content.

The definitive work on the philosophical nature and impact of the theories of Charles Darwin, written by a well-known authority on the history and philosophy of Darwinism. Broadly explores the theories of Charles Darwin and Darwin studies Incorporates much information about modern Biology Offers a comprehensive discussion of Darwinism and Christianity – including Creationism – by one of the leading authorities in the field Written in clear, concise, user-friendly language supplemented with quality illustrations Examines the status of evolutionary theory as (...) a genuine theory and its implications for philosophy, epistemology and ethics Provides a strong understanding of the philosophical nature and impact of Darwin's thought Holds wide appeal for general audiences outside the world of academic philosophy Strongly supports Darwinism and fully explores modern naturalistic explanations of religion. (shrink)

This text gives voice to the idea that the study of the philosophy of thought and language is more than a specialism, but rather lies at the very heart of the ...

Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know provides a balanced look at the topic, considering atheism historically, philosophically, theologically, sociologically and psychologically.

Why believe in the a priori? The answer is clear: there are many examples, drawn from mathematics, logic and philosophy, of knowledge that does not seem to be empirical. It does not seem possible that this knowledge could be justified or revised “by experience.” It must be justified in some other way, justified a priori.

This book is a sophisticated, detailed, and original examination of the main ideas that have dominated Anglo-American legal philosophy since the Second World War. The author probes such themes as: whether there can be right answers to all disputed law cases; how laws and other rules impact on the practical rationality of actors subject to their authority; whether general principles justifying the law must themselves be thought of as part of the law binding on legal actors; and the possibility of (...) an interpretivist jurisprudence that is continuous with law practice in a given culture. (shrink)

This book addresses such key ethical issues as euthanasia, the environment, biotechnology, abortion, the family, sexual ethics, and the distribution of health care resources. Michael Banner argues that the task of Christian ethics is to understand the world and humankind in the light of the credal affirmations of the Christian faith, and to explicate this understanding in its significance for human action through a critical engagement with the concerns, claims and problems of other ethics. He illustrates both the distinctiveness (...) of Christian convictions in relation to the above issues and also the critical dialogue with practices based on other convictions which this sense of distinctiveness motivates but does not prevent. The book's importance lies in its attempt to show the crucial difference which Christian belief makes to an understanding of these issues, whilst at the same time demonstrating some of the weaknesses and confusions of certain popular approaches to them. (shrink)

One of the most foundational and continually contested questions in the cognitive sciences is the degree to which the functional organization of the brain can be understood as modular. In its classic formulation, a module was defined as a cognitive sub-system with nine specific properties; the classic module is, among other things, domain specific, encapsulated, and implemented in dedicated neural substrates. Most of the examinations—and especially the criticisms—of the modularity thesis have focused on these properties individually, for instance by finding (...) counterexamples in which otherwise good candidates for cognitive modules are shown to lack domain specificity or encapsulation. The current paper goes beyond the usual approach by asking what some of the broad architectural implications of the modularity thesis might be, and attempting to test for these. The evidence does not favor a modular architecture for the cortex. Moreover, the evidence suggests that best way to approach the understanding of cognition is not by analyzing and modelling different functional domains in isolation from the others, but rather by looking for points of overlap in their neural implementations, and exploiting these to guide the analysis and decomposition of the functions in question. This has significant implications for the question of how to approach the design and implementation of intelligent artifacts in general, and language-using robots in particular. (shrink)

Most anyone interested in such topics as creation mythology, Jungian theory, or the idea of "secret teachings" in ancient Judaism and Christianity has found "gnosticism" compelling. Yet the term "gnosticism," which often connotes a single rebellious movement against the prevailing religions of late antiquity, gives the false impression of a monolithic religious phenomenon. Here Michael Williams challenges the validity of the widely invoked category of ancient "gnosticism" and the ways it has been described. Presenting such famous writings and movements (...) as the Apocryphon of John and Valentinian Christianity, Williams uncovers the similarities and differences among some major traditions widely categorized as gnostic. He provides an eloquent, systematic argument for a more accurate way to discuss these interpretive approaches.The modern construct "gnosticism" is not justified by any ancient self-definition, and many of the most commonly cited religious features that supposedly define gnosticism phenomenologically turn out to be questionable. Exploring the sample sets of "gnostic" teachings, Williams refutes generalizations concerning asceticism and libertinism, attitudes toward the body and the created world, and alleged features of protest, parasitism, and elitism. He sketches a fresh model for understanding ancient innovations on more "mainstream" Judaism and Christianity, a model that is informed by modern research on dynamics in new religious movements and is freed from the false stereotypes from which the category "gnosticism" has been constructed. (shrink)

Some philosophers influenced by Quine's meaning-holism agree that metaphor matters for science and for language in general, but they part ways over whether metaphors are cognitive. Hesse holds that metaphors have special cognitive content, apart from the literal content of the expressions used metaphorically. Davidson and Rorty deny this. I offer a partial reconciliation, allowing that metaphor has a noncognitive dimension, but holding that there is no sharp boundary between the literal and the metaphorical, between meaning and use, or between (...) the cognitive and noncognitive. This also answers the question: Where do dead metaphors gets their second literal meanings? (shrink)

What’s presented in our normal waking perceptual visual experiences feels present to us, while what we “see” in pictures and imagine does not. What about dreams? Does what we “see” in a dream feel present? Jennifer Windt has argued for an affirmative answer, for all dreams. But the dreams which flow from the brain’s registration of myoclonic twitches present a challenge to this answer. During these dreams motion-guiding vision is shut off, and, as Mohan Matthen has argued, motion-guiding vision seems (...) to be a key mechanism underlying the feeling of presence. I propose that the feeling of presence in fact involves two components: the feeling of immersion, and the feeling of availability for action. I suggest that only the feeling of availability for action derives from motion-guiding vision, and, hence, hypothesize that body-driven dreams lack this component to the feeling of presence. Finally, the distinction between these two varieties of presence has implications for measures of presence in virtual environments, as these measures can diverge over which of the two varieties they track. (shrink)

Both Higher-Order Uni cation approaches to In linguistic theories on discourse coherence Kehler, discourse semantics Dalrymple et al., 1991; Shieber et.

I. Avicennan studies -- II. Ghazālian studies -- III. Other studies.