Philosophical Papers and Letters

Philosophical Papers and Letters
Author: G.W. Leibniz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 743
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9401014264

The selections contained in these volumes from the papers and letters of Leibniz are intended to serve the student in two ways: first, by providing a more adequate and balanced conception of the full range and penetration of Leibniz's creative intellectual powers; second, by inviting a fresher approach to his intellectual growth and a clearer perception of the internal strains in his thinking, through a chronological arrangement. Much confusion has arisen in the past through a neglect of the develop ment of Leibniz's ideas, and Couturat's impressive plea, in his edition of the Opuscu/es et fragments (p. xii), for such an arrangement is valid even for incomplete editions. The beginning student will do well, however, to read the maturer writings of Parts II, III, and IV first, leaving Part I, from a period too largely neglected by Leibniz criticism, for a later study of the still obscure sources and motives of his thought. The Introduction aims primarily to provide cultural orientation and an exposition of the structure and the underlying assumptions of the philosophical system rather than a critical evaluation. I hope that together with the notes and the Index, it will provide those aids to the understanding which the originality of Leibniz's scientific, ethical, and metaphysical efforts deserve.

Philosophical Papers 1913–1946

Philosophical Papers 1913–1946
Author: M. Neurath
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400969953

The philosophical writings of Otto Neurath, and their central themes, have been described many times, by Carnap in his authobiographical essay, by Ayer and Morris and Kraft decades ago, by Haller and Hegselmann and Nemeth and others in recent years. How extraordinary Neurath's insights were, even when they perhaps were more to be seen as conjectures, aperfus, philosophical hypotheses, tools to be taken up and used in the practical workshop of life; and how prescient he was. A few examples may be helpful: (1) Neurath's 1912 lecture on the conceptual critique of the idea of a pleasure maximum [ON 50] substantially anticipates the development of aspects of analytical ethics in mid-century. (2) Neurath's 1915 paper on alternative hypotheses, and systems of hypotheses, within the science of physical optics [ON 81] gives a lucid account of the historically-developed clashing theories of light, their un realized further possibilities, and the implied contingencies of theory survival in science, all within his framework that antedates not only the quite similar work of Kuhn so many years later but also of the Vienna Circle too. (3) Neurath's subsequent paper of 1916 investigates the inadequacies of various attempts to classify systems of hypotheses [ON 82, and this volume], and sets forth a pioneering conception of the metatheoretical task of scientific philosophy.

Philosophical Papers : Volume I

Philosophical Papers : Volume I
Author: David Lewis Professor of Philosophy Princeton University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 301
Release: 1983-06-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198020422

The first volume of this series presents fifteen selected papers dealing with a variety of topics in ontology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

Descartes: Philosophical Essays and Correspondence

Descartes: Philosophical Essays and Correspondence
Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2000-03-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1603840176

A superb text for teaching the philosophy of Descartes, this volume includes all his major works in their entirety, important selections from his lesser known writings, and key selections from his philosophical correspondence. The result is an anthology that enables the reader to understand the development of Descartes’s thought over his lifetime. Includes a biographical Introduction, chronology, bibliography, and index.

Philosophical Letters of David K. Lewis

Philosophical Letters of David K. Lewis
Author: David K. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192597604

David Kellogg Lewis (1941-2001) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He made significant contributions to almost every area of analytic philosophy including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, and set the agenda for various debates in these areas which carry on to this day. In several respects he remains a contemporary figure, yet enough time has now passed for historians of philosophy to begin to study his place in twentieth century thought. His philosophy was constructed and refined not just through his published writing, but also crucially through his life-long correspondence with fellow philosophers, including leading figures such as D.M. Armstrong, Saul Kripke, W.V. Quine, J.J.C. Smart, and Peter van Inwagen. His letters formed the undercurrent of his published work and became the medium through which he proposed many of his well-known theories and discussed a range of philosophical topics in depth. A selection of his vast correspondence over a 40-year period is presented here across two volumes. As metaphysics is arguably where Lewis made his greatest contribution, this forms the focus of Volume 1. Arranged under the broad areas of Causation, Modality, and Ontology, the letters offer an organic story of the origins, development, breadth, and depth of his metaphysics in its historical context, as well as a glimpse into the influence of his many interlocutors. This volume will be an indispensable resource for contemporary metaphysics and for those interested in the Lewisian perspective.

Content and Justification

Content and Justification
Author: Paul A. Boghossian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2008-09-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199292108

Content and Justification presents a series of essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge.Part one comprises essays on the nature of rule-following and its relation to the problem of mental content; on the intelligibility of eliminativist views of the mental; on the prospects for a naturalistic reduction of mental content; and on the currently influential view that meaning is a normative notion.Part two includes three widely discussed papers on the phenomenon of self-knowledge and its compatibility with externalist conceptions of mental content.Part three concerns the classical but ill-understood phenomenon of knowledge that is based upon knowledge of meaning or conceptual competence.Finally, part four turns its attention from general issues about mental content to an account of a specific class of mental contents. It contains two widely discussed papers on the nature of colour concepts, and colour properties.

Content, Cognition, and Communication

Content, Cognition, and Communication
Author: Nathan Salmon
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2007-03-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191536105

Nathan Salmon presents a selection of his essays from the early 1980s to 2006, on a set of closely connected topics central to analytic philosophy. The book is divided into four thematic sections. The first contains six essays on the theme of direct reference, and associated issues regarding names and descriptions, demonstratives and reflexivity. The four essays in the second section, under the heading of apriority, concern particular consequences of Millianism with respect to the semantic-epistemological status of certain special kinds of sentences. The five essays in the third section develop Salmon's project of reconciling Millianism with a host of problems posed by locutions of propositional attitude, especially by attributions of belief. The volume concludes with four essays about the distinction between meaning and use, or more generally, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

Thoughts

Thoughts
Author: Stephen Yablo
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2008-11-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199266468

In these twelve essays Stephen Yablo presents a modern-day examination of Cartesian themes in the metaphysics of mind, including mental/physical dualism, the possibility of disembodied existence, conceivability as a guide to possibility, the nature of solipsistic content, and how the mind affects the course of physical events.