Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind

Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind
Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2012-02-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 019976686X

Each of the essays in this volume engages with some particular aspect of philosopher Alvin Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion.

Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind

Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind
Author: Kelly James Clark
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019992130X

In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith.

Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind

Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind
Author: William Jaworski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2016
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198749562

Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind is the first book to show how hylomorphism can be used to solve mind-body problems--persistent problems understanding how thought, feeling, perception, and other mental phenomena fit into the physical world described by our best science. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. Some individuals, paradigmatically living things, consist of materials that are structured or organized in various ways. Those structures are responsible for individuals being the kinds of things they are, and having the kinds of powers or capacities they have. From a hylomorphic perspective, mind-body problems are byproducts of a worldview that rejects structure. Hylomorphic structure carves out distinctive individuals from the otherwise undifferentiated sea of matter and energy described by our best physics, and it confers on those individuals distinctive powers, including the powers to think, feel, and perceive. A worldview that rejects hylomorphic structure lacks a basic principle which distinguishes the parts of the physical universe that can think, feel, and perceive from those that can't, and without such a principle, the existence of those powers in the physical world can start to look inexplicable and mysterious. But if mental phenomena are structural phenomena, as hylomorphism claims, then they are uncontroversially part of the physical world, for on the hylomorphic view, structure is uncontroversially part of the physical world. Hylomorphism thus provides an elegant way of solving mind-body problems.

Personal Agency

Personal Agency
Author: E. J. Lowe
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2008-09-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191550906

Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will—a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world—with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind—one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively—is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.

The Metaphysics of Mind

The Metaphysics of Mind
Author: Janet Levin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2022-03-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108944205

The Metaphysics of Mind presents and discusses the major contemporary theories of the nature of mind, including Dualism, Physicalism, Role-Functionalism, Russellian Monism, Panpsychism, and Eliminativism. Its primary goal is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question, including their prospects for explaining the special qualitative character of sensations and perceptual experiences, the special outer-directedness of beliefs, desires, and other intentional states, and—more generally—the place of mind in the world of nature, and the relation between mental states and the behaviors that they (seem to) cause. It also discusses, briefly, some further questions about the metaphysics of mind, namely, whether groups of individuals, or entire communities, can possess mental states that cannot be reduced to the mental states of the individuals in those communities, and whether the boundaries between mind and world are as sharp as they may seem.

Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics

Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics
Author: Marcus Willaschek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2018-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 110847263X

Detailed exploration of the Transcendental Dialectic, in which Kant uncovers the sources of metaphysics in human reason.

Self, Reason, and Freedom

Self, Reason, and Freedom
Author: Andrea Christofidou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0415501067

This book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.

Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Mind
Author: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0429974485

This book explores a range of issues in the philosophy of mind, with the mind-body problem as the main focus. It serves as a stimulus to the reader to engage with the problems of the mind and try to come to terms with them, and examines Descartes's mind-body dualism.

Being and Reason

Being and Reason
Author: Martin Lin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2019
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198834152

In Spinoza's metaphysics there is only one substance, God or nature. Martin Lin offers a new interpretation, arguing against idealist readings where the metaphysical is grounded in something epistemic, logical, or psychological. In Lin's realist interpretation, finite natural creatures stand to God or nature as waves stand to an ocean.