Anti-individualism and Knowledge

Anti-individualism and Knowledge
Author: Jessica Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2004
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262524216

A persuasive monograph that answers the keyepistemological arguments against anti-individualism in thephilosophy of mind.

Nietzsche and Metaphysics

Nietzsche and Metaphysics
Author: Peter Poellner
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2000
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780198250630

Peter Poellner offers a comprehensive interpretation and a detailed critical assessment of Nietzsche's later ideas on epistemology and metaphysics, drawing on his published works and his largely unpublished voluminous notebooks.

A Slim Book about Narrow Content

A Slim Book about Narrow Content
Author: Gabriel M. A. Segal
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2000-06-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780262264563

A good understanding of the nature of a property requires knowing whether that property is relational or intrinsic. Gabriel Segal's concern is whether certain psychological properties—specifically, those that make up what might be called the "cognitive content" of psychological states—are relational or intrinsic. He claims that content supervenes on microstructure, that is, if two beings are identical with respect to their microstructural properties, then they must be identical with respect to their cognitive contents. Segal's thesis, a version of internalism, is that being in a state with a specific cognitive content does not essentially involve standing in any real relation to anything external. He uses the fact that content locally supervenes on microstructure to argue for the intrinsicness of content. Cognitive content is fully determined by intrinsic, microstructural properties: duplicate a subject in respect to those properties and you duplicate their cognitive contents. The book, written in a clear, engaging style, contains four chapters. The first two argue against the two leading externalist theories. Chapter 3 rejects popular theories that endorse two kinds of content: "narrow" content, which is locally supervenient, and "broad" content, which is not. Chapter 4 defends a radical alternative version of internalism, arguing that narrow content is a variety of ordinary representation, that is, that narrow content is all there is to content. In defending internalism, Segal does not claim to defend a general philosophical theory of content. At this stage, he suggests, it should suffice to cast reasonable doubt on externalism, to motivate internalism, and to provide reasons to believe that good psychology is, or could be, internalist.

Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind

Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind
Author: William Child
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 1996
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198236255

William Child examines two central ideas in the philosophy of mind, and argues that (contrary to what many philosophers have thought) an understanding of the mind can and should include both. These are causalism, the idea that causality plays an essential role in our understanding of the mental; and interpretationism, the idea that we can gain an understanding of belief and desire by considering the ascription of attitudes to people on the basis of what they say and do.

Words Without Meaning

Words Without Meaning
Author: Christopher Gauker
Publisher: Christopher Gauker
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262072424

A critique of, and alternative to, the received view of linguistic communication.

Aquinas on Friendship

Aquinas on Friendship
Author: Daniel Schwartz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2007-03
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0199205396

Daniel Schwartz presents and examines the thoughts of the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas on the subject of friendship - the ideal type of relationship that rational beings should cultivate. Using examples from the world of human relationships and politics and highlighting the contemporary relevance of texts that are not readily available to scholars, Schwartz facilitates access to the ideas of this great thinker.

Discrimination and Disrespect

Discrimination and Disrespect
Author: Benjamin Eidelson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2015-11-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191047074

Everyone agrees that discrimination can be a grave moral wrong. Yet this consensus masks fundamental disagreements about what makes something an act of discrimination, as well as precisely why (and hence when) such acts are wrong. In Discrimination and Disrespect, Benjamin Eidelson develops illuminating philosophical answers to these two questions. Discrimination is intrinsically wrong, Eidelson argues, when it manifests disrespect for the personhood of those it disfavours. He offers an original account of what such disrespect amounts to, explaining how attention to two different facets of moral personhood — equality and autonomy — ought to guide our judgments about wrongful discrimination. At the same time, however, Eidelson contends that many forms of discrimination are morally impeachable only on account of their contingent effects. The book concludes with a discussion of the moral arguments against racial profiling — a practice that exemplifies how controversial forms of discrimination can be morally wrong without being intrinsically so.

Robert Spaemann's Philosophy of the Human Person

Robert Spaemann's Philosophy of the Human Person
Author: Holger Zaborowski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2010-02-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199576777

An analysis of the most important features of Robert Spaemann's philosophy. Holger Zaborowski demonstrates the importance of Spaemann's contribution to a number of contemporary debates in philosophy and theology and explains the unity of his thought.