The Actual and the Possible

The Actual and the Possible
Author: Mark Sinclair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2017
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0198786433

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.

Actual Minds, Possible Worlds

Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Author: Jerome S. BRUNER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0674029011

Drawing on recent work in literary theory, linguistics, and symbolic anthropology, as well as cognitive and developmental psychology Professor Bruner examines the mental acts that enter into the imaginative creation of possible worlds, and he shows how the activity of imaginary world making undergirds human science, literature, and philosophy, as well as everyday thinking, and even our sense of self. - Publisher.

The Possible and the Actual

The Possible and the Actual
Author: Michael J. Loux
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1979
Genre: First philosophy
ISBN: 9780801491788

This well-chosen collection of fifteen important essays in the fields of philosophical logic and metaphysics addresses questions relating to the nature and status of possible worlds.

Actual Causality

Actual Causality
Author: Joseph Y. Halpern
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2016-08-12
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262035022

Explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression.

On Knowing

On Knowing
Author: Jerome Seymour Bruner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1979
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780674635258

The left hand has traditionally represented the powers of intuition, feeling, and spontaneity. In this classic book, Jerome Bruner inquires into the part these qualities play in determining how we know what we do know; how we can help others to know--that is, to teach; and how our conception of reality affects our actions and is modified by them. The striking and subtle discussions contained in On Knowing take on the core issues concerning man's sense of self: creativity, the search for identity, the nature of aesthetic knowledge, myth, the learning process, and modern-day attitudes toward social controls, Freud, and fate. In this revised, expanded edition, Bruner comments on his personal efforts to maintain an intuitively and rationally balanced understanding of human nature, taking into account the odd historical circumstances which have hindered academic psychology's attempts in the past to know man. Writing with wit, imagination, and deep sympathy for the human condition, Jerome Bruner speaks here to the part of man's mind that can never be completely satisfied by the right-handed virtues of order, rationality, and discipline.

Candide

Candide
Author: By Voltaire
Publisher: BookRix
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2019-06-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3736801785

Candide is a French satire by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply Optimism) by his mentor, Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Candide is characterized by its sarcastic tone, as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As philosophers of Voltaire's day contended with the problem of evil, so too does Candide in this short novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers through allegory; most conspicuously, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism. As expected by Voltaire, Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté. However, with its sharp wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition, the novel has since inspired many later authors and artists to mimic and adapt it. Today, Candide is recognized as Voltaire's magnum opus and is often listed as part of the Western canon; it is arguably taught more than any other work of French literature. It was listed as one of The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written.

Leibniz and Kant

Leibniz and Kant
Author: Brandon C. Look
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2021
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199606366

Although it is common to see Kant's philosophy as at its core a reaction to (and partial rejection of) the dogmatism and rationalism of Leibniz, Wolff, and their followers, it is surprising how little detailed and critical study there has been of the relation between Leibniz and Kant. How did Kant understand Leibniz's philosophy? Did he correctly understand Leibniz's philosophy? Since only a portion of Leibniz's philosophical writings were published prior to Kant's critical period, is there a "true Leibniz" that Kant did not know? Are all of Kant's criticisms of Leibniz in particular and Leibnizian rationalism in general justified? Or does Leibniz have an answer to Kant's philosophy? Moreover, how should we understand the reception of Leibniz's philosophy in 18th-century Enlightenment Germany? Leibniz and Kant seeks to examine the relation between Leibniz and Kant by collecting essays written by some of the leading scholars of the history of modern philosophy, all of whom have in common a deep knowledge of both philosophers. This anthology further aims to create a dialogue between scholars of early modern philosophy and Kantians and to fill a lacuna in historical and philosophical scholarship. The essays contained here address fundamental questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical theology in Leibniz and Kant and address Kant's understanding and interpretation of his philosophical predecessor.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible
Author: Peter Pomerantsev
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2014-11-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610394569

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the wild and bizarre heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system. Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.