This paper focuses on one of the metaphysical problems for theistic evolution which is the problem of evolutionary transition from one specified substantial form to another. According to the evolutionary account, new substantial forms appear owing to accidental changes in previously existing substances. However, the accidental change may only lead to production of new accidents not entirely new distinct substantial forms. The solutions proposed by modern Thomists head in two directions: One is the reduction of the number of (...) substantial forms ; the other consists of diminishing substantial form altogether. Both proposals stray from classical metaphysics. The evolutionary account of the origin of species ultimately needs to challenge the real existence of species and leads to nominalism. As such it cannot be reconciled with classical metaphysics. (shrink)

This book seeks to read the political thought of classic thinkers of the liberal tradition in the context of their metaphysical and theological writings. Sokolowski demonstrates that the political measures offered by political theorists to remedy the state of unrest and instability are intrinsically connected to their metaphysical conception of order, the self, and the interaction between the two.

This paper presents a distinctively metaphysical version of the problem of other minds. The main source of this version of the problem lies in the principle that, when it comes to consciousness, no distinction can sensibly be drawn between appearance and reality. I will argue that, unless we want to call that principle into question, we should seriously consider the possibility of accepting the conclusion that other minds are not like our own. This option is less problematic than it (...) might seem at first if we are willing to reconceive facts of consciousness as subjective rather than objective in nature. -/- . (shrink)

This book is an introduction to The Metaphysicist, the second Information Philosopher website, a work in progress on some classical questions in philosophy that 20th-century logical positivists and analytic language philosophers dis-solved as pseudo-problems. -/- The Metaphysicist analyzes the information content in twenty classic problems in metaphysics - Abstract Entities, Being and Becoming, Causality, Chance, Change, Coinciding Objects, Composition (Parts and Wholes), Constitution, Free Will or Determinism, God and Immortality, Identity, Individuation, Mind-Body Problem, Modality, Necessity or Contingency, Persistence, (...) Possibility and Actuality, Space and Time, Truth, Universals, Vagueness, and the 20th-century problem of WaveParticle Duality. -/- The Metaphysicist also includes pages on the classic paradoxes and puzzles used for millennia to wrestle with these metaphysical problems The Debtor’s Paradox, Dion and Theon, The Growing Argument, The Infinite Regress, The Problem of the Many, The Ship of Theseus, The Sorites Puzzle, The Statue and the Clay, and Tibbles, the Cat. -/- Information philosophy is a new philosophical methodology that goes “beyond logic and language” to the underlying information structures in the cosmos, in the world, in biological systems, and in the human mind - structures without which logic, language, and science would be impossible. (shrink)

Change according to Heraclitus is the only abiding substance observable in the universe. The implication of this view is that apart from change which remains the only constant thing, there is nothing that is held to be permanent. That is why life though relatively blissful, sooner or later is overtaken by death. Of course, death is always a dread to human conciousness. It is a phenomenon which man has always whished that it not be a reality. It is this facticity (...) and the finitude of life that the writer intends to critically examine in this paper. With the methodological approach of critical reflection, he aimed at achieving the goal of the study which concludes that death is an inescapable phenomenon awaiting every single existent being, though not the end of existence. (shrink)

The understanding of early Buddhist philosophy oscillates between two binary opposed interpretations. On the one hand we find a metaphysical system that hinges on the doctrine of karma and the attempt to exit saṃsāra. Here the Buddha is thought to attain a transcendence that takes place in some indescribable existential or ontological realm. On the other hand we encounter an empirical approach that sees the Buddha as a thinker who denied the credibility of metaphysical speculation and who advocated (...) the relinquishing of philosophical positions, which is grounded in a concrete perception of impermanence and conditionality. There are also many intermediary positions between these two extremes and various formulations... (shrink)

If one does not possess an immaterial and immortal soul, then the prospect of conscious experience after death would appear to depend upon the metaphysical possibility of the resurrection of one’s biological life.[i] By “resurrection,” I don’t mean just the possibility that a dead but still existing and well preserved individual could be brought back to life. My contention is that the human organism can even cease to exist, perhaps as a result of cremation or extensive decay, and yet (...) still can be brought back into existence at a later time. That is, the same organism can live again after a period of nonexistence. However, a number of philosophers, religious and secular, insist that once an individual ceases to exist he does so forever, regardless of whether God or a future technology reassembles his atoms. Their claim is that the resulting human being would be a duplicate, for intermittent existence is impossible - at least for living creatures. In the pages that follow, I aim to establish, not that the dead will be resurrected, but that some of the alleged barriers to such an event are dubious. My contention is that resurrection after a period of nonexistence is not a metaphysically impossible state of affairs. (shrink)

The author of the article analyses the historical and philosophical principles used by B. Russell, L. Couturat, E. Cassirer, H. Heimsoeth, W. Kabitz, B. Jansen, D. Mahnke and others to interpret the relation between logic and metaphysics in the philosophy of G. W. Leibniz. The article proves that the approach of W. Kabitz is a significant regression compared to the approach of E. Cassirer due to the ignoring of Leibniz's contribution to the history of logic, methodology and theory of cognition, (...) as well as due to the too narrow modernised understanding of logic. The author disagrees with the interpretation of B. Jansen, who based Leibniz's philosophy on non-cholastic pre-established harmony. The disadvantage of D. Mahnke's approach is, in the author's opinion, a failure to understand that synthesis for the sake of synthesis can never be creative, and the construction of a universal philosophical system can never be the goal of true philosophical creativity. (shrink)

Despite its enormous practical success, many physicists and philosophers alike agree that the quantum theory is full of contradictions and paradoxes which are difficult to solve consistently. Even after 90 years, the experts themselves still do not all agree what to make of it. The area of disagreement centers primarily around the problem of describing observations. Formally, the so-called quantum measurement problem can be defined as follows: the result of a measurement is a superposition of vectors, each representing the quantity (...) being observed as having one of its possible values. The question that has to be answered is: how this superposition can be reconciled with the fact that in practice we only observe one value. How is the measuring instrument prodded into making up its mind which value it has observed? Among some alternatives to resolve the above QM measurement problem, a very counterintuitive one was suggested by Hugh Everett in his 1955 Princeton dissertation, which was subsequently called the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM (MWI). In this paper we will not discuss all possible scenarios to solve the measurement problem, but we will only shortly discuss Everett’s MWI, because it has led to heated debates on possibility of multiverses, beyond the Universe we live in. We also discuss two alternatives against MWI proposal: (a) the so-called scale symmetry theory, (b) the Maxwell-Dirac isomorphism. In last section, we also discuss shortly MWI hypothesis from philosophical perspective. (shrink)

The standard moral realist response to the charge of “queerness” has been a type of companions in guilt defense. This response asserts that moral properties are no more queer than other abstract properties and since most people accept these other abstract properties into their ontology then they ought to also accept moral properties. Moral realists contend that moral properties face no special problem. In this paper, I argue that moral properties do face a unique problem – the moral realist1 is (...) not able to ac- count for the resemblance between moral properties in ways that the meta- physical realist has accounted for it between non-moral abstract proper- ties. The moral realist shares similar theoretical motivations as the realist about universals (i.e. those who accept other non-moral abstract proper- ties), and they attempt to align themselves with the realist about universals when defending their view against the charge of queerness. To highlight the unique����������������������������������������������������������������� the problem of accounting for resemblance between universals which has been made explicit in the metaphysical debate concerning realism. I then apply this problem to the seemingly parallel metaethical position, moral realism. Lastly, I describe one prominent metaphysical response that has been offered and argue that the moral realist cannot consistently accept this response. Moral properties do face a unique problem when compared with other abstract properties – accounting for the resemblance between ��������������������������������������������������������������������. (shrink)

This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno’s lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno’s own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work Negative Dialectics. Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This basic (...) split, in Adorno’s interpretation, runs right through the history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic. Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought. It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical tradition owes its greatness. The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle’s thought, focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno’s attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in metaphysical experiences, which transcend rational discourse without lapsing into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to which his own thought always aspired. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Adorno’s work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars of philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

Chisholm's theory of freedom implies that a free action necessarily is one that has a certain causal history, Namely one leading back to a brain event (or some similar physiological occurrence) made to happen by the agent. The problem arises of the conceivability of the relation that is supposed to exist, On this theory, Between the agent and the bodily events leading up to his behavior. Furthermore, If it is a contingency whether human beings are sometimes free or always determined, (...) Then chisholm's formulation of the problem of freedom contains an assumption that may be unjustified, Namely that human beings are "responsible agents" in the sense that their free actions necessarily have a certain indeterministic history. It may be an empirical fact that every human action in fact has a sufficient causal condition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMetaphysics has a problem with plurality: in many areas of discourse, there are too many good theories, rather than just one. This embarrassment of riches is a particular problem for metaphysical realists who want metaphysics to tell us the way the world is and for whom one theory is the correct one. A recent suggestion is that we can treat the different theories as being functionally or explanatorily equivalent to each other, even though they differ in content. The aim (...) of this paper is to explore whether the notion of functionally equivalent theories can be extended and utilized in the defence of metaphysical realism, drawing upon themes from structuralism in the philosophies of mathematics and science in which the specifics of theories do not matter as long as the relations in which they stand to other theories are maintained. I argue that despite its initial attractiveness, there are significant difficulties with this proposal. Discovering these obstacles thwarts the realist structuralist project, but reveals interesting features of metaphysical systems. (shrink)

"The Problems of Philosophy series is designed to familiarize the beginning student in philosophy with basic problem in each of the central fields of philosophy: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Aesthetics, and the Philosophy of Religion. Each volume in the series emphasizes the contributions of eight or nine philosophers whose works are both important in their own right and representative of principal positions in philosophy."-Publisher.

Recent years have seen a surge in philosophical work on the rationality of grief. Much of this research is premised on the idea that people tend to grieve much less than would be appropriate or, as it is often called, fitting. My goal in this paper is diagnostic, that is, to articulate two never properly distinguished, and indeed often conflated, arguments in favour of the purported discrepancy between experienced and fitting grief: a metaphysical and a psychological argument. According to (...) the former, grief is rationalized entirely by facts about the past. And because the past is unchangeable, grief can be said to remain forever fitting. According to the latter argument, humans’ emotional resilience causes grief to diminish at a faster rate than would be fitting. Which of these problems we end up facing depends on relatively subtle variations in the characterization of the losses that render grief appropriate. (shrink)

The most fundamental concern of this study is the question of value in the modern world as the phrase "transformation of nihilism" in the title intends to indicate. ;In Part One an interpretation of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy is offered which focuses on the link between his "metaphysical scepticism" and his assessment of the spiritual condition of the modern world under the rubric "nihilism": the disintegration of a sense of meaning and value to human life in the face (...) of the rise of science and the "Copernican Revolution". ;In its general conclusions Part One finds that while Nietzsche had identified with great insight the related problems of truth and value in the modern world, he ultimately failed, due to his abiding "metaphysical scepticism", to take us beyond nihilism to a genuine transformation of our relation to the everyday world of becoming and to human existence in general. ;Part Two offers an interpretation of the whole of Wittgenstein's philosophy centering on his attempt to move beyond metaphysics altogether and engender a new way of looking at the human situation largely without precedent in the Western tradition. It sees in this an "eschatological" impulse somewhat similar to that which animated Nietzsche's philosophical struggle with the phenomenon of nihilism. It examines in this connection Wittgenstein's idea that "a sort of rearrangement of the whole of our language is needed" as well as his serious concern with "the ethical" and "the mystical". ;Part Three draws out the implications of an encounter between Nietzsche's thought of "nihilism" and Wittgenstein's way of looking at the human situation: what may be called its "ontological groundlessness". Suggestions are made that Wittgenstein's notion of the "groundlessness" of the human situation can be used as a pointer beyond philosophy towards a non-cognitive "awareness" of the kind intimated in the writings of some Eastern philosophies. It is suggested that such an "awareness" is the direction in which we must move if we are to reclaim an integrity and value for the everyday dimension of human existence. (shrink)

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Vitalism was long viewed as the most grotesque view in biological theory: appeals to a mysterious life-force, Romantic insistence on the autonomy of life, or worse, a metaphysics of an entirely living universe. In the early twentieth century, attempts were made to present a revised, lighter version that was not weighted down by revisionary metaphysics: " organicism ". And philosophers since the Vienna Circle (Schlick, Frank and later Nagel) criticized Driesch and Bergson's " neovitalism " as a too-strong ontological commitment (...) to the existence of certain entities or " forces ", over and above the system of causal relations studied by mechanistic science, rejecting the weaker form, organicism, as well. But there has been some significant scholarly " push-back " against this orthodox attitude, notably pointing to the 18th-century Montpellier vitalists to show that there are different historical forms of vitalism, including how they relate to mainstream scientific practice (Wolfe and Normandin, eds. 2013). Additionally, some trends in recent biology that run counter to genetic reductionism and the informational model of the gene present themselves as organicist (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000, Moreno and Mossio 2015). Here, we examine some cases of vitalism in the twentieth century and today, not just as a historical form but as a significant metaphysical and scientific model. We argue for vitalism's conceptual originality without either reducing it to mainstream models of science or presenting it as an alternate model of science, by focusing on historical forms of vitalism, logical empiricist critiques thereof and the impact of synthetic biology on current (re-)theorizing of vitalism. (shrink)

In this paper it is highlighted and argued that Boscovich’s natural sciences theory is so deeply rooted in metaphysics and pervaded by it, we can maintain that it is a distinctive example of sharp-­witted, clever and far­-reaching metaphysical natural philosophy. Critically engaging with the unsubstantiated denial of metaphysics and several centuries long attempts to overcome it, I demonstrate that by metaphysical thinking Boscovich arrived at his unique notion of attractive­repulsive force and gained insight into the structure of things, (...) by which he anticipated, among other things, the theory of relativity and quantum physics. Although Boscovich greatly and successfully used quantitative methods while solving problems from geodesy, astronomy, optics, civil engineering statistics, hydraulic engineering and other fields – the most important parts of his natural sciences legacy, which made him transpose several centuries, are supported by geometric intuition and carried out mainly by qualitative methods, that is, metaphysical speculation. Also, I explain how for the creation and development of electromagnetism it was crucial to describe electromagnetic phenomena using Boscovich’s unique law of force and his theory of the structure of matter, what was explicitly stated by the ‘father of electromagnetism’ James Clerk Maxwell. Boscovich would have never reached these ideas by the exact scientific method, only by metaphysically founded and guided ‘proper thinking’. (shrink)

Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s metaphysics dissolves the necessary relationship between immateriality, immortality and thought. While in her youth this leads her to admit the possibility of thinking matter, in her mature work, it allows her to conceive space as non-thinking immaterial substance that links non-thinking material substance and thinking immaterial substance. To ground this conception of space, she draws on the thesis of the great chain of being. However, the possibility of thinking matter is not consistent with the hierarchy of beings, (...) because within this frame matter occupies the lowest place. My aim is to evaluate whether there is any alternative within Trotter's philosophy to solve this contradiction. -/- La metafísica de Catharine Trotter Cockburn disuelve la relación necesaria entre inmaterialidad, inmortalidad y pensamiento. Mientras que en su juventud esto la lleva a admitir la posibilidad de la materia pensante, en su madurez le permite concebir al espacio como sustancia inmaterial no pensante que oficia como eslabón entre la sustancia material no pensante y la sustancia inmaterial pensante. Para ello, apela también a la tesis de la gran cadena del ser. Sin embargo, la posibilidad de la materia pensante no es consistente con la tesis de la jerarquía de seres, porque en ella la materia ocupa el lugar más bajo. Me propongo estudiar si existe alguna alternativa dentro de la filosofía de Trotter que permita resolver esta contradicción. (shrink)

Roger T. Ames begins his contribution to Chenyang Li and Franklin Perkins’ edited volume Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems with this scene from Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, chapter 51: “They [a set of literary articles written for the Eatanswill Gazette] appeared in the form of a copious review of a work on Chinese metaphysics, Sir,” said Pott. “Oh,” observed Mr. Pickwick; “from your pen, I hope?” “From the pen of my critic, Sir,” rejoined Pott, with dignity. “An abstruse subject, (...) I should conceive,” said Mr. Pickwick. “Very, Sir,” responded Pott, looking intensely sage. “He crammed for it, to use a technical but expressive term; he read up for the subject... (shrink)

My thesis in this paper is: the modern concept of laws of motion—qua dynamical laws—emerges in 18th-century mechanics. The driving factor for it was the need to extend mechanics beyond the centroid theories of the late-1600s. The enabling result behind it was the rise of differential equations. -/- In consequence, by the mid-1700s we see a deep shift in the form and status of laws of motion. The shift is among the critical inflection points where early modern mechanics turns into (...) classical mechanics as we know it. Previously, laws of motion had been channels for truth and reference into mechanics. By 1750, the laws lose these features. Instead, now they just assert equalities between functions; and serve just to entail (differential) equations of motion for particular mechanical setups. This creates two philosophical problems. First, it’s unclear what counts as evidence for the laws of motion in the Enlightenment. Second, it’s a mystery whether these laws retain any notion of causality. That subverts the early-modern dictum that physics is a science of causes. (shrink)

Metaphysics is usually taken to be that part of analytical philosophy which offers an account of the most basic and persuasive concepts we use, an inventory and analysis of such fundamental structural features of our world as existence, substance, change and quality. But there is a revisionary as well as a descriptive metaphysics. Some philosophers and theologians have sought to reach beyond these familiar conceptual categories and to extend the scope of human understanding and language. What sort of an intellectual (...) enterprise would that be, and what sort of facts, truths or understanding could it yield? Professor MacKinnon devotes this book to a study of these questions - the nature and possibility of a revisionary metaphysics. (shrink)

In his recent article “Even if the fetus is not a person, abortion is immoral: The Impairment Argument,” Perry Hendricks sets out to sidestep thorny metaphysical questions regarding human fetuses and present a new argument against abortion – if impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome is immoral, then killing the fetus is immoral. Hendricks takes inspiration from Judith Jarvis Thomson’s defense of abortion – that even if fetuses are persons with a right to life, the right to life (...) is not the right to use others, so it is acceptable to induce abortion. Together with Bruce Blackshaw, Hendricks set out to strengthen the impairment argument by appealing to Don Marquis’s future like ours (FLO) account of the wrongness of killing. Here I argue the impairment argument falls short in three ways. First, Hendricks and Blackshaw fail to assume fetuses aren’t persons, broadly construed. Second, they fail to show that impairing a fetus is immoral. Third, they overlook abortions that (merely) let the fetus die. Finally, I argue Thomson’s defense of abortion preempts the significance of the impairment argument; Thomson seems to show that even if killing a fetus is prima facie immoral, women still have the right to induce abortion. (shrink)

This book offers a unique perspective on the philosophical discipline of metaphysics. Hartley Burr Alexander presents his own definitions for key terms and concepts in metaphysical inquiry, challenging traditional approaches and revealing the limitations of language in this complex field of study. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and (...) possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This paper advances a philosophical interpretation of Hegel's Logic as defending a metaphysics, which includes an absolute, itself comparable to God in other systems of metaphysics of interest to Hegel, including Aristotle's and Spinoza's. Two problems are raised which can seem to block the prospects for such a metaphysically inflationary interpretation. The key to resolving these problems is consideration of the kinds of metaphysical priority that Hegel sees in Aristotle. This allows us to build a philosophical model (...) of Hegel's absolute, and to demonstrate how the model fits the argument of Hegel's Logic. Application of this model provides a philosophical explanation of the senses in which Hegel's metaphysics is idealist; he argues that thought is absolute and comparable to God in other systems of metaphysics: thought is both self-determining and metaphysically prior to being. (shrink)

The debate on how to interpret Kant's transcendental idealism has been prominent for several decades now. In his book Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism (2004) Kenneth R. Westphal introduces and defends his version of the metaphysical dual-aspect reading. But his real aim lies deeper: to provide a sound transcendental proof for (unqualified) realism, based on Kant's work, without resorting to transcendental idealism. In this sense his aim is similar to that of Peter F. Strawson – although Westphal's approach is (...) far more sophisticated. First he attempts to show that noumenal causation – on the reality of which his argument partly rests – is coherent in and necessary for Kant's transcendental idealism. Westphal then aims to undermine transcendental idealism by two major claims: Kant can neither account for transcendental affinity nor satisfactorily counter Hume's causal scepticism. Finally Westphal defends his alternative for transcendental idealism by showing that it solves these problems and thus offers a genuine transcendental proof for realism. In this paper I will show that all the three steps outlined above suffer from decisive shortcomings, and that consequently, regardless of its merits, Westphal's transcendental argument for realism remains undemonstrated. (shrink)

The Art Firm explores the seemingly unorthodox alliance of the arts, management, and marketing. Art firms—as avant-garde enterprises and arts corporations—have existed for at least two hundred years, using texts, images, and other types of art to create corporate wealth. This book investigates how to apply the methods artists use in creating value to the methods more traditional managers use in running their businesses. Guillet de Monthoux offers a crash course in aesthetics from Kant to Gadamer, showing how aesthetic management (...) and metaphysical marketing can create value. Using case studies of successful art managers from Richard Wagner to Robert Wilson, the author illustrates the creative role—so central to value-making in contemporary economies—performed by aesthetic play in art firms. Along the way, Guillet de Monthoux points out how responsible aesthetic management and marketing can eradicate the problems of banality and totality, the two capital sins of an art-based economy. (shrink)

This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno's lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno's own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work _Negative Dialectics._ Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This basic (...) split, in Adorno's interpretation, runs right through the history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic. Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought. It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical tradition owes its greatness. The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle's thought, focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno's attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in metaphysical experiences, which transcend rational discourse without lapsing into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to which his own thought always aspired. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Adorno's work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars of philosophy and social theory. (shrink)