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| A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE : Toward a Phenomenological Explanation [Tommaso Piazza] The book sets out to analyse the notion of a priori justification and of a priori knowledge. The most influential explanations of the a priori within the contemporary analytic tradition are analysed. It is shown that the theories which group around the notion of implicit definition ultimately entail that the propositions which can be known a priori are to be analysed along conventionalist lines. It is argued that the notion of objective a priori knowledge requires a commitment to the existence of a faculty which is the source of and justifies that kind of knowledge. The existence and functioning of this faculty cannot be explained within a strictly naturalistic set of constraints. Attention to the phenomenology of justification (validation) both of observational and purportedly a priori statements however reveals that the naturalistic demands are based on an asymmetry thesis among perception (and credited genuine sources of justification) and rational insight which is false. Therefore it is argued that a corresponding symmetry thesis must be accepted, according to which rational insight should be regarded as a justification-conferring faculty. In the final part of the book it is argued that Husserl's conception of the analytic/synthetic distinction, and of concept constitution, allow for an objective interpretation both of analytic and synthetic a priori knowledge. { 194pp, 150x210mm, October 2006; HB, £76.50, 3937202927:9783937202921 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ACQUAINTANCE, ONTOLOGY, & KNOWLEDGE : Collected Essays in Ontology [Fred Wilson] These essays bring together forty years of work in ontology. Intentionality, negation, universals, bare particulars, tropes, general facts, relations, the myth of the 'myth of the given', are among the topics covered. Bergmann, Quine, Sellars, Russell, Wittgenstein, Hume, Bradley, Hochberg, Dummett, Frege, Plato, are among the philosophers discussed. The essays criticise non-Humean notions of cause; they criticise the notion that besides simple atomic facts there are also negative facts and general facts. They defend a realism of properties as universals, against nominalism; bare particulars; a (qualified) realism with regard to logical form; a Russellian account of relations; and an account of minds and intentionality, which is opposed to materialism, but is also a form of (methodological) behaviourism. In general, the ontology is one of logical atomism and empiricist throughout, rooted in a Principle of Acquaintance. { 726pp, 150x210mm, June 2007; HB, £144.99, 3938793589:9783938793589 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ACTIONS, PRODUCTS, & THINGS : Brentano & Polish Philosophy [Arkadiusz Chrudzimski & Dariusz Lukasiewicz (eds)] For a long time Franz Brentano has been widely perceived almost exclusively as the re-discoverer of intentionality and the founder of the continental phenomenology. It was only during the last 30 years that his immense importance for the development of analytic philosophy (and also the arbitrariness of the very division between analytic and continental philosophy) became clear. This volume is devoted to Brentano's influence on the Polish Analytic Philosophy better known under the name of: Lvov-Warsaw School. Contributors: Arianna Betti (Amsterdam), Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (Szczecin and Salzburg), Dale Jacquette (Pennsylvania), Dariusz Lukasiewicz (Bydgoszcz), Maria van der Schaar (Leiden), Peter Simons (Leeds), Barry Smith (Buffalo and Saarbrücken), Jan Wolenski (Cracow). { 237pp, 150x210mm, March 2006; HB, £71.99, 3938793066:9783938793060 , Ontos Verlag } |
| AFTER WHITEHEAD : Rescher on Process Metaphysics [Michel Weber (ed); Series Editors Nicholas Rescher, Johanna Seibt & Michel Weber] When Rescher's Process Metaphysics (1996) was published, it was widely acclaimed as a major step towards the academic recognition of a 'mode of thought' that has otherwise been confined within sharp scholarly boundaries. Of course it is not an easy book: despite its stylistic clarity, it remains the complex outcome of a life's work in most areas of philosophy. The goal of the present volume is to systematically unfold the vices and virtues of Process Metaphysics, and thereby to specify the contemporary state of affairs in process thought. To do so, the editor has gathered one focused contribution per chapter, each paper addressing specifically and explicitly its assigned chapter and seeking to promote a dialogue with Rescher. In addition, the volume features Rescher's replies to the papers. REVIEW: "Whenever Nicholas Rescher writes, philosophers take note. This volume bears witness to that fact. Its essays not only engage Rescher's wrestling with Alfred North Whitehead and process metaphysics in helpful ways but also make distinctive and instructive contributions of their own. This book advances the development of an important and lively philosophical tradition...". -- John K Roth, Edward J Sexton Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College, USA. { 338pp, 150x210mm, June 2004; HB, £80.99, 3937202498:9783937202495 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD : De lalgèbre universelle à la théologie naturelle [François Beets, Michel Dupuis & Michel Weber] Text in French. Les 31 mai, 1er et 2 juin 2006, la Faculté de Théologie de l'Université catholique de Louvain a organisé, en collaboration avec le Centre de philosophie pratique Chromatiques whiteheadiennes, un colloque international consacré à la pensée d'Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). Les échanges ont privilégié les aspects les plus actuels d'une pensée apte à rencontrer les défis contemporains. Rejoindre l'actualité de Whitehead tant en science et en philosophie qu'en théologie suppose de pratiquer une interdisciplinarité qui est au coeur de ses intuitions. Le dialogue entre scientifiques, philosophes et théologiens a permis d'apporter des précisions importantes sur la manière whiteheadienne d'appréhender les sphères en interaction de la religion, de la science et de la politique. { 378pp, 150x220mm, April 2005; HB, £71.99, 3937202641:9783937202648 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD'S SCIENCE & THE MODERN WORLD : Proceedings of the Second International 'Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes' Conference [François Beets, Michel Dupuis & Michel Weber (eds)] The second international 'Chromatiques whiteheadiennes' conference was devoted exclusively to the exegesis and contextualization of Whitehead's Science and the Modern World (1925). In order to elucidate the meaning and significance of this epoch-making work, the Proceedings are designed to form a 'companion' volume. With one paper devoted to each of its thirteen chapters, the Proceedings aim, on the one hand, to identify the specific contribution of each chapter to Whitehead's own research program -- that is to say, to put its categories into perspective by means of an internal analysis -- and, on the other hand, to identify its global impact in the history of ideas. { 447pp, 155x215mm, March 2006; HB, £89.50, 3938793074:9783938793077 , Ontos Verlag } |
| APPLIED ONTOLOGY : An Introduction [Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds)] Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together. This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called 'ontologies', for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare. Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another. They are often idiosyncratically structured, accessible only to those who created them, and unable to serve as inputs for automated reasoning. This volume shows, in a non-technical way and using examples from medicine and biology, how the rigorous application of theories and insights from philosophical ontology can improve the ontologies upon which information management depends. Katherine Munn is a former researcher for the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science and is currently reading for a PhD in philosophy at Oxford University. Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology. He is the author of some 450 scientific publications on ontology and related topics. Currently, the primary focus of his research is the application of ontology in biomedicine and biomedical informatics. { 342pp, 150x210mm, June 2008; HB, £89.50, 3938793988:9783938793985 , Ontos Verlag } |
| APPLIED PROCESS THOUGHT I : Initial Explorations in Theory & Research [Dr Mark Dibben & Professor Thomas Kelly (eds)] Concentrating mainly on the process philosophy developed by Alfred North Whitehead, this series of essays brings together some of the newest developments in the application of process thinking to the physical and social sciences. These essays, by established scholars in the field, demonstrate how a wider and deeper understanding of the world can be obtained using process philosophical concepts, how the distortions and blockages inevitably inherent in substantivist talk can be set aside, and how new and fertile lines of research in the sciences can be opened as a result. { 389pp, 155x215mm, February 2008; HB, £89.50, 3938793759:9783938793756 , Ontos Verlag } |
| AUSTRIAN PHENOMENOLOGY : Brentano, Husserl, Meinong & Others on Mind & Object [Robin D Rollinger] While many of the phenomenological currents in philosophy allegedly utilise a peculiar method, the type under consideration here is characterised by Franz Brentano's ambition to make philosophy scientific by adopting no other method but that of natural science. Brentano became particularly influential in teaching his students (such as Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, and Edmund Husserl) his descriptive psychology, which is concerned with mind as intentionally directed at objects. As Brentano and his students continued in their investigations in descriptive psychology, another side of Austrian phenomenology, namely object theory, became more and more prominent. The philosophical orientation under consideration in this collection of essays is accordingly a two-sided discipline, concerned with both mind and objects, and applicable to various areas of philosophy such as epistemology, philosophy of language, value theory, and ontology. { 326pp, 150x210mm, September 2008; HB, £89.50, 3868380051:9783868380057 , Ontos Verlag } |
| AUTOBIOGRAPHY [Nicholas Rescher] Nicholas Rescher was born in Germany in 1928 and emigrated to the United States shortly before the outbreak of World War II. After training in philosophy at Princeton University he embarked on a long and active career as professor, lecturer, and writer. His many books on a wide variety of philosophical topics have established him as one of the most productive and versatile contributors to 20th century philosophical thought, combining historical and analytical investigators to articulate an amalgam of German idealism with American pragmatism. The book accordingly has two dimensions, both as a contribution to German-American cultural interaction and as a contribution to the history of philosophical ideas. { 342pp, 155x215mm, July 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793597:9783938793596 , Ontos Verlag } |
| BAS VAN FRAASSEN : The Fortunes of Empiricism [Andreas Berg-Hildebrand & Christian Suhm (eds)] Without doubt Bas C. van Fraassen is among the most distinguished and celebrated philosophers of science of our days. His fields of expertise range from logic and semantics to epistemology and philosophy of physics. Several of his monographs belong to the standard literature of these disciplines. It was already in 1980 when his The Scientific Image brilliantly entered the philosophical scene. Especially the exposition of constructive empiricism, van Fraassen’s favoured philosophy of science as well as his alternative to scientific realism, launched an intensive and highly controversial debate on the aim and status of science which has not at all been settled up to now. In his Terry Lectures at Yale University (published as The Empirical Stance in 2002) Bas van Fraassen gave a comprehensive account of what he deems to be cogent answers to the questions of what empiricism is and what it could be. In due distance to the self-defeating fundamentalist projects of logical empiricism he envisaged empiricism as a stance, as opposed to a factual thesis. From his point of view it is the recurrent rebellion against metaphysics and the admiration for science that characterises the empiricists’ stance and buttresses their philosophical arguments. It is beyond doubt that the prospects of empiricism today are intimately related to Bas van Fraassen and his work. REVIEW: "Participation in the Münstersche Vorlesungen zur Philosophie 2005 was an honour and a genuine intellectual pleasure for me. The symposium, with all its contributions by the Münster faculty and students, was a wonderfully valuable experience. I can hardly do justice to its spirit of free discussion, or adequately express my thanks, by these short replies. But I think that they will testify clearly to the stimulation the symposium provided and to how much I learned from this exchange." -- Bas van Fraassen. { 171pp, 150x210mm, May 2006; PB, £22.99, 3938793147:9783938793145 , Ontos Verlag } |
| BASHO OF ECONOMICS : An Intercultural Analysis of the Process of Economics [Silja Graupe; Translated & Introduced by Roger Gathman] In the parlance of modern Japanese philosophy, the term Basho denotes a field of experience underlying all conceptions of reality, while remaining itself conceptually ungraspable. The Basho of Economics, then, refers to the economy's hidden experiential ground, which has never been explicitly scrutinised, as such, by mainstream economics. We uncover this ground by discerning the tacit presuppositions of classical and neo-classical theories from the perspective of modern Japanese philosophy. In particular, we draw attention to the traditional atomist assumptions implicit in their equilibrium-centred models. By breaking through these assumptions, we reconstruct the economy as a functional and relational world of habitual and creative activity outside of the scope of mechanical laws. REVIEW: "Intercultural thought is not only about finding similarities between cultures, but de-familiarising cultural patterns -- making us see again realities that have become so habitual to us that they have faded into the material of our everyday lives. Graupe, by using Japanese thinking as a tool to unlock one of the truly central Western patterns of thought since the beginning of modernity, opens us not only to the surprising reality of the Other, but to the process by which we have become who we are." -- From the foreword by Roger Gathman. { 325pp, 150x210mm, May 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793082:9783938793084 , Ontos Verlag } |
| BASIC BELIEF & BASIC KNOWLEDGE : Papers in Epistemology [René van Woudenberg, Sabine Roeser, Ron Rood (eds)] Over the last two decades foundationalism has been severely criticised. In response to this various alternatives to it have been advanced, notably coherentism. At the same time new versions of foundationalism were crafted, that were claimed to be immune to the earlier criticisms. This volume contains 12 papers in which various aspects of this dialectic are covered. A number of papers continue the trend to defend foundationalism, and foundationalism's commitment to basic beliefs and basic knowledge, against various attacks. Others aim to show that one important objection against coherentism, viz. that the notion of 'coherence' is too vague to be useful, can be countered. Next to these more general issues related to foundationalism, a number of papers deal with much more specific topics. First, various papers deal with mathematical knowledge, and with the problems attached to the idea of basic mathematical knowledge -- problems that derive in part from Benacerraf's work. Second, various papers deal with Plantinga's notion of 'properly basic belief', criticising it and at the same time proposing improvements on it. Finally there are papers that deal with the problems of basicality in moral knowledge, testimony, and proprioperception. { 292pp, 150x210mm, January 2005; HB, £80.99, 3937202706:9783937202709 , Ontos Verlag } |
| BEING & VALUE : & Other Philosophical Essays [Nicholas Rescher] "Being and Value" collects together fifteen essays by Nicholas Rescher on salient issue in metaphysics, axiology and metaphilosophy. In the way in which they shed new light on significant philosophical issues, these deliberations are emblematic of Rescher's characteristic way of illuminating timeless issues and historical perspectives in a reciprocal interrelationship. { 211pp, 150x210mm, February 2008; HB, £71.99, 3938793880:9783938793886 , Ontos Verlag } |
| BELIEF & MEANING : Essays at the Interface [Wolfram Hinzen & Hans Rott (eds)] Belief and Meaning have often been thought to be intimately related. Typically, there is a correlation between the meaning of a sentence which is uttered and the content of the attitude that the speaker thereby conveys. This is also why the sentence can be used to specify this content in an attribution of the attitude to the speaker. From the perspective of a theory of semantic content, thus, there is a level of description where mental states and sentences can be said to share a content or meaning. Maybe, though, belief and (sentence) meaning have to be kept apart conceptually, theoretically, and methodologically. Thus it could be that meaning is an internalist notion which can be accounted for purely linguistically (or even non-intentionally altogether), while the same may not be true of belief. The volume brings together researchers from various areas in philosophy as well as linguistics to address these questions. Issues dealt with include the Davidsonian thesis of the necessary interlocking of belief and meaning, the naturalisability of intentional content in general, externalism versus internalism, the connection of meaning and grammar, the role of meaning in a general theory of inquiry, the normativity of meaning, and analyticity. Contributors are Akeel Bilgrami, Michael Esfeld, Wolfram Hinzen, Max Kolbel, Isaac Levi, Diego Marconi, James McGilvray, Olaf Muller, Paul Pietroski and Norbert Hornstein, Sebastian Rodl, and Alberto Voltolini. { 252pp, 155x215mm, October 2001; HB, £52.99, 3937202056:9783937202051 , Ontos Verlag } |
| BODY, MIND AND SELF IN HUME'S CRITICAL REALISM [Fred Wilson] This essay proposes that Hume's non-substantialist bundle account of minds is basically correct. The concept of a person is not a metaphysical notion but a forensic one, that of a being who enters into the moral and normative relations of civil society. A person is a bundle but it is also a structured bundle. Hume's metaphysics of relations is argued must be replaced by a more adequate one such as that of Russell, but beyond that Hume's account is essentially correct. In particular it is argued that it is one's character that constitutes one's identity; and that sympathy and the passions of pride and humility are central in forming and maintaining one's character and one's identity as a person. But also central is one's body: a person is an embodied consciousness: the notion that one's body is essential to one's identity is defended at length. Various concepts of mind and consciousness are examined -- for example, neutral monism and intentionality -- and also the concept of privacy and our inferences to other minds. { 540pp, 150x210mm, February 2008; HB, £126.50, 3938793791:9783938793794 , Ontos Verlag } |
| C D BROAD'S ONTOLOGY OF MIND [L Nathan Oaklander] C. D. Broad's writing on various philosophical issues spans more than half a century. Rather than attempt to trace the development of his thought throughout these fifty years this book considers his most representative work, namely, The Mind and Its Place in Nature. Nor does the scope of this study encompass the whole of that book, but only some of the issues he discusses in it. Specifically, Oaklander considers what Broad has to say about such fundamental issues as substance, universals, relations, space, time, and intentionality in the contexts of perception, memory and introspection. { 105pp, 150x210mm, December 2005; HB, £35.50, 3937202978:9783937202976 , Ontos Verlag } |
| CHURCH'S THESIS AFTER 70 YEARS [Adam Olszewski, Jan Wolenski & Robert Janusz (eds)] Church's Thesis (CT) was first published by Alonzo Church in 1935. CT is a proposition that identifies two notions: an intuitive notion of a effectively computable function defined in natural numbers with the notion of a recursive function. Despite of the many efforts of prominent scientists, Church's Thesis has never been falsified. There exists a vast literature concerning the thesis. The aim of the book is to provide one volume summary of the state of research on Church's Thesis. These include the following: different formulations of CT; CT and intuitionism; CT and intentional mathematics; CT and physics; the epistemic status of CT; CT and philosophy of mind; provability of CT; and CT and functional programming. { 551pp, 150x210mm, June 2006; HB, £117.50, 3938793090:9783938793091 , Ontos Verlag } |
| COLLECTED WORKS, REALISM : A Critique of Brentano & Meinong [Gustav Bergmann; Edited by Erwin Tegtmeier; Series Editors Rafael Hüntelmann, Erwin Tegtmeier & Käthe Trettin] Realism is one of the most important philosophical books of the second half of the 20th century because of its metaphysical sophistication and the great progress it brings to the development of a form of direct realism that follows Brentano and Meinong. Bergmann's direct realism is systematic. It is thus set apart from the sketches of philosophical positions that are typically found in analytic philosophy. The book investigates the two alternative kinds of ontology, reistic and fact ontologies, and shows how the former kind leads to representationalism and idealism. In great detail it exposes the inner logic and the difficulties of representationalism and reconstructs the ontologies of Brentano and Meinong and their ensuing theories of knowledge. The question of how far they managed to overcome representationalism is a focus of the work. { 458pp, 150x215mm, April 2004; HB, £90.99, 3937202404:9783937202402 , Ontos Verlag } |
| COLLECTED WORKS, SELECTED PAPERS 1 [Gustav Bergmann] Bergmann's early philosophical work concerned the foundations of psychology and physics (topics were e.g. the behaviorist J B Watson, operationism, psychoanalysis, psychological measurement, psychophysics, emergence and quantum physics). Bergmann was born in Vienna in 1906. After finishing the Gymnasium he registered at the University of Vienna. Before he took a Ph.D. in mathematics with a minor in philosophy in 1928, he had already been invited along with his Gymnasium classmate Kurt Godel to join the Vienna Circle, where he was especially influenced by Schlick, Waismann and Carnap. In 1929-30 Bergmann taught mathematics at a Realschule in Vienna and in the following year he went to Berlin to work as assistant of Einstein together with W. Mayer his dissertation director. Discouraged by the discrimination against Jews at German and Austrian universities Bergmann returned to Vienna to study law. He took a JD and went into a firm of corporation lawyers. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 Bergmann emigrated to the United States with financial assistance from Circle Member Otto Neurath. In 1939 he obtained an appointment at the University of Iowa as an assistant to the psychologist Kurt Lewin. He was employed to develop a mathematical representation of Lewin's psychological field theory. In 1940 Bergmann became assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, and in 1950 full professor of philosophy and psychology. During the 1960s and 1970s Bergmann had a major impact on contemporary philosophy and contemporary issues in the philosophy and methodology of psychology, attracting brilliant students who went on to teach in philosophy and psychology departments of leading universities of the United States. Bergmann and his philosophy students and followers were sometimes referred to as " The Iowa School" or " The Iowa Realists". It brought national and international status to a small philosophy department of a middle-sized midwestern university. From 1967-68 he served as president of the American Philosophical Association (Western Division) and in 1972 he was awarded the first named professorship in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Iowa as Carver Professor. Bergmann retired in 1974 and died in 1987. { 350pp, 155x215mm, January 2003; HB, £89.99, 393720217X:9783937202174 , Ontos Verlag } |
| COLLECTED WORKS, SELECTED PAPERS 2 [Gustav Bergmann] The large majority of the papers in the present volume were collected by Bergmann under the title "Logic and Reality" which indicates the theme of an ontological foundation for logic or of an ontological analysis of analyticity. Actually, the theme is to be found in almost all of the papers of this volume. When Quine published his attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction, Bergmann defended it vehemently. In contrast to Carnap whom Quine criticised Bergmann takes "analytic" in the narrow sense of "logical truth". However, he later extended the area of the analytic a by including truths (falsehoods) expressing the intentional connection between mental states and the facts they purportedly intend. As can be gathered from Selected Papers I Bergmann is a dualist and became more and more interested in intentionality. Another element of the world's form usually not recognised and discovered by Bergmann is the exemplification tie or exemplification nexus which connects individuals and relational and non-relational universals. Intentionality and exemplification are brought together by Bergmann with logical conjunction and disjunction which he considers as connections in reality and not mere symbols. Moreover, Bergmann offers ontological assays of negation and quantification, of variables and their order. Bergmann holds that the recognition of the logical and categorial form of the world including the intentional connection is crucial to arrive at a tenable epistemological realism. { 350pp, 155x215mm, November 2003; HB, £89.99, 3937202277:9783937202273 , Ontos Verlag } |
| COMPOSITIONALITY OF MEANING & CONTENT, VOLUME 1 : Foundational Issues [Markus Werning, Edouard Machery & Gerhard Schurz (eds)] Representational systems such as language, mind or brain exhibit a structure that is widely assumed to be compositional, i.e. the semantic value of complex representations is determined by the semantic values of their parts. Dating back to the late 19th century, the principle of compositionality has regained wide attention recently. Since the way the principle has been dealt with differs largely across the disciplines, the aim of the two volumes is to conjoin the diverging approaches. They assemble a collection of original papers that cover the topic of compositionality from virtually all perspectives of interest in the contemporary debate. The well chosen international list of authors includes psychologist, neuroscientist, computer scientist, linguists and philosophers. { 309pp, 150x210mm, August 2005; HB, £71.99, 3937202528:9783937202525 , Ontos Verlag } |
| COMPOSITIONALITY OF MEANING & CONTENT, VOLUME 2 : Applications to Linguistics, Psychology & Neuroscience [Edouard Machery, Markus Werning, & Gerhard Schurz (eds)] Representational systems such as language, mind and perhaps even the brain exhibit a structure that is often assumed to be compositional. That is, the semantic value of a complex representation is determined by the semantic value of its parts and the way they are put together. Dating back to the late 19th century, the principle of compositionality has regained wide attention recently. Since the principle has been dealt with very differently across disciplines, the aim of the two volumes is to bring together the diverging approaches. They assemble a collection of original papers that cover the topic of compositionality from virtually all perspectives of interest in the contemporary debate. The well-chosen international list of authors includes psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, linguists, and philosophers. The second volume is devoted to issues of compositionality that arouse in the sciences of language, the investigation of the mind, and the modelling of representational brain functions. How could compositional languages evolve? How many sentences are needed to learn a compositional language? How does compositionality relate to the interpretation of texts, the generation of idioms and metaphors, and the understanding of aberrant expressions? What psychological mechanism underlies the combination of complex concepts? And finally, what neuronal structure can possibly realize a compositional system of mental representations? { 312pp, 150x210mm, November 2005; HB, £76.50, 3937202536:9783937202532 , Ontos Verlag } |
| CONSCIOUSNESS, REALITY & VALUE : Essays in Honour of T L S Sprigge [Pierfrancesco Basile & Leemon B McHenry (eds)] Timothy Sprigge has been a major player on the philosophical scene contributing to discussions as diverse as consciousness, the ontology of time, personal identity, animal rights, punishment, censorship and wider issues in metaphysics, ethics and the history of philosophy. He is, however, less well known for his own highly original system of metaphysics and ethics. a synthesis of Absolute Idealism, panpsychism and utilitarianism. The contributions gathered in this volume, written by philosophers of international reputation or by acknowledged scholars in their specialised fields of inquiry, engage themes in his metaphysics and ethics and provide a critical assessment of his ideas and arguments. In a concluding essay, Sprigge answers the most significant objections raised by his critics: the final result is an engaging dialogue on the perennial and most fundamental questions of philosophy. { 331pp, 150x210mm, July 2007; HB, £89.50, 3938793716:9783938793718 , Ontos Verlag } |
| COSMOS & COGNITION : Studies in Greek Philosophy [Nicholas Rescher] The six studies comprising this volume deal with some fundamental issues in early Greek thought: cosmic evaluation in Anaximander, the theory of opposites from the Pre-Socratics to Plato and Aristotle, thought experimentation in Pre-Socratic thought, the origins of Greek Scepticism among the Sophisists, the prehistory of 'Buridan's Ass' speculation, and the role of esthesis in Aristotle's theory of science. In each case the early discussion seeks to show how certain ideas bore unexpected fruit during the subsequent development of philosophical thought. { 132pp, 150x210mm, March 2005; HB, £52.99, 393720265X:9783937202655 , Ontos Verlag } |
| CULTURES. CONFLICT -- ANALYSIS -- DIALOGUE : Proceedings of the 29th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria 2006 [Christian Kanzian & Edmund Runggaldier (eds)] What can systematic philosophy contribute to come from conflict between cultures to a substantial dialogue? This question was the general theme of the 29th international symposium of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society in Kirchberg. Worldwide leading philosophers accepted the invitation to come to the conference, whose results are published in this volume. The sections are dedicated to the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Logics and Philosophy of Language, Decision- and Action Theory, Ethical Aspects of the Intercultural Dialogue, Intercultural Dialogue, and last not least to Social Ontology. Our edition include (among others) contributions by Peter Hacker, Jennifer Hornsby, John Hyman, Michael Kober, Richard Rorty, Hans Rott, Gerhard Schurz, Barry Smith, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Franz Wimmer and Kwasi Wiredu. { 431pp, 150x210mm, May 2007; HB, £53.99, 393879366X:9783938793664 , Ontos Verlag } |
| DAVID GAUTHIERS MORALISCHER KONTRAKTUALISMUS : Eine kritische Analyse [Raffael Iturrizaga] Rationalität hat religiöse und andere metaphysisch anspruchsvolle Größen in ihrer ehemals privilegierten Stellung als Begründungsinstanzen in der Moralphilosophie abgelöst. David Gauthier hat mit MORALS BY AGREEMENT hier für den moralischen Kontraktualismus die bisher am besten elaborierte Theorie vorgelegt, die auch die Methoden der modernen Entscheidungs- und Spieltheorie einbezieht. Die zentrale Herausforderung besteht in dem Erbringen des Nachweises, dass es in einer Gesellschaft mit ungleicher Machtverteilung für alle Personen rational ist, einen Kooperationsvertrag einzugehen, der von Anfangsbedingungen der Gleichheit ausgeht. Iturrizaga stellt in seiner tief greifenden kritischen Analyse diesen Nachweis in Frage und liefert dabei zugleich eine umfassende Darstellung der Theorie Gauthiers. { 367pp, 155x215mm, February 2007; HB, £89.50, 3938793600:9783938793602 , Ontos Verlag } |
| DIALECTICS : A Classical Approach to Inquiry [Nicholas Rescher] Few ideas have played a more continuously prominent role throughout the history of philosophy than that of dialectic, which has figured on the philosophical agenda from the time of the Presocratics. The present book explores the philosophical promise of dialectic, especially in its dialogical version associated with disputation, debate, and rational controversy. The book's deliberations examine what lessons can be drawn to exhibit the utility of dialectical proceedings for the theory of knowledge in reminding us that the building-up of knowledge is an interpersonally interactive enterprise subject to communal standards. { 200pp, 150x210mm, September 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793767:9783938793763 , Ontos Verlag } |
| EPISTEMIC PRAGMATISM : & Other Studies in the Theory of Knowledge [Nicholas Rescher] The core of pragmatism lies in the concept of functional efficacy -- of utility in short. And epistemic pragmatism accordingly focuses on the utility of our devices and practices in relation to the aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise -- answering questions, resolving puzzlement, guiding action. The present book revolves around this theme. All papers in this book bear on epistemological topics which have preoccupied Nicholas Rescher for many years. Much as with the thematic structure of this book, this interest expanded from an initial concern with the exact sciences, to encompass the epistemology of the human sciences, and ultimately the epistemology of philosophy itself. { 174pp, 150x210mm, July 2008; HB, £62.99, 3868380035:9783868380033 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ESSAIS SUR LES FONDEMENTS DE L'ONTOLOGIE DU PROCÈS. : Traduction de l'anglais et introduction par Michel Weber [Nicholas Rescher] Text in French. Les présents essais constituent un texte essentiel pour comprendre les enjeux de la philosophie du procès. Nicholas Rescher (1928-) s'y attache non seulement à préciser la profondeur historique (grecque et moderne), spéculative (essentiellement anti-substantialiste) et conceptuelle (les fondements catégoriels) de la pensée du procès, mais il en développe les conséquences aux niveaux épistémologique, anthropologique et métaphysique avant d'interroger -- toujours à l'aune du procès -- la cohérence du projet philosophique lui-même. { 283pp, 150x210mm, January 2007; HB, £80.99, 3938793163:9783938793169 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ESSAYS ON REALIST INSTANCE ONTOLOGY & ITS LOGIC : Predication, Structure, & Identity [Donald W Mertz] Structure or system is a ubiquitous and uneliminable feature of all our experience and theory, and requires an ontological analysis. The essays collected in this volume provide an account of structure founded upon the proper analysis of polyadic relations as the irreducible and defining elements of structure. It is argued that polyadic relations are ontic predicates in the insightful sense of intension-determined agent-combinators, monadic properties being the limiting and historically misleading case. This assay of ontic predicates has a number of powerful explanatory implications, including fundamentally: providing ontology with a principium individuationis, demonstrating the perennial theory that properties and relations are individuated as unit attributes or 'instances', giving content to the ontology of facts or states of affairs, and providing a means to precisely differentiate identity from indiscernibility. The differentiation of the unrepeatable combinatorial and repeatable intention aspects of ontic predicates makes it possible to properly diagnose and disarm the classis Bradley Regress Argument aimed against attributes and universals, an argument that trades on confusing these aspects. It is argued that these two aspects of ontic predicates form a 'composite simple', an explanation that sheds light on the nature and necessity of the medieval formal distinction, e.g., the distinctio formalis a parte rei of Scotus. Following from this analysis of ontic predication there is given a number of principles delineating realist instance ontology, together with a critique of both nominalistic trope theory and modern revivals of Aristotle's instance ontology of the Categories. It is shown how the resulting theory of facts can, via 'horizontal' and 'vertical' composition, account for all the hierarchical structuring of our experience and theory, and, importantly, how this can rest upon an atomic ontic level composed of only dependent ontic predicates. The latter is a desideratum for the proposed 'Structural Realism' ontology for micro-physics where at its lowest level the physical is said to be totally relational/structural. Nullified is the classic and insidious assumption that dependent entities presuppose a class of independent substrata or 'substances', and with this any pressure to admit 'bare particulars' and intensionless relations or 'ties'. The logic inherent in realist instance ontology -- termed 'PPL' -- is formalized in detail and given a consistency proof. Demonstrated is the logic's power to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate impredicative definitions, and in this how it provides a general solution to the classic self-referential paradoxes. PPL corresponds to Gödel's programmatic 'Theory of Concepts'. The last essay, not previously published, provides a detailed differentiation of identity from indiscernibility, preliminary to which is given an explanation of in what sense a predicate logic presupposes an ontology of predication. The principles needed for the differentiation have the significant implication (e.g., for the foundations of mathematics) of implying an infinity of logical entities, viz., instances of the identity relation. { 236pp, 150x210mm, October 2006; HB, £71.99, 3938793333:9783938793336 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ETHICS OF ENERGY : William James's Moral Philosophy in Focus [Sergio Franzese, Ph.D.] William James's moral philosophy is neither a remaking of utilitarianism nor it is a theory of values as it is assumed by the majority of his interpreters. Instead James offers an ethical view consistently arising out of valorisation of energy of his days, and effecting a counter-tendency to the two great popular scientific currents of the 19th century: the universalising of Darwinism and the pessimistic ideologies of social entropy. James's ethics moves away from the traditional idealistic or utilitarian grounds and takes place against the background of an up-and-coming philosophical anthropology hinged on the primacy of action. Human activity, however, needs to be understood in relation to Energy as the fabric of the universe pervading the whole spectrum of being in a continuum in which humanity and divinity are strictly intertwined. { 237pp, 150x210mm, October 2008; HB, £80.99, 3868380116:9783868380118 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ETHICS OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS [Georg Meggle (ed)] Humanitarian Interventions -- that sounds nice; much nicer than wars, battles and use of military force. Foremost, the phrase makes you think of the delivery of sanitary goods, medication, of soup-kitchens. Here we are not supposed to think of interventions of this kind; we have to have humanitarian interventions in mind which are humanitarian intervention-wars. 1) At exactly what point is the use of military force a humanitarian intervention? What is the humanitarian aspect of those interventions? Their occasion? Their motive? Their alleged as well as their actual consequences?; 2) At exactly what point are humanitarian intervention-wars morally justifiable? Are they justifiable even if they are wars of aggression breaching international law?; and finally 3) Was the war which was presented to us as the paradigmatic example of a humanitarian-intervention-war, that is: the war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 (with over 37,000 bombing missions), really justifiable as a humanitarian intervention? Many of us wanted to believe so at the time. Does our ex ante judgement hold today in an ex post reflection? And which lessons for the future should we learn from the success or failure of this humanitarian war? These are the questions proposed in this book; therefore, it is concerned with problems of semantics (part 1), problems of moral assessment (part 2) and with the moral, legal and political conclusions we draw from our experiences with the war in Kosovo, our primary example of a humanitarian intervention (part 3). International experts in the areas of philosophy, international law, sociology and peace studies debated these questions vigorously for several days. This is the resulting volume. Contribution from: Rüdiger Bittner, Uwe Czaniera, Martin Frank, Johan Galtung, Dieter S. Lutz, Georg Meggle, Thomas Mertens, Seumas Miller, Olaf L. Müller, Aleksandar Pavkovic, Walter Pfannkuche, Miroslav Prokopjievic, Hajo Schmidt, Rudolf Schüssler, Reiner Steinweg, Ulrich Steinvorth, Ralf Stoecker, Michael Walzer, Véronique Zanetti. { 382pp, 150x210mm, September 2004; HB, £85.50, 3937202587:9783937202587 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ETHICS OF TERRORISM & COUNTER TERRORISM [Georg Meggle (ed)] We are supposed to wage war against Terrorism -- but exactly what we are fighting against in this war, there is nearly no consensus about. And, much worse, nearly nobody cares about this conceptual disaster -- the main thing being, whether or not you are taking sides with the good guys. This volume is an analytical attempt to end this disaster. What is Terrorism? Are terrorist acts to be defined exclusively on the basis of the characteristics of the respective actions? Or should we restrict such actions to acts performed by non-state organisations? And, most important, is terrorism already by its very nature to be morally condemned? But, having a clear idea of what Terrorism is, would be only the beginning. Rational moral assessment still needs two further components: The relevant facts; and the relevant values and norms. Now, in a field where systematic misinformation has been even proclaimed to be the official policy, facts are obviously very hard to get at. This volume is mainly interested in Ethics: What’s wrong with Terrorism? And what is morally right or morally wrong, respectively, with all the different means of Counter-Terrorism? What are the moral boundaries for waging war against terrorism? What are the right ways of dealing with terrorists? And what about the alleged anti-terrorism wars on Afghanistan and Iraq? With contributions from Marcelo Dascal, Tomis Kapitan, Daniel Messelken, Seumas Miller, Olaf L. Mueller, Igor Primoratz, Charles P. Webel , Per Bauhn, Rüdiger Bittner, C. A. J. (Tony) Coady, Haig Khatchadourian, Georg Meggle, Peter Simpson, Carolin Emcke, Ralf Groetker, Laurence Lustgarten, Thomas Mertens, Aleksandar Pavkovic, Filimon Peonidis, Janna Thompson, Véronique Zanett. { 345pp, 165x245mm, December 2004; HB, £89.50, 3937202684:9783937202686 , Ontos Verlag } |
| EXISTENCE, CULTURE, & PERSONS : The Ontology of Roman Ingarden [Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (ed)] Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) belonged to those phenomenologists who never accepted Husserl's transcendental idealism. He devoted a great part of his intellectual energy to the 'preparatory' analytical studies in which he hoped to develop an ontological framework suitable for an ultimate refutation of Husserl's idealistic doctrine. In these works we find a rich arsenal of ontological tools which is interesting even for those philosophers who are not interested in the subtleties of the Husserlian tradition or esoteric dialectics of the idealism / realism debate. Contributors: Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (Szczecin and Salzburg), Gregor Haefliger (Fribourg), Guido Küng (Fribourg), Jeff Mitscherling (Guelph), Andrzej Póltawski (Cracow), Peter Simons (Leeds), Edward Swiderski (Fribourg), Amie L Thomasson (Miami), Daniel von Wachter (Munich). { 226pp, 150x210mm, June 2005; HB, £70.99, 3937202846:9783937202846 , Ontos Verlag } |
| EXPLAINING ALTRUISM : A Simulation-Based Approach & its Limits [Eckhart Arnold, Ph.D., MA] Employing computer simulations for the study of the evolution of altruism has been popular since Axelrod's book "The Evolution of Co-operation". But have the myriads of simulation studies that followed in Axelrod's footsteps really increased our knowledge about the evolution of altruism or co-operation? This book examines in detail the working mechanisms of simulation based evolutionary explanations of altruism. It shows that the "theoretical insights" that can be derived from simulation studies are often quite arbitrary and of little use for the empirical research. In the final chapter of the book, therefore, a set of epistemological requirements for computer simulations is proposed and recommendations for the proper research design of simulation studies are made. { 310pp, 150x215mm, August 2008; HB, £89.50, 3868380078:9783868380071 , Ontos Verlag } |
| FACETS OF SOCIALITY [Nikos Psarros & Katinka Schulte-Ostermann (eds)] The aim of this volume is to explore new approaches to the problem of the constitution of the various aspects of sociality and to confront these with received ideas. Therefore many of the contributions to this volume are devoted to a rather holistic and antireductionist conception of social objects, groups, joint actions and collective knowledge. The topics, that are dealt with are: a) the question of the ontological status of social objects and their relation to physical objects, b) collective agency and c) the question whether there can be shared knowledge and shared beliefs - a rather new topic in the discussion of the social aspects of personal life. { 379pp, 150x210mm, November 2006; HB, £89.50, 3938793392:9783938793398 , Ontos Verlag } |
| FOSTERING THE ONTOLOGICAL TURN : Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) [Rosaria Egidi & Guido Bonino (eds)] Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) was, arguably, one of the greatest ontologists of the twentieth century. In 2006 and 2007, after a period of relative neglect, international conferences devoted solely to Bergmann's work were held at the University of Iowa in the USA, Université de Provence in France, and Università degli Studi di Roma Tre in Italy. The fifteen papers collected in this volume were presented at the third of these conferences, in Rome, and are here divided into three sections: "Categories of a realistic ontology", "World, mind, and relations", "Metaphysics of space and time". { 274pp, 155x210mm, October 2008; HB, £80.99, 3868380086:9783868380088 , Ontos Verlag } |
| FOURTH WAY : A Theory of Knowledge [Reinhardt Grossmann] Reinhardt Grossmann argues that a realistic ontology in regard to perceptual, physical, and mathematical objects can be combined with an empiricistic theory of knowledge. In the first part of the book he shows that the traditional distinction between primary and secondary qualities leads to idealism, while the common Cartesian conception of knowledge by way of ideas leads to scepticism. In order to avoid these twin scourges of modern philosophy, the authors argues for the existence of ordinary perceptual objects and explains how we know these objects directly through simple acts of perception. The second part of the book is concerned with the way in which we know what is in our minds. Grossmann maintains that this kind of knowledge is just as fallible as perception. In the third part the author concludes that logic, arithmetic, and set theory concern matters of facts and that we discover these facts empirically. { 312pp, 155x235mm, October 2005; HB, £89.50, 3937202900:9783937202907 , Ontos Verlag } |
| FRINGES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE : Cross-perspectives on William James' 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' [Sergio Franzese & Felicitas Kraemer (eds)] William James's Varieties of Religious Experience is one of the most renowned works of the famous psychologist and founder of pragmatism, and a fully accomplished anthropological analysis of the phenomenon of religion. In this book a selection of 10 papers from international scholars, previously presented at the International Centennary Conference in Celebration of The Gifford Lectures at University of Edinburgh in 2002, explore the theoretical and historical 'fringes' of James's work in the attempt to provide new insights into some major issues involved therein. The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with important philosophical and psychological issues related to James's account of religious experience. A second shorter section lays a focus a on the historical sources and reception of James's ideas in American and European culture. { 210pp, 150x210mm, May 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793570:9783938793572 , Ontos Verlag } |
| GOD'S RATIONAL WARRIORS : The Rationality of Faith Considered [Marion Ledwig] This book stands in the tradition of philosophers who advance the rationality of faith. Yet the book goes beyond their accounts, for it not only defends the view that faith can be termed rational, but it also considers the different senses in which faith can be termed rational. While this book advances the idea that faith as a general category can be termed rational, it does not investigate in a detailed way whether there are arguments for the rationality of particular faiths which would go beyond the arguments for the rationality of faith as a general category. Besides discussing whether betting on God in Pascal's wager and believing in miracles are forms of the rationality of faith, I will provide unique solutions to the problem of evil and the paradoxes of omnipotence and omniscience. { 239pp, 150x210mm, February 2008; HB, £71.99, 3938793872:9783938793879 , Ontos Verlag } |
| GRUNDLAGEN DER ETHIK [Peter Schaber & Rafael Huntelmann (eds)] Text in German. The aim of the 'Practical Philosophy Series' is to publish high-quality work that deals with questions in practical philosophy from a broadly analytic perspective. These include questions in meta-ethics, normative ethics and 'applied' ethics, as well as in political philosophy, philosophy of law and the philosophy of action. Through the publication of work in both German and English, the series aims to facilitate discussion between English and German-speaking practical philosophers. { 194pp, 150x215mm, November 2002; PB, £24.99, 3937202269:9783937202266 , Ontos Verlag } |
| HANDBOOK OF WHITEHEADIAN PROCESS THOUGHT : Volumes 1 & 2 [Michel Weber & Will Desmond (eds)] Gathering 120 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, this handbook aims at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary development. Two kinds of entries are weaved together in order to interpret Whitehead secundum Whitehead and to read him from the vantage point of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. The "thematic" entries provide: (i) a broad contextualisation of the issue at stake; (ii) a focus on Whitehead's treatment (if any) or of a possible Whiteheadian treatment of the issue; (iii) a history of relevant scholarship; (iv) a personal assessment by the Author. The "biographical" entries provide: (i) a brief vita of the targeted thinker; (ii) a sketch of his/her categories relevant to the Whiteheadian scholarship; (iii) a personal assessment of the actual (or possible) { 1411pp, 150x210mm, June 2008; HB, £361.99, 3938793929:9783938793923 , Ontos Verlag } |
| HOW CAN CONCEPTUAL CONTENT BE SOCIAL & NORMATIVE, AND, AT THE SAME TIME, BE OBJECTIVE? [Andrea Clausen] In this book, Andrea Clausen intends to reconcile Kripke's point according to which conceptual content has to be considered as being constituted by social, normative practice -- by a process of mutual assessments -- with the view that the content of empirical assertions has to be conceived as objective. She criticises approaches that explicate content-constitutive practice in non-normative terms, namely in terms of sanctioning behaviour (Haugeland, Pettit, Esfeld). She also rejects a pragmatist reading of Heidegger that proceeds from thoroughly normative but pre-conceptual practice. She develops and defends a particular reading of an approach that conceives normative, conceptually articulated practice -- giving and asking for reasons -- as primitive (Brandom, McDowell). { 264pp, 150x210mm, July 2004; HB, £71.99, 3937202579:9783937202570 , Ontos Verlag } |
| HOW SUCCESSFUL IS NATURALISM? [Georg Gasser (ed)] Naturalism is the reigning creed in analytic philosophy. Naturalists claim that natural science provides a complete account of all forms of existence. According to the naturalistic credo there are no aspects of human existence which transcend methods and explanations of science. Our concepts of the self, the mind, subjectivity, human freedom or responsibility is to be defined in terms of established sciences. The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism's success so far. Unlike other volumes it does not contain a collection of papers which unanimously reject naturalism. Naturalists and anti-naturalists alike unfold their positions discussing the success or failure of naturalistic approaches. "How successful is naturalism?" shows where the lines of agreement and disagreement between naturalists and their critics are to be located in contemporary philosophical discussion. With contributions by Rudder Lynne Baker, Johannes Brandl, Helmut Fink, Ulrich Frey, Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan, Peter S.M. Hacker, Winfried Löffler, Nancey Murphy, Josef Quitterer, Michael Rea, Thomas Sukopp, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski and Gerd Vollmer. { 300pp, 150x210mm, June 2007; HB, £62.99, 3938793678:9783938793671 , Ontos Verlag } |
| IDEALISM AND PRAXIS : The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher ((Reading Rescher Series: 3)) [Michele Marsonet] This work manages to present a complete and informative overview of Nicholas Rescher's philosphy. A prominent representative of contemporary pragmatism and of 20th century's thought at large, Rescher wrote an impressive amount of volumes and essays on a wide variety of philosophical topics. The present book purports to make his theses and theories accessible in one single volume. Moreover, it provides an apparatus of references to the relevant literature produced by Rescher's critics, and positions his work in the wider setting of its links with various contemporary American and European philosophers. The mixture of pragmatism and idealism, typical of Rescher's stance, is carefully taken into account, along with his contributions to logic, philosophy of science, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, social and political philosophy. { 245pp, 150x210 mm, June 2008; HB, £80.99, 3938793996:9783938793992 , Ontos Verlag } |
| INFORMATION & INFORMATION FLOW : An Introduction [Manuel Bremer & Daniel Cohnitz; Series Editors Guenther Grewendorf, Wolfram Hinzen, Hans Kamp & Helmut Weiss] This book is conceived as an introductory text into the theory of syntactic and semantic information, and information flow. Syntactic information theory is concerned with the information contained in the very fact that some signal has a non-random structure. Semantic information theory is concerned with the meaning or information content of messages and the like. The theory of information flow is concerned with deriving some piece of information from another. The main part will take us to situation semantics as a foundation of modern approaches in information theory. We give a brief overview of the background theory and then explain the concepts of information, information architecture and information flow from that perspective. { 243pp, 150x210mm, July 2004; PB, £22.99, 3937202471:9783937202471 , Ontos Verlag } |
| INTERPRETING PHILOSOPHY : The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics [Nicholas Rescher] Metaphilosophy is philosophy's poor and neglected cousin. Philosophers are on the whole too busy doing philosophy to take time to stand back and consider reflectively how the project itself actually works. And they lead tend to produce texts without too much consideration of how this looks from the standpoint of the consumer. All this, it seems to be, affords good reason for attending to philosophical hermeneutics, reflecting on the issue of how philosophical texts are to be understood and interpreted. { 190pp, 150x210mm, February 2007; HB, £80.99, 3938793449:9783938793442 , Ontos Verlag } |
| INTRODUCING ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY : Its Sense & Its Nonsense 1879-2002 [Herbert Hochberg] Philosophy took a "linguistic turn" in the twentieth century that was marked by the focus on theories of meaning, reference, description, predication and truth. Starting with the roots of the analytic tradition in Frege, Meinong and Bradley, this book follows its development in Russell and Wittgenstein and the writings of major philosophers of the analytic tradition and of various lesser, but well known and widely discussed, contemporary figures. In dealing with basic issues that have preoccupied analytic philosophers in the past century, the author notes how analytic philosophy is sometimes transformed from its original concern with careful and precise formulations of classical issues into the dismissal of such issues and the resultant spinning of intricate verbal webs, often signalling the rebirth of idealism in the guises of "contextualism" and "anti-realism." The book thus examines the change that came to dominate the analytic tradition by a shift of focus from the world, as what words are about, to a preoccupation with language itself. { 280pp, 150x210mm, July 2003; PB, £19.99, 3937202218:9783937202211 , Ontos Verlag } |
| IS PHILOSOPHY DISPENSABLE? : And Other Philosophical Essays [Nicholas Rescher] "During 2005-2006 I continued my longstanding practice of writing occasional studies on philosophical topics, both for formal presentation and for informal discussion with colleagues. While my forays of this kind have usually issued in journal publications, this has not been so in the present case so that the studies offered here encompass substantially new material. Notwithstanding their thematic variation, they manifest a uniformity of treatment and method in a way that is characteristic of my philosophical modus operandi and inherent in its endeavours to treat classical issues from novel points of view." -- Nicholas Rescher. { 117pp, 150x220mm, March 2007; HB, £53.99, 3938793457:9783938793459 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION [Nicholas Rescher] Over the years Nicholas Rescher has published various essays on religious issues from a philosophical point of view. The chapters of the present volume collect these together, joining to them four further pieces which appear here for the first time (Chapters 3, 7, and 8). While these studies certainly do not constitute a system of religious philosophy, they do combine to give a vivid picture of a well-defined point of view on the subject -- the viewpoint of a Roman Catholic philosopher who, in the longstanding manner of this tradition, seeks to harmonise the commitments of faith with the fruits of inquiry proceeding under the auspices of reason. { 117pp, 150x210mm, August 2007; HB, £53.99, 3938793708:9783938793701 , Ontos Verlag } |
| JOHN HEIL : Symposium on his Ontological Point of View [Michael Esfeld (ed)] Fifty years after Willard Van Orman Quine published 'From a logical point of view' (1953), John Heil brought out his book 'From an ontological point of view' (2003). The title expresses the shift in contemporary philosophy from logical and epistemological concerns to metaphysics. The papers of this symposium discuss that shift, focussing on what John Heil calls 'ontological seriousness', truth-making, levels of being, properties, powers, and reductionism. Each paper is followed by a comment from John Heil. The volume covers a number of the most hotly debated issues in today's metaphysics and moves the discussion on in several important aspects. "It would be difficult to imagine a collection of more astute, penetrating, and philosophically hard-hitting discussions of the kind of metaphysical realism articulated in 'From an Ontological Point of View'. Symposium participants deploy an impressive range of analytical skills in a way that illuminates connections among metaphysical positions that too often escape notice." (John Heil). { 275pp, 150x210mm, August 2006; PB, £17.99, 3938793279:9783938793275 , Ontos Verlag } |
| KEEPING BALANCE : On Desert & Propriety [Diana Abad] What is desert? The aim of this book is to give an analysis of this notion. Starting from Feinberg's seminal paper, the argument goes on to Chisholm, 18th-century British Rationalism, and Kant, who developed the concept of propriety that is the foundation of the concept of desert and the key to understanding it. Beyond the analysis, the concept of desert is applied to two problems of moral philosophy, punishment and moral residue, that can be solved only by means of this notion. Desert is an indispensable moral concept we do well to understand clearly and to incorporate into our moral practice. { 202pp, 150x210mm, July 2007; HB, £71.99, 393879318X:9783938793183 , Ontos Verlag } |
| KNOWLEDGE, LANGUAGE & INTERPRETATION : On the Philosophy of Donald Davidson [Maria Cristina Amoretti & Nicla Vassallo (eds)] Thanks to their heterogeneity, the nine essays in this volume offer a clear testimony of Donald Davidson's authority, and they undoubtedly show how much his work - even if it has raised many doubts and criticisms - has been, and still is, highly influential and significant in contemporary analytical philosophy for a wide range of subjects. Moreover, the various articles not only critically and carefully analyse Davidson's theses and arguments (in particular those concerning language and knowledge), but they also illustrate how such theories and ideas, despite their unavoidable difficulties, are still alive and potentially fruitful. Davidson's work is indeed an important and provocative starting point for discussing the future progress of philosophy. { 224pp, 150x210mm, July 2008; HB, £80.99, 3868380000:9783868380002 , Ontos Verlag } |
| LA DIALECTIQUE DE L'INTUITION CHEZ ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD : Introduction a la lecture de Process & Reality (1929) [Michel Weber] Procès et réalité (1929) d'A. N. Whitehead (1861-1947) est sans doute l'ouvrage le plus important pour saisir le sens et la portée de la pensée du processus. A l'instar du corpus whiteheadien, la présente introduction procède de manière circumambulatoire, c'est-à-dire qu'elle met en ¦uvre une série convergente d'analyses contextualisantes. La première Partie met en scène le concept de 'sensation pure' à l'aide d'un examen contrasté de ses inflexions bergsoniennes et whiteheadiennes. La seconde Partie expose l'intuition 'systématique' de Whitehead, c'est-à-dire la rationalisation d'un mode relationnel qui rend compte de -- et est justifié par -- l'intuition pré-systématique. La troisième Partie affine le concept de l'Ultime en opérant un remembrement principiel 'contiguïste' des paysages jusque là profilés sectoriellement. { 319pp, 155x220mm, December 2004; HB, £68.50, 3937202552:9783937202556 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MEDICINE & PHILOSOPHY : A Twenty-First Century Introduction [Ingvar Johansson & Niels Lynøe] This textbook introduces the reader to basic problems in the philosophy of science and ethics, mainly by means of examples from medicine. It is based on the conviction that philosophy, medical science, medical informatics, and medical ethics are overlapping disciplines. It claims that the philosophical lessons to learn from the twentieth century are not that nature is a 'social construction' and that 'anything goes' with respect to methodological and moral rules. Instead, it claims that there is scientific knowledge, but that it is never completely secure; that there are norms, but that they are situation-bound; and that, therefore, it makes good sense to search for scientific truths and try to act in a morally decent way. Using philosophical catchwords, the authors advocate 'fallibilism' and 'particularism'; a combination that might be called 'pragmatic realism'. { 475pp, 145x210mm, March 2008; PB, £35.50, 3938793902:9783938793909 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MEINONG ON MEANING & TRUTH [Anna Sierszulska] The study aims at exposing Meinong's ideas that may be of interest to analytic philosophers. It contains all the basic information concerning Meinong's theory of objects with a special focus upon 'objectives', which are Meinong's propositions. Meinong's theory of meaning and his epistemological views are discussed in detail. An outline of his conception of truth, which is classified as firmly realistic, is followed by a review of the critical works touching upon Meinong's epistemological ideas. Finally, Meinong's theory of objects is presented as inspiring the development of Meinongian logics, with his Aussersein as the prototype of an all-inclusive semantic domain. The issues considered include reference of terms and sentences as well as the general features of a Meinongian-style semantics. { 262pp, 150x210mm, November 2005; HB, £70.99, 3937202943:9783937202945 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MEINONG STUDIES 1 [Alexius-Meinong-Institute, Graz/Austria] The first volume of MEINONG STUDIES contains both historical and systematic contributions on Meinongian topics. The subjects dealt with cover Meinong's views on abstraction preceding his object theoretic period (Chrudzimski), his early epistemological investigations (Manotta), his theories of presentations (Raspa) and of assumptions (Dölling). Meinong's views are confronted with those of Franz Brentano (Rollinger) and of Sartres and Russell (Hochberg). Further analyses deal with the consistency of Meinong's universe of objects (Simons), with his theory of magnitudes and measurement (Guigon), with his (and Ernst Mally's) object-theoretic foundations of logic (Tegtmeier), and with the relation of semantics and ontology from the perspective of a scorekeeping approach (Potrc und Strahovnik). { 330pp, 150x210mm, May 2005; HB, £80.99, 3937202773:9783937202778 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MEINONGIAN ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN PHILOSOPHY [Venanzio Raspa (ed)] The traditional and lively interest in Meinong's philosophy and related topics among Italian philosophers gives rise to this volume of MEINONG STUDIES. As more than an introduction, Venanzio Raspa presents an enlightening historical presentation of Meinong's reception in Italy from his lifetime to the present day. Riccardo Martinelli offers a reconstruction of the Meinongian theory of musical objects of higher order. Francesca Modenato gives the outlines of Meinong's object theory as a theory of the pure object, separating it from ontology and associating it rather with gnoseology. From a less historical than systematic-analytic perspective, Andrea Bottani deals with incomplete objects, Mario Alai investigates the problem of propositions concerning non-existent objects, and Carola Barbero proposes a realistic theory of the emotions aroused by reading literary texts. As themes related to Meinongian ones, Alberto Voltolini discusses the concept of existence as a property, Francesco Orilia validates an intuition of Meinong by adopting an approach called 'fact infinitism', and Guido Bonino deals with Gustav Bergmann's interpretation of Meinong's ontology. { 266pp, 150x210mm, October 2006; HB, £80.99, 393879335X:9783938793350 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MENTAL CAUSATION : Investigating the Mind's Powers in a Natural World [Jens Harbecke. Ph.D.] This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analysed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the "new compatibilist's" approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterised by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of "causal proportionality" that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal over-determinationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation. { 434pp, 150x210mm, April 2008; HB, £108.50, 3938793945:9783938793947 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSICA -- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR ONTOLOGY & METAPHYSICS, VOLUME 4, NO.1 [Rafael Hüntelmann, Erwin Tegtmeier & Käthe Trettin (eds)] { 164pp, 150x215mm, April 2003; PB, £22.99, 382671234X:9783826712340 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSICA -- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR ONTOLOGY & METAPHYSICS, VOLUME 4, NO.2 [Rafael Hüntelmann, Erwin Tegtmeier & Käthe Trettin (eds)] Contents: The Ontological Status of Truthmakers. An Alternative to Tactarianism and Metaphysical Anti-Realism; Gegenstande in der Zeit; Statues and there Constituens. Whether Constitution is Identity; Eigenschaften von Komplexen. Ein Beitrag zur angewandten Ontologie; Is Salta's Individuation of Intensional Entities Circular? Physikalismus und die Autonomie der Mentalen: Ungeloste Probleme in Donald Davidsons Philosophie des Mentalen; In Situ Rationality: A Defense of Realism. { 136pp, 150x215mm, October 2003; PB, £22.99, 3937202323:9783937202327 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSICA -- SPECIAL ISSUE 03, RAMSEY'S ONTOLOGY [Nils-Eric Sahlin (ed)] Frank Plumpton Ramsey was born on February 22, 1903 and died at the age of 26 on January 19, 1930. Few philosophers of the twentieth century have influenced the sciences as much as Ramsey. He did pioneering work in pure mathematics, logic, economics, statistics, probability theory, decision theory and cognitive psychology. He also did ground-breaking work in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics and semantics. And he accomplished all this before the age of twenty-seven. His work in metaphysics, however, has not really received the attention it deserves. The essays published in this volume are all, in one way or another, inspired by Ramsey's ontology, or better, by the ontological questions discussed, problems solved and methods developed in some of his celebrated papers. { 116pp, 150x210mm, February 2005; PB, £31.99, 3937202722:9783937202723 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSICS & THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MEANING [Jonas Pfister] The book develops the metaphysics of meaning along the lines set up by Paul Grice, defining the three central notions of what is meant, said and implicated. The Gricean notion of what is said is threatened by semantic underdetermination: If the sentence underdetermines the thought it is used to express, what is said cannot be the proposition expressed by the sentence and meant by the speaker. This leads to a number of questions: How far does semantic underdetermination reach? Do we have to extend or restrict the Gricean notion? Is what is said semantic or pragmatic? Keeping these metaphysical questions separate from the epistemological question of how the hearer understands what is meant, which is best explained by generalising the Gricean theory of implicature derivation and combining it with a game-theoretic model, the book provides an original defense of a Gricean view in the ongoing debate about semantics and pragmatics. { 148pp, 150x210mm, June 2007; HB, £30.99, 393879349X:9783938793497 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSICS & TRUTHMAKERS [Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed)] The essays collected in this volume concern the general question of truthmaking. Most of them also bear upon the metaphysical nature of truthmakers (moments, tropes, property-instances, Aristotelian substances, states of affairs, meanings or essences?). Taking as their starting point a famous seminal paper by K Mulligan, P Simons and B Smith, as well as D Armstrong's outstanding contribution to the subject, they offer a fresh assay of the main concepts involved, in order to assess the explanatory value of truthmakers and truthmaker necessitarianism, and explore such delicate issues as contingent truth, bare possibility, tensed propositions, the ontological irreducibility of relations, the subsistence of facts and the epistemic role of negative truths. The collection as a whole provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking survey of the current debate about truthmaking theory and deserves to be read carefully by anyone interested in the relationship between language, thought and reality. { 337pp, 148x210mm, April 2007; HB, £89.50, 3938793325:9783938793329 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSICS OF CETERIS PARIBUS LAWS [Markus Schrenk] Universality is not sufficient to distinguish laws of nature from accidental regularities. A multitude of additional defining features have been suggested. Yet, once it is acknowledged that exceptionless universality is not the only criterion for lawhood it is possible to start questioning whether it is necessary. Markus Schrenk's The Metaphysics of Ceteris Paribus Laws takes this bold step and it's provocative conclusion is that existing theories -- especially David Lewis's and David Armstrong's -- are, in fact, strong enough to guarantee lawhood even if there are instances that do not conform to the laws. Schrenk also advances two novel theories for special science ceteris paribus laws. His unorthodox exploration has the potential to stimulate a new debate about laws, lawhood and exceptions. This work has received the Award for Furthering Research in Ontology of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP). REVIEW: "Markus Schrenk's book is the first monograph about metaphysical issues concerning laws with exceptions. His tight and compelling argumentations also cover themes from philosophy of religion and cosmology." -- Professor Albert Newen, University of Tübingen. "...an exceptional contribution to ontology which sheds a new light on our concept of laws of nature. The clear, vigorous, and convincing argumentation is exemplary for analytic metaphysics." -- Professor Hans Rott, German Society for Analytic Philosophy. "This is a fascinating thesis, with many original ideas, well-informed, clearly written and argued, which throws light on the different conceptions of law of nature found in contemporary philosophy." -- Professor Dorothy Edgington, University of Oxford. { 192pp, 150x210mm, January 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793422:9783938793428 , Ontos Verlag } |
| METAPHYSISCHE UNTERSUCHUNGEN [Aleksander Kellenberg] Text in German. { 471pp, 155x215mm, July 2007; HB, £89.50, 3938793627:9783938793626 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MIND : Ontology and Explanation: Collected Papers 1981-2005 [Laird Addis] In this collection of papers by Laird Addis, published over approximately a quarter century, the main topics are the ontology of mind and the role of mind in the explanation of behavior. Addis defends a theory of natural signs, by which there is, in every conscious state including emotional states, an intrinsically intentional entity. He also argues that explanations of behavior by dispositional mental states, while not themselves causal explanations, presuppose the possibility of such explanations. The theory of dispositions is applied also to the theories of Chomsky and Freud. In broad strokes, Addis holds that, while there is a distinct realm of mental properties, behaviors admit of purely physical explanations. { 289pp, 150x215mm, February 2008; HB, £71.99, 3938793864:9783938793862 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MIND & ITS PLACE IN THE WORLD : Non-Reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness [Alexander Batthyany, Avshalom Elitzur (eds)] What is mind? What is its relationship to the physical world? Is consciousness a causative agent in the physical world? With much progress being made in the neurosciences, many have thought that these questions could be answered by reducing them to questions about physical systems such as the brain. But this approach has foundered on the core problem of consciousness: Why is it that some brain processes are accompanied by conscious awareness? This anthology points out new sources and unexamined paths of consciousness research. By presenting a wide spectrum of non-reductive theories, the volume endeavours to overcome the dichotomy between dualism and monism that keeps plaguing the debate in favour of new and more differentiated positions. { 323pp, 150x210mm, December 2005; HB, £85.50, 3937202986:9783937202983 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MODES OF EXISTENCE : Papers in Ontology & Philosophical Logic [Andrea Bottani & Richard Davies (eds)] The volume collects essays by an international team of philosophers aimed at elucidating three fundamental and interconnected themes in ontology. In the first instance, there is the issue of the kind of thing that, in the primary sense, is or exists: must the primitive terms be particular or universal? Any reply will itself raise the question of how to treat discourse that appears to refer to things that cannot be met with in time and space: what difference is there between saying that someone is not sad and saying that something does not exist? If we can speak meaningfully about fictions, what makes those statements true (or false) and how can the entities in question be identified? Assessment of the options that have been opened up in these fields since the work of Bertrand Russell and Alexius Meinong at the beginning of the twentieth century remains an important testing-ground for metaphysical principles and intuitions. { 237pp, 150x220mm, September 2006; HB, £71.99, 3938793120:9783938793121 , Ontos Verlag } |
| MONISM [Andreas Bächli & Klaus Petrus] Monism is not a particular theory or even a school. However, monistic intuitions or doctrines are grounded in many different ways of philosophising. For instance, one may argue that there is ultimately only one thing, or one kind of thing, or that there is only one set of true beliefs, one truth, one type of action, one sort of meaning, one way of analysing, explaining and understanding; or, alternatively, one may pursue the project of the unity of knowledge or even that of the unity of science. Taken in this broad sense, monism is often opposed to varieties of pluralism or numerous versions of dualism, since so much philosophical debate has focused on the question whether there are two different kinds of thing, mind and matter, or only one. The aim of the present volume is to discuss some of these aspects historically and systematically. With original contributions by Scott Austin, Andreas Baechli, Alex Burri, Thomas Grundmann, Herbert Hochberg, Mark A Kulstad, E J Lowe, Eduard Marbach, Alex Mourelatos, Klaus Petrus, Matjaz Potrc, Wolfgang Röd, Richard Schantz, Ralf Stoecker, Karsten R Stueber, Leonardo Tarán, and Jean-Claude Wolf. { 332pp, 150x215mm, July 2003; HB, £63.99, 3937202196:9783937202198 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NATURALISMUS : Kritik und Verteidigung erkenntnistheoretischer Positionen [Thomas Sukopp] Was kann Naturalismus in der gegenwärtigen Erkenntnistheorie heißen? Wie können wir antinaturalistische Argumente in der Erkenntnistheorie aus naturalistischer Sicht bewerten und klassifizieren? Hat der radikale Naturalist Quine etwa Recht mit seiner Provokation, dass Erkenntnistheorie angewandte Naturwissenschaft ist? REVIEW: "Die Studie enthält viele großartige Bausteine. Sukopp bietet ein Panorama von beeindruckender Breite und Tiefe. Ihre wichtigste Leistung liegt darin, dass sie es nicht bei Darstellungen und Gegenüberstellungen bewenden lässt, sondern sich durchgehend auf Argumente einlässt, auf fremde und eigene. Darin sehe ich die eigentliche philosophische Leistung. Wer sich nicht nur über ein Spektrum von Meinungen informieren möchte, sondern über Argumente Pro und Kontra und über ihre Haltbarkeit, der wird hier nicht nur fündig: Er wird reich belohnt." -- Gerhard Vollmer. { 350pp, 150x215mm, June 2006; HB, £76.50, 3938793139:9783938793138 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS : Hans Kelsen's Reply to Erik Voegelin's 'New Science of Politics' -- A Contribution to the Critique of Ideology [Hans Kelsen] Eric Voegelin is famous as a philosopher of history and a as one of the most eminent political scientists of the 20th century. His most fundamental work on political theory, the 'New Science of Politics', is nowadays considered a classic in its field. While the ‘New Science’ has always been very controversial book, its critics have hardly ever taken the pain to pinpoint the weaknesses they condemned Voegelin’s book for. There is, however, one exception: Only shortly after the appearance of Voegelin’s ‘New Science’ in 1954, Hans Kelsen has written a most detailed reply to this book of his former student. Being a distinguished philosopher himself of an erudition and breadth of knowledge that matches that of Eric Voegelin, Hans Kelsen is able to support the critical stance he takes on Voegelin 'New Science' by clear and well founded argument. This critical reply to Voegelin’s ‘New Science’ is not only an important contribution to the dispute about the foundations of political order in modern society, but will also prove valuable to readers generally interested in Voegelin’s life and work. { 137pp, 155x215mm, October 2004; HB, £62.99, 3937202501:9783937202501 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NICHOLAS RESCHER COLLECTED PAPERS, PART 1 [Nicholas Rescher] Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the American Metaphysical Society, the American G W Leibniz Society, and the C S Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. { 790pp, 150x210mm, November 2005; HB, £226.50, 393720282X:9783937202822 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NICHOLAS RESCHER COLLECTED PAPERS, PART 2 [Nicholas Rescher] { ca850pp, 150x210mm, August 2006; HB, £289.99, 3938793058:9783938793053 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NICHOLAS RESCHER COLLECTED PAPERS, PART 3 [Nicholas Rescher] Includes the following: Volume 10, Studies in the History of Logic; Volume 11, Studies in the Philosophy of Science; Volume 12, Studies in Metaphysical Optimalism; Volume 13, Studies in Leibniz's Cosmology; Volume 14, Studies in Autobiography. { ca.900pp, 150x210mm, October 2006; HB, £270.99, 3938793244:9783938793244 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NICHOLAS RESCHER COLLECTED PAPERS, PART 4 [Nicholas Rescher] Includes the following: Volume 1, Studies in 20th Century Philosophy; Volume 2, Studies in Pragmatism; Volume 2, Mind and its Place in the World; Volume 3, Studies in Idealism; Volume 4, Studies in Philosophical Inquiry; Volume 5, Studies in Cognitive Finitude; Volume 6, Studies in Social Philosophy; Volume 7, Studies in Philosophical Anthropology; Volume 8, Studies in Value Theory; Volume 9, Studies in Metaphilosophy; Volume 10, Studies in the History of Logic; Volume 11, Studies in the Philosophy of Science; Volume 12, Studies in Metaphysical Optimalism; Volume 13, Studies in Leibniz's Cosmology; Volume 14, Studies in Autobiography. { ca.2500pp, 150x210mm, October 2006; HB, £725.50, 3938793252:9783938793251 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NON-LOCALITY & POSSIBLE WORLDS : A Counterfactual Perspective on Quantum Entanglement [Tomasz F Bigaj] This book uses the formal semantics of counterfactual conditionals to analyse the problem of non-locality in quantum mechanics. Counterfactual conditionals (subjunctive conditionals) enter the analysis of quantum entangled systems in that they enable us to precisely formulate the locality condition that purports to exclude the existence of causal interactions between spatially separated parts of a system. They also make it possible to speak consistently about alternative measuring settings, and to explicate what is meant by quantum property attributions. The book develops the possible-world semantics of quantum counterfactuals using David Lewis' famous approach as a starting point but modifying it significantly in order to achieve compatibility with the demands of the special theory of relativity as well as quantum mechanics. There have been several attempts to use counterfactual semantics to strengthen Bell's theorem and its cognates such as the GHZ and Hardy theorems. These are critically evaluated in the book. Finally, a counterfactual reconstruction of the EPR argument and Bell's theorem is proposed that sheds a new light on their philosophical consequences regarding the relations between realism and local causation. { 286pp, 150x210mm, August 2006; HB, £80.99, 3938793295:9783938793299 , Ontos Verlag } |
| NORMATIVITY & NATURALISM [Peter Schaber (ed)] At the centre of the metaethical debate that took off from G E Moore's 'Principia Ethica' (1903) was his critique of ethical naturalism. While Moore's own arguments against ethical naturalism find little acceptance these days, an alternative ground for thinking that ethical properties and facts could not be natural has gained prominence: No natural account can be given of normativity. This collection contains original essays from both sides of the debate. Representing a wide range of metaethical views, the authors develop diverse accounts of normativity and discuss what it means for a concept to be natural. Contributions are by Norbert Anwander, David Copp, Neil Roughley, Peter Schaber, Thomas Schmidt, Tatjana Tarkian, and Theo van Willigenburg. { 179pp, 150x210mm, July 2004; HB, £38.50, 3937202412:9783937202419 , Ontos Verlag } |
| OMNISCIENCE : From a Logical Point of View [Paul Weingartner, Ph.D.] The aim of the book is to clarify the concept of omniscience. This is done first by discussing basic questions on omniscience (chs.1-12) and secondly by offering a theory of omniscience as an axiomatic system in which also a definition of omniscience is given (ch.13). The twelve chapters deal with questions like whether everything is true what God knows, whether God's knowledge is bound to time, whether it concerns singular truths or only laws, whether it extends also to contingent future events ...etc. The book is neither a book about the existence of God nor about proofs for his existence. It is a book about the possibility of a consistent concept of omniscience which can be attributed to God. And it invalidates opposite claims and shows that they are based on wrong or very doubtful premises. The pros and cons at the beginning of each chapter represent different positions and objections which are clarified and discussed in the answer to the objections. { 188pp, 150x215mm, January 2008; HB, £71.99, 3938793813:9783938793817 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ON HUMAN PERSONS [Klaus Petrus (ed)] There is no question: We are all persons. But what exactly are persons? Are we immaterial souls or Cartesian Egos which only contingently have bodies? Or are persons nothing over and above their bodies? Are they essentially or most fundamentally animals, evolved beings of a certain sort? Or are we something other or more than animals, namely constituted beings with a certain capacity that distinguishes persons from everything else? What is necessary, and what is sufficient, for an entity to be classified or (re-)identified as a person? What's the value of an analysis of such (biological or psychological) conditions? What does it contribute to our understanding of ourselves as free agents or as beings wanting to live their individual live? The essays collected in this anthology try to answer these questions. They are primarily concerned with the metaphysics of persons and the criteria of personal identity, but also touch on problems of the theory of action and of practical philosophy. { 214pp, 150x215mm, November 2003; PB, £23.99, 3937202315:9783937202310 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ONTOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS : An Inquiry into the Categories of Nature, Man & Society [Ingvar Johansson] This volume is devoted to problems within analytic metaphysics. It defends an ontology and theory of categories inspired by Aristotle, but revised in such a way as to be compatible with modern science. The ontology of both natural and social reality is addressed, starting out from the view that universals exist but only in the spatiotemporal world (immanent realism). In attempting to bring Aristotle's ontology up-to-date, the author relies very much on the thinking of Edmund Husserl, conceiving the cement of the universe as Husserlian relations of existential dependence and regarding intentionality as a non-reducible category in the ontology of mind. The work is thoroughly realistic in spirit, but large parts of it should nonetheless be of interest to conceptualists and nominalists, too. { 414pp, 150x215mm, March 2004; HB, £80.99, 3937202420:9783937202426 , Ontos Verlag } |
| ONTOLOGY & ANALYSIS : Essays & Recollections About Gustav Bergmann [Laird Addis, Greg Jesson & Erwin Tegtmeier] Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) was, arguably, the greatest ontologist of the twentieth century in pursuing the fundamental questions of first philosophy as deeply as any philosopher of any time. In 2006 and 2007, international conferences devoted solely to Bergmann's work were held at the University of Iowa in the USA, Université de Provence in France, and Università degli Studi Roma Tre in Italy. The papers in this volume were presented at the first of these conferences, in Iowa City, where Bergmann taught for nearly four decades after escaping from Europe, following the dissolution of the Vienna Circle of which he had been the youngest member. There are nine philosophical papers, reminiscences of three of his students, and a complete bibliography of his published writings. { 314pp, 150x210mm, June 2007; HB, £89.50, 3938793694:9783938793695 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PERSISTENCE [Christian Kanzian (ed)] The problem of persistence is as old as the tradition of systematic ontology. How can we explain that the middle-sized standard objects of everyday life are regarded normally as remaining 'the same', even if they change their properties and their material constituents? The aim of this edition is to present new arguments, perspectives, and theoretical backgrounds concerning 'persistence': There is much more to consider than the classical distinction between 'endurantism' and 'perdurantism'. The volume includes contributions authored by S Barker, P Dowe, A Chrudzimski, P Grenon, B Smith, L Jansen, E J Lowe, U Meixner, K Miller, E Runggaldier, J Seibt and E Tegtmeier. { 198pp, 150x210mm, October 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793740:9783938793749 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PERSISTENCE THROUGH TIME, & ACROSS POSSIBLE WORLDS [Jiri Benovsky] How do ordinary objects persist through time and across possible worlds? How do they manage to have their temporal and modal properties? These are the questions addressed in this book which is a 'guided tour of theories of persistence'. The book is divided in two parts. In the first, the two traditional accounts of persistence through time (endurantism and perdurantism) are combined with presentism and eternalism to yield four different views, and their variants. The resulting views are then examined in turn, in order to see which combinations are appealing and which are not. It is argued that the 'worm view' variant of eternalist perdurantism is superior to the other alternatives. In the second part of the book, the same strategy is applied to the combinations of views about persistence across possible worlds (trans-world identity, counterpart theory, modal perdurants) and views about the nature of worlds, mainly modal realism and abstractionism. Not only all the traditional and well-known views, but also some more original ones, are examined and their pros and cons are carefully weighted. Here again, it is argued that perdurance seems to be the best strategy available. { 281pp, 150x210mm, March 2006; HB, £76.50, 3937202994:9783937202990 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PERSPECTIVES ON PERCEPTION [Mary Margaret McCabe & Mark Textor (eds)] Perception and its puzzles have given rise to philosophical reflection from antiquity to recent times: What do we perceive? How do we talk about what we perceive? What is the nature of our subjective experience? How can we talk about our subjective experience? In this book a distinguished group of philosophers addresses questions like these by drawing on historical and contemporary sources, illuminating the intersections between historical and contemporary philosophical discussion. They ask about the way things look; about how we can perceive a particular object (and no other); about self-perception; and about the nature and explanation of our phenomenal experience, and our talk about it. The book provides important new work in a central philosophical area. { 177pp, 150x210mm, September 2007; HB, £71.99, 3938793732:9783938793732 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PHENOMENOLOGY & ANALYSIS : Essays in Central-European Philosophy [Arkadiusz Chrudzimski & Wolfgang Huemer] The history of twentieth century philosophy is characterised by the gap between analytic and continental philosophy -- even though both have their roots in a tradition referred to as 'Austrian' or 'Central-European' philosophy. The essays in this volume show in historical and systematic studies, how a reassessment of this 'Central-European' tradition can build an interesting bridge between phenomenology and analytic philosophy and, thus, create a new foundation that allows for an original perspective on central problems of philosophy. { 383pp, 150x215mm, January 2004; PB, £29.50, 3937202366:9783937202365 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PHENOMENOLOGY AS GRAMMAR [Jesús Padilla Gálvez (ed)] This volume gathers papers, which were read at the congress held at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo (Spain), in September 2007, under the general subject of phenomenology. The book is devoted to Wittgenstein's thoughts on phenomenology. One of its aims is to consider and examine the lasting importance of phenomenology for philosophic discussion. For E. Husserl phenomenology was a discipline that endeavoured to describe how the world is constituted and experienced through a series of conscious acts. His fundamental concept was that of intentional consciousness. What did drag Wittgenstein into working on phenomenology? In his "middle period" work, Wittgenstein used the headline "Phenomenology is Grammar". These cornerstones can be signalled by notions like language, grammar, rule, visual space versus Euclidean space, minima visibilia and colours. L. Wittgenstein's main interest takes the form of a research on language. { 224pp, 150x210mm, June 2008; HB, £53.99, 3938793910:9783938793916 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS : Set Theory, Measuring Theories & Nominalism [Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds)] One main interest of philosophy is to become clear about the assumptions, premises and inconsistencies of our thoughts and theories. And even for a formal language like mathematics it is controversial if consistency is achievable or necessary like the articles in the first part of the publication show. Also the role of formal derivations, the role of the concept of a priority, and the intuitions of mathematical principles and properties need to be discussed. The second part is a contribution on nominalistic and platonistic views in mathematics, like the "indispensability argument" of W v O Quine H Putnam and the "makes no difference argument" of A Baker. Not only in retrospect, the third part shows the problems of Mill, Frege's and the unity of mathematics and Descartes' contradictional conception of mathematical essences. Together, these articles give us a hint into the relationship between mathematics and world, that is, one of the central problems in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science { 184pp, 150x210mm, October 2008; HB, £71.99, 3868380094:9783868380095 , Ontos Verlag } |
| PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY : Proceedings of the 30th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Aus |