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This book offers arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology, a view which Ratcliffe suggests is a theoretically motivated abstraction. His alternative account draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology, exploring patterned interactions in shared social situations.

The Unraveling of Scientism, a companion to Joseph Margolis's Reinventing Pragmatism, follows the thread of American analytic philosophy through the second half of the twentieth century, the period of its greatest influence and activity. Margolis finds that the distinctive features of analytic philosophy were effectively altered, at about mid-century, most pointedly by W. V. Quine. Surprisingly, this was a time of declining conceptual invention and originality among the leading strands of philos...

This book introduces a panorama of the philosophical theory of explanation. Written as a philosophical dialogue between two interlocutors, Philip and a student, it presents a defense of the position of explanatory pluralism. The fictional dialogue takes place on Cape Sounion, near Athens, where the two interlocutors are enjoying the view over the Aegean Sea. An initial exchange of arguments leads to a dialogue unfolding the development of the contemporary philosophical theory of explanation. T...

In Certainty in Action, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock describes how her encounter with Wittgenstein overturned her previous assumptions that the mind is a product of brain activity and that thought, consciousness, the will, feelings, memories, knowledge and language are stored and processed in the brain, by the brain. She shows how Wittgenstein enables us to veer away from this brain-centred view of intelligence and behaviour to a person-centred view focusing on ways of acting that are both diversely e...

This historical study investigates Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of logic and language, as it is presented in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The study makes a case for the Tractatus as an insightful critique of the philosophies of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege-the Founding Fathers of analytic philosophy.

Problems in Epistemology and Metaphysics takes a pro and con approach to two central philosophical topics. Each chapter begins with a question: Can We Have Knowledge? How are Beliefs Justified? What is the mind? Contemporary philosophers with opposing viewpoints are then paired together to argue their position and raise problems with conflicting standpoints. Alongside an up-to-date introduction to a core philosophical stance, each contributor provides a critical response to their opponent and c...

Pragmatism has been reinvented in every generation since its beginnings in the late nineteenth century. This book, by one of today's most distinguished contemporary heirs of pragmatist philosophy, rereads cardinal figures in that tradition, distilling from their insights a way forward from where we are now.Perspectives on Pragmatism opens with a new accounting of what is living and what is dead in the first three generations of classical American pragmatists, represented by Charles Sanders Peirc...

Ever since the publication of 'Truth' in 1959 Sir Michael Dummett has been acknowledged as one of the most profoundly creative and influential of contemporary philosophers. His contributions to the philosophy of thought and language, logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics have set the terms of some of most fruitful discussions in philosophy. His work on Frege stands unparalleled, both as landmark in the history of philosophy and as a deep reflection on the defining commitments of...

Dummett argues that the aim of philosophy is the analysis of thought and that, with Frege, analytical philosophy learned that the route to the analysis of thought is the analysis of language. Here are bold and deep readings of the subject's history and character, which form the topic of this volume.

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 expla...

This book sets out to identify the nature and implications of a proper understanding of pluralism in a original and illuminating way. Isaiah Berlin believed that a recognition of pluralism is vital to a free, decent and civilised society. By looking below at the often neglected foundations of Berlin's celebrated account of moral pluralism, Lyons reveals the more philosophically profound aspects of his undogmatic and humanistic liberal vision. He achieves this by comparing Berlin's core ideas wit...

Leading scholars discuss whether some of the main tenets or theses that are currently or traditionally ascribed to Wittgenstein are still both theoretically and exegetically viable, by focusing on three well-established Wittgensteinian themes: mind, meaning, and metaphilosophy.

The annual Munster Lectures in Philosophy, which started in 1997, have evolved as a highly renowned get-together of philosophers. The invited guest for the respective lecture gives a public talk and participates in a one- to two-day-colloquium with members of the Philosophical Seminar (staff and students) of the University of Munster. Lectures, contributions of participants and replies of the guest philosophers are published in this series.

At certain moments in his political essays, Kant conceives of socio-historical emancipation as a process of working ourselves out of pathological legacies, suggesting that emancipation would involve a process of working through our affective attachments to entrenched, regressive social arrangements. Jackson shows how Freud's analyses of melancholia, mania and the work of mourning can contribute to an understanding of key dimensions of such pathological social fixations, as well as the possibilit...

This book provides a discussion of the philosophy of being according to three major traditions in Western philosophy, the Analytic, the Continental, and the Thomistic. The origin of the point of view of each of these traditions is associated with a seminal figure, Gottlob Frege, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Aquinas, respectively. The questions addressed in this book are constitutional for the philosophy of being, considering the meaning of being, the relationship between thinking and being, and the...

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal ord...

This book demonstrates for the first time how the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein can transform 4E Cognitive Science. In particular, it shows how insights from Wittgenstein can empower those within 4E to reject the long held view that our minds must involve representations inside our heads. The book begins by showing how proponents of 4E are divided amongst themselves. Proponents of Extended Mind insist that internal representations are always needed to explain the human mind. However, proponents...

Comparing is one of the most essential practices, in our everyday life as well as in science and humanities. In this in-depth philosophical analysis of the structure, practice and ethics of comparative procedures, Hartmut von Sass expands on the significance of comparison. Elucidating the ramified structure of comparing, von Sass suggests a typology of comparisons before introducing the notion of comparative injustice and the limits of comparisons. He elaborates on comparing as practice by re...

Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings inspired contemporary philosophical thinking and advanced many issues that had been addressed by traditional philosophy. The questions raised by the Viennese philosopher initiated debates on a reconsideration of philosophical terminology. This is especially true for a term that has generated at least three significant controversies since its creation and will probably generate more disputes in the following years. It is the expression "form(s) of life" which transl...

This impressive edited collection investigates the relationship between British Pop Art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. At this time, when Paolozzi’s oeuvre is in the process of being rediscovered, his long-time fascination with Wittgenstein requires thorough exploration, as it discloses a deeper understanding of his artistic production, further helping to reassess the philosopher’s actual impact on visual arts and its theory in the second half of the 20th cen...