Grasping Reality
Grasping Reality

Author: Hans Lenk

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 981279557X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Grasping Reality addresses the methodology of a sophisticated realistic approach to scientific as well as everyday recognition by using schemes and interpretative constructs to analyze theories and the practice of recognition from a hypothesis-realistic vantage point. The three main theses are: (1) Any OC graspingOCO of real objects, processes, entities etc. is deeply dependent on scheme interpretations and interpretative constructs OCo in short, on using schemes and constructs; the same applies to any sophisticated actions encroaching on reality; (2) a sophisticated interpretation-dependent realism is sketched out and defended from a methodological, non-foundational, epistemological point of view called pragmatic realism; (3) the most provocative thesis is generalized from the role of the well-known preparationist interpretation of quantum theory to everyday knowledge OCo the interpretative structuring and preparing of the experimental make-up as known in quantum mechanics is not just a special case but the rather general case of gaining any knowledge in science and everyday recognition. An appendix provides an overview regarding a realistic and pragmatic philosophy of technology, including the so-called new information technologies. Contents: OC GraspingOCO as Interpretation and Impregnation; Methodological Outline of the Systematic Scheme Interpretationism; Short Note about OC GraspingOCO in Traditional Philosophy; OC TruthOCO as a Metatheoretic Interpretative Construct; A Reappraisal Regarding OC TheoriesOCO and OC Theoretical ConceptsOCO: Towards an Action-Theoretical and Technology-Oriented Philosophy of Science and Epistemology; Reality Constructs and Different OC RealismsOCO From a Kantian Towards a Problematistic-Interpretationist Approach; Referential Realism as an Interactionist Interpretationism; Interpretation of Reality and Quantum Theory; R(r)sum(r): OC GraspingOCO as Acting in (Re)cognizing; Appendix OCo Progress and Characteristics of Traditional and New Technologies: Regarding a Realistic and Pragmatic Philosophy of Technology. Readership: Graduate and higher level undergraduate students as well as researchers in epistemology."

Grasping Truth and Reality
Grasping Truth and Reality

Author: Donald Le Roy Stults

Publisher: James Clarke & Company

Published: 2009-02-26

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0227903161

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When Lesslie Newbigin returned to Britain in 1974 after years of missionary service, he observed that his homeland was as much a mission field as India, where he had spent the majority of his missionary career. He concluded that the Western world needed a missionary confrontation. Instead of the traditional approach to missions, however, Newbigin realized that the Western world needed to be confronted theologically. From his earliest days at Cambridge University, Newbigin developed the theological convictions that shaped his understanding of the Christian faith, and he used these theological convictions as criteria to evaluate the belief system of Western culture and to provide an answer to its dilemma. The Enlightenment reintroduced humanism and dualisminto Western culture, which resulted on the loss of purpose and the rise of scepticism. This book discusses Newbigin's theological convictions and how they factored into both his critique of and his solution to Western culture's spiritual and worldview problems. Donald Le Roy cleverly explains Newbigin's solution to reintroduce the Christian belief system into Western culture in order to restore purpose and truth to Westerners and put them back in contact with true reality through Jesus Christ.

Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality

Author: Alan Wexelblat

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2014-05-10

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1483220559

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Virtual Reality: Applications and Explorations provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of virtual reality and artificial reality. This book discusses the potential applications of virtual reality. Organized into three parts encompassing 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the traditional computer science activities ad discusses how hard problems in computer science can be addressed with virtual reality ideas and technology. This text then explores some applications of virtual reality technology that could potentially touch almost every purposeful activity that humans undertake in a technological civilization. Other chapters consider the use of virtual reality to manage and present to users information that cannot otherwise be comprehended. This book discusses as well the use of artificial worlds in both computer art and virtual reality. The final chapter deals with how the ideas of virtual reality and artificial reality can be of use to anyone who has to manage a business or organization. This book is a valuable resource for computer scientists.

Contact with Reality
Contact with Reality

Author: Esther Lightcap Meek

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-05-05

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1498239846

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Is knowledge discovered, or just invented? Can we ever get outside ourselves to know how reality is in itself, independent of us? Philosophical realism raises the question whether in our knowing we connect with an independent reality--or only connect with our own mental constructs. Far from being a silly parlor game, the question impacts our lives concretely and deeply. Modern Western culture has been infected with antirealism and the doubt, skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and atheism that attends it--not to mention distrust and arbitrary (mis)use of reality. Premier scientist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi stepped aside from research to offer an innovative account of knowing that takes its cue from how discovery actually happens. Polanyi defied the antirealism of the twentieth century, sounding a ringing note of hope in his repeated claim that in discovery, we know we have made contact with reality because "we have a sense of the possibility of indeterminate future manifestations." And that sense marks contact with reality, because it is the way reality is: abundant, generous, and fraught with as-yet-unnameable possibilities. This book examines that distinctive claim, contrasting it to the wider philosophical discussions regarding realism and antirealism in the recent decades. It shows why Polanyi's outlook is superior, and why that matters, not just to scientific discoverers, but to us all.

Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality

Author: Howard Rheingold

Publisher:

Published: 1992-08-15

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Breaking the reality barrier ; the reality-industrial complex ; virtual reality and the future.

Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 20
Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 20

Author: J.D. Westwood

Publisher: IOS Press

Published: 2013-03-06

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 1614992096

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since 1992, when it began as the "Medicine Meets Virtual Reality" conference, NextMed/MMVR has been a forum for researchers utilizing IT advances to improve diagnosis and therapy, medical education, and procedural training. Scientists and engineers, physicians and other care providers, educators and students, military medicine specialists, futurists, and industry: all come together with the shared goal of making healthcare more precise and effective. This book presents the proceedings of the 20th NextMed/MMVR conference, held in San Diego, California, USA, in February 2013. It covers a wide range of topics: simulation, modeling, imaging, data visualization, haptics, robotics, sensors, interfaces, plasma medicine, and more. Key applications include simulator design, information-guided therapies, learning tools, mental and physical rehabilitation, and intelligence networking. During the past two decades, healthcare has been transformed by progress in computer-enabled technology, and NextMed/MMVR has played a prominent role in this transformation.

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality
Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

Author: Philip Goff

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-07-21

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0190677023

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism, the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience, and hence that physicalism cannot be true. Unusually for an opponent of physicalism, Goff argues that there are big problems with the most well-known arguments against physicalismChalmers' zombie conceivability argument and Jackson's knowledge argumentand proposes significant modifications. The second half of the book explores and defends a recently rediscovered theory of fundamental realityor perhaps rather a grouping of such theoriesknown as 'Russellian monism.' Russellian monists draw inspiration from a couple of theses defended by Bertrand Russell in The Analysis of Matter in 1927. Russell argued that physics, for all its virtues, gives us a radically incomplete picture of the world. It tells us only about the extrinsic, mathematical features of material entities, and leaves us in the dark about their intrinsic nature, about how they are in and of themselves. Following Russell, Russellian monists suppose that it is this 'hidden' intrinsic nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Some Russellian monists adopt panpsychism, the view that the intrinsic natures of basic material entities involve consciousness; others hold that basic material entities are proto-conscious rather than conscious. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. The penultimate chapter defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.

Slouching Towards Utopia
Slouching Towards Utopia

Author: J. Bradford DeLong

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2022-09-06

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0465023363

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from one of the world’s leading economists, offering a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, but left us unsatisfied “A magisterial history.”—​Paul Krugman Named a Best Book of 2022 by Financial Times * Economist * Fast Company Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.