The Anatomy of Knowledge and The Ontological Necessity of First Principles

The Anatomy of Knowledge and The Ontological Necessity of First Principles

Author: Karim Lahham

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03-08

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9789948860709

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This paper in the series explores one of the first principles of metaphysics, the principle of identity in its logical form, namely, the principle of non-contradiction, and the relationship between its metaphysical and logical dimensions. It is invariably the task of revelation to provide definable and recognizable references that can be brought into human understanding. Logic is given the role of providing in us an eternal order reflective of the order of creation, a role that bestows it therefore with a certain sacrality. the Kantian conceptualist contention, now often encountered, establishes the basis for the contemporary de-ontologization of logic, since it creates a split between second intentions and first intentions, ensuring that reality has no input into the workings of the mind. Secondary intelligibles, however, are based on first intelligibles - things that exist - and thus they are ontologically dependent and reflective of that order. The logical thus can never contradict the metaphysical, and the metaphysical can never, in turn, be illogical. This seamlessness between the two orders is critical to the safeguarding of a sound intellectual discourse enabling the human soul to understand its existential condition, a condition that remains the same regardless of time and place


The Necessity of Experience

The Necessity of Experience

Author: Edward S. Reed

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780300105667

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Primary experience, gained through the senses, is our most basic way of understanding reality and learning for ourselves. Our culture, however, favors the indirect knowledge gained from secondary experience, in which information is selected, modified, packaged, and presented to us by others. In this controversial book, Edward S. Reed warns that secondhand experience has become so dominant in our technological workplaces, schools, and even homes that primary experience is endangered. Reed calls for a better balance between firsthand and secondhand experience, particularly in our social institutions. He contends that without opportunities to learn directly, we become less likely to think and feel for ourselves. Since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, Western epistemological tradition has rejected primary experience in favor of the abstractions of secondhand experience. Building on James Gibson's concept of ecological psychology, Reed offers a spirited defense of the reality and significance of ordinary experience against both modernist and postmodernist critics. He expands on the radical critiques of work, education, and art begun by William Morris and John Dewey, offering an alternative vision of meaningful learning that places greater emphasis on unmediated experience, and he outlines the psychological, cultural, and intellectual conditions that will be needed to foster that crucial change.


After Finitude

After Finitude

Author: Quentin Meillassoux

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2008-06-07

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0826496741

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After Finitude provides readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy. Author Quentin Meillassoux introduces a philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique. After Finitude proposes a new alliance between philosophy and science and calls for an unequivocal halt to the creeping return of religiosity in contemporary philosophical discourse.


Kant’s Philosophy of Physical Science

Kant’s Philosophy of Physical Science

Author: Robert E. Butts

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 9400947305

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The papers in this volume are offered in celebration of the 200th anni versary of the pub 1 i cat i on of Inmanue 1 Kant's The MetaphysicaL Foundations of NatupaL Science. All of the es says (including the Introduction) save two were written espe ci ally for thi s volume. Gernot Bohme' s paper is an amended and enlarged version of one originally read in the series of lectures and colloquia in philosophy of science offered by Boston University. My own paper is a revised and enlarged version (with an appendix containing completely new material) of one read at the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Sci ence Association held in Chicago in 1984. Why is it important to devote this attention to Kant's last published work in the philosophy of physics? The excellent essays in the volume will answer the question. I will provide some schematic com ments designed to provide an image leading from the general question to its very specific answers. Kant is best known for hi s monumental Croitique of Pure Reason and for his writings in ethical theory. His "critical" philosophy requires an initial sharp division of knowledge into its theoretical and practical parts. Moral perfection of attempts to act out of duty is the aim of practical reason. The aim of theoretical reason is to know the truth about ma terial and spiritual nature.


Naming and Necessity

Naming and Necessity

Author: Saul A. Kripke

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780674598461

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If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics or in philosophy of language, this is it. Ever since the publication of its original version, Naming and Necessity has had great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.


Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap

Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap

Author: Adriane Rini

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-09-15

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1107077885

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Introduces readers to the history of necessity and possibility, two modal concepts which play a key role in philosophy.


God and Necessity

God and Necessity

Author: Brian Leftow

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2012-09-06

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 0199263353

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Brian Leftow offers a theist theory of necessity and possibility, and a new sort of argument for God's existence. He argues that necessities of logic and mathematics are determined by God's nature, but that it is events in God's mind - His imagination and choice - that account for necessary truths about concrete creatures.


Necessary Beings

Necessary Beings

Author: Bob Hale

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-09-19

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0199669570

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Bob Hale presents a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another. He argues that facts about what kinds of things exist depend on facts about what is possible. Modal facts are fundamental, and have their basis in the essences of things—not in meanings or concepts.


A Historical and Systematic Perspective on A Priori Knowledge and Justification

A Historical and Systematic Perspective on A Priori Knowledge and Justification

Author: Ivette Fred-Rivera

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-08-10

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 3031068742

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This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the problem of a priori knowledge from a historical as well as a systematic perspective. The author explores Kant’s views in connection with the possibility of revision, something hardly, if at all, done in philosophical literature. Furthermore, the views of well-renowned philosophers such as Quine, Putnam, Kitcher, and Hale are discussed in detail and are put into a historical and systematic perspective. Finally, this book contains a glossary of important notions offering illuminating accounts of a priori knowledge and related notions and explains the relationship between a priori knowledge, fallibility and revision. The detailing of concepts such as ‘defeasibility’, ‘infallibility’, ‘falsifiability’ helps anyone reading philosophical literature to pin down the meaning of the terms and its implications in this context. The enriched and dual approach the author takes makes the book a very useful and lucid guide to the problem of a priori knowledge.


Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge

Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge

Author: Kareem Khalifa

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-10-05

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1107195632

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The first comprehensive exploration of the nature and value of understanding, addressing burgeoning debates in epistemology and philosophy of science.