On certainty and other philosophical essays on cognition
On certainty and other philosophical essays on cognition

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 107

ISBN-13: 3110319772

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On Certainty continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing occasional studies that form part of a wider program of investigation of the scope and limits of rational inquiry in the pursuit of understanding. And pragmatism forms a subtextual Leitmotiv of these essays, seeing that the linking idea at work throughout is that knowledge is a tool for the management of our theoretical and practical affairs, and that what we ask of it is serviceability for the uses we have in view.

Dialectics
Dialectics

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 3110321289

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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.

Finitude
Finitude

Author: Philippe Rochat

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9781032026923

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Philippe Rochat's FINITUDE is a rumination on time and self-consciousness. It is built around the premise that finitude and separation form the human self-conscious reality of time. It argues that we need to reclaim time from current theories in physics that tend to debunk time as an illusion, or state that time simply does not exist. This thought-provoking book considers how, from a human psychological and existential standpoint, time is very real. It examines how we make sense of such reality in human development and in comparison to other living creatures. The book explores how we represent time and live with it. It tries to capture the essence of time in our self-conscious mind. If we opt to live for as long as possible and knowing that it is going to end, how should we exist? FINITUDE contemplates this most serious psychological question. It considers the developmental origins of human subjectivity, the foundations of our sense of being alive and the explicit awareness of existing in finite time. It deals with how we live and represent our finite time, how we construe and archive in memory the events of our life, how we project ourselves into the future, and how we are all constrained to knowingly exist in finite time Offering an overarching understanding of concepts, above and beyond the methodological details, this book will be an essential reading for all advanced students and researchers interested in the psychology of time, and the development of self.

Interpreting Philosophy
Interpreting Philosophy

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 3110326973

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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.

On Rules and Principles
On Rules and Principles

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 3110321742

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The present book is a natural outgrowth of Rescher’s longstanding preoccupation with the rational systematization of our knowledge as manifested in such earlier works as Cognitive Systematization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), and Complexity (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998). Accordingly, the role of principles in human affairs is crucial and ubiquitous. Principology, the theory of principles—underdeveloped through it may be—is accordingly bound to find a significant place in the sphere of philosophical inquiry regarding matters of thought and action.

Epistemic Pragmatism and Other Studies in the Theory of Knowledge
Epistemic Pragmatism and Other Studies in the Theory of Knowledge

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 3110319055

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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.

Philosophical Explorations
Philosophical Explorations

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 3110319837

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This book continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays that originated in occasional lecture and conference presentations. Notwithstanding their topical diversity they exhibit a uniformity of method in a common attempt to view historically significant philosophical issues in the light of modern perspectives opened up thorough conceptual clarification.

On the Nature of Philosophy and Other Philosophical Essays
On the Nature of Philosophy and Other Philosophical Essays

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 3110320207

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This book continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays. Notwithstanding their thematic diversity, these discussions exhibit a uniformity of method in addressing philosophical issues via a mixture of historical contextualization, analytical scrutiny, and common-sensical concern. Their interest, such as it is, lies not just in what they do but in how they do it.

Reason, Method, and Value
Reason, Method, and Value

Author: Dale Jacquette

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 653

ISBN-13: 3110329050

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Nicholas Rescher has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in philosophy, writing on many different areas from logic to philosophy of language, epistemology, pragmatism, ethics and political philosophy, and metaphilosophy. Reason, Method, and Value: A Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher offers a selection of Rescher's writings over a span of decades representing the core of his prodigious research interests in six key areas. Each section of the *Reader* is accompanied by a compact critical introduction written by a leading philosophical scholar with spezial expertise in Rescher's philosophy, and the volume opens with an appreciative introduction written by the editor and a concluding retrospective by Rescher, looking back over his oeuvre and explaining connecting themes and the unity of system contained in this extensive body of work. Taken together, the volume encapsulates the heart of Rescher's impressive lifelong contributions to philosophy between two covers, in a single volume that provides a solid overview of his thought while serving to direct readers to the corpus of Rescher's writings for amore complete picture.

Being and Value and Other Philosophical Essays
Being and Value and Other Philosophical Essays

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 3110321343

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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. The chapter of the book are as follows: Being and Value: On the Prospect of Optimalism; On Evolution and Intelligent Design; Mind and Matter; Fallacies Regarding Free Will; Sophisticating Naïve Realism; Taxonomic Complexity and the Laws of Nature; Practical Vs. Theoretical Reason; Pragmatism as a Growth Industry; Cost Benefit Epistemology; Quantifying Quality; Explanatory Surdity; Can Philosophy be Objective?; On Ontology in Cognitive Perspective; Plenum Theory [Essay Written Jointly with Patrick Grim]; and Onometrics (On Referential Analysis in Philosophy)