How to teach philosophy to young dissidents, excluded from higher education by the communist regime? The author of this book, Czech philosopher, former dissident, software developer and occasional politician, tries to carry over this experience into his university lectures. It is not a talk about philosophy or philosophers, but rather an invitation: its aim is first to excite the reader´s interest and to lead him or her to think philosophically by himself. In some 30 short chapters, covering a broad spectrum of topics and followed by questions, the reader is shown that philosophy is not only a special discipline, but rather a habit of thought, which can and should be applied anywhere.
Sonic Thinking attempts to extend the burgeoning field of media philosophy, which so far is defined by a strong focus on cinema, to the field of sound. The contributors urge readers to re-adjust their ideas of Sound Studies by attempting to think not only about sound [by external criteria, such as (cultural) meaning], but to think with and through sound. Series editor Bernd Herzogenrath's collection serves two interconnected purposes: in developing an alternative philosophy of music that takes music serious as a 'form of thinking'; and in bringing this approach into a fertile symbiosis with the concepts and practices of 'artistic research': art, philosophy, and science as heterogeneous, yet coequal forms of thinking and researching. Including contributions by both established figures and younger scholars working on cutting edge material, and weaving artistic responses and interventions in between the more theoretical texts, Herzogenrath's collection provides a lively introduction to a fresh debate.
Imogen Dickie develops an account of aboutness-fixing for thoughts about ordinary objects, and of reference-fixing for the singular terms we use to express them. Extant discussions of this topic tread a weary path through descriptivist proposals, causalist alternatives, and attempts to combine the most attractive elements of each. The account developed here is a new beginning. It starts with two basic principles. The first connects aboutness and truth: a belief is about the object upon whose properties its truth or falsity depends. The second connects truth and justification: justification is truth conducive; in general and allowing exceptions, a subject whose beliefs are justified will be unlucky if they are not true, and not merely lucky if they are. These principles—one connecting aboutness and truth; the other truth and justification—combine to yield a third principle connecting aboutness and justification: a body of beliefs is about the object upon which its associated means of justification converges; the object whose properties a subject justifying beliefs in this way will be unlucky to get wrong and not merely luck to get right. The first part of the book proves a precise version of this principle. Its remaining chapters use the principle to explain how the relations to objects that enable us to think about them—perceptual attention; understanding of proper names; grasp of descriptions—do their aboutness-fixing and thought-enabling work. The book includes discussions of the nature of singular thought and the relation between thought and consciousness.
The book provides a new look at the everyday relationship between psychological processes and extraordinary aspects of ordinary phenomena. Why should we deal with ordinary things? People’s life is made of everyday practical, taken-for-granted things, such as driving a car, using money, listening music, etc. When you drive from home to workplace, you are migrating between contexts. Is this an empty space you are crossing, or the time you spend into the car is something meaningful? In psychological terms, things have, at least, three levels of existence, a material, a symbolic and an affective one. The underlying idea is that the symbolic elaboration of everyday things is characterized by the transcendence of the particular object-sign, leading to the creation of more and more complex sign fields. These fields expand according to an inclusive logic up to dialogically and dialectically incorporate opposites (i.e. clean/dirty, transparent/opaque, hide/ show, join/divide, slow/fast, etc.). Even the meaning of “ordinary” and “extraordinary” follow such an inclusive logic: if you give a positive value to ordinary, extraordinary is rule-breaking; otherwise, if ordinary means trivial, extraordinary assumes a positive value. Besides, things are cultural artifacts mediating the experience of the world, the psychological processes and the construction of mind. Reflecting upon “things” is thus a more meaningful pathway to understand Psyche.
Vagueness, volume XX, contains twenty-seven essays, with issues covered including: nihilism, phenomenal sorites, degrees of truth, epistemicism, higher-order vagueness, contextualism, and intuitionism. Written by leading contemporary philosophers, these essays will be of interest to researchers in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, metaphysics and epistemology; as well as those in natural language semantics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science more generally. A substantial introduction written by the editors provides a guide to the topic and to the essays in the volume.
While well-known for his book-length work, philosopher Peter Unger's articles have been less widely accessible. These two volumes of Unger's Philosophical Papers include articles spanning more than 35 years of Unger's long and fruitful career. Dividing the articles thematically, this first volume collects work in epistemology and ethics, among other topics, while the second volume focuses on metaphysics. Unger's work has advanced the full spectrum of topics at the heart of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, and ethics. Unger advances radical positions, going against the so-called "commonsense philosophy" that has dominated the analytic tradition since its beginnings early in the twentieth century. In epistemology, his articles advance the view that nobody ever knows anything and, beyond that, argue that nobody has any reason to believe anything--and even beyond that, they argue that nobody has any reason to do anything, or even want anything. In metaphysics, his work argues that people do not really exist--and neither do puddles, plants, poodles, and planets. But, as Unger has often changed his favored positions, from one decade to the next, his work also advances the opposite, "commonsense" positions: that there are in fact plenty of people, puddles, plants and planets and, quite beyond that, we know it all to be true. On most major philosophical questions, both of these sides of Unger's significant work are well represented in this major two volume collection. Unger's vivid writing style, intellectual vitality, and fearlessness in the face of our largest philosophical questions, make these volumes of great interest not only to the philosophical community but to others who might otherwise find contemporary philosophy dry and technical.
When Pancho arrives at St. Anthony's Home, he knows his time there will be short. If his plans succeed, he'll soon be arrested for the murder of his sister's killer. But then he's assigned to help DQ, whose brain cancer has slowed neither his spirit nor his mouth. DQ tells Pancho all about his "Death Warrior's Manifesto", which will help him to live out his last days fully - ideally, he says, with the love of the beautiful Marisol. As Pancho tracks down his sister's murderer, he finds himself falling under the influence of DQ and Marisol, and beginning to understand that there's more to life than revenge and more to death than sadness. "I love Francisco's books. They make you bigger inside after reading them" Maggie Stiefvater
