Science and metaphysics. The Four-Category Ontology : The Four-Category OntologyA Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science Oxford Scholarship Online. Abstract The four-category ontology is a metaphysical system recognizing two fundamental categorial distinctions — these being between the particular and the universal, and between the substantial and the non-substantial — which cut across each other to generate four fundamental ontological categories. The four categories thus generated are substantial particulars (‘objects’), non-substantial particulars (‘modes’), substantial universals (‘kinds’), and non-substantial universals (‘attributes’). This ontology has a lengthy pedigree, with many commentators attributing a version of it to Aristotle on the ... More The four-category ontology is a metaphysical system recognizing two fundamental categorial distinctions — these being between the particular and the universal, and between the substantial and the non-substantial — which cut across each other to generate four fundamental ontological categories.
Bibliographic Information. Non-philosophy. Non-philosophy is a concept developed by French philosopher François Laruelle (formerly of the Collège international de philosophie and the University of Paris X: Nanterre). Laruelle argues that all forms of philosophy (from ancient philosophy to analytic philosophy to deconstruction and so on) are structured around a prior decision, and remain constitutively blind to this decision. The 'decision' that Laruelle is concerned with here is the dialectical splitting of the world in order to grasp the world philosophically. Examples from the history of philosophy include Immanuel Kant's distinction between the synthesis of manifold impressions and the faculties of the understanding; Martin Heidegger's split between the ontic and the ontological; and Jacques Derrida's notion of différance/presence.
The reason Laruelle finds this decision interesting and problematic is because the decision itself cannot be grasped (philosophically grasped, that is) without introducing some further scission. Surprise! Naturalistic metaphysics undermines naive determinism, part I. By Massimo Pigliucci Throughout last semester several students at CUNY’s Graduate Center, a colleague, and I have spent some time navigating the complexities of James Ladyman and Don Ross’s Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (which also contains essays co-authored by David Spurrett and John Collier).
The book is not for the faint of heart, but it has given me much food for thought, which Julia and I will soon explore further in a forthcoming episode of the Rationally Speaking podcast featuring Ladyman as a guest (I should also add that James contributed to an edited collection on the philosophy of pseudoscience that I just finished putting together with the help of Maarten Boudry which will be published next year by the University of Chicago Press).
I must admit that the title of the first chapter — “In defense of scientism” — did not dispose me well toward the book. Background, 1: metaphysics and naturalism. Ouch. That’s where Ladyman and Ross come in. Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. This is not a linear book. It is a complex book. Wimsatt begins with the fact that humans are limited beings confronted with a complex world. This has an array of implications for our understanding of our understanding of the world, and also for our understanding of the world. These are the broadest themes running through the book. They are reflexive. Begin with our understanding of our understanding of the world. The two lead themes -- that we are limited beings and that we confront a complex world -- percolate through the book, and lead seamlessly to a panoply of topics.
The book brings together modestly edited versions of some of Wimsatt's most important and influential essays published over the last thirty years. In the remaining space, I'll sort through some of the main themes that permeate Wimsatt's book. Heuristic procedures, as Herbert Simon thought of them, are "rules of thumb" guiding our decisions and choices. Preliminary Survey results | PhilPapers Surveys. On Sense and Reference. Equality[1] gives rise to challenging questions which are not altogether easy to answer. Is it a relation? A relation between objects, or between names or signs of objects? In my Begriffsschrift I assumed the latter. The reasons which seem to favour this are the following: a = a and a = b are obviously statements of differing cognitive value; a = a holds a priori and, according to Kant, is to be labeled analytic, while statements of the form a = b often contain very valuable extensions of our knowledge and cannot always be established a priori.
The discovery that the rising sun is not new every morning, but always the same, was one of the most fertile astronomical discoveries. Even today the identification of a small planet or a comet is not always a matter of course. Now if we were to regard equality as a relation between that which the names 'a' and 'b' designate, it would seem that a = b could not differ from a = a (i.e. provided a = b is true). Consciousness Studies/The Philosophical Problem/Machine Consciousness. Elementary Information and Information Systems Theory[edit] When one physical thing interacts with another a change in "state" occurs. For instance, when a beam of white light, composed of a full spectrum of colours is reflected from a blue surface all colours except blue are absorbed and the light changes from white to blue.
When this blue light interacts with an eye it causes blue sensitive cones to undergo a chemical change of state which causes the membrane of the cone to undergo an electrical change of state etc. The number of distinguishable states that a system can possess is the amount of information that can be encoded by the system. Each distinguishable state is a "bit" of information. The binary symbols "1" and "0" have two states and can be used to encode two bits of information.
The binary system is useful because it is probably the simplest encoding of information and any object can represent a binary "1". Classification, signs, sense, relations, supervenience etc. EXTERNALISM: THOUGHTS AND THEIR CONTENT. KNOWING WHAT YOU THINK vs KNOWING Fred Dretske I am an externalist about meaning. I am an externalist about all forms of representation. That includes mental representation. What gives something intentional content, what makes it represent, mean, or say something about other affairs are not its intrinsic properties, but, rather, something about its purpose or function in an informational system.
That is why alcohol in a glass tube--an ordinary household thermometer--is able to mean or say, truly or falsely as the case may be, that the temperature is 70o F. It has the function (a function we give it) of telling us, providing us with information, about temperature. *Thanks to the members of El Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, for the tough questions they asked when I read an early version of this paper. I have just described my own brand of metaphysical externalism about the mind. This, we are told, creates a problem. 1. Narrow Mental Content. First published Wed Nov 20, 2002; substantive revision Thu Jun 30, 2011 Narrow mental content is a kind of mental content that does not depend on an individual's environment. Narrow content contrasts with “broad” or “wide” content, which depends on features of the individual's environment as well as on features of the individual.
It is controversial whether there is any such thing as narrow content. Assuming that there is, it is also controversial what sort of content it is, what its relation to ordinary or “broad” content is, and how it is determined by the individual's intrinsic properties. 1. Introduction What is narrow mental content? A narrow content of a particular belief is a content of that belief that is completely determined by the individual's intrinsic properties. On first encounter, it may seem strange that the idea of narrow content should be controversial, or even that we should need a special term for it. 2. 2.1 Putnam's Argument: Twin Earth and Natural Kinds 3.
Fred Dretske. Frederick Irwin Dretske (December 9, 1932 – July 24, 2013) was an American philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of mind.[1] Born to Frederick and Hattie Dretske, he first planned to be an engineer, attending Purdue University. He changed his mind after taking the university's only philosophy course, deciding philosophy was the only thing he wanted to do in his life. After graduating in 1954 with a degree in electrical engineering and serving in the Army, he enrolled in graduate school in philosophy at the University of Minnesota, where he received his PhD in 1960.
His dissertation, supervised by May Brodbeck, was on the philosophy of time. Dretske’s first academic appointment was to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1960, where he rose to the rank of full Professor. Upon his death, he was survived by his second wife Judith Fortson, by his children Kathleen Dretske and Ray Dretske, and by a stepson, Ryan Fortson.[2] Selected publications[edit] People.cohums.ohio-state.edu/tennant9/parts_and_classes_analytical.pdf. Analysis, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 215-223. Composition as Identity. Composition as Identity A Resource Page Composition as identity is the thesis that a thing is identical to its parts. For example, the bicycle is identical to the wheels, frame, seat, gears, pedals, brakes, and chain. (You could break the bicycle down into smaller parts, and the identity claim would hold.)
Note what the view is not: It is not that a composite object is identical to the sum or set of its parts. Rather, a composite is identical to its parts, plural. Philosophers who believe in four-dimensionalism understand composition (and thus composition as identity) to include temporal as well as spatial parts (more precisely, composition includes spatiotemporal parts). Table of Contents Quoted Passages Motivating Composition as IdentityChallenges for Composition as IdentityAnnotated Bibliography Passages Motivating Composition as Identity Suppose a man owned some land which he divides into six parcels.
David Lewis motivates the thesis in his book, Parts of Classes: [Top of page] Mereology. Mereology. First published Tue May 13, 2003; substantive revision Mon Feb 24, 2014 Mereology (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole.[1] Its roots can be traced back to the early days of philosophy, beginning with the Presocratics and continuing throughout the writings of Plato (especially the Parmenides and the Thaetetus), Aristotle (especially the Metaphysics, but also the Physics, the Topics, and De partibus animalium), and Boethius (especially De Divisione and In Ciceronis Topica).
In the following we focus mostly on contemporary formulations of mereology as they grew out of these recent theories—Leśniewski's and Leonard and Goodman's. Indeed, although such theories come in different logical guises, they are sufficiently similar to be recognized as a common basis for most subsequent developments. 1. A preliminary caveat is in order. This is not uncontentious. 2. Lewisian mereology. Chinese Room Argument. Portal:Mind and Brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Philosophy. Gilbert Ryle - The Concept of Mind. You're reading a free preview. Pages 7 to 80 are not shown in this preview.
You're reading a free preview. Pages 87 to 118 are not shown in this preview. You're reading a free preview. Pages 125 to 223 are not shown in this preview. You're reading a free preview. You're reading a free preview. Dennett. Word and Object. Profile For S. Guha: Reviews. Mind design two. Martin Heidegger. His best known book, Being and Time, is considered one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century.[9] In it and later works, Heidegger maintained that our way of questioning defines our nature. He argued that Western thinking had lost sight of being. Finding ourselves as "always already" moving within ontological presuppositions, we lose touch with our grasp of being and its truth becomes "muddled".[10] As a solution to this condition, Heidegger advocated a change in focus from ontologies based on ontic determinants to the fundamental ontological elucidation of being-in-the-world in general, allowing it to reveal, or "unconceal" itself as concealment.[11] Overview[edit] Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy since Plato has misunderstood what it means for something "to be", tending to approach this question in terms of a being, rather than asking about Being itself.
Heidegger's work has strongly influenced philosophy, aesthetics of literature, and the humanities. "The Phenomenon of Science", a book on MSTT. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Categories. 1. Category Systems 1.1 Aristotelian Realism Philosophical interest in categories may be traced back to Aristotle who, in his treatise Categories, attempts to enumerate the most general kinds into which entities in the world divide. He does not begin from a single highest kind, but rather lists the following as the ten highest categories of things “said without any combination” (Categories 1b25): Substance (e.g., man, horse) Quantity (e.g., four-foot, five-foot) Quality (e.g., white, grammatical) Relation (e.g., double, half) Place (e.g., in the Lyceum, in the market-place) Date (e.g., yesterday, last year) Posture (e.g., is lying, is sitting) State (e.g., has shoes on, has armor on) Action (e.g., cutting, burning) Passion (e.g., being cut, being burned) There are two sorts of substance: a primary substance is, e.g., an individual man or horse; the species (and genera) of these individuals (e.g., man, animal) are secondary substances. 1.2 Kantian Conceptualism 1.3 Husserlian Descriptivism.
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