The Logical Alien

2020-01-14 Philosophy

Author : Sofia Miguens
Release : 2020-01-14
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 831/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis The Logical Alien by : Sofia Miguens

Download or read book The Logical Alien written by Sofia Miguens. This book was released on 2020-01-14. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A remarkable book capable of reshaping what one takes philosophy to be.” —Cora Diamond, Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita, University of Virginia Could there be a logical alien—a being whose ways of talking, inferring, and contradicting exhibit an entirely different logical shape than ours, yet who nonetheless is thinking? Could someone, contrary to the most basic rules of logic, think that two contradictory statements are both true at the same time? Such questions may seem outlandish, but they serve to highlight a fundamental philosophical question: is our logical form of thought merely one among many, or must it be the form of thought as such? From Descartes and Kant to Frege and Wittgenstein, philosophers have wrestled with variants of this question, and with a range of competing answers. A seminal 1991 paper, James Conant’s “The Search for Logically Alien Thought,” placed that question at the forefront of contemporary philosophical inquiry. The Logical Alien, edited by Sofia Miguens, gathers Conant’s original article with reflections on it by eight distinguished philosophers—Jocelyn Benoist, Matthew Boyle, Martin Gustafsson, Arata Hamawaki, Adrian Moore, Barry Stroud, Peter Sullivan, and Charles Travis. Conant follows with a wide-ranging response that places the philosophical discussion in historical context, critiques his original paper, addresses the exegetical and systematic issues raised by others, and presents an alternative account. The Logical Alien challenges contemporary conceptions of how logical and philosophical form must each relate to their content. This monumental volume offers the possibility of a new direction in philosophy.

The Logical Alien

2020-02-11 Philosophy

Author : Sofia Miguens
Release : 2020-02-11
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 902/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis The Logical Alien by : Sofia Miguens

Download or read book The Logical Alien written by Sofia Miguens. This book was released on 2020-02-11. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is our logical form of thought merely one among many, or must it be the form of thought as such? From Kant to Wittgenstein, philosophers have wrestled with variants of this question. This volume brings together nine distinguished thinkers on the subject, including James Conant, author of the seminal paper “The Search for Logically Alien Thought.”

Alien Powers

2017-10-19 Political Science

Author : Kenneth Minogue
Release : 2017-10-19
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 544/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Alien Powers by : Kenneth Minogue

Download or read book Alien Powers written by Kenneth Minogue. This book was released on 2017-10-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term "ideology" can cover almost any set of ideas, but its power to bewitch political activists results from its strange logic: part philosophy, part science, part spiritual revelation, all tied together in leading to a remarkable paradox--that the modern Western world, beneath its liberal appearance, is actually the most systematically oppressive system of despotism the world has ever seen. Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology takes this complex intellectual construction apart, analyzing its logical, rhetorical, and psychological devices and thus opening it up to critical analysis. Ideologists assert that our lives are governed by a hidden system. Minogue traces this notion to Karl Marx who taught intellectuals the philosophical, scientific, moral, and religious moves of the ideological game. The believer would find in these ideas an endless source of new liberating discoveries about the meaning of life, and also the grand satisfaction of struggling to overcome oppression. Minogue notes that while the patterns of ideological thought were consistent, there was little agreement on who the oppressor actually was. Marx said it was the bourgeoisie, but others found the oppressor to be males, governments, imperialists, the white race, or the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Ideological excitement created turmoil in the twentieth century, but the defeat of the more violent and vicious ideologies--Nazism after 1945 and Communism after 1989--left the passion for social perfection as vibrant as ever. Activist intellectuals still seek to "see through" the life we lead. The positive goals of utopia may for the moment have faded, but the ideological hatred of modernity has remained, and much of our intellectual life has degenerated into a muddled and dogmatic skepticism. For Minogue, the complex task of "demystifying" the "demystifiers" requires that we should discover how ideology works. It must join together each of its complex strands of thought in order to understand the remarkable power of the whole.

Self-Knowledge and Resentment

2012-03-05 Philosophy

Author : Akeel Bilgrami
Release : 2012-03-05
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 526/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Self-Knowledge and Resentment by : Akeel Bilgrami

Download or read book Self-Knowledge and Resentment written by Akeel Bilgrami. This book was released on 2012-03-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Self-Knowledge and Resentment, Akeel Bilgrami argues that self-knowledge of our intentional states is special among all the knowledges we have because it is not an epistemological notion in the standard sense of that term, but instead is a fallout of the radically normative nature of thought and agency. Four themes or questions are brought together into an integrated philosophical position: What makes self-knowledge different from other forms of knowledge? What makes for freedom and agency in a deterministic universe? What makes intentional states of a subject irreducible to its physical and functional states? And what makes values irreducible to the states of nature as the natural sciences study them? This integration of themes into a single and systematic picture of thought, value, agency, and self-knowledge is essential to the book's aspiration and argument. Once this integrated position is fully in place, the book closes with a postscript on how one might fruitfully view the kind of self-knowledge that is pursued in psychoanalysis.

Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge

2013-01-08 Philosophy

Author : Julia Tanney
Release : 2013-01-08
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 727/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge by : Julia Tanney

Download or read book Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge written by Julia Tanney. This book was released on 2013-01-08. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julia Tanney offers a sustained criticism of today’s canon in philosophy of mind, which conceives the workings of the rational mind as the outcome of causal interactions between mental states that have their bases in the brain. With its roots in physicalism and functionalism, this widely accepted view provides the philosophical foundation for the cardinal tenet of the cognitive sciences: that cognition is a form of information-processing. Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge presents a challenge not only to the cognitivist approach that has dominated philosophy and the special sciences for the last fifty years but, more broadly, to metaphysical-empirical approaches to the study of the mind. Responding to a tradition that owes much to the writings of Davidson, early Putnam, and Fodor, Tanney challenges this orthodoxy on its own terms. In untangling its internal inadequacies, starting with the paradoxes of irrationality, she arrives at a view these philosophers were keen to rebut—one with affinities to the work of Ryle and Wittgenstein and all but invisible to those working on the cutting edge of analytic philosophy and mind research today. This is the view that rational explanations are embedded in “thick” descriptions that are themselves sophistications upon ever ascending levels of discourse, or socio-linguistic practices. Tanney argues that conceptual cartography rather than metaphysical-scientific explanation is the basic tool for understanding the nature of the mind. Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge clears the path for a return to the world-involving, circumstance-dependent, normative practices where the rational mind has its home.

Popular eBooks

The Logical Alien

The Logical Alien

Alien Powers

Self-Knowledge and Resentment

Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge

You may also like...