This book is the product of a collaboration stretching the years 2007-10, which began as a paper on “Plenum Theory” published in Nous. The work grew out of the author's conviction that standard set theory, which had evolved to meet the needs of mathematics, was not fully adequate to the less abstractly geared and rigidly determine needs of less finalized ranges of inquiry and deliberation.
The book seeks to characterize reflexive conceptual structures more thoroughly and more precisely than has been done before, making explicit the structure of paradox and the clear connections to major logical results. The goal is to trace the structure of reflexivity in sentences, sets, and systems, but also as it appears in propositional attitudes, mental states, perspectives, and processes. What an understanding of patterns of reflexivity offers is a deeper and de-mystified understanding of issues of semantics, free will, and the nature of consciousness.
Philosophical modeling is as old as philosophy itself; examples range from Plato's Cave and the Divided Line to Rawls's original position. What is new are the astounding computational resources now available for philosophical modeling. Although the computer cannot offer a substitute for philosophical research, it can offer an important new environment for philosophical research. The authors present a series of exploratory examples of computer modeling, using a range of computational techniques to illuminate a variety of questions in philosophy and philosophical logic. Topics include self-reference and paradox in fuzzy logics, varieties of epistemic chaos, fractal images of formal systems, and cellular automata models in game theory. Examples in the last category include models for the evolution of generosity, possible causes and cures for discrimination, and the formal undecidability of patterns of social and biological interaction. The cross-platform CD-ROM provided with the book contains a variety of working examples, in color and often operating dynamically, embedded in a text that parallels that of the book. Source code of all major programs is included to facilitate further research.
The central claim of this powerful philosophical exploration is that within any logic we have, there can be no coherent notion of all truth or of total knowledge. Grim examines a series of logical paradoxes and related formal results to reveal their implications for contemporary epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. He reaches the provocative conclusion that, if the universe is thought of in terms of its truths, it is essentially open and incomplete. The Incomplete Universe includes detailed work on the liar paradox and recent attempts at solution, Kaplan and Montague's paradox of the knower, the Gödel theorems and related incompleteness phenomena, and new forms of Cantorian argument. The emphasis throughout is philosophical rather than formal, with an eye to connection's with possible worlds, the notion of omniscience, and the opening lines of the Tractatus: "The world is all that is the case.
Categorization is an essential and unavoidable instrumentality for conceptually navigating a world—indeed for being able to conceptualize a world to be navigated. Classification is a pivotal instrument for scientific systemization, featured as a basis for the philosophical understanding of reality since Aristotle, but classificatory concepts of sorts, types and natural kinds inevitably pervade our understanding of ourselves and our position in the social as well as the natural world at all levels. The authors argue that the character, purpose-, context-, and culture-relativity of categories and categorization have been widely misunderstood—that standard philosophical views are substantially correct in some respects but markedly mistaken in others. The book offers a comprehensive survey of basic principles of classification and categorization, a survey of relevant empirical work, and a multitude of illustrative examples accompanied by instructive analysis of ways and means. The work traces wide-ranging implications of the current approach for philosophical problematic and paradox in philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy of science, social philosophy and ethics.
In the epic tradition of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Jonathan Maberry, the terrifying second novel in the Haunted Hollow Chronicles. GRIM HARVEST Still reeling from last year’s Pumpkin Parade disaster, the people of Ember Hollow are unprepared for the horrors yet to come, as Halloween returns to their shaken farm community. A brutal biker gang, armed with a spell that turns people into werewolves, is roaring into town with plans to resurrect a sadistic mass murderess in the body of an unsuspecting local. Teens Deshaun and Stuart, best friends and death metal fans, must protect their friend Candace from her own psychotic brother—dubbed The Trick or Treat Terror by the press and who Candace is certain will rise from the dead just in time for Halloween. And Minister Abe McGlazer is acting like a man possessed after a secret passage is discovered beneath his ancient church . . . With the aid of a pair of punk rockers, Deputy Hudson Lott will have to work overtime to help his friends and family confront a host of horrors before this year’s pumpkin crop unleashes a wave of evil too hideous to imagine . . .
The new edition of this popular book is reorganized to present pairs of contrasting views on what it means to be a man in contemporary Western culture. Addressing such issues as sex differences, fatherhood, intimacy, homosexuality, and oppression; the collection also includes new discussions of paternity, pornography, mixed-race marriage, impotence, and violence. Rethinking Masculinity is an excellent text for gender studies, ethics, and social philosophy courses.
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