Tag: Metaphysics

Free Download Liran Shia Gordon, "A Metaphysics of Creation for the Information Age: A Dialogue with Duns Scotus"
English | ISBN: 1666902985 | 2022 | 210 pages | EPUB, PDF | 450 KB + 1362 KB
The metaphysical and theological writings of John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308)-one of the most intriguing, albeit if now nigh-forgotten philosophers of the late Middle Ages-were seminal in the emergence of modernity. A Metaphysics of Creation for the Information Age: A Dialogue with Duns Scotus uses the prism of the concept of Creation as the leitmotif to assemble and interpret Scotus’s system of thought in a unified manner. In doing so, Liran Shia Gordon reframes Scotus’s metaphysics such that it confronts the challenges posed by information technology and its impact on our lives, thought, and actions. Surprisingly, although there has been great interest in the emergence and dissemination of information technology through the popular media, there has not yet been a genuine and vigorous philosophical consideration of the multiple ways information technology alters the basic categories by which we perceive and understand reality. Juxtaposing medieval philosophy and information technology offers an unconventional horizon to frame the foundational changes carried by the information revolution and reassess the relevancy of medieval philosophy.

Free Download David H. Gordon, "The Implications of Evolution for Metaphysics: Theism, Idealism, and Naturalism"
English | ISBN: 1666923729 | 2023 | 364 pages | EPUB, PDF | 1061 KB + 3 MB
After the nineteenth-century "turn from idealism," when idealist philosophies were largely abandoned for materialist ones, many analytic philosophers have adhered to scientific naturalism as the new orthodoxy, largely due to the success of scientific advancements. The New Atheists, such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, claim it is Darwin who deserves much of the credit for repudiating the traditional Mind-first world view. In The Implications of Evolution for Metaphysics: Theism, Idealism, and Naturalism, David H. Gordon explores questions such as: Is it true that evolution is incompatible with theism and necessarily results in naturalism? Is it possible, as naturalism maintains, that everything can be reduced to physical processes? Or are there too many recalcitrant phenomena that defy reduction? Can the epistemological conditions for metaphysical knowledge be met? If the underdetermination of theory allows for multiple metaphysical theories to cover the same phenomena, with each offering an epistemically adequate explanation, then neither naturalism nor theism can be asserted to be objectively true. Nevertheless, it is possible to favor one over the other based on overall coherence and explanatory power.

Free Download Derek Brown, "Political Theology after Metaphysics "
English | ISBN: 1438495862 | 2023 | 292 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Argues for a revolutionary political theology that can be used to combat racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression.

Free Download Karen Bennett, "Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 13"
English | ISBN: 0192886037 | 2023 | 336 pages | EPUB, PDF | 499 KB + 2 MB
Much of the most interesting work in philosophy today is metaphysical in character. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics is a forum for the best new work in this flourishing field. OSM offers a broad view of the subject, featuring not only the traditionally central topics such as existence, identity, modality, time, and causation, but also the rich clusters of metaphysical questions in neighbouring fields, such as philsophy of mind and philosophy of science. Besides independent essays, volumes will often contain a critical essay on a recent book, or a symposium that allows participants to respond to one another’s criticisms and questions. Anyone who wants to know what’s happening in metaphysics can start here.

Free Download Robb Dunphy, "Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy "
English | ISBN: 1032030003 | 2023 | 380 pages | EPUB, PDF | 946 KB + 31 MB
This volume is dedicated to questions about the nature and method of metaphysics in Classical German Philosophy. Its chapters offer original investigations into the metaphysical projects of many of the major figures in German philosophy between Wolff and Hegel.

Free Download Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall, "Medieval Metaphysics, or is it "Just Semantics"? "
English | ISBN: 1443833754 | 2011 | 105 pages | PDF | 621 KB
Medieval semantic theories develop out of Aristotle s On Interpretation, in which he notes that Spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds (tr. J. L. Ackrill, OUP 1984). The medieval commentary tradition elaborates on Aristotle s theory in light of various epistemological and metaphysical commitments, including those entailed by the doctrine of the transcendentals that emerges from the tradition in the writings of Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236). Transcendental attributes such as unity, truth and goodness (properties that figure into most if not all accounts of the transcendentals) characterize every being as such, and hence the doctrine of the transcendentals promised some knowledge of God. This hope, together with the general medieval consensus that the cognitive acts by which we grasp extra-mental entities are veridical (i.e., in most cases, these acts represent what the cognizing subject takes them to represent) encouraged medieval thinkers to devote considerable effort to discerning how concepts latch onto reality. Medieval Metaphysics, or Is It Just Semantics ? follows these attempts as concerns the signification of theological discourse in general and Trinitarian semantics in particular, the proper object of the intellect, and what is signified through quidditative or essential definition.

Free Download Properties in Ancient Metaphysics
English | 2023 | ISBN: 1009475738 | 78 Pages | PDF (True) | 1.5 MB
This Element provides an overview of how the ancient thinkers (Anaxagoras, Plato and Aristotle) theorised about properties; such overview puts in relief the inquiries, problems and solutions they were pursuing while engaged in dialogue with each other. It examines alternative philosophical perspectives existing in antiquity concerning the explanation of property qualification, qualitative similarity, compositeness, and oneness. It further argues that although Plato was the first to conceptualise recurring universals, he did not reify them and did not admit them in his ontology; it was Aristotle who did, and developed his metaphysics around them. Aristotle, building on Plato’s work, identified the metaphysical phenomenon of the instantiation of properties and developed an account for it. Finally, this Element outlines Aristotle’s ‘sophisticated’ account of the oneness of a substance and argues that it was not hylomorphic.

Free Download G. W. Leibniz, Albert R. Chandler, George R. Montgomery, "Discourse on Metaphysics and The Monadology"
English | 2005 | pages: 96 | ISBN: 0486443108 | EPUB | 0,8 mb
One of the 17th century’s most important thinkers, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz exercised enormous influence on the philosophy of Herder, Feuerbach, and Hegel as well as on the writings of Schiller and Goethe. Two of Leibniz’s most studied and often quoted works appear in this volume: Discourse on Metaphysics and The Monadology.

Free Download Chemistry’s Metaphysics
English | 2023 | ISBN: 1009467867 | 86 Pages | PDF (True) | 1.2 MB
The place of chemistry in the metaphysics of science may be viewed as peripheral compared to physics and biology. However, a metaphysics of science that disregards chemistry would be incomplete and ill-informed. This Element establishes this claim by showing how key metaphysical issues are informed by drawing on chemistry. Five metaphysical topics are investigated: natural kinds, scientific realism, reduction, laws and causation. These topics are spelled out from the perspective of ten chemical case studies, each of which illuminates the novel ways that metaphysics of science can be informed by chemistry.

Free Download William Desmond, "The Voiding of Being: The Doing and Undoing of Metaphysics in Modernity"
English | 2019 | pages: 313 | ISBN: 0813232481 | PDF | 2,1 mb
In contemporary philosophy the status, indeed the very viability of metaphysics is a much contested issue. The reflections offered here explore diverse aspects of this contested status and offer a defence of metaphysics. In other works, perhaps most fully in Being and the Between, William Desmond has tried to develop what he calls a metaxological metaphysics in response to different skeptical, if not hostile approaches to metaphysics quite common in our time. The Voiding of Being complements the systematic dimensions of this metaxological metaphysics outlined in Being and the Between. It presents a set of studies which amplify important themes in the unfolding of modern metaphysics, in relation to major earlier and contemporary thinkers, while adding nuance to what is involved in the more systematic articulation of a metaxological metaphysics. There is what the author calls a voiding of being in modernity, expressed in diverse developments of thought. "The Voiding of Being," might seems to conjure up too negative associations but the aim of the thoughts gathered here is not at all negative. While attempting to understand the voiding of being in modern thought, our appreciation of the promise of metaphysical thinking can also be renewed and indeed extended – extended beyond skepticism and hostility to metaphysics. Desmond engages many interlocutors along the way, from the long tradition, such as Heraclitus, Aquinas and Hegel, as well as more contemporary thinkers like Heidegger and Marion. As the book’s subtitle suggests, it is concerned with the continued doing of metaphysics and not only the contemporary undoing of it.