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Thomas Kuhn's 'Linguistic Turn' and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism
Presenting a critical history of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century, focusing on the transition from logical positivism in its first half to the \"new philosophy of science\" in its second, Stefano Gattei examines the influence of several key figures, but the main focus of the book are Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. Kuhn as the central figure of the new philosophy of science, and Popper as a key philosopher of the time who stands outside both traditions. Gattei makes two important claims about the development of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century; that Kuhn is much closer to positivism than many have supposed, failing to solve the crisis of neopostivism, and that Popper, in responding to the deeper crisis of foundationalism that spans the whole of the Western philosophical tradition, ultimately shows what is untenable in Kuhn's view. Gattei has written a very detailed and fine grained, yet accessible discussion making exceptionally interesting use of archive materials.
Stefano Gattei researches the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pisa. He is the author of several books and articles, including La rivoluzione incompiuta di Thomas Kuhn (Turin: UTET, 2007), Introduzione a Popper (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2008) and Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science: Rationality without Foundations (Routledge, New York). He is currently working on a reader's guide to Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery for Continuum Press, New York, and, together with Joseph Agassi, he is editing Physics and Philosophy, the fourth volume of Feyerabend's philosophical papers for Cambridge University Press. He also has in preparation an annotated critical edition of Kepler's Strena seu De nive sexangula (1611).
Contents: Preface; Two revolutions in 20th century philosophy of science; Kuhn and the 'new philosophy of science'; Incommensurability; Kuhn's 'linguistic turn'; The shadow of positivism; Bibliography; Index.
eBook
Identity Politics in Deconstruction
Identity politics dominates the organisation of liberation movements today. In this book Carolyn D'Cruz investigates the nexus between what David Birch describes as 'the seemingly impossible of high theory and the seemingly accessible possibilities of popular discourse', as encountered in liberation movements based on identity. D'Cruz reworks the logic of such movements through the unique combination of Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian discourse and Levinasian ethics. Moving both within and between the domains of philosophy, politics and 'postmodern culture' this book offers both a clear explication of complex philosophical issues and an understanding of how they relate to the political practicalities of everyday life.
eBook
Truth and Normativity
Beginning by posing the question of what it is that marks the difference between something like terrorism and something like civil society, Brassington argues that commonsense moral arguments against terrorism or political violence tend to imply that the modern democratic polis might also be morally unjustifiable. At the same time, the commonsense arguments in favour of something like a modern democratic polis could be co-opted by the politically violent as exculpatory. In exploring this prima facie problem and in the course of trying to substantiate the commonsense distinction, Brassington identifies a tension between the primary values of truth and normativity in the standard accounts of moral theory which he ultimately resolves by adopting lines of thought suggested by Martin Heidegger and concluding that the problem with mainstream moral philosophy is that, in a sense, it tries too hard.
Contents: Preface; 'There are no innocents': why we should be worried about moral philosophy; Independentism: moral truth and the lack thereof; Dependentism: buying truth and pawning normativity; The reality of values: Heidegger and moral thought; Oughtobiography: Heidegger and ethical thought; Bibliography; Index.
Iain Brassington is Lecturer in Bioethics at the School of Law, University of Manchester, UK.
eBook
Living Without Domination
Living Without Domination defends the bold claim that humans can organise themselves to live peacefully and prosperously together in an anarchist utopia. Clark refutes errors about what anarchism is, about utopianism, and about human sociability and its history. He then develops an analysis of natural human social activity which places anarchy in the real landscape of sociability, along with more familiar possibilities including states and slavery. The book is distinctive in bringing the rigour of analytic political philosophy to anarchism, which is all too often dismissed out of hand or skated over in popular history.
eBook
Science and Virtue
Charting new territory in the interface between science and ethics, Science and Virtue is a study of how the scientific mentality can affect the building of character, or the attainment of virtue by the individual. Drawing on inspiration from virtue-ethics and virtue-epistemology, Caruana argues that science is not just a system of knowledge but also an important factor determining a way of life.
eBook
Preference and Information
Is it important to our quality of life that the preferences we satisfy are rational and well-informed? Standard preferentialist theories allege that a person's preferences and their satisfaction are the correct measure of well-being. In preference-sensitive theories, preferences are important but do not count for everything. This raises the question of whether we ought to make demands on these preferences. In this book Egonsson presents a critical analysis of the 'Full Information Account of the Good', which claims that only the satisfaction of rational and fully informed preferences has value for a person. The problems he deals with include: how is an information requirement to be formulated and shaped? Is it possible to design a requirement that is both neutral to the agent's epistemic situation and reasonable? Is the requirement reasonable? Does it make sense to claim that some are better off if we satisfy the preferences they would have had in some merely hypothetical circumstances? This is an important new book on preference rationality which will be of great interest to academics and students of ethics, quality of life, and rationality.
Contents: Preface; Introduction; Analysing disappointment; The quantitative element; The qualitative element; The qualitative element criticized; Comparing examples; Truth and deliberation; Intrinsic and final preferences; Strongly intrinsic preferences; A problem of hypothetical approval; Hypothetical approval in medicine; Summary and conclusions; Bibliography; Index.
Dan Egonsson is Reader in the Department of Philosophy, Lund University, Sweden.
eBook
Death, Contemplation and Schopenhauer
The connections between death, contemplation and the contemplative life have been a recurrent theme in the canons of both western and eastern philosophical thought. This book examines the classical sources of this philosophical literature, in particular Plato's Phaedo and the Katha Upanishad and then proceeds to a sustained analysis and critical assessment of the sources and standpoints of a single thinker, Arthur Schopenhauer, whose work comprehensively pursues this problem. Going beyond the well examined western influences on Schopenhauer, Singh offers an in-depth account of Schopenhauer's references to eastern thought and a comprehensive examination of his eastern sources, particularly Vedanta and Buddhism. The book traces the pivotal issue of death through the whole range of Schopenhauer's writings uncovering the deeper connotations of his crucial notion of the will-to-live.
eBook