Many philosophical naturalists eschew analysis in favor of discovering metaphysical truths from the a posteriori, contending that analysis does not lead to philosophical insight. A countercurrent to this approach seeks to reconcile a certain account of conceptual analysis with philosophical naturalism; prominent and influential proponents of this methodology include the late David Lewis, Frank Jackson, Michael Smith, Philip Pettit, and David Armstrong. Naturalistic analysis is a tool for locating in the scientifically given world objects and properties we quantify over in (...) everyday discourse. This collection gathers work from a range of prominent philosophers who are working within this tradition, offering important new work as well as critical evaluations of the methodology. Its centerpiece is an important posthumous paper by David Lewis, "Ramseyan Humility," published here for the first time. The contributors first address issues of philosophy of mind, semantics, and the new methodology's a priori character, then turn to matters of metaphysics, and finally consider problems regarding normativity. Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism is one of the first efforts to apply this approach to such a wide range of philosophical issues. _Contributors: _David Braddon-Mitchell, Mark Colyvan, Frank Jackson, Justine Kingsbury, Fred Kroon, David Lewis, Dustin Locke, Kelby Mason, Jonathan McKeown-Green, Peter Menzies, Robert Nola, Daniel Nolan, Philip Pettit, Huw Price, Denis Robinson, Steve Stich, Daniel Stoljar The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

Part 1: Metaphysics and Conceptual Analysis 1. Analysis, description and the a priori?, Simon Blackburn 2. Physicalism, conceptual analysis and acts of faith, Jennifer Hornsby 3. Serious metaphysics: Frank Jackson’s defense of conceptual analysis, William G. Lycan 4. Jackson’s classical model of meaning, Laura Schroeter & John Bigelow 5. The semantic foundations of metaphysics, Huw Price 6. The folk theory of colours and the causes of colour experience, Peter Menzies Part 2: The Knowledge Argument 7. Consciousness and the frustrations (...) of physicalism, Philip Pettit 8. Jackson’s change of mind: representationalism, a priorism and the knowledge argument, Robert Van Gulick Part 3: Ethics 9. Analytic moral functionalism meets moral twin earth, Terrence Horgan & Mark Timmons 10. Consequentialism and the nearest and dearest objection, Michael Smith 11. The ’actual’ in actualism, Julia Driver Part 4: Conditionals and the Purposes of Arguing 12. Conditionals, truth and assertion, Dorothy Edgington 13. Conditionals: A debate with Jackson, Graham Priest 14. Two purposes of arguing and two epistemic projects, Martin Davies Replies to my critics, Frank Jackson. (shrink)

A companion volume to In the Realm of Organization, this book explores in detail the intricate relationships that exist between technology, representation and organization from a diversity of perspectives, relocating the study of organization in wider social theory.

Kelly Aguirre, Phil Henderson, Cressida J. Heyes, Alana Lentin, and Corey Snelgrove engage with different aspects of Robert Nichols’ Theft is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory. Henderson focuses on possible spaces for maneuver, agency, contradiction, or failure in subject formation available to individuals and communities interpellated through diremptive processes. Heyes homes in on the ritual of antiwill called “consent” that systematically conceals the operation of power. Aguirre foregrounds tensions in projects of critical theory scholarship that aim for dialogue and (...) solidarity with Indigenous decolonial struggles. Lentin draws attention to the role of race in undergirding the logic of Anglo-settler colonial domination that operates through dispossession, while Snelgrove emphasizes the link between alienation, capital, and colonialism. In his reply to his interlocutors, Nichols clarifies aspects of his “recursive logics” of dispossession, a dispossession or theft through which the right to property is generated. (shrink)

"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability.... Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the (...) Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle’s works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

This volume is a continuation of Robert Greystones on the Freedom of the Will: Selections from His Commentary on the Sentences. From this, five of the most relevant questions were selected for editing and translation in this timely volume. This edition should prompt not just a footnote to, but a re-writing of the history of philosophy.

[Robert Stalnaker] Saul Kripke made a convincing case that there are necessary truths that are knowable only a posteriori as well as contingent truths that are knowable a priori. A number of philosophers have used a two-dimensional model semantic apparatus to represent and clarify the phenomena that Kripke pointed to. According to this analysis, statements have truth-conditions in two different ways depending on whether one considers a possible world 'as actual' or 'as counterfactual' in determining the truth-value of the (...) statement relative to that possible world. There are no necessary a posteriori or contingent a priori propositions: rather, contingent a priori and necessary a posteriori statements are statements that are necessary when evaluated one way, and contingent when evaluated the other way. This paper distinguishes two ways that the two-dimensional framework can be interpreted, and argues that one of them gives the better account of what it means to 'consider a world as actual', but that it provides no support for any notion of purely conceptual a priori truth. /// [Thomas Baldwin] Two-dimensional possible world semantic theory suggests that Kripke's examples of the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori should be handled by interpreting names as implicitly indexical. Like Stalnaker, I reject this account of names and accept that Kripke's examples have to be accommodated within a metasemantic theory. But whereas Stalnaker maintains that a metasemantic approach undermines the conception of a priori truth, I argue that it offers the opportunity to develop a conception of the a priori aspect of stipulations, conceived as linguistic performances. The resulting position accommodates Kripke's examples in a way which is both intrinsically plausible and fits with Kripke's actual discussion of them. (shrink)

Dr. Zaslavsky’s edition of the text of Tacitus’s Agricola has been prepared with an eye to its use as the first complete text with which to challenge learners who have completed a basic course of Latin such as his An Introductory Latin Course: A First Latin Grammar for Middle Schoolers, High Schoolers, College Students, Homeschoolers, and Self-Learners. It is accompanied by historical and grammatical notes, a glossary/concordance, and a translation.

Ce livre rassemble les Actes du colloque qui s’est tenu au Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle du 9 au 16 juin 2012. Ce colloque est le premier qui ait été consacré à la philosophie de Robert Misrahi. Ce colloque a permis de parcourir un itinéraire dans l’ensemble de l’oeuvre de Robert Misrahi. Des philosophes ont d’abord exposé les grands axes de sa pensée, des spécialistes d’autres disciplines ont ensuite montré que cette pensée avait essaimé dans de nombreux champs (...) de pratiques : psychanalytique, bioéthique, coopérative, poétique, artistique, monde de l’entreprise, de l’éducation. On a ainsi pu mesurer l’ampleur et la cohérence d’une oeuvre. La particularité de ce colloque résidait aussi dans la présence de Robert Misrahi, et on se rend compte à la lecture des actes de son engagement permanent. Ses trois communications tissent une trame depuis son inscription dans l’histoire des idées, à l’élaboration de ses propres concepts pour ensuite synthétiser l’aboutissement d’une oeuvre et d’une vie. Les échanges qui ont été retranscrits permettent aussi d’avoir un témoignage des relations très intenses et éclairantes qui ont eu lieu. (shrink)

Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of “ultimate responsibility,” Robert Kane argues that to be exercising a free will an agent must have taken some character forming decisions for which there were no sufficient conditions or decisive reasons.¹ That is, an agent whose will is free not only had the ability to develop other dispositions, but could have exercised that ability without being irrational. To say it again, a person has a free will just in case her character is the product (...) of decisions that she could have rationally avoided making. That one’s character is the product of such decisions entails ultimate responsibility for its manifestations, engendering a free will. (shrink)

'almost every branch of modern science can trace phases of its origin in his writings... in the broad field of science Boyle made a greater number and variety of discoveries than one man is ever likely to make again' - John Fulton, Boyle's bibliographer Robert Boyle (1627-91) was one of the most influential scientists and philosophers of the seventeenth century. The founder of modern chemistry, he headed the movement that turned it from an occult science into a subject well-grounded (...) in experiment, sound methodology and observation. His pioneering experiments on the properties of gases and his mechanistic theory of matter are the forerunners of the modern theories of chemical elements and atomic theory. He is best known for founding the renowned Boyle Lectures and for Boyle's Law that states that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional. A founding fellow of the Royal Society, three consecutive kings of England conversed familiarly with him. Philosophically, he wrote with sophistication on atheism, atomism, epistemology, miracles and natural laws. He influenced Berkeley, Spinoza, Henry More and especially John Locke, who relied on Boyle's theory of primary and secondary qualities in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Boyle's circle of correspondents included Newton, Locke, Aubrey, Oldenburg and Hartlib, and his influence on both British and European scholars was enormous. He also took a lead part in examining the relation of science to theology. This is the standard edition of Boyle's works and the only complete collection currently available. First published in 1772, it brings together his many and varied writings in one comprehensive, fully-indexed source. Covering his work in chemistry, philosophy and theology, it includes a Life of Boyle by Thomas Birch. The Thoemmes reprint of the second and best English edition features a new introduction by Peter Alexander, one of the world authorities on Boyle. --includes a Life of Boyle by Thomas Birch --features letters to and from Boyle --this rare edition is the only complete collected edition currently available and the standard text to which literature on Boyle refers --engraved frontispieces and several fold-out illustrations. (shrink)

Robert Boyle, one of the most important intellectuals of the seventeenth century, was a gifted experimenter, an exceptionally able philosopher, and a dedicated Christian. In Boyle's two Excellencies, The Excellency of Theology Compared with Natural Philosophy and About The Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis, he explains and justifies his new philosophy of science while reconciling it with Christian theology. These pioneering works of early science and theology are now available in a modernized and accessible new edition. This (...) Broadview edition brings spelling and punctuation into line with current conventions and includes notes and references to set the works in their historical and philosophical context. The appendices include works by Boyle's predecessors in the philosophy of science, other philosophical writings by Boyle, and an appendix of the other figures mentioned in the texts. (shrink)