Argument, in any full sense of the word, needs resources and assumptions that postmodernism does not provide. Postmodernism is not a phenomenon that emerged ‘after modernism,’ as it were, to replace it; postmodernism is just an ultimate expression of the nihilistic tendencies of modernism, tendencies which were present from its beginning and have continued to the present. A radical critique of modernism undercuts postmodernism as well and clears the way for a revival of realist foundations for argument and rhetoric.

A NUMBER of things are immediately striking about Roderick Chisholm’s way of doing philosophy. He is an analytic philosopher who is quite ready to cite at some length such diverse thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, and Edmund Husserl. He unabashedly calls much of his work "metaphysical." His sources and conclusions mark him as something of a maverick, but his philosophical style is quintessential contemporary American establishment. These crosscurrents seem at least potentially exciting. They promise a richness of (...) perspective as well as exactness and clarity in argument. It has become commonplace to deplore the lack of dialogue among the main philosophical "schools" of this century—the analysts, the phenomenologists, etc. In Roderick Chisholm America has produced a philosopher who has consistently refused isolationism even when it has seemed hopelessly fashionable. (shrink)

This work is part of a proposed four volume series. A much-respected teacher once told Palmquist, “No single philosopher has done more damage to the Christian religion than Immanuel Kant.” Palmquist eventually came to disagree strongly: he regards the present volume as an attempt to remove his teacher’s appraisal “from the collective consciousness of contemporary philosophy of religion”. The result is a compendious effort, full of excellent textual analysis that may, nevertheless, lead the critical reader to conclude that Palmquist’s teacher (...) was right after all. How can this be? Palmquist successfully defends Kant, on Kant’s own terms, against various allegations, including prominently the following: that his philosophy is antimetaphysical; that he reduces religion to morality; that he is a deist, not a theist; and that he denies even the possibility of mystical experience. (shrink)

Watkins sets out in this book to provide an answer for Humean scepticism as it affects the philosophy of science. His carefully argued conclusions display the great fruitfulness--and limits--of the basic approach pioneered by Karl Popper. The development here goes well beyond Popper's own work, but is more in tune with it than, say, the latter-day views of Imre Lakatos.

By “the Enlightenment Project” the author means “the attempt to define and explain the human predicament through science as well as to achieve mastery over it through the use of a social technology”. One immediately wonders if this definition of “the Enlightenment Project” is radical enough. The author intends to join the many critics of the Enlightenment. Most of these think the Enlightenment got science wrong as well as much else. Twentieth century scientists do not adhere to the methods put (...) forward by Descartes, Bacon, even Newton, and the positivists. On this, the critics say, the scientists have been right, the Enlightenment wrong. The fatal flaw of the Enlightenment Project was not in science, but in an assumption held prior to science—namely, that scientific and all other knowledge must adhere to a canon of strict deductive/reductive demonstrability. Capaldi joins other critics in attacking this fatal flaw. He argues further, however, that science is also flawed in that it purports to provide “explanations,”. He claims that such explanations, the descriptions of underlying causal mechanisms, offer us “no way to decide among them”. Yet this last point is true only under the canon of deductive/reductive demonstrability, which, it seems, Capaldi would eschew. (shrink)

The fundamental thesis of this book is the following: "The first principle of ontology is that existence is property possession. Nothing is bare of properties and no properties are unattached. Properties, the universals they instantiate, and the individuals into which they are woven are all there is". Swindler puts forward this ontology in the first third of the book. Like Roderick Chisholm, who has distinguished between occurring and nonoccurring states of affairs, Swindler distinguishes between instantiated and uninstantiated universals. For Chisholm, (...) the nonoccurring states of affairs exist; and for Swindler the uninstantiated universals exist. In other words, they are both explicit Platonists. The description of Swindler as a moderate realist must be understood in this light. He describes Aristotle as a "conceptualist," not a realist, for whom the universal "appears only in intellectu". Swindler's realism is to be understood as moderate by comparison with the "ultra realism" of Anselm and David Lewis, whose ontologies include "implicit reduction of the individual to the general". The book, therefore, describes and participates in an argument among contemporary Platonists in the philosophy of language. (shrink)