Bøger af Nicholas Rescher

The book collects together various studies on issues of moral philosophy which the author has contributed to the professional literature of the subject over the years. Covering a wide range from the human condition at large and the foundation of justice questions of economics and professional responsibility, it illustrates from varying viewpoints the author¿s characteristic method of elucidating technical details by theoretical analysis.

Since Rescher's earliest publication of the middle 1950's in this field, the philosophy of science has constituted one focus of his interest and preoccupation. Some dozen of Rescher's contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to convey his favored way of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.

This series provides a forum for monographs and collected volumes aiming at a philosophical discussion of the texts, topics, and arguments of ancient philosophers. The authors demonstrate that philosophical historiography not only paraphrases the claims of ancient authors, but can also reconstruct the arguments for those claims and consider ongoing discussions in modern philosophy, thus enriching the philosophical debate of our time.

The present book continues Rescher's longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays that originated in occasional lecture and conference presentations. Notwithstanding their topical diversity they exhibit a uniformity of method in a common attempt to view historically significant philosophical issues in the light of modern perspectives opened up through conceptual clarification.

Diese Reihe bietet ein Forum fur interdisziplinare und disziplinubergreifende Studien zur Analyse und Anwendung dynamischer Kategorien. Sie prasentiert innovative Beitrage zur Prozessontologie und Prozessmetaphysik sowie zu prozessbasierten Theorien aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen.

Diese Reihe bietet ein Forum fur interdisziplinare und disziplinubergreifende Studien zur Analyse und Anwendung dynamischer Kategorien. Sie prasentiert innovative Beitrage zur Prozessontologie und Prozessmetaphysik sowie zu prozessbasierten Theorien aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen.

The aim of the series is to publish high-quality studies in English or German that deal with topics in practical philosophy from a broadly analytic perspective. These include questions in meta-ethics, normative ethics and 'applied' ethics, as well as in political philosophy, philosophy of law and the philosophy of action.

For about a decade Nicholas Rescher directed the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science and he has published instructive studies in this field since the 1950's. Some dozen of the contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to illustrate his characteristic approach of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.

It must be acknowledged that the essays presented here do not constitute a systematic account of any sort but represent occasional forays. Some deal with matters that happened to evoke Rescher's interest, others grew out of a chance encounter with a text he deemed to be of particular value. Throughout, challenges of the work itself more than compensated the author's efforts. Logic has always been of crucially important concern to philosophers. Rescher's own involvement with the history of logic goes back to his work on Leibniz in the 1950's (represented by Chapter 8 of the present book). Thereafter, during the 1960's he devoted considerable effort to the contributions of the medieval logicians of the Arabic-using world (here represented in Chapters 2-6). Moreover, Rescher have from time to time returned to the area to look at some aspects of the more recent scene, as Chapters 8-9 illustrate. In some instances the present essays have been overtaken by subsequent events-events which in fact helped to promote. This is true in particular in chapter 6's work on Arabic work regarding temporal modalities, which was instrumental in evoking the important contributions of Tony Street of Cambridge University.

The place of humans in nature's scheme of things and the conditions and circumstances of our existence have been at the forefront of philosophical deliberation since the very dawn of the subject. Over the past three decades Rescher from time to time ventured into discussions of some of the key themes that crop up in this domain. representative sampling of such papers are assembled in the present volume. He trust that this collection will give some indication of the tenor of thought that characterizes Rescher's approach to these philosophically crucial concerns.

Nicholas Rescher's interest in issues of social philosophy, now dating back over forty years, have resulted in four previous books: Distributive Justice (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1966), Welfare: the Social Issues on Philosophical Perspective (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), Public Concerns (Lanham, MI: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), and Fairness (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). Additionally, however, he has during this time also written more than a dozen essays on various particular problems and issues of this domain-usually in response to the needs of some special occasion. The aim of the present volume is to collect this material together in coordinative conjunction. The resultant book will not only offer a panorama of Rescher's views on some of the key issues of the field, but also convey a sense of the procedural ways and means by which Rescher think that philosophical deliberations can serve to shed some instructive light on such ever-controversial matters. For Rescher is convinced in theory and has sought to illustrate in practice that constructive thinking in this domain calls for implementing a quantitative approach from a moral perspective, and that neither the measurable quantities not the intangible values of the situation can be overlooked in a cogent assessment of the issues. It is his hope that these essays will confirm the justice of this conviction.

For over thirty years Professor Rescher has been preoccupied with exploring the scope and limits of human knowledge from an array of different points of view. This book collects together these various threads into a unified treatment of this overall terrain. It argues in detail that while scepticism is about the prospect of factual knowledge about the world is emphatically unwarranted, nevertheless the project of amplifying this knowledge does encounter some specifiable and insuperable limits.

set of studies of various central problems in contemporary philosophy--particularly issues relating to the theory of knowledge and to philosophical inquiry itself (metaphilosophy).

set of studies of various ideas and theories that play a key role in contemporary idealism and are important for the pragmatic idealism that Nicholas Rescher long was developing.

set of studies of various ideas and theories that play a key role in traditional pragmatism and are important for the idealistic pragmatism Nicholas Rescher long was engaged in developing.

Set of studies of various movements and developments in 20th century philosophy in which Nicholas Rescher was involved as a participant.

Being and Value collects together fifteen essays by Nicholas Rescher on salient issue in metaphysics, axiology and metaphilosophy. In the way in which they shed new light on significant philosophical issues, these deliberations are emblematic of Rescher's characteristic way of illuminating timeless issues and historical perspectives in a reciprocal interrelationship. The chapter of the book are as follows: Being and Value: On the Prospect of Optimalism; On Evolution and Intelligent Design; Mind and Matter; Fallacies Regarding Free Will; Sophisticating Naive Realism; Taxonomic Complexity and the Laws of Nature; Practical Vs. Theoretical Reason; Pragmatism as a Growth Industry; Cost Benefit Epistemology; Quantifying Quality; Explanatory Surdity; Can Philosophy be Objective?; On Ontology in Cognitive Perspective; Plenum Theory [Essay Written Jointly with Patrick Grim]; and Onometrics (On Referential Analysis in Philosophy)

Few ideas have played a more continuously prominent role throughout the history of philosophy than that of dialectic, which has figured on the philosophical agenda from the time of the Presocratics. The present book explores the philosophical promise of dialectic, especially in its dialogical version associated with disputation, debate, and rational controversy. The book's deliberations examine what lessons can be drawn to exhibit the utility of dialectical proceedings for the theory of knowledge in reminding us that the building-up of knowledge is an interpersonally interactive enterprise subject to communal standards.

Over the years Nicholas Rescher has published various essays on religious issues from a philosophical point of view. The chapters of the present volume collect these together, joining to them four further pieces which appear here for the first time (Chapters 3, 7, and 8). While these studies certainly do not constitute a system of religious philosophy, they do combine to give a vivid picture of a well-defined point of view on the subject-the viewpoint of a Roman Catholic philosopher who, in the longstanding manner of this tradition, seeks to harmonize the commitments of faith with the fruits of inquiry proceeding under the auspices of reason.

During 2005-2006 I continued my longstanding practice of writing occasional studies on philosophical topics, both for formal presentation and for informal discussion with colleagues. While my forays of this kind have usually issued in journal publications, this has not been so in the preset case so that the studies offered here encompass substantially new material. Notwithstanding their thematic variation, they manifest a uniformity of treatment and method in a way that is characteristic of my philosophical modus operandi and inherent is its endeavors to treat classical issues from novel points of view.' Nicholas Rescher

This book is avowedly written in what has been rather patronizingly called "e;the affable spirit of compromise or conciliation"e; between science and religion. Its key thesis is that these two enterprises can-and should be-seen as complementary in addressing different albeit interrelated questions: on the one side the nature of the natural world and our place in it, and on the other how we should proceed and act so as to capitalize on the opportunities that our place in the world affords to us for shaping our lives in a meaningful and satisfying way. How the world works is the crux of the one enterprise and how we are to live is that of the other.

Philosophical Deliberations continues for the 2011/12 biennium Rescher longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays. Notwithstanding their thematic diversity, these discussions exhibit a uniformity of method in addressing philosophical issues and a commonality of objective: the elucidation of philosophically pivotal ideas.

No short book on the explanation of existence can afford the hubris of claiming to accomplish this task. And certainly no such claim can be or is being made here. What is at issue is not-and cannot be-an actual explanation. Rather, what is attempted here is at the very most a rough sketch of the conceptual architecture that an adequate explanation can be expected to exhibit. No more is achieved than a rough and general indication of the direction in which a satisfactory explanation can unfold. A vast amount of detail will have to be filled in to provide a tenable explanation. Only the rough shape that the explanation will have to take is something that one can map out in the basis of considerations of general principles, giving reasons why alternative directions are less promising and how objection to the indicated direction can be removed or mitigated. But the move from a general direction to a specific and detailed pathway calls for more than is-or can be-attempted here.

Im Verlauf der vergangenen Jahrzehnte sind verschiedene Aufsatze Reschers in Deutsch erschienen, die in diesem Band zusammengefasst werden. Es handelt sich hauptsachlich um drei Themengebiete: Erkenntnistheorie, philosophische Anthropologie und Metaphilosophie. Das Buch stellt dem deutschen Leser einen wichtigen Teil von Reschers philosophischen Ideen zu Verfugung, obwohl die ethischen und historischen Arbeiten hier auer Acht gelassen werden.

Presents author's practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays.