Bøger af Nicholas Rescher

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

Logic is of course a general resource for reasoning at large. But in the first half of the twentieth century, it developed particularity with a view to mathematical applications, and the field of mathematical logic came into being and flourished. In the second half of the century, much the same happened with regard to philosophical applications. Hence philosophical logic. Thedeliberations of this book cover a varied but interrelated array of key issues in the field. They address the representation of information in linguistic formulation, and modes of cogent demonstration in logic, mathematics, and empirical investigation, as well as the role of logic in philosophical deliberations. Overall, the book seeks to demonstrate and illustrate the utility of logic as a productive resource for rational inquiry at large.

This book covers a varied spectrum of ethical topics, ranging from the fundamental considerations regarding ethical values, to the rationale of obligation, and the ethical management of societal and personal affairs.

Since the late 1960's Professor Rescher has carried on a series of investigations in value theory in an endeavor to clarify the nature of values and the ways in which they impact on human affairs. This book collects together some dozen of these studies in a way that showcases the author's characteristic perspective on this important range of basic philosophy issues. It bring clearly to view the author's characteristic combinations of analytical accuracies within a broad luminative outlook.

Our world is enormously sophisticated and nature's complexity is literally inexhaustible. As a result, projects to describe and explain natural science can never be completed. This volume explores the nature of complexity and considers its bearing on our world and how we manage our affairs within it.Rescher's overall lesson is that the management o

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.

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.

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

This book presents a nonstandard approach to epistemology. Where standard epistemology generally focuses on the certain knowledge the Greeks called episteme, the present focus is on some less assured modes of information. Its deliberations focus on such cognitively suboptimal processes as conjecture, guesswork, and plausible supposition.

Nicholas Rescher offers a grand vision of how to conceptualize, and in some cases answer, some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics and value theory. He engages issues across a wide range of metaphysical themes, from different world views and ultimate questions to contingency and necessity, to empathy and other minds, moral obligation, and philosophical methodology.

A philosophical study that addresses the conceptual and analytical question: how does the concept of reality function and how should we think with regard to the issue of reality's relations to appearances? It proposes that while realism is a sensible and tenable position, nevertheless there is something to be said for idealism as well.

This book is a survey of key issues in the theory of evaluation aimed at exhibiting and clarifying the rational nature of the thought-procedures involved. By means of theoretical analysis and explanatory case studies, this volume shows how evaluation is-or should be-a rational procedure directed at appropriate objectives.

Cognitive Complications examines fundamental issues in the theory of knowledge from the perspective of philosophical pragmatism. Rescher seeks to show how a pragmatic, user-oriented approach to knowledge can elucidate key issues of the field.

Presents a reassessment of free will and, as such, seeks to answer the question: Do humans ever act under the guidance of the will? To determine if humans have free will, this book first examines what exactly free will is and how it should function. It also examines the role of nature, nurture, and free choice.

No descriptive material is available for this title.

The studies collected here are united both by a common methodology of probative investigation and by their common purpose of providing instructive insight into a varied spectrum of important philosophical issues.

Comprises ten essays that mediate between Scholastic concerns and contemporary philosophical issues, and address key issues - from historical as well as substantive standpoint. The essays are written in the conviction that there is much to be learned from the schoolmen even when one fails to agree with their substantive doctrinal positions.

Paradoxes are sets of propositions that are individually plausible, but collectively inconsitent. This book introduces the subject of paradoxes, it surveys the range of types of paradoxes, and introduces an integrated theory of paradoxes. It explains and analyzes over 130 paradoxes.

The aim of this monograph is to expound the conceptions of temporalized modality at issue in various Arabic logical texts. I claim to have been able to make good logical sense of doctrines of which even the later Arab logicians themselves came to despair.

The epistemic status of such cognitive 'values' of inquiry as - coherence (Chapter 2) - consistency (Chapter 3) - completeness (Chapter 4) 3. The epistemic status of certain ideal desiderata of cognition, such as - totality (Chapter 7) - precision (Chapter 8) - exactness (Chapter 9) 5.

This book is a study in the methodology of philosophical inquiry. It expounds and defends the thesis that systematization is the proper instrument of philosophical inquiry and that the effective pursuit of philosophya s mission calls for constructing a doctrinal system that answers our questions in a coherent and comprehensive manner.

Explores looking from a scientific point of view at such central ideas of traditional metaphysics as the simplicity of nature, its comprehensibility, or its systematic integrity. Rescher seeks to describe the metaphysical situation that characterizes the process of enquiry in natural science.