Bøger af Nicholas Rescher

This volume explores the nature of complexity and considers its bearing on our world and how we manage our affairs within it. Although offering a sobering outlook, Rescher also believes that complexity entails mixed blessings: our imperfect knowledge provides a rationale for putting forth our best efforts.

Process philosophy views temporality, activity, and change as the cardinal factors in our understanding of the real, and emphasizes process over product. In this work Nicholas Rescher provides an accessible survey of the basic issues and controversies surrounding this philosophical approach.

The realities of mankind's cognitive situation are such that our knowledge of the world's ways is bound to be imperfect. None the less, the theory of unknowability-agnoseology as some have called it-is a rather underdeveloped branch of philosophy. In this philosophically rich and groundbreaking work, Nicholas Rescher aims to remedy this. As the heart of the discussion is an examination of what Rescher identifies as the four prime reasons for the impracticability of cognitive access to certain facts about the world: developmental inpredictability, verificational surdity, ontological detail, and predicative vagrancy. Rescher provides a detailed and illuminating account of the role of each of these factors in limiting human knowledge, giving us an overall picture of the practical and theoretical limits to our capacity to know our world.

Rescher presents a broad-ranging study that examines the manifestations, consequences, and occasional benefits of ignorance in areas of philosophy, scientific endeavor, and ordinary life.

A new analysis of the occurrence, causality, and consequences of error in human thought, action, and evaluation. Defines three main categories of error, and provides a historical perspective on error from Greek to modern philosophy.

This work aims to show how the idea of distributive equity forms the core of the concept of fairness in distributive justice. It concludes that fairness is a fundamentally ethical conception whose distinctive modus operandi contrasts sharply with the aims of paternalism or economic advantage.

For teaching Leibniz - a philosopher as difficult as he is important - this is as good a work as we are ever likely to get. It gives good guidance throughout.' - Robert E. Butts, University of Western Ontario