Infinite Regress Arguments

Author : Claude Gratton
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2009-12-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789048133413

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Infinite Regress Arguments by Claude Gratton Pdf

Infinite regress arguments are part of a philosopher's tool kit of argumentation. But how sharp or strong is this tool? How effectively is it used? The typical presentation of infinite regress arguments throughout history is so succinct and has so many gaps that it is often unclear how an infinite regress is derived, and why an infinite regress is logically problematic, and as a result, it is often difficult to evaluate infinite regress arguments. These consequences of our customary way of using this tool indicate that there is a need for a theory to re-orient our practice. My general approach to contribute to such a theory, consists of collecting and evaluating as many infinite regress arguments as possible, comparing and contrasting many of the formal and non-formal properties, looking for recurring patterns, and identifying the properties that appeared essential to those patterns. Two very general questions guided this work: (1) How are infinite regresses generated in infinite regress arguments? (2) How do infinite regresses logically function as premises in an argument? In answering these questions I clarify the notion of an infinite regress; identify different logical forms of infinite regresses; describe different kinds of infinite regress arguments; distinguish the rhetoric from the logic in infinite regress arguments; and suggest ways of improving our discussion and our practice of constructing and evaluating these arguments.

Author : Jan Willem Wieland
Publisher : Springer Science & Business
Page : 68 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2014-04-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319062068

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Infinite Regress Arguments by Jan Willem Wieland Pdf

This book on infinite regress arguments provides (i) an up-to-date overview of the literature on the topic, (ii) ready-to-use insights for all domains of philosophy, and (iii) two case studies to illustrate these insights in some detail. Infinite regress arguments play an important role in all domains of philosophy. There are infinite regresses of reasons, obligations, rules, and disputes, and all are supposed to have their own moral. Yet most of them are involved in controversy. Hence the question is: what exactly is an infinite regress argument, and when is such an argument a good one?

Author : William L. Craig
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2000-05-24
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781579104382

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The Kalam Cosmological Argument by William L. Craig Pdf

Does God exist? Of the many ongoing debates to answer this question, William Craig examines one of the most controversial proofs for the existence of God; the Kalam cosmological argument. Dr. Craig provides a broad assessment of the argument in lieu of recent developments in philosophy, mathematics, science and theology.

Author : Mark Textor
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2017-08-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192525659

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Brentano's Mind by Mark Textor Pdf

Mark Textor presents a critical study of the work of Franz Brentano, one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century. His work has influenced analytic philosophers like Russell as well as phenomenologists like Husserl and Sartre, and continues to shape debates in the philosophy of mind. Brentano made intentionality a central topic in the philosophy of mind by proposing that 'directedness' is the distinctive feature of the mental. The first part of the book investigates Brentano's intentionalism as well as attempts to improve or develop it. Textor argues that there is no plausible version of this doctrine, and rejects it in favour of a mark of the mental proposed by Brentano's student Husserl: mental phenomena have no appearances. The second part of the book develops and defends Brentano's view about the structure of perceptual awareness. Awareness of a mental activity and this mental activity are not distinct mental acts, the first representing the second. They are one and the same activity that has several objects. Textor shows that Brentano held that intentionality is plural - directedness is directedness on some objects - and shows how the plural conception solves thorny problems. The third part of the book is devoted to Brentano's view of pleasure and pain. Textor draws out parallels between enjoying an activity and awareness of it and argues that enjoying an activity and the activity enjoyed are not distinct. The final part of the book extends the plural view to the conscious mental life of a thinker at a time (the unity of synchronic consciousness): it is one mental act with many objects.

Author : Samuel Scolnicov
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2003-07-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780520925113

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Plato's Parmenides by Samuel Scolnicov Pdf

Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology. Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues. Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.

Author : David Atkinson,Jeanne Peijnenburg
Publisher : Springer
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2017-06-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783319582955

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Fading Foundations by David Atkinson,Jeanne Peijnenburg Pdf

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn? The problem has puzzled philosophers ever since antiquity, giving rise to what is often called Agrippa's Trilemma. The current volume approaches the old problem in a provocative and thoroughly contemporary way. Taking seriously the idea that good reasons are typically probabilistic in character, it develops and defends a new solution that challenges venerable philosophical intuitions and explains why they were mistakenly held. Key to the new solution is the phenomenon of fading foundations, according to which distant reasons are less important than those that are nearby. The phenomenon takes the sting out of Agrippa's Trilemma; moreover, since the theory that describes it is general and abstract, it is readily applicable outside epistemology, notably to debates on infinite regresses in metaphysics. The book is a potential game-changer and a must for any advanced student or researcher in the field.

Author : Timothy O'Connor
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2012-02-20
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781444350883

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Theism and Ultimate Explanation by Timothy O'Connor Pdf

An expansive, yet succinct, analysis of the Philosophy of Religion – from metaphysics through theology. Organized into two sections, the text first examines truths concerning what is possible and what is necessary. These chapters lay the foundation for the book’s second part – the search for a metaphysical framework that permits the possibility of an ultimate explanation that is correct and complete. A cutting-edge scholarly work which engages with the traditional metaphysician’s quest for a true ultimate explanation of the most general features of the world we inhabit Develops an original view concerning the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, or truths concerning what is possible or necessary Applies this framework to a re-examination of the cosmological argument for theism Defends a novel version of the Leibnizian cosmological argument

Author : Scott Aikin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2010-11-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781136841903

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Epistemology and the Regress Problem by Scott Aikin Pdf

In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a regress of reasons looms. In this new study, Aikin presents a full case for infinitism as a response to the problem of the regress of reasons. Infinitism is the view that one must have a non-terminating chain of reasons in order to be justified. The most defensible form of infinitism, he argues, is that of a mixed theory – that is, epistemic infinitism must be consistent with and integrate other solutions to the regress problem.

Author : Robert J. Spitzer
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2010-04-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780802863836

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New Proofs for the Existence of God by Robert J. Spitzer Pdf

Responding to contemporary popular atheism, Robert J. Spitzer's New Proofs for the Existence of God examines the considerable evidence for God and creation that has come to light from physics and philosophy during the last forty years. --from publisher description.

Author : Nicholas Rescher
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2017-09-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351512596

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Infinite Regress by Nicholas Rescher Pdf

Regression addresses what has come before; it is a matter of looking backward of retrospections? The motionless things of nature are generally forward-looking their problem is that of the question: Where do we go from here? It is primarily with intelligent beings that we ask: How did we get to where we now find ourselves? Regression and infinite regression in particular is thus a concept that has gained a greater prominence in the human sciences than in the sciences of nature. Argumentation to infinite regress has long been a favored instrument of philosophical dialectic. Philosophers have used it to disprove the positions they model to criticize. Infinite regresses, so they reason, are unrealizable: they cannot be completed so as to achieve some definitive result. And thereby anything that would engender an infinite regress is automatically made ineffective. Infinite Regress examines the theory of regression and includes information on the topics of vicious regress, innocuous regress, circularity regress, and propositional regress. Also discussed is the history of regression stemming from ancient times, to medieval times, to early modern history. Some of the other chapters in this book focus on world class philosophers including Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Bertrand Russell. The book will play a significant role in theoretical philosophy as well as in social philosophy and the philosophy of mind.

Author : M. Huemer
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2016-03-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1137560851

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Approaching Infinity by M. Huemer Pdf

Approaching Infinity addresses seventeen paradoxes of the infinite, most of which have no generally accepted solutions. The book addresses these paradoxes using a new theory of infinity, which entails that an infinite series is uncompletable when it requires something to possess an infinite intensive magnitude. Along the way, the author addresses the nature of numbers, sets, geometric points, and related matters. The book addresses the need for a theory of infinity, and reviews both old and new theories of infinity. It discussing the purposes of studying infinity and the troubles with traditional approaches to the problem, and concludes by offering a solution to some existing paradoxes.

Author : Jacobus Erasmus
Publisher : Springer
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2018-01-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783319734385

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The Kalām Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment by Jacobus Erasmus Pdf

This book offers a discussion of the kalām cosmological argument, and presents a defence of a version of that argument after critically evaluating three of the most important versions of the argument. It argues that, since the versions of the kalām cosmological argument defended by Philoponus (c. 490–c. 570), al-Ghazālī (1058– 1111), and the contemporary philosopher, William Lane Craig, all deny the possibility of the existence of an actual infinite, these arguments are incompatible with Platonism and the view that God foreknows an endless future. This conclusion, however, is not a problem for the proponents of the kalām cosmological argument, for the book shows how the argument can be defended without denying the possibility of the actual infinite. In order to offer a comprehensive analysis of Philoponus and al-Ghazālī’s cosmological arguments, the book draws on recent English translations of some of their works. Next, the book advances a detailed argument against the popular argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite. Finally, the book offers a unique defence of the kalām cosmological argument by defending philosophical arguments for a beginning of time that do not deny the actual infinite, evaluating which hypothesis best explains the discoveries of modern cosmology, and offering an argument in support of the premise that, if the universe came into existence, then God brought it into existence.

Author : William Lane Craig
Publisher : Crossway
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781433501159

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Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig Pdf

This updated edition by one of the world's leading apologists presents a systematic, positive case for Christianity that reflects the latest work in the contemporary hard sciences and humanities. Brilliant and accessible.

Author : Michael Huemer
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0742512533

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Skepticism and the Veil of Perception by Michael Huemer Pdf

In opposition to both skeptics and representationalists, Huemer (philosophy, U. of Colorado, Boulder) presents a theory of perceptual awareness, according to which perception gives us direct awareness of real objects and non-inferential knowledge of the properties of these objects. He responds to the major arguments for skepticism, including the infinite regress argument, the problem of the criterion, the brain in the vat, and the impossibility of verification. c. Book News Inc.

Author : Claude Gratton
Publisher : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Logic
ISBN : 0612026604

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Aspects of the Logic of Infinite Regress Arguments [microform] by Claude Gratton Pdf