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Bradley is a much neglected philosopher. The neglect is hardly justifiable, considering what Bradley actually wrote. However, the situation has improved in the last couple of decades, as there are signs of renewed interest in Bradley. Indeed, a basic consensus among Bradley scholars is the need for a reassessement of his philosophy and his place in the history of philosophy. In this interpretive and critical work, Ilodigwe undertakes an appraisal of Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy. He argues that Bradleyâ (TM)s metaphysics of the absolute is the core of his philosophical system This means that we cannot understand Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy unless we do justice to this aspect of his thought. Nor would it be possible to gain a full conspectus of the varied ramification of his thought if dissociated from the larger milieu relative to which they subsist and have their being. Unfortunately, much of the contemporary rejection of Bradleyâ (TM)s metaphysics is predicted on this sort of fragementary appreciation, as evidenced by Russell and Jamesâ (TM)s reception of Bradley. Bradley and the Problematic Status of Metaphysics tries to redress this imbalance. Ilodigwe here makes a case for a fundamental reassessment of Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy by taking his account of the Absolute as point of reference for receiving other aspects of his thought. In keeping with this strategy, Part 1 and 2 focuses on a number of themes in Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy such as his account of immediate experience, his theory of Judgement, his analysis of the essence of thought and his account of truth as appearance. In each case Ilodigwe shows how the themes illutrate a two-fold thesis that permeate Bradleyâ (TM)s thought: the claim as to the immanence of the Absolute in its appearances, and the further claim that the Absolute is irreducible to to any of its apperances. Part 3 relates Bradleyâ (TM)s philosophy to the situation of contemporary philosophy by assessing Russell and Jamesâ (TM)s appraisal of Bradley.
This book is a major contribution to the study of the philosopher F. H. Bradley, the most influential member of the nineteenth-century school of British Idealists. It offers a sustained interpretation of Bradley's Principles of Logic, explaining the problem of how it is possible for inferences to be both valid and yet have conclusions that contain new information. The author then describes how this solution provides a basis for Bradley's metaphysical view that reality is one interconnected experience and how this gives rise to a new problem of truth.
We cannot live a full life unless we know who we are, unless we know the essence of our being. The sciences, which have been immensely helpful in the way in which we live our lives, have been helpless when it comes to telling us how our life should be lived and what its meaning is. Accepting any philosophical or religious belief, on the other hand, limits our freedom to learn directly from personal knowledge of reality, as any preconceived ideas do not only alter its perception, but limit the spectrum of possibilities to which our reason can be applied. To those who do not surrender their right to decide for themselves what reality is, life offers a unique opportunity to apply their insights both in the worlds within and without and either validates or disproves their findings. If they are true to themselves, the continuous feeedback life offers will reveal to them unique characterics of our mind, which are otherwise limited by its own beliefs.
Idealist Alternatives to Materialist Philosophies of Science (ed. Philip MacEwen) makes the case that there are other, and arguably better, ways of understanding science than materialism. Philosophical idealism leads the list of challengers but critical realism and various forms of pluralism are fully articulated as well. To ensure that the incumbent is adequately represented, the volume includes a major defence of materialism/naturalism from Anaxagoras to the present. Contributors include Leslie Armour, John D. Norton, and Fred Wilson with a Foreword by Nicholas Rescher. For anyone interested in whether materialism has a monopoly on science, this volume presents a good case for materialism but a better one for its alternatives.
Appearance versus Reality is a collection of new studies of the work of F. H. Bradley, a leading British philosopher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and one of the key figures in the emergence of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. In recent years there has been a widespread revaluation of Bradley's philosophy: it has been found to offer alternative approaches to those inherited from Frege, Descartes, the British Empiricists, and Quinean naturalism, which have dominated analytic philosophy for some time. The nine well-known contributors to this volume, from Britain, North America, and Australia, focus on Bradley's views on truth, meaning, knowledge, and reality. These essays show that his work not only was crucial to the development of twentieth-century philosophy, but can illuminate contemporary debates in metaphysics, logic, and epistemology.
Idealism is a family of metaphysical views each of which gives priority to the mental. The best-known forms of idealism in Western philosophy are Berkeleyan idealism, which gives ontological priority to the mental (minds and ideas) over the physical (bodies), and Kantian idealism, which gives a kind of explanatory priority to the mental (the structure of the understanding) over the physical (the structure of the empirical world). Although idealism was once a dominant view in Western philosophy, it has suffered almost total neglect over the last several decades. This book rectifies this situation by bringing together seventeen essays by leading philosophers on the topic of metaphysical idealism. The various essays explain, attack, or defend a variety of idealistic theories, including not only Berkeleyan and Kantian idealisms but also those developed in traditions less familiar to analytic philosophers, including Buddhism and Hassidic Judaism. Although a number of the articles draw on historical sources, all will be of interest to philosophers working in contemporary metaphysics. This volume aims to spark a revival of serious philosophical interest in metaphysical idealism.
Berkeley is popular in the philosophical tradition as the philosopher who denied the existence of matter in favour of spiritual substance. His esse est percipi thesis is understandably seen as a recipe for subjective idealism. While there is a point to this reading of Berkeley, it remains to be seen whether it does justice to the full significance of Berkeley’s opposition to philosophical materialism. In this book, essentially a sympathetic reconstruction of Berkeley’s philosophy, Ilodigwe approaches Berkeley’s Immaterialism from the standpoint of the philosophical issues raised by the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century. He argues that when approached in this manner, Berkeley’s opposition to philosophical materialism not only emerges as an attempt to overcome false abstractions, but it also becomes possible to make sense of his claimed alliance with common sense in his battle against philosophical materialism. While the realist portrait of Berkeley that emerges from this exercise is not free from difficulties, it arguably offers us a fuller conspectus of Berkeley’s philosophy of immaterialism.
The Law of Non-Contradiction-that no contradiction can be true-has been a seemingly unassailable dogma since the work of Aristotle, in Book Gamma of the Metaphysics. It is an assumption challenged from a variety of angles in this collection of original papers. Twenty-three of the world's leading experts investigate the 'law', considering arguments for and against it and discussing methodological issues that arise whenever we question the legitimacy of logical principles. The result is a balanced inquiry into a venerable principle of logic, one that raises questions at the very centre of logic itself. The aim of this volume is to present a comprehensive debate about the Law of Non-Contradiction, from discussions as to how the law is to be understood, to reasons for accepting or re-thinking the law, and to issues that raise challenges to the law, such as the Liar Paradox, and a 'dialetheic' resolution of that paradox. One of the editors contributes an introduction which surveys the issues and serves to frame the debate. This collection will be of interest to anyone working on philosophical logic, and to anyone who has ever wondered about the status of logical laws and about how one might proceed to mount arguments for or against them.
This book tries to present in brief compass a metaphysical system, matured (as is hoped) over many years. By metaphysics is understood an account of the fundamental categories of being, such notions as property, relation, causality. These notions are more abstract than the results of scientific inquiry, and are controversial among scientists as well as among philosophers. The book sprang from lectures given to graduate students, and has deliberately been kept at an informal level. It includes some explanations not required in a book for professional philosophers. The argument is developed in sixteen short chapters. It is argued that the world is a world of states of affairs, involving universals and particulars. The notion of finding suitable truthmakers for truths grows in importance as the book proceeds.