Contemporary philosophers of mind often raise serious questions around the concepts of self, subjectivity, and ’the inner life’ on the grounds that such concepts have their origin in a discredited Cartesian metaphysics. The contention of this book is that the rejection of ’interiority’ and related concepts has been based on a time-honoured misreading of Descartes. In the course of exposing the misconceived anti-Cartesianism of a wide range of thinkers from Wittgenstein and Ryle to Dennett ...

The first complete introduction to the subject ever published, A History of Irish Thought presents an inclusive survey of Irish thought and the history of Irish ideas against the backdrop of current political and social change in Ireland.Clearly written and engaging, the survey introduces an array of philosophers, polemicists, ideologists, satirists, scientists, poets and political and social reformers, from the anonymous seventh-century monk, the Irish Augustine, and John ...

In this lively and entertaining introduction to the philosophy of mind, Edward Feser explores the questions central to the discipline; such as 'do computers think', and 'what is consciousness'; and gives an account of all the most important and significant attempts that have been made to answer them.

If there is such a thing as reason, it has to be universal. Reason must reflect objective principles whose validity is independent of our point of view--principles that anyone with enough intelligence ought to be able to recognize as correct. But this generality of reason is what relativists and subjectivists deny in ever-increasing numbers. And such subjectivism is not just an inconsequential intellectual flourish or badge of theoretical chic. It is exploited to deflect argument and to be...

When it first appeared in 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature hit the philosophical world like a bombshell. In it, Richard Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. Rorty's book is a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned.Today, the book remains a must-read and stands as a classic...

Those aspects of language use that are crucial to an understanding of language as a system, and especially to an understanding of meaning, are the acknowledged concern of linguistic pragmatics. This textbook provides a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic ...

About this Book..."A major and long overdue addition to the America/English psychoanalytic literature. . . . All major concepts—among them the mirror stage, the Name-of-the-Father, metaphor and metonymy, the phallus, the foreclosure of the subject—are developed in depth."-Nicholas Kouretsas, Harvard Medical School

Heidegger is one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. A difficult and powerful philosopher, his work requires careful reading. Being and Time was his first major book and remains his most influential work.Heidegger and Being and Time introduces and assesses: Heidegger's life and the background of Being and Time; the ideas and text of Being and Time; Heidegger's importance to philosophy and to the intellectual life of this c...

Epistemology, or “the theory of knowledge,” is concerned with how we know what we know, what justifies us in believing what we believe, and what standards of evidence we should use in seeking truths about the world and human experience. This comprehensive introduction to the field of epistemology explains the concepts and theories central to understanding knowledge. Along with covering the traditional topics of the discipline in detail, Epistemology explores emerging areas of rese...

Jerry Fodor presents a new development of his famous Language of Thought hypothesis which has since the 1970s been at the centre of interdisciplinary debate about how the mind works. Fodor defends and extends the groundbreaking idea that thinking is couched in a symbolic system realized in the brain. This idea is central to the representational theory of mind which Fodor has established as a key reference point in modern philosophy psychology and cognitive science. The foundationstone of o...

This book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the work of Willard van Orman Quine, the most important and influential American philosopher of the post-war period. An understanding of Quine's work is essential for anyone who wishes to follow contemporary debates in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind and metaphysics.Hookway traces the development of Quine's work from his early criticisms of logical positivism and empiricism to his more recent theories a...

Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism find it wanting. The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defences of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson’s kno...