Knepper criticizes existing efforts in the philosophy of religion for being out of step with, and therefore useless to, the academic study of religion, then forwards a new program for philosophy of religion that is in step with, and therefore useful to, the academic study of religion.

This book is an accessible introduction to the central themes of contemporary metaphysics. It carefully considers accounts of causation, freedom and determinism, laws of nature, personal identity, mental states, time, material objects, and properties, while inviting students to reflect on metaphysical problems. The philosophical questions discussed include: What makes it the case that one event causes another event? What are material objects? Given that material objects exist, do such thin...

Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise appear. This work is extremely influential and has spawned an entire research program. This volume (which follows on a previous collection, Adaptive Thinking, al...

"This is a marvelous look at our souls and their links to unseen dimensions around us through the eyes of eminent scholars and religious leaders!...a book that is highly readable, intensely thought-provoking....It's a tall order to integrate and explain belief systems and spiritual beings, but Schieding did so in a manner that was quite impressive."–Feathered Quill Book Reviews“A Spirit in Motion is worth the read if you have an interest in the beliefs surr...

Our knowledge comes primarily from experience – what our senses tell us. But is experience really what it seems?The experimental breakthroughs in 17th-century science of Kepler, Galileo and Newton informed the great British empiricist tradition, which accepts a 'common-sense' view of the world – and yet concludes that all we can ever know are 'ideas'.In Introducing Empiricism: A Graphic Guide, Dave Robinson - with the aid of Bill Mayblin's brilliant ...

In Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, Nicholas Smith develops a new theory of vagueness: fuzzy plurivaluationism. A predicate is said to be vague if there is no sharply defined boundary between the things to which it applies and the things to which it does not apply. For example, 'heavy' is vague in a way that 'weighs over 20 kilograms' is not. A great many predicates - both in everyday talk, and in a wide array of theoretical vocabularies, from law to psychology to engineer...

Are there any universal entities? Or is the world populated only by particular things? The problem of universals is one of the most fascinating and enduring topics in the history of metaphysics, with roots in ancient and medieval philosophy. This collection of new essays provides an innovative overview of the contemporary debate on universals. Rather than focusing exclusively on the traditional opposition between realism and nominalism, the contributors explore the complexity of the debate...

The roots of this work lie in my earlier book, Scientific Progress, which first appeared in 1981. One of its topics, the distinction between scientific laws and theories, is there treated with reference to the same distinction as drawn by N. R. Campbell in his Physics: The Elements. Shortly after completing Scientific Progress, I read Rom Harre's The Principles of Scientific Thinking, in which the concept of theory is even more clearly delineated than in Campbell, being directly con nected...

The first book-length study of metaphysical nihilism: an analytical treatment of one of the most intriguing and fundamental questions in contemporary analytic metaphysics: Could there have been nothing at all? No physical universe, no people, no living beings, no planets, no atoms, no matter, no energy - nothing?

While much has been written on Descartes' theory of mind and ideas, no systematic study of his theory of sensory representation and misrepresentation is currently available in the literature. Descartes and the Puzzle of Sensory Misrepresentation is an ambitious attempt to fill this gap. It argues against the established view that Cartesian sensations are mere qualia by defending the view that they are representational; it offers a descriptivist-causal account of their representati...

Featuring chapters on the latest developments in fifteen core subjects in analytic philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy is an essential guide for all those working in the field today.Introducing its history and looking ahead to new research directions, this companion brings together a team of internationally renowned philosophers to explore the major concepts, thinkers and areas of inquiry in the analytic traditionWith an extensive glossary, an annot...

Vagueness is a familiar but deeply puzzling aspect of the relation between language and the world. It is highly controversial what the nature of vagueness is - a feature of the way we represent reality in language, or rather a feature of reality itself? May even relations like identity or parthood be affected by vagueness? Sorites arguments suggest that vague terms are either inconsistent or have a sharp boundary. The account we give of such paradoxes plays a pivotal role for our understan...