Welcome to our book review site www.go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A Dynamic Theory of Hylomorphism
This book introduces a novel hylomorphic theory of material objects, according to which material objects are understood as comprised or composed of both matter and activity, where activity plays the role of form. This theory, “hyloenergeism,” captures the dynamic nature of many of the objects of our experience, such as living organisms, better than other leading varieties of contemporary hylomorphism. Hylomorphism is the theory according to which material objects are understood as comprised or composed of two fundamental parts, components, aspects, or principles: matter and form. Many contemporary hylomorphists endorse a version according to which the form of a material object is underst...
Forms and Structure in Plato's Metaphysics
This book investigates the thought of two of the most influential philosophers from antiquity, Plato and his predecessor Anaxagoras, with respect to their metaphysical account of objects and their properties. The book's subject matter is of wide interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy alike. The methodology applied in the study of the subject matter in this book also facilitates reaching out to both domains of readership. The innovative (and possibly controversial) claims made in the book will spark debate and bring the book at the forefront of current discussions in philosophy.
The Metaphysics of Light in the Hexaemeral Literature
This volume critically re-evaluates the received interpretation of the nature of light in the ancient sources. Isidoros C. Katsos contests the prevalent view in the history of optics according to which pre-modernity theorized light as subordinate to sight ('oculocentrism') by examining in depth the contrary textual evidence found in early Christian texts. It shows that, from Philo of Alexandria and Origen to Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, the Jewish-Christian commentary tradition on the hexaemeral literature (the biblical creation narrative) reflected deeply on the nature and physicality of light for the purposes of understanding the structure and purpose of material creation. Conte...
Mereologies, Ontologies, and Facets
The assignment events, objects, state of beings, etc., to an experiential category is a fundamental activity carried out by human (and by other animals). So rudimentary are the processes involved in categorizing that it is indeed impossible to imagine conscious awareness to exist without the presence of categories. A considerable body of writing exists on categories dating from the times of Classical philosophy. Plato developed a categorical ontology and Aristotle produced one of the earliest examples of a complex understanding of basic ontologies. A number of other categorially structured ontologies have been proposed including those by Lowe, Westerhoff, Chisholm, etc. The book is an edited...
Everything in Everything
The book argues that Anaxagoras's theory of extreme mixture, with a share of everything in everything, is underpinned by an ontology of physical causal powers (the opposites), which exist as endlessly partitioned. Anaxagoras is thus the first ante litteram 'gunk lover' in the history of metaphysics; his reality is atomless.
Powers
Why does a wine glass break when you drop it, whereas a steel goblet does not? The answer may seem obvious: glass, unlike steel, is fragile. This is an explanation in terms of a power or disposition: the glass breaks because it possesses a particular power, namely fragility. Seemingly simple, such intrinsic dispositions or powers have fascinated philosophers for centuries. A power's central task is explaining why a thing changes in the ways that it does, rather than in other ways: powers should explain why an acorn turns into an oak tree, not a sunflower, or why fire burns wood, and wood can catch fire. This volume examines the twists and turns of the fascinating history of a difficult philo...
Putting Properties First
Matthew Tugby develops and defends a new metaphysical theory of natural modality called 'Modal Platonism', which puts properties first in the metaphysical hierarchy. This theory solves a range of philosophical puzzles regarding dispositions and laws and provides a plausible metaphysical framework for natural science.
Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantius
"Known since the Renaissance as the 'Christian Cicero,' Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (d. 324 A.D.) was a professor of Latin rhetoric, Christian apologist, and theologian at Constantine's court. Writing in response to Diocletian's persecution, he attempted a complete synthesis of third-century Latin Christian thinking about theology, ethics, and political order. This work explores the character and quality of that synthesis in his major work, The Divine Institutes of the Christian Religion by focusing on the core notion of virtus. The early chapters explore the socio-political (Chapter 1) and philosophical traditions that informed arguments about virtus in classical Roman (Chapter 2) and early Latin Christian writers - especially Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Cyprian (Chapter 3)"--
Aristotle on Perceiving Objects
How can we explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? Are our five senses sufficient for the perception of objects? Aristotle investigated these questions by means of the metaphysical modeling of the unity of the perceptual faculty and the unity of experiential content. His account remains fruitful-but also challenging-even for contemporary philosophy. This book offers a reconstruction of the six metaphysical models Aristotle offered to address these and related questions, focusing on their metaphysical underpinning in his theory of caus...
Metaphysics
This volume introduces readers to a selected number of core issues in metaphysics that have been central in the history of philosophy and remain foundational to contemporary debates, that is: substances; properties; modality and essence; causality; determinism and free will. Anna Marmodoro and Erasmus Mayr take a neo-Aristotelian approach both in the selection and presentation of the topics. But Marmodoro and Mayr's discussion is not narrowly partisan-it consistently presents opposing sides of the debate and addresses issues from different philosophical traditions, and encourages readers to draw their own conclusions about them. Metaphysics combines a state-of-the-art presentation of the issues that takes into account the most recent developments in the field, with extensive references to the history of philosophy. The book thus makes topics in contemporary analytical metaphysics easily accessible to readers who have no specific background in contemporary philosophy, but rather in the history of philosophy. At the same time, it will engage readers who do not have any historical background with some key developments within the history of the subject.
