Mar 9, 2016 05:11 AM
]Nelson Goodman's Irrealism and Worldmaking
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman/#Irr
EXCERPT: Goodman labels his own position “irrealism”. Irrealism, roughly, is the claim that the world dissolves into versions. Goodman's irrealism is certainly the most controversial aspect of his philosophy. Two lines of argument can be separated in Goodman's writings (Dudau 2002). First, Goodman argues that there are conflicting statements that cannot be accommodated in a single world version: some truths conflict (WW: 109–16; MM: 30–44). If that is the case, we need many worlds, if any, to accommodate the conflicting versions and bring them in unison with the standard correspondence account of truth, that is, that the truth of a statement is its being in correspondence with a world. The second line of argument seems to be that we need no worlds at all if we need many. If we need a world for each version, why postulate the worlds over and above the versions?...
Dualism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
EXCERPT: This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world....
Kant's Transcendental Idealism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-t...-idealism/
EXCERPT: In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations. Some, including many of Kant’s contemporaries, interpret transcendental idealism as essentially a form of phenomenalism, similar in some respects to that of Berkeley, while others think that it is not a metaphysical or ontological theory at all. There is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus. This entry provides an introduction to the most important Kantian texts, as well as the interpretive and philosophical issues surrounding them....
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman/#Irr
EXCERPT: Goodman labels his own position “irrealism”. Irrealism, roughly, is the claim that the world dissolves into versions. Goodman's irrealism is certainly the most controversial aspect of his philosophy. Two lines of argument can be separated in Goodman's writings (Dudau 2002). First, Goodman argues that there are conflicting statements that cannot be accommodated in a single world version: some truths conflict (WW: 109–16; MM: 30–44). If that is the case, we need many worlds, if any, to accommodate the conflicting versions and bring them in unison with the standard correspondence account of truth, that is, that the truth of a statement is its being in correspondence with a world. The second line of argument seems to be that we need no worlds at all if we need many. If we need a world for each version, why postulate the worlds over and above the versions?...
Dualism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
EXCERPT: This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world....
Kant's Transcendental Idealism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-t...-idealism/
EXCERPT: In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations. Some, including many of Kant’s contemporaries, interpret transcendental idealism as essentially a form of phenomenalism, similar in some respects to that of Berkeley, while others think that it is not a metaphysical or ontological theory at all. There is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus. This entry provides an introduction to the most important Kantian texts, as well as the interpretive and philosophical issues surrounding them....