Reasons for Realism

Reasons for Realism PDF

Author: Edward Reed

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 1000734811

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

James J. Gibson’s numerous theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of how people perceive were innovative, controversial, often radical, and always profound. Many of his ideas revolutionized the science of perception, and his influence continued to grow throughout the world. This book, originally published in 1982, is a collection of the most important of Gibson’s essays on the psychology of perception. Drawing from the entire corpus of Gibson’s papers, the editors have selected over thirty works dealing with such diverse topics as ecological optics, event perception, pictorial representation, and the conceptual foundations of psychology. The editors’ goals in preparing the volume were twofold: first to provide easy access to Gibson’s most outstanding papers and talks, including some that were previously unpublished; and second, to provide an intellectual biography of Gibson by including essays from the different periods of his career.

Being Realistic about Reasons

Being Realistic about Reasons PDF

Author: T. M. Scanlon

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 0199678480

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Is what we have reason to do a matter of fact? If so, what kind of truth is involved, how can we know it, and how do reasons motivate and explain action? In this concise and lucid book T.M. Scanlon offers answers, with a qualified defence of normative cognitivism - the view that there are normative truths about reasons for action.

The Limits of Realism

The Limits of Realism PDF

Author: Tim Button

Publisher:

Published: 2013-06-27

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0199672172

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Tim Button explores the relationship between minds, words, and world. He argues that the two main strands of scepticism are deeply related and can be overcome, but that there is a limit to how much we can show. We must position ourselves somewhere between internal realism and external realism, and we cannot hope to say exactly where.

Resisting Scientific Realism

Resisting Scientific Realism PDF

Author: K. Brad Wray

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-11

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1108415210

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Provides a spirited defence of anti-realism in philosophy of science. Shows the historical evidence and logical challenges facing scientific realism.

What It Is Like To Perceive

What It Is Like To Perceive PDF

Author: J. Christopher Maloney

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0190854774

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Naturalistic cognitive science, when realistically rendered, rightly maintains that to think is to deploy contentful mental representations. Accordingly, conscious perception, memory, and anticipation are forms of cognition that, despite their introspectively manifest differences, may coincide in content. Sometimes we remember what we saw; other times we predict what we will see. Why, then, does what it is like consciously to perceive, differ so dramatically from what it is like merely to recall or anticipate the same? Why, if thought is just representation, does the phenomenal character of seeing a sunset differ so stunningly from the tepid character of recollecting or predicting the sun's descent? J. Christopher Maloney argues that, unlike other cognitive modes, perception is in fact immediate, direct acquaintance with the object of thought. Although all mental representations carry content, the vehicles of perceptual representation are uniquely composed of the very objects represented. To perceive the setting sun is to use the sun and its properties to cast a peculiar cognitive vehicle of demonstrative representation. This vehicle's embedded referential term is identical with, and demonstrates, the sun itself. And the vehicle's self-attributive demonstrative predicate is itself forged from a property of that same remote star. So, in this sense, the perceiving mind is an extended mind. Perception is unbrokered cognition of what is real, exactly as it really is. Maloney's theory of perception will be of great interest in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Reason, Regulation, and Realism

Reason, Regulation, and Realism PDF

Author: C. A. Hooker

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1995-03-09

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780791422625

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book develops a new naturalist theory of reason and scientific knowledge from a synthesis of philosophy and the new sciences of complex adaptive systems. In particular, the theory of partially self-organizing regulatory systems is now emerging as central to all the life and social sciences, and this book shows how these ideas can be used to illuminate and satisfyingly reconstruct our basic philosophical concepts and principles. Evolutionary epistemology provides a unifying subject for the book. It is taken as proposing some important commonality between cognitive biological and cognitive epistemic processes. Here, that commonality is found by embedding both in a common model of complex adaptive system dynamics .New reconstructions are offered on the theories of Jean Piaget, Karl Popper, and Nicholas Rescher which show how their ideas are more deeply illuminated from this perspective in contrast to the formal rationalist interpretations standard among philosophers and scientists.

Being Realistic about Reasons

Being Realistic about Reasons PDF

Author: T. M. Scanlon

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-01-16

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0191003158

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

T. M. Scanlon offers a qualified defense of normative cognitivism--the view that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action. He responds to three familiar objections: that such truths would have troubling metaphysical implications; that we would have no way of knowing what they are; and that the role of reasons in motivating and explaining action could not be explained if accepting a conclusion about reasons for action were a kind of belief. Scanlon answers the first of these objections within a general account of ontological commitment, applying to mathematics as well as normative judgments. He argues that the method of reflective equilibrium, properly understood, provides an adequate account of how we come to know both normative truths and mathematical truths, and that the idea of a rational agent explains the link between an agent's normative beliefs and his or her actions. Whether every statement about reasons for action has a determinate truth value is a question to be answered by an overall account of reasons for action, in normative terms. Since it seems unlikely that there is such an account, the defense of normative cognitivism offered here is qualified: statements about reasons for action can have determinate truth values, but it is not clear that all of them do. Along the way, Scanlon offers an interpretation of the distinction between normative and non-normative claims, a new account of the supervenience of the normative on the non-normative, an interpretation of the idea of the relative strength of reasons, and a defense of the method of reflective equilibrium.

Taking Morality Seriously

Taking Morality Seriously PDF

Author: David Enoch

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-07-28

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 019161856X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view—according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths—is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive—defending Robust Realism against traditional objections—it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections. The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here—the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)—are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.

Controversy in Marketing Theory: For Reason, Realism, Truth and Objectivity

Controversy in Marketing Theory: For Reason, Realism, Truth and Objectivity PDF

Author: Shelby D. Hunt

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 131529088X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this book distinguished theorist and author Shelby D. Hunt analyzes the major controversies in the "philosophy debates" raging throughout the field of marketing. Using an historical approach, Hunt argues against relativism and for scientific realism as a philosophy for guiding marketing research and theory. He also shows how the pursuit of truth and objectivity in marketing research are both possible and desirable. Specific controversies analyzed in the book include: Does positivism dominate marketing research? Does positivism imply quantitive methods? Is relativism an appropriate foundation for marketing research? Does relativism imply pluralism, tolerance, and openness? Should marketing pursue the goal of objective research? An ideal companion to Hunt's classic text, Foundations of Marketing Theory, this volume will be equally useful on its own in any graduate level course on marketing theory.

Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education

Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education PDF

Author: Grant Banfield

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-09-16

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 131741148X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book offers a critical realist intervention into the field of Marxist Sociology of Education. Critical realism, as developed by British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, is known for its capacity to serve as a conceptual underlabourer to applied fields like education. Indeed, its success in clarifying and resolving thorny issues of educational theory and practice is now well established. Given critical realism’s sympathetic Marxist origins, its productive and critical engagement with Marxism has an even longer history. To date there has been little sustained attention given to the application of critical realism to Marxist educational praxis. The book addresses this gap in existing scholarship. Its conceptual ground clearing of the field of Marxist Sociology of Education centres on two problematics well-known in the social sciences: naturalism and the structure-agency relation. Marxist theory from the days of Marx to the present is shown to also be haunted by these problematics. This has resulted in considerable tension around the meaning and nature of, for example, reform, revolution, class determinism and class struggle. With its emergence in the 1970s as a child of Western Marxism, the field continues to be an expression of these tensions that seriously limit its transformative potential. Addressing these issues and offering conceptual clarification in the interests of revolutionary educational practice, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education provides a new perspective on education which will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners alike.