Download Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy PDF

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy

Author: Walter Ott
Publsiher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191571407
Rating: 4.1/5 (7 downloads)

Download Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Some philosophers think physical explanations stand on their own: what happens, happens because things have the properties they do. Others think that any such explanation is incomplete: what happens in the physical world must be partly due to the laws of nature. Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy examines the debate between these views from Descartes to Hume. Ott argues that the competing models of causation in the period grow out of the scholastic notion of power. On this Aristotelian view, the connection between cause and effect is logically necessary. Causes are 'intrinsically directed' at what they produce. But when the Aristotelian view is faced with the challenge of mechanism, the core notion of a power splits into two distinct models, each of which persists throughout the early modern period. It is only when seen in this light that the key arguments of the period can reveal their true virtues and flaws. To make his case, Ott explores such central topics as intentionality, the varieties of necessity, and the nature of relations. Arguing for controversial readings of many of the canonical figures, the book also focuses on lesser-known writers such as Pierre-Sylvain Régis, Nicolas Malebranche, and Robert Boyle.

Download Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy PDF

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy

Author: Walter R. Ott
Publsiher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:
Rating: 4./5 ( downloads)

Download Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This is a study of one of the most important debates in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy: the nature of causation. Ott offers controversial readings of such canonical figures as Descartes, Locke, and Hume, and explores related topics such as intentionality, necessity, and relations.

Download Causation in Early Modern Philosophy PDF

Causation in Early Modern Philosophy

Author: Steven Nadler
Publsiher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0271039663
Rating: 4.9/5 (63 downloads)

Download Causation in Early Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Download Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences PDF

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

Author: Dana Jalobeanu
Publsiher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 2267
Release: 2022-08-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319310690
Rating: 4.0/5 (9 downloads)

Download Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. Editorial Board EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Dana Jalobeanu University of Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University, Belgium ASSOCIATE EDITORS Delphine Bellis University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Zvi Biener University of Cincinnati, OH, USA Angus Gowland University College London, UK Ruth Hagengruber University of Paderborn, Germany Hiro Hirai Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Lenz University of Groningen, The Netherlands Gideon Manning CalTech, Pasadena, CA, USA Silvia Manzo University of La Plata, Argentina Enrico Pasini University of Turin, Italy Cesare Pastorino TU Berlin, Germany Lucian Petrescu Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Justin E. H. Smith University de Paris Diderot, France Marius Stan Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Koen Vermeir CNRS-SPHERE + Université de Paris, France Kirsten Walsh University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Download Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy PDF

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy

Author: Donald Rutherford
Publsiher:
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2020-01-02
Genre: Philosophy, Modern
ISBN: 0198852452
Rating: 4.2/5 (52 downloads)

Download Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.

Download Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy PDF

Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy

Author: Dominik Perler
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2019-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351379380
Rating: 4.9/5 (8 downloads)

Download Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many early modern thinkers did not unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Download The Metaphysics of Laws of Nature PDF

The Metaphysics of Laws of Nature

Author: Walter Ott
Publsiher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2022-07-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192675370
Rating: 4.5/5 (7 downloads)

Download The Metaphysics of Laws of Nature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

It can seem obvious that we live in a world governed by laws of nature, yet it was not until the seventeenth century that the concept of a law came to the fore. Ever since, it has been attended by controversy: what does it mean to say that Boyle's law governs the expansion of a gas, or that the planets obey the law of gravity? Laws are rules that permit calculations and predictions. What does the universe have to be like, if it is to play by them? This book sorts the most prominent answers into three families. Laws first arose in a theological context; they govern events only because God enforces them. Those wishing to reverse the order of explanation, and argue that the powers of objects fix the laws, struggled to claim for themselves the results of new science. The stand-off between these two families bred a third which rejects any kind of enforcer for the laws. On this view, laws summarize events; they do not govern anything. This book traces the fortunes of the three families, from their origins to the present day. It uses objections - and the revisions needed to answer them - to produce the best representative of each. Along the way, it tries to settle the rules of this game, the debate over laws of nature. What should we expect from an account of laws? The book aims to help readers develop their own desiderata and judge the merits of the competing positions.

Download Causality and Mind PDF

Causality and Mind

Author: Nicholas Jolley
Publsiher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-11-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191648329
Rating: 4.8/5 (29 downloads)

Download Causality and Mind Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Causality and Mind presents seventeen of Nicholas Jolley's essays on early modern philosophy, which focus on two main themes. One theme is the continuing debate over the nature of causality in the period from Descartes to Hume. Jolley shows that, despite his revolutionary stance, Descartes did no serious re-thinking about causality; it was left to his unorthodox disciple Malebranche to argue that there is no place for natural causality in the new mechanistic picture of the physical world. Several essays explore critical reactions to Malebranche's occasionalism in the writings of Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume, and show how in their different ways Leibniz and Hume respond to Malebranche by re-instating the traditional view that science is the search for causes. A second theme of the volume is the set of issues posed by Descartes' innovations in the philosophy of mind. It is argued that Malebranche is once again a pivotal figure. In opposition to Descartes Malebranche insists that ideas, the objects of thought, are not psychological but abstract entities; he thus opposes Descartes' 'dustbin theory of the mind'. Malebranche also challenges Descartes' assumption that intentionality is a mark of the mental and his commitment to the superiority of self-knowledge over knowledge of body. Other essays discuss the debate over innate ideas, Locke's polemics against Descartes' theory of mind, and the issue of Leibniz's phenomenalism. A major aim of the volume is to show that philosophers in the period are systematic critics of their contemporaries and predecessors.

Download Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers PDF

Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers

Author: Gloria Frost
Publsiher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2022-08-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1009225421
Rating: 4.5/5 (21 downloads)

Download Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book reconstructs and analyses Aquinas's theories of efficient causation and causal powers.

Download Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature PDF

Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature

Author: Jeffrey Koperski
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-11-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 042964275X
Rating: 4.2/5 (5 downloads)

Download Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A longstanding question at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology is how God might act, or not, when governing the universe. Many believe that determinism would prevent God from acting at all, since to do so would require violating the laws of nature. However, when a robust view of these laws is coupled with the kind of determinism now used in dynamics, a new model of divine action emerges. This book presents a new approach to divine action beyond the current focus on quantum mechanics and esoteric gaps in the causal order. It bases this approach on two general points. First, that there are laws of nature is not merely a metaphor. Second, laws and physical determinism are now understood in mathematically precise ways that have important implications for metaphysics. The explication of these two claims shows not only that nonviolationist divine action is possible, but there is considerably more freedom available for God to act than current models allow. By bringing a philosophical perspective to an issue often dominated by theologians and scientists, this text redresses an imbalance in the discussion around divine action. It will, therefore, be of keen interest to scholars of Philosophy and Religion, the Philosophy of Science, and Theology.

Download Causation and Modern Philosophy PDF

Causation and Modern Philosophy

Author: Keith Allen
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2011-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 113682006X
Rating: 4.0/5 (6 downloads)

Download Causation and Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.

Download The Territories of Science and Religion PDF

The Territories of Science and Religion

Author: Peter Harrison
Publsiher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 022647898X
Rating: 4.8/5 (8 downloads)

Download The Territories of Science and Religion Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The conflict between science and religion seems indelible, even eternal. Surely two such divergent views of the universe have always been in fierce opposition? Actually, that’s not the case, says Peter Harrison: our very concepts of science and religion are relatively recent, emerging only in the past three hundred years, and it is those very categories, rather than their underlying concepts, that constrain our understanding of how the formal study of nature relates to the religious life. In The Territories of Science and Religion, Harrison dismantles what we think we know about the two categories, then puts it all back together again in a provocative, productive new way. By tracing the history of these concepts for the first time in parallel, he illuminates alternative boundaries and little-known relations between them—thereby making it possible for us to learn from their true history, and see other possible ways that scientific study and the religious life might relate to, influence, and mutually enrich each other. A tour de force by a distinguished scholar working at the height of his powers, The Territories of Science and Religion promises to forever alter the way we think about these fundamental pillars of human life and experience.

Download The Interpretation of Early Modern Philosophy PDF

The Interpretation of Early Modern Philosophy

Author: Paul Taborsky
Publsiher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2019-01-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1527526828
Rating: 4.6/5 (28 downloads)

Download The Interpretation of Early Modern Philosophy Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

What is early modern philosophy? Two interpretative trends have predominated in the related literature. One, with roots in the work of Hegel and Heidegger, sees early modern thinking either as the outcome of a process of gradual rationalization (leading to the principle of sufficient reason, and to “ontology” as distinct from metaphysics), or as a reflection of an inherent subjectivity or representational semantics. The other sees it as reformulations of medieval versions of substance and cause, suggested by, or leading to, early modern scientific developments. This book proposes a rather different kind of explanation. It suggests that the concept of relation, specifically that of dyadic, anti-symmetrical relations, can throw light on a wide variety of developments in early modern thought, such as those concerning causality, sense perception, temporality, and the mereological approach to substance. The book argues that these relations are grounded in an interpretation of causal influence, and not in semantic theories or subjectivity. Furthermore, if it is correct that the problem of unity was, for most of classical antiquity, what the problems of motion, causality and perception were for early modern thinkers, then early modern thought is much closer to the thought of Aristotle than is commonly supposed. The genesis of early modern thought might instead be taken to have occurred in opposition to one aspect of the thought of Duns Scotus (an aspect that lives on in contemporary Neo-Aristotelianism), and that can be explained once the relational perspective examined here is taken into account.

Download Laws of Nature PDF

Laws of Nature

Author: Walter Ott
Publsiher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-05-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191063711
Rating: 4.3/5 (11 downloads)

Download Laws of Nature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

What is the origin of the concept of a law of nature? How much does it owe to theology and metaphysics? To what extent do the laws of nature permit contingency? Are there exceptions to the laws of nature? Is it possible to give a reductive analysis of lawhood, or is it a primitive? Twelve new essays by an international team of leading philosophers take up these and other central questions on the laws of nature, whilst also examining some of the most important intuitions and assumptions that have guided the debate over laws of nature since the concepts invention in the seventeenth century. Laws of Nature spans the history of philosophy and of science, contemporary metaphysics, and contemporary philosophy of science.

Download Suárez on Aristotelian Causality PDF

Suárez on Aristotelian Causality

Author:
Publsiher: BRILL
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004292160
Rating: 4.2/5 (6 downloads)

Download Suárez on Aristotelian Causality Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Suárez on Aristotelian Causality offers the first comprehensive account of Francisco Suárez’s position with respect to the four Aristotelian causes in his Metaphysical Disputations.

Download Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe PDF

Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe

Author: Michael Stolleis
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317089774
Rating: 4.9/5 (74 downloads)

Download Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This impressive volume is the first attempt to look at the intertwined histories of natural law and the laws of nature in early modern Europe. These notions became central to jurisprudence and natural philosophy in the seventeenth century; the debates that informed developments in those fields drew heavily on theology and moral philosophy, and vice versa. Historians of science, law, philosophy, and theology from Europe and North America here come together to address these central themes and to consider the question; was the emergence of natural law both in European jurisprudence and natural philosophy merely a coincidence, or did these disciplinary traditions develop within a common conceptual matrix, in which theological, philosophical, and political arguments converged to make the analogy between legal and natural orders compelling. This book will stimulate new debate in the areas of intellectual history and the history of philosophy, as well as the natural and human sciences in general.

Download One True Cause PDF

One True Cause

Author: Andrew R. Platt
Publsiher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-08-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190941812
Rating: 4.1/5 (12 downloads)

Download One True Cause Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Occasionalism is the thesis that God alone is the true cause of everything that happens in the world, and created substances are merely "occasional causes." This doctrine was originally developed in medieval Islamic theology, and was widely rejected in the works of Christian authors in medieval Europe. Yet despite its heterodoxy, occasionalism was revived in the 1660s by followers of the philosophy of René Descartes, perhaps the most famous among them the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, who popularized this doctrine. What led Cartesian thinkers to adopt occasionalism? Since the 1970s has there been a growing body of literature on Malebranche and the movement he engendered. There is also a new and growing body of work on the Cartesian occasionalists before Malebranche--including Arnold Geulincx, Geraud de Cordemoy, and Louis de la Forge. But to date there has not been a systematic, book-length study of the reasoning that led Cartesian thinkers to adopt occasionalism, and the relationship of their arguments to Descartes' own views. This book expands on recent scholarship to provide the first comprehensive account of seventeenth century occasionalism. Part I contrasts occasionalism with a theory of divine providence developed by Thomas Aquinas, in response to medieval occasionalists; it shows that Descartes' philosophy is compatible with Aquinas' theory, on which God "concurs" in all the actions of created beings. Part II reconstructs the arguments of Cartesians--such as Cordemoy and La Forge--who used Cartesian physics to argue for occasionalism. Finally, the book shows how Malebranche's case for occasionalism combines philosophical theology with Cartesian metaphysics and mechanistic science.