This is a new volume of original essays on the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. The essays address questions such as: What fundamental metaphysics is best motivated by quantum mechanics? What is the ontological status of the wave function? Does quantum mechanics support the existence of any other fundamental entities, e.g. particles? What is the nature of the fundamental space (or space-time manifold) of quantum mechanics? What is the relationship... more...

Science has had a profound influence in shaping contemporary perspectives of reality, yet few in the public have fully grasped the profound implications of scientific discoveries. This book describes three intellectual revolutions that led to the current scientific consensus, emphasizing how science over the centuries has undermined traditional, religious worldviews. The author begins in ancient Greece, where the first revolution took place. Beginning... more...

Aesthetics and Painting introduces and opens up current debates and ideas in the aesthetics of painting. At the book's center is an investigation of the complex relationship between what a painting depicts and the means by which it is depicted. The book looks at: how and why painting may be distinguished from other art forms; the relationship between the painted surface and the depicted subject; the "rules of representation" specific to... more...

Machiavelli is usually understood as a thinker who separated morality from politics or who championed Roman, pagan morality over conventional, Christian morality. Belliotti argues, instead, that Machiavelli's innovation is his understanding of the perhaps irresolvable moral conflicts that exist within political leaders who fulfill the duties of their offices while accepting the authority of absolute moral principles. Machiavelli is a moral pessimist... more...

This book presents a philosophical approach to probability and probabilistic thinking, considering the underpinnings of probabilistic reasoning and modeling, which effectively underlie everything in data science. The ultimate goal is to call into question many standard tenets and lay the philosophical and probabilistic groundwork and infrastructure for statistical modeling. It is the first book devoted to the... more...

This book tells about the "History of Zen" in China and Japan. It has altogether 16 chapters. The first eight chapters are about Zen in China and the later eight chapters about Zen in Japan. It is mainly concerned with a detailed account of inheriting lineage and sermons of different Zen schools and sects in China and Japan as well as the specific facts of Chinese monks crossing over to Japan for preaching and Japanese monks coming to China for... more...

Hans-Georg Gadamer is considered to have made the most important contribution to hermeneutics of this century through his major work, Truth and Method. Born in Marburg on February 11, 1900, he earned his doctorate under Paul Natorp, the Plato scholar, in 1922 and completed his habilitation thesis on Plato's dialectical ethics under Martin Heidegger in 1928. He spent the major portion of his teaching career at the University of... more...

Here at last is the only up-to-date history of American philosophy, an American counterpart to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. In this fascinating volume, the eminent historian Bruce Kuklick tells the story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the United States, in the context of intellectual and social change. He sketches the genesis of these intellectual practices in New England Calvinism and the writing of Jonathan Edwards.... more...

The question posed by Herman Rapaport, in the title of this book, is intended both seriously and ironically. It is not Rapaport's purpose to debate whether or not truth resides in art. The title points rather to his belief that truth needs to be reconcep-tualized in the light of continuing efforts to deconstruct and to discredit the notion of truthfulness in art.The question of art's truthfulness persists because truth in art is neither an entity or... more...

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer... more...