Inference And The Metaphysic Of Reason

"This book elucidates how the so-called "problem of inference," long a matter of debate among philosophers of logic, epistemology, language, and other domains of speculation, is inextricably tied to the issue of how, in the classical idiom, Knowing is of Being. Motivating this project is an underlying question that guides the discussion throughout: namely, How is it most rational to orient ourselves in thinking about the way that the inferential intelligence articulates the actual? The principal task of the essay as a whole is to think-through this metaphysical question by addressing the Reason (Vernunft) of the act of inference critically and from an onto-epistemological standpoint. Part I demonstrates how contemporary analytic epistemologies of inference, currently the leading speculative approaches to the topic, and earlier philosophies of inference fail in different ways to account, in sufficiently rational terms, for the Reason of inference--and by that token fail to explicate the onto-epistemology of discursive thought with due cogency. Part II of the inquiry probes, along onto-epistemological lines, the conceptual logic of inference as act. In the process, Stambovsky reintroduces the notion that the principle of sufficient reason is on a par with that of (non)contradiction--at least in the conceptual logic of inference. Moreover, in an original yet broadly substantiated move the author argues that sufficient reason, so far as it is the signal principle that grounds the Reason of the act of inference, is in the first instance properly a function of formal cause."--Publisher's website.

"The following Lectures on Metaphysics constitute the first portion of the Biennial Course which the lamented Author was in the habit of delivering during the period of his occupation of the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics, in the University of Edinburgh. giving these Lectures to the world, it is due, both to the Author and to his readers, to acknowledge that they do not appear in that state of completeness which might have been expected, had they been prepared for publication by the Author himself As Lectures on Metaphysics--whether that term be taken in its wider or its stricter sense--they are confessedly imperfect. The Author himself, adopting the Kantian division of the mental faculties into those of Knowledge, Feeling, and Conation, considers the Philosophy of Mind as comprehending, in relation to each of these, the three great subdivisions of Psychology, or the Science of the Phenomena of Mind; Nomology, or the Science of its Laws; and Ontology, or the Science of Results and Inferences. The term Metaphysics, in its strictest sense, is synonymous with the last of these subdivisions; while, in its widest sense, it may be regarded as including the first also--the second being, in practice at least, if not in scientific accuracy, usually distributed among other departments of Philosophy. The following Lectures cannot be considered as embracing the whole province of Metaphysics in either of the above senses. Among the Phenomena of Mind, the Cognitive Faculties are discussed fully and satisfactorily; those of Feeling are treated with less detail; those of Conation receive scarcely any special consideration; while the questions of Ontology, or Metaphysics proper, are touched upon only incidentally. The omission of any special discussion of this last branch may perhaps be justified by its abstruse character, and unsuitableness for a course of elementary instruction; but it is especially to be regretted, both on account of the general neglect of this branch of study by the entire school of Scottish philosophers, and also on account of the eminent qualifications which the Author possessed for supplying this acknowledged deficiency. A treatise on Ontology from the pen of Sir William Hamilton, embodying the final results of the Philosophy of the Conditioned, would have been a boon to the philosophical world such as probably no writer now living is capable of conferring."--[Source inconnue].

This book is a major contribution to the study of the philosopher F. H. Bradley, the most influential member of the nineteenth-century school of British Idealists. It offers a sustained interpretation of Bradley's Principles of Logic, explaining the problem of how it is possible for inferences to be both valid and yet have conclusions that contain new information. The author then describes how this solution provides a basis for Bradley's metaphysical view that reality is one interconnected experience and how this gives rise to a new problem of truth.

Explanatory reasoning is ubiquitous. Not only are rigorous inferences to the best explanation used pervasively in the sciences, this kind of reasoning is common in everyday life. Despite its widespread use, inference to the best explanation is still in need of precise formulation, and it remains controversial. On the one hand, supporters of explanationism take inference to the best explanation to be a justifying form of inference; some even take all justification to be a matter of explanatory reasoning. On the other hand, critics object that inference to the best explanation is not a fundamental form of inference, and some argue that we should be skeptical of inference to the best explanation in general. This volume brings together twenty philosophers to explore various aspects of inference to the best explanation and the debates surrounding it. These specially commissioned essays constitute the cutting edge of research on the role explanatory considerations play in epistemology and philosophy of science.

Reason and rationality represent crucial elements of the self-image of human beings and have unquestionably been among the most debated issues in Western philosophy, dating from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, and to the present day. Many words and thoughts have already been spent trying to define the nature and standards of reason and rationality, what they could or ought to be, and under what conditions something can be said to be rational. This volume focuses instead on the relationships of reason and rationality to some relevant specific topics, i.e., science, knowledge, gender, politics, ethics, religion, aesthetics, language, logic, and metaphysics, trying to uncover and clarify both the connections and differences in their various characterisations and uses.

Grice contends that practical necessities are established by derivation. This text allows a defence of the treatment of necessity, also revealing how the construction of derivations can help to explain, as well as justify, thought and action.