The Intractability Of Philosophical Problems

John Kekes proposes a new way of understanding the nature of philosophical problems, and defends a pluralist approach towards coping with them. He argues that the recurrence of such problems is not a defect, but a consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live.

This book in the epistemology of religion discusses a wide spectrum of sources in analytic, scholastic and apologetic philosophy and theology in order to argue non-deductively for the following thesis: Apart from religious experience, it cannot be evident (in a defined sense of psychological impossibility) that the Trinity doctrine is logically possible. Hence, this conclusion is drawn deductively: Apart from religious experience, it cannot be evident that Christianity or the Trinity doctrine have non-minimal logical probability. As the author points out, however, they still may be justified, well-argued, plausibly logically probable, and probable in other than the logical sense. The book will be of interest to philosophers of religion, analytic theologians, and researchers in analytic scholasticism.

This advanced introductory text offers a synoptic view of philosophical inquiry, discussing such topics as consciousness, the self, meaning, free will, the a priori, and knowledge. The emphasis is on the fundamental intractability of these questions, and a theory is proposed as to why the human mind has so much difficulty in resolving them. This theory turns upon a naturalistic picture of the scope and limits of human intelligence.

The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and PhilosophicalPsychology presents a comprehensive exploration of the widerange of methodological approaches utilized in the contemporaryfield of theoretical and philosophical psychology. The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and PhilosophicalPsychology presents a comprehensive exploration of the widerange of methodological approaches utilized in the contemporaryfield of theoretical and philosophical psychology. Gathers together for the first time all the approaches andmethods that define scholarly practice in theoretical andphilosophical psychology Chapters explore various philosophical and conceptualapproaches, historical approaches, narrative approaches to thenature of human conduct, mixed-method studies of psychology andpsychological inquiry, and various theoretical bases ofcontemporary psychotherapeutic practices Features contributions from ten Past Presidents of the Societyof Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, along with severalPast Presidents of other relevant societies

We must all make choices about how we want to live. We evaluate our possibilities by relying on historical, moral, personal, political, religious, and scientific modes of evaluations, but the values and reasons that follow from them conflict. Philosophical problems are forced on us when we try to cope with such conflicts. There are reasons for and against all proposed ways of coping with the conflicts, but none of them has been generally accepted by reasonable thinkers. The constructive aim of The Nature of Philosophical Problems is to propose a way of understanding the nature of such philosophical problems, explain why they occur, why they are perennial, and propose a pluralist approach as the most reasonable way of coping with them. This approach is practical, context-dependent, and particular. It follows from it that the recurrence of philosophical problems is not a defect, but a welcome consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live. The critical aim of the book is to give reasons against both the absolutist attempt to find an overriding value or principle for resolving philosophical problems and of the relativist claim that reasons unavoidably come to an end and how we want to live is ultimately a matter of personal preference, not of reasons.

Consciousness lies at the core of being human. Therefore, to understand ourselves, we need a theory of consciousness. In Sisyphus's Boulder, Eric Dietrich and Valerie Hardcastle argue that we will never get such a theory because consciousness has an essential property that prevents it from ever being explained. Consequently, philosophical debates over materialism and dualism are a waste of time. Scientific explanations of consciousness fare no better. Scientists do study consciousness, and such investigations will continue to grow and advance. However, none of them will ever reveal what consciousness is. In addition, given the centrality of consciousness in philosophy, Dietrich and Hardcastle claim that philosophy itself needs to change. That the central problems of philosophy persist is actually a profound epistemic fact about humans. Philosophy, then, is a limit to what humans can understand. (Series A)

Wittgenstein made use of his insights into the nature and powers of language to search out the source of conceptual confusions in the foundations of mathematics and in philosophy of psychology. Once he has established the use account of language, his Philosophical Investigations opens out into an extensive coverage of psychological phenomena and the concepts with which we identify and manage them. In this book Harr nd Tissaw display Wittgenstein's analysis of the 'grammar' of the most important of these concepts in a systematic and accessible way. Previous studies of the psychological aspects of Wittgenstein's writings, admirable as exegeses of his thought, have paid little attention to the relevant psychology. Here, the 'adjacent' theories and empirical investigations from mainstream psychology have been described in sufficient detail to show how Wittgenstein's work impinges on psychology as it has actually been practiced. In using this book, philosophers will be able to get a sense of the relevance of Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology to the development of psychology as a science. Psychologists will be able to see how to use Wittgenstein's insights to enrich and discipline their attempts to gain an understanding of human thinking, feeling, acting and perceiving, the domain of psychology as science. The book includes an historical overview of the sources of Wittgenstein's philosophy in the Vienna of the last years of Austro-Hungary, as well as a brief presentation of the main themes of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as it anticipated computational models of cognition. Student use is emphasized with frequent summaries and self-test questionnaires.