Product Description: Combining rigorous philosophical analysis with historical and biographical information, this accessible work demonstrates that philosophy need not be intimidating. Filled with illustrations and full-color photos that simultaneously inform and stimulate, this examination summarizes the contributions of thinkers from Plato to Jacques Derrida...read more

A complete study of the most important thinkers and scholars in history and their ideas combines analysis and historical background with illuminating illustrations to create an entertaining and accessible introduction to philosophical thought.

Teleosemantics seeks to explain meaning and other intentional phenomena in terms of their function in the life of the species. This volume of new essays from an impressive line-up of well-known contributors offers a valuable summary of the current state of the teleosemantics debate.

David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he discusses both theoretical and practical rationality, and shows how evolutionary theory, decision theory, and quantum mechanics offer fresh approaches to some long-standing problems.

Presents an introduction to consciousness with information on such topics as the relationship between mind and matter, neural mechanisms, and cerebral computations.

David Papineau defends the naturalist view that human beings and their mental powers are normal parts of the natural world described by science. The first part of the book shows why this naturalist perspective is an inescapable consequence of certain physical truisms. However, far from this diminishing human beings, Papineau then shows how the central features of mind - consciousness, meaning and knowledge - can still be accommodated within the naturalist perspective. He exposes the widespread intuition that consciousness is non-physical as a confusion occasioned by the special structure of human imagination. Meaning is explained as a biological phenomenon, arising from the need for our actions to be directed towards and guided by features of the external world. And knowledge is understood in terms of the active pursuit of truth, a perspective which yields a realist solution to traditional sceptical problems, and carries important implications for the interpretation of mathematics, modality and morality. This book aims to offer original solutions to the central philosophical problems of mind and knowledge.

Product Description: This book defends realism from a naturalistic perspective. Criticizing the view of philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett and Donald Davidson, the author argues that representation is a natural, biological phenomenon, which needs to be analyzed in teleological terms, and he shows that such an analysis implies reality and human judgment are conceptually quite independent of each other...read more

Product Description: This book is concerned with those aspects of the theory of meaning for scientific terms that are relevant to questions about the evaluation of scientific theories. The contemporary debate about theory choice in science is normally presented as a conflict between two sets of ideas...read more