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Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher (; ; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. He is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was formerly chairman of the philosophy department. Rescher has served as president for the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Leibniz Society of North America, American Metaphysical Society, American Philosophical Association, and Charles S. Peirce Society. He is the founder of ''American Philosophical Quarterly'', ''History of Philosophy Quarterly'', and ''Public Affairs Quarterly''. Early life and education Nicholas Rescher was born in Hagen in the Westphalia region of Germany. In his autobiography he traces his descent to Nehemias Rescher (1735-1801), a founder of the Hochberg-Remseck Jewish community in Swabian Germany. He relocated to the United States when he was 10 and obtained a degree in mathematics at Queens College, N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Philosophy
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" grc, φιλεῖν , "to love" and σοφία '' sophía'', "wisdom"). History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology; the nature and origin of the universe, while rejecting mythical answers to such questions. They were specifically interested in the (the cause or first principle) of the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value Theory
In ethics and the social sciences, value theory involves various approaches that examine how, why, and to what degree humans value things and whether the object or subject of valuing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. Within philosophy, it is also known as ethics or axiology. Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of " the good". Today, some work in value theory has trended more towards empirical sciences, recording what people do value and attempting to understand why they value it in the context of psychology, sociology, and economics. In ecological economics, value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs an accrual-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service ( H. T. Odum, ''Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision-making'', 1996). In o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value Theory
In ethics and the social sciences, value theory involves various approaches that examine how, why, and to what degree humans value things and whether the object or subject of valuing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. Within philosophy, it is also known as ethics or axiology. Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of " the good". Today, some work in value theory has trended more towards empirical sciences, recording what people do value and attempting to understand why they value it in the context of psychology, sociology, and economics. In ecological economics, value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs an accrual-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service ( H. T. Odum, ''Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision-making'', 1996). In o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theory Of Everything (philosophy)
In philosophy, a theory of everything (ToE) is an ultimate, all-encompassing explanation or description of nature or reality.Rescher, Nicholas (2006a). "Holistic Explanation and the Idea of a Grand Unified Theory". ''Collected Papers IX: Studies in Metaphilosophy''.Rescher, Nicholas (2006b). "The Price of an Ultimate Theory". ''Collected Papers IX: Studies in Metaphilosophy''.Googlebooks previewWalker, Mark Alan (March 2002). ''Journal of Evolution and Technology'' Vol. 10. Adopting the term from physics, where the search for a theory of everything is ongoing, philosophers have discussed the viability of the concept and analyzed its properties and implications. Among the questions to be addressed by a philosophical theory of everything are: "Why is reality understandable?" – "Why are the laws of nature as they are?" – " Why is there anything at all?" Comprehensive philosophical systems The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer ''all'' the important ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John A
Sir John Alexander Macdonald (January 10 or 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first prime minister of Canada, serving from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 to 1891. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland; when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada (today in eastern Ontario). As a lawyer, he was involved in several high-profile cases and quickly became prominent in Kingston, which elected him in 1844 to the legislature of the Province of Canada. By 1857, he had become premier under the colony's unstable political system. In 1864, when no party proved capable of governing for long, Macdonald agreed to a proposal from his political rival, George Brown, that the parties unite in a Great Coalition to seek federation and political reform. Macdonald was the leading figure in the subsequent discussions and conferences, which resulted in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Sosa
Ernest Sosa (born June 17, 1940) is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. Since 2007 he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, but he spent most of his career at Brown University. Education and career Born in Cárdenas, Cuba, on June 17, 1940, Sosa earned his BA and MA from the University of Miami and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964. His dissertation was supervised by Nicholas Rescher. He joined the Rutgers faculty in 2007, having taught at Brown University since 1964. While full-time at Brown, he was also a distinguished visiting professor at Rutgers every spring from 1998 to 2006. Sosa has been described as "one of the most important epistemologists of the last half-century." Sosa is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He edits the philosophical journals ''Noûs'' and ''Philosophy and Phenomenological Research''. In 200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michele Marsonet
Michele Marsonet (born 1950) is professor of philosophy of science and methodology of the human sciences, chairman of the philosophy department and vice-rector for international relations at the University of Genoa in Italy. Having worked as associate professor, first of logic and then of philosophy of science, at the University of Genoa from 1992 to 1999, he was then a full professor of theoretical philosophy and institutions of philosophy. He was also dean of the faculty of arts and humanities of the University of Genoa from 2002 to 2008. His main areas of study are in pragmatism, philosophy of science, metaphysics, methodology of the social sciences, political philosophy and philosophical logic. He has published extensively on the works of Nicholas Rescher. He graduated from the University of Genoa (1973), then earned a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh (1979), with subsequent periods of study at Oxford, Manchester and New York City. He has been a visiting professor at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Pruss
Alexander Robert Pruss (born January 5, 1973) is a Canadian philosopher and mathematician. He is currently a professor of philosophy and the co-director of graduate studies in philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. His best known book is ''The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment'' (2006). He is also the author of the books, ''Actuality, Possibility and Worlds'' (2011), and ''One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics'' (2012), and a number of academic papers on religion and theology. He maintains his own philosophy blog and contributed to the Prosblogion philosophy of religion blog. Biography Pruss graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1991 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and physics. After earning a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of British Columbia in 1996 and publishing several papers in ''Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society'' and other mathematical journals, he began graduate work in philosophy at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorenz Bruno Puntel
Lorenz (Lorencino) Bruno Puntel (; born September 22, 1935) is a Brazilian philosopher based in Germany, who established the school of Structural-systematic philosophy. Professor emeritus at the University of Munich, Puntel has been named as one of the great contemporary philosophers, articulating his ideas from the most varied traditions. Career Puntel studied philosophy, theology, philology and psychology in Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna, Paris, and Rome. He graduated in philosophy in Munich (1968) and in Catholic theology (1969) in Innsbruck. He became a professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Munich in 1978. He was a student of Karl Rahner and studied with Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy concerned him throughout his life. Philosophical work Puntel's thought tries to reconstruct the systematics of philosophy from a very unique viewpoint, which involves the elaboration of a theoretical language, abandoning the idea of a language of predicates. Puntel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume '' Principia Mathematica'' (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. ''Principia Mathematica'' is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel (January 8, 1905 – November 9, 1997) was a German writer, philosopher, logician, and epistemologist. He was a major figure in logical empiricism, a 20th-century movement in the philosophy of science. He is especially well known for his articulation of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960s. He is also known for the raven paradox (also known as "Hempel's paradox"). Education Hempel studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Göttingen and subsequently at the University of Berlin and the Heidelberg University. In Göttingen, he encountered David Hilbert and was impressed by his program attempting to base all mathematics on solid logical foundations derived from a limited number of axioms. After moving to Berlin, Hempel participated in a congress on scientific philosophy in 1929 where he met Rudolf Carna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
