154 research outputs found

    Properties

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    Panorama aggiornato delle principali teorie filosofiche su propriet\ue0 e relazioni intese come universal

    Theism, Platonism, and the Metaphysics of Mathematics

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    Properties

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    survey of major approaches to properties understood as universal

    Toward an Epistemology of Art

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    The Philosophy of Mathematics: A Study of Indispensability and Inconsistency

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    This thesis examines possible philosophies to account for the practice of mathematics, exploring the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological outcomes of each possible theory. Through a study of the two most probable ideas, mathematical platonism and fictionalism, I focus on the compelling argument for platonism given by an appeal to the sciences. The Indispensability Argument establishes the power of explanation seen in the relationship between mathematics and empirical science. Cases of this explanatory power illustrate how we might have reason to believe in the existence of mathematical entities present within our best scientific theories. The second half of this discussion surveys Newtonian Cosmology and other inconsistent theories as they pose issues that have received insignificant attention within the philosophy of mathematics. The application of these inconsistent theories raises questions about the effectiveness of mathematics to model physical systems

    Footnotes to Footnotes: Whitehead\u27s Plato

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    This dissertation examines the presence of Plato in the philosophical expressions of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). It was Whitehead who issued the well-known remark that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato -- the purpose of this project is to examine the manner in which Whitehead positioned himself as one such footnote, with respect to his thought itself, and its origins, presentation and reception. This examination involves: first, an explication of Whitehead’s cosmology and metaphysics and their ostensibly Platonic elements (consisting chiefly in the Timaeus); second, investigation of what motivated his interpretation and appropriation of Platonic cosmology (I emphasize the influence of A.E. Taylor’s Commentary on the Timaeus); third, analysis of the aforementioned “footnote” remark, and of how Whitehead foregrounded Plato as symbolic of philosophy’s ideal goals and methodologies; fourth, discussion of the reception of Whitehead’s reading of Plato, and how in some connections it has impeded the reception of his thought, and in others (Process philosophy) has received further (especially theological) development; fifth, exploration of how Whitehead’s reading of Plato applies to philosophical interpretations of modern science (e.g. relativity theory, Big Bang cosmology, quantum physics). Several themes emerge in these examinations. – One is that an assessment of the validity of Whitehead’s reading of Plato involves ambiguities that have their root in inherent ambiguities in the Timaeus, and Plato’s writing and Platonism at large. – Whitehead celebrates the Timaeus’ success in revealing the “forms” in the flux of cosmic process – but is a non-hierarchical Platonism with non-transcendent forms really a Platonism at all? Another theme is that just as there is an arbitrariness involved in Platonic interpretation, so is there arbitrariness in applying those interpretations (or those of other ancient philosophers) to modern science. Interpreting modern science through a Platonic lens may be at once helpful and illustrative, and problematic and unfavorable. More generally, presenting a novel system of thought as “Platonic” involves one in inextricable associations that may complicate and compromise the reception of that system, as has been, in some respects, the case with Whitehead

    Pieces of a Theory

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    A survey of theories of part, whole and dependence from Aristotle to the Gestalt psychologists, with special attention to Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation “On the Theory of Parts and Wholes”
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