Philosophy / General

Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge offers scholarly analysis of key elements of Ayn Rand’s radically new approach to epistemology. The four essays, by contributors intimately familiar with this area of her work, discuss Rand’s theory of concepts—including its new account of abstraction and essence—and its central role in her epistemology; how that view leads to a distinctive conception of the justification of knowledge; her realist account of perceptual awareness and its role in the acquisition of knowledge; and finally, the implications of that theory for understanding the growth of scientific knowledge. The volume concludes with critical commentary on the essays by distinguished philosophers with differing philosophical viewpoints and the author’s responses to those commentaries.

Leading biologists and philosophers of biology discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology, providing a remarkably unified report on the “state of the art” in the philosophy of biology.

Everything we know about what goes on in the world comes to us through reports, information transmitted through human communication. This book offers a clear, accessible introduction to the theory of reporting, with a special emphasis on national security, particularly military and diplomatic reporting, drawing on examples from historical accounts of espionage and statecraft from the Second World War.

The first comprehensive chronology of philosophical anecdotes, from antiquity to the current era. Rescher introduces the major thinkers, texts, and historical periods of Western philosophy, recounting many of the stories philosophers have used over time to engage with issues of philosophical concern: questions of meaning, truth, knowledge, value, action, and ethics. Rescher’s anecdotes touch on a wide range of themes—from logic to epistemology, ethics to metaphysics.

Unsatisfied with current environmental philosophies, Brian G. Henning developed his own theory inspired by Alfred North Whitehead and several other classical American philosophers. In this work he discusses the theory’s most significant insight, “The Ethics of Creativity.”

Winner, John N. Findlay Book Prize from the Metaphysical Society of America

Voted one of the Top Ten Picks for university press books by Foreword Magazine in 2014.

New in Paper

Acampora details an inter-species morality by examining the underlying nature of bodily experience as animate creatures and as human beings.

The act of interpretation occurs in nearly every area of the arts and sciences. That ubiquity serves as the inspiration for the fourteen essays of this volume, covering many of the domains in which interpretive practices are found.

Contributors: Andreas Blank, Cornelius Borck, Paul M. Churchland, George Gale, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Kristin Gjesdal, Ruth Lorand, Christoph Lumer, Peter Machamer, Paolo Parrini, Nicholas Rescher, Ulrich Sautter, Kenneth F. Schaffner, Catherine Wilson

Philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand (1905-1982) is a cultural phenomenon. Yet Rand’s work has until recently received little serious attention from academics. This new series seeks a fuller scholarly understanding of this highly original and influential thinker. The chapters in this volume address the basis of her egoism in a virtue-centered normative ethics; her account of how moral norms in general are themselves based on a fundamental choice by an agent to value his own life; and how her own approach to the foundations of ethics is to be compared and contrasted with familiar approaches in the analytic ethical tradition.

A comprehensive philosophical analysis of the use of scientific models in historic and contemporary contexts.

Winner of the the 2016 Southern Cone Studies Section Social Sciences Book Award from the Latin American Studies AssociationThe philosophy of the mind is at the central core of this volume. Essays examine topics such as folk psychology, neuropsychology, psychoanalytic theory, the role of mental content in voluntary action, the functional and qualitative properties of color, meanings as conceptual structures, cognitive luck, and animal cognition.

Selling science has become a common practice in contemporary universities. This commodification of academia pervades many aspects of higher education. This volume offers the first book-length analysis of this disturbing trend from a philosophical perspective and presents views by scholars of philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and research ethics.

Provides an innovative analysis of the nature and interplay of observation and conceptualization. Radder shows that observation is always conceptually interpreted, and concepts affect the way observational processes are conducted in the first place.

The inaugural volume of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz series, devoted to the work of philosopher Adolf Grunbaum, encompasses the philosophical problems of space, time, and cosmology, the nature of scientific methodology, and the foundations of psychoanalysis.

Through essays on both rhetorical theory and case studies, leaders in the disciplines of rhetoric, sociology, philosophy, and history converge and clash to explore the rhetoric of science.

A comprehensive reexamination of the work of the twentieth-century scientist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi that offers a deeper understanding of his theories and rationale.