P. M. S. Hacker

Human Nature (eBook, ePUB)

The Categorial Framework

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. * * The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind * Written by one of the world's leading philosophers, the co-author of the monumental 4 volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell Publishing, 1980-2004) * Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature * Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted * Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
• Seitenzahl: 344
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. Juli 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781444351514
• Artikelnr.: 38305848

Autorenporträt

P. M. S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is author of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, the first two volumes co-authored with G. P. Baker (Blackwell, 1980-96) and of Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). He has also written extensively on philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, most recently Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003) and History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), both co-authored with M. R. Bennett. He is also co-editor (with Joachim Schulte) and co-translator of the 4th edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface. Chapter 1 The Project. 1. Human nature. 2. Philosophical
anthropology. 3. Grammatical investigation. 4. Philosophical investigation.
5. Philosophy and 'mere words'. 6. A challenge to the autonomy of the
philosophical enterprise: Quine. 7. The Platonic and Aristotelian
traditions in philosophical anthropology. Chapter 2 Substance. 1.
Substances: things. 2. Substances: stuffs. 3. Substance-referring
expressions. 4. Conceptual connections between things and stuffs. 5.
Substances and their substantial parts. 6. Substances conceived as natural
kinds. 7. Substances conceived as a common logico-linguistic category. 8. A
historical digression: misconceptions of the category of substance. Chapter
3 Causation. 1. Causation: Humean, neo-Humean and anti-Humean. 2. On causal
necessity. 3. Event causation is not a prototype. 4. The inadequacy of
Hume's analysis: observability, spatio-temporal relations and regularity.
5. The flaw in the early modern debate. 6. Agent causation as prototype. 7.
Agent causation is only a prototype. 8. Event causation and other centres
of variation. 9. Overview. Chapter 4 Powers. 1. Possibility. 2. Powers of
the inanimate. 3. Active and passive powers of the inanimate. 4. Power and
its actualization. 5. Power and its vehicle. 6. First- and second-order
powers; loss of power. 7. Human powers: basic distinctions. 8. Human
powers: further distinctions. 9. Dispositions. Chapter 5 Agency. 1.
Inanimate agents. 2. Inanimate needs. 3. Animate agents: needs and wants.
4. Volitional agency: preliminaries. 5. Doings, acts and actions. 6. Human
agency and action. 7. A historical overview. 8. Human action as agential
causation of movement. Chapter 6 Teleology and Teleological Explanation. 1.
Teleology and purpose. 2. What things have a purpose? 3. Purpose and
axiology. 4. The beneficial. 5. A historical digression: teleology and
causality. Chapter 7 Reasons and Explanation of Human Action. 1.
Rationality and reasonableness. 2. Reason, reasoning and reasons. 3.
Explaining human behaviour. 4. Explanation in terms of agential reasons. 5.
Causal mythologies. Chapter 8 The Mind. 1. Homo loquens. 2. The Cartesian
mind. 3. The nature of the mind. Chapter 9 The Self and the Body. 1. The
emergence of the philosophers' self. 2. The illusion of the philosophers'
self. 3. The body. 4. The relationship between human beings and their
bodies. Chapter 10 The Person. 1. The emergence of the concept. 2. An
unholy trinity: Descartes, Locke and Hume. 3. Changing bodies and switching
brains: puzzle cases and red herrings. 4. The concept of a person. Index.

Rezensionen

"Full of helpful distinctions and arguments which show in different ways how carefully we must proceed ... and how sensitive we must be to contexts." (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

"an outstanding contribution to contemporary metaphysics and philosophical anthropology"' (Stephen Mulhall, Philosophical Quarterly)

"an amazing achievement when writing about such potentially confusing and hotly contested issues" (Duncan Richter, Metapsychology)