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Book Cover
E-book
Author Unger, Peter K

Title Empty ideas : a critique of analytic philosophy / Peter Unger
Published New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 258 pages .)
Contents 1. How empty is mainstream philosophy? -- Most recent mainstream proposals are concretely empty ideas -- A working idea of concrete reality -- Observing the concretely empty in some recent mainstream philosophy -- Our central distinction and three that have been philosophically salient -- The concretely empty, the analytically empty and mainstream philosophy -- 2. Promising examples of concretely substantial philosophy. -- Some pretty promising examples of concretely substantial philosophy -- The substantial scientiphicalism of mainstream philosophy -- Memory, history and emptiness -- Various specifications of scientiphicalism and various departures from scientiphicalism -- Interactionist entity dualism and the problem of causal pairings -- Exploring philosophical thoughts that may be analytically empty ideas -- 3. Thinkers and what they can think about : empty issues and individualistic powers. -- Language, thought and history -- Thinking about "the external world" -- Earth, twin Earth and history -- The banality of successfully investigating unfamiliar individuals -- A concretely substantial possibility : individualistically directed powers -- The propensity to acquire individualistic powers and its historical manifestation -- A concretely substantial possibility : individualistically directed mental powers -- Generalistic propensities to acquire real-kind directed mental powers -- Wishful blindness to emptiness : Putnam's "transcendental" pronouncement -- Reading modal claims substantially and widening our philosophical horizons -- 4. The origins of material individuals : empty issues and sequentialistic powers -- The origin of a particular wooden table -- Some thoughts about tables and some thoughts about shmables -- Origination conditions, persistence conditions, and boxing a logical compass -- A tenet of scientiphicalism : basic individuals have no "memory-like" propensity -- How a wooden table could have first been made from a hunk of ice -- Tood and tice, a table first made of wood and a table first made of ice -- Using modal terms substantially : the case of determinism -- Distinctive material objects and these objects' distinctive matter -- Sequentialistically propensitied concrete particulars -- Wooden tables, ice, and sequentialistically propensitied concrete particulars -- 5. The persistence of material individuals : empty issues and self-directed propensity. -- Material sculptures and pieces of matter -- Are there inconveniently persisting material individuals? -- Pieces, lumps and hunks : a problematic plethora of persisting individuals? -- Is there a plethora of extraordinary persisting individuals? -- Ordinary and not so ordinary persisting material individuals -- Using these sentences differently and expressing substantial ideas -- Fundamentals of fundamental material persistents -- 6. Empty debates about material matters
Summary During the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers generally agreed that, by contrast with science, philosophy should offer no substantial thoughts about the general nature of concrete reality. Instead, philosophers offered conceptual truths. It is widely assumed that, since 1970, things have changed greatly. This book lays crucial challenges at the door of mainstream analytic philosophy, for Unger argues persuasively that (contrary to its explicit self-conception), a great deal of recent philosophy has been concerned with merely conceptual issues - nothing 'concretely substantial'
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Reality.
Substance (Philosophy)
Matter -- Philosophy
Analysis (Philosophy)
PHILOSOPHY -- Metaphysics.
Analysis (Philosophy)
Matter -- Philosophy.
Reality.
Substance (Philosophy)
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780199378524
0199378525
9780199330829
0199330824
0199330832
9780199330836