Nicholas Rescher

Concept Audits (eBook, ePUB)

A Philosophical Method

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Concept auditing is based on an innovative premise for philosophers: when they address an everyday life conception on the order of knowledge, truth, justice, fairness, beauty, or the like and purport to be dealing with what it involves, then they must honor the existing meanings of these terms. And insofar as the prevailing meaning is being contravened, they must explain how and justify why this is being done. They must, in sum, explain how their treatment of a topic relates to our established pre-systematic understanding of the issues involved and relate their deliberations to the prevailing conception of the matter they are proposing to discuss. The aim of a concept audit is to consider to what extent a given philosophical discussion honors this communicative obligation. Concept Audits sets out not only to explain and defend this procedure, but also to consider a host of applications and exemplifications of these ideas. Nicholas Rescher shows how this method of conceptual auditing can function to elucidate and evaluate philosophical theses and doctrine across a wide spectrum of issues, ranging from logic to ethics and metaphysics. Accordingly, he explains and illustrates an instructive innovation in philosophical method. This new study of philosophical methodology presents its method in a clear and convincing way and shows the method at work with respect to a wide spectrum of important philosophical issues.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 194
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. August 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781498540407
• Artikelnr.: 47253924

Autorenporträt

Nicholas Rescher is distinguished university professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. In a research career extending over six decades, he has published over three hundred articles and written over a hundred philosophy texts, including A System of Pragmatic Idealism, The Limits of Science, Conditionals, Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosphizing, Enlightening Journey: The Autobiography of an American Scholar, and Unknowability: An Inquiry Into the Limits of Knowledge.

Inhaltsangabe

PREFACE I. METHODOLOGY 1. Introduction: The Concept Auditing Process II.
SOME HISTORICAL APPLICATIONS 2. The Socratic Method as an Illustration 3.
Neo-Platonic Wholes 4. Descartes and Generalization 5. Spinoza on Things
and Ideas 6. Kantian Absolutism in Moral Theory 7. Mill on Desirability 8.
Ordinary Language Philosophy on the Nature of Knowing 9. Russell-Gettier on
the Analysis of Knowledge 10. Concept Dialectics in Historical Perspective
11. Metaphysical Illusions III. FURTHER ILLUSTRATIVE APPLICATIONS 12. Who
Dun It? 13. Existence: To Be or Not to Be 14. Explanatory Regression 15.
The Fallacy of Respect Neglect 16. Appearance and Reality 17. On the Truth
about Reality 18. Sameness and Change 19. Origination Issues 20. Shaping
Ideas 21. Construing Necessitation 22. Conceptual Horizons 23. Language
Limits 24. On Certainty 25. Timeless Truth 26. Assessing Acceptability 27.
Value Neutrality in Science 28. Personhood and Obligation 29. Control
Issues 30. Fairness Problems 31. The Ethics of Delegation 32. Doing unto
Others 33. Faux Quantities 34. Luck vs. Fortune 35. The Problem of Progress
36. Issues of Excellence 37. Problems of Perfection IV. CONCLUSION 38.
Concluding Observations