The metaphysics of explanation : an inquiry into the nature and philosophical limits of explanation

著者

• Whitaker, Campbell

書誌事項

The metaphysics of explanation : an inquiry into the nature and philosophical limits of explanation

Campbell Whitaker

（Studies in the history of philosophy, v. 74）

Edwin Mellen Press, c2004

• : hbk

注記

Includes bibliographical references (p. 469-490) and index

内容説明・目次

内容説明

Dr. Whitaker's book represents a highly important contribution to philosophical scholarship. It is not only a sustained analysis of the metaphysical questions of existence and the world, it is also a thorough analysis of the important theories of explanation over the past century and an overview and generalized theory of the essential nature of all types of rational explanation (including convincing resolutions of traditional problems of induction and free will). It is a thorough analysis of the concept of total explanation and its relation to concepts of sufficient reason, necessary being, axiarchism, explanatory self-subsumption, existence, concept, object, sense, and reference. There are interesting and significant analyses of some of the age-old proofs of the existence of God. There is also a rigorous explication of the philosophical limits of explanation and the incoherencies that result when those limits are ignored. This study also contains a detailed review and analysis of theories of divine creation and their relation to theories of scientific cosmology. There are exhaustive analyses of arguments for the spatial and temporal extent of the world as a whole. There is a careful and extensive consideration of the various meanings which have been attached to the term "space" by both scientific as well as metaphysical thinkers, and important distinctions between the major concepts of space that have been hopelessly confused in most treatments. Last but not least, there are interesting and novel analyses of concepts of the spiritual and the noumenon.

目次

• Preface, Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Question of Existence and the Concept of Explanation
• 2. Total Explanation and the Concept of Necessary Being
• 3. Axiarchism, Explanatory Self-Subsumption, The Universe, and Absolute Nothing
• 4. The Question of the World: Cosmology and Creation
• 5. The Finite World
• 6. The Infinite World
• Appendices
• Index
• Bibliography

「Nielsen BookData」 より

詳細情報

• NII書誌ID(NCID): BA68248180
• ISBN:
  • 0773464069
• LCCN: 2004044955
• 出版国コード: us
• タイトル言語コード: eng
• 本文言語コード: eng
• 出版地: Lewiston, N.Y.
• ページ数/冊数: iii, 490 p.
• 大きさ: 24 cm
• 親書誌ID:
  • BA06710793