Metaphysics category: 2011 books

Never before published images of Cambodia seen through lens and mind. As for the suitcase, it has no pretension, no markings, no grandeur as is right for such a vessel. Yet it has carried within a world of worlds forgotten and promised. Its past cannot be comprehended, its future contemplated....

George Santayana’s renowned work of moral philosophy outlines his vision of the ideal life. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.   George Santayana’s The Life of Reason stands as one of the most influential and beautifully written works of philosophical naturalism....

Countable/Uncountable sets, Sizes of Infinity, "Hilbert Hotels", Power set, Cantor’s theorem and Paradox, Russell’s paradox, Zermelo's axioms for set theory, Essentials of Axiomatic method, Continuum Hypotheses, Unlimited Abstraction Principle and Separation Principle, Undecidability...

The Cartesian cogito—the principle articulated by Descartes that "I think, therefore I am"—is often hailed as the precursor of modern science. At the same time, the cogito's agent, the ego, is sometimes feared as the agency of manipulative domination responsible for all present woes,...

Everyone has an ultimate secret, even God. Since the dawn of time, humanity has sought to discover this most precious of all things. Our finest minds, noblest souls and most adventurous spirits have quested for the Holy Grail, the Philosopher’s Stone and the mystical Blue Flower of transcendent...

Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings is a comprehensive anthology that draws together leading philosophers writing on the major topics within philosophy of mind. Robb and O'Connor have carefully chosen articles under the following headings: *Substance Dualism and Idealism *Materialism *Mind and...

Most contemporary metaphysicians are sceptical about the reality of familiar objects such as dogs and trees, people and desks, cells and stars. They prefer an ontology of the spatially tiny or temporally tiny. Tiny microparticles 'dog-wise arranged' explain the appearance, they say, that there are...

Maitreya's Ratnagotravibhaga, also known as the Uttaratantra, is the main Indian treatise on buddha nature, a concept that is heavily debated in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. In A Direct Path to the Buddha Within, Klaus-Dieter Mathes looks at a pivotal Tibetan commentary on this text by Go Lotsawa...

Philosophy suffers the distinction of being regarded as essentially an academic pursuit. The term philosophy, to be sure, is used in common speech to denote a stoical manner of accepting the vicissitudes of life; but this conception sheds little or no light upon the meaning of philosophy as a branch...

Los textos del presente volumen, Nostalgia del Absoluto, nacen de una reflexión, a raíz de un ciclo de cinco conferencias emitidas por la radio canadiense en el otoño de 1974, sobre el vacío moral y emocional que ha dejado en la cultura occidental la decadencia de los sistemas religiosos institucionales....

Moving on from my essay on the elements of matter, I consider the problem of space. It must be objective and external to man. I go over some axioms concerning mathematics and geometry prior to the analysis of space. I put forth the fundamental proof of space as an independent existence. Since C lies...

This is the first of at least three essays on the elements of physics. I have dealt with these ideas in other works to some extent, but feel no compunction in laying them out in different formats for readers to grasp the full import. And extraneous matters in other works of mine where these problems...

I note that mathematics cannot analyze a continuum nor the infinite. These facts lead me to reverse my former view that space must be finite to be compatible with mathematical analysis. I have broken the link between space and math, but not between matter and math. Geometry is just that, the measure...

In his preface to Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche says this: “With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air...