Online research in philosophy

This book presents a state-of-the-art overview of current developments in this exciting new area of interdisciplinary collaboration, and will be indispensable ...

In recent years numerous attempts have been made by analytic philosophers to naturalize various different domains of philosophical inquiry. All of these attempts have had the common goal of rendering these areas of philosophy amenable to empirical methods, with the intention of securing for them the supposedly objective status and broad intellectual appeal currently associated with such approaches. This volume brings together internationally recognised analytic philosophers, including Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen and Robert Audi, to question the project of naturalism. (...) The articles investigate what it means to naturalize a domain of philosophical inquiry and look at how this applies to the various sub-disciplines of philosophy including epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of the mind. The issue of whether naturalism is desirable is raised and the contributors take seriously the possibility that excellent analytic philosophy can be undertaken without naturalization. Controversial and thought-provoking, Analytic Philosophy Without Naturalism examines interesting and contentious methodological issues in analytic philosophy and explores the connections between philosophy and science. (shrink)

This paper examines the role played by the concept of human nature in ethical theory. The focus is on the epistemological problems that arise from application of this notion to the foundation of ethics. From this viewpoint, two theories, the neoscholastic and the neoclassical ones, are expounded, analyzed and compared. The aim is to highlight their opposite ways of relating the "ought-to-be" (of norms) to the "is" (of human nature). The conclusion is drawn that an adequate solution of the dispute (...) depends on a correct interpretation of Hume's law. Reflection is conducted in the last section on the implications of metaethical discourse on human nature for applied ethics. (shrink)