Books by "E. Jonathan Lowe"
3 books found
What is the nature of the material world? And how are its fundamental constituents to be described? These questions are of central concern to contemporary philosophers, and in their attempt to answer them, they have begun reconsidering traditional views about metaphysical structure, including the Aristotelian view that material objects are best described as 'hylomorphic compounds'--that is, objects composed of both matter (hyle) and form (morphe). In this major new study, Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Aristotelian of the Middle Ages. According to Brower, the key to understanding Aquinas's conception lies in his distinctive account of intrinsic change. Beginning with a novel analysis of this account, Brower systematically introduces all the elements of Aquinas's hylomorphism, showing how they apply to material objects in general and human beings in particular. The resulting picture not only sheds new light on Aquinas's ontology as a whole, but provides a wholesale alternative to the standard contemporary accounts of material objects. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the nature of change, composition, material constitution, the ontology of stuff vs. things, the proper analysis of ordinary objects, the truthmakers for essential vs. accidental predication, and the metaphysics of property possession.
There have been many voices in disciplines as various as philosophy, history, psychology, hermeneutics, literary theory, and theology that have claimed that narrative is fundamental to all that is human. Here is a book that, in an engaging and amusing way, presents a coherent thesis to that effect, connecting the Joke and the Story (with all that comedy and tragedy imply) not only with our sensing and perceiving of the world, but with our faith in each other, and what the character of that faith should be.
This book addresses an apparent paradox in the psychology of thinking. On the one hand, human beings are a highly successful species. On the other, intelligent adults are known to exhibit numerous errors and biases in laboratory studies of reasoning and decision making. There has been much debate among both philosophers and psychologists about the implications of such studies for human rationality. The authors argue that this debate is marked by a confusion between two distinct notions: (a) personal rationality (rationality1 Evans and Over argue that people have a high degree of rationality1 but only a limited capacity for rationality2. The book re-interprets the psychological literature on reasoning and decision making, showing that many normative errors, by abstract standards, reflect the operation of processes that would normally help to achieve ordinary goals. Topics discussed include relevance effects in reasoning and decision making, the influence of prior beliefs on thinking, and the argument that apparently non-logical reasoning can reflect efficient decision making. The authors also discuss the problem of deductive competence - whether people have it, and what mechanism can account for it. As the book progresses, increasing emphasis is given to the authors' dual process theory of thinking, in which a distinction between tacit and explicit cognitive systems is developed. It is argued that much of human capacity for rationality1 is invested in tacit cognitive processes, which reflect both innate mechanisms and biologically constrained learning. However, the authors go on to argue that human beings also possess an explicit thinking system, which underlies their unique - if limited - capacity to be rational.