Author: David Rapport Lachterman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415901413
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The Ethics of Geometry is a study of the relationship between philosophy and mathematics. Essential differences in the ethos of mathematics, for example, the customary ways of undertaking and understanding mathematical procedures and their objects, provide insight into the fundamental issues in the quarrel of moderns with ancients. Two signal features of the modern ethos are the priority of problem-solving over theorem-proving, and the claim that constructability by human minds or instruments establishes the existence of relevant entities. These figures are combined in the emblematic statement of Salomon Maimon, "In mathematical construction we are, as it were, gods." Construction is the mark of modernity. The disciplines of classical philology, literary interpretation and the history of philosophy and of mathematics are woven together in this volume.

Author: David Rapport Lachterman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In a wide-ranging study of the relationship between philosophy and mathematics, Lachterman discussing the importance of construction from Euclid to Kant and his successors.

Author: Martin Peterson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190652276
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Autonomous cars, drones, and electronic surveillance systems are examples of technologies that raise serious ethical issues. In this analytic investigation, Martin Peterson articulates and defends five moral principles for addressing ethical issues related to new and existing technologies: the cost-benefit principle, the precautionary principle, the sustainability principle, the autonomy principle, and the fairness principle. It is primarily the method developed by Peterson for articulating and analyzing the five principles that is novel. He argues that geometric concepts such as points, lines, and planes can be put to work for clarifying the structure and scope of these and other moral principles. This geometric account is based on the Aristotelian dictum that like cases should be treated alike, meaning that the degree of similarity between different cases can be represented as a distance in moral space. The more similar a pair of cases are from a moral point of view, the closer is their location in moral space. A case that lies closer in moral space to a paradigm case for some principle p than to any paradigm for any other principle should be analyzed by applying principle p. The book also presents empirical results from a series of experimental studies in which experts (philosophers) and laypeople (engineering students) have been asked to apply the geometric method to fifteen real-world cases. The empirical findings indicate that experts and laypeople do in fact apply geometrically construed moral principles in roughly, but not exactly, the manner advocates of the geometric method believe they ought to be applied.

Author: L. Magnani
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401096228
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Philosophers have studied geometry since ancient times. Geometrical knowledge has often played the role of a laboratory for the philosopher's conceptual experiments dedicated to the ideation of powerful theories of knowledge. Lorenzo Magnani's new book Philosophy and Geometry illustrates the rich intrigue of this fascinating story of human knowledge, providing a new analysis of the ideas of many scholars (including Plato, Proclus, Kant, and Poincaré), and discussing conventionalist and neopositivist perspectives and the problem of the origins of geometry. The book also ties together the concerns of philosophers of science and cognitive scientists, showing, for example, the connections between geometrical reasoning and cognition as well as the results of recent logical and computational models of geometrical reasoning. All the topics are dealt with using a novel combination of both historical and contemporary perspectives. Philosophy and Geometry is a valuable contribution to the renaissance of research in the field.

Author: Shelly Kagan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190233729
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 675

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Book Description
The Geometry of Desert explores the hidden complexity of moral desert. Using graphs to illustrate and contrast alternative views, it carefully investigates the various ways in which the value of an outcome varies when people get (or fail to get) what they deserve.

Author: Valtteri Viljanen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139501461
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This work examines the unique way in which Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77) combines two significant philosophical principles: that real existence requires causal power and that geometrical objects display exceptionally clearly how things have properties in virtue of their essences. Valtteri Viljanen argues that underlying Spinoza's psychology and ethics is a compelling metaphysical theory according to which each and every genuine thing is an entity of power endowed with an internal structure akin to that of geometrical objects. This allows Spinoza to offer a theory of existence and of action - human and non-human alike - as dynamic striving that takes place with the same kind of necessity and intelligibility that pertain to geometry. Viljanen's fresh and original study will interest a wide range of readers in Spinoza studies and early modern philosophy more generally.

Author: Olli Koistinen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139827650
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza's Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style.

Author: Dmitriĭ Vladimirovich Nikulin
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"This book considers conditions of applicability of mathematics to the study of natural phenomena. The possibility of such an application is one of the fundamental assumptions underlying the enormous theoretical and practical success of modern science. Addressing problems of matter, substance, infinity, number, structure of cognitive faculties, imagination, and of construction of mathematical object, Dmitri Nikulin examines mathematical (geometrical) objects in their relation to geometrical or intelligible matter and to imagination. The author explores questions in the history of philosophy and science, particularly in late antiquity and early modernity. The focus is on key thinkers Plotinus and Descartes (with the occasional appearance of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Proclus, Newton and others), in whom the fundamental presuppositions of ripe antiquity and of early modernity find their definite expression."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Remo Bodei
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487503369
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
The passions have long been condemned as a creator of disturbance and purveyor of the temporary loss of reason, but as Remo Bodei argues in Geometry of the Passions, we must abandon the perception that order and disorder are in a constant state of collision. By means of a theoretical and historical analysis, Bodei interprets the relationship between passion and reason as a conflict between two complementary logics. Geometry of the Passions investigates the paradoxical conflict-collaboration between passions and reason, and between individual and political projects. Tracing the roles passion and reason have played throughout history, including in the political agendas of Descartes, Hobbes, and the French Jacobins, Geometry of the Passions reveals how passion and reason may be used as a vehicle for affirmation rather than self-enslavement.

Author: Vincenzo de Risi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3764379863
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Book Description
This book reconstructs, from both historical and theoretical points of view, Leibniz’s geometrical studies, focusing in particular on the research Leibniz carried out in his final years. The work’s main purpose is to offer a better understanding of the philosophy of space and in general of the mature Leibnizean metaphysics. This is the first ever, comprehensive historical reconstruction of Leibniz’s geometry.