Books by Nicholas Rescher

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

Logic is of course a general resource for reasoning at large. But in the first half of the twentieth century, it developed particularity with a view to mathematical applications, and the field of mathematical logic came into being and flourished. In the second half of the century, much the same happened with regard to philosophical applications. Hence philosophical logic. Thedeliberations of this book cover a varied but interrelated array of key issues in the field. They address the representation of information in linguistic formulation, and modes of cogent demonstration in logic, mathematics, and empirical investigation, as well as the role of logic in philosophical deliberations. Overall, the book seeks to demonstrate and illustrate the utility of logic as a productive resource for rational inquiry at large.

This book covers a varied spectrum of ethical topics, ranging from the fundamental considerations regarding ethical values, to the rationale of obligation, and the ethical management of societal and personal affairs.

Since the late 1960's Professor Rescher has carried on a series of investigations in value theory in an endeavor to clarify the nature of values and the ways in which they impact on human affairs. This book collects together some dozen of these studies in a way that showcases the author's characteristic perspective on this important range of basic philosophy issues. It bring clearly to view the author's characteristic combinations of analytical accuracies within a broad luminative outlook.

Our world is enormously sophisticated and nature's complexity is literally inexhaustible. As a result, projects to describe and explain natural science can never be completed. This volume explores the nature of complexity and considers its bearing on our world and how we manage our affairs within it.Rescher's overall lesson is that the management o

The book collects together various studies on issues of moral philosophy which the author has contributed to the professional literature of the subject over the years. Covering a wide range from the human condition at large and the foundation of justice questions of economics and professional responsibility, it illustrates from varying viewpoints the author¿s characteristic method of elucidating technical details by theoretical analysis.

Since Rescher's earliest publication of the middle 1950's in this field, the philosophy of science has constituted one focus of his interest and preoccupation. Some dozen of Rescher's contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to convey his favored way of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.

This series provides a forum for monographs and collected volumes aiming at a philosophical discussion of the texts, topics, and arguments of ancient philosophers. The authors demonstrate that philosophical historiography not only paraphrases the claims of ancient authors, but can also reconstruct the arguments for those claims and consider ongoing discussions in modern philosophy, thus enriching the philosophical debate of our time.

The present book continues Rescher's longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays that originated in occasional lecture and conference presentations. Notwithstanding their topical diversity they exhibit a uniformity of method in a common attempt to view historically significant philosophical issues in the light of modern perspectives opened up through conceptual clarification.

Diese Reihe bietet ein Forum fur interdisziplinare und disziplinubergreifende Studien zur Analyse und Anwendung dynamischer Kategorien. Sie prasentiert innovative Beitrage zur Prozessontologie und Prozessmetaphysik sowie zu prozessbasierten Theorien aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen.

Diese Reihe bietet ein Forum fur interdisziplinare und disziplinubergreifende Studien zur Analyse und Anwendung dynamischer Kategorien. Sie prasentiert innovative Beitrage zur Prozessontologie und Prozessmetaphysik sowie zu prozessbasierten Theorien aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen.

The aim of the series is to publish high-quality studies in English or German that deal with topics in practical philosophy from a broadly analytic perspective. These include questions in meta-ethics, normative ethics and 'applied' ethics, as well as in political philosophy, philosophy of law and the philosophy of action.

For about a decade Nicholas Rescher directed the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science and he has published instructive studies in this field since the 1950's. Some dozen of the contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to illustrate his characteristic approach of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.

It must be acknowledged that the essays presented here do not constitute a systematic account of any sort but represent occasional forays. Some deal with matters that happened to evoke Rescher's interest, others grew out of a chance encounter with a text he deemed to be of particular value. Throughout, challenges of the work itself more than compensated the author's efforts. Logic has always been of crucially important concern to philosophers. Rescher's own involvement with the history of logic goes back to his work on Leibniz in the 1950's (represented by Chapter 8 of the present book). Thereafter, during the 1960's he devoted considerable effort to the contributions of the medieval logicians of the Arabic-using world (here represented in Chapters 2-6). Moreover, Rescher have from time to time returned to the area to look at some aspects of the more recent scene, as Chapters 8-9 illustrate. In some instances the present essays have been overtaken by subsequent events-events which in fact helped to promote. This is true in particular in chapter 6's work on Arabic work regarding temporal modalities, which was instrumental in evoking the important contributions of Tony Street of Cambridge University.

The place of humans in nature's scheme of things and the conditions and circumstances of our existence have been at the forefront of philosophical deliberation since the very dawn of the subject. Over the past three decades Rescher from time to time ventured into discussions of some of the key themes that crop up in this domain. representative sampling of such papers are assembled in the present volume. He trust that this collection will give some indication of the tenor of thought that characterizes Rescher's approach to these philosophically crucial concerns.

Nicholas Rescher's interest in issues of social philosophy, now dating back over forty years, have resulted in four previous books: Distributive Justice (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1966), Welfare: the Social Issues on Philosophical Perspective (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), Public Concerns (Lanham, MI: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), and Fairness (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). Additionally, however, he has during this time also written more than a dozen essays on various particular problems and issues of this domain-usually in response to the needs of some special occasion. The aim of the present volume is to collect this material together in coordinative conjunction. The resultant book will not only offer a panorama of Rescher's views on some of the key issues of the field, but also convey a sense of the procedural ways and means by which Rescher think that philosophical deliberations can serve to shed some instructive light on such ever-controversial matters. For Rescher is convinced in theory and has sought to illustrate in practice that constructive thinking in this domain calls for implementing a quantitative approach from a moral perspective, and that neither the measurable quantities not the intangible values of the situation can be overlooked in a cogent assessment of the issues. It is his hope that these essays will confirm the justice of this conviction.

For over thirty years Professor Rescher has been preoccupied with exploring the scope and limits of human knowledge from an array of different points of view. This book collects together these various threads into a unified treatment of this overall terrain. It argues in detail that while scepticism is about the prospect of factual knowledge about the world is emphatically unwarranted, nevertheless the project of amplifying this knowledge does encounter some specifiable and insuperable limits.

set of studies of various central problems in contemporary philosophy--particularly issues relating to the theory of knowledge and to philosophical inquiry itself (metaphilosophy).

set of studies of various ideas and theories that play a key role in contemporary idealism and are important for the pragmatic idealism that Nicholas Rescher long was developing.

set of studies of various ideas and theories that play a key role in traditional pragmatism and are important for the idealistic pragmatism Nicholas Rescher long was engaged in developing.

Set of studies of various movements and developments in 20th century philosophy in which Nicholas Rescher was involved as a participant.