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Download Philosophy and Scientific Realism by J J C Smart PDF

By J J C Smart

Originally released in 1963. In an introductory bankruptcy the writer argues that philosophy needs to be greater than the artwork of clarifying inspiration and that it's going to main issue itself with outlining a scientifically believable global view. Early chapters care for phenomenalism and the truth of theoretical entities, and with the relation among the actual and organic sciences. unfastened will, problems with time and area and man’s position in nature are coated in later chapters.

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Extra resources for Philosophy and Scientific Realism

Example text

On an otherworldly view, strictly speaking, we have no history, hence no discontinuity, no alienation, no crisis. If I held such a view, I could say nothing about our crisis; I could only show its essential irrelevance. 1 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Buch der Freunde: Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen (1922), in Hofmannsthal, Selected Prose, trans. Mary Hottinger and Tania and James Stern, introd. Hermann Brach, New York: Pantheon (Bollingen Series XXXIII), 1952, p. 356. 3 S~ren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (1849), trans.

This is the risk of insanity. The dangers of both kinds of false surrender may be avoided by awareness of them and, if awareness is insufficient, that is, if it fails, by new surrender or the effort to surrender. Still, there is nothing certain about this. But we must go beyond these explications of cognitive love. In surrender, a person, whoever it may be, is thrown back on what that person really is - which is what he or she shares with mankind. In surrender, I am, that is, I am as a human being, a representative of mankind, rather than as the individual which I also am.

The reason is that the person who surrenders to this cause moves on the faith in surrender. In its essence this faith may be formulated as faith in surrender because of faith in man as the being that can surrender and catch. This faith, and the catch of surrender on it alone, and not on any other element of tradition, are the phenomena that in this stage of man's history articulate themselves as that which is common to mankind. I may examine my faith by observing how good a witness to it I am, how often and on what kinds of occasions I can remain true to myself, rather than giving in to the temptation of refusing to surrender.

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