Modality and Anti-Metaphysics critically examines the most prominent approaches to modality among analytic philosophers in the twentieth century, including essentialism. Defending both the project of metaphysics and the essentialist position that metaphysical modality is conceptually and ontologically primitive, Stephen McLeod argues that the logical positivists did not succeed in banishing metaphysical modality from their own theoretical apparatus and he offers an original defence of metaphysics against their advocacy of its elimination. -/- Seeking to assuage the sceptical worries which underlie modal (...) anti-realism, McLeod provides an original contribution to essentialist epistemology, engaging with current debates about modality and suggesting that standard essentialist approaches to some issues in the philosophies of logic and language require revision. -/- This book offers valuable insights to professional philosophers, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in metaphysics, philosophy of logic or the history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. (shrink)

En el “Prólogo” a sus Primeros principios metafísicos de la ciencia de la naturaleza, Kant sostiene que la psicología empírica, a diferencia de la física matemática y la química flogística, no es una ciencia de la naturaleza. Este artículo se propone ofrecer una interpretación de las razones por las cuales Kant atribuye este estatus a la psicología empírica. Mostraré, por un lado, que la psicología empírica no posee un carácter científico en sentido propio como la física matemática porque los fenómenos (...) internos no pueden presentarse a priori como movimientos en el espacio; y, por el otro, que esta psicología no posee un carácter científico en sentido impropio como la química flogística porque no es posible realizar experimentos ni observaciones rigurosas en el dominio del sentido interno. La psicología empírica es una mera descripción natural, sistemática y clasificatoria, de los fenómenos del sentido interno. (shrink)

In the Kantian symbolism, it seems that there is a different kind of rule or modes of presentations, which sheds new light on a variety of concepts of understanding with references to ideas of reason. In this way, the type of presentation is indicated by the description of the various types of concepts that are presented in intuition in the process of cognition in Kant’s philosophy. The first step is the introduction and identification of all kinds of concepts and intuitions (...) in Kant’s philosophy so that we can clarify the role of mark and characteristics in his thought. Schematisation is explained through emphasis relation between concepts and pure intuition or spatiotemporal determination in the mechanism of cognition so that the distinction of the schema from the symbol is designated. In the next step, we clarify the role of symbol in the judgment of taste with an emphasis on free and adherent beauty. Consequently, we make bright the judgment like “beauty is the symbol of the morally good”. Finally, let’s also clarify how the symbol evolves, with emphasis on two types of natural and artistic symbolism. To define the symbol in Kant’s thought, two negative and positive ways have been used. Relying on aesthetics and art is to understand its implications. The result is that the symbol is a kind of reflective rule which will form in a different situation, in Kant’s thought. over pure concepts of understanding, ideas of reason with a reflection on the form of new referent or special schema or new intuition and with reference to concepts of understanding lead to an extension in the meaning of the different concepts of understanding in the light of ideas of reason. (shrink)