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In Metaphysical Perspectives, Nicholas Rescher offers a grand vision of how to conceptualize, and in some cases answer, some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics and value theory. Rescher addresses what he sees as the three prime areas of metaphysical concern: (1) the world as such and the architecture of nature at large, (2) ourselves as nature's denizens and our potential for learning about it, and (3) the transcendent domain of possibility and value. Rescher engages issues across a wide range of metaphysical themes, from different worldviews and ultimate questions to contingency and necessity, intelligent design and world-improvability, personhood and consciousness, empathy and other minds, moral obligation, and philosophical methodology. Over the course of this book, Rescher discusses, with his characteristic fusion of idealism and pragmatism, an integrated overview of the key philosophical problems grounded in an idealistically value-oriented approach. His discussion seeks to shed new light on philosophically central issues from a unified point of view.
"Nicholas Rescher’s encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy is on full display in this work. A broad sweep of metaphysical topics is covered, ranging from the principle of sufficient reason through consciousness to the question of why philosophy is ordinarily inexact. One of its virtues is that the clarity of writing makes most chapters accessible to a general readership while providing an intellectual challenge to academic philosophers." —Paul Humphreys, University of Virginia
Nicholas Rescher is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of 175 books, including Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).
Preface
Introduction: On the Mission of Philosophy
1. Ultimate Questions
2. World Views
3. Terminological Contextuality
4. On Contingency and Necessity
5. Randomness and Reason
6. Issues of Self-Reference and Paradox
7. Explanation and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
8. Intelligent Design Revisited in the Light of Evolutionary Neo-Platonism
9. What If Things Were Different?
10. On the Improvability of the World
11. Consciousness
12. Control
13. Free Will in the Light of Process Theory
14. Personhood
15. The Metaphysics of Moral Obligation
16. Empathy, Shared Experience, and Other Minds
17. Philosophy as an Inexact Science
18. Philosophy’s Involvement with Transcendental Issues
19. Religious Variation and the Rationale of Belief
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names