Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Keywords: life, everyday, randomness, brilliant, luck
Number of Pages: 256
Published: 2001-03-15
List price: $15.95
ISBN-10: 0822957558
ISBN-13: 9780822957553

Luck touches us all. "Why me?" we complain when things go wrong—though seldom when things go right. But although luck has a firm hold on all our lives, we seldom reflect on it in a cogent, concerted way. In Luck, one of our most eminent philosophers offers a realistic view of the nature and operation of luck to help us come to sensible terms with life in a chaotic world. Differentiating luck from fate (inexorable destiny) and fortune (mere chance), Nicholas Rescher weaves a colorful tapestry of historical examples, from the use of lots in the Old and New Testaments to Thomas Gataker’s

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Keywords: harmony, knowledge, constitution, role, cognitive, systemic
Number of Pages: 128
Published: 2005-04-04
List price: $25.95
ISBN-10: 0822942437
ISBN-13: 9780822942436

This novel approach to epistemological discourse explains the complex but crucial role that systematization plays-not just for the organization of what we know, but also for its validation. Cognitive Harmony argues for a new conception of the process philosophers generally call induction. Relying on the root definition of harmony, a coherent unification of component parts (systemic integrity) in such a way that the final object can successfully accomplish what it was meant to do (evaluative positivity), Rescher discusses the role of harmony in cognitive contexts, the history of cognitive har

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Keywords: philosophizing, methodology, study, reasoning, philosophical
Number of Pages: 296
Published: 2001-10-17
List price: $55.95
ISBN-10: 0631230181
ISBN-13: 9780631230182

This book is a study in the methodology of philosophical inquiry. It expounds and defends the thesis that systematization is the proper instrument of philosophical inquiry and that the effective pursuit of philosophy’s mission calls for constructing a doctrinal system that answers our questions in a coherent and comprehensive manner.

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Keywords: cognition, tentative, practices, presumption
Number of Pages: 198
Published: 2006-06-19
List price: $100.00
ISBN-10: 0521864747
ISBN-13: 9780521864749

Presumption is a remarkably versatile and pervasively useful resource. Firmly grounded in the law of evidence from its origins in classical antiquity, it made its way in the days of medieval scholasticism into the theory and practice of disputation and debate. Subsequently, it extended its reach to play an increasingly significant role in the philosophical theory of knowledge. It has thus come to represent a region where lawyers, debaters, and philosophers can all find some common ground. In Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition, Nicholas Rescher endeavors to show that the proce

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Keywords: philosophical, philosophy, methodology, empiricist, standardism, approach
Number of Pages: 224
Published: 2000-06-15
List price: $22.95
ISBN-10: 0822957396
ISBN-13: 9780822957393

Now in paperback, Philosophical Standardism is ideal for bringing one of the fields preeminent scholars into the classroom. In this novel empirical treatment of fundamental issues in philosophy, Nicholas Rescher propounds an unorthodox approach to philosophical doctrines that is predicated on the idea of standardism.

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Open Court
Keywords: possibilities, unreal, study, irreality, imagining
Number of Pages: 319
Published: 2003-12-26
List price: $36.95
ISBN-10: 0812695658
ISBN-13: 9780812695656

Imagining Irreality looks at the various ways philosophers have considered the realm of unreal possibilities and nonexistent objects. Author Nicholas Rescher ties both diverse approaches and makes an argument against the philosophical trend of dealing with nonexistent possible worlds as though they were authentic objects. He does not attempt to show that no Platonic realm of possibilities can exist, but merely that philosophers can discuss and think about unrealized possibilities without recourse to such a realm.

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Keywords: inheritance, useful
Number of Pages: 144
Published: 1990-01-28
List price: $76.00
ISBN-10: 0847676153
ISBN-13: 9780847676156

The book formulates an evolutionary approach to the theory of knowledge, based on the parallelism between the "natural" selection of our cognitive capacities and the "rational" selection of the methodological processes by which we put them to work. The former reflects the "biological evolution" of "homo sapiens," the latter the "cultural evolution" of "homo quaerens" through the development of a scientific community of inquirers with its characteristic practices. This dual aspect of cognitive evolution indicates that our human cognitive accomplishments are limited by our particular evolutionar