An Introduction to Ontology Nikk Effingham Books
Download As PDF : An Introduction to Ontology Nikk Effingham Books
In this engaging and wide-ranging new book, Nikk Effingham provides an introduction to contemporary ontology - the study of what exists - and its importance for philosophy today.
He covers the key topics in the field, from the ontology of holes, numbers and possible worlds, to space, time and the ontology of material objects - for instance, whether there are composite objects such as tables, chairs or even you and me. While starting from the basics, every chapter is up-to-date with the most recent developments in the field, introducing both longstanding theories and cutting-edge advances. As well as discussing the latest issues in ontology, Effingham also helpfully deals in-depth with different methodological principles (including theory choice, Quinean ontological commitment and Meinongianism) and introduces them alongside an example ontological theory that puts them into practice.
This accessible and comprehensive introduction will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as any reader interested in the present state of the subject.
An Introduction to Ontology Nikk Effingham Books
This can be summarized as an elementary introduction to ontology for the beginner. The content and chapters are not too exhaustive and provide a decent foundation for the study of ontology. However in later chapters it can get pretty technical with the "logic language", but for personal purposes I wanted a quick, concise, and accurate crash course in ontology and my expectations we met.Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: An Introduction to Ontology (9780745652559): Nikk Effingham: Books,Nikk Effingham,An Introduction to Ontology,Polity,0745652557,Ontology,An Introduction to Ontology,Metaphysics,PHILOSOPHY Metaphysics,Philosophie,Philosophy,Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology
People also read other books :
- The Place of the Lion Charles Williams 9780571271436 Books
- Captain America Who Won't Wield The Shield #1 Jason Aaron Matt Fraction Stuart Moore Mirco Pierfederici Brenden McCarthy Joe Quinones Books
- Algorithmic Trading and DMA An introduction to direct access trading strategies Barry Johnson 9780956399205 Books
- The String of Pearls Thomas Preskett Prest 9781534913820 Books
- Relax Dad Stan Reese 9781470161118 Books
An Introduction to Ontology Nikk Effingham Books Reviews
Dr. Effingham offers us a broad brush introduction to the philosophic sub-discipline of ontology, the examination of what exactly exists, is real, or is fundamental about our world. It is a modern approach in that he does not much mention the foundations of ontology in the ancient world nor the contributions of Christian scholastic philosophers of the middle ages who did so much to clarify the implications of God's (should he exist of course) infinity (See Peter Coffey "Ontology or the Theory of Being" [kindle available] for a long and detailed 20th century treatment of this). Dr. Effingham focuses exclusively on 20th (and early 21st) century secular ontology, both the positions themselves and various methodological considerations used to argue for or against them. The over-view, intended he says for philosophy undergraduates or perhaps people who are curious bout the subject matter but lack the time or inclination to persue many thousands of pages of dense argumentation, covers a lot of ground in a rather short book. I think he manages to accomplish his goal of coverting the subject from a very high level at the cost of some superficiality. For each sub-section (for example anti-realism about propositions) he mentions and abandons discussion of various approaches in favor of selecting one or a few of those he takes to be quintessential examples for [somewhat] more detailed treatment.
What saves the book from being too simplistic however is the resource collection he adds to the end of each chapter. I've written a few philosophy books and I know how difficult it is (I mostly don't bother) to find and cite extensive references on a large number of narrow subjects. I'm going to guess here that it took Dr. Effingham more time to collect all these references than it did to write the body of the text. I've already used this valuable resource to find other articles (many easily accessible as PDF or Web pages) written by the most well known proponents of these various ontological positions.
In sum, Dr. Effingham accomplishes his purpose. Thanks to both his over-views and his resource collections a student of philosophy or other interested party should have no problem using this little book to penetrate deeply into the field of ontology. I think the price is a little steep for the casual reader who is unlikely to make use of the resource collections, but otherwise this is a good overview of the field as it is today.
I have done reading in the history of philosophy and read this book as a summary of ontology. There are scarcely any recent books about ontology that would be worth reading by anyone but an academic philosopher, and the only history of ontology I have found is Van Steenberghen's, which is mostly about scholastic philosophy and is furthermore out of print. Rather than talking about Plato's Forms, or Plutarch's Ship of Theseus, or Anselm's ontological argument, or Occam's razor (which is about what entities we want to talk about existing), Effingham writes about ontology after Quine. Although there are imperfections in this work, there doesn't seem to be any better introduction to ontology. Furthermore, for a reader who wants to know about what professional philosophers are now saying this book is probably ideal.
Some fields ontology borders on are natural philosophy (do we think of fields as existing as things?), ethics (does an organization exist in the same way as a human does? does the economy exist?), programming languages (general questions about object-oriented programming), and theology (can we clarify what we mean by saying that God exists?). Natural philosophy and ethics are lightly touched on in this book but more could be said that a non-professional philosopher could absorb.
I expect that this will be useful as a university textbook. Usually workers in a discipline like to talk more about what people in their discipline now care about then what people in their discipline used to care about or about things they consider only on the border of their discipline, and for Quine, Meinong, David Armstrong, and other recent ontologists, this book is an easily read introduction. However, the literature would be improved by a book written at the same level (but longer) on the history of Western ontology covering the pre-Socratics (e.g. Heraclitus and Parmenides), classical Greek philosophy (e.g. Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics and Epicureans), scholastic philosophy (e.g. Duns Scotus and William of Ockham), and early modern philosophy (e.g. Descartes and Leibniz).
In perfect condition. Easy to understand and read. Years ago took a class and this brings back all things I had gotten from the class
This can be summarized as an elementary introduction to ontology for the beginner. The content and chapters are not too exhaustive and provide a decent foundation for the study of ontology. However in later chapters it can get pretty technical with the "logic language", but for personal purposes I wanted a quick, concise, and accurate crash course in ontology and my expectations we met.
0 Response to "≡ Read An Introduction to Ontology Nikk Effingham Books"
Post a Comment