Appearance And Explanation

We might think that appearances give a prima facie justification for belief. This is the foundation for Phenomenal Conservatism in epistemology. McCain and Moretti adapt this view by integrating it with the view that epistemic justification is a matter of explanatory relations between one's evidence and propositions supported by that evidence.--

This book examines two kinds of research, research in social psychology and in clinical psychology, into the effects of physical appearance on person perception. Both are explored with the objective of identifying gender similarities and differences on the effects of physical appearance. The theoretical framework for integrating the two approaches is presented, with implications of this framework for future research, social change, and psychotherapy. The book demonstrates that gender must be considered in research on physical appearance effects.

In Reality and Its Appearance, Nicholas Rescher aims to address the conceptual and analytical question: how does the concept of reality function and how should we think with regard to the issue of reality's relations to appearances? Rescher argues that the distinction between reality and its appearance is not a substantive distinction between two types of being, but rather relates to different ways of understanding one selfsame mode of being. The book proposes that while realism is a sensible and tenable position, nevertheless there is something to be said for idealism as well. In the cognitive as in the moral life, perfection is beyond our human grasp and we have no choice but to rest content with the best that we can manage to achieve in practice. This perspective shifts the approach from a cognitive absolutism to a pragmatism that is prepared to come to terms with the limitations inherent in our situations. On this basis Rescher defends a substantive realism that itself rests on a justificatory rationale of a decidedly pragmatic orientation.

In Appearance in Reality, John Heil addresses a question at the heart of metaphysics: how are the appearances related to reality, how does what we find in the sciences comport with what we encounter in everyday experience and in the laboratory? Objects, for instance, appear to be colourful, noisy, self-contained, and massively interactive. Physics tells us they are dynamic swarms of colourless particles, or disturbances in fields, or something equally strange. Is what we experience illusory, present only in our minds? But then what are minds? Do minds elude physics? Or are the physicist's depictions mere constructs with no claim to reality? Perhaps reality is hierarchical: physics encompasses the fundamental things, the less than fundamental things are dependent on, but distinct from these. Heil's investigation advances a fourth possibility: the scientific image (what we have in physics) affords our best guide to the nature of what the appearances are appearances of.

Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics addresses quantum mechanics and relativity and their philosophical implications, focusing on whether these theories of modern physics can help us know nature as it really is, or only as it appears to us. The author clearly explains the foundational concepts and principles of both quantum mechanics and relativity and then uses them to argue that we can know more than mere appearances, and that we can know to some extent the way things really are. He argues that modern physics gives us reason to believe that we can know some things about the objective, real world, but he also acknowledges that we cannot know everything, which results in a position he calls "realistic realism." This book is not a survey of possible philosophical interpretations of modern physics, nor does it leap from a caricature of the physics to some wildly alarming metaphysics. Instead, it is careful with the physics and true to the evidence in arriving at its own realistic conclusions. It presents the physics without mathematics, and makes extensive use of diagrams and analogies to explain important ideas. Engaging and accessible, Appearance and Reality serves as an ideal introduction for anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy and physics, including students in philosophy of physics and philosophy of science courses.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Taking a sociological approach, the authors of Appearance as Capital examine physical appearance as a normatively regulated form of capital and explore how it is possible to accumulate and convert capital based on physical appearance.

The history of western metaphysi from Plato onwards is dominated by the dualism of being and appearance. What something really is (its true being) is believed to be hidden behind the 'mere appearances' through which it manifests. Twentieth-century European thinkers radically overturned this foundation. With Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer came a major step towards taking appearance seriously, exploring a way of seeing that draws attention back 'upstream', from what is experienced into the act of experiencing. Understood in this way, perception is a dynamic event, a 'phenomenon', in which the observer participates. Henri Bortoft guides us through this dynamic way of seeing in various areas of experience -- in distinguishing things, the finding of meaning, and the relationship between thought and words. He also explores similarities with Goethe's reflections on the coming-into-being of the living plant. Here, in another reversal of classical thinking, we find that even in their 'diversity of appeareances', living things are not separate but in relation. Diversity is the dynamic unity of life itself. Expanding the scope of his previous book, The Wholeness of Nature, the author shows how Goethean insights combine with the dynamic way of seeing in continental philosophy to offer us an actively experienced 'life of meaning'. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the contribution and wider implications of modern European thought in the world today.

'The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition' Although there are innumerable studies of the Easter event, the spectrum of New Testament research demonstrates an astonishing vacuum regarding a history-of-tradition analysis of the Easter appearance stories, especially in the application of the form-critical method. This study begins with a methodological review of the more recent literature and challenges the widely accepted view that the appearance stories are to be excluded from consideration of the origins of Easter faith. Because of the far-reaching confusion over the place of these stories within the complex of the resurrection traditions, Part Two scans the distinctions and relationships between them. In Part Three the author concentrates upon the appearance stories themselves and raises the following questions: Are pre-redactional forms discernible? If so, do such demonstrate by comparison similarities of form and content? Does a NT 'Gattung' stand behind them? And, finally, Part Four probes the matter of analogies in the world of primitive Christianity, while Part Five summarizes and asks provisionally if observations of a formal nature invite suggestive possibilities for further work on the question of historical experience behind the stories. An attempt at critical review of such questions is long overdue.

An examination of the language of law in the area of political representation, this book considers the development and recognition of group claims brought pursuant to the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause in Supreme Court opinions. In his analysis, Burke highlights the different, discursive strategies, broadly identified as liberal and communitarian, used by the Supreme Court to justify the outcomes of various cases, and he argues that no particular strategy of justification is inherently politically conservative or liberal and that no conception of political representation is unassailable. Therefore, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will articulate a stable measure of fair representation. The Supreme Court offers one more forum in the deliberation over what is fair representation; however, it is not likely to provide minority communities with a legal answer to the problem of political underrepresentation. As such, this book tells the uncertain story of the creation of political fairness by the Supreme Court. The language used to characterize what is fair and representative, and the theoretical designs which the rhetoric reflects, allows us to formulate concepts of fair representation as legal standards evolve. By placing the debate over fair representation in not only political and legal but also philosophical terms, we are better able to understand the inevitable tensions that drive the concept of representation into new, ill-defined, and contentious areas.

With this third edition of Nelson Goodman's The Structure of Appear ance, we are pleased to make available once more one of the most in fluential and important works in the philosophy of our times. Professor Geoffrey Hellman's introduction gives a sustained analysis and appreciation of the major themes and the thrust of the book, as well as an account of the ways in which many of Goodman's problems and projects have been picked up and developed by others. Hellman also suggests how The Structure of Appearance introduces issues which Goodman later continues in his essays and in the Languages of Art. There remains the task of understanding Good man's project as a whole; to see the deep continuities of his thought, as it ranges from logic to epistemology, to science and art; to see it therefore as a complex yet coherent theory of human cognition and practice. What we can only hope to suggest, in this note, is the b. road Significance of Goodman's apparently technical work for philosophers, scientists and humanists. One may say of Nelson Goodman that his bite is worse than his bark. Behind what appears as a cool and methodical analysis of the conditions of the construction of systems, there lurks a radical and disturbing thesis: that the world is, in itself, no more one way than another, nor are we. It depends on the ways in which we take it, and on what we do.