Understood one way, the branch of contemporary philosophical ethics that goes by the label "metaethics" concerns certain second-order questions about ethics--questions not in ethics, but rather ones about our thought and talk about ethics, and how the ethical facts fit into reality. Analogously, the branch of contemporary philosophy of law that is often called "general jurispru...(展开全部)

In his introduction to these closely linked essays Professor Hart offers both an exposition and a critical assessment of some central issues in jurisprudence and political theory. Some of the essays touch on themes to which little attention has been paid, such as Bentham's identification of the forms of mysitification protecting the law from criticism; his relation to Beccaria;...(展开全部)

These essays, which cover a wide range of topics, were written by Professor Hart between 1953 and 1981, and first appeared in a variety of different books and journals.

Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. Leading thinkers in the field explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to dev...(展开全部)

In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of...(展开全部)

Metasemantics comprises new work on the philosophical foundations of linguistic semantics, by a diverse group of established and emerging experts in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the theory of content. The science of semantics aspires to systematically specify the meanings of linguistic expressions in context. The paradigmatic metasemantic question is accordingly...(展开全部)

Metaphysics asks questions about existence: for example, do numbers really exist? Metametaphysics asks questions about metaphysics: for example, do its questions have determinate answers? If so, are these answers deep and important, or are they merely a matter of how we use words? What is the proper methodology for their resolution? These questions have received a heightened de...(展开全部)

This book investigates the issue of conceptual originality in art criticism of the seventeenth century, a period in which China dynamically reinvented itself. In art criticism, the term which was called upon to indicate conceptual originality more than any other was "qi" 奇, literally, "different"; but secondarily, "odd," like a number and by extension, "the novel," and "extraor...(展开全部)

Several debates of the last years within the research field of contemporary realism known under titles such as "New Realism," "Continental Realism," or "Speculative Materialism" have shown that science is not systematically the ultimate measure of truth and reality. This does not mean that we should abandon the notions of truth or objectivity all together, as has been posited...(展开全部)

Challenging Locke's views in Essays on Human Understanding chapter by chapter, Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussion of the ideas and institutions of the age make this work a fascinating and valuable document in the history of ideas.