Winner of the 2015 John N. Findlay Award in Metaphysics presented by the Metaphysical Society of America
Reviving and modernizing the tradition of post Darwinian naturalism,
The Orders of Nature draws on philosophy and the natural sciences to present a naturalistic theory of reality. Conceiving of nature as systems, processes, and structures that exhibit diverse properties that can be hierarchically arranged, Lawrence Cahoone sketches a systematic metaphysics based on the following orders of nature: physical, material, biological, mental, and cultural. Using recent work in the science of complexity, hierarchical systems theory, and nonfoundational approaches to metaphysics, Cahoone analyzes these orders with explanations of the underlying science, covering a range of topics that includes general relativity and quantum field theory; chemistry and inorganic complexity; biology and telenomic explanation, or ‚purpose‘; the theory of mind and mental causation as an animal phenomenon; and the human mind’s unique cultural abilities. The book concludes with an exploration of what answers such a theory of naturalism can provide to questions about values and God.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. A Kind of Naturalism
1. From Pluralism to Naturalism
2. A Selective History of Naturalism
3. Reduction, Emergence, and Physicalism
4. Concepts for Pluralistic Nature
Part II. The Orders of Nature
5. The Physical Order
6. The Achievements of Matter
7. The Phenomena of Life
8. Mind and the Hard Problems
9. Meanings of the Cultural Mind
10. The Evolution of Knowledge
Part III. Naturalistic Speculations
11. A Ground of Nature
12. Natural Religion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Über den Autor
Lawrence Cahoone is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross. His many books include
Cultural Revolutions: Reason versus Culture in Philosophy, Politics, and Jihad and
From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology.
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