In
Centering and Extending, Steven G. Smith retrieves and refashions some of the best ideas of classical and early modern metaphysics to support insight into the natures of mental and material beings and their relations. Avoiding what he critiques as distortive paths of idealism, materialism, repressive monism, and overly permissive pluralism, Smith builds his framework on centering and extending as universal principles of formation. Identifying the basic consistency of being with these principles in symmetrical partnership enables a naturalist process view that, unlike Whitehead’s, does not overbalance toward the subjective and teleological and, unlike Deleuze and Guattari’s, does not overbalance toward the material and chaotic. This view supports useful conceptions of mind and matter, form and energy, reason and cause, and a layered world order without relying on a blind concept of supervenience or emergence. It also respects and reinforces a division of roles between metaphysical sense-making and spiritual determinations of meaningfulness.
Inhoudsopgave
Preface
1. Metaphysical Sense
World and Life
Sense and Meaningfulness
Sense, Success, and Satisfaction
The Metaphysical Kind of Sense
The Parmenidean Topic of Being
Metaphysical Sense and Meaningfulness
2. Platonism
Being
Forms
Soul
Matter
Lessons of Platonism
3. Cartesianism
Cartesian Dualism
Spinozan Duality
Leibnizian Monadology
Monadology and Meaningfulness
Bergsonian Dualism
Bergsonism and Meaningfulness
4. Centering and Extending
The Way In: Concepts of the Right Kind
The Proposal
A Note on Nonreductive Physicalism
A Note on Panexperientialist Physicalism
A Note on Deleuze and Guattari’s Metaphysics
5. Naturalism and Mind
Intentionality
Consciousness and Actuality
The Causal Relevance of the Mental
Soul as Natural
6. World Order
Richness, Complexity, and Organization
Levels of Being
The Harmony of the World
Ultimate Sense and Meaningfulness
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Over de auteur
Steven G. Smith is Jennie Carlisle Golding Professor of Philosophy at Millsaps College. He is the author of several books, including
Worth Doing, also published by SUNY Press.
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