Publisher's Synopsis
A Metaphysics for the Future is a work of original philosophy but at the same time is a humanistic commentary on the moral malaise of our time. It reviews the intellectual events that have brought us to our present point of relativism in ethics and skepticism in knowledge and presents a new viewpoint which offers a way out of our intellectual impasse. - - Philosophers discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Searle and Rorty. The thoughts of the physicists Penrose and Hawking are examined. Topics covered include the philosopher as diagnostician, the mind-body problem, the foundation of truth in mathematics, preconceptual and postconceptual knowledge, representationalism, the picture theory of truth, Wittgenstein's Ladder, the concept of metaphysical truth, the concepts of Yin and Yang, the synthetic a priori and post-Modernism. A sophisticated text for courses in metaphysics and epistemology. - - Professor Robert E. Allinson is the author of many books including the forthcoming Ashgate title, Space, Time and the Ethical Foundations, and Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 (Tenth Impression). He serves on eight editorial boards including The Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Asian Philosophy. His work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Italian. Professor Allinson has been a Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford University, an Associate Member of Balliol College of Oxford University and Visiting Fellow at the Graduate School of the Department of Philosophy at Yale University. He is now a professor in the Department of Philosophy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
