Mario Augusto Bunge – författare

Is philosophy dead? Some philosophers have declared it to be so, and judging by some of the mental acrobatics now fashionable in postmodernist circles a reasonable person might have to agree. Though recognizing the moribund state of current academic philosophy, Mario Bunge feels that this is a crisis from which the discipline can and will recover. To overcome the impasse Bunge argues that it is necessary to reconstruct philosophy by building a philosophical system that addresses real-world problems of everyday people in a clear, comprehensible fashion. The new system must be exact and compatible with contemporary science and technology. Above all, it should shun purely academic problems.This book offers glimpses of such a system while avoiding technical jargon unfamiliar to the lay reader. It is thus accessible to the average educated reader interested in such perennial philosophical concerns as What is matter?, What is mind?, What is the nature of society?, Are there limits to our knowledge?, What are the criteria for distinguishing genuine science from pseudoscience?, and How should human rights be balanced with moral obligations? These questions will always be of interest to thinking human beings, says Bunge, and philosophy, rather than becoming a fruitless, self-referential academic game, should be the main intellectual tool for exploring and clarifying such all important issues.

This lexicon of modern Western philosophical concepts, problems, principles, and theories may well be the shortest dictionary of philosophy in the English language, but one of the most useful. Organized by internationally recognized philosopher Mario Bunge, this indispensable volume, directed to general and university audiences, elucidates and evaluates many contemporary philosophical ideas from a humanist and scientifically oriented perspective.From A to Z, most entries are brief and nontechnical in nature, highlighting useful philosophical terms rather than trendy ones. Placing emphasis on "living" philosophy, Bunge has deliberately excluded many of the archaic terms and philosophical curios of other dictionaries. He has incorporated a number of "minipapers," or longer definitions of some terms, and he critically analyzes such influential doctrines as existentialism, phenomenology, idealism, materialism, pragmatism, deontological ethics, utilitarianism, and many others. Constructive alternatives are offered to all philosophical approaches criticized.This is a superb reference work for both students and professional philosophers.

"The originality of this book is that it reverses the tables on all current schools of philosophy, where philosophy and metaphysics are separated and isolated from the sciences. The punch line for Bunge is that practitioners in all intellectual fields need to adopt the appropriate form of metaphysics. Only then will they be enabled to create scientistic research projects."Marx & Philosophy Review of BooksNearly all philosophers have dealt with the outcomes of scientific research, and have overlooked its philosophical presuppositions, such as those of rationality and realism. Although these presuppositions are mostly tacit and thus easily overlooked, actually they are supremely important, since some of them favor research whereas others hamper it. For instance, whereas subjectivism leads to navel gazing and uncontrolled fantasy, realism encourages us to explore the world and check our conjectures.This book examines science in the making, a process it illustrates with many examples from the natural, social, and biosocial sciences. Therefore it centers on the research process and its philosophical presuppositions. It claims that the latter constitutes a sort of matrix for conceiving and nurturing scientific projects.

"The originality of this book is that it reverses the tables on all current schools of philosophy, where philosophy and metaphysics are separated and isolated from the sciences. The punch line for Bunge is that practitioners in all intellectual fields need to adopt the appropriate form of metaphysics. Only then will they be enabled to create scientistic research projects."Marx & Philosophy Review of BooksNearly all philosophers have dealt with the outcomes of scientific research, and have overlooked its philosophical presuppositions, such as those of rationality and realism. Although these presuppositions are mostly tacit and thus easily overlooked, actually they are supremely important, since some of them favor research whereas others hamper it. For instance, whereas subjectivism leads to navel gazing and uncontrolled fantasy, realism encourages us to explore the world and check our conjectures.This book examines science in the making, a process it illustrates with many examples from the natural, social, and biosocial sciences. Therefore it centers on the research process and its philosophical presuppositions. It claims that the latter constitutes a sort of matrix for conceiving and nurturing scientific projects.