{"title":"Eli Hirsch","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"concept-of-identity-book-eli-hirsch-9780195029956","title":"The Concept of Identity","description":"The book as a whole tackles a cluster of central metaphysical issues in a consistently clear and careful manner. Moreover, Hirsch is pleasantly undogmatic and endeavors to give fair treatment to those views he eventually rejects. His arguments for his own conclusions are frequently all-the-more forceful for that. The standard of argument is high and Hirsch has something interesting to say on every topic he discusses.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50233494208785,"sku":"CIN019502995XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/019502995X.jpg?v=1751005628"},{"product_id":"concept-of-identity-book-eli-hirsch-9780195074741","title":"The Concept of Identity","description":"In this book, Eli Hirsch focuses on identity through time, first with respect to ordinary bodies, then underlying matter, and eventually persons. These are linked at various points with other aspects of identity, such as the spatial unity of things, the unity of kinds, and the unity of groups. He investigates how our identity concept ordinarily operates in these respects. He also asks why this concept is so cental to our thinking and whether we can justify seeing the world in terms of such a concept.  This is the revised and updated edition of a hardback published in 1982.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346123034897,"sku":"CIN0195074742G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50696926298385,"sku":"NGR9780195074741","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52336594354449,"sku":"NLS9780195074741","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53393071636753,"sku":"GOR009891511","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195074742.jpg?v=1750875632"},{"product_id":"dividing-reality-book-eli-hirsch-9780195111422","title":"Dividing Reality","description":"The central question in this book is why it seems reasonable for the words of our language to divide up the world in one way rather than another, or what the rational basis is for our language to contain certain kinds of general words rather than others. Terming this query the division problem, Dividing Reality aims to bring it into sharp focus, to distinguish it from various related problems, and to consider the best prospects for solving it. In exploring various possible responses to the division problem, Eli Hirsch examines a series of division principles which purport to express rational constraints on how our words ought to classify and individuate. The ensuing discussion deals with a wide range of metaphysical and epistemological topics, including projectibility and similarity, alternative analyses of natural properties and things, the inscrutability of reference, and the relevance of such pragmatic notions as salience and economy. The final chapters of the book develop what Hirsch contends is the most promising response to the division problem: a theory in which constraints on classification and individuation are seen to derive from the necessary structure of fine-grained propositions and the necessary dependence of some concepts on others. Formulating in clear terms a fundamental problem which has not been properly isolated or seriously addressed previously, this book is of key interest to metaphysicians, philosophers of language, and cognitive psychologists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52342613082385,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52342613573905,"sku":"NLS9780195111422","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780195111422.jpg?v=1758172860"},{"product_id":"dividing-reality-book-eli-hirsch-9780195057546","title":"Dividing Reality","description":"The central question in this book is why it seems reasonable for the words of our language to divide up the world in one way rather than another, or what the rational basis is for our language to contain certain kinds of general words rather than others. Terming this query the division problem, Dividing Reality aims to bring it into sharp focus, to distinguish it from various related problems, and to consider the best prospects for solving it. In exploring various possible responses to the division problem, Eli Hirsch examines a series of division principles which purport to express rational constraints on how our words ought to classify and individuate. The ensuing discussion deals with a wide range of metaphysical and epistemological topics, including projectibility and similarity, alternative analyses of natural properties and things, the inscrutability of reference, and the relevance of such pragmatic notions as salience and economy. The final chapters of the book develop what Hirsch contends is the most promising response to the division problem: a theory in which constraints on classification and individuation are seen to derive from the necessary structure of fine-grained propositions and the necessary dependence of some concepts on others. Formulating in clear terms a fundamental problem which has not been properly isolated or seriously addressed previously, this book is of key interest to metaphysicians, philosophers of language, and cognitive psychologists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52401173037329,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52401174085905,"sku":"NLS9780195057546","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780195057546.jpg?v=1758753834"},{"product_id":"quantifier-variance-and-realism-book-eli-hirsch-9780199732111","title":"Quantifier Variance and Realism","description":"Eli Hirsch has contributed steadily to metaphysics since his ground-breaking (and much cited) work on identity through time (culminating in the 1982 OUP book The Concept of Identity). Within the last 10 years, his work on realism and quantifier variance has been front-and-center in the minds of many metaphysicians. Metametaphysics, which looks at foundational questions about the very practice of metaphysics and the questions it raises, is now a popular area of discussion. There is a lot of anxiety about what ontology is, and Hirsch's diagnosis of how revisionary ontologists go wrong is one of the main views being discussed. This volume collects HIrsch's essays from the last decade (with the exception of one article from 1978) on ontology and metametaphysics which are very much tied to these debates. His essays develop a distinctive language-based argument against various anti-commonsensical views that have recently dominated ontology. All these views go astray, Hirsch says, by failing to interpret ordinary assertions about existence in a plausibly charitable way, so their philosophizing leads them to misuse language about ontology - our ordinary concept of 'what exists' - in favor of a position othat is quite different. Hirsch will supply a new introduction. The volume will interest philosophers of metaphysics currently engaged in these debates.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52455338377489,"sku":"NLS9780199732111","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199732111.jpg?v=1759373972"},{"product_id":"radical-skepticism-and-the-shadow-of-doubt-book-eli-hirsch-9781350033849","title":"Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt","description":"Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt brings something new to epistemology both in content and style.  At the outset we are asked to imagine a person named Vatol who grows up in a world containing numerous people who are brains-in-vats and who hallucinate their entire lives.  Would Vatol have reason to doubt whether he himself is in contact with reality?  If he does have reason to doubt, would he doubt, or is it impossible for a person to have such doubts?  And how do we ourselves compare to Vatol?  After reflection, can we plausibly claim that Vatol has reason to doubt, but we don’t? These are the questions that provide the novel framework for the debates in this book.  Topics that are treated here in significantly new ways include: the view that we ought to doubt only when we philosophize; epistemological “dogmatism”; and connections between radical doubt and “having a self.”   The book adopts the innovative form of a “dialogue\/play.”  The three characters, who are Talmud students as well as philosophers, hardly limit themselves to pure philosophy, but regale each other with Talmudic allusions, reminiscences, jokes, and insults.  For them the possibility of doubt emerges as an existential problem with potentially deep emotional significance. Setting complex arguments about radical skepticism within entertaining dialogue, this book can be recommended for both beginners and specialists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52485813469457,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52485814583569,"sku":"NLS9781350033849","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350033849.jpg?v=1759858242"},{"product_id":"selves-in-doubt-book-eli-hirsch-9780197813980","title":"Selves in Doubt","description":"In Selves in Doubt, Eli Hirsch focuses on the importance of the first-person perspective to a normal human level of rational thought and behavior. Hirsch argues that an \"I-blind\" being—one who lacks the capacity to employ the first-person pronoun—could not be fully rational; nor could they acquire normal knowledge of physical reality.  The meaning of the first-person pronoun is shown to have a particular bearing on the anomalous context of split-brain patients and generalizations of that context. Hirsch critiques Parfit's suggestion that a better language might eliminate or revise the concept of personal identity and the use of the first-person pronoun, on the grounds that the first-person perspective must remain as it is because the capacity to employ the first-person pronoun is a necessary condition for a language to be suitable for rational beings. Hirsch also contends that, contrary to Lewis and Sider, it may be difficult to find any other necessary condition for a language to be suitable for rational beings.  A bold claim defended later in the book is that it is metaphysically impossible to be sane while doubting the reality of other selves. This claim leads to a discussion of skepticism, and the final chapter consists in reflections on how facing skepticism relates to facing death.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52698827030801,"sku":"NGR9780197813980","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53489795858705,"sku":"NIN9780197813980","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780197813980.jpg?v=1772036538"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-eli-hirsch.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}