Being and Value and Other Philosophical Essays

Book excerpt: Being and Value collects together fifteen essays by Nicholas Rescher on salient issue in metaphysics, axiology and metaphilosophy. In the way in which they shed new light on significant philosophical issues, these deliberations are emblematic of Rescher’s characteristic way of illuminating timeless issues and historical perspectives in a reciprocal interrelationship. The chapter of the book are as follows: Being and Value: On the Prospect of Optimalism; On Evolution and Intelligent Design; Mind and Matter; Fallacies Regarding Free Will; Sophisticating Naïve Realism; Taxonomic Complexity and the Laws of Nature; Practical Vs. Theoretical Reason; Pragmatism as a Growth Industry; Cost Benefit Epistemology; Quantifying Quality; Explanatory Surdity; Can Philosophy be Objective?; On Ontology in Cognitive Perspective; Plenum Theory [Essay Written Jointly with Patrick Grim]; and Onometrics (On Referential Analysis in Philosophy)