Böcker av Philippe Huneman

This book addresses several key issues in the biological study of death with the intent of capturing their genealogy, the assumptions and presuppositions they make, and the way that they open specific new research avenues. The book is divided into two sections: the first considers physiology and the second evolutionary biology. In the first part, Huneman reconstructs a conceptual genealogy of experimental physiology based on an in-depth analysis of Bichat's investigations of death processes. In the second part he explains that biologists in the late 1950s put forth a research framework that evolutionarily accounts for death in terms of either an effect of the weakness of natural selection or a by-product of natural selection for early reproduction. He illustrates how the biology of death is a central field and that studying it provides insight into the way that the epistemic structure of this knowledge has been constituted, persists until now, and may conflict with some traditional philosophical ideas.

This book addresses several key issues in the biological study of death with the intent of capturing their genealogy, the assumptions and presuppositions they make, and the way that they open specific new research avenues. The book is divided into two sections: the first considers physiology and the second evolutionary biology. In the first part, Huneman reconstructs a conceptual genealogy of experimental physiology based on an in-depth analysis of Bichat's investigations of death processes. In the second part he explains that biologists in the late 1950s put forth a research framework that evolutionarily accounts for death in terms of either an effect of the weakness of natural selection or a by-product of natural selection for early reproduction. He illustrates how the biology of death is a central field and that studying it provides insight into the way that the epistemic structure of this knowledge has been constituted, persists until now, and may conflict with some traditional philosophical ideas.

"Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? Through an analysis of these questions and others, philosopher Philippe Huneman describes the different meanings of "why," and how those meanings can, and should (or should not), be conflated. As Huneman outlines, there are three basic meanings of why: the cause of an event, the reason of a belief, and the reason why I do what I do (the purpose). Each of these meanings, in turn, impacts how we approach knowledge in a wide array of disciplines: science, history, psychology, and metaphysics. Exhibiting a rare combination of conversational ease and intellectual rigor, Huneman teases out the hidden dimensions of questions as seemingly simple as "Why did Mickey Mouse open the refrigerator?," or as seemingly unanswerable as "Why am I me?" In doing so, he provides an extraordinary tour of canonical and contemporary philosophical thought, from Plato and Aristotle, through Descartes and Spinoza, to Elizabeth Anscombe and Ruth Millikan, and beyond. Of course, no proper reckoning with the question "why?" can afford not to acknowledge its limits, which are the limits, and the ends, of reason itself. Huneman thus concludes with a provocative elaboration of what Kant called the "natural need for metaphysics," the unallayed instinct we have to ask the question even when we know there can be no unequivocal answer"--

A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology.