Let me attempt a drastic summary, or symbolic reduction, of Mr. Foss's adeptly metaphorical exposition. The use of the copula is, implicit in the appositive series, will do some violence to the complexity of the argument, but since causes and parts are frowned on by the same argument, the simpler arrangement cannot be altogether out of keeping. In logical and grammatical terms, we have on two sides of a profound ledger: "symbolic reduction," the divisive subject and predicate,--and "metaphoric (...) process," the underlying and unifying energy of the proposition, the subjectum. The negations of dialectic operate to show the insufficiency of symbolic concepts and are the "door to philosophic truth." And in ontological terms, we have on the one hand number, time, space, cause and effect, coincidence and contingency; and on the other the different, the naught, the apeiron, the potential, the tension of process, freedom and necessity in metaphoric lawful unity. There are two closely similar extremes of reduction between which one locates the transcendent philosophy of metaphor: that of sensationalism, the philosophy of the brute and atomic, and that of rationalism, the philosophy of expedient action. And in more or less theological terms, we have on the one hand the environment and its complement the ego, purposive and possessive; on the other, World, the I and the Thou, prayer, sin and grace in the metaphorical unity of consciousness, the widening power of personality in intercession or metaphorical representation. On the one hand, birth and death, past and future, and a present extending ad libitum into either; on the other, the eternal present of the integrated process stretching over past and future, expressed in its purest form in art. And so in aesthetic terms: on the one hand catharsis, a rationalized mixture of the ego's pleasure and pain, asceticism and hedonism, play; on the other, drama--especially tragedy, which par excellence action--Eudaimonia, purification, artistic distance, stylization, imagination, conscience, love. On the one hand, comedy in the sense of farce, environment symbolically reduced, actions and persons according to type, the mechanism of means and ends, rules, rituals, tricks, chance, the caricature of symbolic fixation--producing laughter: on the other hand, true and great comedy, the attempt to understand life in all its contradictions, producing the smile. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one historically important approach to computationalism about thought. According to "the classical computational theory of mind" (CTM), thinking involves the algorithmic manipulation of mental symbols. The chapter reviews CTM and the related language of thought (LOT) position, urging that the orthodox position, associated with the groundbreaking work of Jerry Fodor, has failed to specify a key component: the notion of a mental symbol. It clarifies the notion of a LOT symbol and explores an approach different from (...) the orthodox, Fodorian LOT/CTM. The LOT position is a leading approach to the computational nature of thought. A key feature of LOT is that its mental representations have a combinatorial syntax. A representational system has a combinatorial syntax when it employs a finite store of atomic representations, which can be combined to form compound representations, which can then be combined to form further compound representations. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish two great families of representation. Symbolic representations include logical and mathematical symbols, words, and complex linguistic expressions. Iconic representations include dials, diagrams, maps, pictures, 3-dimensional models, and depictive gestures. This essay describes and motivates a new way of distinguishing iconic from symbolic representation. It locates the difference not in the signs themselves, nor in the contents they express, but in the semantic rules by which signs are associated with contents. The two kinds of (...) rule have divergent forms, occupying opposite poles on a spectrum of naturalness. Symbolic rules are composed entirely of primitive juxtapositions of sign types with contents, while iconic rules determine contents entirely by uniform natural relations with sign types. This distinction is marked explicitly in the formal semantics of familiar sign systems, both for atomic first-order representations, like words, pixel colors, and dials, and for complex second-order representations, like sentences, diagrams, and pictures. (shrink)

Let NBG be von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel set theory without the axiom of choice and let NBGA be the modification which allows atoms. In this paper we consider some of the well-known class or global forms of the wellordering theorem, the axiom of choice, and maximal principles which are known to be equivalent in NBG and show they are not equivalent in NBGA.

This is an attempt to view the most basic and fundamental part of modern logic from a perspective which shares no grounds with any established schools of philosophical logic, in that the truth and falsehood as judged by means of human interventions is denied and the notion of logical dimensions is introduced. It establishes the minimum irrefutable logical structure and proceeds to found the relations between logic and geometry. The description of symmetry creates and simultaneously constrains the logical structure, whereas (...) symmetry itself can only be postulated. (shrink)

We give a novel application of algebraic logic to first order logic. A new, flexible construction is presented for representable but not completely representable atomic relation and cylindric algebras of dimension n (for finite n > 2) with the additional property that they are one-generated and the set of all n by n atomic matrices forms a cylindric basis. We use this construction to show that the classical Henkin-Orey omitting types theorem fails for the finite variable fragments of (...) first order logic as long as the number of variables available is > 2 and we have a binary relation symbol in our language. We also prove a stronger result to the effect that there is no finite upper bound for the extra variables needed in the witness formulas. This result further emphasizes the ongoing interplay between algebraic logic and first order logic. (shrink)

In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and ...

Ernst Cassirer occupies a unique space in Twentieth-century philosophy. A great liberal humanist, his multi-faceted work spans the history of philosophy, the philosophy of science, intellectual history, aesthetics, epistemology, the study of language and myth, and more. Cassirer's thought also anticipates the renewed interest in the origins of analytic and continental philosophy in the Twentieth Century and the divergent paths taken by the 'logicist' and existential traditions, epitomised by his now legendary debate in 1929 with the philosopher Martin Heidegger, over (...) the question "What is the Human Being?" The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is Cassirer's most important work. It was first published in German in 1923, the third and final volume appearing in 1929. In it Cassirer presents a radical new philosophical worldview - at once rich, creative and controversial - of human beings as fundamentally "symbolic animals," placing signs and systems of expression between themselves and the world. This major new translation of all three volumes, the first for over fifty years, brings Cassirer's magnum opus to a new generation of students and scholars. Taken together, the three volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms are a vital treatise on human beings as symbolic animals and a monumental expression of neo-Kantian thought. Correcting important errors in previous English editions, this translation reflects the contributions of significant advances in Cassirer scholarship over the last twenty to thirty years. Each volume includes a new introduction and translator's notes by S. G. Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and a thorough index. (shrink)

The ArgumentErnst Cassirer's theory of language as a symbolic form, one of the richest and most insightful philosophies of language of the twentieth century, went virtually unnoticed in the mainstreams of modern linguistics. This was so for what seems to be a good metatheoretical reason: Cassirer insisted on the constitutive role of meaning in the explanation of linguistic phenomena, a position which was explicitly rejected by both American Structuralists and Chomskian Generativists. In the last decade, however, a new (...) and promising linguistic framework has emerged — the framework of lexical semantics — which seems to bear close theoretical resemblance to Cassirer's theory. In this paper, I show how the empirical results accumulated within the framework of lexical semantics serve to validate Cassirer's most fundamental philosophical insights, and suggest that Cassirer's philosophy helps position these empirical results in their appropriate epistemological context. I discuss the following fundamental points, which, for me, constitute the backbone of both Cassirer's philosophy and the theory of lexical semantics: natural language grammars constitute structural reflections of a deeply-rooted, highly structured level of semantic organization; the representational level of linguistic meaning, which is prior to experience in the Kantian sense, comprises a partial set of semantic notions, which language selects as centers of perceptual attention; this partial set is potentially different from the sets selected by other symbolic forms, such as myth, science, and art; and linguistic variability is to be explained in universalistic terms, thus allowing for specific patterns of variability within universally-constrained limits. (shrink)

v. 1. Language.--v. 2. Mythical thought.--v. 3. The phenomenology of knowledge.--v. 4. The metaphysics of symbolic forms.

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in (...) philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

although mostly known to specialists nowadays, Kenelm Digby was a remarkable figure on the intellectual scene of the early seventeenth century. He has been described as “one of the most influential natural philosophers” of his time,1 and corresponded with many of the great scholars of his days, including Descartes, and the French pioneer of atomism, Pierre Gassendi. In the later years of his life, Digby, alongside men like Robert Boyle, became one of the founding members of the Royal Society.2Digby authored (...) one major work of philosophy: the Two Treatises of 1644. This work consisted of a long First Treatise on bodies, and a shorter, Second Treatise on the human soul. In the First Treatise, Digby argued... (shrink)

This ambitious work reclassifies and restructures the history of ideas and the philosophy of culture through a wide-ranging and novel use of the idea of the organon. It does so by radically revising standard interpretations and theories of all branches of philosophy, and by providing an intellectual and philosophical foundation for the new organon of the cultural sciences. Furthermore, the seeded idea that saw its growth in the form of this book is the unshakable conviction that the only way (...) by which a new apparatus of philosophy, an organon, could be created is by harking back to the vast sources of imagination, inspiration and mimÄ"sis. This entire study is based on the notion that metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the world in its entirety and with human beingâ (TM)s existence and thought, should provide the foundation for the organon of cultural sciences, based on symbolic forms. Given that the colossal amount of information and knowledge of philosophy, arts, humanities, logic, mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences cannot be comprised, analyzed and comprehended per se, it is the organonâ (TM)s objective to extract the main principles, ideas, postulates, theorems and theories of the cultural sciences, and, subsequently, to shape and restructure them as symbolic forms. Since all these principles are grounded on Becomingâ "which is not a stable or fixed entity such as Being, substance or thingâ "the symbolic forms preserve and change, elevate and further the organon of the cultural sciences, via a critical-dialectical process. (shrink)

My paper will analyze Cassirer’s logic of the cultural sciences as it developed in close engagement with work on logic, psychology, biology, and linguistics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper focuses on Chajim Steinthal, who sees the “expressive form” of language as a natural function of human engagement with the environment, developing independently of logic. When read in the context of his engagement with Steinthal, the biologist Uexküll, and the neuroscientist Kurt Goldstein, The Philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>Symbolic Forms reimagines the role of logic and language in the construction of the cultural world. This provides a reading of what Cassirer means by the logic of the cultural sciences, and what he means by culture itself. My reading highlights the tension, which I argue stems from Steinthal’s earlier work, between the assertion that phenomena including linguistic expression, living beings, and consciousness develop independently of a unifying logic, and Cassirer’s assertion that we live in a common, objective human world. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in (...) philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in (...) philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in (...) philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

"In his Phenomenology of Cognition, Cassirer provides a comprehensive and systematic account of the dynamic process involved in the whole of human culture as it progresses from the world of myth and its feeling of social belonging to the highest abstractions of mathematics, logic and theoretical physics. Cassirer engages with the most sophisticated and cutting-edge work in fields ranging from ethnology to classics, egyptology and assyriology to ethology, brain science and psychology to logic, mathematics and theoretical physics. His command of (...) philosophy, literature, and the arts is superb. Echoing his work on Kant, Cassirer begins ThePhilosophy of Symbolic Formswith the problem posed by the meaning of being for philosophy since Plato. But Cassirer also shows that this problem gains new significance with Kant and with the development of modern culture. Cassirer weaves his conception of the development of knowledge into a broadly Kantian and German idealist dynamic-historical conception of significance and of experience that refuses to accept a fundamental opposition between literary, philosophical and scientific culture. In consequence of his great vision grounded in careful reflection and argument, Cassirer's systematic conception of the Copernican cosmopolitan-cosmological revolution is still philosophically and scientifically unmatched in contemporary philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the Pacific." - Pierre Keller, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, USA. This new translation makes Cassirer's seminal work available to a new generation of scholars. Each volume includes an introduction by Steve Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and an index. Steve Lofts is Professor of Philosophy at King's University College, Canada. He is the translator of Cassirer's The Logic of the Cultural Sciences and The Warburg Years : Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology. (shrink)

Cassirer's conception of culture & theory of symbolism anticipated much of later cultural theory. The essays in this volume explore aspects of his thinking & demonstrate the influence that it had on later scholarship.

In this paper, I explore how Cassirer’s early and mature epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of culture make up a coherent and comprehensive view of the mathematical sciences that is fruitful for understanding contemporary science. In Cassirer’s first systematic work, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, the mathematical sciences are understood through the concept of function. This implies that scientific investigation aims at increased unity in a system of functional concepts, rather than at answering the substance-rooted question of what is. In his (...) mature work, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Cassirer expands his inquiry to diverse notions of objects and principles of symbolic forming, recognizing the mathematical sciences as one of many ways of structuring experience, alongside other symbolic forms such as myth and ordinary language. Together, Cassirer’s early and mature works detail the preconditions and idiosyncrasies of the unfolding of scientific objects and situate the mathematical sciences within the totality of human experience. Applying these insights to contemporary interpretations of science suggests connecting common misconceptions of science to challenges in translating objects between symbolic forms. I propose the concepts of domestication and mythification of science as instructive for clearing up such misunderstandings. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in (...) philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in (...) philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

The ArgumentMy thesis in this text is that A. Ernst Cassirer outlines a philosophical theory that proves equally sensitive to historical change and to the consistency of conceptual thinking. B. Cassirer relies on the differential logic of an internally ruptured, and yet undivided “basis phenomenon.” Especially his reading of Goethe has led to the concept of the basis phenomenon existing in a differential symbolic mode. Cassirer's delineation of Goethe's conceptual trivium ofUrphänomene— “experience,” “deed,” and “life” — underscores the conceptual (...) rupture in the construction of any basis phenomenon. Furthermore, I argue that C. thePhilosophy of Symbolic Forms, takes up Goethe's notion of basis phenomena and eventually turns it into a modern, pluralistic theorem about the interrelation of science and culture. Cassirer reaches this aim by (1) focusing on the question of philosophical inquiry as a basis phenomenon in the sense of a basic philosophical activity. I also argue that (2) Cassirer's view retains an essentially ambiguous character, as opposed to a fundamentalist notion of basis phenomena. It is important to see that (3) this ambiguity also informs Cassirer's notion of culture (the plurality of symbolic forms), as well as his delienation of the relation between culture and science. (shrink)

Harreà’s positioning theory posits discourse as the concrete context within which selves are produced, but accentuates the dissociation between the physical engagement in a conversation and ‘location’ in a conceptual interpersonal space. The thesis that positioning involves selective attention, and that selected positions express ongoing transformations in the hearer’s experiential realm is expanded here initially by reference to Gibson’s direct-perception theory. The concepts of indexical and symbolic affordances are introduced to describe the function of utterances in setting parameters for (...) hearer’s behavioural and social-relational engagement, respectively. This implicates a construct of ‘psychological value’ , as proposed by C. G. Jung. The essay draws attention to the idea of symbol forming as a process whereby abstract self/world relations are articulated in one’s actions and thoughts, and in which context the ‘reception’ of others’ actions and utterances as having positioning implications may be understood. (shrink)

This paper pursues the double task of presenting Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as a systematic critique of culture and assessing this systematic approach with regards to the question of reason vs. relativism. First, it reconstructs the development of his theory to its mature presentation in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer here presents a critique of culture as fulfilling Kant’s critical work by insisting on the plurality of reason as spirit, manifesting itself in symbolic forms. In (...) the second part, the consequences of this approach will be drawn by considering the systematics Cassirer intended with this theory. As can be reconstructed from his metaphilosophical reflections, the strength of Cassirer’s philosophy is that it accounts for the plurality of rational-spiritual activity while at the same time not succumbing to a relativism. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms steers a middle course between a rational fundamentalism and a postmodern relativism. (shrink)

A commentary on Ernst Cassirer's "Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms". It offers an introduction to the metaphysical views that underlie the philosopher's conceptions of symbolic form and human culture. It also focuses on the meaning of Cassirer's claim that philosophy is not itself a symbolic form.

THIS ESSAY ADDRESSES TWO QUESTIONS: Is the search for scientific truth a self-sufficient activity? or Does scientific right reasoning depend upon a form of truth-telling that lies beyond the limits of scientific investigation? Put differently, is there a sense of metaphysics as a form of human culture that is the embodiment of this general sense of truth-telling?

In this paper, we describe the completeness of a calculation procedure of logic programs. The procedure is the combination of two procedures, a replacement procedure of atoms in the goal by the bodies or the negation of the bodies of rules in the program, and a transformation procedure of equations to disjunctive normal forms equivalent under Clark's Equational Theory. To combine replacement of atoms in the goal to logical formulae determined from the program and transformation of equations to DNF equivalent (...) under CET is a method by which procedures with the capability of expressing answers in DNF can be build, so it is a leading method for expressing answers in a form including negation. Some procedures based on the method are devised, and their calculation capabilities are shown by applying the theory of completed programs. However, the procedure that uses the bodies or the negation of the bodies of rules for replacement has higher calculation capability, and is intuitively more natural than they. Therefore, to clarify the calculation capability of the procedure is considered an important subject for research into calculation procedures of logic programs with the capability for expressing answers in a form including negation. Moreover, since the completeness is realized by standing on the viewpoint of treating the implication symbol as a different implication symbol from usual, and interpreting logic programs in three-valued logic, examples which support the viewpoint are also described. (shrink)

Both Hilbert's axiomatics and Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms have their roots in Leibniz's idea of a 'universal characteristic,' and grow on Hertz's 'principles of mechanics,' and Dedekind's 'foundations of arithmetic'. As Cassirer recalls in the introduction to his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, it was the discovery of the analysis of infinity that led Leibniz to focus on "the universal problem inherent in the function of symbolism, and to raise his 'universal characteristic' to a truly philosophical plane." In (...) Leibniz's view, the logic of 'things' cannot be separated from the logic of 'signs,' as "the sign is no mere accidental cloak of the idea, but its necessary and essential organ."Every 'law' of .. (shrink)

Forschungen zur verkorperten Intelligenz und zu den symbolischen Vermittlungen des menschlichen Geistes werden bislang zumeist in getrennten Disziplinen betrieben. Die aus der Kulturphilosophie, Kunst- und Bildwissenschaft, Theologie, Medizin, Psychiatrie, Psychologie und Kognitionswissenschaft stammenden Beitrage des Bandes vereint jedoch das gemeinsame Ziel, einen umfassenden Begriff von Verkorperung zu entwickeln, der die Grenzziehung zwischen kulturalistischen und naturalistischen Ansatzen uberwindet.".

The final volume in the fine translation of Cassirer's central work deals with the problem of knowledge, "the structure and articulation of a theoretical world view." The analysis proceeds from perception and representation, through the function of signification and the idea of concept, to mathematics and the highest forms of natural science. Cassirer's introduction offers a concise discussion in historical context of the idea of symbolic form itself.--F. M. S.

B a c k g r o u n d. The article is devoted to the analysis of the key directions of the study of the possible influence of the specifics of Chinese language culture on the content and nature of intellectual discourse, which is recognized as philosophical. Logic and ontology are the key areas of analysis of the possible influence of linguistic determinants on the intellectual discourse of China. Three main topics that attract the attention of researchers are the (...) structure of judgment, the semantics of lexical units, and the specificity of the pragmatics of the Chinese language. M e t h o d s. The author applied general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and description of the works of researchers of Chinese philosophy, which justify and argue the fruitfulness of studying the peculiarities of Chinese language to explain the reasons of the fundamental difference between the problems actualized in the history of Chinese philosophy and those that formed the basis of the development of the history of philosophy in the Western world. R e s u l t s. It is generally accepted that for the worldview of representatives of Chinese culture, the world is a structural whole, consisting of elements that continuously interact in the dynamics of changes and transformations, we find a reflection of this feature in the semantics of the corresponding symbolic system. Polysemy in the Chinese language mostly reveals a complex and multi-layered "web" of associative and correlative connections between meanings, which in fact cannot be argued outside the context of the relevant cultural tradition indicating common features or similarities of the signified. The doubt about the typicality of understanding the denotations as fixed and atomized for the Chinese language culture is reasonable, even in those cases when it comes to the designation of empirically accessible objectivity. The main specific features of polysemy in the Chinese language are the complete heterogeneity of what is signified, and the lack of transparent grounds for identifying the genus-species subordination of the scope of general concepts. This can also serve as an explanation for the fact that we do not find a completely obvious and nondisputable analogue of the problem of universals of the Western model in the history of Chinese philosophy. C o n c l u s i o n s. Based on the peculiarities of the Chinese language culture, we can recognize as a reasonable a statement that the seemingly natural understanding of the essence – the subject, as something that remains the same (at least for a certain time), but it undergoes some changes through its manifestations – a predicate (properties and actions). It is not as necessary and axiomatic for Chinese thinkers as, for example, for ancient Greek philosophers. In addition, we can recognize the fact that the verb "to exist" does not fulfill the role of a necessary copula in judgments in the Chinese language, as a probable reason for the lack of fundamental problematization of the concept of "being" in the Chinese history of philosophy. In general, the context of the use of a certain word-sign in the Chinese language plays a determining role. The actualization of one or another meaning in an expression is formed not only by its integration into a certain text, but also by its purpose in accordance with the specific practice of application. Therefore, this can serve as an explanation for the absence of an original and axiomatic interpretation of truth as absolute, that is, unchanging and non-relative in the history of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

Most scholars regard Ernst Cassirer as a thinker in the Marburg Neo-Kantian tradition whose writings take him from its concern with the analysis of the logical foundations of science to problems in intellectual history, theory of language, and culture. The critical work on his thought has reflected and supported this view. There is a second image of Cassirer which is shared by the large number of students and general readers who have come to his thought through two works that appeared (...) at the end of his life—An Essay on Man and the Myth of the State. These works have gone through numerous printings and have appeared in editions in most major Western and Oriental languages. These readers have found in Cassirer not primarily an epistemologist and historian of thought but a philosopher of humanity, an interpreter of the fragmentation of contemporary cultural life and the nature of the political world. These two sides shown by Cassirer’s thought are not exactly opposed, but also they are not joined. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), Neo-Kantian philosopher of Marburg school, studies myth as a component of symbolic forms. He considers myth as the cornerstone of philosophy of culture as well as the source of such other forms as language, religion, art and science. Cassirer, applying an epistemological approach towards myths and other realms of human culture, argues that human beings experience the world through a mediated process. Of course, this mediated encounter with the world has different aspects in the evolving course (...) of culture. These aspects are completely dependent upon the symbolic form through which man experiences his world. However, it seems what Cassirer puts forth as an explanation of the cultural evolution of mankind is basically influenced by his semiotic viewpoints. Therefore, the present article tries to find the theoretical resources of Cassirer’s thought and analyze his reasoning in this regard. Emphasizing Cassirer’s theoretical assumptions as well as his methodology, we have tried to better understand his claims about myth and other symbolic forms. It has been revealed that Cassirer’s theory is mainly shaped by his particular models of semiotic functions. Analyzing the semiotic functions of each specific form indicates that Cassirer has differentiated three independent functions. Each of these functions works on an expressive,Ausdrucken.representative,Darstellungen.or signifyingBedeutungen.basis and is respectively correspondent with myth, language, and science. (shrink)

Two more or less standard methods exist for the systematic, logical construction of classical mathematics, the so-called theory of types, due in the main to Russell, and the Zermelo axiomatic set theory. In systems based upon either of these, the connective of membership, “ε”, plays a fundamental role. Usually although not always it figures as a primitive or undefined symbol.Following the familiar simplification of Russell's theory, let us mean by alogical typein the strict sense any one of the following: (i) (...) the totality consisting exclusively of individuals, (ii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively individuals, (iii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively classes whose members in turn are exclusively individuals, and so on. Any entity from (ii) is said to beone type higherthan any entity from (i), any entity from (iii), one type higher than any entity from (ii), and so on. In systems based upon this simplified theory of types, the only significant atomic formulae involving “ε” are those asserting the membership of an entity in an entity one type higher. Thus any expression of the form “(x∈y)” is meaningless except where “y” denotes an entity of just one type higher than the type of the entity denoted by “x” It is by means of general type restrictions of this kind that the Russell and other paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

Introduction: schema, substance, and symbol -- Linguistic form: the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture -- Mythical thought: beginning the ladder of consciousness -- Phenomenology of knowledge: taking phenomenology in the Hegelian, not the modern sense -- Metaphysics of symbolic forms: spirit, life, and Werk -- Logic of the cultural sciences: nature and culture -- Animal symbolicum -- Human freedom and politics.

This is the first full-length, systematic study of Ernst Cassirer's fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, which was published in the German edition in 1995 and in the American edition in 1996 from Cassirer's Nachlass. Prior to the appearance of this volume it was generally held that Cassirer had little interest in a metaphysics of symbolic forms and had not formulated such. ;This study considers the nature of the basic elements (...) of Cassirer's metaphysics as they appear in this fourth volume and as they are connected to comments in other of his works. It also considers to what extent Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms requires a metaphysical grounding in a traditional sense. ;Part I is an analysis of Cassirer's writings of the 1920s concerning his distinction between life and spirit , their dialectical relationship and their connection to the conception of symbolic form. Highly significant is Cassirer's assertion in a fragment from this period that philosophy is not itself a symbolic form. ;Part II is an analysis of Cassirer's writings of the 1940s concerning his conception of three "basis phenomena" --the life-process and the I, action and the Other, and the sphere of work . Of particular importance is Cassirer's final description of the philosophy of symbolic forms as a Socratic philosophy grounded in the basis phenomenon of work. ;The study contains an appendix showing an analytic scheme of the volume and a comprehensive bibliography of Cassirer's works and critical literature relevant to the interpretation of his systematic philosophy. (shrink)