Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl's closest students and friends, ranks among the most eminent of the first generation of phenomenologists. His magisterial <I>Controversy over the Existence of the World, written during the years of World War II in occupied Poland, consists of a fundamental defense of realism in phenomenology. Volume I, which receives here its first complete and critical translation into English, initiates the grand project of refuting transcendental idealism, and begins by setting the foundations for an (...) elaborate and precise ontological system. This is Ingarden's greatest accomplishment, who is rather known as a theoretician of literature than an ontologist outside of Poland. The most important achievement of Ingarden's ontology is an analysis of the modes of being of various types of objects - things, processes, events, purely intentional objects and ideas. The three-volume <I>Controversy is perhaps the last great systematic work in the history of philosophy, and undoubtedly one of the most important works in 20th century philosophical literature. (shrink)

This article reconstructs and defends Husserl's argument for the indubitability of the existence of the world as grounded in ultimate principles. Responding to criticisms about the feasibility of a Husserlian‐informed metaphysical cosmology, it offers a systematic account that explores the question of the world's existence at three distinct levels (factual‐empirical, eidetic, and transcendental), leading to a threefold characterization of the world. First, the obviousness of the world's existence serves as our point of departure. (...) The analysis then moves from a conception of the world as (i) an ontic factum and pregiven ground of all theoretical and practical endeavors in the natural attitude, to a priori ontological considerations of (ii) the essence of “world in general.” However, the insufficiency of both factual‐empirical and a priori investigations necessitates a further displacement of the analysis into the transcendental field of pure phenomena. In accordance with the fundamental principle of synthesis, the world is thus reconceived of as (iii) a phenomenological factum. In this context, the clarification of the existence of the world as both an irrational and a “rational” fact provides all the elements necessary to demonstrate the relative apodicticity and empirical indubitability of the world. This justifies our doxic certainty of the world's existence. (shrink)

The final section of the book considers two features of the world which transcend the categories, existence and negation.

Since the 1960s an increasing number of philosophers have endorsed the thesis that there can be no such thing as “the best possible world.” In this paper I examine the main arguments for this thesis as put forth by George Schlesinger, Alvin Plantinga, Bruce Reichenbach, Peter Forrest, and Richard Swinburne. I argue that none of these arguments succeed in establishing the thesis and that the logical possibility of the best possible world is as yet an open question.

This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's views on the existence of the world have undergone significant change in the course of his philosophical career. In Structure, Kuhn appears to be committed to the existence of the ordinary empirical world as well as the existence of an independent metaphysical world, but realism about the empirical world is abandoned in his later writings. Whereas in Structure the only relative worlds are the scientific worlds inhabited by (...) the practitioners of various paradigms, the later Kuhn puts the non-scientific worlds of particular groups or cultures on the same footing as the paradigm-related scientific worlds. The article shows that, on what Ian Hacking called the "new-world problem", the later Kuhn has moved to a more radical antirealist position. It is also argued that the earlier and later solutions to the "new-world problem" face insuperable difficulties, which render Kuhn's account of scientific change implausible. (shrink)

In this paper I examine a strategy which aims to bypass the technicalities of the indispensability debate and to offer a direct route to nominalism. The starting-point for this alternative nominalist strategy is the claim that--according to the platonist picture--the existence of mathematical objects makes no difference to the concrete, physical world. My principal goal is to show that the 'Makes No Difference' (MND) Argument does not succeed in undermining platonism. The basic reason why not is that the (...) makes-no-difference claim which the argument is based on is problematic. Arguments both for and against this claim can be found in the literature; I examine three such arguments, uncovering flaws in each one. In the second half of the paper, I take a more direct approach and present an analysis of the counterfactual which underpins the makes-no-difference claim. What this analysis reveals is that indispensability considerations are in fact crucial to the proper evaluation of the MND Argument, contrary to the claims of its supporters. (shrink)

In the first experiment, I exhibit unreliable judgment about the primeness or divisibility of four-digit numbers, in contrast to a seeming Excel program. In the second experiment, I exhibit an imperfect memory for arbitrary-seeming three-digit number and letter combinations, in contrast to my seeming collaborator with seemingly hidden notes. In the third experiment, I seem to suffer repeated defeats at chess. In all three experiments, the most straightforward interpretation of the experiential evidence is that something exists in the universe that (...) is superior in the relevant respects – theoretical reasoning (about primes), memorial retention (for digits and letters), or practical reasoning (at chess) – to my own solipsistically-conceived self. (shrink)

Next SectionAn attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the solution of the Sleeping Beauty Problem in the framework of the Many-Worlds Interpretation led to a new controversy regarding the Quantum Sleeping Beauty Problem. We apply the concept of a measure of existence of a world and reach the solution known as ‘thirder’ solution which differs from Peter Lewis’s ‘halfer’ assertion. We argue that this method provides a simple and powerful tool for analysing rational decision theory problems.

Geis' work addresses questions about gratuitous claims of empiricism in Hume, unfounded assumptions in Kant, presumptions of science, and improbabilities identified in Darwinism. Geis argues that evil, used as a means to betterment of oneself and the world, takes on the role commensurate with the doctrine of an omnibenevolent deity.

In this paper I shall explore Wittgenstein’s view on the existence of mind. The main concern is in this paper to give a positive theory of mind which can provide a method for understanding mind as a metaphysical reality. In this context the self is presupposed by which what we call the mental phenomena including consciousness, because without the self the mind will be meaningless in this physical world. That is, this phenomenon of world itself needs a (...) self in which mind is the part of this phenomenal world. As Wittgenstein takes mind in continuation with language and world because, for him, mind is not an independent entity in this world, rather it is part of this world. Thus the existence of the mind itself in this physical world proves that mind is metaphysical. (shrink)

Does the real world, defined as a world of objects that exist independent of human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities, really exist? Jan Westerhoff argues that we have good reason to believe it does not. His discussion considers four main facets of the idea of the real world, ranging from the existence of a separate external and internal world, to the existence of an ontological foundation that grounds the existence of all the entities (...) in the world, and the existence of an ultimately true theory that provides a final account of all there is. As Westerhoff discusses the reasons for rejecting the postulation of an external world behind our representations, he asserts that the internal world is not as epistemically transparent as is usually assumed, and that there are good reasons for adopting an anti-foundational account of ontological dependence. Drawing on conclusions from the ancient Indian philosophical system of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Westerhoff defends his stance in a purely Western philosophical framework, and affirms that ontology, and philosophy more generally, need not be conceived as providing an ultimately true theory of the world. (shrink)

This paper aims at discussing a quite specific aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology, i.e., the notion of synthesis of identification, and the role it plays in the arguments set forward in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation during the discussion of the constitution of the other, hence of the monadological inter-subjectivity. The case will be made for considering the very heart of the Meditation to be what we will refer to as Husserl’s “transcendental argument”, consisting in the claim that there can be only (...) one inter-subjectivity, hence, the “world” being the correlate of the transcendental monadological inter-subjectivity, only one real and actual world. This will also give us the opportunity to critically approach a series of views lately held by some leading figures of the “continental” and “analytic” tradition, which, as the first part of the essay will show, pursue views directly opposed to Husserl’s. (shrink)

The claim that there can be relations without relata, submitted by the radical ontic structural realist, mounts a serious challenge to her: on the one hand, the world is constituted, according to this sort of realism, just by structures and relations, and on the other hand, relations depend, mathematics says, on individual objects as relata. To resolve the problem, Steven French has argued that while the dependency of relations on relata is conceivable concerning the structure associated with the source (...) of representation, radical ontic structural realism assumes the existence of relations devoid of relata regarding the target of representation. In this article, I will argue this solution considered together with his semantics for the sentences that contain terms referring apparently to individual objects seems incoherent. (shrink)

본고는 흄의 외부 세계 현존 문제에 대한 비판적 재구성을 꾀한다. 흄은 그의 주저 『인성론』 1권, 4부, 2절 논의(“감관들에 관련된 회의주의에 대해서Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses”)에서 지금까지도 계속 철학자들의 골치를 썩이는 이 문제를 다룬다. 하지만 흄의 논의는 필요 이상으로 장황하고 복잡다단하며 불분명한 탓에, 일단 먼저 그가 제시한 논증을 차례대로 좇아서 살피기 전에 논증의 전 구조를 망라하는 그림이 필요하다. 따라서 본고에서 필자는, 첫째, 외부 세계 현존 문제를 위한 흄의 논증 기저에 놓인 근본적 사유틀을 압축해서 드러낸다. 둘째, 이러한 사유틀을 기초로 해서 (...) 발현된 흄의 논증에 깃든 다양한 문제점들을 살핀다. 필자는 흄의 논증에 대한 비판을 면밀하게 수행하는 과정에서 김효명 교수가 『영국경험론』 제5장 말미(pp.152-162.)에서 흄의 견해를 줄곧 따라서 보인 해석이 직면하는 어려움도 보인다. 셋째, 지금까지 검토한 내용을 바탕으로, 결국 흄은 그의 자연주의를 지탱하는 능력에 일관되게 호소하면서 외부 세계 현존 문제에 대한 의미 있는 (즉, 존재론적 차원의 논의를 심리학적 차원의 논의로 전환하는) 답변을 제시하고자 하지만, 그의 노력은 그가 매우 의도성 짙게 ‘지각’과 ‘대상’을 상호 무분별히 뒤섞어서 쓰는 사정에 기인하기 때문에 논의에 일관성이 없으며, 이러한 비일관적 상황이 초래하는 결과는 그의 인간학에 대한 근원적 회의로 나타남이 지적될 것이다. (shrink)

AN EMPIRICIST, ONE MIGHT THINK, OUGHT TO BE AGNOSTIC about the existence of the external world. That, anyway, is the received wisdom of respected empiricists such as David Hume. In A Treatise of Human Nature, book I, part II, section VI, Of the idea of existence, and of external existence, Hume argues that.

Free will is an intuitive reality that all humans apprehend in their actions. Moral responsibility also stems from this freedom of will. This article first explains that the strong human intuition about free will cannot be dismissed as an illusion. It then examines the notion that a physical being cannot possess free will because it implies the ability to both perform and abstain from an action. In the physical world, all human actions are determined by preceding causes, leaving no (...) room to avoid an action volitionally. Building on this, the article concludes that free will becomes plausible only when rooted in the existence of the soul. Consequently, free will serves as independent evidence for the existence of an immaterial soul. (shrink)

The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' Error, (...) Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the (...) essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

This article offers an argument for a form of panentheism in which the divine is conceived as both ‘God the World’ and ‘God the Good’. ‘God the World’ captures the notion that the totality of everything which exists is ‘in’ God, while acknowledging that, given evil and suffering, not everything is ‘of’ God. ‘God the Good’ encompasses the idea that God is also the universal concept of Goodness, akin to Plato’s Form of the Good as developed by Iris (...) Murdoch, which is inextricably conjoined with God the World because it is the nature of the world which determines the nature of perfect Goodness. This form of ‘conjoined’ panentheism yields a concept of divine personhood which includes both divine agency and human/divine engagement. God the Good is an agent of change by providing human persons with a standard of Goodness against which to measure the goodness of their own actions, while God the World provides the physical embodiment through which God acts. Human engagement with the divine may take a number of forms and may lead to moral action, the means by which the divine acts upon the world and changes it for the better. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hans Blumenberg’s theory illuminates a novel interpretation of the phenomenological concept of the lifeworld—as a world sustained by myths and their receptions. This paper combines two central themes in Blumenberg’s philosophy: his interpretation of Edmund Husserl and his aesthetics, especially his theory of the novel and of myth. My claim to originality is to offer a mythology of the lifeworld with the help of one of Blumenberg’s less-known texts, “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Wirkungspotential des Mythos.” In the (...) first part, I will examine a crucial aspect in Blumenberg’s reading of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld, namely the unorthodox view that the lifeworld, as the foundation for sciences and their logos, itself has no need to resort to language. To put it mythically: the lifeworld is an expressionless state of naivety. To support this deconstructive reading, I will then turn to Blumenberg’s theory of the novel. As has been noticed by Blumenberg and his colleagues, the underlying meaning structure of the novel, or its “concept of reality,” has a typically modern character, and largely overlaps with the phenomenological idea of the world and lifeworld. However, in the second part, I will radicalize Blumenberg’s discussions about reality, and show that the novelistic reality can never fully supersede that of myth. Mythology has a persistent existence, and, in Blumenberg’s argument, the history of mythical reception reveals a perpetual movement of human struggle against terror. In this Blumenbergian philosophy of mythology, a new image of the lifeworld presents itself, a world made by the myth-telling humans, by their active and aesthetic use of words, instead of slumbers of naivety. (shrink)

In this paper, an argument of Alvin Plantinga's for the existence of abstract possible worlds is shown to be unsound. The argument is based on a principle Plantinga calls "Quasicompactness", due to its structural similarity to the notion of compactness in first-order logic. The principle is shown to be false.

Quantum mechanics stands as one of the most remarkable achievements of the twentieth century: at once a new and startling insight into the nature of matter and a spectacularly successful predictive theory. However, while the predictive abilty of the quantum theory has been rigorously tested time and time again, so that it now satisfies any criterion of reliability as a tool of scientific inquiry, surprisingly fundamental difficulties remain with its interpretation. This book introduces the general reader to the philosophical issues (...) raised by the success of the quantum theory. What exactly is the wavefunction, the mathematical device that resides at the heart of the theory? In what sense does this device represent reality? The wavefunction is believed to describe the probability of a system's behaving in a particular way, yet the equations which describe the wave function are totally deterministic: what then is the relationship between determinism and ramdomness in the microworld? Does this tell us anything about the freedom of will in a world governed by the immutable world of physics? Do these laws rely for their existence on the presence of concious observers? Euan Squires explains to a non-specialised readership how these profound difficulties arise in the simplest of experimental arrangements. He outlines with great clarity the different points of view adopted by various schools of physicists who are striving to understand the meaning underlying the theories they use every day. The reader is encouraged to see how this most successful of physical theories is relevant to issues outside physics - even to the existence of God. other_titles. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the content and features of the concept of "society" in the Tuvan culture, which is formed in a syncretic worldview. Features of the historical development of the Tuvan culture led to the formation of an authentic picture of the world, in which man is an integral part of nature. It was revealed that social aspects are not isolated from nature either. It is shown that the limitations of thinking did not require the development (...) of abstract and universal concepts of man and society. The fundamental role of the family in the implementation of social relations in the Tuvan society is determined. In addition, the verbal form of transmitting traditions enhanced the importance of the family in the social system of the Tuvans. As a methodology, a combination of cultural-anthropological and socio-cultural approaches in various aspects is used. In addition, a conceptual and historical method is used to identify the essence of the transformation of Tuvan society. The main conclusions of the authors are the definition of the Tuvan word "niitiel" as a neologism formed in the course of modernization of the Tuvan culture. The logic of its formation differs from the etymology of the concept of society in Russian and English. The concept of "society" contains syncretic and naturalistic aspects. It is emphasized that the individual did not single out individual political, economic, cultural and social interests. In his thinking, he operated only with family and clan interests. The authors found that the syncretism of the Tuvan culture not only led to the fusion of various spheres of human existence, but also the inseparability of the subject and object in thinking. In this regard, the individual did not separate himself from the family and social structure. (shrink)

Summary The object of this study is to analyse certain aspects of the debate between David Brewster and William Whewell concerning the probability of extra-terrestrial life, in order to illustrate the nature, constitution and condition of natural theology in the decades immediately preceding the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's Origin of species. The argument is directed against a stylised picture of natural theology which has been drawn from a backward projection of the Darwinian antithesis between natural selection and certain (...) forms of the design argument. Contrary to the popular image of natural theology as an essentially static, autonomous and monolithic set of presuppositions about the existence of design in nature, the paper underlines the existence of a fundamental divergence of strategies within natural theology, a divergence that, in the case of Brewster and Whewell, can be correlated with the religious cultures to which they most closely belonged. The fact that, in the plurality of worlds debate, their respective positions became mutually exclusive suggests that the fragmented and disordered state of natural theology, only too apparent before the Darwinian impact, was occasioned as much by the ulterior problem of rationalising the excessive space of the astronomers and the excessive time of the geologists as it was by any principle of the uniformity of nature in the biological sphere. The argument is substantiated with particular reference to the breakdown in communication as Brewster and Whewell developed conflicting strategies to expose the ?development hypothesis? that had appeared in Vestiges. Their altercation also reveals a certain conflict of status concerning the conclusions of astronomy and geology which, in turn, suggests that tensions between the physical and life sciences were not peculiar to the period following the publication of Darwin's theory. (shrink)

Legal realism comes in two main versions, namely American legal realism and Scandinavian legal realism. In this article, I shall be concerned with the Scandinavian realists, who were naturalists and non-cognitivists, and who maintained that conceptual analysis is a central task of legal philosophers, and that such analysis must proceed in a naturalist, anti-metaphysical spirit. Specifically, I want to consider the commitment to ontological naturalism and non-cognitivism on the part of the Scandinavians and its implications for their view of the (...) nature of law. I argue that the Scandinavians differ from legal positivists in that they reject the idea that there are legal relations, that is, legal entities and properties, and to varying degrees defend the view that law is a matter of human behavior rather than legal norms, and that they do not and cannot accept the idea that there is a ‘world of the ought’ in Kelsen's sense. I also argue, more specifically, that the objection to non-naturalist theories raised by the Scandinavians—that there is and can be no connection between the higher realm of norms and values and the world of time and space—is convincing, and that Kelsen's introduction of a so-called modally indifferent substrate does nothing to undermine this objection. In addition, I argue that the Scandinavians can account for the existence of legal relations that do not presuppose the existence of morally binding legal norms by embracing conventionalism about the existence of the sources of law, while pointing out that in doing so they would also be abandoning their legal realism for legal positivism. Finally, I argue that the implications for legal scholarship of the realist emphasis on human behavior instead of legal norms is not well explained by the realists and appear to amount to little more than a preference for teleological interpretation of legal norms. (shrink)

Although O'Regan & Noë (O&N) claim that the world may serve as the viewers' external visual memory, findings from the field of memory research have demonstrated the existence of internal visual representations. These representations are stored in the viewer's brain, contain information regarding visual objects and their relations, guide subsequent exploration of the visual world and promote change detection.

In some discussions on global distributive justice, it is argued that the factthat the state exercises coercive authority over its own citizens explains whythe state has egalitarian distributive obligations to its own but not to otherindividuals in the world at large. Two recent works make the case that the globalorder is indeed coercive in a morally significant way for generating certainglobal distributive obligations. Nicole Hassoun argues that the coercivecharacter of the global order gives rise to global duties of humanitarian (...) aid.Laura Valentini argues that the existence of global coercion triggers globaldistributive duties more demanding than mere humanitarianism, but notnecessarily as demanding as cosmopolitan egalitarian duties. This reviewessay suggests that Hassoun’s and Valentini’s depictions of the global orderas coercive entitle them to the stronger conclusion that there are globalegalitarian duties. (shrink)

This article reflects on the crisis of political reason in this heyday of populistic rhetoric, proposing to move beyond the erroneous dichotomy between?democratic reason? and?raging passions,? and the demo-phobia that often derives from it. We propose instead to follow Bourdieu?s footsteps in bringing our attention to the forms of impermeability that fracture our contemporary political and social life, establishing the conditions of possibility of the reasonable and the unreasonable. What marks contemporary political passions as particularly dangerous is their impermeability to (...) the lessons of our historical past, to the moral condemnation of the political instrumentalization of difference and to the sacred character of fundamental principles. This hermeneutical gap, however, is later explained by a more fundamental analysis of the problem of contemporary impermeability, one which operates as a reversal of the dichotomy between political reason and passion. It is no longer the electorate, seduced by the sirens of populism, which is impermeable to the voice of political reason; it is, instead, this very reason, embodied by the elites who claim to recognize themselves in its values and principles, which has become impermeable to the?conditions of non-existence? in which a considerable part of the population lives. If there is a problem of contemporary impermeability, or imperturbability, it is that of a political discourse that has lost touch with?all the misery of the world?. (shrink)

This article develops a logical (or semantic) response to scepticism about the existence of an external world. Specifically, it is argued that any doubt about the existence of an external world can be proved to be false, but whatever appears to be doubt about the existence of an external world that _cannot_ be proved to be false is nonsense, insofar as it must rely on the assertion of something that is logically impossible. The article (...) further suggests that both G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein worked towards the same solution but left their work unfinished. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel's Discussion of the Proofs On “Proof” and “Existence” The Proofs, Religious Elevation, and the Communion of Spirit The Multiplicity of Proofs and the One God The Cosmological Proof The Teleological Proof The Ontological Proof The Dialectic of the Proofs and the Speculative Reversal Hegel's Proofs Today.

In _The Politics of Decolonial Investigations_ Walter D. Mignolo provides a sweeping examination of how coloniality has operated around the world in its myriad forms from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Decolonial border thinking allows Mignolo to outline how the combination of the self-fashioned narratives of Western civilization and the hegemony of Eurocentric thought served to eradicate all knowledges in non-European languages and praxes of living and being. Mignolo also traces the geopolitical origins of racialized and gendered classifications, (...) modernity, globalization, and cosmopolitanism, placing them all within the framework of coloniality. Drawing on the work of theorists and decolonial practitioners from the Global South and the Global East, Mignolo shows how coloniality has provoked the emergence of decolonial politics initiated by delinking from all forms of Western knowledge and subjectivities. The urgent task, Mignolo stresses, is the epistemic reconstitution of categories of thought and praxes of living destituted in the very process of building Western civilization and the idea of modernity. The overcoming of the long-lasting hegemony of the West and its distorted legacies is already underway in all areas of human existence. Mignolo underscores the relevance of the politics of decolonial investigations, in and outside the academy, to liberate ourselves from canonized knowledge, ways of knowing, and praxes of living. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Matter in the World Extension as a Property of Matter “Body” in the Meditations Body as Non‐Mind Basic Concepts A Proof of the Existence of Bodies Cartesian Limitations.

ABSTRACT In this paper I present and evaluate Leibniz’s two main arguments against the existence of atoms. In this context atoms are extended particles that are absolutely hard, homogeneous, indivisible, and indestructible by natural means. As we shall see, Leibniz’s arguments are flawed in a very instructive way. The first argument is in tension with the claim that God created the best possible world. The second argument overgeneralizes in an undesirable way. However, as I shall discuss in the (...) last section of the paper, even if the arguments are somehow defective, at least the first one contributes valuable insights to contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

In our contemporary and futuristic times, immortality is slowly being extracted from the divine/spiritual arena by means of science and technology. There is the optimism that through the scientific and technological revitalization of human nature, humans would probably attain eternal existence in this world. This optimism, and its underlying philosophy, is based on something known as transhumanism. In this chapter, we examine the implications of transhumanism for the question of life’s meaning, especially from an African perspective. Specifically, we (...) pit transhumanism against three dominant traditional African notions of meaning viz. the God’s purpose theory, the vital force theory and the communal normative function theory in a bid to decipher which theory, amongst the three, best undergirds a meaningful transhuman existence. We conclude that the communal view is the most attractive of the three theories in terms of answering the question of how to live meaningfully as a transhuman/post-human being. According to the communal view, a meaningful life is one that strives to acquire personhood of the highest level by performing those acts that ensure harmonious living, communal flourishing, and the common good. Attaining personhood, thus, presents itself as one plausible overarching purpose for a transhuman existence. (shrink)

A formal theory of quantity T Q is presented which is realist, Platonist, and syntactically second-order (while logically elementary), in contrast with the existing formal theories of quantity developed within the theory of measurement, which are empiricist, nominalist, and syntactically first-order (while logically non-elementary). T Q is shown to be formally and empirically adequate as a theory of quantity, and is argued to be scientifically superior to the existing first-order theories of quantity in that it does not depend upon empirically (...) unsupported assumptions concerning existence of physical objects (e.g. that any two actual objects have an actual sum). The theory T Q supports and illustrates a form of naturalistic Platonism, for which claims concerning the existence and properties of universals form part of natural science, and the distinction between accidental generalizations and laws of nature has a basis in the second-order structure of the world. (shrink)

In this article, the author notes that Thomas Aquinas, in his brief work entitled De Ente et Essentia, proved that at the base of understanding the world, the human being, and God in particular, there is our understanding of being and its essence. When we make a small mistake at the beginning in our understanding of being and its essence, it will turn to be a big one in the end. And what is “at the end” of our knowledge (...) is the discovery of the First and Ultimate Cause of all things, known as: Ipsum Esse, God, the Absolute, The Most Perfect Substance, on whom everything depends, and who depends not on anything else. These present inquiries about the proper understanding of being and its essence are aimed at formulating proof of the necessity of existence of a Being that is the First Cause, and which, existing as Ipsum Esse, is the source and reason of existence of all beings. Without these inquiries, the proof itself would be incomprehensible, and more importantly it would be a purely a priori one. Furthermore, without the existential conception of being, which Thomas first formulated, one could not discover the First Cause which, as Ipsum Esse, is the source of the existence of every being. This issue seems to have escaped the attention of the author of the book Aquinas’s Way to God. The Proof in “De Ente et Essentia.”. (shrink)

Does God exist? What are the various arguments that seek to prove the existence of God? Can atheists refute these arguments? The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction assesses classical and contemporary arguments concerning the existence of God: the ontological argument, introducing the nature of existence, possible worlds, parody objections, and the evolutionary origin of the concept of God the cosmological argument, discussing metaphysical paradoxes of infinity, scientific models of the universe, and philosophers’ discussions about ultimate (...) reality and the meaning of life the design argument, addressing Aquinas’s Fifth Way, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the concept of irreducible complexity, and the current controversy over intelligent design and school education. Bringing the subject fully up to date, Yujin Nagasawa explains these arguments in relation to recent research in cognitive science, the mathematics of infinity, big bang cosmology, and debates about ethics and morality in light of contemporary political and social events. The book also includes fascinating insights into the passions, beliefs and struggles of the philosophers and scientists who have tackled the challenge of proving the existence of God, including Thomas Aquinas, and Kurt Gödel - who at the end of his career as a famous mathematician worked on a secret project to prove the existence of God. The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal gateway to the philosophy of religion and an excellent starting point for anyone interested in arguments about the existence of God. (shrink)

In recent decades, attempts to create and argue a new ontology of existence that could provide a robust alternative to the mainstream physicalist metaphysics have been made in science and philosophy. A new book by Bernardo Kastrup, a well-known specialist in the field of philosophy of mind and neuroscience of consciousness, offers the author's conceptually clear and rigorous formulation of the philosophical system. The author proves that appearance and reality in ontology are fundamentally experiential. A universal phenomenal consciousness is (...) the sole ontological primitive, which patterns of excitation constitute existence, and a human being is dissociated mental complexes of this universal consciousness, surrounded like islands by the ocean of its mentation. Kastrup’s idea of the World has an idealist ontological underpinning. The author contrasts his vision of the world with the existing ideas of the world perception, such as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism. The quality of the argument, which is given in the book, suggests the revival of the philosophy of idealism as the next paradigm, according to which a form of universal mind will be viewed as nature's sole fundamental entity. (shrink)