La « théorie des deux noms », qui assigne la même fonction sémantique au sujet et au prédicat, est souvent considérée comme caractéristique de l'analyse occamiste de la prédication, et du nominalisme en général. On l'oppose à la doctrine de l'asymétrie du sujet et du prédicat, telle qu'elle a été formulée par Frege, et qui paraît caractéristique d'une forme de réalisme, ainsi qu'en témoignent Frege lui-même et les versions préfrégéennes de cette doctrine chez les Médiévaux, comme Thomas d'Aquin. L'examen des (...) analyses de la prédication de Thomas d'Aquin et de Guillaume d'Occam montre que le second, comme le premier, a soutenu une forme d'asymétrie sémantique. Les options ontologiques ne déterminent pas, sur ce point, leur philosophie du langage. The so-called « two names theory » which attributes the same semantic function to both subject and predicate, is frequently considered as reflecting the occamist analysis of predication, and as characteristic of nominalism in general. It has been opposed to the fregean doctrine of the asymmetry of subject and predicate, which seems connected with realism, as it can be seen in Frege's work, and in the medieval and pre-fregean versions of that same doctrine, for which Aquinas is a good example. But Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham's analysis of predication do not show such an opposition. On the contrary, both have formulated a kind of semantical asymmetry, which is not undermined by their ontological commitments. (shrink)

Was ist Intuition? Gibt es intuitive Erkenntnis? Intuition beschäftigt Philosophie, Psychologie und Alltagsdenken. Einschätzungen reichen dabei von "höchste Erkenntnisart" bis "höchst unzuverlässig." Cyrill Mamin zeichnet zentrale Bestimmungen der Intuition in Philosophie und Psychologie nach. Wesentliche Fragen sind dabei: Wie ist es, eine Intuition zu haben? Wie kommt eine Intuition zustande? Auf dieser Grundlage bestimmt Mamin Intuition als massgeblich nicht-propositionale Erkenntnisart, welche unsere intuitiven Überzeugungen rechtfertigen kann. Im Zentrum steht ein neuartiges Modell der intuitiven Rechtfertigung, das psychologische mit erkenntnistheoretischen Elementen verbindet. (...) Dadurch lässt sich Intuition im Verhältnis zu anderen mentalen Akten (u.a. Wahrnehmung, Imagination, Delusion) näher bestimmen sowie ein kritischer Blick auf die philosophische Intuitionsdebatte werfen. (shrink)

This paper shows that, under certain reasonable conditions, if the investigation of the behavior of a physical system is difficult, no scientific change can make it significantly easier. This impossibility result implies that complexity is then a necessary feature of models which truly represent the target system and of all models which are rich enough to catch its behavior and therefore that it is an inevitable element of any possible science in which this behavior is accounted for. I finally argue (...) that complexity can then be seen as representing an intrinsic feature of the system itself. (shrink)

I argue that one can be responsible for a certain state of affairs, one has brought about, or one has let happen, only if one could have avoided it, by omitting or by performing a certain action. I limit my argument to the consequences of actions and omissions, and to the conditional ability of avoiding the consequences by an alternative behaviour. Even within those limits, the argument challenges the Causal Conception of Moral Responsibility and the strategy mounted by Frankfurt against (...) the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. It is a step in favor of the idea that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Social scientists who conduct qualitative research frequently use emotional engagement to gather information about participants’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in relation to a particularly research question. When the subject under investigation is related to trauma, listening to, or being exposed to personal accounts of participants’ traumatic experiences can carry a significant emotional cost for researchers. This may place them at risk of secondary trauma. In this article, I examine these issues from the context of my doctoral field research in South (...) Africa, which focused on intergenerational trauma amongst descendants of victims of apartheid-era gross human rights violations. I reflect on my positionality as both an insider and outsider and feelings of guilt that emanated from my sense of being privileged and an imposter. I also reflect on the emotional turmoil brought about by my engagement with the trauma of participants and their families. I conclude by sharing the lessons I have learnt, and that have enabled me to sustain my scholarly engagement with intergenerational trauma. Ultimately, this article gives insight into, and raises awareness about, the emotional consequences of conducting trauma research. It offers practical suggestions to help researchers navigate the emotional minefield involved in conducting trauma research. (shrink)

This paper analyses Heidegger’s controversial advancement of Husserl’s idea of philosophy and phenomenological research towards ‘the Being-Question’ and its relation to ‘Dasein’. It concentrates on Heidegger’s elision of Dilthey and Husserl’s different concepts of ‘Descriptive Psychology’ in his 1925 Summer Semester lecture-course, with Husserl’s concept losing out in the competition, as background to the formulation of ‘the Being-Question’ in Being and Time (1927). It argues that Heidegger establishes his own position within phenomenology on the basis of a partial appropriation of (...) Dilthey’s hermeneutical manner of thinking, an appropriation that was later radically called into question by Levinas on Diltheyean-hermeneutical-philosophical grounds. (shrink)

This essay explores the possible justification that liberal perfectionism may provide to an epistocratic regime. I suggest that epistocratic mechanisms and rules can maintain and improve epistemic autonomy, which itself contributes to the form of personal autonomy to which perfectionists grant a moral priority. Though not decisive, I claim that the Perfectionist Argument for Epistocracy partially justifies epistocracy. Because this argument is developed in the context of liberal social forms, this indicates the conceptual possibility of liberal epistocracy.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

La place centrale que la récompense occupe dans le discours pastoral de Jean Chrysostome s’explique aussi bien par sa volonté de prendre en compte les motivations humaines des fidèles que par sa recherche constante de l’« utile » et par sa fidélité à l’Écriture elle-même. Pour rendre compte de la nature du lien entre la récompense et ce qui la motive, Chrysostome n’hésite pas à recourir à des analogies empruntées au langage commercial ou juridique, mais c’est pour faire d’autant mieux (...) ressortir, par contraste, la supériorité radicale de la récompense divine. Ce sont la patience dans la souffrance, et plus encore l’amour pour nos ennemis qui nous valent les récompenses les plus hautes. Dès ici-bas, de premières récompenses nous sont accordées, mais c’est dans l’au-delà que sont obtenus les gains à la fois les plus véritables et les plus indicibles. (shrink)

Rather than unifying the peoples in the world, globalization divides them into zones: either developed and prosperous, or underdeveloped and ravaged by poverty. How, then, can one imagine economic and financial globalization as a current implementation of cosmopolitanism, which abolishes the old fratricidal strife and seals the reunion between men across national borders? And how can we not doubt the cosmopolitan order facing the proliferation of identity claims, the rise of competitors due to globalization? Are we condemned to live in (...) a world ever more unequal, more “hard” for the losers, the weak? What space is there in philosophy to think the new solidarity? This paper sketches some answers to these questions. (shrink)

Many of the philosophers of African politics who have argued that the political challenges of Nigeria, and of Africa as a whole are as a result of the impunity and corruption of post-independence Nigeria leaders also give the impression that the people of Nigeria are mere innocent victims because in their arguments all the ills of the Nigerian state exist only because the country have not experienced or discovered an honest and capable political leader. The scholars argue to the effect (...) that all that Nigeria can do is simply to hope for the ascendance of a Messiah, who being an honest, capable and patriotic leader will on his own volition become committed to the cause of reversing the situation in order to turn around all the ills of the nation. Employing the examples of two prominent scholars of African politics the paper employs the epistemological rigor of analysis and logic to examine and make a critique of the underlying assumptions of the scholars and identifies the theoretical flaws of believing that political representatives are substantively political leaders, that Nigerians are helpless victims who on their own are incapable of reversing the situation and that Nigeria should hope for a political saviour who will turn around all the social and political ills of Nigeria on his own accord. Keywords : Ignocence, Messianism, Epistemology, Democracy, Nigeria. (shrink)

Traditionally, such a statement as ‘I was misled’ is intended to be taken seriously by the addressee and considered an expression of the true state of affairs. Unfortunately, the statement has many logical implications that often go unnoticed by both the one who utters it and the addressee. The paper critically explores the instrumentality of logical and epistemological analyses in its attempt to lay bare the implications of the statement being true and of entertaining the underlying belief in the first (...) place that ‘I was misled’. By so doing, the paper attempts to show that even if the function of philosophy is merely to analyse language, it would still have contributed indispensably and significantly to human society by clarifying ambiguous concepts. It also attempts to demonstrate the relevance of critical thinking in human society. (shrink)

I wish to correlate Bernard Lonergan’s functional specialty Communications with Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of novelistic discourse with the goal of teasing out how the Bakhtinian notion of discourse furthers on-going reflection on inculturation. Theology as a highly differentiated and specialized reflection on religion bears fruit in the final stage (Communications) of theological reflection. This fruit – inculturation – can be explained using different constructs. This paper privileges the Bakhtinian construct in that it addresses “the life and behavior of discourse in (...) a contradictory and multi-languaged world” in ways that Lonergan’s differentiated and specialized reflection on theology accounts for multiplicity of cultural traditions in an ever-changing world church. (shrink)

For a quarter of a century the industrial Western world has been living in the euphoria of continuous improvements in welfare, based on economic programming, increasing integration and terms of trade which favor indus trial countries and discriminate against agricultural regions. It is true that recessions have periodically recurred during these years : time and again, however, government intervention succeeded in reducing them to mere "in ventory cycles". In contrast with the twenties and thirties, when economic policy in the West (...) focused on fighting unemployment and stimulating investment, the postwar period has been characterized by a permanent concern to curb inflationary pressure, which was partly due to full-employ ment. The present welfare economy has given rise to a growth of the pro pensity to consume such that public policy has often been constrained to limit consumption and stimulate saving. In this new framework it has perhaps been forgotten that today's welfare owes much to the lessons from the past. The bitter world crisis experience of the thirties in particular has exerted a fruitful and decisive influence upon the search for means to prevent, eliminate or soften the cyclical fluctuations which the process of economic growth involves. Forty years after the out break of the greatest economic crisis ever, it seems useful to draw up the balancesheet of the lessons learned from it. There exists a large literature about the depression of the thirties. (shrink)

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and (...) later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness. (shrink)

Cyril Smith shows that Marx developed a far richer and liberatory vision of humanity and the alternative to capital than that which has characterized his followers, and he makes a powerful argument that it is essential to return to Marx's original body of thought in order to reconstitute a viable critique of existing capitalist society.

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