In this article a particular approach is presented to the problem of the human I. The starting-point is an 'interdisciplinary' question: I wonder whether nowadays we can - imbued as we are with post-cartesian criticism of the I - still be interested in mystical descriptions of the 'way inward', in particular those of Jan van Ruusbroec. I then try to develop a positive answer in three steps. First, it is shown that we do well now to get acquainted with Descartes' (...) original experience of I think, therefore I am. As M. Henry has pointed out, this primary intuition should be taken into account as a fundamental element of modern philosophical reflexion on the I. Secondly, we come to see that the first cartesian insight in the proper reality of the I does not lay itself bare to the usual post-cartesian criticism. The reason for that immunity is rather obvious: the main targets - that the human I is a self-founding reality, that it is a substrat-substance and requires a 'robust' dualism - do not appear in Descartes' original self-experience. These three points are being elucidated by regular flash-backs on Augustine's self-analysis: the affinity between the original cartesian intuition and the augustinian view of 'interior man' is unmistakable indeed. By so looking back on Augustine we get, in the third place, a foretaste of the 'turning inwards', inkeeren presented by Jan van Ruusbroec. Of course, there are quite some differences between the inner exploration of the Latin thinker and the Flemish mystic's 'introversion' - caused by the divine 'touch', gherinen in his 'ground' - but that does not alter the fact of their being akin on those points that today embarrass us most. If then we allow ourselves to take some distance from the cartesianism we are acquainted with, Ruusbroec may well - and even more strongly than Augustine - appear as a valuable interlocutor. Maybe this medieval mystic is at least able to question our modern questioning of the reality of the I? (shrink)

Mysticism Buddhist and Christian. Encounters with Jan van Ruusbroec. Paul Mommaers and Jan Van Bragt. Crossroad, New York 1995. 302 pp. $29.95. ISBN 0-8245-1455-6.

This 2007 book examines the possibilities for the rehabilitation of Hegelian thought within analytic philosophy. From its inception, the analytic tradition has in general accepted Bertrand Russell's hostile dismissal of the idealists, based on the claim that their metaphysical views were irretrievably corrupted by the faulty logic that informed them. These assumptions are challenged by the work of such analytic philosophers as John McDowell and Robert Brandom, who, while contributing to core areas of the analytic movement, nevertheless have found in (...) Hegel sophisticated ideas that are able to address problems which still haunt the analytic tradition after a hundred years. Paul Redding traces the consequences of the displacement of the logic presupposed by Kant and Hegel by modern post-Fregean logic, and examines the developments within twentieth-century analytic philosophy which have made possible an analytic re-engagement with a previously dismissed philosophical tradition. (shrink)

This volume brings together Paul Williams's previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara. In addition, there is a much longer version of the paper 'Identifying the Object of Negation', and nearly half the book consists of a wholly new essay, 'The Absence of Self and the Removal of Pain', subtitled 'How Santideva Destroyed the Bodhisattva Path'. This book will be of interest to those concerned with (...) the history and interpretation of Indian and Tibetan philosophy. (shrink)

Despite its considerable intellectual interest and great social relevance, religion has been neglected by contemporary develop- mental psychologists. But in the last few years, there has been an emerging body of research exploring children’s grasp of certain universal religious ideas. Some recent findings suggest that two foundational aspects of religious belief – belief in divine agents, and belief in mind–body dualism – come naturally to young children. This research is briefly reviewed, and some future directions..

This book discusses some of the most challenging ideas emerging out of the research program on institutional diversity associated with the 2009 co-recipient of 2009 Nobel Prize in economics, Elinor Ostrom, while outlining a set of new research directions and an original interpretation of the significance and future of this program.

This critical examination of racial equality takes a new approach to breaking down racial barriers by proposing a system of equal opportunity through shared labor and contributive justice. Focuses on how race and class inevitably structure vastly unequal life prospects Shows how human society can be organized in a way that does not socialize children for lives of routine labour Looks towards contribution, not distribution, as a way to promote racial equality Argues that by sharing routine and complex labor, social (...) relationships would be transformed, eliminating competition for limited opportunities to develop and contribute abilities. (shrink)

This collects some of the remarks made at the 2016 Pacific APA Memorial session for Patrick Suppes and Jaakko Hintikka. The full list of speakers on behalf of these two philosophers: Dagfinn Follesdal; Dana Scott; Nancy Cartwright; Paul Humphreys; Juliet Floyd; Gabriel Sandu; John Symons.

Though Frege was interested primarily in reducing mathematics to logic, he succeeded in reducing an important part of logic to mathematics by defining relations in terms of functions. By contrast, Whitehead & Russell reduced an important part of mathematics to logic by defining functions in terms of relations (using the definite description operator). We argue that there is a reason to prefer Whitehead & Russell's reduction of functions to relations over Frege's reduction of relations to functions. There is an interesting (...) system having a logic that can be properly characterized in relational but not in functional type theory. This shows that relational type theory is more general than functional type theory. The simplification offered by Church in his functional type theory is an over-simplification: one can't assimilate predication to functional application.<br>. (shrink)

Both science itself, and the human culture of which it is a part, would benefit from a story of science that encourages wider engagement with and participation in the processes of scientific exploration. Such a story, based on a close analysis of scientific method, is presented here. It is the story of science as story telling and story revising. The story of science as story suggests that science can and should serve three distinctive functions for humanity: providing stories that may (...) increase human well-being, serving as a supportive nexus for human exploration and story telling in general, and exemplifying a commitment to skepticism and a resulting open-ended and continuing exploration of what might yet be. Some practical considerations that would further the development and acceptance of such a story of science as a widely shared nexus of human activity are described. (shrink)

The Theaetetus is one of the most widely studied of any of the Platonic dialogues because its dominant theme concerns the significant philosophical question, what is knowledge? In this book Paul Stern provides a full-length treatment of its political character in relationship to this dominant theme. He argues that this approach sheds significant light on the distinctiveness of the Socratic way of life, with respect to both its initial justification and its ultimate character. More specifically, he argues that Socrates' (...) revolutionary decision to subject political life to philosophic reflection, the decision that leads directly to his trial and execution, is based on his awareness of the elusiveness of comprehensive knowledge and the implications of that elusiveness for the validity of philosophic inquiry. This view of Socrates' rationale has important consequences for our understanding of political philosophy and of the validity of the life of reason itself. (shrink)

One understanding of naturalism about perception allows that results in the sciences bearing on the senses may have an impact upon philosophical theorising on perception. Its opponents reject or, at least, are much more wary about this possibility. I consider two cases: the implications of prediction error theories for naïve realism and the latest empirical research on cross modal illusions, and taste, for the traditional division of the senses into five. Although in neither case are the implications straightforward, I argue (...) that there is a tension in the first case, relating to naïve realism, given the structure of the debate against representationalism, what naïve realists say about hallucination, and assertion of the significant differences between perception and cognition. In the second, the conflict is avoided by recognising distinctive features of how senses are integrated and realised, and a new personal level of explanation. (shrink)

Hegel makes claims about the relation of philosophy to religion that might raise concerns for those who want to locate his philosophy generally within the modern enlightenment tradition. For example, at the outset of his Lectures on Aesthetics he claims that philosophy “has no other object but God and so is essentially rational theology”.1 What might seem to placate worries here is that Hegel of course differentiates between the forms of religious and philosophical cognition in which such a content is (...) presented: while religion grasps this content in the form of imagistic or figurative representations [Vorstellungen], philosophy grasps it within conceptual thought, an attitude which might seem to align him with that found within the German enlightenment, for example, that found in Lessing and Kant. However, it seems undeniable that, in comparison to Kant, for example, Hegel employs forms of expression for the presentation of his own philosophical thought that are redolent with the type of imagistic and figurative locutions supposedly at home in religion. Moreover, the actual imagery employed seems to refer to the type of trinitarian version of Christianity that can seem antithetical to those forms of Christian thought that lent themselves to the sort of “demythologization” characteristic of the enlightenment attitude to religious doctrine. Such factors as these make it easy to portray Hegel’s philosophy as a type of irrationalist mysticism,2 or at least as a disguised theology with a content from revealed religion, and thus aligning him more to the spirit of the Counter-Enlightenment than the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Epistemic Analysis, as I conceive of it, is concerned with the analysis of knowledge. The precincts of my concern have, however, been determined by the ...

Paul Ziche entwickelt in seinem Beitrag „Philosophische Psychologie jenseits von Psychologismus, Phänomenologie und deskriptiver Psychologie: Oswald Külpes experimentelle Untersuchung philosophischer Probleme“ Külpes Konzeption einer philosophischen Psychologie, die einerseits den philosophischen Ansprüchen seiner Zeit gerecht zu werden beansprucht, andererseits aber an der Leistungsfähigkeit experimentell psychologischer Arbeit festhält, dabei aber den Spagat versucht, einem reduktiven Psychologismus zu entgehen. Dabei konzentriert sich der Beitrag auf die Experimente Külpes hinsichtlich philosophischer Begriffe und Probleme einerseits und der Ermittlung der Külpischen Strategien zu einem umfassenden (...) philosophischen Projekt unter dem Titel „Realisierung“ andererseits. Somit scheint sich der Psychologismusstreit in der Person Külpes gleichsam aufzulösen, was Ziche zu dem Versuch veranlasst, die Situation der Zeit nicht als eine Kontroverse, sondern vielmehr als eine Interaktion zwischen den Lagern zu verstehen. Dabei kann Ziche in seiner Rekonstruktion der experimentellen Arbeit Külpes zeigen, dass dieser das Verhältnis von Psychologie und Philosophie im Ausgang seiner Experimente als ein wechselseitiges „Stützen“ versteht. Zudem gelinge es Külpe – so Ziche – die Kritiken, welche von beiden Lagern gegen seine Experimente ausgingen, positiv zu nutzen und als „komplexe Grundlagen aller Wissenschaften“ auszuweisen. (shrink)

Encyclopedia entry on the concepts of adaptation and adaptationism.

Since 1790, the term Naturwissenschaften occurs in the lecture lists of the University of Jena published in the Allgemeine Literatur‐Zeitung of Jena. Naturwissenschaften is used as a title for lectures previously listed under the headings of Philosophie or Naturgeschichte. The introduction of the concept of Naturwissenschaften is interesting for several reasons: Firstly, at that time it is not the usual label in this context, and one therefore has to ask whether it already implies the connotations that are associated with the (...) modern concept of Naturwissenschaften, i. e. science in the modern sense. Secondly, the lecture lists of the University of Jena give insight into the various changes in the established ordering scheme for academic lectures that lead to the introduction of the term Naturwissenschaften, thus contributing to a better understanding of both the history of this concept and of the development of the university faculties as we know them. A close look at the concept of Naturwissenschaften as it was used around 1800 may, thirdly, help to understand the use made of this concept in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of nature of this period. (shrink)

Addresses the nature of human religious belief in a series of vignettes and questions that explore humankind's relationship to the divine, from ancient times to the present, in the context of a taxi ride.

L’objectif de ce texte de Ricœur est de relier mémoire et narrativité en prenant appui sur l’exemple de l’architecture. « J’adopte, écrit le philosophe, la définition la plus générale de la mémoire – celle que l’on trouve dans un petit texte d’Aristote précisé-ment intitulé De la mémoire et de la réminiscence, et qui reprend d’ailleurs des nota-tions, en particulier de Platon dans le Théétète, concernant l’eikôn, l’image: « rendre présent de l’absence », « rendre présent de l’absent » ; ainsi (...) que la notation qui dis-tingue deux absents : l’absent comme simple irréel, qui serait donc l’imaginaire, et l’absent-qui-a-été, l’auparavant, l’antérieur, le proteron. Ce dernier est, pour Aristote, la marque distinctive de la mémoire quant à l’absence: il s’agit donc de rendre pré-sente l’absence qui-a-été. J’ai trouvé une grande complicité de pensée aux deux ex-trêmes de notre histoire de l’Occident, entre les Anciens − avec cette idée de l’absence rendue présente et de l’antériorité − et un propos de Heidegger, auquel je tiens beau-coup, quel que soit mon éloignement de son idée de l’être-pour-la-mort: la pensée qu’il faut dédoubler notre concept du passé en ce qu’il appelle le révolu, le vergangen, et ce-qui-a-été, le gewesen. Du même coup, on rend justice à la définition des Anciens, car l’auparavant-rendu-présent est doublement marqué grammaticalement: il n’est plus, mais il a été. Et il me semble que c’est la gloire de l’architecture de rendre pré-sent non pas ce qui n’est plus mais ce qui a été à travers ce qui n’est plus. ». (shrink)

Professor Honderich presents his account of consciousness boldly and informally, and his presentation merits a response in similar terms. I conceive of this response as simply the first move in a conversation, in the course of which misunderstandings might be removed and, just possibly, criticisms sharpened, and positions modified. I want to concentrate on two questions that his very interesting paper prompts me to ask. The first question is; what exactly is the thesis about consciousness that Professor Honderich is proposing? (...) The second question is; what are the main reasons he has for his proposal and are they persuasive? Although there are two questions, I shall mix considerations of them together in a way which I hope it is possible to follow. (shrink)

The author responds to the interpretations and criticisms of his thought as presented in the eleven essays in "Love and Society: Essays in the Ethics of Paul Ramsey ". He defends and refines his position on ethical theory, war and political ethics and medical ethics.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Wilhelm Dilthey, in his reflections on the nature of history as a “Geisteswissenschaft”—a science of “spirit” as opposed to “nature”—appealed “to Hegel’s notion of “spirit” (Geist). Attempting to extract Hegel’s concept from what he considered the unsupportable metaphysical system within which it had been developed, Dilthey, a neo-Kantian, gave it a broadly epistemological significance by correlating it with a distinct type of “understanding” (Verstehen) that was foreign to the Naturwissenschaften, concerned as they were (...) with explanation (Erklären) of phenomena in terms of laws of nature. Moreover, the paradigm of such an anti-naturalistic approach to history was not Hegel’s philosophical approach to history, but the strongly empiricist practice of the romantic “historical school”, found paradigmatically in the work of Leopold von Ranke. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we should recognize (...) a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda­ tions will be given special attention. (shrink)

I focus on one approach to understanding quotation, the identity theory; I delineate varieties thereof; and I cite some considerations for favoring a speech-act version. Along the way we shall see how the study of quotation can illuminate the general conflict between speech-act semantics and formal semantics, and we shall see fresh arguments for insisting that the mechanism of quotation is referentially indeterminate.