"Descartes is rightly considered the father of modern philosophy" - Schopenhauer "The effect of this man on his age and the new age cannot be imagined broadly enough... René Descartes is indeed the true beginner of modern philosophy, insofar as it makes thinking the principle. "- Hegel "Descartes was the first to bring to light the idea of a transcendental science, which is to contain a system of knowledge of the conditions of possibility of all knowledge." - Kant A new (...) 2023 translation directly from the original manuscripts into English of Descartes' famous work "Rules for the Direction of the Mind" (Règles pour la direction de l'esprit). This edition contains a new introduction and afterword from the translator, as well as a timeline of Descartes' life and summaries of each of his works. Here, Descartes lays out a method for approaching problems and seeking knowledge. The importance of this work lies in the fact that it established the scientific method as a way of investigating the world, and had a significant influence on the development of modern science. This work is one of the foundational texts of Western Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thomas Reid on MemoryRené van Woudenbergthis paper is a discussion of Thomas Reid’s views on memory as an “avenue of knowledge.” Part 1 deals with various remarks Reid makes concerning memory, knowledge, and belief which he holds to be “obvious and certain.” Part contains a more detailed discussion of Reid’s thesis that “memory is unaccountable.” Part 3 inquires how Reid’s critique of the Way of Ideas fits with his (...) own views on memory.Reid’s dealings with memory are part of his broader inquiries into the intellectual faculties of the human mind. In the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man Reid discusses not only memory, but other avenues of knowledge as well, such as perception and reasoning. In these essays Reid is doing straight epistemology. This is not to deny that Reid addresses other topics as well. In the essay on memory, for instance, Reid criticizes John Locke’s account of personal identity. But even then his discussion focusses on epistemological matters; one of his conclusions, for example, is that Locke confounded personal identity with the evidence we have of our personal identity, a thesis, Reid points out, that is bristled with absurd consequences. Although, then, Reid’s views on memory are related with his views on personal identity, I will abstain from a discussion of the latter. His epistemology of memory, I think, warrants attention in its own right.11. memory, knowledge, and beliefI.IIn Essay III of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man [1784],2 entitled “Of Memory,” Reid writes: [End Page 117]It is by memory that we have an immediate knowledge of things past. The senses give us information of things only as they exist in the present moment.(EIP 339)Memory, says Reid, gives us knowledge of things past, whereas sense perception gives us knowledge of things present. Reid takes it to be “obvious and certain” (as the title of the first chapter of Essay III indicates) that “The object of memory, or thing remembered, must be something that is past; as the object of perception... must be something which is present. What now is, cannot be an object of memory; neither can that which is past and gone be an object of perception” (EIP 340).These remarks may, however, occasion some doubts. One way of explaining Reid’s remark that the object of memory is something that is past, is that whenever someone, S, remembers something, viz., that p, p will be a proposition about something that is past.3 This explanation gives the right result for such propositions as there was snowfall in late August, and she once visited Finland4 But, as Norman Malcolm has observed, it does not always give the right results.5 For, he says, there are cases of S remembering that p, where p is not a proposition about the past. Let p be his telephone number is 2 79-289-59 75, or his car is in the garage. What is remembered, in these cases, is a proposition about something that is not past, but present (or: about what is presently the case). It is, so it seems at least, possible for S to remember the present.It even seems possible for S “to remember the future” (something Aristotle deemed impossible).6 S can remember, for instance, that the game starts at 8:00 P.M., or that there will be elections next year.No doubt some will find these suggestions preposterous. Still, we say such things as “I remember my telephone number” and “I remember the game starts at 8:00 P.M.” Someone who balks at the suggestion that we can remember present and even future things, therefore, has to find a way of dealing with these quite common modes of saying. One way would be to argue that these manners of saying are incorrect, another that they are elliptical. Since the first thesis is unconvincing (it is, after all, correct, i.e., correct English to use the expressions under consideration), we are left with the second, viz., that these modes of saying are elliptical. Can this be made acceptable? Let us see.Might... (shrink)

Les problèmes de la vie commençante et ceux de la vie finissante déterminent deux secteurs importants de la bioéthique. La démarche éthique de toutes les personnes concernées par ces problèmes commence par une information sérieuse sur les données scientifiques, biologiques ou médicales, sur les situations des personnes et leurs implications anthropologiques et sociales. Elle requiert ensuite, mais toujours en lien étroit avec ces approches technologiques, l'analyse, principalement philosophique, des concepts de personne et de corps humain, de dignité et de respect (...) de la personne, analyse attentive à la fragilité de l'être humain et aux conflits qui peuvent surgir entre valeurs humaines et procédures médicales comme entre les situations individuelles et les impératifs de la loi. A la « morale commune », élaborée par le discours philosophique, la théologie ajoute son intuition propre de la gratuité de l'amour et de la responsabilité d'autrui, puisée dans la révélation de l'Alliance et de l'identification du Christ aux personnes les plus fragiles et aux conditions de plus grande précarité. Elle n'entre pas en concurrence avec la morale commune ni ne se substitue à la décision éthique qui incombe à chacun, mais elle apporte aux croyants des motivations plus pressantes et un regard plus ouvert et plus compréhensif sur le prochain et sur l'humain.Bioethics can be divided into two sectors, problems in the first stages of life and problems near the end of life . The etbical steps taken by the people concerned by these problems begin with a serious study of the scientific, biological, or medical facts. They must also consider the situation of the individual's case as well as the anthropological and social implications, The ethical steps to be taken require, but always in close connection with technological approaches, the analysis of the concepts of person and the human body. Tbey also require respect for the dignity elabored by pbilosopbical discourse, theology adds its own intuition on the gratuitousness of love and responsibility for the other. Its sources are found in the revelation of the Covenant and the identification of Christ with the weakest persons and to conditions that are the most precarious. Theology does not enter into competition witb common morality, nor put itself in the place of the ethical decision that eacb person must make. Rather it brings strong motives to believers and a more open and more understanding look at one’s neighbour and humanness. (shrink)

So simple and imperfect as it may appear this book has made use of knowledge on invention and discovery accumu lated during a lifetime. Those persons who would be tempted to emphasize only its imperfections should read the correspondence exchanged between Cantor and Dedekind at the end of the nineteenth century; they would then realize how difficult it was, even for an outstanding man, the creator of the set theory, to propose impeccable results in a completely new field. The field (...) I have chosen here is plausibility. I have proposed an intuitive, some would say a naive, presentation as I want to reach as large an audience as possible and because I personally believe that it is easier to axiomatize a mathematical theory precisely than to dis cover it and enunciate its key theorems. Professor Polya said: "The truly creative mathematician is a good guesser first and a good prover afterward. " For centuries a formalized generalized logic was found necessary and many attempts have been made to build it. vi Preface Mine is based on plausibility which covers with precision a wider field than probability and makes the formalization of analogy and generalization possible. As Laplace said: "Even in the mathematical sciences, our principal instru ments to discover the truth are induction and analogy. "* The examples of application I have chosen are not des cribed in detail. (shrink)

The identification of plausible epistemic approaches in science as well as the social problem definitions with which scientists implicitly work is essential for the quality of a deliberative public policy. While responding to the Nanofutures project, I will reflect on the essential elements of such a policy.

Principles of Philosophy. Author’s Letter to the Translator (Preface).

As a significant extension of our previous calculus of logical differentials and moving logic, we propose here a mathematical diagram for specifying the emergence of novelty, through the construction of some “differentials” related to cohomological computations. Later we intend to examine how to use these “differentials” in the analysis of anticipation or evolution schemes. This proposal is given as a consequence of our comments on the Ehresmann–Vanbremeersch’s work on memory evolutive systems, from the two points of view which are characterization (...) of life and use of categorical modeling. It would not be possible to conceive of the “differentials” outside the frame of a MES. Furthermore, we hope that this diagram will be useful to exhibit the “emergence of sense” in discourses, and this idea is supported here by a brief examination of how a discourse could be seen as a living system. (shrink)

Hydrogen is troublesome in any periodic table classification. This being so it may as well be placed in a position that confers desirable attributes to the arrangement of the elements, while notionally recognising its lineage to the group 1 alkali metals and the group 17 halogens. Since the noble gases bridge the halogens and the alkali metals, and hydrogen encompasses the transition from the alkali metals to the halogens, there is more to the idea of hydrogen over helium. (Meyer 1870, (...) p. 357) (Proust 1927, p. 559). (shrink)

According to the standard view on the issue, the habit of marking questions with a particular typographical sign in Greek and Latin script does not arise prior to the eighth or ninth century. This period is generally credited with the ‘invention’ of the question mark (excepting Syriac evidence, which points to the fifth and sixth centuries). The purpose of the present article is to correct this view. It argues that the first indication for the use of a typographical sign that (...) marks questions can actually be detected no later than during the reign of Emperor Hadrian (a.d. 117–38), that is, more than half a millennium before the traditional date of the invention. The chief witness is Nicanor of Alexandria, who does not seem to have used question marks himself, but criticizes the misappropriation of another punctuation mark to that purpose. He thus indirectly testifies to the existence of question marks. Comparable traces can also be found later in the exegetical works of some Christian commentators. (shrink)

Quels sont les liens entre phantasia et perception? Aristote a bien découvert en la première, rattachée à la seconde, la faculté de se représenter en l'absence. Il y a certes des cas de représentation en présence imputés à la phantasia, mais cet emploi du terme, qui renvoie à des situations infraperceptives, est plutôt résiduel. Ces cas pathologiques sont pour Aristote assez peu dignes d'intérêt. On ne peut dire que la phantasia « interprète ». What is the link between phantasia and (...) perception? Although it depends on aisthêsis itself, Aristotle calls phantasia a faculty of representing in absentia, of which he is the discoverer. Of course, some cases of representation in praesentia are attributed to phantasia, but this use of the word is not central; these cases are cases below perception proper, and pathology of perception is of minor interest in Aristotle's mind. Phantasia is not an interpretation of the data. (shrink)

'Those most capable of being moved by passion are those capable of tasting the most sweetness in this life.'Descartes is most often thought of as introducing a total separation of mind and body. But he also acknowledged the intimate union between them, and in his later writings he concentrated on understanding this aspect of human nature. The Passions of the Soul is his greatest contribution to this debate. It contains a profound discussion of the workings of the emotions and of (...) their place in human life - a subject that increasingly engages the interest of philosophers and intellectual and cultural historians. It also sets out a view of ethics that has been seen as a radical reorientation of moral philosophy.This volume also includes both sides of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, one of Descartes's keenest disciples and shrewdest critics, which played a crucial role in the genesis of The Passions, as well as the first part of The Principles of Philosophy, which sets out the key positions of Descartes's philosophical system.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

This paper presents a dynamic perspective in which the psychological contract is treated as a structured set of beliefs that are held by individual employees about the mutual obligations of the organization as employer and themselves as employees. This set of beliefs is assumed to produce a state of commitment to the organization in which the employee is willing to accept work roles and tasks offered by the organization, and to carry them out in accordance with certain standards. The dynamic (...) model that is presented can help to explain why the commitment of employees remains relatively stable over time, and why it may suddenly decrease or increase under circumstances that are perceived as critical by the employee. The model assumes that the employee's evaluation of the organization's behavior changes over time, but that the structure of the psychological contract and the associated commitment change only when certain limits are overstepped. This perspective on changes in the psychological contract transforms the concept into a powerful construct that may lead to fruitful research on the dynamics of organization-employee relationships. Implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

How is it possible for a picture to depict a picture? Proponents of perceptual theories of depiction, who argue that the content of a picture is determined, in part, by the visual state it elicits in suitable viewers, that is, by a state of seeing-in, have given a plausible answer to this question. They say that a picture depicts a picture, in part, because, under appropriate conditions of observation, a suitable viewer will be able to see a picture in the (...) picture. In this article, I first argue that this answer is in conflict with the way in which some of the most influential perceptual theories of depiction – Robert Hopkins's version of the experienced resemblance theory and Dominic Lopes's version of the recognition theory – construe seeing-in. I then formulate a version of the recognition theory that avoids this conflict and show how it can explain the depiction of pictures. (shrink)

The hexagonal structure for ‘the geometry of logical opposition’, as coming from Aristoteles–Apuleius square and Sesmat–Blanché hexagon, is presented here in connection with, on the one hand, geometrical ideas on duality on triangles (construction of ‘companion’), and on the other hand, constructions of tripartitions, emphasizing that these are exactly cases of borromean objects. Then a new case of a logical interest introduced here is the double magic tripartition determining the semi-ring ${\mathcal{B}_3}$ and this is a borromean object again, in the (...) heart of the semi-ring ${{\rm Mat}_{3}(\mathbb{B}_{\rm Alg})}$ . With this example we understand better in which sense the borromean object is a deepening of the hexagon, in a logical vein. Then, and this is our main objective here, the Post-Mal’cev full iterative algebra ${\mathbb{P}_4 = \mathbb{P}(\mathbb{F}_4)}$ of functions of all arities on ${\mathbb{F}_4}$ , is proved to be a borromean object, generated by three copies of ${\mathbb{P}_2}$ in it. This fact is induced by a hexagonal structure of the field ${\mathbb{F}_4}$ . This hexagonal structure is seen as precisely a geometrical addition to standard boolean logic, exhibiting ${\mathbb{F}_4}$ as a ‘boolean manifold’. This structure allows to analyze also ${\mathbb{P}_4}$ as generated by adding to a boolean set of logical functions a very special modality, namely the Frobenius squaring map in ${\mathbb{F}_4}$ . It is related to the splitting of paradoxes, to modified logic, to specular logic. It is a setting for a theory of paradoxical sentences, seen as computations of movements on the bi-hexagonal link among the 12 classical logics on a set of 4 values. (shrink)

In his classic text, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that the structural principles of a society are just when they issue from a procedure that is fair. One crucial feature that makes the procedure fair is that the persons who will be subjected to these principles choose them after they have deliberated together in a condition marked by a certain balance of knowledge and ignorance. In particular, these people know enough to consider principles that are workable, yet converse (...) behind a “veil of ignorance,” unable to predict what their place in society will be and hence discouraged from slanting the principles toward any preferential interests. My paper questions whether this attempt to ensure the disinterestedness of the conversation of justice is feasible. I worry that when we approach this question practically, we discover that the education that furnishes us with the knowledge necessary to choose viable principles must at the same time preclude genuine ignorance about our social position and interests. As an alternative, I suggest that we convene the conversation of justice behind a “veil of existence.” In this condition, people possess knowledge about how their society works and even about their places in it; however, this knowledge does not foster preferential interests because all interests are subjected to the question of their existential meaning. As Jean-Paul Sartre explains in his essay, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” for our interests to be truly meaningful, they must be affirmed as free responses to our thrownness into existence. Yet how do we find the wherewithal to make such responsible choices rather than lapse into paralysis before their essentially arbitrary differences? My positive thesis is that we may do so by acknowledging how all of us in this existential predicament critically and mutually provoke each to commit oneself to depart from the others in specific ways. This process of provocation is thus educational. It broaches a conception of non-instrumental, non-mimetic, liberal study, one which I try to enact in a writing that employs direct address, regular returns to questions that put discourse at a loss, and expanding webs of association. In this manner, I hope to demonstrate that liberal study may deepen our appreciation of our communal nature, our camaraderie, and thus motivate us to participate unselfishly in the conversation of justice. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

The concept of the gesture is explored in relationship with its moral significance rather than, for example, its aesthetic significance. It is argued that the concept can be used in order to make clear how morality relates to the body. This is not to suggest that gestures can be neatly defined. On the contrary, they always seem to be ambivalent and somewhat nebular. However, it will be shown that some of their significance might well be related to popular concepts such (...) as ‘transparency’, ‘authenticity’, ‘integrity’ and ‘responsibility’. In order to make this clear, the role of some particular gestures in politics and organizational life, most notably ‘apology’ and ‘trust’, will be discussed throughout the paper. (shrink)

I now come to an idea that is important to me and that I address in an article from 1957 entitled “Où va le roman?” Both André Malraux and Jean-Paul Sartre made use of the novel early in their careers before abandoning it. Is this development inevitable? Against the naturalist novel, which eliminates the subject in favor of the object, we see the rise, after the Second World War, of the metaphysical novel, which will, on the contrary, gradually destroy its (...) object. I contend in this article that Malraux’s and Sartre’s transcendence of the novel—in Malraux’s The Voices of Silence (Les Voix du silence) and in Sartre’s engagement with an overly rational subjectivism—neither can nor should become a rallying cry. I .. (shrink)

FRANCK LESSAY. — Avant de dialoguer ensemble autour de la thématique des nouvelles guerres de religion, il nous apparaît important de nous attarder sur la notion même de « guerre de religion », de nous interroger sur son degré de pertinence dans le monde contemporain et sur l’évolution qu’elle peut avoir subie historiquement. Comment les guerres de religion de..