Metaphysicians go on busily doing metaphysical thinking all over the world, and apparently with a modicum of self-assurance that they are not talking nonsense or pursuing an illusory will-of-the-wisp. Yet other philosophers of empirical, analytical, phenomenological, or other turns of mind seem to have more and more difficulty in understanding just how metaphysicians give meaning and positive content to the vast abstract concepts by which they seek to describe and explain the entire spectrum of reality extending far beyond present or (...) perhaps even possible human experience. Since there is no way of gaining direct insight into dimensions of reality beyond human experience, and since in order to be applied to the whole range of reality these concepts must abstract from purely human experience, it is hard for them to see—and it is a serious problem in itself—how these all-embracing terms can be anything more than empty, formal, verbal symbols or conceptual constructions, with no positive existential content describing reality itself across its whole spectrum. Even the metaphysician himself, though when left alone he may have a sure sense of how to do metaphysical thinking fruitfully, when questioned to explain and justify what he is doing, and is convinced is worth doing, can feel embarrassed and struck dumb as to how to articulate and justify the principles behind the procedures he is following. (shrink)

W. Norris Clarke's metaphysics of the universe as a journey rests on six major positions: the unrestricted dynamism of the mind, the primacy of the act of existence, the participation structure of reality, and the person, considered as both the starting point of philosophy and the source of the categories needed for a flexible contemporary metaphysics. Reflecting on his conscious life and the universe around him, the finite person mounts by a two-fold path to its Infinite source, who, though immutable (...) in His natural being, is mutable in the intentional being of His personal knowledge and love. The personal God is the efficient cause from whom the universe comes and the final cause to whom it returns.Less optimistic than Norris Clarke, John Caputo wonders about his metaphysics of the person. In a hermeneutical interpretation of the human face, the person through whom Being "sounds" discloses an ambiguous Being that both reveals and conceals itself. Far from grounding a casual ascent to God, hermeneutical phenomenology allows us no more than the right to interpret the world and its transcendent source through our own free decision.Although impressed by Norris Clarke's attempt to introduce mutability into God, Lewis Ford still finds Clarke's Thomistic God unacceptable. As a Whiteheadian, he proposes in place of Thomas' God, whose perfection consists in static unity, a God whose perfection consists in a never-ending process of unification. John Smith argues against the traditional dichotomy made between the ontological and cosmological arguments. Rather than opposed methods of proving God's existence, they should be taken as complementary journeys to the divine presence which discloses itself, although diversely, in the soul and in the world. There are parallels between Smith's historical study of two arguments and Clarke's two-fold path to God. Yet Smith is critical of Thomas' cosmological journey to God and does not share Clarke's confidence in its validity. Significant studies in their own right, the three essays as a group challenge Clarke's whole metaphysics of the universe as a journey. Meeting the challenge, Clarke clarifies and refines his own thought.An account of Clarke's philosophy by Gerald A. McCool, S.J. preceds this unified and stimulating philosophical discussion. (shrink)

In this paper, I contest increasingly common "realist" interpretations of Hegel's theory of "the concept" (der Begriff), offering instead a "isomorphic" conception of the relation of concepts and the world. The isomorphism recommended, however, is metaphysically deflationary, for I show how Hegel's conception of conceptual form creates a conceptually internal standard for the adequacy of concepts. No "sideways-on" theory of the concept-world relationship is envisioned. This standard of conceptual adequacy is also "graduated" in that it allows for a lack of (...) fit between concept and world. The possibility for a "maximally isomorphic" fit between concept and world obtains through the teleological realization of concepts, which marks especially the "artificial" world of human culture (law, art, religion, etc.). Some of the most seemingly exaggerated claims Hegel makes about the concept, I contend, can be understood when we consider the significance Hegel ascribes to human making, which is provided for in his conceptual theory. But my framework provides an interpretive key for the way Hegel sees concepts imperfectly realized in the natural world as well. (shrink)

This essay defends a reading of Hegel as a metametaphysical antirealist. Metametaphysical antirealism is a denial that metaphysics has as its subject matter answers to theoretical questions about the mind-independent world. Hence, on this view, metaphysical questions are not, in principle, knowledge transcendent. I hold that Hegel presents a version of metametaphysical antirealism in the Science of Logic because he pursues his project by suspending reference to all supposed objects of metaphysical theory as practiced before him. Hegel introduces reference in (...) his theory only by the self-reference of thought to itself in the Doctrine of the Concept. I motivate the relevance of Hegel’s approach to metaphysics by comparing it to Kit Fine’s (2017) concept of “naïve metaphysics.” I argue that Hegel’s theory results from a comprehensively naïve metaphysics. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that the expression “an sich selbst” (“in itself”) in Kant combines with terms to form complex nouns such as “thing in itself” and “end in itself.” I argue that the basic use of “an sich selbst” in Kant’s German is as a sentence adverb, which has the role of modifying subject-predicate combinations, rather than either subject or predicate on their own. Expressions of the form “S is P an sich selbst” mean roughly that S is P (...) ‘in its own right’ or without some further ‘condition’. Accordingly, “an sich selbst” should not be treated as forming complex nouns. This analysis has significant consequences for the interpretation of “thing in itself” in particular, for it implies that the latter is not a complete nominal expression. Instead, one must treat ‘an sich selbst’ as expressing how some S is a ‘thing’, looking to the wider sentential context. I conclude with a brief account of the new significance granted to the concept of a ‘thing’ (Ding) according to the present interpretation. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher. He is a central figure of modern philosophy, and set the terms by which all subsequent thinkers have had to grapple. He argued that human perception structures natural laws, and that reason is the source of morality. His thought continues to hold a major influence in contemporary thought, especially in fields such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.

Hegel often says that his "logic" is meant to replace metaphysics. Since Hegel's Science of Logic is so different from a standard logic, most commentators have not treated the portion of that work devoted to logical forms as relevant to this claim. This paper argues that Hegel's discussion of logical forms of judgment and syllogism is meant to be the foundation of his reformation of metaphysics. Implicit in Hegel's discussion of the logical forms is the view that the metaphysical concepts (...) discussed in Books I and II of the Science of Logic supervene on the role of subject and predicate terms in the logical forms discussed in Book III. Hegel thus has an explanation for the nature and significance of metaphysical concepts that resembles Kant's "metaphysical deduction," according to which the categories can be derived from the table of judgments. Though Hegel's metaphysics is often supposed to be influenced by Kant, prevailing interpretations do not show how Hegel's fine-grained treatment of logical forms is relevant to his critical view of metaphysics. The present interpretation provides a model for Hegel's explanation of metaphysical concepts, as well as a new picture of the structure of his Science of Logic that emphasizes the priority of its Doctrine of the Concept. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 1026-1038, December 2021.

In this paper, missing attribute values in incomplete data sets have three possible interpretations: lost values, attribute-concept values and ‘do not care’ conditions. For rule induction, we use characteristic sets and generalized maximal consistent blocks. Therefore, we apply six different approaches for data mining. As follows from our previous experiments, where we used an error rate evaluated by ten-fold cross validation as the main criterion of quality, no approach is universally the best. Thus, we decided to compare our six approaches (...) using complexity of rule sets induced from incomplete data sets. We show that the smallest rule sets are induced from incomplete data sets with attribute-concept values, while the most complicated rule sets are induced from data sets with lost values. The choice between interpretations of missing attribute values is more important than the choice between characteristic sets and generalized maximal consistent blocks. (shrink)

In An Ethic of Trust: Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will to Live, W. Royce Clark uses the work of theologians and philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls to create an inclusive ethic in which both the religious and non-religious will have equal freedom and stability.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

While the idea of philosophy as conceptual analysis has attracted many adherents and undergone a number of variations, in general it suffers from an authority problem with two dimensions. First, it is unclear why the analysis of a concept should have objective authority: why explicating what we mean should express how things are. Second, conceptual analysis seems to lack intersubjective authority: why philosophical analysis should apply to more than a parochial group of individuals. I argue that Hegel’s conception of social (...) ontology, focused on his concept of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), helps to explain how concepts (and their explication) have both objective and intersubjective authority in the social domain. Hegel claims that modern institutions are the product of self-conscious purposes, so that they are conceptually constituted. Concepts do not just represent these objects and so depend on a contingent relation to them. As many contemporary social ontologists agree, this means that our concepts of these institutions are uniquely epistemically “transparent.” They have objective authority. Concepts have intersubjective authority in the modern world as well, according to Hegel. However, I show that this feature of Hegel’s account does not rely on the solution to a philosophical problem. Rather, since the concepts of modern ethical life are “essentially contested,” their content depends on the practical and political agreement of modern subjects. This means that concepts can only have objective authority if some prior intersubjective agreement has been reached. The role of philosophy as conceptual analysis is thus importantly dependent on political developments. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Aesthetic Appreciating Nature Skepticism Regarding Aesthetic Nature Aesthetics and the Concept of Nature.

When the "human sciences" in the West followed the physical sciences in the 18th and 19th centuries with new measurements, methods, and language, the "metaphysics of infinity" lost its credibility. The response of Western religions was to retrench in a stronger authoritarianism, especially by the last half of the 19th century. While the new human sciences were being extended even to study the history and philosophy of religions, those religions themselves placed more emphasis on their understanding of the Absolute or (...) Unquestionable. That split became a burden both to those who were religious and to those who were not. Here, W. Royce Clark argues that humanity's survival may depend on the development of a universal or inclusive ethic in which religions move beyond their Absolutes. Clark poses the sharp challenge: Are religious communities ready to abandon the foundations that until now they have insisted were the only adequate foundation for ethics? (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe close connection often cited between Hegel and Wilfrid Sellars is not only said to lie in their common negative challenges to the ‘framework of givenness,’ but also in the positive less...

W. Clark Gilpin - The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Vol. 3 of Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 549-550 Book Review The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, editors. The Millenarian Turn: (...) Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Vol. 3 of Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Pp. xxv + 190. Cloth, $85.00. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a significant body of scholars called attention to.. (shrink)

The first English translation of Hegel's important lectures on logic.