We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The paper discusses three major points:1. Concerning the matrix of intelligence, as a solution to the problem, Popper proposes a Darwinian model based on a hierarchical idea of causality (downward causality);2. Underlying hierarchical causality are systemic properties, whether they be holistic or reductionist;3. Intelligence is a hierarchical causality imposed by an external agent – i.e., whenever an external agent is able to impose its system characteristics upon the object of its impact
More...
The article is devoted to the problem, but still not lost its relevance theory about binominal nature of reasoning. The author has turned to a theoretical - historical reconstruction of the classic views of Thomas Hobbes who can be united under the name “two-names theory” and for which researchers differ in their conclusions. It's about the idea that language consists of names and that the two main term in a judgment - subject and predicate - act as names. This theory is shared by John. St. Mill, but is subject to critical analysis by G. Frege and B. Russell. At this historical and philosophical background are addressed three topics: the semantic role of the names, the dependence of their importance to the principles that govern the logical form of a valid proposition and the conclusions of T. Hobbes on definitions needed for the birth and development of theoretical knowledge.
More...
The paper discusses Leibniz’s project for a lingua universalis undertaken in his first period, 1666- 1679, when he was enthusiastic about the possibility of creating a universal language based on the “alphabet of human thought”, which he viewed as the “most important instrument for the perfection of the human mind”. The article analyzes the main issue confronted by the young Leibniz, i.e., the creation of a list of “primitive notions”, also discussed by Descartes in his letter to Mersenne from 20th November 1629. Leibniz’s response to the issues raised by Descartes is outlined together with how he resolved them by means of the theory of so-called “blind thought” (cogitatio caeca). The article concludes with a brief account of the influence these ideas in Leibniz’s work had on the 19th century pioneers of modern logic.
More...
Hilary Putnam, one of the most famous analytical philosophers of the 20th century, died in 2016. His intellectual legacy extends to many areas of analytic philosophy and, beyond philosophy, to mathematics and computer science. The present article is focused on his particular contribution to the philosophy of mind – the thesis of the multiple realizability of mental states. Multiple realizability is among the most influential arguments in the debate on the mind-body problem and on the relationship between psychology and “the more fundamental” natural sciences (neuroscience, physiology, biology, physics, etc.).The article presents a brief overview of multiple realizability. In the first part, the author introduces the concept, and in the second part presents a reconstruction of the main argument of multiple realizability, as well as the most frequent applications of the concept in the philosophy of mind. In the third part, some of the most influential critiques of multiple realizability are reviewed.
More...
The article aims to indicate the aspects of reality we measure daily with our own imagination, perception and reason. The hidden reality inside that reality appears within life’s emanations. What we think, what we do, what we experience, refer to a hidden reality unknown to us; yet this parabolic reality is active everywhere and always. The main way to capture this new extra-dimensional world is through metaphor or, more generally, through tropology in the arts. We use tropes to reach the hidden levels of our reality, because they are infinite and produce paradoxes that lead to parabolic reality.
More...
The article argues that theorizing about the origin of the universe is imbued with metaphorical language. Only such a language can produce intuitive representations about some cosmic “cause” of the birth of the universe. Nor can it be otherwise, when one strives to say something about the genesis of everything – whether the theorizing be couched in theological or in purely scientific concepts.
More...
The possible has become a distinct construction in philosophical theories, but this would imply that it should be amenable to structuring in certain ways and figures, which could be used as instruments in theoretical construction. The article offers several models of the possible, built with their original and leading metaphoricity. Starting from Aristotle’s model of the possible, it is interesting to see how this view of “the possibility of a thing” leads to “the concept of force” in Hobbes and Leibniz. The construction of the possible is especially interesting in that it is like a field, an area, where multiple things have their positions. Here, of course, the leading viewpoint is the construction of space proposed by Hobbes, but no less interesting is Leibniz’s critique of absolute empty space as a “sensorium”, Newton’s amazing metaphor. Introduced as a field, a universum, the possible requires to be filled up, requires its own “spectrum”, “degrees” (in Kant’s term), with steps taken and inner construction works done to intensify and organize it, and attains Leibniz’s famous concept of “the best of all possible words”. Finally, the article structures the unchained connections and correlatives in the triad of “possibility-actuality-necessity”, with its models and metaphoricity in Hobbes, Leibniz and Kant, and offers a description of the three modal areas in one common and absolute relation.
More...
Review of: İslam Düşüncesi Üzerine Söyleşiler Ve Konuşmalar “Filler Ve Körler”, Prof. Dr. Ekrem Demirli, Sufi Yayınları, İstanbul, 2016, 319 S.
More...
The article offers an analysis, in parallel, of the philosophies of responsibility of Emmanuel Levinas and Hans Jonas, based on an overview of their most representative theses. These include, in the case of Levinas, ethics as a “first philosophy”; the hypostasis of the Self and Being for the Other as a path to the transcendent; responsibility and ethical transcendence; the transition from responsibility to justice. In the case of Jonas, responsibility and metaphysics as guardians of justifications; the role of knowledge and imagination; the specificity of the subject of responsibility, who continues and ensures the work of the “silent God”.
More...
What is significant for Muslim tradition, what colors it and in many ways predisposes it, is its immersion in tawheed, God’s Oneness (Waḥdah), a concept so powerful and integrative that it adjusts and poses in the world all the pieces of Muslim culture and civilization. In fact, everything else stems from exactly that principle or represents a reflection of that principle, since it is that principle that represents the main flow of the overall Muslim walk through history. Contrary to that, in the last two centuries we have an enthusiastic, dominant Western culture whose essential thread is disintegrativeness, and which, in itself, has nothing recognizable or strong that, in relation to that element, other constituent elements could adjust or pose themselves within such a worldview. It is exactly the absence of such a principle that makes this civilization specific and different in relation to all the others that have preceded it. Since it lacks one such integrative, constituting element, the Western civilization crumbles through impeccable multiplication of information which, in the end, given the fact that this information itself represents little deities, and halve man, taking from it what is the most valuable, and that is a genuine, incorruptible Divine spirit within itself that such a soul, tired and exhausted by the overall horizontal prostration, is not even aware of.
More...
This essay presents a cognitive stylistic analysis of Philip Larkin’s “Talking in Bed,” highlighting the linguistic functions that aid the reader in the meaning-making process. In the poem, the realization of truth dawns upon the persona in the final moments of a lingering introspection, shedding light on the reason for which he is lying in bed beside his partner, profoundly incapable of uttering a word. It seems to him, in the end, that truth is indispensable to human relationships. This essay represents a thorough attempt at textually analyzing the poem, broaching snippets of knowledge from multiple fields – philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and literature – all in an attempt to present a comprehensive interpretation of Larkin’s poem. The aim is to further evidence the speaker’s realization, that the articulation of truth is a vital element in a healthy relationship, and to provide an understanding of the stylistic technique most utilized by Larkin, namely, the linguistic deviation he usually deploys by the end of his poems. I argue that the ambiguity he instills at the end of this poem makes for a cognitive attempt at empathically communicating to the reader the sense of meaninglessness the persona suffers from throughout the poem.
More...
The Theætetus and the Sophist present in succession two “battles” regarding ousia. In so doing, ousia is placed at the heart of what is essential to both dialogues : in fact, ousia interconnects with the conditions of possibility, both physical and metaphysical, of logos and epistèmè. However, each dialogue brings differing conceptions of discourse and science into play, and both articulate a different train of thought regarding being. Ousia appears differently in the two dialogues and it is not the same thing as the notion of ousia, usually considered to be truly Platonic, presented in the central books of the Republic, which neither the Socrates of the Theætetus nor the Stranger of the Sophist put forward. Both present ways out of the battles, each has its own middle course. Against the thesis of the non‑immutability of ousia, the Theætetus establishes that there is not only motion. And, unlike the doctrine that reduces ousia to Forms excluding all motion, the Sophist shows that while there is not only motion, there is not only rest either. Such different orientations in the treatment of ousia, just below and just above doctrinal Platonism as it were, adjust to distinctions in the epistemological stakes : even if the Theætetus emphasizes that science proceeds from an activity of the soul bringing together “commons”, it is not yet a question, as it will be the following day, of systematically getting epistèmè to intellectually grasp a set of eidetic relationships, nor of making logos itself the elaboration of relationships. One needs to have left the field where those in favour of motion are challenged on their own ground, and in an albeit transformed field marked out by the partisans of eide which is not the field hierarchical metaphysics either, it will become possible to analyse the discourse itself as a relational framework that is consistent with the framework of ousia.
More...
This paper deals with the Aristotelian notion of topical matter (ὕλη τοπική) mentioned in a few passages of the Metaphysics and ascribed to the celestial bodies. Taking into account the metaphysical context of each occurrence of this notion, it tries to determine for what metaphysical use this notion has been developed and what impact it has on the ousiological analysis of the celestial substances. It suggests that the notion of topical matter, although intended to provide a convenient tool that makes possible a metaphysical, i.e. universal study of sensible substances, by allowing to subordinate every sensible substance to similar principles, in fact prevents celestial substances from being defined as ordinary hylomorphic compounds and leads to conceive them as a particular type of substances.
More...
Thanks to the studies carried out during the last forty years, which have contributed significantly to the elimination of certain inveterate historiographical prejudices, it is now possible to state with complete confidence that Boethius is one of the greatest philosophers of the entire Occidental tradition. Born at a turning point in the cultural and political history of the West, he is not only the well‑known author of the Consolatio philosophiae, but also a leading expert on the quadrivium and, in particular, the trivium.
More...
The idea that defines quiddity – independence or neutrality in relation to the modalities of existence – allows Avicenna not only to speak of a duality in the being of existing things, but also to use apparently logically incompatible notions to qualify quiddity: that of reality (or truth), on the one hand, and that of possibility (or falsity), on the other. The very conception of the independence of quiddity – which lets us consider quiddity as a separate element in the existing thing – can be recognized in the resolution of the doubt that concludes the Maqāla fī l‑tawḥīd of Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī (d. 974). A comparison between Avicenna’s discussion of quiddity in his Metaphysics and the discourse of Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī confirms the idea that this Christian philosopher and theologian who was active in Baghdad in the tenth century could have played an important formative role in the ontology of the great Persian philosopher.
More...
The present paper aims at presenting Averroes’ doctrine of act and potency in the framework of his general conception of metaphysics as a science. By tracing the origins of his doctrine back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, it shows that Averroes conceives act and potency as concomitant attributes of being qua being and as terms πρὸς ἕν and ἀφ’ ἑνός. According to this reading, the study of these two notions, considered as such, constitutes an essential step in Averroes’ metaphysical project, whose ultimate goal is to account for the essence of the first of all forms: God.
More...
In his critic of the doctrine of Bardaisan († 222), Ephrem the Syrian († 373) devotes a lot of space to reflection on the meaning of the terms ītutā and ītyā (plural ītyē) which, as he denounces, are used inaccurately by his opponent. These Syriac terms can be translated by “being” or “essence”, but also by “substance”. This observation leads us to propose the comparison with the Greek term οὐσία, taking into account many difficulties raised by its uses in theological discourse. The article is devoted to the analysis of the uses of the terms ītutā and ītyā ‑ by Ephrem and by Bardaisan ‑ in their different ways of describing the divine essence. This comparison reveals the peculiarities of the two systems of thought and also their connections with the Greek philosophical doctrines.
More...
Once theatre aims at children, who are the citizens and decision makers of the future, it can influence the course of society through the values and worldviews that it promotes. The exceptional capacity of this medium in engaging the audience, along with children’s receptiveness, necessitates a meticulous study of the ideologies embedded in plays. This study unravels how these ideological factors can hamper the theatre’s main purpose which is to encourage the audience to form individual fantasies. Accordingly, Žižek’s theories are drawn upon for their hints on ideology, fantasy, reality, and subjectivity. Taking his psychoanalytic views into account, four Persian plays are examined to determine what ideologies underlie these plays’ motifs and instructions, as well as what may justify their presence in plays. On close inspection, it becomes evident that these plays are loaded with conscious manipulative ideologies which are intended to train homogeneous social members rather than present objective glimpses of real life.
More...