CEEOL - Browse Subjects Result

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.

Historia filozofii jako historia problemu poznania – propozycja Ernsta Cassirera

Author(s): Przemysław Parszutowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54/2009

The goal of the essay History of Philosophy as History of the Problem of Knowledge is to show how the history of philosophy was practiced in neokantian School in Marburg (notably by Ernst Cassirer). Their method was based on the historical and genetic analysis. As a result of that analysis every particular philosophical conception, both historical and contemporary, is discussed as articulation and reiterated attempt to solve some of the perennial philosophical problems. The purpose of such reformulation, however, is not another description of particular epistemological standpoints. Is seeks – according to chief principals of the critical philosophy – the ultimate base for the possibility of their variety and thus apportion of the main function of the evolution of the epistemological issues.

More...

Kartezjańskie motywy filozofii oczywistości. Analiza hasła „Evidence” Wielkiej Encyklopedii Francuskiej autorstwa François Quesnaya

Author(s): Wojciech Starzyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 53/2008

The philosophical work of the one of the pioneers of modern economy, François Quesnay (1694–1774), is poorly known and rarely commented. Initially, he raises the philosophical questions on the margin of his medical theory, then, in the fifties he joins the circle of the encyclopedists, and beside of his economical contributions, he writes for Encyclopedy some philosophical texts, one of them seems to be more developed, the article on evidence. In my analysis, I propose to compare it with the thought of the founder of the modern philosophy of evidence recognized as criterion of truth, namely Descartes. Inspite of the severe critique of the doctrine of innate ideas or the cogito as result of methodical doubt, the physiocrate founds his philosophical project on a sensual subjectivity which experiences the initial evidence. Quesnay pursues his philosophical way marked by evidence, with the epistemological analyses on attention, memory, judgment, and will. Finally, he evokes the capital question of the liberty. The human as a sensual subject is not able to confirm his superiority over animal, so his liberty seems to be equal to animal. Quesnay finds solution in supernatural certitude inaccessible to the theoretical knowledge, but experienced in practice which can justify the only human liberty.

More...

Sceptyczna a Nietzscheańska krytyka poznania

Author(s): Mikołaj Domaradzki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 52/2007

The article aims to confront the skeptical critique of cognition with Nietzsche’s refutation of classical epistemology. Irrespective of some striking analogies, it does not purport that skepticism exerted direct impact on Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nevertheless, both critiques reject such a type of philosophy that endeavors to discover the very nature of things and both repudiate the dogmatic dichotomy of the ‘apparent’ and the ‘true’ world that since Plato has become an integral part of nearly every metaphysical project. The ancient skeptics and Nietzsche demonstrate that every cognition is determined by various physiological, social and cultural contexts and, consequently, the Greek thinkers seem to agree with the German philosopher that concepts such as ‘reality’ or ‘world’ are but interpretations conditioned by the very structure of the human sense organs and basic human needs. In the light of the contingent and situational character of our knowledge, the skeptics and Nietzsche dethrone the discourse of science and philosophy by showing not only the genesis of our propositions but also the possibility of opposite, yet equally justified, propositions. Thus, ‘world’ transpires to be a necessary illusion and every attempt at explaining it is relegated to the position of just one of the manifold perspectives attainable. In the final analysis, the article offers a reevaluation of the skeptical project, as it advances a thesis that the ancient and Nietzschean skepticisms show the insurmountable limitations of every cognition, protest against any endeavor to establish an absolute account of reality and, thereby, opt for a continuous striving for new interpretations and perspectives.

More...

Екзистенційні аспекти діалогу «людина - природа»

Author(s): Vitaliy Darensky / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 2/2007

Сучасні філософські рефлексії проблеми людина-природа, як правило, відбува¬ ються у двох напрямах: у напрямі критики техноцентричного світовідношення, яке однаково руйнує як природне середовище, так і внутрішній світ людини, а також у традиційному напрямі дослідження онтології матеріального світу. Утім, існує третій, не менш важливий і актуальний аспект цієї проблеми, пов’язаний із розумінням при¬ роди як одного з феноменів, що визначає людську екзистенцію, тобто насамперед процеси формування особистості як духовної істоти. Отже, словосполучення „діалог з природою” (яке, як відомо, було запропоноване І.Пригожиним) не можна розуміти лише як метафору, оскільки воно відображає певну сукупність процесів формування людської свідомості у її світоглядному вимірі.

More...

Physical Reality, Theoretical Physics, and Mathematics—15 Years Later

Author(s): Piret Kuusk / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

Physicists usually admit a rather naive concept of physical reality: it is the object they are investigating using experiments understood as actions in the real world. In theoretical physics, the object of investigation is not the real world itself but its mathematical description which is considered as describing physical reality as exactly as possible. I present arguments from philosophy of science and from recent work in the theory of gravitational physics which indicate a possibility to defend also antirealistic views, and clarify in which sense both standpoints can be viable.

More...

Grimm Wisdom

Author(s): Paul O’Grady / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Wisdom has not been widely discussed in analytical epistemology. An interesting recent analysis comes from Stephen Grimm who argues that wisdom requires knowledge and that the traditional dichotomy between theoretical and practical wisdom doesn’t hold. I note a tension between these aspects of his work. He wishes to maintain that traditional exemplars of wisdom (such as Jesus, Buddha, Confucius) may still be termed ‘wise’ by his theory. But his knowledge condition seems to require that only a subset of those who hold conflicting views are really wise. I consider a number of possible responses to this and endorse a non-indexical contextualist approach which will allow the knowledge condition and also allow the traditional exemplars to be termed ‘wise’.

More...

An epistemological probing into the state and nature of death

Author(s): Felix Ayemere Airoboman / Language(s): English Issue: XXIX/2017

This study is an epistemological investigation into death state and some ways people are put to death in error due to misunderstanding of actual state of death. The study probes in philosophic mannerism into existing conditions under which people are certified dead and into understanding when someone is actually dead. It holds that there are no univocal conceptions about these conditions since their understanding vary from place to place and in the passage of time due to increase in knowledge and development in medicine. Since some of those who are confirmed and pronounced dead do wake up, the study argues that any existing method of ascertaining death state is epistemologically inefficient and suspicious. It then raises issues that appertain to the ignorance and incompetence of doctors and others who confirm death cases and their methods or instruments of confirming death. The study argues analogically that since some of those whom doctors discharge against medical advice get well and since other conclusions they reach about patients and health cases (while relying on their knowledge and instrument of investigations) do sometimes prove otherwise or deviate from reality, possibly, some of those they declared dead may actually be alive. The study extends this wrong confirmation of death cases to occurrences outside hospital environments and from non-medical practitioners from different cultures and argues that all such death declaration just like those declared by doctors could be in error of judgement. It then argues that since what it exactly means to be dead is incontrovertibly controversial among people and in time, caution should be exercised in order not to be stocking people alive in mortuary, harvesting the organs of living people mistaken to be dead and burying people alive who are thought dead since they might probably be alive.

More...

«ИСКУССТВО ЖИЗНИ» СТОИКОВ

Author(s): Alexander Sanzhenakov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2017

The article focuses on the Stoic notion of “art of living”. First of all, I discuss the Socratic phrase “art that one used for taking pains over oneself”, which is a prototype of the studied concept. Then I show that Socratic normative requirement to take care of one’s own soul was taken up by the Stoics and equipped with a clear perception of the conditions of its practicability. These perceptions have appeared thanks to the Zeno’s definition of art as a ‘system of concepts’. However, the mechanism of its realization remained obscured due to the rigor of early Stoic doctrine. Only the Roman Stoicism, especially this of Seneca, was able to develop the “art of living” as a theoretical and practical concept.

More...

ПЛАТОН, ЭВИДЕНЦИАЛИЗМ И JTB

Author(s): Pavel Butakov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

It is often claimed that Plato’s definition of knowledge as “true opinion with an account” is in agreement with the contemporary analysis of knowledge as “justified true belief” (JTB). Some scholars disagree with the attribution of JTB to Plato. I analyze three influential arguments against the assumption of Plato’s agreement with JTB, and refute them. Then I provide my own argument against the assumption. I argue that the contemporary interpretation of the JTB formula understands “belief” not in the sense of an “opinion,” but rather of a “degree of confidence.” Accordingly, “justification” is understood not as applying to the opinion itself, but rather to the person having a certain degree of confidence. I support this claim by showing the difference between the traditional and the contemporary understanding of “evidence,” the former referring to a property of the proposition, while the latter meaning the body of reasons, which supports the person’s confidence to a certain degree. Thus, I conclude that Plato understands knowledge as “correct opinion validated by a rational explanation,” and it has very little in common with the contemporary understanding of knowledge as “sufficiently supported subjective degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition.”

More...

Eugene Thacker’s Conception of Negative Correlation Regarding Quentin Meillassoux’s Speculative Materialism

Author(s): Adas Diržys / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The current article deals with the analysis of the recently proposed ontological possibility to think the thing-in-itself. Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative materialism is explained in relation with Eugene Thacker’s critique of vitalistic correlation which is assumed as a broader attempt of thinking to transcend itself. The latter analysis manifests the limit of Meillassoux’s project optimism, concerning the ordering of necessity of contingency, situated through the epistemological conditioning of possibilities. In this part, contingent logic requires the full apprehension of the possibility to be otherwise despite the determination of logical probabilism. The article ends with the explanation of Thacker’s suggestion of the new mediation theory based on the excommunication (the negative communication act) as the primal condition of every speculative approach.

More...

AN APPROACH TO EPISTEMOLOGY, LITERATURE, AND THE POET’S POLITICS

Author(s): Darko Suvin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

My presupposition is that the common sense or doxa we inherited from High Modernism has failed in, and because of, Post-Modernism and the Post-Fordist triumph of predatory capitalism. This would include the mass misuse of modern sciences in wars and impoverishment of peoples as well as the intellectual destruction of the presuppositions both for a practical Left in Stalinism, as manifested in the disasters after 1968 and 1989, and for a genuine freedom-loving liberalism. But this is a large subject-matter that should be developed separately, while refusing the Post-Modern "weak thought" abandonment of reason. I propose in this essay to suggest, first, what might be some foundations and salient aspects of epistemology, that branch of philosophy which asks how do we know what we (think we) know, and to propose an orientation in it (toward a "soft" skepticism). I then draw a parallel between sciences and arts, including their institutional anchorage, and in particular insofar as narration is concerned. I end with a brief glimpse of how the art and cognition of poetry may intervene in a politics of freedom and survival: importantly but indirectly.

More...

APIE BANDYMĄ ATVERTI JUODĄSIAS MOKSLO DĖŽES (1)

Author(s): Arūnas Poviliūnas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 41 (02)/2017

This study is an analysis of a sociological research about the scientific activities performed by natural scientists. It is composed of three parts: a critical overview of Bruno Latour’s theoretical writings on the Actor- Network Theory, the description of the research and reflections on the findings. The research discussed in this study was a didactical experiment consisting of focus group discussions. The aim of the experiment was to facilitate an epistemological rupture, which, in the science studies, might be interpreted as a shift from the sociology of the social to the sociology of translation or the Actor-Network Theory treating non-social objects of nature, nonhumans or things as social entities within associations and networks. The sociology students who participated in the didactical experiment were very positive about their experience regarding the epistemological rupture and its role in shaping their knowledge about sociology itself. In this issue, we publish the first part of the study and discuss the ideas of B. Latour on the sociology of transduction and science studies.

More...

Sociálna funkcia historického poznania a vedecké písanie dejín v 21. storočí

Author(s): László Vörös / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 4/2016

In the 21st century historiography remains epistemologically diverse like no other discipline in the social sciences and humanities. Theoretically uninformed, often nationalist, and objectivist (reconstructionist) narrative historians coexist with constructionist and deconstructionist historians who work with social theories and conduct critical analyses within the same institutional frames of regional or national historiographies. In spite of decades of intense plausible criticism – at least in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe – the national/nationalist history writing based on rather naïve objectivist epistemology remains influential and forms an important, if not dominant, part of the respective national historiographies. The present paper suggests that there are several factors in the lasting reproduction and even thriving of the obsolete epistemological positions that traditional, narrative national/nationalist historiographies are based on. These might be categorized as cognitive, social, and institutional in their nature. The paper analyses particularly the social purpose of knowledge about the past and the social functions of institutionalized professional history writing. National histories play an important part in the politics of memory and identity; they provide a historical dimension to the ideal (imagined) national community, they also serve as legitimizing or delegitimizing narratives – these functionalities require a strongly objectivist (naïve) epistemology. In fact, the epistemological points of departure of the traditional narrative national/nationalist historians are very similar to the intuitive “pre-cognitive” theories of the past shared by most ordinary people. Both are based on the idea that the past can be narrated in a form of one true story. The paper comes to the conclusion that historiographies – at least in the Central and Eastern European countries – are formatively influenced by social determinants coming from outside the discipline to much larger extent that most of the historians are ready to admit.

More...

MAADAY-KARA DESTANI’NDA BİLGİ, AKIL VE MUTLULUK İLİŞKİSİ

Author(s): Mustafa Nerkiz / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 43/2018

The concept of knowledge has often been discussed; a variety of ideas on quality, source and importance of knowledge has been put forward. Also, in Turkic culture, knowledge has been considered as a universal value raising human beings. And the thought that man might reach the bliss due to knowledge has been allaged. The Epic of Maaday-Kara, which we’re dealt with in this study, in one hand, present information about the Turk’s worldview and thinking system. On the other hand, it gives the value of knowledge, use of wisdom and important messages to reach the bliss at the background of the text. In this long piece of the epic which is containing diverse episodes such as struggle with the bad souls of the ground and underground, tackling with foreign khans and the marriage of the hero, tools for reaching the knowledge in tackling with the bad souls of the ground and underground, the role and use of wisdom in this process, sophism and bliss have made the point of this study.

More...

Czy relatywista może być parezjastą?

Author(s): Jacek Moroz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2014

The article aspires to provide the reader with the answer to the relevant question whether a relativist can be a parrhesiast. This is a complicated question, because parrhesia implies ethical commitment, which from the relative point of view is difficult to justify. I present two different philosophical perspectives (epistemological realism and radical relativism) as two possible approaches to the main problem.

More...

Reflected View on the Personal Afterlife

Author(s): Daniel Krchňák / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

In this paper, I try to argue that, from the methodological position of reflected equilibrium, it seems to be reasonable to build a theory of personal identity that enables a person to continue her existence after the biological death of her body. This conclusion is supported by the argument that our practice reflects that our identity-presupposing concerns reach beyond biological continuity. We have also good reasons to maintain such concerns and practices. As the best candidate to implement such concerns in a theoretical account of practical identity, I will identify the person-life view, where personal identity depends to a great extent on social conditions. I also show how this theory can implement the classical belief in the afterlife, and how it could conceptualize the difference of the afterlife from a physicalistic and a theistic point of view.

More...

The Role of Priors in a Probabilistic Account of “Best Explanation”

Author(s): Anton Donchev / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

In this paper, I argue that the notion of “best explanation”, as it appears in the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), can be defined in terms of explanatory power (EP) (i.e. the best explanation among a set of possible explanations is the one having the highest EP), if we employ a probabilistic measure of EP, which takes into account both the likelihoods and the prior probabilities of the compared explanatory hypotheses. Although the association between the EP of a hypothesis and its likelihood is largely uncontroversial, most of those working on EP do not see an association between EP and the prior probability of an explanatory hypothesis. I provide three examples (two toy examples and one from real scientific practice), in order to show that the role of priors in decisions about the best explanatory hypothesis deserves a serious consideration. I also show that such an explication of “best explanation” allows us to compare IBE and Bayesian confirmation theory (BCT) in terms of the probabilities they assign to two competing hypotheses, and thus to elicit the conditions under which both IBE and BCT lead to the same conclusion and are in this sense compatible.

More...

The Truth about Sherlock Holmes

Author(s): Fredrik Haraldsen / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

According to possibilism, or non-actualism, fictional characters are possible individuals. Possibilist accounts of fiction do not only assign the intuitively correct truth-conditions to sentences in a fiction, but has the potential to provide powerful explanatory models for a wide range of phenomena associated with fiction (though these two aspects of possibilism are, I argue, crucially distinct). Apart from the classic defense by David Lewis the idea of modeling fiction in terms of possible worlds have been widely criticized. In this article, I provide a defense of a possibilist account against some lines of criticism. To do so, I assume that names for fictional characters are directly referential and a possible-worlds model that accommodates transworld identity. On this background, I argue, it is possible to construct an elegant model of fictional discourse using familiar models of information exchange in ordinary discourse, and I sketch how this model can be used to i) make a natural distinction between fictional and counterfactual discourse, ii) account for creativity, and iii) sustain a natural definition of truth-in-fiction that avoids certain familiar objections to possibilism. Though I set aside questions about the metaphysical commitments of a possible-world interpretation here, there is accordingly reason to think that the battle over possibilist treatments of fiction will have to be fought over metaphysical foundations rather than technical shortcomings.

More...

Conceivability & Modality June 19-20, 2017, Sapienza University in Rome

Author(s): Martin Vacek / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

Conceivability & Modality June 19-20, 2017, Sapienza University in Rome

More...

Personal Identity and What Matters

Author(s): Jeremiah Joven Joaquin / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

There are two general views about the nature of what matters, i.e. about the metaphysical ground of prudential concern, the ground of the concern we have for our own future welfare. On the one hand, the identity-is-what-matters view tells us that prudential concern is grounded on one’s continuing identity over time; I am concerned with my own future welfare because it is my own future welfare. On the other hand, the identity-is-not-what-matters view tells us that prudential concern is not grounded on such continuing identity; rather, it is grounded on some continuityrelation, which only coincides with identity. In this paper, I explore a primary motivation for the latter view—viz., Parfit’s fission case—and show that there are interesting ways to resist it.

More...