Na začiatku každej zmeny myslenia je inšpirácia
Review of: Zumrík, Miroslav: Filozofické aspekty korpusovej lingvistiky. Bratislava: Veda 2020. 80 s. ISBN 978-80-224-1826-3.
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Review of: Zumrík, Miroslav: Filozofické aspekty korpusovej lingvistiky. Bratislava: Veda 2020. 80 s. ISBN 978-80-224-1826-3.
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Congenital aphantasia, or the complete absence of mental imagery, is a topic that has recently aroused the interest of researchers in many fields including philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences. While it is generally supposed that we all have rich mental lives full of imaged representations, estimates suggest 2-3% of the population may have never formed an image or seen ‘in the mind’s eye.’ This paper aims to address the scepticism surrounding aphantasia, the challenges in communicating about mental imagery, and the research methods used in cognitive sciences today through the lens of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The paper argues that 1) communicating about mental imagery involves language games that persons with aphantasia may not be able to play (i.e., makes reference to expressions and concepts that are meaningless for them, such as ‘visualise,’ ‘form an image,’ etc.); 2) that as a consequence aphantasia, in present research, is only describable negatively (as lack or incapacity); 3) that rather than a cognitive or a psychological issue, aphantasia should be understood as a grammatical one; and 4) that we need to invent new language games in order to come to a better understanding of conditions such as aphantasia, and to be able to appreciate the rich diversity and variability of human experience.
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Ontological parsimony requires that if we can dispense with A when best explaining B, or when deducing a nominalistically statable conclusion B from nominalistically statable premises, we must indeed dispense with A. When A is a mathematical theory and it has been established that its conservativeness undermines the platonistic force of mathematical derivations (Field), or that a non numerical formulation of some explanans may be obtained so that the platonistic force of the best numerical-based account of the explanandum is also undermined (Rizza), the parsimony principle has been respected. Since derivations resorting to conservative mathematics and proofs involved in non numerical best explanations also require abstract objects, concepts, and principles under the usual reading of “abstract,” one might complain that such accounts turn out to be as metaphysically loaded as their platonistic counterparts. One might then urge that ontological parsimony is also required of these nominalistic accounts. It might, however, prove more fruitful to leave this particular worry to the side, to free oneself, as it were, from parsimony thus construed and to look at other important aspects of the defeating or undermining strategies that have been lavished on the disposal of platonism. Two aspects are worthy of our attention: epistemic cost and debunking claims. Our knowledge that applied mathematics is conservative is established at a cost, and so is our knowledge that nominalistic proofs play a genuine theoretical role in best explanations. I will suggest that the knowledge one must acquire to show that nominalistic deductions and explanations do indeed play their respective theoretical role involves some question-begging assumptions regarding the nature and validity of proofs. As for debunking, even if the face value content of either non numerical claims, or conservative mathematical claims, or platonistic mathematical claims didn’t figure in our causal explanation of why we hold the mathematical beliefs that we do, construed or understood as beliefs about such contents, or as beliefs held in either of these three ways, we could still be justified in holding them, so that the distinction between nominalistic deductions or non numerical explanations on the one hand and platonistic ones on the other turns out to be spurious with respect to the relevant propositional attitude, i.e., with respect to belief.
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In the present article, the author analyses the interpretation of the phenomenon of Christ by Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. The author uses comparative and hermeneutic methods of historical and philosophical research. Dostoevsky's Christ and Nietzsche's Jesus are interpreted as “conceptual characters” (G. Deleuze), occupying an important place in the philosophical constructions of both thinkers. Stating the epoch-making event of the “death of God” in European culture, they discover the origins of nihilism in Christianity itself and attempt (each in his own way) to recreate the original, pristine Christianity. Reconstruction of the original image of Christ makes it possible to comprehend not only the historical destiny of Christianity and the European portion of humanity, but also the prospects for overcoming the crisis of European and Russian (in the case of Dostoevsky) self-consciousness. It is argued that both interpretations, although far from orthodox Christianity, play the role of a central link in the development of the philosophic thinking of the Russian writer and German philosopher from the critical deposition of European humanism and metaphysics to new projects of human existence in the world. The conceptual images of Dostoevsky's Christ and Nietzsche's Jesus personally embody the spiritual attitudes and models of life that are timeless in nature, and at the same time serve as an expression of the “fundamental metaphysical positions” (M. Heidegger) of existential thinkers. The assertion of the absolute genuineness and beauty of the moral ideal of Christ allows Dostoevsky to return transcendence to the godless world – to substantiate the neo-Christian version of metaphysics, the religious-existential ontology. The “Glad Tidings” of Jesus, his life and death, appear in Nietzsche’s works as a practical elimination of transcendence, the Platonic dualism of the “true” and “visible” worlds. The spiritual attitude of Jesus reveals a direct affinity to Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical “philosophy of becoming”.
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Evolutionary models for scientific change are generally based on an analogy between scientific changes and biological evolution. Some dissimilarity cases, however, challenge this analogy. An issue discussed in this essay is that despite natural evolution, which is currently considered to be non-globally progressive, science is a phenomenon that we understand as globally progressive. David Hull's solution to this disanalogy is to trace the difference back to their environments, in which processes of natural selection and conceptual selection occur. I will provide two arguments against this solution, showing that Hull's formulation of natural selection prohibits him from removing the environment from the selection process. Then I point to a related tension in his theory, between realism and externalism in science, and give some suggestions to solve these tensions.
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We survey some of the consequences of the managerialism of science and education as practiced in European countries and its main results: the Bologna declaration and the Bologna process. One notable feature of this process is the gradual introduction of currently fashionable management terms into school curricula. These linguistic changes are the direct result of the neoliberal philosophy behind the concept of knowledge economy, namely, that all sciences must justify their economic value; moreover, the introduction of such terms is via government “strategic documents” that are never the result of a democratic public debate. As a case in point, we examine two such strategic documents issued by the Bulgarian ministry of education.
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Unique and unifying, freedom of personal conscience is what ensures our communion with God—the Holy Trinity—here and now, and especially in eternity. Freedom of religion protects human freedoms—from socio- economic to political freedoms, from freedom of expression to freedom of conscience. Freedom of conscience is authentic only when it is naturally linked to the Revealed and Incarnate Truth, to our Saviour Jesus Christ. In the light of the divine truth we also become “Ebed Yahweh”, that is, slaves of the Lord, enjoying the complete freedom conferred by the Incarnate Logos of our salvation.
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Clive Staples Lewis’s reflections about the „abolition of man” – the abolition of morals and human conscience – are amazingly relevant in our contemporary culture, shaped by an ongoing moral relativism. Our aim in this paper is, therefore, to emphasize the necessity to protect the integrity of moral values. Specifically, we will describe the concept of Tao; secondly, we take notice of some of the perils which threaten the integrity of moral values and, subsequently, of human conscience itself – challenges which are even greater than in the year of 1943, when C.S. Lewis published the Abolition of Man – and finally, we will uncover a few solutions that humans can use as they pass through these challenges.
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As long as the evil together with the character that defines him, the Devil, cannot be known in other way, as Messadié says, than through the discourse, we are going to analyze some works in which the devil is mentioned. First of all, we are not investigating a historical event or action, but rather a renowned and over discussed topic. Therefore, the itinerary of our investigation will consider important works that have been written on this subject, starting, as we said, with the important writings, which are fundamental for the universal cultural area. Without claiming to exhaust or even cover this topic, we will review the essential contributions to the evil’s problem: mythological and theological analyses, philosophical reflections, historical documentation, sociological and anthropological approaches, psychological judgments and, of course, the inexhaustible literary realm or revaluation of evil in the space of literary fiction.
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In this paper, we will present how identity and integrity are determined by the three levels of freedom presented by Adler J. Mortimer and his team in the study: The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the conception of Freedom. These three models of freedom are correlated with the experience of the self through which the moral development of the human being takes place in the approach to identity and integrity: (1) circumstantial freedom - self- realization; (2) acquired freedom - self-perfection and (3) natural freedom - self- determination. This approach wants to show once again that the human being has value and is endowed with abilities that give him or her the opportunity to desire and aim for high ideals and that the deepest meaning of freedom does not consider, first, the essence of the human being, but its existence, not what man is, but what he or she can become. Therefore, the person’s concern to reach the natural freedom is directly proportional to his willingness to open himself to Divinity, nature and fellows. In this experience to search for freedom that offers the highest fulfilment in life, Jesus Christ is the perfect model, but the examples of other special people from Scripture or Christian and universal history can also be very inspiring.
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Understanding the freedom of conscience requires, first and foremost, the definition of the term of consciousness. Thus, in a general sense, consciousness is a faculty or judgment that leads to feelings of regret when man does things that are against his moral values or that informs the moral judgment of man before a work is performed. Metaphorically, consciousness is known as the „inner voice”. In the current understanding, consciousness decides the character of personal actions, motive and feelings, paying attention and condemning what is wrong and approving what is good. From a secular perspective, consciousness is a function of the human brain that has developed to facilitate altruism within society. Consciousness is the reason behind the actions, the one that raises questions about good and evil and which is accompanied by feelings of approval or condemnation. From a theological perspective, consciousness is self-knowledge in relation to a known law that defines what is good or bad. The moral standard has been embedded in human consciousness since creation. Therefore, freedom of conscience means that every man has the opportunity to judge his own deeds according to the moral standards embodied in his being. This assumes responsibility and has the role of highlighting the integrity of a person in the midst of a morally and spiritually polluted society.
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Our expectations for human experience of God can obscure the reality and the presence of such experience for us. They can lead us to look in the wrong places for God’s presence, and they can lead us not to look at all. This article counters the threat of misleading expectations regarding God, while acknowledging a role for diving hiding from humans on occasion. It contends that, given God’s perfect moral character, we should expect typical human experience of God to have moral dissonance, that is, experiential conflict in morally relevant ways. We shall see the evidential or cognitive importance of how humans respond to such dissonance. Our failing to respond cooperatively with God can result either in our obscuring evidence of divine reality or in God’s hiding divine self-manifestation for redemptive purposes aimed at our benefit.
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The aim of the paper is to try to find a solution to the problem of divine hiddenness, which in the context of science takes the form of the question of why, if God exists, science can completely ignore Him and yet explain away so much. We formulate the “argument from hiddenness in the context of science” modelled on the “argument from hiddenness” proposed by J. L. Schellenberg and show possible ways to refute this argument. We also propose a refutation in the form of “explanatory absconditheism,” the best expression of which is the thesis of “articulation” of scientific and theological ways of explaining the world. We also argue that the thesis of “explanatory absconditheism” can be extended to the entire discussion of divine hiddenness, providing possible response to the “argument from hiddenness.”
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* This is a fragment of J. L. Schellenberg’s paper “Divine Hiddenness and Human Philosophy” originally published in Adam Green and Eleonore Stump (eds.), Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief (Cambridge: CUP 2015), 23–25, 28. Reprinted by permission of the author
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While St. Anselm does not supply us with an explicit discussion of the problem of divine hiddenness (PDH) as it is typically conceived today—namely, as an argument for atheism—he is keenly aware of the existential difficulty posed by our seeming lack of access to God. Moreover, he provides the ingredients for an interesting and heretofore neglected approach to the PDH, one rooted in multiple Christian narratives about lapses from knowledge-infused states of grace, both angelic and human. The goal of this paper is to draw out that Anselmian approach explicitly, and to provide at least a rudimentary assessment of it.
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In the paper it is argued that the conceptual resources of Christianity topple the hiddenness argument. According to the author, the variability of the divine love cast doubt on the soundness of Schellenberg’s reasoning. If we understood a perfect love as a maximal and equal concern and identification with all and for all, then a divine love would entail divine impartiality, but because of conflicts of interest between human beings the perfect, divine love cannot be maximal.
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The paper explores Pascal’s idea according to which the teachings of the Church assume the hiddenness of God, and, hence, there is nothing surprising in the fact of the occurrence of nonresistant nonbelief. In order to show it the paper invokes the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Church as the Body of Christ, and the Original Sin. The first one indicates that there could be greater than nonbelief obstacle in forming interpersonal bonds with God, namely the ontological chasm between him and human persons. The assumption of the human nature by the Son of God could be seen as a cure for this problem. The doctrine of the Church shows it as an end in itself, and in order for the Church to have meaning and to exist there has to be nonbelief in the world. Finally, the dogma of the Original Sin shows that there is no category of purely nonresistant nonbelief. The paper also addresses Schellenberg’s “accommodationist strategy” from the perspective of the Christian theology and in the last part it investigates what should be the influence of the fact of the hiddenness on theology’s take on the divine revelation.
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The first premise of J. L. Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument equates God’s love with a positive relationship to human beings. To illustrate this relationship, the human model of parental love is used, based on the standards of the modern American liberal world, not on the biblical standard. As a result, we attribute to God a narrowly understood horizontal relationship towards people, which is completely alien to the understanding of love developed in the Christian tradition. When we refer to the classical theism that recognized love as the central attribute of God, we will see that it should be understood in a vertical model, consisting in the offering of good and mercy. This understanding undermines the benevolent theism and replaces it with the merciful theism or theism of mercy. Ultimately, this makes the first premise of the Hiddenness Argument very questionable and the whole argument calls for a significant revision.
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The success of the atheistic hiddenness argument depends on the “consciousness constraint” it imposes on the divine-human loving relationship: namely, that this relationship requires human conscious awareness of being in the relationship with God. I challenge the truth of this proposition by introducing the concept of a physical relationship with God that is not subject to this constraint. I argue, first, that a physical relationship with God is metaphysically possible; second, that its plausibility is supported by natural theology; and third, that a perfectly loving God would prefer physical relationships with human beings over consciousness-constrained relationships, because a perfectly loving God would prefer to preserve the integrity of human freedom of participation and allow inclusion of all people regardless of their natural cognitive capabilities. I also offer an interpretation of apparent divine hiddenness in the light of the idea of God’s openness for physical relationships.
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One version of the Problem of Divine Hiddenness is about people who are looking for God and are distressed about not finding him. Having in mind such distressed God-seekers, Blaise Pascal imagined Jesus telling them the following: “Take comfort; you would not seek me if you had not found me.” This is what I call the Pascalian Conditional of Hiddenness (PCH). In the first part of this paper, I argue that the PCH leads to a new interpretation of Pascal’s own response to the problem, significantly different from Hick’s or Schellenberg’s interpretations of Pascal. In short: for any person who is distressed about not finding God, and who (for this reason) seriously considers the Argument from Hiddenness, the PCH would show that their own distress constitutes evidence that God is in fact not hidden to them (because this desire for God has been instigated in them by God himself). In the second part of the paper, I set aside the exegetical question and try to develop this original strategy as a contemporary response to one version of the Problem of Divine Hiddenness, which I call the “first-person problem.” I argue that the PCH strategy offers a plausibly actual story to respond to the first-person problem. As a result, even if we need to complement the PCH strategy with other more traditional strategies (in order to respond to other versions of the problem), the PCH strategy should plausibly be part of the complete true story about Divine Hiddenness.
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