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Displaying: 1-20 of 59 documents


1. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Myung-Hyun Lee Preface to Selected Papers from The XXII World Congress of Philosophy
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2. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Peter Kemp Foreword to Selected Papers from The XXII World Congress of Philosophy
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3. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Seon-Wook Kim Introduction to Selected Papers from The XXII World Congress of Philosophy
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4. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Cristina Ionescu Recollection and the Method of Collection and Division in the Phaedrus
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When dealing with the metaphysical and epistemological implications of the Phaedrus, scholars have had the tendency to focus either on recollection or on discerning the methodological articulations of dialectical rhetoric. The present paper explores the relation between recollection and the dialectical method, and argues that recollection and the method of collection and division are complementary aspects of dialectical investigation, the method providing a strategy of reasoning, while the theory of recollection provides the metaphysical horizon within which collection and division can lead to successful results.
rethinking moral, social, and political philosophy: democracy, justice, and global responsibility
5. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Fred Dallmayr Liberal Democracy and Its Critics: Some Voices from East and West
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Liberalism and democracy are not identical. In the phrase “liberal democracy” the two terms are conflated—with the result that liberalism tends to trump democracy. My paper challenges this tendency. It first examines critically central features of “minimalist” liberal democracy as formulated by some leading theorists. The discussion then shifts to critical assessments in both the East and the West. Turning first to South Asia, the focus is placed on Gandhi’s teachings regarding popular self-rule (swaraj) where the latter does not mean “selfish rule” but rather the ability of people to rule themselves in an ethical manner. Moving to East Asia, I concentrate on Confucianism which emphasizes the basic ethical “relationality” of human life and stands opposed to both radical individualism and collectivism. The paper concludes by invoking the work of John Dewey who famously defined democracy as an ethical community.
6. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Nkolo Foé Relativisme et polarisation du monde: Une contradiction majeure du capitalisme historique
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Relativism issues occur in a context characterised by the resurfacing of culturalism and attempts to substitute historical causality based on class struggles with a new causality based on great cycles of civilizations and culture clashes. Symptons include rejection of class struggle, biologisation and culturalisation of social inequalities, and denial of universal values—all linked to the delegitimisation of emancipatory reason, which supposes an ethical approach to social and global issues. In Europe, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, destruction of reason and the neglect of universal values by institutions of capitalism led to the barbaric conquest of non-European societies. In these societies, emancipatory reason and philosophies of freedom have an important role to play in social redemption. The major challenge they face is how to help man free himself from the intolerable universe of constraint (determined by relativism), and bring him to a level of consciousness where freedom of choice is possible. This entails the rehabilitation of universal values and the inscription of the ethics of responsibility at the core of any vision of an alternative modernity.
7. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Christos Y. Panayides Aristotle on Incidental Causes and Teleological Determinism: Resolving The Puzzles of Metaphysics E. 3
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In Metaphysics E. 3. 1027a29–30 Aristotle states that there are some causes, the incidental ones, that are generable and destructible but they have no coming to be. Furthermore, he asserts that if we deny this thesis, then we will have to give into determinism (1027a30–32). There are three persistent puzzles surrounding this chapter. First, what does it mean to say that a cause is generable and destructible but it has no coming to be? Second, what exactly is the connection between this claim and determinism? And third, if we accept that in Metaphysics E. 3 Aristotle deals with incidental causation, then how is this discussion related to the treatment of incidentalness in E. 2? This article puts forward answers for these puzzles. I argue that there is textual evidence in Physics II. 5 that shows that the claim in Metaphysics 1027a29–30 is meant to capture the non-teleological nature of incidental causation. Moreover, I argue that this same textual evidence indicates that the thesis expressed at Metaphysics 1027a29–30 is in effect Aristotle’s response to teleological determinism. Finally, I suggest that it is plausible to suppose that chapter 3 does not quite belong with the rest of Metaphysics E.
rethinking moral, social, and political philosophy: democracy, justice, and global responsibility
8. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Tong Shijun “Overlapping Consensus” on “Overlapping Consensus”
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Many people show great interest in the idea of “overlapping consensus” proposed by John Rawls. On the basis of a careful reading of different understandings of this idea, or the “overlapping consensus” on the idea of “overlapping consensus,” we can say that there are three levels of “overlapping consensus.” At the first level, people with different positions treat each other in the same reasonable attitude. At the second level, people holding different values support the same norms on the basis of their respective values or by taking each other’s perspectives in the moral discourse. At the third level, people who currently hold different “moral sources” of the shared norms are never-the-less ready to be engaged in a common learning process that aims for a “fusion of horizons” in the future. Overlapping consensuses at all these levels should not only be discussed in political philosophy, or discovered in political culture, but also constructed in political practice.
rethinking metaphysics and aesthetics: reality, beauty, and the meaning of life
9. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Tanella Boni Réalité, beauté et sens de la vie
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10. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Jason Waller Spinoza on Conatus and Persistence through Time
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This paper concerns Spinoza’s theory of conatus and an important consequence of this theory concerning how bodies persist through time. I first argue that a conatus is the self-maintaining activity of a mode and not (as many scholars maintain) a tendency toward self-preservation or some kind of force. I then argue that it follows from this theory of conatus that bodies persist through time by having temporal parts. I conclude the paper by arguing that attributing a temporal parts (or ‘four-dimensional’) metaphysic to Spinoza is not as implausible or anachronistic as it might first seem to be.
rethinking metaphysics and aesthetics: reality, beauty, and the meaning of life
11. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Ken-ichi Sasaki Politics of Beauty: Aesthetics Today—Its Role and Possibilities
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This article looks at the past, present, and future of the study of aesthetics. The early modern period, during which aesthetics came into being, was a great historical turning point for civilization. So, too, is our own day. Looked at this way, aesthetics should show a different face than the one we are used to. Aesthetics is generally considered to be the philosophy of art, yet, with art regarded as an autonomous cultural field, aesthetics commonly gives the impression of being isolated from philosophy in general. This article explores a completely different aesthetics. When it was coming into existence, aesthetics was charged with the real and urgent philosophical problem of its time: how to construct a new world.
12. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jean-Luc Marion Les limites de la phénoménalité
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13. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Jason Kawall Meaningful Lives, Ideal Observers, and Views from Nowhere
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In recent discussions of whether our lives are or can be meaningful, appeals are often made to such things as “a view from nowhere,” or “the viewpoint of the universe.” In this paper I attempt to make sense of what it might mean for a being to possess such a perspective, and argue that common appeals to such perspectives are inadequately developed; crucially, they do not adequately account for the character of the beings taken to possess these viewpoints. In the second half of the paper I turn to an alternative proposal, one that focuses on the attitudes of virtuous ideal observers in determining the normative statuses of our lives and activities, and argue that it provides a plausible account of meaningfulness.
rethinking metaphysics and aesthetics: reality, beauty, and the meaning of life
14. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Gerhard Seel Rethinking Art and Philosophy of Art: Some Preliminary Remarks
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As an introduction to the plenary session “Metaphysics and Aesthetics” in my article I try to describe the state of philosophy of art today and give an outlook to its future development. In the last century analytical philosophy of art has been occupied with the following four questions: What is the essence of art? What is the ontological status of works of art? What are aesthetic qualities and how do we come to know them? Have aesthetic value judgments objective validity? In the first step I explain why analytical philosophy of art failed to answer these questions and what this failure has to do with the end of art. In the second step I attempt to give a definition of art myself which allows to show that this failure and the end of art were inevitable. Finally I try—as a consequence—to define the general features of the art of the future.
rethinking epistemology, philosophy of science, and technology: knowledge and culture
15. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Evandro Agazzi Rethinking Philosophy of Science Today
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Modern philosophy of science was, initially, an epistemology of science based on the logical analysis of the language of science. It was superseded by a “sociological epistemology,” according to which the acceptance of scientific statements and theories depends on conditioningscoming from the social context and powers, and this view has fueled anti-scientific attitudes.This happened because the sociological turn still expressed an epistemology of science. Science, however, is not only a system of knowledge, but also a complex human activity. Hence, ethical, political, social, religious issues appear legitimate if they concern “doing science.”Therefore, we must “rethink” philosophy of science, accepting in it also an axiology of science that could enable us to retain the cognitive value of science and at the same time to make techno-scientific activity compatible with the satisfaction of a great variety of values that inspire our societies.
16. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Gaven Kerr Aquinas's Argument for the Existence of God in De Ente et Essentia Cap. IV: An Interpretation and Defense
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Aquinas’s name is practically synonymous with attempts at proving the existence of God. In this article I offer an interpretation and defense of a much neglected argument from Aquinas’s works, that of De Ente et Essentia Cap. IV. Therein Aquinas presents quite a youthful and in my view compelling argument for the existence of God. To begin with, I present an interpretation of the argument and on the basis of this interpretation I suggest that the argument has a prima facie plausibility to it. Thereafter I consider several criticisms that are relevant to the argument, yet not compelling in my view. I conclude that the argument from the De Ente survives the criticisms leveled against it in this paper, in which case if one accepts the methodological framework that Aquinas adopts, then one ought to accept that Aquinas’s argument for God in the De Ente succeeds in what it sets out to do: to establish the existence of a single, immaterial, self-subsisting act of being, which we understand to be God.
rethinking epistemology, philosophy of science, and technology: knowledge and culture
17. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jaegwon Kim Against Laws in the Special Sciences
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The traditional view of science holds that science is essentially nomothetic—that is, the defining characteristic of science is that it seeks to discover and formulate laws for the phenomena in its domain, and that laws are required for explanation and prediction. This paper advances the thesis that there are no laws in the special sciences, sciences other than fundamental physics, and that this does not impugn their status as sciences. Toward this end, two arguments are presented. The first begins with Donald Davidson’s argument against psychophysical laws and develops a more perspicacious general argument against special science laws. The second is a generalized and more explicitly motivated argument based on J. J. C. Smart’s claim that biology, unlike physics, has no laws.
18. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Bertrand Saint-Sernin L’idée de renaissance
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The term “Renaissance” usually applies to a period in European history during which the Greco-Latin culture was rediscovered and modern science started. We show that “the Idea of Renaissance” indicates a universal process: a community (a nation, for example), identifying needs that it does not know how to satisfy by itself, and recognising that another community already satisfies them, tries first to acclimate the external process, and then becomes a creative entity. Several interpretations of this process have already been given: we study three of them: the law of the three states by Auguste Comte, the notion of “a single revolution” in Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason and Critic of Judgement, and the notion of “scientific revolution” by A. A. Cournot. Thus conceived, Renaissance means a challenge in which all cultures are equally involved: discovering, even elsewhere, the means of satisfy needs which are related to scientific knowledge and know-how; trying to assimilate them; and making them productive and indigenous by becoming creative.
rethinking history of philosophy and comparative philosophy: traditions, critique, and dialogue
19. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jean Greisch «Repenser la philosophie»: Une tâche et un problème herméneutique
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Si «penser» est d’abord un acte, «repenser» l’est aussi. On ne peut «repenser» que ce qui fut déjà pensé une fois. Ce que «repenser» veut dire, nous ne le comprenons que si nous nous demandons au préalable ce que «penser» veut dire. Pour Heidegger, cela revient à se demander ce qui nous appelle à penser, pour Kant, c’est se demander comment on peut s’orienter dans la pensée, pour Nietzsche, ce qui nous pousse à penser, à quoi j’ajouterai la question, moins connue et plus déconcertante, d’Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy dans son essai sur la «pensée dative»: «Cui cogitatur?», «À qui nos pensées sont-elles destinées?»À quoi nos pensées sont-elles dédiées?, à qui sont-elles destinées?: c’est la tension féconde entre ces deux questions qui nous met sur la voie d’une réflexion sur le sens que le verbe «repenser» peut revêtir dans la bouche d’un philosophe. À la différence de ceux qui s’imaginent que «repenser» veut dire simplement distribuer un peu différemment les cartes du savoir, les vrais «repenseurs» ne cessent de se demander à quel jeu ils jouent quand il s’efforcent de penser philosophiquement et ils cherchent à avoir une conscience plus nette des enjeux de ces jeux de la pensée.
20. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Mikael Janvid Towards a Default and Challenge Model of A Priori Warrant
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This paper outlines a default and challenge account of a priori warrant by unfolding the three stages of the epistemic dialectic in which such warrant comes to the fore. Among the virtues of this account is that it does not rely on controversial assumptions regarding non-experiential sources of warrant, like intellectual intuition, but instead relies on features of our epistemic practice, more precisely, its default and challenge structure. What distinguishes beliefs to which you are warranted a priori is not that their source of warrant resides in some intellectual faculty, but rather the characteristic ways in which these beliefs can be successfully defended against challenges. The paper ends in a discussion of whether a priori warranted beliefs are empirically indefeasible, arguing that it is misguided to demand such indefeasibility of a priori warranted beliefs since that demand is not made for other sources of warrant. The question that rather should be posed is whether beliefs for which a priori warrant is provided qualify as knowledge on a consistent basis, and this question can be given an affirmative answer even in the face of empirical defeasibility.