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41. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Pavel Mazanka, Edmund Morawiec Classic Philosophy and some Negative Characteristics of Contemporary Culture
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This paper attempts to answer the question: "In what way could classical philosophy be useful to overcome shortcomings of the contemporary culture?" A response to this question is preceded by considerations about the meaning of the world "culture" as well as delineating such features of the contemporary culture and their origins which, in common opinion, are evidence of its crisis. If it is proposed to return to classical philosophy in order to remedy the contemporary culture and humanity, it is because this philosophy, due to its specific character, through the acceptance of real truth and real goodness as reasons for justifying both the order of cognition and the moral order, establishes that which is called culture on the bases of realism and secures its bases against subjectivism, relativism and pragmatism. Within classical philosophy, humankind learns an essential truth about itself, namely that human beings are not exclusively happening events because of human nature and essence, but that humans are persons which constitute a certain ontic fundament for historic processes and guarantee identity of being.
42. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
C. Beha McCullagh Natural Necessity, Objective Chances and Causal Powers
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Are the relations between the property of a thing and its related disposition to react in certain ways, and between the triggering of that disposition and the consequent effect, necessary? Harré and Madden, in their analysis of causal powers, said they are, but their arguments are not persuasive. Humeans like Simon Blackburn deny it. I criticize the Humean position, and argue afresh for their necessity. I note that David Lewis' analysis of causation requires their necessity, though as a confessed Humean he has not admitted this.
43. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Peter Schuller Descartes’ Daydream and the Mind-Body Problem
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After exhorting us to wake up from our ‘daydreaming’ and revolutionize our modality of thought to that of conceptualization, Descartes seems to forget about this crucial matter of a discontinuous leap. So, too, it seems has the profession generally and this has infected philosophical research and teaching. It is urged here that discontinuous processes are crucial in the universe, in human life, in human thinking. Such ontological events cannot be handled by dualism, materialism or postmodernism. Concentration on such discontinuous processes is urged, an alternative is briefly indicated, and a criterion for ordering levels of human levels of reality is offered. It follows in the line of Cantor and Marx. It is suggested that a human being is a transfinite entity and that such an entity has many levels of being, among which are cognitive processes, imaginative processes and physical processes. A person is ‘not other than’ these without being ‘nothing but’ any of these.
44. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Igor D. Nevvazhay Apophatical Metaphysics of a Subject
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In this paper, the inevitability of the metaphysics of a subject for the philosophical understanding of a person’s being in the world is established, and the apophatic character of this type of metaphysics is discussed. Analysis of the categories of being and non-being which allow the interpretation of a subject as transcendent and as transcendental being that is characterized by uniformity, spontaneity and irreversibility is also mentioned. The suggested interpretation of a subject discloses both the rational sense of the classical points of view on the absolute, unconditional, timeless and spaceless character of the subject of knowledge, and the compatibility of the notions of the absolute character of a subject and the ontological condition of a human being in society and culture. The main idea of the suggested conception of a subject is the fact that the subject’s being cannot be "housed" into the world, nor can it be characterized as impossible existence for the world. The world can be understood only from the point of view of being impossible (symbolic) existence. The discussion of the problem of identification of a subject shows that the presumption of a subject as one of the existing structures of the world leads to paradoxes and contradictions in the interpretation of the processes taking place in the world. To understand the process of education, it is necessary to bear in mind that it is not only cognitive, but also moral: education is the process of the formation of a subject of knowledge through identification with transcendental symbolic existence, which fact demands making efforts to be on the part of the thinking person.
45. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Susanne Möbuß Emmanuel Lévinas: Die Würdigung des Metaphyschen als Pädagogishce Aufgabe
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In seinem Hauptwerk Totalité et Infini entwirft Emmanuel Lévinas eine doppelte Sichtweise der Philosophie: als ‘autonom’ und als ‘heteronom.’ Während der erste Typus einer allzu einseitigen Betonung des Egozentrismus des philosophierenden Individuums entspringt, stellt der zweite Typus das Ziel von Lévinas’ argumentativen Bemühungen dar. Im Gegensatz zur Philosophie im Zustand der Autonomie, die nicht dazu bereit ist, die Fremdartigkeit des Anderen gelten zu lassen und diese skrupellos dem eigenen Welt-Denken subsumiert, läßt die Philosophie in der Zustandsweise der Heteronomie den Anderen als den Freien bestehen und unterwirft sich dessen Andersartigkeit im bewußten Verzicht auf die eigene Souveränität. Vor diesem Hintergrund sieht Lévinas die Aufgabe der Philosophie darin, den Menschen über den falschen Anspruch seines individuellen Verlangens aufzuklären und die Alternative zue Erlangung einer umfassenden Gerechtigkeit zu weisen.
46. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Paul Raymont Does Anything Break Because it is Fragile?
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I maintain that dispositions are not causally relevant to their manifestations. The paper begins with a negative argument, which is intended to undermine David Lewis’ recent attempt to restore causal potency to dispositions by identifying their instantiations with the instantiations of their causal bases. I conclude that Lewis’ attempt to vindicate the causal credentials of dispositions meets obstacles that are analogous to (though importantly different from) those that beset Donald Davidson’s attempt to accord a causal role to the mental. I then consider an argument recently given by Frank Jackson against the causal relevance of dispositions (to their manifestations). Jackson’s argument relies on a conception of dispositions that is not likely to be shared by those who defend their causal relevance. I sketch an alternative conception of dispositions that links them more closely to their causal bases, but argue that even on this model dispositions are causally impotent. The paper closes with a defense of the claim that dispositions, in spite of their causal irrelevance to their manifestations, are nevertheless causal-explanatorily relevant to them.
47. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Gordon Steinhoff Kant's Reply to Hume in the Second Analogy
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In the Second Analogy, Kant argues that we must presuppose, a priori, that each event is determined to occur by some preceding event in accordance with a causal law. Although there have been numerous interpretations of this argument, we have not been able to show that it is valid. In this paper, I develop my own interpretation of this argument. I borrow an insight offered by Robert Paul Wolff. In Kant's argument, our need to presuppose that the causal determination of each event rests not upon our need to impose a 'necessary' and 'irreversible' temporal order upon representations of the states of an object, as Kant is usually interpreted, but upon our need to generate a comprehensive representation that includes a certain a priori conception of events in the world around us. Although the argument I attribute to Kant is valid, it cannot compel the Humean skeptic to accept the necessity of presupposing the causal determination of each event: Kant has not successfully responded to Hume in the Second Analogy.
48. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Loretta Torrago Vagueness and Identity
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The view that identity can be vague holds that there are statements of identity which are neither true nor false. The view that composition can be vague holds that unities can have borderline constituents — that is, elements that are neither parts nor non-parts of some larger unity. The case for vague identity is typically made by way of an argument for the vagueness of composition. In this paper, however, I argue that the thesis that composition can be vague is actually incompatible with the thesis of vague identity. The argument for the incompatibility of these two views arises out of a demonstration of the way in which constituency facts (even vague constituency facts) are grounded in the other facts about how a larger unity is configured. Thus, I show that composites that are allegedly vaguely identical are actually different configurations. Hence, the alliance of vague composition with vague identity is taken to be all that is needed in order to show that compositional vagueness is indefensible.
49. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Jan Such The Origin of the Universe and Contemporary Cosmology and Philosophy
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Since the 1970s both in physics and cosmology, there has been a controversy on the subject of the ‘beginning of the universe.’ This indicates that this intriguing problem has reached scientific consideration and, perhaps, a solution. The aim of this paper is to try to answer the question as to whether the origin of the world has slipped out of the hands of philosophers (and theologians), and passed in its entirety into the realm of science, and whether science is able to solve this problem by itself. While presenting the main views in this dispute, I try to show also that metaphysics, philosophy of nature and epistemology provide important premises, proposals and methods that are indispensable for a solution. These premises concern such issues as the extremely subtle problem of the sense and existence of ‘nothing,’ the problem of extrapolation of local physics onto the large-scale areas of the universe, the epistemological status of cosmological principles, as well as problems of the origins of the laws of nature. This last issue is entangled in the difficult problem of the ‘rationality of the world’ and the problem of overcoming the dichotomy of laws and preconditions, according to which the conditions and laws are independent of each other.
50. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Aldo Tassi The Metaphysics Of Performance: The “Theatre Of The World”
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Something extraordinary has happened to metaphysics. At the very moment when philosophy is focusing its efforts at bringing metaphysics to an 'end,' metaphysics finds itself flourishing in the theatre, which speaks of itself as 'metaphysics-in-action' and publishes treatises carrying such titles as The Act of Being: Toward a Theory of Acting. The irony of the situation appears to have been lost on postmodern philosophers. What this paper sets out to do is explore the potential consequences of the metaphysical weight that has been acquired by the theatre for the practice of philosophy. It argues that the theatrical performance is in fact an 'enactment' of the performance of being and that, as such, it is possible to extend our understanding of this performance from the theatrical stage to the 'theatre of the world.' Finally, in doing so, we can establish the context for a metaphysics that does not privilege presence.
51. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Robert E. Tully Tractarian Dualism
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While Wittgenstein’s Tractatus keeps issues of metaphysics and ontology at arm’s length, the world it presents seems altogether monistic in character. In Wittgenstein’s account, it is a world of objects and facts, a world which lacks selves, values, cognitive relations (such as belief), and God. I argue that the Tractarian world is nevertheless dualistic. I defend the view that the Tractatus points away from monism towards dualism and that Wittgenstein’s concepts of thought, sense, and understanding are an essential part of its structure. The language Wittgenstein uses was necessitated by his project of giving a sharp account of the nature of description. It is thus ironic that Wittgenstein defends dualism in the Tractatus and does so in the only form in which he thought it could be defended. Along the way, I try to show that his treatment of thought, sense, and understanding is both a continuation and correction of treatments which Frege and Russell had previously given to these concepts.
52. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Igor I. Yevlampiev Metaphysical Premises And Types Of Liberal Ideology: Liberalism As The End And Liberalism As The Way
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The problem of choosing the way for our country unavoidably brings us to a discussion of the problem of liberalism. At first glance, this should not be a problem since liberal principles underlie Western society and are the basis of the modern world order. But this opinion is not shared by all intellectuals in Russia. First is the specificity of the Russian mentality, social consciousness and social life. The idea of 'Russia's own way' is much referred to by various political movements of pronounced nationalist color, but we have to study this idea at its deepest level rather than oversimplify reality. Yet even most thinkers who are oriented to the West and have insisted on the adoption of Western values and standards have also strongly criticized European civilization. Secondly, liberalism does not have a simple meaning. It connotes a number of complex ideological systems transformed over time both in theory and in political practice. Therefore, it is important to analyze the metaphysical premises of liberal doctrines and systems. I will examine assessments of liberal ideas made by Russian religious philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as P. Struve, N. Novgorodtsev, I. Iliin, and S. Frank who all considered liberalism primarily a metaphysical rather than a legal or political phenomenon, and interpreted it as an empirical manifestation of the deep nature of the human spiritual reality.
53. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Mark Vasilyevich Zhelnov Paideia of “Nihil of Reliabilty of Existing” and Paideia of “Nihil of Truth of Being”
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This paper traces the transformation of the idea of Paideia as an intellectual mode of existence and being in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern period to the idea of Paideia as an intellectual mode of the nihil that is oriented toward the future. It comments specifically on the ideas of Leibniz and Heidegger which have contributed to this development.
54. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
Juan Adolfo Bonaccini Concerning the Relationship Between Non-Spatiotemporality and Unknowability of Things in Themselves in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
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In the present paper is analyzed the relationship between Kant's theses concerning unknowability and non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves. First of all, it is argued that even by taking for granted that the Unknowability Thesis does not contradict the Non-Spatiotemporality Thesis, because the former can be thought as a consequence of the latter, this is not enough to avoid another problem, namely, that the Non-Spatiotemporality Thesis is not sufficient to abolish the possibility of thinking consistently of space and time as empirical or material. It is also remembered that this point has already been partially envisaged for the first time by H.A. Pistorius (and later by A. Trendelenburg) and raised as the objection of the "third possibility" or "neglected alternative." Furthermore, it is maintained that although Kant tries to eliminate this possibility in the Metaphysical Expositions of Space and Time (but not in the Antinomies), by attempting to prove that space and time are only formal necessary conditions of sensibility, he cannot do it successfully. Hereafter it is argued that his circumstance is not due to the above objection itself, but to another difficulty that can only be grasped through the analysis of Kant's main argument in the Metaphysical Expositions of Transcendental Aesthetic. Ultimately, in order to show this difficulty, it is argued first that insofar as the Non-spatiotemporality Thesis supposes the validity of the Singularity Thesis, and this supposes the validity of the Apriority Thesis, the whole force of proof reposes on this latter. Secondly, it is shown that, despite his effort, Kant could not justify satisfactorily his claim to the formal apriority of space and time because of his failure to demonstrate necessarily the Apriority Thesis.
55. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
Sébastien Charles Paideia et Philosophie au Siècle des Lumières
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Parti d'une formulation maladroite de Rousseau laissant croire qu'il ne s'était rien fait sur le thème de l'éducation des Quelques pensées sur l'éducation de Locke à l'Émile, nous avons d'abord voulu montrer le côté fallacieux d'une telle proposition pour bien faire ressortir au contraire l'intérêt d'un tel sujet au siècle des Lumières, sujet qui mobilise toute l'attention des philosophes. Et cette importance accordée à l'éducation est nettement perceptible sur quatre points, qui sont au coeur de l'articulation logique de notre travail. Ainsi, nous montrons d'abord que l'éducation est un topos philosophique par excellence depuis la mise en évidence cartésienne des préjugés attachés à l'enfance. Philosopher, c'est donc former l'individu à repérer et à dénoncer ces présupposés qu'on impose à sa conscience. Cela passe évidemment par une réforme du préceptorat. Ensuite, nous avons mis en valeur l'importance philosophique de l'éducation au siècle du sensualisme où tout part des sens et donc de l'enfance. Dans un troisième moment, nous nous sommes attaché à comprendre comment le siècle des Lumières envisageait l'importance de l'éducation non en termes d'individus mais d'espèce. Faisant intervenir Turgot et Condorcet, nous avons analysé les progrès de l'esprit humain de sa source ténébreuse à la lumière du siècle des philosophes et montré en quoi l'éducation est le socle même d'un tel processes. Enfin, nous terminons en pointant du doight le rôle indispensable de la raison dans toute tentative éducative. Nous inspirant alors de Kant, nous montrons les interactions entre raison et éducation tant au niveau privé que public. En conclusion, nous nous interrogeons sur la portée pratique de ces théories philosophiques.
56. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
Miran Bozovic Malebranche’s Occasionalism: The Philosophy in the Garden of Eden
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According to Malebranche, Adam should be considered as an occasionalist philosopher. Not only did philosophy originate in paradise, but it in fact originated as Malebranchian occasionalism. It was in order to be able to persist in his occasionalist belief that Adam was given exceptional power over his body, that is, the power to detach the principal part of his brain (i.e., the seat of the soul) from the rest of the body. It was only in continually detaching the principal part of his brain from the rest of the body that Adam was able to persist in his occasionalist belief despite the unmistakable testimony of his sense to the contrary. Having once sinned, he thereupon lost his psychophysical privilege. Whereas pre-lapsarian physiology made Adam's belief in the causal efficacy of God possible, post-lapsarian physiology, in contrast, necessarily engenders and sustains belief in the causal efficacy of bodies. It was only as a result of the post-lapsarian physiology that some of the central problems of early modern philosophy arose. Contingent upon Adam's psychophysical privilege, occasionalism was possible only in paradise.
57. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
Maria de Lourdes Borges Hegel and Kant on the Ontological Argument
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I intend to present Kant's refutation of the ontological argument as confronted by Hegel's critique of Kant's refutation. The ontological argument can be exposed in a syllogistic way: everything I conceive as belonging clearly and distinctly to the nature or essence of something can be asserted as true of something. I perceive clearly and distinctly that existence belongs to the nature or essence of a perfect being; therefore, existence can be stated as true of a supremely perfect being, that is, perfect being exists. I intend to argue that Kant criticizes both the major and minor premises. To the major premise, he objects that there is an unqualified passage from the logical to the ontological level. To the minor premise, he objects that existence is not a concept predicate. Finally, I will show how Hegel criticizes Kant's refutation. To the former, Kant's critique is naïve as he could prove that existence is not inherent to a finite being's concept, which is not the concept of God.
58. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
Syliane Charles Les Enjeux de L’éducation pour la Critique Lockienne des Idées Innées
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Au lieu de tracer séparation trop nette entre les écrits pédagogiques de Locke, sur la base de leur caractère souvent anodin, et ses ouvrages philosophiques, en particulier l'Essai philosophique concernant l'entendement humain, nous voulons montrer qu'il faut bien plutôt chercher à bâtir des ponts. L'oeuvre de Locke est construite autour de quelques intuitions fondamentales, dont celle qui définit son empirisme, et qui se concrétise dans sa réfutation de l'existence d'idées innées, et celles-ci se retrouvent et se renforcent mutuellement à différents niveaux. Si l'exemple de l'acquisition tardive par les enfants des principes logiques tout d'abord, et de principes pratiques comme l'idée de Dieu ensuite, ruine l'argument du consentement universel et ainsi prouve que ceux-ci ne sont pas innés l'anti-innéisme confère réciproquement à la pédagogie un rôle essentiel qu'elle se doit d'assumer pour le bien de l'individu et celui de la société. Ce qui donne à comprendre l'enjeu bel et bien philosophique de l'intérêt de Locke pour l'éducation des enfants.
59. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
Zbigniew Drozdowicz L’Égoisme raisonnable des temps moderns
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Je vais fonder mes réflexions sur la thêse de l'apparition et de la popularisation parmi l'élite intellectuelle laique du XVIème, du XVIIème et du XVIIIème siècle du modèle de l'égoiste raisonnable, c'est-a-dire de celui qui veut et qui est capable de coexister et de collaborer avec les autres, mais non pas par charité ni-comme au Moyen Age-par une contrainte exteriéure, mais par un choix rationnel, ayant constaté que le bilan des pertes et de profits était positif. Dans la présentation de ce phénomène, je me limiterai à la culture française, sans toutefois essayer de trancher dans quelle mesure les processus en question sont paralleles à ceux qui ont eu lieu dans d'autres pays. Je n'en suis pas moins persuadé que la creation et la popularisation de ce modèle intervient dans toute l'Europe occidentale, non sans differences détails. C'est le XVIème siècle qui y sert de point de depart, car c'est dans ce centenaire qu'on a lancé la raison et le calme intérieur en tant que valeurs morales /vertus/ essentielles et réelles: ce fut le premier succès sérieux de l'egoiste raisonnable, la raison lui donnant la possibilité de défense contre les plus sérieuses menaces du côté du monde extérieur /social et naturel/, tandis que le calme intérieur lui permettant de garder une distance par rapport à tout ce qu'il considerait comme étranger. Cette idée est bien illustrée par des Essais de Montaigne. Au XVIIème siècle cet égoiste raisonnable note un autre succes important que fut le lancement de l'intellectualisme en tant que forme suprême de la connaissance de la réalite. Cette forme de l'égoiste raissonnable est bien illustrée par 'la morale d'attente' de Descartes. Au XVIIIème siècle on a observé que c'etait une raison assez étroite et un égoisme assez borné, et on y apporta plusieurs modifications essentielles. En consequence, l'égoiste raisonnable devait mieux s'adapter à son milieu, être mieux disposé à apprécier le rationnalité et l'égoisme des autres, et en fin des comptes, être plus efficace dans ses entreprises. Toutes ces proncipes ont trouvé leur forme expresse dans la Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen en 1789.
60. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 11
James Fieser Hume’s Wide Construal of the Virtues
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The term "virtue" has traditionally been used to designate morally good character traits such as benevolence, charity, honesty, wisdom, and honor. Although ethicists do not commonly offer a definitive list of virtues, the number of virtues discussed is often short and their moral significance is clear. Hume's analysis of the virtues departs from this tradition both in terms of the quantity of virtues discussed and their obvious moral significance. A conservative estimate of the various virtues Hume refers to in his moral writings would put the number at around seventy, with the more untraditional ones including wit, good manners, and dialog. Unsurprisingly, Hume's critics have attacked him for making nonsense of the concept of virtue by construing it so widely. Hume was aware that his broad understanding of virtue was controversial and he offered several defenses for it. After presenting the neglected attacks of his contemporaries along with Hume's response, I argue that a problem remains: by failing to distinguish between degrees of virtue, Hume also fails to distinguish between degrees of vice. But, some vices (e.g., malevolence) clearly deserve punishment whereas other alleged vices (e.g., uncleanliness) clearly do not. Thus, for adequate retribution, a distinction is needed between important and less important virtues and vices. I conclude that Hume could have used his own account of instinctive vengeance as a natural indicator for distinguishing between important and unimportant vices.