Evaluating the Metaphysical Realism of Étienne Gilson
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
The Human Striving and the Categories of Science
THE HUMAN STRIVLXG AND THE CATEGORIES OF SCIENCE' BY BENJAMIN GINZBURG CERTAIN school of philosophers have tried to persuade us A that the human striving, or the moral consciousness, and the principles of scientific reason have no relationship in common. It is but necessary to cast a glance at the history of pragmatism to appreciate the inadequacy of such an assertion. In the original arti- cle of C. S. Peirce on "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," - the argu- ment concerned the principles of scientific method. After review- ing the notions of Bacon and Descartes, as well as the attempts of lesser philosophers to legislate for science, the American mathemati- cian came to the conclusion that it was necessary to bring reason into the laboratory—much as Kepler had done when he painstak- ingly plotted every possible curve that could explain the movement of Mars. From a discussion of the logic of science, pragmatism w^as transformed into a philosophy of voluntaristic fideism. And even if Mr. Dewey has attempted to swing the movement away from some of the temperamental excesses of James, the fact remains that in the pragmatic philosophy logic and moral striving are still very closely united. To be sure, the realistic critics have used pragmatism as the hoi rible example of what happens when reasons of the heart are allowed to interfere with reasons of the intellect. And it certainly is true that pragmatism in many instances has weakened the authority of the intellect, and has opened the door to all manner of affective vagaries. The same charge is applicable to the Bergsonian phil- osophy of the intuition, which beginning as a critique of scientific orthodoxy has ended up as an apology for modernistic Catholicism. -
Expressions of Mind/Body Dualism in Thinspiration
MIND OVER MATTER: EXPRESSIONS OF MIND/BODY DUALISM IN THINSPIRATION Annamarie O’Brien A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2013 Committee: Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Dr. Rebecca Kinney Dr. Jeremy Wallach © 2013 Annamarie O’Brien All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Thinspiration images, meant to inspire weight-loss, proliferate online through platforms that encourage the circulation of user-generated content. Despite numerous alarmist critiques in mass media about thinspiration and various academic studies investigating ‘pro-anorexia’ sites, surprisingly little attention has been given to the processes of creation and the symbolic potential of thinspiration. This thesis analyzes the formal hybridity of thinspiration, and its use as an expressive medium. The particularities of thinspiration (including its visual characteristics, creative processes, and exhibition) may be considered carefully constructed instances of self- representation, hinging on the expression of beliefs regarding the mind and body. While these beliefs are deeply entrenched in popular body management discourse, they also tend to rely on traditional dualist ideologies. Rather than simply emphasizing slenderness or reiterating standard assumptions about beauty, thinspiration often evokes pain and sadness, and employs truisms about the transcendence of flesh and rebellion against social constraints. By harnessing individualist discourse and the values of mind/body dualism, thinspiration becomes a space in which people struggling with disordered eating and body image issues may cast themselves as active agents—contrary to the image of eating disorders proffered by popular and medical discourse. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my thesis committee chair, Dr. -
Galileo's Assayer
University of Nevada, Reno Galileo's Assayer: Sense and Reason in the Epistemic Balance A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History. by James A Smith Dr. Bruce Moran/Thesis Advisor May 2018 c by James A Smith 2018 All Rights Reserved THE GRADUATE SCHOOL We recommend that the thesis prepared under our supervision by JAMES A. SMITH entitled Galileo's Assayer: Sense and Reason in the Epistemic Balance be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Bruce Moran, Ph.D., Advisor Edward Schoolman, Ph.D., Committee Member Carlos Mariscal, Ph.D., Committee Member Stanislav Jabuka, Ph.D., Graduate School Representative David W. Zeh, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School May, 2018 i Abstract Galileo's The Assayer, published in 1623, represents a turning point in Galileo's philo- sophical work. A highly polemical \scientific manifesto," The Assayer was written after his astronomical discoveries of the moons of Jupiter and sunspots on a rotating sun, but before his mature Copernican work on the chief world systems (Ptolemaic versus Copernican). The Assayer included major claims regarding the place of math- ematics in natural philosophy and how the objects of the world and their properties can be known. It's in The Assayer that Galileo wades into the discussion about the ultimate constituents of matter and light, namely, unobservable particles and atoms. Galileo stressed the equal roles that the senses and reason served in the discovery of knowledge, in contradistinction to Aristotelian authoritarian dogma that he found to hinder the processes of discovery and knowledge acquisition. -
University of Groningen Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind
University of Groningen Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason Marrama, Oberto IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2019 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Marrama, O. (2019). Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason. University of Groningen. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 27-09-2021 SPINOZA’S THEORY OF THE HUMAN MIND: CONSCIOUSNESS, MEMORY, AND REASON 1A_BW_Marrama .job © Oberto Marrama, 2019. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-94-034-1568-0 (printed version) ISBN 978-94-034-1569-7 (electronic version) 1B_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason PhD thesis to obtain the degree of PhD at the University of Groningen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. -
Computer Simulations and the Trading Zone
PETER &A Computer Simulations and the Trading Zone At the root of most accounts of the development of science is the covert premise that science is about ontology: What objects are there? How do they interact? And how do we discover them? It is a premise that underlies three distinct epochs of inquiry into the nature of science. Among the positivists, the later Carnap explicitly advocated a view that the objects of physics would be irretrievably bound up with what he called a "framework," a full set of linguistic relations such as is found in Newtonian or Eiustcini;~mechanics. That these frameworks held little in common did not trouble Car- nap; prediction mattered more than progress. Kuhn molded this notion and gave it a more historical focus. Unlike the positivists, Kuhn and other commentators of the 1960's wanted to track the process by which a community abandoned one framework and adopted another. To more recent scholars, the Kuhnian categoriza- tion of group affiliation and disaffiliation was by and large correct, but its underlying dynamics were deemed deficient because they paid insufficient attention to the sociological forces that bound groups to their paradigms. All three generations embody the root assumption that the analysis of science studies (or ought to study) a science classified and divided according to the objects of its inquiry. All three assume that as these objects change, particular branches of science split into myriad disconnected parts. It is a view of scientific disunity that I will refer to as "framework relativism. 55 In this essay, as before, I will oppose this view, but not by Computer Simulations I 19 invoking the old positivist pipe dreams: no universal protocol languages, no physicalism, no Corntian hierarchy of knowledge, and no radical reductionism. -
Descartes and Spinoza
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Thu Dec 29 2016, NEWGEN 229 chapter nine Descartes and Spinoza Two Approaches to Embodiment Alison Peterman 1. Introduction Descartes1 (1596– 1650) and Spinoza (1632– 1677) each gave us interest- ing and infuential approaches to answering what I’ll call “embodiment question”: what is the relationship between a mind and its body— the one that it seems to inhabit, feel, control or otherwise be uniquely involved with?2 In Spinoza we fnd (at least) three diferent answers, the ingenuity of all of which is attested to by their long reception in the philosophical tradition. Descartes was an important infuence on Spinoza, but on many others, too, ushering in the era of the “mind- body 1 I am grateful to Colin Chamberlain, Michael Della Rocca, Keota Fields, Kristin Primus, and Alison Simmons for discussion, and also to the other contributors to this volume. 2 Tis question is broader than one than one about the constitutive or essential relationship between a mind and its body. 229 02_acprof-9780190490447_Ch7-11.indd 229 12/29/2016 2:13:15 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Thu Dec 29 2016, NEWGEN 230 230 Embodiment problem” in the form that many philosophers still grapple with. Here, I’ll by no means attempt a comprehensive treatment of their contribu- tions. Instead I will try to uncover an unnoticed similarity between the two, and apply it to understanding the coherence of Spinoza’s account of embodiment. I’ll argue that Descartes and Spinoza both approach the embodiment question in two diferent ways: one approach starts with some metaphysical commitments about the kinds of entities, properties, and interactions there are in the world, and the other starts by attending to the experience of an embodied subject. -
Idealism: Problematic, Visionary, Critical
Kant | Prolegomena 11 Idealism: problematic, visionary, critical There are many passages in the Prolegomena where Kant distances himself from a particular variety of idealism (e.g., Notes II and III, §32, Appendix), even though he is explicitly defending a version of idealism himself. In broadest outline, realism is the view that things in the external world are independent of human cogition; their nature and existence is unrelated to us. (This is how Kant charcterises ‘transcendental realism’ in CPR A368–9.) In contrast, idealism is the view that reality is mind-dependent or mind-correlative. An onto- logical reading suggests that there are no mind-independent things, that there is no ‘ready-made’ world out there; or it is the view that the external world exists only as an object of the mind. But it can also be the view that the fundamental entities are ideas (as opposed to matter), and thus something that is essentially mental or non-material. This is Berkeley’s ‘dogmatic’ idealism (cf. the sheet with extracts). An epistemic reading suggests that what we can know about reality is largely due to our cognitive faculties, and hence our grasp of reality is shaped not by the things themselves, but by the way in which we cognise that reality. This is Kant’s ideal- ism, which thus by no means rejects the claim that there is a world out there, for it plays a role in making possible experience as we have it. But we lack epistemic access to it: we do not have insight into ‘the inner [das Innere, roughly, the intrinsic nature] of things’ (CPR A277/B333), regardless of our cognition of them. -
Descartes, Mathematics and Music
Descartes, Mathematics and Music Donald DeMarco Descartes's influence in shaping the intellectual climate of the modern world is without parallel. More than any other figure of the seventeenth century, he marks the intellectual transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. It is generally conceded that he is the "father of modern philosophy" as well as the "father of modern mathematics." In addition, his literary influence is inestimable. He is said to have been the first to have offered a perfect model of French prose. Karl Stern refers to him as the Saint Augustine of the Age of Reason. And Alfred North Whitehead regards his marriage of algebra and geometry as one of the truly stirring moments in the history of human discovery: It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of men at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string to his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry. 1 Pythagoras and Plato saw mathematics as a key to understanding the physical world. Aristotle, whose intellectual inclinations were far more naturalistic, did not share his predecessors enthusiasm for numbers. And since the mind of Aristotle dominated the intellectual temper of the Middle Ages, it was left to Descartes, together with a host of seventeenth century mathematical physicists, to revive mathematics as the key to understanding nature. -
What Is a Mode Account of Collective Intentionality? Michael Schmitz
What is a mode account of collective intentionality? Michael Schmitz (Penultimate draft; final version published in Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Raimo Tuomela with his Responses; Springer 2017, pp. 37-70; please refer to the published version.) 1. Mode vs. content and subject approaches to collective intentionality Many attempts to understand collective intentionality have tried to steer between two extremes. We want to understand how the members of a group are bound together, what turns them into a group, so we don’t want to think of the group as a mere sum of individuals. At the same time, we don’t want the group to be free-floating with regard to the members. It should not come out as just another individual, as an additional person as it were, nor should it be emergent in a radical sense. It’s useful to distinguish attempts to accomplish this balancing act in terms of where they solely or predominantly locate collectivity: in the content of relevant intentional states (or speech acts), in their mode, or in their subject(s) (Schweikard and Schmid 2012). A content approach tries to understand collectivity in terms of the contents of the subjects’ intentionality, where content is understood in the standard fashion, namely as what the subjects believe, intend, hope, feel, and so on. So on this kind of view, collectivity is just a matter of certain kinds of things that individuals believe, intend, and feel with regard to each other. On this perspective, the best- known representative of which is Michael Bratman (1992; 2014), there may be a ‘we’ of joint action as represented in the content of intentions, but these intentions are always of the form ‘I intend that we J’, so that no collective ‘we’-subject of intentional states is represented.1 Now, this kind of approach is in danger of erring on the side of being too individualistic. -
Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics the Ontological Status of Bodies
Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics The Ontological Status of Bodies: A Study of the Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics By SCOTT STAPLEFORD, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University C> Copyright by Scott Stapleford, August 1998 MASTER OF ARTS (1998) McMaster University (Philosophy) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: The Ontological Status of Bodies: A Study of the Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics AUTHOR: Scott Stapleford, B.A. (Brock University) SUPERVISOR: Professor Wilfrid Waluchow NUMBER OF PAGES: iv, 169 ii Table of Contents Introduction 1 The Problem 2 Collateral Issues 3 Procedure Part I 4 Some Working Deftnitions 5 Phenomenalism 5.1 Linguistic Phenomenalism 5.2 Berkeleian Phenomenalism 6 Leibniz and Phenomenalism 6.1 Macintosh's Interpretation 6.2 Jolley's Interpretation 6.3 Wilson's Interpretation 111 Part II 7 Recapitulation and Procedure 8 Athenian and Darwinian Approaches 8.1 Woolhouse's Interpretation 8.2 Adams' Interpretation 8.3 Hartz's Interpretation 8.4 Loeb's Interpretation 8.5 Rutherford's Interpretation 9 Psychology and Ontology 9.1 Mind and Matter in Descartes and Locke 9.2 Leibniz's Analysis of Mind and Matter 9.2.1 The Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction 9.2.2 Physical Considerations 9.2.3 Metaphysical Considerations 9.2.3.1 Substance as Unity 9.2.3.2 Substance as Activity 9.2.3.3 Substance as Subject 9.2.4 Psychological Considerations 10 Levels of Discourse 11 Leibniz's Epistemological Realism 11.1 Requirements of the System 11.2 The Contrary Proposition 11. -
Philosophy of Mind
Part Two Philosophy of Mind 9781350067301_txt_prf.indd 179 21-08-2018 11:42:33 9781350067301_txt_prf.indd 180 21-08-2018 11:42:33 6 Spinoza’s Two Claims about the Mind-Body Relation Alison Peterman Introduction How is a particular mind related to its body?1 There are many ways to understand this question, and many different answers for those different ways. Spinoza makes a number of claims about this relationship, all of which are independently interesting. But it is not clear that they are compatible. In this chapter, I would like to focus on two of those claims, and to argue that although Spinoza sometimes run these two claims together, in fact he does not succeed in making them compatible with one another. I suggest that the illusion that they are compatible comes from an equivocation between two ways of using the phrase “insofar as” [quatenus], and that this type of equivocation runs deep in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Those two claims are: (1) Parallelism: the mind is causally and structurally linked to other minds in the same way that its body is linked to other bodies; (2) Idea-of: the mind is the idea of its body; or, the body is the object [objectum] of its mind. In focusing on these two, I will ignore some of those other interesting things that Spinoza writes about the mind-body relationship. For example, I will for the most part ignore his account of it in the earlier Short Treatise, where he claims that love constitutes the union of the mind with the body.2 But I will also ignore another of Spinoza’s commitments that might look more relevant: that the mind and the body are “one and the same thing, understood in two different ways” (E2p7s). -
Park, Sam-Yel (1999) a Study of the Mind-Body Theory in Spinoza. Phd Thesis. Copyright and Moral R
Park, Sam-Yel (1999) A study of the mind-body theory in Spinoza. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2040/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] A Study of the Mind-Body Theory in Spinoza Departmentof Philosophy University of Glasgow A Study of Theory in Spinoza the pffindýBody by Sam-Yel Park A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in Fulfilment of the Requirementsfor the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy June 1999 C Sam-Yel Park 1999 Abstract A Study of the Mind-Body Theory in Spinoza by Sam-Yel Park This thesis investigates Spinoza's mind-body theory starting with the discussion of the diverse interpretations of his mind-body theory such as hylomorphism.,idealism, epiphenomenalism,and materialism. From the critical comments on inadequaciesof these interpretations, it turns out that Spinoza's argumentof the relationshipbetween the mind and the body should be understood as holding that there is a non-causalrelationship between the mind and the body and that they have equal weight.