Aristotle has interpreted research done by empirical methods using metaphysical concepts extensively. According to some authors, his metaphysically intoned philosophy of biology is compatible with the modern theory of evolution and with some of the essential topics of ecological ethics. We will try to show how the interpretation of the substantial whole, under the aspect of the notion of potentiality, is Aristotle’s contribution to the debates of eco-ethical holism. Furthermore, we will show how Hans Jonas also finds the possibility of (...) valuing the individual organic substance in Aristotle’s works, which are not only representatives of the human species. Hans Jonas pleads for a revision of the modern theory of evolution, which, combined with some of Aristotle’s metaphysical elements, could avoid the reductionism to which it was exposed after Descartes. (shrink)

In this study, Qāḍī Abd al-Jābbār’s views on knowing Allah (ma‘rifatullah) and following issues have been analysed. In this context, either the divine message has reached to a person or not, it is examined whether ma‘rifatullah is obligatory (wajib) upon him. Subsequently, it is discussed whether this obligation is ensured by reasoning (‘aql) or revelation (naql). Furthermore, while keeping in mind the role of intellect (nazar) and argumentation (istidlāl), we have established and evaluated religious state and source of nazar and (...) istidlāl. Also, we discussed to what extend God can be the subject of knowledge and from which aspects He can be known. Besides, we discussed whether ma‘rifatullah is an obligation and if not what its justification is. In addition, we examined whether imitative knowledge (taqlīd) is possible in the case of ma‘rifatullah or not and whether it’s sufficient to know God just by taqlīd without the reasoning at all. Finally, Qāḍī Abd al-Jābbār’s opinions on the religious situation of people to whom the divine revelation did not reach at all and so they lack of knowledge on God. (shrink)

This paper presents a historical-philosophical reconstruction of Leibniz’s theory of education. In the introduction, I point out the exegetical problems involved in locating Leibniz’s “philosophy of education” within the broader corpus of his works and in uncovering an appropriate theoretical framework within which it is possible to contextualise and reconstruct Leibniz’s thought on education. It is then shown that this framework is provided by Leibniz’s practical philosophy, i.e. his ideas about the optimal state and the common good. I analyse the (...) key theses of Leibniz’s ethics and political philosophy to uncover the background of the idea of the respublica optima and explain how education, in Leibniz’s view, should enable the perfection of the individual and society and contribute to the realisation of the common good. Finally, it is argued that in his educational project Leibniz articulated an idea of the Enlightenment that is far more progressive than the educational ideas of the philosophers we usually associate with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. (shrink)

Neuroscience is one of the most propulsive of all sciences and very often, directly or not, it tries to answer the question: What is man? However, neuroscientific research does not acknowledge the concept of man as a unity of body and soul. The modern scientific research paradigm therefore rests on physicalism, while theologians are turning towards non-reductive physicalism. In this paper, we will highlight a few key points of the theory of philosopher and theologian Nancey Murphy, which is based on (...) the deconstruction of Aquinas's thought about the human soul and its reduction to the physical. We aim to show that she neglected the full scope of Aquinas teachings. In the second part of this paper, for the scientific paradigm of humans we shall propose new-old hylomorphism, and try to complement certain points of such a system with modern neuroscientific views. The aim of this work is to offer advice for the interdisciplinary cooperation between neuroscience, philosophy and theology alongside the guidelines of Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism. (shrink)

_Freiheit nach Kant_ analyzes Kant’s conception of freedom from a historical and systematic point of view. It considers its position in the history of philosophy, its impact on German Idealism, and finally discusses the systematic relevance of Kant’s theory.

Willensstruktur und Handlungsorganisation in Kants Theorie der praktischen Freiheit provides a detailed reconstruction of Kant’s theory of free volitional self-determination. It systematically reveals all aspects of the theory that intrinsically determine the organization and coordination of action under the guidelines of freedom.

These notes discuss formalizing contexts as first class objects. The basic relationships are: ist(c,p) meaning that the proposition p is true in the context c, and value(c,p) designating the value of the term e in the context c Besides these, there are lifting formulas that relate the propositions and terms in subcontexts to possibly more general propositions and terms in the outer context. Subcontextx are often specialised with regard to time, place and terminology. Introducing contexts as formal objects will permit (...) axiomatizations in limited contexts to be expanded to transcend the original limitations. This seems necessary to provide AI programs using logic with certain capabilities that human fact representation and human reasoning possess. Fully implementing transcendence seems to require further extensions to mathematical logic, ie. beyond the nonmonotonic inference methods first invented in AI and now studied as a new domain of logic. (shrink)

In this paper, the phenomenon of the stranger is considered from a philosophical and theological point of view. In the introduction, a brief etymological analysis of the term stranger was made, after which it was pointed out that the term remains ambiguous in relation to others – strangers and beloved, but also in relation to ourselves and, finally, in relation to God. In the first part of the paper, we offer phenomenological and existential reflections on the structure of the encounter (...) with the stranger, primarily through the categories of place/space as the central determinant of the stranger’s identity, then through the phenomena of the fearful and the fascinating, of change and wonder, of face and fear. In the second part of the paper, we consider the concept of the stranger with the help of Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti, which harmoniously draws on philosophical accents but also offers a theological extension of understanding the encounter with the stranger as an encounter with the neighbor. Finally, we present a synthesis of philosophical and theological understandings of the concept of the stranger. (shrink)

Supporters of eliminative connectionism have argued for a pattern association-based explanation of language learning and language processing. They deny that explicit rules and symbolic representations play any role in language processing and cognition in general. Their argument is based to a large extent on two artificial neural network (ANN) models that are claimed to be able to learn the past tenses of English verbs (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986, Parallel distributed processing, Vol. 2, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; MacWhinney & Leinbach, 1991, (...) Cognition, 40, 121-157). In this article we critically review Rumelhart and McClelland's as well as MacWhinney and Leinbach's ANN models and conclude that they do not succeed in the assigned task of learning the past tenses of English verbs. In order to answer their challenge to the symbolic processing approach, we present our symbolic pattern associator (SPA)-a general-purpose pattern associator that can learn to associate arbitrary discrete patterns. We carried out several experiments with the SPA using the same set of verbs that was used in MacWhinney and Leinbach's simulation with more realistic training and testing procedures. The SPA outperformed the connectionist models by a wide margin in the accuracy of learning, and successful inductive generalizations to unseen verbs. Our SPA has very natural and psychologically realistic explanations to many psychological effects such as U-shaped learning curve, and is much closer to human subjects in predicting past tense of the pseudo-verbs. In contrast to ANNs, whose internal representations are entirely opaque, the SPA can represent the acquired knowledge in the form of production rules that allow for further higher-level processing and integration, resulting in linguistically realistic associative templates for irregular verbs and production rules for regular verbs. In the light of these findings, we conclude that eliminative connectionists' vision of cognition as simple pattern association and pattern recognition without symbolic representation is inadequate. Pattern association as such does not imply rule-less or cue-based models of language acquisition or of human learning in general. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article deals with the communicational aspects of Aristotle’s theory of signification as laid out in the initial chapters of the De Interpretatione (Int.).1 We begin by outlining the reception and main interpretations of the chapters under discussion, rather siding with the linguistic strand. We then argue that the first four chapters present an account of verbal communication, in which words signify things via thoughts. We show how Aristotle determines voice as a conventional and hence accidental medium of signification: (...) words as ‘spoken sounds’ are tokens of thoughts, which in turn are signs or natural likenesses of things. We argue that, in this way, linguistic expressions may both signify thoughts and refer to things. This double account of signification also explains the variety of ontological, logical and psychological interpretations of the initial chapters of Int. (shrink)

This article examines two modes of the canceling of time in a comparative analysis that ought to show the passage from the aesthetic over coming of the form of time in Kant to the historical over coming of natural time in Hegel. The essay begins with a problematization of the form of time in Kant?s first Critique and with the question whet her Kant displaces time outside the framework of mere condition of receptivity. Thereafter we will analyze the key passage (...) from Analytics of the Sublime where Kant writes about the cancellation of time-condition and we will interpret this in the light of an ontology of the eventuality and in the historico-political context of French revolution. Although Kant still does not think time as historical time, the cancellation of time-condition in the experience of the sublime shall be considered as the act of the structuring of time that is emancipated from natural linearity and causal continuity. The thinking of historical time will take place only with He gel, i.e. with his identification of time and concept. In this sense we will analyze Hegel?s notion of "conceptual history" in order to draw a conclusion that in Phenomenology of Spirit is al so at work a modus of annihilation of the natural, linear time, but unlike Kant it is truly articulated as historical occurrence. Time is constituted only as annihilated, since it is the intuitive, sensible, natural and external meaning of time what is sublated, while time in its originary dimension is produced only as hi story-time. nema. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate a peculiar acoustic feature of translation – its echoicity. In the first step, I will revisit the story of Echo, the mythological character who repeats the words of the other and distorts its meaning. Moving from this figure, the article will pose the question of how the mechanism of repetition is structured in translation. This will be done through an analysis of the passages from Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”, in which (...) translation is explicitly described as an echo, involved in a chain of multiple resonances. It will be showed that Benjamin’s text as well, especially its terminology, acts through the same multiple resonances. In the last part of the paper, the problem of contradiction will be introduced, making reverberate some concepts and points from Hegelian philosophy, in order to argue the contradictory process of echoing the voice of the other in translation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the idea of universality through the lens of translation, in an attempt to sketch out what can be called a translational universality. As the starting point, I will take into consideration the recent Étienne Balibar's works on the universals, and especially his strategy of translation, i.e. the strategy of enunciating the universal by means of translational process. In the next step, I will analyze political consequences of the universalizing practices of translation, which (...) due to their capacity to enunciate the universals, according to Balibar's thesis, have generated political communities. In order to examine this aspect, I will discuss the constitutive role of translation in the formation of German cultural identity in the 19th Century, by exposing Humboldt-Schleirmacherian model of translation. In doing so I will lean on Berman's study on translation in Romantic Germany and on Venuti's political reading of nationalist narratives of typically German foreignizing translation. The conception of Bildung, envisaged as an experience of the otherness through translation, will be approached as a historical model to understand the notion of translational universality that is at issue in this paper. After these historical and philosophical analyses, which in translation view one possible way to articulate a certain struggle over the universal from the particular position of cultural difference, the article will address some questions regarding our contemporary situation: what would be a historically different and potentially emancipatory form of universality? What are the translational capacities of such a universality to generate a new framework for political communities? (shrink)

U ovom radu autor izlaze Hajdegerovo shvatanje sustine tehnike kao opasnosti i mogucnost umetnosti kao ono-spasonosnog. U tom smislu autor smatra da Hajdeger promislja sustinu tehnike kao i umetnosti polazeci od povesne konstelacije istine bivstvovanja ili udesa razotkrivanja. Ovo povesno promisljanje podrzano je Hajdegerovim etimoloskim analizama pojmova poiesis i techne.

U ovom clanku se razmatra Gadamerovo shvatanje vaznih hermeneutickih pojmova predrasude, autoriteta i tradicije. Izvodjenje razumevanja, u kojem su predrasude neizbezne, odredjeno je kao proces njihovog neprekidnog korigovanja. Pozitivno vrednovanje pojmovnog para autoriteta i tradicije karakteristican je motiv filozofske hermeneutike, za koju autoritet ne poseduje negativni prizvuk, vec je zasnovan na slobodnom i racionalnom prihvatanju. Povezanost razumevanja sa tradicijom je dinamicni odnos, u kojem ni tradicija ni subjekat razumevanja ne ostaju nepromenjeni. Odatle se izvode dve implikacije: da se smisao nekog (...) teksta ne moze iscrpsti i da je njegovo razumevanje beskonacan proces; i da suspenzija predrasuda uspeva tek tamo gde ih takoreci 'filtrira' tradicija. Autor istice napetost u Gadamerovom shvatanju hermeneuticke produktivnosti tradicije i vremenskog odstojanja kao instance koja doprinosi razumevanju. (shrink)

Bilješke koje je Martin Heidegger unosio u takozvane »crne bilježnice« potakle su, netom nakon objavljivanja, intenzivne diskusije, osobito oko pitanja antisemitizma i nacionalsocijalizma. Je li se Heideggerova osobna naklonost ka ovim ideologijama odrazila i na njegovo filozofsko djelo? U ovom ogledu razmatra se jedna, s ovim pitanjima povezana, važna tema u Crnim bilježnicama – tema sveučilišta. Ona postaje frekventnija u tri navrata, obilježena značajnim događajima u Heideggerovoj profesionalnoj biografiji: preuzimanjem funkcije rektora sveučilišta u Freiburgu, napuštanjem te funkcije te isključenjem iz (...) nastave u sklopu poratne denacifikacije Njemačke. Pokazuje se da shvaćanje sveučilišta u Crnim bilježnicama odgovara idejama predočenim u Heideggerovu rektorskom govoru, kao i da to shvaćanje nije jednako nacionalsocijalističkom, već izražava filozofovo »narodnjačko« misaono usmjerenje. Iako posjeduje neke elemente vokabulara koji su bili prisutni u nacističkoj propagandi, Heidegger svoje stavove o stvarnosti i budućnosti sveučilišta integrira s drugim svojim idejama – kritikom svođenja znanja na tehničke aspekte, kritikom izoliranja znanosti u samostalna područja i uopće kritikom zapadnjačkog mišljenja. The notes that Martin Heidegger made in the so-called Black Notebooks stimulated, immediately after publication, intense discussions, especially on the issue of anti-Semitism and National Socialism. Does Heidegger’s personal fondness for these ideologies reflect on his philosophical work? In this essay, one important topic related to these issues in Black Notebooks is discussed – the topic of university. It became more frequent on three occasions, marked by significant events in Heidegger’s professional biography: taking over as rector of the University of Freiburg, leaving that position, and exclusion from teaching as part of the postwar denazification of Germany. It turns out that the understanding of the university in the Black Notebooks corresponds to the ideas presented in Heidegger’s rector’s speech, and that this understanding is not equally National Socialist, but expresses the philosopher’s “populist” thinking. Although he possesses some elements of vocabulary that were present in Nazi propaganda, Heidegger integrates his views on the reality and future of the university with his other ideas – a critique of reducing knowledge to technical aspects, a critique of isolating science into independent fields, and a critique of Western thought. (shrink)

The notes that Martin Heidegger made in the so-called Black Notebooks stimulated, immediately after publication, intense discussions, especially on the issue of anti-Semitism and National Socialism. Does Heidegger’s personal fondness for these ideologies reflect on his philosophical work? In this essay, one important topic related to these issues in Black Notebooks is discussed – the topic of university. It became more frequent on three occasions, marked by significant events in Heidegger’s professional biography: taking over as rector of the University of (...) Freiburg, leaving that position, and exclusion from teaching as part of the postwar denazification of Germany. It turns out that the understanding of the university in the Black Notebooks corresponds to the ideas presented in Heidegger’s rector’s speech, and that this understanding is not equally National Socialist, but expresses the philosopher’s “populist” thinking. Although he possesses some elements of vocabulary that were present in Nazi propaganda, Heidegger integrates his views on the reality and future of the university with his other ideas – a critique of reducing knowledge to technical aspects, a critique of isolating science into independent fields, and a critique of Western thought. (shrink)

The scientific papers published in a special edition of the journal “Scientia et Fides” are the result of an international scientific project titled “The Dynamic Theodicy Model: Understanding God, Evil, and Evolution.” The project leaders are Prof. Piotr Roszak (Nicolaus Copernicus University) and Prof. Saša Horvat (University of Rijeka), under the auspices of the University of Oxford and the John Templeton Foundation. Other members of the project team include Grzegorz Karwasz, Michał Oleksowicz, Tomasz Huzarek, and Jan Wółkowski.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 106 Heft: 3 Seiten: 487-506.

People’s affective experiences can be influenced by multiple informational inputs. It remains unclear however how this occurs? In this paper, we investigate the construction of affective experience...

_Der „innere Gerichtshof“ der Vernunft_ explores Kant’s theory of conscience and its historical reception in German Idealism in the context of practical philosophy and the philosophy of religion.

In this text the author argues that the major achievement of Schelling’s aesthetics in his System of Transcendental Idealism consists in its contribution to the theory of self-consciousness. He emphasizes that a detailed interpretation of the underlying concepts of intellectual and ideal (vollkommen) intuition provides an adequate approach to the understanding of the systematic function of the philosophy of art within the system of knowledge including the unconscious sphere of self knowledge and self realization.

Hölderlin’s „Urteil und Sein“ is certainly one of the most intensively discussed fragments in German Idealism. Since Dieter Henrich’s influential interpretation from 1965 it is firmly believed that Urteil und Sein represents a key reference for a unique and „courageous attack“ on Fichte’s principle of philosophy, the „Ich“ of the intellectual intuition. According to Henrich and his followers, Hölderlin argues that the principle of philosophy ought to be „Sein“ instead of „Ich“. In contrast to Henrich, I believe that Urteil und (...) Sein does not contain any kind of critical remarks on Fichte’s philosophy at all. To follow my argumentation, it is only required to avoid the confusion between the content of the intellectual intuition and self-consciousness.Hölderlins Fragment Urteil und Sein zählt zu den bedeutendsten Dokumenten der klassischen deutschen Philosophie und ist seit Henrichs wirkungsmächtiger Interpretation 1965/66 von nahezu allen namhaften deutschen Idealismusforschern Henrichkonform interpretiert worden. Es gilt als einmalige Referenz für eine ebenso einmalige Kritik am Subjekt als Prinzip der Philosophie – namentlich an Fichtes Prinzip. In diesem Diskussionsbeitrag werfe ich die Frage auf, ob dies wirklich der Fall ist, und vertrete die These, dass in Urteil und Sein keinerlei Kritik an Fichtes Philosophie nachweisbar ist. Meine Argumentation beruht auf der Unterscheidung zwischen dem „Ich“ als gedanklichen Gehalt der intellektuellen Anschauung und dem Selbstbewusstsein als Ausdruck der reflexiven Gewahrwerdens seiner selbst im Bewusstsein, nämlich „Ich bin Ich“. (shrink)

The immediacy of daily encounters with gender roles, as well as the specific features of authoritarian mediation in their social shaping, make an analysis of gendered social interaction indispensable. In this paper the analysis is centered on the concept of social character, with special emphasis on authoritarianism as a continuous determinant of the transformation of natural sex into social construct of gender. It is precisely the authoritarian personality type that is the basis for alienated gender, dominated by sexism, a?natural? belonging (...) to the private or the public sphere of social life, suppression of individual human capacities, and reduction of choice. After a review of the theoretical conceptions of social character and authoritarianism, a historical-comparative analysis of authoritarianism is offered, where the latter is seen as an element of the social character within the perspective of the typology traditional - modern - postmodern society. It is argued in conclusion that, in spite of certain emancipatory achievements, men and women still tend to escape into the security of authoritarian alienation. Feminist theory remains a basic source for reflecting on these processes; therefore the author pleads for a wider acceptance of feminist insights as contributions to establishing a postmodern, interpretive?sociology in a new key?. Analiza drustvene interakcije medju polovima nametnuta je neposrednoscu svakodnevnog susretanja sa polnim ulogama, kao i specificnostima autoritarnog posredovanja u drustvenom uoblicavanju tih uloga. U ovom radu, analiza je organizovana oko pojma drustvenog karaktera, pri cemu se poseban naglasak stavlja na autoritarnost kao kontinuiranu determinantu preobrazaja prirodnog pola u drustveno konstruisanu kategoriju roda. Upravo je autoritarni tip licnosti podloga za otudjenu polnost, u kojoj dominiraju seksizam,?prirodno? pripadanje privatnoj ili javnoj sferi drustvenog zivota, suzbijanje individualnih ljudskih potencijala i suzavanje mogucnosti izbora. Posle pregleda teorijskih koncepcija drustvenog karaktera i pojma autoritarnosti, nudi se istorijsko-uporedna analiza prisustva autoritarnosti kao elementa drustvenog karaktera iz perspektive tipologije tradicionalno - moderno - postmoderno drustvo. Zakljucuje se da, i pored izvesnog ostvarenog emancipacijskog hoda, muskarci i zene jos uvek teze bekstvu u sigurnost autoritarne otudjenosti. Feministicka teorija ostaje nezaobilazna osnova za promisljanje ovih procesa, te se pledira za sire usvajanje feministickih uvida kao doprinosa oblikovanju jedne postmoderne, razumevajuce?sociologije u novome kljucu?. (shrink)

We consider the historic Harress-Sagnac experiment in the light of our absolute space-time theory, proposing two modifications, and we give an account of its recent practical performance. We show that the effect of the rotating disk experiment is a direct result of the light velocity's direction dependence and we point out that our recently performed coupled-mirrors experiment, with whose help for the first time we have measured the Earth's absolute velocity, can be considered as a logical result of the rotating (...) disk experiment. (shrink)

Proceeding from our absolute space-time conceptions, we obtain the formula for the gravitational frequency shift in an extremely simple way. Using our “burst” model for photons, we show that the different rates of clocks placed in spatial regions with different gravitational potentials appear as a direct result of the gravitational frequency shift and the axiomatic assumption that at any space point the time unit is to be defined by light clocks with equal “arms,” i.e., that at any space point the (...) light velocity (in moving frames the “there-and-back” velocity) has the same numerical valuec. Considering the principle of equivalence, we come to the logical conclusion that the kinematic (Einstein-Lorentz) time dilation is an absolute phenomenon. (shrink)

In the light of our recently performed experiments, revealing the anisotropy of light velocity in any frame moving with respect to absolute space, we show that the Lorentz transformation, where the relativity of light velocity is given implicitly through the relativity of the time coordinates, must be treated from an absolute point of view if one seeks to preserve its adequacy to physical reality. Then we propose a new transformation (which is to be considered as a legitimate companion of the (...) Lorentz transformation) wherein the relativity of light velocity is given explicitly and the time coordinates are absolute. (shrink)

This article presents counter evidence against Smolensky's theory that human intuitive/nonconscious congnitive processes can only be accurately explained in terms of subsymbolic computations carried out in artificial neural networks. We presentsymboliclearning models of two well‐studied, complicated cognitive tasks involving nonconscious acquisition of information: learning production rules and artificial finite state grammars. Our results demonstrate that intuitive learning does not imply subsymbolic computation, and that the already well‐established, perceived correlation between “conscious” and “symbolic” on the one hand, and between “nonconscious” and (...) “subsymbolic” on the other, does not exist. (shrink)

The article criticises the attempt to establish connectionism as an alternative theory of human cognitive architecture through the introduction of thesymbolic/subsymbolic distinction (Smolensky, 1988). The reasons for the introduction of this distinction are discussed and found to be unconvincing. It is shown that thebrittleness problem has been solved for a large class ofsymbolic learning systems, e.g. the class oftop-down induction of decision-trees (TDIDT) learning systems. Also, the process of articulating expert knowledge in rules seems quite practical for many important domains, (...) including common sense knowledge.The article discusses several experimental comparisons betweenTDIDT systems and artificial neural networks using the error backpropagation algorithm (ANNs usingBP). The properties of one of theTDIDT systemsID3 (Quinlan, 1986a) are examined in detail. It is argued that the differences in performance betweenANNs usingBP andTDIDT systems reflect slightly different inductive biases but are not systematic; these differences do not support the view that symbolic and subsymbolic systems are fundamentally incompatible. It is concluded, that thesymbolic/subsymbolic distinction is spurious. It cannot establish connectionism as an alternative cognitive architecture. (shrink)

We find the relation between the frequencies received by two observers placed at a given parallel with 180° difference in longitude when they observe a distant light (radio) source. This relation depends on the absolute velocity of the Earth; however, because of the occurrence of aberration, the effect cannot be registered in practice.

If phonons are particles, they must be attached to absolute space through their proper masses, which depend on the absolute velocities. In such a case one should be able to register with phonons the Sagnac and Marinov effects which have been observed with massless and massive particles (photons and neutrons). The experimental possibilities for such experiments are analyzed.

A rebuttal is given of points of criticism raised by Z. Vrcelj against S. Marinov's absolute space-time theory.