THERE would appear to be no philosophical consensus about the nature of human action, even though discussion of that ancient topic has intensified in the last two decades. I shall nevertheless ask the reader to suppose that the question has at last been settled in its main lines, and settled in a way I shall describe in a moment. The supposition I have in mind is no light matter. The universe it envisions is radically different from what it would be (...) if some other supposition were in its place. A detailed justification of it would require a thoroughgoing reassessment of many of the notions about causality that have prevailed in this century. Though I have offered something of that kind in earlier writings, the most I can hope to do here is to state the supposition in as brief, vivid, and concrete a way as I can manage. After that I shall ask what view of the rational agent it leads us to. No matter how action itself is interpreted, common sense attributes action to an agent. If the actions are those that take place in an atmosphere of rational discourse, it is natural to think of the agent as a rational one. Do we have any right to make this attribution in any way more exacting than that of common sense? Precisely what ontological status does the rational agent have? What, in particular, are we to make of its self-identity, seeing that some actions seem to modify the self-identity in which in a prima facie sense they originate? (shrink)

Biologists explain organisms’ behavior not only as having been programmed by genes and shaped by natural selection, but also as the result of an organism’s agency: the capacity to react to environmental changes in goal-driven ways. The use of such ‘agential explanations’ reopens old questions about how justified it is to ascribe agency to entities like bacteria or plants that obviously lack rationality and even a nervous system. Is organismic agency genuinely ‘real’ or is it just a useful fiction? (...) In this paper we focus on two questions: whether agential explanations are to be interpreted ontically, and whether they can be reduced to non-agential explanations (thereby dispensing with agency). The Kantian approach we identify interprets agential explanations non-ontically, yet holds agency to be indispensable. Attributing agency to organisms is not to be taken literally in the way we attribute physical properties such as mass or acceleration, but nor is it a mere heuristic or predictive tool. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of our own rational capacity: as long as we are rational agents ourselves, we cannot avoid seeing agency in organisms. (shrink)

The essential role of language in rational cognition is analysed. The approach is functional: only the results of the connection between language, reality, and thinking are considered. Scientific language is analysed as an extension and improvement of everyday language. The analysis gives a uniform view of language and rational cognition. The consequences for the nature of ontology, truth, logic, thinking, scientific theories, and mathematics are derived.

There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views (...) that have been defended in philosophical literature about artworks and of some criticisms that can be lodged against them: Amie Thomasson’s global descriptivism, Andrew Kania’s local descriptivism, Julian Dodd’s folk-theoretic modesty, and David Davies’ rational accountability view. In the conclusion, I show the advantages of my view. (shrink)

This book offers a new and original hypothesis on the origin of modal ontology, whose roots can be traced back to the mathematical debate about incommensurable magnitudes, which forms the implicit background for Plato’s later dialogues and culminates in the definition of being as dynamis in the Sophist. Incommensurable magnitudes – also called dynameis by Theaetetus – are presented as the solution to the problem of non-being and serve as the cornerstone for a philosophy of difference and becoming. This (...) shift also marks the passage to another form of rationality – one not of the measure, but of the mediation. The book argues that the ontology and the rationality which arise out of the discovery of incommensurable constitutes a thread that runs through the entire history of philosophy, one that leads to Kantian transcendentalism and to the philosophies derived from it, such as Hegelianism and philosophical hermeneutics. Readers discover an insightful exchange with some of the most important issues in philosophy, newly reconsidered from the point of view of an ontology of the incommensurable. These issues include the infinite, the continuum, existence, and difference. This text appeals to students and researchers in the fields of ancient philosophy, German idealism, philosophical hermeneutics and the history of mathematics. (shrink)

This book proposes replacing the philosophical tradition inaugurated by Descartes and Locke which is inherently idealist and, says the author, prone to impoverished notions of rationality and creativity with human ontology. This latter understands human being as nothing but the complex inter-relations between its biological constitution and the natural, social and linguistic worlds in which it is embedded and the emergent properties such as conciousness, subjectivity and selfhood which arise from these. Drawing on the phenomenologies of Merleau Ponty (...) and Heidegger but placing them in this naturalistic context the study shows how knowledge, rationality and creativity arise from within the human relationship to the world. Only on such a basis, it is argued, can the existence of a world independent of human conciousness be sustained along with the rationality of science and coherent theories of the self and truth. (shrink)

In Kant, remarkably, and for the first time perhaps in the history of philosophy, the problem of the Ego receives an ontological signification. The critique of the paralogisms of rational psychology concerns, explicitly, this fundamental problem of the being of the ego. Kant’s examination of this problem constitutes an essential moment of the history of modern philosophy. This examination results finally in the complete failure to determine such a being, a failure that Kant attempts to pass off ultimately as a (...) metaphysical impossibility. This is affirmed constantly through the labyrinthine analysis of the Transcendental Dialectic: what emerges from its difficulties, and obscurities, is that the being of the Ego can be neither determined, nor posited, metaphysically. The conclusion is unquestionably the following: the ego cogito does not contain in itself any sum, at least if, by the latter, one intends, as does rational psychology, the metaphysical and, in some way, absolute being of the ‘I’. (shrink)

The unusual applicability of mathematics to the description of the physical reality still remains a major investigative task for philosophers, physicists, mathematicians and cognitive scientists. The presented article offers a critical analysis of the philosophical motivations and development of a major attempt to resolve this task put forward by two prominent Polish philosophers: Józef Życiński and Michał Heller. In order to explain this particular property of mathematics Życiński has first introduced the concept of the field of rationality together with (...) the field of potentiality to be followed by Heller’s formal field and the field of categories. It turns out that these concepts are fully intelligible once located within philosophical stances on the relations between mathematics and physical reality. It will be argued that in order to achieve more extended conceptual clarification of the precise meaning of the field of rationality, further advancements in the understanding of the nature of the human mind are required. (shrink)

What is a number? Answering this will answer questions about its philosophical foundations - rational numbers, the complex numbers, imaginary numbers. If we are to write or talk about something, it is helpful to know whether it exists, how it exists, and why it exists, just from a common-sense point of view [Quine, 1948, p. 6]. Generally, there does not seem to be any disagreement among mathematicians, scientists, and logicians about numbers existing in some way, but currently, in the mainstream (...) arena only definitions, descriptions of properties, and effects are presented as evidence. Enough historical description of numbers in history provides an empirical basis of number, although a case can be made that numbers do not exist by themselves empirically. Correspondingly, numbers exist as abstractions. All the while, though, these "descriptions" beg the question of what numbers are ontologically. Advocates for numbers being the ultimate reality have the problem of wrestling with the nature of reality. I start on the road to discovering the ontology of number by looking at where people have talked about numbers as already existing: history. Of course, we need to know not only what ontology is but the problems of identifying one, leading to the selection between metaphysics and provisional approaches. While we seem to be dimensionally limited, at least we can identify a more suitable bootstrapping ontology than mere definitions, leading us to the unity of opposites. The rest of the paper details how this is done and modifies Peano's Postulates. (shrink)

A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss conditions of rationality for scientific research (SR) where "conditions" are understood as "necessary conditions". This will be done in the following way: First, I shall deal with the aim of SR since conditions of rationality (for SR) are to be understood as necessary means for reaching the aim (goal) of SR. Subsequently, the following necessary conditions will be discussed: Rational Communication, Methodological Rules, Ideals of Rationality and its Realistic Aspects, (...) Methodological and Ontological Conditions (Universality, Rules for Experiments, Causality), and Metaphysical Presuppositions and Extrapolations. (shrink)

This chapter concentrates on Peter Olivi’s (ca. 1248–98) theory of the ontological foundations of political power—and, by extension, property and other social institutions. After briefly presenting his view of political power as a relation between a ruler and his subjects (which he presents in his famous Quid ponat ius), the chapter focuses more generally on Olivi’s theory of relations. Drawing from previous works by Alain Boureau, Sylvain Piron, Christian Rode, Robert Pasnau and others, it explores the ontology of relations (...) and endeavors to shed new light on this notoriously difficult aspect of Olivi’s philosophy. A special focus is placed on the non-Aristotelian notion of rationes reales, which Olivi uses to make room between realism and nominalism, as he argues that power relations are real (i.e. they are not mind-dependent) although they are not based on any real properties in the relata. After showing that political power and other institutional facts must be understood in light of this peculiar ontological notion, the final section of the essay argues that the freedom of the human will entails an ability to change social reality. It is also suggested that despite this rather modern aspect of Olivi’s his social ontology, he remains firmly within medieval worldview by grounding the normative aspect of social institutions in the will of God. (shrink)

Ontology is one of today’s buzzwords. It is back in fashion in analytical philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, and major projects and research centres get funding around the world (cf. e.g. the Buffalo Centre for Ontological Research, the Laboratory for Ontology in Turin, the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science in Saarland). In the philosophy of science ontology has arguably always been a key area of research, under the guise of ‘The foundations of __’ (physics, (...) biology, chemistry, etc.). Economics however is an exception. Because of economics’ hybrid status, philosophers’ interest in its foundations has traditionally focused on normative issues – typically the theory of rationality that lies at the core of the neoclassical paradigm. What is relatively new, then, 1 is the current growth of interest for the metaphysics of economics as a descriptive scientific discipline (see e.g. Mäki, ed. 2001). (shrink)

Since management is about influencing - influencing people who work in the organization, the structure and practices of the organization, as well as its environment - how ‘influencing’ is understood evidently makes a huge difference. The still popular empiricist concept of cause-effect relations as presupposing regularities is mistaken, since it forms no sufficient basis for action in new and unique situations. As alternative notions of causation, the paper discusses the Critical Realist conception of causal powers and the counterfactual conditional view, (...) arguing that the classical notion of power (dunamis in Greek; power, potentiality, possibility, ability, capacity, capability in English) offers the most fruitful analysis of causal relations for managerial purposes. The paper presents the four ontological features of power scrutinised already by Aristotle in his Metaphysics and Physics, and actively discussed in current philosophy of science. These are the potentiality-actuality distinction, full power as consisting of an active and a receptive component, the distinction of rational and non-rational powers, and the idea of hierarchy of powers. These ontological distinctions suit management contexts not only because they allow room for new unique decision-making situations, but primarily because they imply invaluable practical advice. The relevance of the power ontology for management is illustrated in the context of the Bohm and the new Timeout dialogue. The paper concludes with a summary of the practical implications of the classical power ontology to management and the adoption of dialogical practices to managerial expertise. (shrink)

In an explanation, what does the explaining and what gets explained? What are the relata of the explanation relation? Candidates include: people, events, facts, sentences, statements, and propositions.

It is widely believed that science is in the business of finding out what the world is really like. The philosophical version of this belief is scientific realism -- a doctrine about science that tells us that we ought to believe that the best theories in science are true, and that the world is occupied with the objects that those theories contain. If scientific realism was not correct, the argument goes, the incredible success of science would be a miracle. The (...) best explanation for the success of science however, is not that it is a miracle, but that scientific theories are true. This argument is an instance of inference to the best explanation, or IBE. Skeptics have questioned why scientific success must imply its truth given that there are so many abandoned, false scientific theories in the history of science that were nevertheless successful. One of the controversies in the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists surrounds the legitimacy of reasoning in accordance with IBE. Realists need IBE to be a justified and reliable guide to truth. In this compilation thesis, I address various questions related to IBE and scientific realism. Paper 1 argues that scientific realism without IBE loses too much of its epistemic optimism, and that it in some contexts even becomes more pessimistic than the most prominent rival philosophical doctrine about science -- constructive empiricism. To avoid deflating realism, I argue, a defense of IBE is necessary. Paper 2 addresses whether methodological similarities between science and metaphysics force scientific realists to also be realists with respect to metaphysics. If IBE is legitimate, it should not only be valid in science, but also in metaphysics, effectively inflating the ontology that scientific realists are rationally bound to accept. I argue against this conclusion. Paper 3 offers a proof of concept regarding a novel way to justify inferences to unobservable objects. Paper 4 establishes a novel critique of non-probabilistic versions of IBE in scientific realism. (shrink)

Hermeneutic rationality arises from the idea that experience is a cumulative process, in which differences are not eliminated but preserved. The universality which derives from this process is an “intensional universality”, which follows a law of direct proportionality between extension and intension: the more an educated individual enriches her experiences, the more she is able to universalize her understanding of others. Experience is then inevitably open and never closed, that is, free for other experiences. If we use the word (...) “domain” to describe the condition of a closed and predetermined system or ontology, the entities of which are pre-assumed, we can therefore call this open universality a “universality without domain”.This description of hermeneutical experience leads to a question about its logical and ontological presuppositions. In the second part of the paper I refer to a particular practice which is central for hermeneutical theory in order to show how I understand these presuppositions: the practice of translation. In translation we experience the impossibility of rendering completely the sense of the source language in a target language, that is, we experience a difference which cannot be suppressed. I compare this experience to the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes in ancient Greek mathematics, a discovery that shook Parmenidean and Pythagorean ontology: in my opinion, philosophical hermeneutics more or less implicitly develops the consequences of this incredible discovery, which marks the passage to a differential, comparative and integrative rationality and ontology. (shrink)

This article serves as either an addendum or as an expansion of ideas and work developed in my 2023 book, The Rationality Project: Across the Millennia, issued by Palgrave Macmillan. The book explores 21 potential theories for explaining rationality in terms of why and how one among these can serve in the position of explanatory power. The book does not fully explain all of these candidate theories, assigning that complete role to this addendum or work-in-progress. The main reason (...) for this abbreviation in assessing all the theories in the book is that the complete coverage—which this addendum allows—of all 21 theories would become too detailed for some philosophical readers. This addendum; one may consider, is then for the more technically minded reader—although certainly not-too-technically minded readers are welcome to explore it. If it becomes too bogged in detail for those latter kinds of readers, they may end up skimming the material in this addendum, trying at least to get the general idea of how these addendum sections fit into the book”s goals. (shrink)

Ockham’s ontology of arithmetic, specifically his position on the ontological status of natural numbers, has not yet attracted the attention of scholars. Yet it occupies a central role in his nominalism; specifically, Ockham’s position on numbers constitutes a third part of his ontological reductionism, alongside his doctrines of universals and the categories, which have long been recognized to constitute the first two parts. That is, the first part of this program claims that the very idea of a universal thing (...) is self-contradictory, while the second part asserts that it is more rational to accept only two distinct types of singular things, namely substance and quality. These two elements are incomplete, however, for they do not fully encompass Ockham’s position on what realists take to be abstract objects. For this, one needs the third part of Ockham’s program of ontological reductionism, dealing with numbers, among the most paradigmatic abstract objects for realists. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological character of amicitia in Aquinas. The originality of Aquinas’s theory is found in the ontological foundation expressed by Neoplatonic concepts (unio, unitas, communicatio). By integrating such Neoplatonic concepts with his analysis on the transcendentals (aliquid, unum), I made a new ontological foundation to the theory of amicitia.In order that a man is a one (unum), he must establish himself as something different (aliud quid) in the midst of the relationship with (...) others and then has to return to himself. So long as he stays self-contained without moving outward, he cannot constitute himself as an independent being which is different from other beings (aliquid). The ontological oneness (unitas) as an independent rational substance makes it possible for a man to form the mutual relationship of unity (unio) without losing himself in the midst of the deep relationship with someone else. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological character of amicitia in Aquinas. The originality of Aquinas’s theory is found in the ontological foundation expressed by Neoplatonic concepts (unio, unitas, communicatio). By integrating such Neoplatonic concepts with his analysis on the transcendentals (aliquid, unum), I made a new ontological foundation to the theory of amicitia.In order that a man is a one (unum), he must establish himself as something different (aliud quid) in the midst of the relationship with (...) others and then has to return to himself. So long as he stays self-contained without moving outward, he cannot constitute himself as an independent being which is different from other beings (aliquid). The ontological oneness (unitas) as an independent rational substance makes it possible for a man to form the mutual relationship of unity (unio) without losing himself in the midst of the deep relationship with someone else. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological character of Friendship in Aquinas. The originality of Aquinas's theory is found in the ontological foundation expressed by Neoplatonic concepts (unio, unitas, communicatio). By integrating such Neoplatonic concepts with his analysis on the transcendentals(aliquid, unum), I will make a new ontological foundation to the theory of amicitia. In order that a man is a one (unum), he must establish himself as something different (aliud quid) in the midst of the relationship (...) with others and then has to return to himself. So long as he stays self-contained without moving outward, he cannot constitute himself as an independent being which is different from other beings (aliquid). The ontological oneness (unitas) as an independent rational substance makes it possible for a man to form the mutual relationship of unity (unio) without losing himself in the midst of the deep relationship with someone else. (shrink)

The article raises the question of constant violent acts, primarily military, despite the longtime general condemnation thereof. This turns us to the problem of ontology of violence. The approach suggested here is based on understanding violence as labor with the excessive use of force. This is related to the understanding of force as the truth. Thus, for the archaic mind, force (and violence), the sacred, and truth were different projection-implementations of one entity. The civilizational world model contains in its (...) basis not the principles of a single truth, but the principles of collaboration and coexistence of different stances instead of the submission to one entity. The old model of violence as a way to participate in the object’s truth and to confirm the subject’s sacred status stays effective. This paper argues that violence has an ontological dimension in the old model of a single truth, but cannot have it within a civilizational approach. (shrink)

In the past decade, the meaning of Hegel's idea of a ‘science of logic’ has become a matter of intense philosophical debate. This article examines the two most influential yet opposed contemporary readings of the Science of Logic—often referred to as the ‘metaphysical’ and ‘non-metaphysical’ interpretations. I argue that this debate should be reframed as a contest between logic as ontology (LAO) and logic as metaphysics (LAM). According to Stephen Houlgate's interpretation of logic as ontology, the science of (...) logic is a progressively explicit unfolding of the categories of thought, which is at the same time the process by which being itself determines what it is to be. A second interpretation has been pursued by Sebastian Rödl and Robert Pippin, who read Hegel's logic as metaphysics. On this reading, the science of logic is a progressively coherent unfolding of the categories of thought, which articulate all that it could intelligibly mean to be. This article intervenes in this debate in three key ways. First, I argue that Houlgate's ontological approach undermines his attempt to establish the objective validity of the categories. Second, I show that the LAM emphasis on the crucial idea of apperception enables it to succeed where Houlgate fails by doing justice to the rational necessity with which the Logic unfolds. Third, I argue that, despite this success, the LAM program remains unrealized because of its neglect of Hegel's understanding of cognition as a form of life. While LAM has compellingly unfolded the ‘thought of being’, it has ignored the inverse question of the ‘being of thought’. I attempt to fulfil the LAM program by elaborating Hegel's account of what it means to be a thinker. (shrink)

In the Common Mind, Pettit argues that rational choice theory cannot provide genuine causal accounts of action. A genuine causal explanation of intentional action must track how people actually deliberate to arrive at action. And, deliberation is necessarily enculturated or situated “. . . we take human agents to reason their way to action, using the concepts that are available to them in the currency of their culture” (p. 220). When deciding how to act, “. . . people find their (...) way to action in response to properties that they register in the options before them, properties that are valued in common with others and that can be invoked to provide at least some justification of their choices” (p. 272). That people seek to make justified decisions implies that, at times, their own goals or objectives will be modified in deliberation. Something that rational choice theory cannot allow. (shrink)

I shall describe the beautiful fit of the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and William James with the concepts of relativistic quantum field theory developed by Tomonaga and Schwinger.The central concept is a set of happenings each of which is assigned a space-time region.This growing set of non-overlapping regions fill out a growing space-time region that advances into the still uncreated and yet-to-be-axed future.Each happening has both experiential aspects and physical aspects,which are jointly needed to generate the advance into the (...) future.This conception is useful in passing from the pragmatic interpretation of science to a putative understanding of the reality beyond phenomena,and of our role within it. James' ideas about attention and volition are naturally implementable within this framework,and make us into agents that can act eficaciously upon the physical world on the basis of felt values, rational reasons,and conscious understandings. (shrink)

The phenomenon of widespread stigmatization of victims of deadly, or previously incurable, diseases in African traditional societies would appear to pragmatically contradict the humanistic values of communalism associated with those societies. However, the implied contradiction of the phenomenon, which borders on irrationality and injustice, seems amenable to a rational explanation when one considers the thick ontological underpinnings of African traditional communalism along with their epistemic significance. The justification of the proffered explanation, the paper avers, is made clearer when it is (...) taken as a paradigm of Jurgen Habermas’ theory of (communicative) rationality and action. Against this background, the paper argues that such global social problemsas terrorism and internet scams may well be justifiable if Habermas’ strategic and contextual models of rationality and action are communicatively valid. (shrink)

Popper's version of situational analysis, with its focus on the logic of situations and the rationality principle, fails to provide cogent explanations of the human decisions and actions underpinning social phenomena. It so fails because where he demanded objectivism and formalism in the social sciences, his substantive arguments lost contact with the psychological and subjectivist realities of the human realm. But Popper also devised some key elements of a social ontology. It is argued that although there are crucial (...) gaps in his ontology, it can be augmented to give situational analysis the potential to reach beyond pure logic and rationality and to bring social theory closer to grasping the real world of human action. (shrink)

In this article, I first problematize the concept of rationality as educational ideal through the use of feminist philosophy. I then offer an alternative concept of rationality as educational ideal based on my reading of Catherine Malabou’s work on plasticity, epigenesis, and rationality. In a last part, I explore the ontological and normative dimensions of this new concept of rationality through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “hyper-dialectics.”.

Within the interactivist, process approach to metaphysics, Bickhard (Social life and social knowledge: toward a process account of development. Lawrence Erlbaum, New York, 2008a; Topoi 27: 139–149, 2008b; New Ideas Psychol, in press) has developed a social ontology of persons that avoids many well-known philosophical difficulties concerning the genesis, development, and application of the rational and moral capabilities and responsibilities that characterize persons. Interactivism positions developing persons inside sets of social conventions within which they participate in their own constitution (...) as rational and moral agents who constantly transform themselves and their world. Following a description of Bickhard’s social ontology and an evaluation of its philosophical merits, two suggestions are offered with the intention of extending the explanatory reach of an interactivist ontology of persons. One of these suggestions concerns a recommended shift from processes of interaction and constructivism to processes of coordination and constitutionism. A second, related recommendation concerns the need for a more precise detailing of processes of coordinated constitution that explain the developing person’s embodied and enactive transformation from a social to a psychological being. (shrink)

During the winter of 1968–69, members of the so-called Budapest School formulated a scathing “review” of Georg Lukács’ late work, Ontology of Social Being. In the wake of the objections (but not in accordance with them), Lukács began to revise the text, but was unable to complete it: he died in June 1971. The disciples’ critique, published in English and German in 1976, played a major role in the reception history of Ontology—or rather in the fact that the (...) 1500-page “philosophical fiasco” still has no remarkable reception history. The main criticism of the disciples is that Lukács’ work mixes two incompatible ontologies and recalls the worst traditions of Soviet Marxism. In this paper, I will argue that the disciples’ “review” is misleading (nevertheless, the historical circumstances may provide a sufficient explanation for this) because there are no “two ontologies” in Lukács’ unfinished book. I will concentrate on the source of the misunderstanding, the Lukácsian thesis of the “post festum-rationality” of history, and in the light of this I will analyse how Lukács describes the open determination of individual and collective action in the process of the social reproduction of life. (shrink)

Against the oft-repeated claim that Heideggerian authenticity calls for a resoluteness that is either indifferent or inimical to normative rationality, Steven Crowell has recently argued that the phenomenon of conscience in _Sein und Zeit_ is specifically intended to ground normative rationality in the existential ontological account of Dasein so that Heidegger puts forward not a rejection of the life of reason but a more fundamental account of its condition of possibility in terms of self-responsibility. In what follows, I (...) wish to take up the issue of an existential grounding of rational life and its implications for the phenomenological reduction in relation to the work of Husserl by showing that he too is concerned with a self-responsible contextualizing of the life of reason even at the level of individual human existence. In this way, Husserl, like Heidegger, can be read as framing the phenomenological reduction in terms of the subject's concern for self-justification. However, this 'framing' cannot be seen as a motivation to reduction but only as an 'after-the-fact' explanation of its import. But I will suggest, in conclusion, that the problem of the motivation to reduction is perhaps as much of a problem for Heidegger as it is for Husserl. (shrink)

Galen Strawson has claimed that "the impossibility of free will and ultimate moral responsibility can be proved with complete certainty." Strawson, I take it, thinks that this conclusion can be established by one argument which he has developed. In this argument, he claims that rational free actions would require an infinite regress of rational choices, which is, of course, impossible for human beings. In my paper, I argue that agent causation theorists need not be worried by Strawson's argument. For agent (...) causation theorists are able to deny a key principle which drives the regress. Oversimplifying things a bit, the principle states that if one is responsible for her rational actions, then she was antecedently responsible for the reasons on which she acted. (shrink)

The Reason Why by Edo Pivčević is an unconventional philosophy book. The author takes the wind out of the sails of the sceptic’s argument by removing its basis. It is neither epistemology nor ontology; nor does its outcome fall into the usual categories vis à vis the real, including pragmatism. A complete system is developed through a profound examination of explanation, contrasting the conceptual approach with the unbounded naturalistic kind and its dangers, illuminating examples of the latter kind with (...) misunderstandings and abuses in physics, mathematics and computer science; effectively demonstrating the confusions engenderedby varieties of reductionism. The author erects a rational structure of components which are mutually dependent and self-sustaining through the analysis and endorsement of common dualisms, e.g. necessary and contingent truth, self and the world; while distancing causality and determinism. (shrink)

The article discusses the relations between humanism and humanitarianism through the prism of rationality, which allows to identify the significant contradictions between their essences and methods of implementation as well as to reveal the subtleties and differences in the relationship between them. The author demonstrates the interrelation of the idea of rationality as reasonability with the theory of humanism and its practices; it is shown that the charges of inhumanity against rationality can be addressed mainly to instrumental (...) reasonability, which occupies a dominant position in the society of Modernity. The inconsistency of the development of humanism in recent years is examined. On the one hand, first organizationally formed humanistic movements emerged in the 20th century and humanism gradually became a common social practice. On the other hand, starting from the second half of the 20th century, representatives of the postmodern and religious-conservative traditions more and more clearly pronounce statements about the crisis of humanistic ideology. It is determined that the classical concept of secular humanism has lost its representativeness to social realities because its model of a person becomes outdated and requires rethinking and renewal. It is emphasized that the role of humanitarian technologies is increasing under the new conditions of the science functioning in modern society, in which any knowledge, including natural and technical, acquires a humanitarian dimension. Therefore, the humanitarian component is a necessary part of any science today since the humanitarian component offers a pragmatical and axiological comparison of the scientific achievements with the life-world of men and their needs. The author concludes that rational strategies for overcoming the crisis of humanism are associated with new ontologies and represent attempts to understand the transformations of humanistic values in the technoscientific world. (shrink)

Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre is often thought to occupy a standpoint from which claims about what there really is, as opposed to claims about how we necessarily represent things to be, are metaphilosophically prohibited or methodologically precluded. This essay argues that for Fichte a transcendental account of the necessary conditions for knowing supports an accordant understanding of the basic nature of being. These are linked by a reconception of the nature of rationality, and thus of rational justification, that Fichte’s transcendental (...) epistemology secures and which his ontology draws on and develops. In particular, his account of the nature of rationality issues in a distinctive form of nonevidentialism, according to which we possess unimpeachable rational grounds, albeit not narrowly evidential ones, for assent to certain metaphysical claims. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This paper intervenes in a contemporary debate on the animal ethics of the Brethren of Purity's (Iḫwān al-Ṣafāʾ) epistle on animals. I argue that they present a case for justice for animals by rejecting the fallacious link between ontological superiority and moral superiority. Since human beings are vice-regents of God and since the rational soul is the vice-regent, the Brethren's account of human beings as superior in virtue of their rationality establishes a moral obligation toward animals. The Brethren develop (...) this account partially under the influence of the Muʿtazilī theological tradition, and as a result, their position falls in line with other positions on justice for animals found during their time. Even on the issue of animal use, the Brethren maintain that the human need for animal labor emphasizes the obligation to treat animals justly. In the end, the greater rational capacity of human beings entails greater moral responsibility toward animals, not moral impunity. (shrink)

The essay deals with Aquinas’theory of person, focusing especially on the relevance of this qualification in Saint Thomas’ theory of the «spiritual substances», on his rejection of Platonism and on his peculiar use of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of the intellecitve substances. We especially stress that Aquinas’functionalist theory of person places the concept of «dignity» as the ultimate foundation of rationality, understanding the latter as a specific assignement and a specific responsibility in the order of Creation.

This paper is about the pragmatic inferences in play as conversational implicatures (Grice, P. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) occur. First, it constructs the deductivism versus abductivism debate that transpires from the extant literature but is rarely elaborated. Against deductivism, the paper argues that implicating inferences in conversational implicatures can instantiate an abductive logical form, as abductivism suggests. Against abductivism, however, it grants to deductivism that implicating inferences can have a deductive form provided (...) the latter is of a defeasible type. In sum, it thus argues for pluralist defeasibilism. Second, it turns to the issue of the ontological nature of implicating inferences and advocates normative inferentialism, on which these inferences are not primarily real psychological processes but rules of the practice of implicating. While this allows for the possibility of their psychological instantiation, to be sure, the paper also insists that psychological inferring processes in implicatures are neither necessarily isomorphic to the aforementioned rules nor even necessarily occur as an implicature occurs. (shrink)