scholarly journals Concepts in Action: Introduction

Author(s):  
Lucas Bechberger ◽  
Mingya Liu

AbstractIt is impossible to talk about human cognition without talking about concepts—there simply is no human cognition without concepts. Concepts form an abstraction of reality that is central to the functioning of the human mind. Conceptual knowledge (of e.g., APPLE, LOVE and BEFORE) is crucial for us to categorize, understand, and reason about the world. Only equipped with concepts and words for them can we successfully communicate and carry out actions. But what exactly are concepts? How are concepts acquired? How does the human mind use concepts? In this introduction chapter, we elaborate on these questions (i.e., representation, learning, application), and provide summaries of the seven individual chapters in the volume, which from different scientific disciplines relate to one or the other of the questions.

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Agustinus Wisnu Dewantara

Talking about God can not be separated from the activity of human thought. Activity is the heart of metaphysics. Searching religious authenticity tends to lead to a leap in harsh encounter with other religions. This interfaith encounter harsh posed a dilemma. Why? Because on the one hand religion is the peacemaker, but on the other hand it’s has of encouraging conflict and even violence. Understanding God is not quite done only by understanding the religion dogma, but to understand God rationally it is needed. It is true that humans understand the world according to his own ego, but it is not simultaneously affirm that God is only a projection of the human mind. Humans understand things outside of himself because no awareness of it. On this side of metaphysics finds itself. Analogical approach allows humans to approach and express God metaphysically. Human clearly can not express the reality of the divine in human language, but with the human intellect is able to reflect something about the relationship with God. Analogy allows humans to enter the metaphysical discussion about God. People who are at this point should come to the understanding that God is the Same One More From My mind, The Impossible is defined, the Supreme Mystery, and infinitely far above any human thoughts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 01208
Author(s):  
Irina Nekipelova

The article is devoted to a research of a linguistic and philosophical category of generalization and specialization. The generalization category is one of the most important categories of human mind. It is as important as the other categories, like analyzing and synthesizing, classification, extrapolation and analogy. On the one hand, generalization is a philosophical category, because it is one of world designing instruments and a world picture creation in mind of the human. On the other hand, generalization is also a linguistic category, because it is one of instruments of designing a world language picture. The certificate of it are the cross-disciplinary researches using knowledge of different sciences. The ability to draw conclusions is a feature of human minds. It allows a human to unite a logical and figurative approach to perception and understanding of the world. The research has shown that the generalization category realizes the subset and superset relations between language units. These relations assume communication of the general concept with the private concepts included in it. In the pragmatical plan, the generalization category is expressed in existing words having the generalized value. These words designate nonexistent denotations. At the same time, they correspond too many denotations. However, they do not call these denotations directly, but that is what it means. Designating a lot of things, the generalized words have a high coefficient of informational content. But this coefficient significantly decreases in specific conditions of a context. It is necessary to tell that the criterion of informational content is the important criterion of the language development. And we should see that generalization is one of ways of information growth in language. Subset and superset relations make human communications more successful.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 160-168
Author(s):  
Jolly Bhattacharjee

Life can never be completely free of problems and pain. This is perhaps because no two people think alike, work alike or have similar taste. Problems and pain will be there when two persons live. So there are bounds to be differences and judgements born there of and create disharmony and conflicts. The natural inclination of human mind to get rid of pain and problems of life wanders for a different world. The romantic poet John Keats philosophically searched for such a place and wanted to escape. And escaping into the world of imagination helped him to get rid of pain and problems of life and discovers anything true is beautiful as beauty dwells in truth. Manifestation of god in all the objects of nature magnetically attracts Keats’s mind as it serves as a therapy to contemplate in the serene and isolated space he sought for. Human being and Nature are interrelated, meaning the harmonious unity of Man and Nature are interrelated as both assume qualities of the other as they born and die, ashes go into the lap of Mother Nature as the very essence of human being, the structure is made up of the elements of Nature. The serene, calm and quiet Nature provides a kind of nourishment to Keats’ mind to discover the beauty, provides him joy and it is a truth. Longing of every soul is to be away from the problems of life.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-175
Author(s):  
Florian Wöller

AbstractThis article examines four medieval views on the subject of theology. Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol were all confronted with an idea based on Aristotle’s theory of knowledge according to which any scientific discipline is unified by its proper subject. In defining this subject of theology, however, the theologians had to confront one thorny problem: God, whom they considered to be the subject of theology, cannot be grasped by any concept accessible to the human mind. In their respective discussions, two distinct strategies to solving this puzzle emerged. Aquinas and Giles, on the one hand, argued for a concept proportionate to human cognition. This concept or ratio functioned as a placeholder for the quidditative concept of God. Scotus and Auriol, on the other hand, elaborated on a concept which they believed grasped God’s quiddity, albeit in a somewhat approximative way. Their theories, therefore, figure as attempts to find a concept, that is, the concept of being, that in itself was as boundless as to grasp God’s immensity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-86
Author(s):  
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer

In order to understand Hegel’s form of philosophical reflection in general, we must read his ‘speculative’ sentences about spirit and nature, rationality and reason, the mind and its embodiment as general remarks about conceptual topics in topographical overviews about our ways of talking about ourselves in the world. The resulting attitude to traditional metaphysics gets ambivalent in view of the insight that Aristotle’s prima philosophia is knowledge of human knowledge, developed in meta-scientific reflections on notions like ‘nature’ and ‘essence’, ‘reality’ (or ‘being’) and ‘truth’, about ‘powers’ and ‘faculties’ – and does not lead by itself to an object-level theory about spiritual things like the soul. We therefore cannot just replace critical metaphysics of the human mind by empirical investigation of human behaviour as empiricist approaches to human cognition in naturalized epistemologies do and neuro-physiological explanations propose. Making transcendental forms and material presuppositions of conceptually informed perception and experience explicit needs some understanding of figurative forms of speech in our logical reflections and leads to other forms of knowledge than empirical observation and theory formation.


Mäetagused ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Merili Metsvahi ◽  

The article gives a short overview of the Estonian werewolf tradition in the 16th and 17th centuries and a glimpse into the 19th–20th-century werewolf beliefs. The image of werewolf of the earlier and later periods is compared. The differences between the images of these two periods are explained with the help of the approaches of Tim Ingold and Philipp Descola, which ground the changes in the worldview taking place together with the shift from the pre-modern society into modernity. The mental world of the 16th–17th-century Estonian and Livonian peasant did not encompass the category of nature, and the borders between the human being and the animal on the one side and organism and environment on the other side were not so rigid as they are in today’s people’s comprehension of the world. The ability to change into a wolf was seen as an added possibility of acquiring new experiences and benefits. As the popular ontology had changed by the second half of the 19th century – the human mind was raised into the ultimate position and the animal was comprehended as being inferior – the transformation of a man into an animal, if it was seriously taken at all, seemed to be strange and unnatural.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 147-153
Author(s):  
Anna Muradova ◽  

The archaic mythology of Celts like the other pagan cosmologic systems is based on binary oppositions e.g. light and darkness, “our world” and the Otherworld. The comparative reconstruction of the basic concepts of the pre-Christian mytho-poetical tradition is in most cases based on the Old Irish text. Nevertheless, Breton folklore texts (often neglected because of their modernity) can be useful for further reconstruction of the opposition “light – dark”, “our world – otherworld”. The fact of the existence of such oppositions like one of the first steps of the human mind on the way of understanding the world and structuring the society was observed by ethnologists, psychologists and comparative linguists.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustinus Dewantara

Talking about God can not be separated from the activity of human thought. Activity is the heart of metaphysics. Searching religious authenticity tends to lead to a leap in harsh encounter with other religions. This interfaith encounter harsh posed a dilemma. Why? Because on the one hand religion is the peacemaker, but on the other hand it’s has of encouraging conflict and even violence. Understanding God is not quite done only by understanding the religious dogma, but to understand God rationally it is needed. It is true that humans understand the world according to his own ego, but it is not simultaneously affirm that God is only a projection of the human mind. Humans understand things outside of himself because no awareness of it. On this side of metaphysics finds itself. Analogical approach allows humans to approach and express God metaphysically. Humans clearly can not express the reality of the divine in human language, but with the human intellect is able to reflect something about the relationship with God. Analogy allows humans to enter the metaphysical discussion about God. People who are at this point should come to the understanding that God is the Same One More From My mind, The Impossible is defined, the Supreme Mystery, and infinitely far above any human thoughts.


Author(s):  
Т. Прудка

The philosophy of Lev Shestov has a close connection with life. The thinker considered it necessary to pay attention to the most burning issues, one of which is the problem of freedom. The article analyzes the phenomenon of freedom as the fundamental principle of Shestov's philosophy. It also reflects the main philosophical ideas of the thinker, analyzes the correlation of religion and philosophy in his work. It is noted that freedom occupies the central position for Shestov. Real philosophy doesn’t exist and can’t exist without it. At the same time, Shestov insists that logic is the main opponent of freedom. The article analyzes Shestov's argumentation concerning this issue. It is emphasized that the philosopher puts faith in God above reason, since God is the Truth, and the human mind tends to wander. It was also revealed that Shestov considered it impossible to judge the meaning of the universe rationally. The philosopher asserts that logic cannot be the only one method of perception of the existance, he is looking for the other forms of penetration into the secrets of the world order. Exactly such method for him occurs the faith in God. Only the faith gives an opportunity to comprehend the secrets of the world. Shestov anticipated the main ideas of late existentialism. The philosopher was worried about the problems of individual human existence, the search for a way out of hopelessness. The philosophy of Lev Shestov deserves careful and detailed studying. But, unfortunately, not enough attention was paid to his work, that fact determined the relevance of this work. The purpose of the study is to identify the importance of freedom as the basis of the philosophy of Lev Shestov, to reflect the central ideas of the thinker. It is concluded that Lev Shestov considered the faith in God is the only possible way of perception, since only faith can give a true freedom. The thinker sees a direct correlation between faith in God and philosophy.


Author(s):  
Mahdieh Sodeif Motlagh

The issue of "divine justice", which is the one of the most important doctrinal principles and a characteristic of the theological religions such Shiite and Mu'tazilite, in fact is one of the Perfect Attributes of Allah and due to its indescribable importance, it has a special place in doctrinal discussions. On the other hand, the existence of evils and calamities, poverty and deprivation, oppression and disease and moral corruption, and even the manner of punishment in the hereafter, always raises doubts in the human mind and calls into question Allah's justice. The generality of such suspicions has led Islamic thinkers to solve these problems in defense of divine justice. In this regard, the present study seeks to use the words of the fourth Shiite Imam in the divine invocations of the complete Sahifa Al_ Sajjadiyya, to achieve the theological foundations to solve some evil doubts in the realm of creation and the human world. The method of collecting materials in this research is library and the research method is "descriptive -analytical". After investigations, it became clear that from Imam Sajjad's point of view, neglecting and inclining the soul to the world and other than Allah, and consequently being caught in the trap of the devil and carnal soul, and contamination with sin and transgression, is the real evil. According to him, the divine test and punishment and return to the truth, the flourishing of talents and the appreciation of blessings are the benefits of evil and suffering. also meanings such as: the inherent richness of the Almighty, the bestowal of goodness and abundant blessings, the guidance of the servants to the good religion and the punishment of the same action in the prayers of Imam (A.S), all three types of genetic justice, legislative justice and criminal justice can be proved.


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