A Defence of Lichtenberg

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Giovanni Merlo
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Conscious Thinking

Abstract Cartesians and Lichtenbergians have diverging views of the deliverances of introspection. According to the Cartesians, a rational subject, competent with the relevant concepts, can come to know that he or she thinks – hence, that he or she exists – on the sole basis of his or her introspective awareness of his or her conscious thinking. According to the Lichtenbergians, this is not possible. This paper offers a defence of the Lichtenbergian position using Peacocke and Campbell's recent exchange on Descartes's cogito as a framework for discussion. A thought-experiment will be presented involving two communities with radically different conceptions of the metaphysics of the self. The purpose of the thought-experiment is to suggest that a substantive metaphysical thesis, whose truth cannot be a priori known, is presupposed by any justified transition from one's introspective awareness of a certain mental activity to the self-ascription of that activity.

scholarly journals Communities and the individual: Beyond the liberal–communitarian divide

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Volker Kaul
Keyword(s):  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
The Self ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Default Position ◽  
The Individual

Liberalism believes that individuals are endowed a priori with reason or at least agency and it is up to that reason and agency to make choices, commitments and so on. Communitarianism criticizes liberalism’s explicit and deliberate neglect of the self and insists that we attain a self and identity only through the effective recognition of significant others. However, personal autonomy does not seem to be a default position, neither reason nor community is going to provide it inevitably. Therefore, it is so important to go beyond the liberal–communitarian divide. This article is analysing various proposals in this direction, asks about the place of communities and the individual in times of populism and the pandemic and provides a global perspective on the liberal–communitarian debate.

Phenomenology of Interior Life and the Trinity

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Robert Farrugia
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Michel Henry ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Static Nature

Michel Henry radicalises phenomenology by putting forward the idea of a double manifestation: the “Truth of Life” and “truth of the world.” For Henry, the world turns out to be empty of Life. To find its essence, the self must dive completely inward, away from the exterior movements of intentionality. Hence, Life, or God, for Henry, lies in non‑intentional, immanent self-experience, which is felt and yet remains invisible, in an absolutist sense, as an a priori condition of all conscious experience. In Christian theology, the doctrine of the Trinity illuminates the distinction between the immanent Trinity (God’s self‑relation) and the economic workings of the Trinity (God‑world relation). However, the mystery of God’s inmost being and the economy of salvation are here understood as inseparable. In light of this, the paper aims to: 1) elucidate the significance of Henry’s engagement with the phenomenological tradition and his proposal of a phenomenology of Life which advocates an immanent auto‑affection, radically separate from the ek‑static nature of intentionality, and 2) confront the division between Life and world in Henry’s Christian phenomenology and its discordancy with the doctrine of the Trinity, as the latter attests to the harmonious unity that subsists between inner life and the world.

Scripting a Role for the Speaker of Private Prayer: 2 and 3 Henry VI

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-105
Author(s):  
Ceri Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Pregnant Women ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Self ◽  
Life Coaching ◽  
The World ◽  
Henry Vi ◽  
Counterfactual History ◽  
Private Prayer

Private prayer creates narrative lines about its beneficiaries. Collections of model prayers show kitchen maids how to empathize with war heroes, or gentlemen with pregnant women, or merchants with coalminers, imagining their beneficiaries’ problems in loving detail. Pray-ers refer to themselves as marginalized (sick, criminal, in chains), yet at the same time as provided with an almighty weapons system to change the world. Praying could be a form of ethical and pragmatic life coaching, a way to steel the self to unpalatable actions or perform a thought experiment in alternative outcomes—but it could also shut down radical possibilities. This chapter discusses how alternative plot lines developed by the king’s prayer in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI create a counterfactual history, one opposed by the normative pray-ers in the factions around Henry.

Algebra As Thought Experiment

1998 ◽  
pp. 106-111
Author(s):  
Jagdish Hattiangadi
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Algebraic Method ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
The World ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

This paper addresses the problem of understanding what mathematics contributes to the exceptional success of modern mathematical physics. I urge that we give up the Kantian construal of the division between mathematics (synthetic a priori) and physics (experimental), and that we ask instead how algebra helps synthetic a posteriori mathematics improve our ability to study the world. The theses suggested are: 1) Mathematical theories are about the empirical world, and are true or false just like other theories of empirical science. 2) The air of artificiality in mathematics lies exclusively in the use of algebraic method. 3) This method is constructive much like all fiction is, but this construction is for the purpose of experimental investigation of the physical world to the extent that anything in the world has objects like those in the fictional world of a particular algebra. 4) This is why algebraic techniques are successful even when the assumptions of the system are false: they may still be applicable to some things considered from some perspective. 5) The success of mathematical physics is also due to Descartes' discovery of a remarkable truth: we live in space and time which can be described as a whole. 6) Therefore, what distinguishes modern science from earlier and later philosophy is not a general method of science, but the fact that it happened to find a truth, and a particular way of studying reality which bore fruit.

Thought Experiments

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robert Brown ◽  
Michael T. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Widespread Agreement ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Insight Into

Thought experiments are performed in the imagination. We set up some situation, we observe what happens, then we try to draw appropriate conclusions. In this way, thought experiments resemble real experiments, except that they are experiments in the mind. The terms “thought experiment,” “imaginary experiment,” and “Gedankenexperiment” are used interchangeably. There is no consensus on a definition, but there is widespread agreement on which are standard examples. It is also widely agreed that they play a central role in a number of fields, especially physics and philosophy. There are several important questions about thought experiments that naturally arise, including what kinds of thought experiments there are, what roles they play, and how, if at all, they work. This last question has been the focus of much of the literature: How can we learn something new about the world just by thinking? Answers range from “We don’t really learn anything new” to “We have some sort of a priori insight into how nature works.” In between there are a great variety of rival alternative accounts. There is still no consensus; debate is wide open on almost every question pertaining to thought experiments.

scholarly journals The face-to-face encounter in indigenous health care: a perspective in Lévinas

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (suppl 6) ◽  
pp. 2848-2853
Author(s):  
Diomedia Zacarias Teixeira ◽  
Nelson dos Santos Nunes ◽  
Rose Mary Costa Rosa Andrade Silva ◽  
Eliane Ramos Pereira ◽  
Vilza Handan
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Health ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Radical Alterity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
Reflective Study ◽  
Outpatient Settings

ABSTRACT Objective: To reflect on the sensitive behaviors of indigenous healthcare professionals based on the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, to ratify completeness, equity, and humanity. Method: reflective study. Reflection: Studies have identified inadequacies in meeting the indigenous singularities. In the hospital and outpatient settings, they are diluted in the search for care. The difficulty of the professionals to admit them generates conflicts and non-adherence of indigenous individuals to treatments that disregard their care practices. In Lévinas, consciousness requires, "a priori," sensitivity to access the Infinity on the Face of the Other, which in the face-to-face encounters is presented to the Self as radical Alterity, proposing an Ethical relationship through transcendence. The freedom of the Self as to the Other is finite, as the Self cannot possess the Other, and infinite for its responsibility for the Other. Final considerations: The Self builds essence and existence in responsibility. In the Ethics of Alterity, in Lévinas, reflections are proposed that influence sensitive behaviors.

All Natural Right Is Changeable: Aristotelian Natural Right, Prudence, and the Specter of Exceptionalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Clare Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Extreme Situation ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
The Public ◽  
Decent Society ◽  
Political Decisions

In his recent book on Strauss, Steven B. Smith has called attention to “a curiously neglected passage from the very center of Natural Right and History,” a passage in which Strauss “acknowledges the way political decisions grow out of concrete situations and cannot be deduced from a priori rules.” The passage reads: Let us call an extreme situation a situation in which the very existence or independence of a society is at stake. In extreme situations there may be conflicts between what the self-preservation of society requires and the requirements of commutative and distributive justice. In such situations, and only in such situations, it can justly be said that the public safety is the highest law. A decent society will not go to war except for a just cause. But what it will do during a war will depend to a certain extent on what the enemy—possibly an absolutely unscrupulous and savage enemy—forces it to do. There are no limits which can be defined in advance, there are no assignable limits to what might become just reprisals.

Damage Mechanisms Identification in FRP Using Acoustic Emission and Artificial Neural Networks

2006 ◽  
Vol 514-516 ◽  
pp. 789-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui de Oliveira ◽  
António Torres Marques
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Acoustic Emission ◽  
Artificial Neural Networks ◽  
Tensile Test ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Self Organizing Maps ◽  
Damage Mechanisms ◽  
Artificial Neural

In this study is proposed a procedure for damage discrimination based on acoustic emission signals clustering using artificial neural networks. An unsupervised methodology based on the self-organizing maps of Kohonen is developed considering the lack of a priori knowledge of the different signal classes. The methodology is described and applied to a cross-ply glassfibre/ polyester laminate submitted to a tensile test. In this case, six different AE waveforms were identified. The damage sequence could so be identified from the modal nature of those waves.

FREE-BOUNDARY PROBLEM OF THE ONE-DIMENSIONAL EQUATIONS FOR A VISCOUS AND HEAT-CONDUCTIVE GASEOUS FLOW UNDER THE SELF-GRAVITATION

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (08) ◽  
pp. 1377-1419 ◽  
Author(s):  
MORIMICHI UMEHARA ◽  
ATUSI TANI
Keyword(s):  
Blow Up ◽  
A Priori Estimates ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Global Solvability ◽  
The Self ◽  
Fundamental Result ◽  
System Of Equations ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Unique Existence ◽  
The One

In this paper we consider a system of equations describing the one-dimensional motion of a viscous and heat-conductive gas bounded by the free-surface. The motion is driven by the self-gravitation of the gas. This system of equations, originally formulated in the Eulerian coordinate, is reduced to the one in a fixed domain by the Lagrangian-mass transformation. For smooth initial data we first establish the temporally global solvability of the problem based on both the fundamental result for local in time and unique existence of the classical solution and a priori estimates of its solution. Second it is proved that some estimates of the global solution are independent of time under a certain restricted, but physically plausible situation. This gives the fact that the solution does not blow up even if time goes to infinity under such a situation. Simultaneously, a temporally asymptotic behavior of the solution is established.

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