scholarly journals Essence and Mere Necessity

2018 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 309-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Leech
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
De Re ◽  
The World ◽  
Do So

AbstractRecently, a debate has developed between those who claim that essence can be explained in terms ofde remodality (modalists), and those who claim thatde remodality can be explained in terms of essence (essentialists). The aim of this paper is to suggest that we should reassess. It is assumed that either necessity is to be accounted for in terms of essence, or that essence is to be accounted for in terms of necessity. I will argue that we should assume neither. I discuss what role these key notions – essence and necessity – can reasonably be thought to contribute to our understanding of the world, and argue that, given these roles, there is no good reason to think that we should give an account of one in terms of the other. I conclude: if we can adequately explainde remodality and essence at all, we should aim to do so separately.

Richard William Southern 1912–2001

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Murray
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Deep Thought ◽  
Life Work ◽  
Made In ◽  
Do So

People with a logical turn of mind say that the history of the world can be summarised in a sentence. A précis of mediaval historian Richard William Southern's work made in that spirit would identify two characteristics, one housed inside the other, and both quite apart from the question of its quality as a work of art. The first is his sympathy for a particular kind of medieval churchman, a kind who combined deep thought about faith with practical action. This characteristic fits inside another, touching Southern's historical vision as a whole. Its genesis is traceable to those few seconds in his teens when he ‘quarrelled’ with his father about the Renaissance. The intuition that moved him to do so became a historical fides quaerens intellectum. Reflection on Southern's life work leaves us with an example of the service an historian can perform for his contemporary world, as a truer self-perception seeps into the common consciousness by way of a lifetime of teaching and writing, spreading out through the world (all Southern's books were translated into one or more foreign language).

Banner Blindness: The Irony of Attention Grabbing on the World Wide Web

1998 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 463-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Panero Benway
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
World Wide ◽  
The Other ◽  
Controlled Conditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Web Designers ◽  
Do So ◽  
Banner Blindness

Web designers attempt to draw attention to important links by making them distinctive. However, when users are asked to find specific items, they often overlook these distinctive banners. The irony of “banner blindness” is that the user who really wants to find the information the designer has highlighted is not likely to do so. In the experiments reported here, banner blindness is reproduced under controlled conditions. Banners located higher on the page and therefore further from the other page links were missed more often than banners located lower on the page and closer to the other links. Banners were missed more often when located on pages containing links to categories than when located on pages with links to specific items. Users saw banners hardly at all when clicking a banner was not required to accomplish a task.

scholarly journals Metafore sebstva u autobiografskom diskursu Vesne Parun

2016 ◽  
Vol XIV (2) ◽  
pp. 184-184
Author(s):  
Kornelija Kuvač-Levačić
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Human Personality ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Symbolic Number ◽  
Do So

By using the concept of the Self as the human personality in its totality, as defined by Carl Gustav Jung and furthered by P. Ricoeur (the theory of narrative identity, the Self defined as an identity constructed by narrative configuration, the dialectics of the discovery of the other in one’s own Self and one’s own Self in the Other), this work will focus in the analysis of metaphors which express the Self of the auto-diegetic narrator as can be found in the autobiographical discourse of Vesna Parun. The corpus of this research is to be found in selected texts from her volume Noć za pakost. Moj život u 40 vreća (2001). From the first chapter of this volume [which consists of the following works of autobiography and essays: Poljubac života (1993), Do zalaska sunca hodajući za kamilicom (1958), Pod muškim kišobranom (1986)] the reader comes to realise that, for this author, the writing of autobiography is itself a problem of self-expression and that she had constantly deferred it, while, on the other hand, feeling a great compulsion from within to do so. This sense of paradox finds its reflection in some of the constitutive elements which can be found in her autobiographical discourse. In the relationship between literature and reality, which is something which the genre of autobiography questions in its own way, the author noticeably distances herself from the mere documentary transmission of factual information from her life. A reflection of this can be seen in the negation of a strict chronology of events and confessions, as she makes recourse to a technique which uses collage and appears fragmentary; furthermore, here prose here has a lyrical quality, negating "metaphor as a literary device" and transforming it into "literature as metaphor". The autobiographical prose of Vesna Parun is especially dense with metaphor, and it can be concluded that it expresses her Self. Attention is directed here to three metaphors in particular – the umbrella, which can be both "masculine" and "feminine", a map of the world, on the wall of every house in Vesna’s community, as well the sack, which is followed by the symbolic number 40, as many in which she could fill her life in. Besides the metaphors mentioned here, what will be proposed here is that in the autobiographical discourse of Vesna Parun literature itself is presented as metaphor of her Self, appearing to the reader as significantly (auto)meta-textual.

scholarly journals DOWSING, NANOTECHNOLOGIES AND PROSPECTS OF APPLIED AND FUNDAMENTAL GEOPHYSICS

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
В.Н. Шулейкин ◽  
А.Д. Жигалин
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Gold Metal ◽  
Do So

Лозоходство и использование нанотехнологий разделяет более 4‑х тысяч лет. Можно ли сейчас сопоставлять эти две технологии, одну, буквально, «старую как мир», и другую, обращенную от дней сегодняшних в необозримое и пока неясное будущее. Секрет эффекта лозы до сих пор не раскрыт до конца. В статье обсуждаются различные взгляды на проблему – строгий геофизический, объясняющий наблюдаемые эффекты с позиций физического эксперимента; биофизический, основанный на представлении о человеке как о сенсоре, чувствительного к внешним полям, и сугубо индивидуального, «астрального». Возможно, «нанотехнологический» подход к решению задачи позволит теснее объединить различные представления и глубже проникнуть в природу вещей в обозримом будущем Dowsing and the use of nanotechnology divides more than 4 thousand years. Is it possible today to compare the two technologies: one is «ancient as the world» and the other facing away from the current days in a vast and yet uncertain future. Dowsers were able to find water, gold, metal ores and other minerals with the help of some form twigs (vines) or frames and pendulum. Vines effect secret has not yet been disclosed to the end. Perhaps the «nanotechnology» approach to the problem will do so in the foreseeable will-present

Epistemic infinitism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Aikin
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Series ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
Regress Problem ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Particular Solution ◽  
Basic Beliefs ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Epistemic Regress Problem ◽  
Do So

If you believe something rationally, you believe it for a reason. And that reason can’t just be any old reason. You’ve got to rationally hold it as a good reason. In order to do so, you must have another reason. And that reason needs another. And so a regress of reasons ensues. This is a rough-and-ready picture of the epistemic regress problem. Epistemic infinitism is the view that justifying reasons are infinite, and so it is a particular solution to the regress problem. Consider, also, that justification comes in degrees – some beliefs are better justified than others. Moreover, it seems that people can know things better than others. Call this the gradability phenomenon. Epistemic infinitism is the view that for someone to be justified maximally is for that person to have an infinite series of supporting reasons. Epistemic infinitisms admit of a wide variety. Differences between versions of infinitism arise according to two factors for the view: one dialectical, the other ecumenical. The dialectical factor for epistemic infinitisms is the matter of what philosophical problems or questions they answer. Infinitisms are designed to either provide models for how to solve the epistemic regress problem or address the phenomenon of the gradability of justification and knowledge. Infinitisms will differ depending on which issue they are designed to address, and an infinitism designed to address one issue may not be the same as one designed to address another. The ecumenical factor for epistemic infinitisms is the matter of how consistent the view is with other competing theories about how to address the regress problem and the gradability phenomenon. With the regress problem, infinitism’s main competitor theories are foundationalism, the view that there are basic beliefs for which there is no need for further reason, and coherentism, the view that justifying reasons come in large mutually supporting packages. For the most part, infinitism is taken to be a form of noncoherentist antifoundationalism about justification, because the infinitist holds that reasons must be infinitely long chains of nonrepeating reasons. However, there are versions of infinitism consistent with both foundationalism and coherentism. Infinitism faces a variety of challenges, and two of particular importance are whether infinitism is actually a form of scepticism and whether infinitism is a complete theory of justification.

When Death Comes Too Late: Radical Life Extension and the Makropulos Case

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Michael Hauskeller
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Life Extension ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
The World ◽  
Radical Life Extension ◽  
Do So ◽  
Makropulos Case

AbstractFamously, Bernard Williams has argued that although death is an evil if it occurs when we still have something to live for, we have no good reason to desire that our lives be radically extended because any such life would at some point reach a stage when we become indifferent to the world and ourselves. This is supposed to be so bad for us that it would be better if we died before that happens. Most critics have rejected Williams’ arguments on the grounds that it is far from certain that we will run out of things to live for, and I don't contest these objections. Instead, I am trying to show that they do not affect the persuasiveness of Williams’ argument, which in my reading does not rely on the claim that we will inevitably run out of things to live for, but on the far less contentious claim that it is not unthinkable we will do so and the largely ignored claim that if that happens, we will have died too late.

The Poverty of the Claudii Pulchri: Varro,De Re Rustica3.6.1–2

1992 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Jeffrey Tatum
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
De Re ◽  
The Third ◽  
Do So

‘In historical composition’, said Samuel Johnson, ‘all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent’. Perhaps so, but even if the historian must appear dull and plodding next to his more profound and shimmering brethren, the philologists and – of course – the literary critics, still he must be granted at least one virtue in plenty and that virtue is scepticism. Especially nowadays. While not quite yet ready to surrender his province to the meta-historians (who, not much believing in facts, have no real use for scepticism anyway), the historian continues diligently to scrutinize his sources with such wary Pyrrhonism as he can muster. He is especially suspicious of those ancients whose intelligence and whose literary gifts he most admires, hence the unrelenting distrust of authors such as Cicero and Caesar – and recently even such paragons of accuracy as Polybius. Still, a few authors have earned our unconscious credence, it would seem, merely by dint of their artlessness; we simply do not respect them enough to doubt them. A case in point: Varro'sDe Re Rustica, a remarkable ensemble of three dialogues, a highly literary work, yet one whose obvious inadequacies have distracted readers from its attempts at literariness and consequently have led them to take its veracity for granted – even when it relates to items having little or nothing to do with agriculture. A brief passage in the third book ofR.R.informs us, or rather seems to inform us, that what was perhaps republican Rome's most illustrious family, the Claudii Pulchri, was reduced to poverty in the seventiesB.C. in the aftermath of the death of the consul of 79 – evidence that has been accepted widely by modern scholars. In this paper I hope to show that there is no good reason for believing Varro's Appius when he claims to have been pauperized by his father's death and, furthermore, that to do so is to fail to appreciate the artistry and wry humour with which Varro has composed Book Three.

Plutarch, Callisthenes and the Peace of Callias

1990 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Bosworth
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Do So

The continuing and polemical debate over the authenticity of the Peace of Callias has become so complicated that it would be a positive service to scholarship to remove some of the more contentious evidence and reduce the scope of the argument. That is the object of this article. A fragment of Callisthenes has bulked very large in the modern literature. According to the received view the Olynthian historian denied the existence of a formal peace between Athens and the Persian King and alleged that the King observed a de facto limit to his empire, never venturing west of the Chelidonian islands. For sceptics this is grist to the mill. A writer of the mid-fourth century rejected the Athenian patriotic tradition, and it is assumed that he had good reason to do so. On the other hand defenders of the authenticity of the Peace stumble over Callisthenes' apparent denial and are forced to counter-denial or to sophistry. What is common to both camps is a tendency to refer to the evidence of Callisthenes without noting that the original text is lost. The ‘fragment’ (which it is not) is preserved by Plutarch in a sophisticated passage of source criticism and due attention needs to be paid to his mode of citation. Only then can we begin to elicit what Callisthenes may have said and reconstruct the probable context in his historical exposition. As always, we need to approach the unknown through proper study of the known.

Among Lovers

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 99-124
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Schoonheim ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Public ◽  
Person Following ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Positive Light ◽  
Do So

Both love and politics name relations, according to Arendt, in which a subject is constituted as a unique person. Following up on this suggestion, I explore how love gives rise to a conception of personhood that temporarily suspends the public judgments and social prejudices that reduce the other to their actions or to their social identity. I do so by tracing a similar movement in the various tropes of Arendt’s phenomenology of love: the retreat away from the collective world into the intimacy of love, followed by the necessary return to the world and the end of love. This exploration casts a new—and surprisingly positive—light on some key notions in Arendt’s thought, such as the body, the will, and life. However, Arendt disregards that love, as De Beauvoir argued, requires a constant effort in restraining our tendency to reduce the lover to their social identity.

Models of God's Transcendence

1966 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-209
Author(s):  
Robert H. King
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Causal Model ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

“The causal model emphasizes priority in respect to efficacy, but that is by no means the only kind of priority God exhibits. The elusive priority of the self in relation to its action, as well as the priority of persons in relation to one another, is also important and characteristic of religious apprehension of God in some of its modes anyway. On the other hand, the two more personal models, Schleiermacher's and Barth's, include a feature that is conspicuously lacking in the causal model, yet equally important to religious experience, the aspect of immediacy. So there may be good reason for preferring one model to another, while not excluding one or another. It is, after all, with a model that we have to do, and not with the thing itself. The relation of God and the world is unique and mysterious. It is not surprising that several different models have been used to interpret it.”

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