scholarly journals A Budget of Paradoxes (Continued from page 54)

1866 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 176-188
Author(s):  
A. De Morgan

Old and new logic contrasted: being an attempt to elucidate, for ordinary comprehension, bow Lord Bacon delivered the human mind from its 2,000 years' enslavement under Aristotle. By Justin renan. London, 1839, 12mo.Logic, though the other exact science, has not had the sort of assailants who have clustered about mathematics. There is a sect which disputes the utility of logic, but there are no special points, like the quadrature of the circle, which excite dispute among those who admit other things. The old story about Aristotle having one logic to trammel us, and Bacon another to set us free—always laughed at by those who really knew either Aristotle or Bacon—now begins to be understood by a large section of the educated world. The author of this tract connects the old logic with the indecencies of the classical writers, and the new with moral purity: he appeals to women, who, “when they see plainly the demoralizing tendency of syllogistic logic, they will, no doubt, exert their powerful influence against it, and support the Baconian method.” This is the only work against logic which I can introduce, but it is a rare one, I mean in contents, I quote the author's idea of a syllogism:—“The basis of this system is the syllogism. This is a form of couching the substance of your argument or investigation into one short line or sentence—then corroborating or supporting it in another, and drawing your conclusion or proof in a third.”

PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 356-364
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Topazio

With the emergence of philosophy in the nineteenth century as a separate discipline which stressed primarily questions insoluble by empirical or formal methods, Voltaire's reputation as a philosopher has gone into gradual eclipse. It has become unfashionable and degrading for philosophers to concern themselves with the practical aspects of philosophical enquiry. In eighteenth-century France, on the other hand, the identification of philosophy with science, which by twentieth-century standards had vitiated philosophical thought, produced the “philosophes” or natural philosophers who were on the whole more interested in human progress than in the progress of the human mind. And Voltaire was by popular consent the leader of this “philosophe” group, the one who had unquestionably contributed the most in the struggle to make man a happier and freer member of society. Yet, ironically, despite a lifelong effort in behalf of humanity, Voltaire's reputation as a destructive thinker has steadily grown even as the critics have pejoratively classified him as a “practical” rather than a “real” philosopher. Typical of this criticism of Voltaire is Macaulay's statement: “Voltaire could not build: he could only pull down: he was the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock of our positive knowledge.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Dean Radin ◽  
Helané Wahbeh ◽  
Leena Michel ◽  
Arnaud Delorme

An experiment we conducted from 2012 to 2013, which had not been previously reported, was designed to explore possible psychophysical effects resulting from the interaction of a human mind with a quantum system. Participants focused their attention toward or away from the slits in a double-slit optical system to see if the interference pattern would be affected. Data were collected from 25 people in individual half-hour sessions; each person repeated the test ten times for a total of 250 planned sessions. “Sham” sessions designed to mimic the experimental sessions without observers present were run immediately before and after as controls. Based on the planned analysis, no evidence for a psychophysical effect was found. Because this experiment differed in two essential ways from similar, previously reported double-slit experiments, two exploratory analyses were developed, one based on a simple spectral analysis of the interference pattern and the other based on fringe visibility. For the experimental data, the outcome supported a pattern of results predicted by a causal psychophysical effect, with the spectral metric resulting in a 3.4 sigma effect (p = 0.0003), and the fringe visibility metric resulting in 7 of 22 fringes tested above 2.3 sigma after adjustment for type I error inflation, with one of those fringes at 4.3 sigma above chance (p = 0.00001). The same analyses applied to the sham data showed uniformly null outcomes. Other analyses exploring the potential that these results were due to mundane artifacts, such as fluctuations in temperature or vibration, showed no evidence of such influences. Future studies using the same protocols and analytical methods will be required to determine if these exploratory results are idiosyncratic or reflect a genuine psychophysical influence.


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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-119
Author(s):  
Leno Francisco Danner ◽  
Agemir Bavaresco ◽  
Fernando Danner

In this paper, we argue that the normative concept of modernity as self-referentiality, self-subsistence, autonomy, endogeny and independence of reason is based on the correlation of anthropology and science in a double, however correlated, point: on the one hand, it is rooted on the idea of the natural world as a purely technical, physical, chemical and biological triad of structure, dynamics and object, which obeys to quantitative and definite-invariable material laws; on the other, it is grounded on the idea of human mind or human nature as a normative subject that is able to interpret in an objective way this purely technical nature and, more importantly, to construct the epistemological-moral-ontological objectivity from the modern self’s capability of creating its own axiology and rationalizing the epistemological-moral foundation and the anthropological-ontological place-belonging in the world and in society. As a consequence, the normative concept of modernity, associated to a technical view of nature and to a political-profane-historical notion of society-culture-consciousness, of socialization-subjectivation, enables the idea that modernity is a very singular anthropological-societal-cultural-cognitive process of evolution in human history, as its paradigmatic basis (reason between natural science and secular culture) represents directly universalism in itself, so as to construct a barrier and an opposition between modernity and the other of modernity, as well as to institute the process of modernity-modernization and its comprehension as a self-referential, self-subsisting, autonomous, closed and endogenous process, and as a principle of movement, dynamics and explanation. Here, modernity can be explained only by its internal processes, subjects, principles, values and multiple dynamics, as it signifies a self-constructive movement in itself and by itself, as an overcoming of traditionalism as a minority and a consolidation of modernity-modernization as a majority due to the intersection of reason, science and culture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-503
Author(s):  
Hironori Akechi ◽  
Jari K. Hietanen

An agent's moral standing is considered as depending on the agent's mind and their harmfulness toward a victim, but a victim's mind and species may also matter. To examine whether a victim's species (i.e., human or another) and a victim's mind are considered in the judgment of a harmful agent's moral standing, the present study modulated the mental capacities of an imaginary species. Only humans' suffering was considered when the other species' mental capacities were presumed to be low (Study 1), but humans' and the other species' suffering were equally considered when the other species had mental capacities that were presumed to be equivalent to those of humans (Study 2). The results suggest that our judgments of the moral standing of an agent 1) depend not only on the agent's mind but also on the victim's mind and 2) are not human species-oriented but human mind-oriented.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz

Spinoza's ethics is grounded by a conviction which is as simple as it is programmatic: Subjective experience can be explained, and its successful explanation is of ethical relevance. For it makes us smarter, freer and happier. This is the programmatic conviction behind Spinoza's ethics and motivates many of the theses it puts forward. Ursula Renz shows which kind of a theory of the human mind informs this program. The systematic differentiation of theory parts in the architecture of ethics proves to be a decisive move: A theory part that deals with questions of the ontology of the mental is followed by a definition of the human mind as a kind of subject theory, which in turn is separated from a theory part dealing with the constitution of content. This structure makes it possible to deal separately with different problems that arise in the course of the explanation of experience. In the end, Spinoza succeeds in avoiding both reductionisms and skepticisms right from the start. In this way, two intuitions are brought together that are often considered incompatible: on the one hand, the view that experience is something irreducibly subjective, and on the other hand, the assumption that there are better and worse explanations of experience.


2021 ◽  
pp. 159-176
Author(s):  
Stewart Duncan

Locke is officially agnostic about the nature of the human mind: he thinks we cannot know that materialism is true, but also that we cannot know that dualism is true. Despite this agnosticism, we can ask whether Locke thought one of those views was more likely than the other. The chapter considers arguments on both sides. A small number of texts suggest he thought dualism more likely. On the other hand, Lisa Downing has argued that Locke thought materialism more likely, on the basis of the similarities between human and animal minds. This chapter argues that the reasons she offers do not show us that Locke was inclined to materialism. Nevertheless, Locke did show the possibility of materialism, not just by saying it was possible, but by developing at length an account of the mind that did not depend upon its being an immaterial substance.


Author(s):  
T.A. Ryckman

The least abstract form of mathematics, geometry has, from the earliest Hellenic times, been accorded a curious position straddling empirical and exact science. Its standing as an empirical and approximate science stems from the practical pursuits of land surveying and measuring, from the prominence of visual aids (figures and constructions) in geometric proofs and, in the twentieth century, from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which holds that the geometry of spacetime is dependent upon physical quantities. On the other hand, very early on, the symmetry and perfect regularity of certain geometric figures were taken as representative of a higher knowledge than that afforded by sense experience. And its concern with figures and constructions, rather than with number and calculation, rendered geometry amenable to axiomatic formulation and syllogistic deduction, establishing a paradigm of demonstrative knowledge which endured for two millennia. While the progress of mathematics has surmounted traditional distinctions between geometry and the mathematics of number, leaving only a heuristic role for geometric intuition, geometric thinking remains a vital component of mathematical cognition.


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.


1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-409
Author(s):  
Robert Friedmann

In the middle of May, 1527, a religious debate took place at the castle of the manorial Lords of Liechtenstein at Nicolsburg, Moravia, which aroused widest attention and strong passions. On the one side was Dr. Baithasar Hubmaier, highly respected by the Lords of Liechtenstein and by a large section of the city of Nicolsburg which Hubmaier not so long ago had congregated into a peculiar Anabaptist (mass-) church of his own creation. He was supported by his fellow believers Martin Göschl, formerly auxiliary bishop in Moravia, and Hans Spittlemayer, previously Catholic clergyman but now a coworker with Hubmaier.On the other side of the debate was Hans Hut, the outstanding Anabaptist missioner-apostle of South Germany and Austria, his friends and fellow-believers Oswald Glaidt, Hans Nadler, and several more, all of whom disagreed strongly with the way Hubmaier had guided the “radical reformation” in the city of Nicolsburg. We do not know exactly the topic of this debate and most likely will never know it with certainty. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren claims that the topic had been the issue of the “sword,” that is, the question whether or not a Christian may serve as a soldier or as a civic magistrate who, too, is bound to use the “sword” to enforce law and order. It is said that Hubmaier defended the sword even for “radical” Christians while Hut was passionately opposed to it.


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