Apriority, Disputability, and Necessity

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-164
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Abstract Objects

This chapter shows how the self-evident and, by extension, a priori propositions in general may plausibly be considered necessary. These propositions are best taken to have, as truthmakers, abstract objects and their interrelations. It is also argued that the a priori may be plausibly taken to extend to certain normative truths and to many propositions that, like some perceptual principles discussed in earlier chapters, belong to philosophy itself. As the case of philosophy well illustrates, when a priori propositions are substantive, there may be widespread rational disagreement on them. This is especially clear if, as argued here, beliefs can be rational even if not sufficiently well-grounded to be justified. This possibility implies that someone may rationally, though unjustifiedly, reject even certain self-evident propositions. How this happens is explained, and the chapter also shows both difficulties in identifying rational disagreements and some prospects for resolving them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Expressing the selves

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Zeman
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
The Self ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Reference

By drawing parallels to neuro-philosophical approaches to self-consciousness that give up the notion of an a priori psychological self, Zeman argues that linguistic self-reference does not reflect the self as a holistic subject of consciousness, but as a set of different ‘selves’ that are commonly neutralized behind the personal pronoun ‘I’. The argument is grounded in an investigation of ‘multiple-perspective constructions’ (MPC) like the epistemic use of modal verbs, Free Indirect Discourse, and the ‘Future of Fate’ constructions where the subject is split in more than one dimension. The analysis shows that the impression of a holistic self emerges as a discourse effect based on the integration of the hierarchical relations between (i) an ‘internal’ and ‘external’ self with respect to the mental content, and (ii) ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ perspectives with respect to the communicative roles.

The Spirit of Israel Law

1974 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-462
Author(s):  
Haim H. Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
General Trend ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Political Motivation ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Law

It may appear unduly pretentious to speak of the Spirit of the Law of a State which just completed but 25 years of independent legislative and judicial life. States with legislative and judicial records of hundreds of years may find it difficult, and perhaps also rather unprofitable, to delve into speculations of the Spirit behind their laws. In most cases, the general trend and the political motivation of the creation and the administration of law are anyhow known beforehand and well defined a priori—be it the realization of democracy by the rule of law, be it the implementation of socialism or communism, or the self-assertion of a fascist or communist dictatorship. Add to such trends and motivations the national legal traditions which a State inherited and consciously or unconsciously continues to maintain—and you will obtain, for what it may be worth or useful, a fair overall picture of the “Spirit”.of its laws.

Being as Doing

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Llewelyn
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
German Word

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself, myself it speaks and spells; Crying What I dó is me: for that I came. These remarkable lines from ‘As kingfishers catch fire’ hark back seven centuries to Scotus’ emphasis on willing, and forward getting on for another hundred years to (let us say) the instress put by that Scotus scholar Martin Heidegger on the verbal-nominative grammar of Sein, the German word for being, preparing the ground for Carol Ann Duffy’s planting of the conceit of the verb at the heart of the noun thanks to which the self is said as selving and as a priori ‘yessing’, we discovered in chapter 3, that Hopkins borrows from Parmenides along with the latter’s hyphenation of being and thinking or perceiving (noieô).

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