Perception, Knowledge, and Understanding in Aristotle’s Epistemology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Marc Gasser-Wingate
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Alternative Conception ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Domain I ◽  
Explanatory Structure ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Role

In this chapter I consider how we should approach questions about the relationship between perception and the more advanced cognitive states Aristotle thinks derive from it. I argue that it’s reasonable to talk of perceptual knowledge, and explain how I will be using various knowledge terms to capture the different cognitive states that feature in Aristotle’s epistemology. I then offer an account of scientific understanding (Aristotle’s epistemic ideal) as a form of theoretical expertise requiring a synoptic, reflective appreciation of the explanatory structure of some domain. I argue we should resist views that would make scientific understanding the sole locus of justification, and on which perception would therefore never play any significant epistemic role. I also raise some concerns about invoking talk of justification in this context, and suggest an alternative conception of epistemic value which I think better fits Aristotle’s descriptions of our learning.

scholarly journals On the Epistemic Value of Eros. The Relationship Between Socrates and Alcibiades

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Laura Candiotto
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Value ◽  
New Model ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Role

Several key lines concerning the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, extracted from the Symposium and the Alcibiades 1, are discussed for the purpose of detecting the epistemic value that Plato attributed to eros in his new model of education. As result of this analysis, I argue for the philosophical significance of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades as a clear example – even when failed – of the epistemic role of eros in the dialogically extended knowledge.

scholarly journals On the Epistemic Value of Eros. The Relationship Between Socrates and Alcibiades

2017 ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Laura Candiotto
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Value ◽  
New Model ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Role

Several key lines concerning the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, extracted from the Symposium and the Alcibiades 1, are discussed for the purpose of detecting the epistemic value that Plato attributed to eros in his new model of education. As result of this analysis, I argue for the philosophical significance of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades as a clear example – even when failed – of the epistemic role of eros in the dialogically extended knowledge.

Bodies and Being One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Schechter
Keyword(s):  
Self Awareness ◽  
Single Object ◽  
Split Brain ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter concerns the relationship between the split-brain case and the non-split case. In the first half of the chapter, I consider arguments to the effect that if split-brain subjects have two minds apiece, then so do non-split subjects. Sometimes these arguments have taken the form of a reductio against the 2-thinkers claim for split-brain subjects. These arguments do not work: that a split-brain subject has two minds does not mean that I have two minds, although it does mean that I could. The second half of the chapter offers my own proposal for the respect in which R’s and L’s co-embodiment as one animal, S, makes a split-brain subject one of us: I argue that S must be the single object of both R’s and L’s implicit bodily self-awareness.

Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
International Courts ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supranational Institutions

This collection brings together scholars of jurisprudence and political theory to probe the question of ‘legitimacy’. It offers discussions that interrogate the nature of legitimacy, how legitimacy is intertwined with notions of statehood, and how legitimacy reaches beyond the state into supranational institutions and international law. Chapter I considers benefit-based, merit-based, and will-based theories of state legitimacy. Chapter II examines the relationship between expertise and legitimate political authority. Chapter III attempts to make sense of John Rawls’s account of legitimacy in his later work. Chapter IV observes that state sovereignty persists, since no alternative is available, and that the success of the assortment of international organizations that challenge state sovereignty depends on their ability to attract loyalty. Chapter V argues that, to be complete, an account of a state’s legitimacy must evaluate not only its powers and its institutions, but also its officials. Chapter VI covers the rule of law and state legitimacy. Chapter VII considers the legitimation of the nation state in a post-national world. Chapter VIII contends that legitimacy beyond the state should be understood as a subject-conferred attribute of specific norms that generates no more than a duty to respect those norms. Chapter IX is a reply to critics of attempts to ground the legitimacy of suprastate institutions in constitutionalism. Chapter X examines Joseph Raz’s perfectionist liberalism. Chapter XI attempts to bring some order to debates about the legitimacy of international courts.

The Question of Disclosure in Photography

Glimpse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
Junichiro Inutsuka ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Technological Environment ◽  
Cognitive Transformation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

Keeping aside discussions about theories of depiction of photography and the epistemic value of photography from the viewer’s perspective, I reconsider this techne from the photographers’ entire act of photographing. It presents the quest of the possibility to regain the world by the art of photography, especially in a situation where human consciousness of the living environment is overwhelmed by the photographic effects. The nature of the current technological environment—while disguising the manifestation of pure humanity, in the sense that it is the externalization of technology due to human nature—is completely destructive. Today, trying to save or regenerate philosophy should be nothing more than seeking a way for human beings to refuse being incorporated as an automaton in an endless track of automated reproduction processes. As one of those who wish to find a way to reconstruct the relationship between humans and nature or to reveal that human existence can only be established in such correlation, I seek a way of breathing human freedom, momentarily disputing this automated living and social environment. In other words, to regain or to play the art of photography, to unsettle what usually works as concrete support for the cognitive transformation making us unconsciously think of the technological environment as something inevitable and natural. It would be presenting a temporary retreat and a more positive way forward.

Conclusion

Equity ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 189-196
Author(s):  
Irit Samet
Keyword(s):  
General Solution ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Relationship

In this concluding chapter I discuss some findings from the analysis of three of Equity’s fundamental doctrines we explored: fiduciary law, proprietary estoppel, and clean hands. I wish to highlight the traits they share and consider the relationship between the legal ideals of efficiency and Accountability Correspondence which they exemplify. Drawing up the strings of the last three chapters will also reveal how the courts use the category of conscionability to ensure that the value of the Rule of Law is sacrificed only in cases where it is necessary to maintain a healthy balance with Accountability Correspondence, in a way that also serves efficiency. Finally, I wish to show how the discussions of the specific doctrines support the argument that the fusion project as a general solution to the friction between law and Equity ought to be rejected.

Documentary Goes Popular

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-102
Author(s):  
Angela J. Aguayo
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Documentary History ◽  
Creative Force ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

While the documentary genre has frequently been conceptualized as a democratic tool with civic potential, the ways popular advocacy documentary functions in the process of social change is unclear. We need more information about the relationship between documentary agitation and collective organizing for social change, as well as about how this function shifts with the visibility of popular attention. Mainstream commercial culture is more than at odds with a commons of democratic exchange. The advocacy film is a time-honored tradition in documentary history, made specifically for the aims of democratic exchange. This type of film is produced for political causes by activists or advocates who are not closely connected with the government or decision makers. Often the director is constructed as a central creative force. Central figures usually function as surrogates for the film in public interviews and engagements; the speakers are often connected to sponsoring organizations. In this chapter, I first address the historical linage of popular documentary and its movement from the vernacular to the popular. Then, I examine the ways popular advocacy documentary in popular form has morphed in recent years, providing insight into the potential of the genre to make contact with the political structure.

The Working Day

Animal Labour ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 181-206
Author(s):  
Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel
Keyword(s):  
Karl Marx ◽  
Main Site ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Working Day ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
A Site ◽  
Alliance Building ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Labour Time

In Chapter 10 of Capital Vol. 1—‘The Working Day’—Karl Marx reveals at least one central concern within his project: namely the relationship between labour time and free time as a site of antagonism under capitalism. In this chapter I offer a perspective on the politics of animal labour that takes the working day as a main site of problematization and contestation. I argue that while a concept of a ‘working day’ is applicable to some animal labourers, a defining characteristic of most animals labour under capitalism—particularly that of animals in intensive forms of agriculture—is the reality that the working day never stops: all time is labour time for these animals. I further argue that a focus on labour time offers a different and productive base for pro-animal politics, and for alliance building. At least one curious set of resonances here are the strong demands being made by other social movements—such as environmental justice movements—to ‘slow down capitalism’ through reduced work, reduced production, and reduced consumption.

Uncentred Minds

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-117
Author(s):  
Jonardon Ganeri
Keyword(s):  
Fernando Pessoa ◽  
The World ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

In this chapter I explore the relationship between Fernando Pessoa and Buddhism. I first introduce the brilliant French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–43), a contemporary of Pessoa but someone of whom he certainly had never heard. One way to read her remarks is as directed against the positional use of ‘I’, against the deployment in thought and speech of a positional conception of self. One should abandon forms of self-consciousness that are grounded in one’s thinking of oneself as the one at the centre of a landscape of sensation. For Weil, it is precisely such contact with reality as attention makes possible which holds the uncentred mind together, preventing its content being ‘a phantasmagoric fluttering with no centre or sense’. The uncentred mind would thus be a sort of conformal and aperspectival map of reality, standing in correspondence with the world without any privileged perspectival point. With these distinctions in mind, we say more of the mind of Alberto Caeiro, and address the question whether he is a Buddhist heteronym.

The Changing Views of a Philosopher of Chemistry on the Question of Reduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric R. Scerri
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Mathematical Theory ◽  
Approximate Solutions ◽  
Electron Systems ◽  
Atomic Systems ◽  
Quantum Mechanical Description ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship

The question of the reduction of chemistry to quantum mechanics has been inextricably linked with the development of the philosophy of chemistry since the field began to develop in the early 1990s. In the present chapter I would like to describe how my own views on the subject have developed over a period of roughly 30 years. A good place to begin might be the frequently cited reductionist dictum that was penned in 1929 by Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. . . . The underlying laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a larger part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that exact applications of these laws lead to equations, which are too complicated to be soluble. (Dirac 1929) . . . These days most chemists would probably comment that Dirac had things backward. It is clear that nothing like “the whole of chemistry” has been mathematically understood. At the same time most would argue that the approximate solutions that are afforded by modern computers are so good as to overcome the fact that one cannot obtain exact or analytical solutions to the Schrödinger equation for many-electron systems. Be that as it may, Dirac’s famous quotation, coming from one of the creators of quantum mechanics, has convinced many people that chemistry has been more or less completely reduced to quantum mechanics. Another quotation of this sort (and one using more metaphorical language) comes from Walter Heitler who together with Fritz London was the first to give a quantum mechanical description of the chemical bond. . . . Let us assume for the moment that the two atomic systems ↑↑↑↑ . . . and ↓↓↓↓ . . . are always attracted in a homopolar manner. We can, then, eat Chemistry with a spoon. (Heitler 1927) . . . Philosophers of science eventually caught up with this climate of reductionism and chose to illustrate their views with the relationship with chemistry and quantum mechanics.

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