The Attributes

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-101
Author(s):  
Martin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Body Interaction ◽  
Single Substance ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

According to Descartes, an attribute is the essence of a substance, and as such each substance has one and only one attribute. Spinoza, however, claims that the one substance, God or nature, has infinitely many attributes. But how can a single substance have infinitely many essences? This chapter argues for a new interpretation of the attributes according to which each distinct attribute of a substance is identical to its unique essence and the distinction between them is merely a distinction of reason created by the plurality of concepts used to cognize that essence. The chapter also solves a long standing puzzle about mind–body interaction in Spinoza. If minds and bodies are identical, as Spinoza claims, how can he both maintain mind–mind and body–body causation but deny mind–body causation? It argues that Spinoza’s topic, when he appears to deny mind–body causation, is, in fact, mind–body causal explanation.

scholarly journals Self-organizing Systems in the Light of the Arrows of Orderedness, Symmetry, and Entropy

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
György Darvas
Keyword(s):  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Local Symmetry ◽  
Evolution Of The Universe ◽  
Global Evolution ◽  
New Material ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Matter Energy

The paper makes an attempt to resolve two conceptual mingling: (a) the mingling of the two interpretations of the concept of orderedness applied in statistical thermodynamics and in symmetrology, and (b) the mingling of two interpretations of evolution applied in global and local processes. In conclusion, it formulates a new interpretation on the relation of the emergence of new material qualities in selforganizing processes on the one hand, and the evolution of the universe, on the other. The process of evolution is a sequence of emergence of new material qualities by self-organization processes, which happen in negligible small segments of the universe. Although thermodynamics looks at the universe as a closed (isolated) system, this holds for its outside boundaries only, while the universe has many subsystems inside, which are not isolated (closed), since they are in a permanent exchange of matter, energy, etc. with their environment (with the rest of the universe) through their open boundaries. Any ";;emergence";; takes place, i.e., all new qualities come into being just in these small open segments of the universe. The conditions to apply the second law of thermodynamics are not present here. Therefore, global evolution of the universe is the consequence of local symmetry decreases, local decreases of orderedness, and possible local decreases of entropy.

Platonism and Mathematical Explanations

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Fabrice Pataut ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Theory ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Mathematical Explanations ◽  
Parsimony Principle ◽  
The Face ◽  
Numerical Formulation ◽  
The One

Ontological parsimony requires that if we can dispense with A when best explaining B, or when deducing a nominalistically statable conclusion B from nominalistically statable premises, we must indeed dispense with A. When A is a mathematical theory and it has been established that its conservativeness undermines the platonistic force of mathematical derivations (Field), or that a non numerical formulation of some explanans may be obtained so that the platonistic force of the best numerical-based account of the explanandum is also undermined (Rizza), the parsimony principle has been respected. Since derivations resorting to conservative mathematics and proofs involved in non numerical best explanations also require abstract objects, concepts, and principles under the usual reading of “abstract,” one might complain that such accounts turn out to be as metaphysically loaded as their platonistic counterparts. One might then urge that ontological parsimony is also required of these nominalistic accounts. It might, however, prove more fruitful to leave this particular worry to the side, to free oneself, as it were, from parsimony thus construed and to look at other important aspects of the defeating or undermining strategies that have been lavished on the disposal of platonism. Two aspects are worthy of our attention: epistemic cost and debunking claims. Our knowledge that applied mathematics is conservative is established at a cost, and so is our knowledge that nominalistic proofs play a genuine theoretical role in best explanations. I will suggest that the knowledge one must acquire to show that nominalistic deductions and explanations do indeed play their respective theoretical role involves some question-begging assumptions regarding the nature and validity of proofs. As for debunking, even if the face value content of either non numerical claims, or conservative mathematical claims, or platonistic mathematical claims didn’t figure in our causal explanation of why we hold the mathematical beliefs that we do, construed or understood as beliefs about such contents, or as beliefs held in either of these three ways, we could still be justified in holding them, so that the distinction between nominalistic deductions or non numerical explanations on the one hand and platonistic ones on the other turns out to be spurious with respect to the relevant propositional attitude, i.e., with respect to belief.

La Forge

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-267
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Platt
Keyword(s):  
Logical Consequence ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Body Interaction ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind

Chapter 6 argues that La Forge is a “partial” occasionalist, who appeals to “body–body” occasionalism to defend Descartes’ central epistemic thesis that mind is better known than body. La Forge argues for an occasionalistic version of Descartes’ physics. However, La Forge presents a theory of the mind–body union that implies that the human mind and body causally interact. While he says bodies are the “only occasional causes” of sensations in the mind, he uses “occasional cause” to refer to a type of accidental efficient cause. La Forge’s arguments for occasionalism are limited to body–body interaction: Although he holds that God continually re-creates finite substances, he is not committed to full-blown occasionalism. La Forge does not adopt occasionalism simply because he takes it to be a logical consequence of Cartesian physics. He sees body–body occasionalism as playing a broader theoretical role: He uses it to respond to criticisms of Cartesian epistemology.

Occasionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tad Schmaltz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Body Interaction ◽  
Divine Activity ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Early Modern Metaphysics ◽  
Radical Form

Occasionalism was a theory of causation that played an important role in early modern metaphysics. In its most radical form, this theory holds that God is the only genuine cause, with natural events serving merely as ‘occasions’ for divine activity. According to an old textbook view, which has its source in the seventeenth century, occasionalism was introduced as an ad hoc solution to the problem, deriving from Descartes’s dualism, of how mind and body can causally interact. In fact, however, occasionalism has a history that dates from long before Descartes, and it was initially offered as a solution to theological rather than purely metaphysical difficulties. After Descartes, moreover, occasionalism remained significant for reasons that go far beyond the issue of mind-body interaction.

Meditation and the Modern Encounter between Asia and the West

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard E. King
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Body ◽  
The West ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Colonial Encounter ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

In the West, meditation has been particularly associated with Asian religions and seen as illustrative of the mystical nature of eastern culture. This chapter explores the impact of the colonial encounter between Europe and Asia. In this context, Asian meditative practices became abstracted from their traditional cosmological, ritualistic, and cultural contexts and reframed in terms of key conceptual binaries and assumptions deriving from modern Western culture. These include a Cartesian distinction between mind and body (with mind being associated with meditation and Buddhist mindfulness, and the body linked to “Hindu” yoga and its modern postural forms). Asian forms of meditation were translated according to a modern psychological framework and encountered in relation to the dichotomies between science and religion on the one hand and religious tradition and a de-traditionalized notion of spirituality on the other. The approaches taken in the Western encounter with Asian meditation tell us as much about the intellectual grooves of the modern Western episteme as they do about the Asian meditative traditions to which they relate.

Descartes’ Dualism of Mind and Body in the Development of Psychological Thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Brown ◽  
Brian Key
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Special Science ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The 19Th Century

Few practitioners or researchers in psychology would think of the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes, as the founding father of their discipline. Yet, it is difficult to see how psychology could have emerged as a discipline in its own right without the contributions of Descartes. Descartes’ theoretical and experimental contributions to our understanding of rationality, consciousness, sensation, feeling, attention, psychological self-regulation and voluntary action, and indeed the very concept of mind that lies at the heart of his philosophy, have been pivotal to the evolution of psychology since its emergence as a special science in the 19th-century. These contributions tend to get overshadowed by the unpalatable aspects of his dualism of mind and body and his denial of animal consciousness, doctrines for which he was and still is much pilloried. However, both doctrines are relevant to understanding how from its inception the subject matter and scope of psychological investigation was framed, for underlying the Cartesian concept of mind is not one dualism but two: a dualism of mind and body and a dualism of life and mind. The mind, for Descartes, could not be theorized on its own terms without conceiving of it at least to some extent independently of the physiological processes of the human body, on the one hand, and the life functions of biological organisms, on the other. Descartes’ legacy for psychology as a discipline is thus twofold. It created the conceptual space for the concept of mind to emerge as a threshold concept in its own right, distinct from the concept of matter that defined mechanics, and it demarcated those uniquely human capacities that enabled psychology to differentiate itself from the newly emerging evolutionary biology of the 19th-century, even though it would remain more closely aligned with biology than physics thenceforth. Without both dualisms of mind and body and life and mind, it is difficult to envisage how psychology as a special science distinct from anatomy and the life sciences could have emerged, and for this the discipline of psychology owes Monsieur Descartes a considerable debt.

What is the Nature of the Crime of the Delinquent Daughter in Deuteronomy 22:13-21? A Rejoinder to J. Fleishman's Suggestion

2009 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-459
Author(s):  
Meir Malul
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Previous Suggestion ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

AbstractThe exact nature of the girl's crime in the law of the delinquent daughter in Deut 22:13-21 is examined, starting by a detailed critique of J. Fleishman's previous suggestion in this journal (vol. 58, pp. 191-210) to construe it in the light of the law of cursing the parents in Exod 21:17 and understand it as an innovation and restriction of the latter law. In his view, the girl's sin is tantamount to cursing her parents, which, like the sin of the glatton and drunkard son according to Deut 21: 18-21, meant the undermining of the parents' authority and status, for which both boy and girl deserved the death penalty. In the following critique, it is underlined that the girl's sin is, first, not one of omission but of commission, and, second, it is not against her parents but against her husband, who is also the one to initiate the legal proceedings. A new interpretation is suggested, according to which the girl's crime, defined in v. 21 as an act of and a deed of, consisted not only in concealing her previous loss of virginity from her husband, thus deceiving him and her parents, but also in duping her husband into committing a sin comparable to that of lying with a menstruating, and thus desolate, woman. Being deprived of virginity, and thus of the socially recognized status of a virgin, she became, like Tamar (2 Sam 13:20), “desolate, forlorn”, an unenviable state from which only her seducer/ravisher could redeem her (thus are the sense and goal of the laws of the seduced virgin in Exod 22:15-16 and Deut 22:28-29). Trying to dupe her husband into steping in and performing what custom and law dictated the other man—the seducer/ravisher—should have done, and thus to arrogate to herself a social status she did not deserve, was then tantamount to undermining social structure and striking at the fibers that constituted the essence and integrity of the social community (cf. Prov 30:21-23).

Melissus And His Opponents: The Argument of DK 30 B 8

Phronesis ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Makin
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Good Argument ◽  
Orthodox Interpretation ◽  
Realist Position ◽  
The World ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

AbstractIn this paper I offer a new interpretation of Melissus' argument at DK 30 B8.In this passage Melissus uses an Eleatic argument against change to challenge an opponent who appeals to the authority of perception in order to support the view that there are a plurality of items in the world. I identify an orthodox type of approach to this passage, but argue that it cannot give a charitable interpretation of Melissus' strategy. In order to assess Melissus' overall argument we have to identify the opponent at whom it is aimed. The orthodox interpretation of the argument faces a dilemma: Melissus' argument is either a poor argument against a plausible opponent or a good argument against an implausible opponent.My interpretation turns on identifying a new target for Melissus' argument. I explain the position I call Bluff Realism (contrasting it with two other views: the Pig Headed and the Fully Engaged). These are positions concerning the dialectical relation between perception on the one hand, and arguments to counter-perceptual conclusions on the other. I argue that Bluff Realism represents a serious threat from an Eleatic point of view, and is prima facie an attractive position in its own right.I then give a charitable interpretation of Melissus' argument in DK 30 B8, showing how he produces a strong and incisive argument against the Bluff Realist position I have identified. Melissus emerges as an innovative and astute philosopher.

Populus Interruptus: Self-Determination, the Independence of Kosovo, and the Vocabulary of Peoplehood

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZORAN OKLOPCIC
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One ◽  
External Actors

AbstractThis article uses the contested independence of Kosovo as an opportunity to re-examine the theoretical imagery behind the concept of self-determination, and then confront those findings with the more recent approaches to polity formation from other theoretical genres: normative theories of secession, on the one hand, and the global governance approach to self-determination, on the other. What emerges from the encounter between these bodies of thought is not a new interpretation, or a theory of self-determination and its relationship to uti possidetis, but rather a plea for an approach to polity formation which is simultaneously critical and prudential. That is, an approach which would accept the role of external actors as inevitable, but goes further and unmasks them as complicit in labelling certain projects as ‘civic’ and ‘multicultural’ on the one hand and ‘ethno-nationalist’ on the other. Equally, the proposed approach reveals the ever-present aspiration to unanimity as a concealed ideal of polity formation, shared by both the ‘civic’ and the ‘ethnic’ variants of self-determination. Finally, this approach to polity formation sketches the contours of an alternative, thin vision of a political community – one not wearing the badge of peoplehood – one glued together not by normative imperatives of participation and solidarity, but rather by the acknowledgement of geopolitical fiat.

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