Passions and Reason in the Short Treatise

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-74
Author(s):  
Andrea Sangiacomo
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Position ◽  
Conceptual Resources

In the Short Treatise, Spinoza upholds the epistemological claims advanced in the Treatise on the Emendation, but also provides further developments concerning his theory of error and his account of how passions and knowledge relate to each other. Section 2.2 introduces Spinoza’s account of the passions as inadequate ideas caused by other inadequate ideas. Section 2.3 explains how his rejection of the Cartesian distinction between intellect and will further supports this account. Section 2.4 presents his epistemic remedy for the passions, which consists in the emendation of the inadequate ideas that underpin them. Section 2.5 examines the correspondence between Spinoza and Willem van Blijenbergh and shows how, in this context, Spinoza is forced to confront some crucial worries that emerge from his early ethical position. Section 2.6 argues that Spinoza’s early ethics does not have the conceptual resources required to offer a fully satisfying solution to these worries.

Triggers of Thought: Impressions within Hume’s Theory of Mind

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Associative Processes ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
The World ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Conceptual Resources

This essay argues that Humean impressions are triggers of associative processes, which enable us to form stable patterns of thought that co-vary with our experiences of the world. It will thus challenge the importance of the Copy Principle by claiming that it is the regularity with which certain kinds of sensory inputs motivate certain sets of complex ideas that matters for the discrimination of ideas. This reading is conducive to Hume’s account of perception, because it avoids the impoverishment of conceptual resources so typical for empiricist theories of meaning and explains why ideas should be based on impressions, although impressions cannot be known to mirror matters of fact. Dieser Aufsatz argumentiert dafür, dass humesche Eindrücke („impressions“) Auslöser von assoziativen Prozessen sind, welche es uns ermöglichen, stabile Denkmuster zu bilden, die mit unseren Erfahrungen der Welt kovariant sind. Der Aufsatz stellt somit die Wichtigkeit des Kopien-Prinzips in Frage, nämlich dadurch, dass behauptet wird, für die Unterscheidung der Ideen sei die Regelmäßigkeit maßgeblich, mit der gewisse Arten von sensorischen Eingaben gewisse Mengen von komplexen Ideen motivieren. Diese Lesart trägt zu einem Verständnis von Humes Auffassung der Wahrnehmung bei, da sie die Verarmung der begrifflichen Mittel, die für empiristische Theorien der Bedeutung so typisch ist, vermeidet und erklärt, warum Ideen auf Eindrücken basieren sollten, obwohl Eindrücke nicht als Abbildungen von Tatsachen erkannt werden können.

The emotional labor of former street children working as tour guides in Delhi

Focaal ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Tore Holst
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Ethical Position ◽  
Tour Guides ◽  
Personal Stories

In Delhi, former street children guide tourists around the streets they once inhabited and show how the NGOs they live with try to resocialize current street children. The “personal stories” they perform implicitly advocate simple solutions that conveniently fit the limited engagement of the tourists, whose ethical position is thereby validated in relation to the NGO. But this uncomplicated exchange of guides’ emotions for tourists’ capital is in the guides’ interest, because it allows them to set boundaries for the emotional labor of performing their past suffering. The guides are thus incentivized to work within a post-humanitarian logic, selling their stories as commodities, which then incentivize the tourists to act as consumers, who have little choice but to frame their declarations of solidarity with the children as acts of consumption.

Assertion and Testimony

2019 ◽  
pp. 553-579
Author(s):  
Edward S. Hinchman
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relation ◽  
General Thesis ◽  
Conceptual Resources

Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what one gets when one adds an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion—assertion without testimony—as what one gets when one subtracts that interpersonal relation? This article argues for the subtractive approach and for the more general thesis that its treatment of the interpersonal element in assertion makes understanding that interpersonal element the key to understanding how assertion expresses belief. This theory of belief expression in assertion treats it as internalizing the transmission of belief in testimony. How we understand that internalizing move depends on how we conceptualize the interpersonal element in testimony. Since what will be called the Command Model does not give one the conceptual resources to make this move, one should adopt an alternative that will be called the Custodial Model, on which a testifier aims not to convince her addressee but to reason with him—to give him reasons to believe what she tells him, where those reasons are grounded in her trustworthiness in thus attempting to influence him. The subtractive approach to assertion thus rests on a key distinction between the aims of reasoning and persuasion.

“Is there no Balm in Gilead?”: Health, Illness, Death, and Dying in the Hebrew Bible and Today

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-206
Author(s):  
Joel S. Kaminsky
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Life Care ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Conceptual Resources

This essay argues that the Hebrew Bible contains conceptual resources that can contribute to and enrich the ongoing discussions surrounding healthcare in the U.S. and in other modern Western societies. These biblical ideas may help us reframe our understandings of sickness and health, something urgently needed if we wish individuals and their families to have less medically invasive and less alienating experiences of illness, most especially during end of life care.

Reflections on Earth's Insights from an East Asianist

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Evelyn Tucker
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Conceptual Resources ◽  
Shingon Buddhism

AbstractCallicott's Earth's Insights is a remarkable survey of resources from the world's religions for formulating a global ethics. He mentions, in particular, the rich symbolic and conceptual resources available from East Asia. This paper supports such an assertion and develops more fully the teachings of Japanese Shingon Buddhism which helped to foster a deep identity with the natural world by means of ritual. Moreover, the paper suggests that the literary and artistic resources of Japanese culture are also important sources for further exploration.

scholarly journals The Rights of Science and the Rights of Politics: Lessons from the Long-form Census Controversy

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Long Form ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Normative Account ◽  
Made In ◽  
Conceptual Resources

One of the main issues in the long-form census controversy concerned the relationship between science and politics. Through analysis of the arguments and underlying assumptions of four influential and exemplary interventions that were made in the name of science, this paper outlines a normative account of this relationship. The paper nuances the science-protective ideals that critics invoked and argues that such conceptual resources are needed if science is to be protected from undue political encroachment. However, in their zeal to defend the rights of science critics claimed for it more than its due, eclipsing the value dimension of policy decisions and failing to respect the role of politics as the rightful locus of decision making for value issues. An adequate normative account of the relationship between science and politics in public policy must be capable not only of protecting science from politics but also of protecting politics from science.

scholarly journals ASCENSÃO E DECADÊNCIA DA EPISTEMOLOGIA DIVINA

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (123) ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
Evaldo Sampaio
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Epistemological Issue ◽  
Do So ◽  
Conceptual Resources

Trata-se de examinar a parábola da Morte de Deus enquanto uma crítica do conhecimento. Seguindo-se sua formulação na filosofia de Friedrich Nietzsche, pretende-se identificar a constituição do que se designa por epistemologia divina, sua ascensão e agora declarado declínio. Para tanto, caracteriza-se a singularidade do tipo de abordagem que Nietzsche concede à questão e se discute sua probidade. Entende-se que tal investigação pode fornecer recursos conceituais para debates contemporâneos nos quais, como se sugere, ocultam-se estruturas morais e cognitivas que reforçam aquilo que se propõem a abandonar.Abstract: The article examines the parable of the Death of God as an epistemological issue. In order to achieve this purpose, the work tries to identify in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy the constitution of what could be called divine epistemology, its rise and current decline. To do so, the singularity of Nietzsche’s approach to the issue is characterized and its consistence discussed. It is understood that such investigation can supply conceptual resources for a contemporary debate in which, as suggested, cognitive and moral structures are hidden that reinforce what is to be abandoned.

scholarly journals Now: A Post-Romantic Countertextuality of the Contemporary

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Corby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Ethical Position ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Future ◽  
Contemporary Situation ◽  
To Come ◽  
Ethical Stance

In this essay James Corby questions the dominant future-oriented nature of the ethical turn of theory and philosophy in the final decades of the twentieth century and its aesthetic influence. Focusing in particular upon the ethical position of Jacques Derrida, Corby argues that the desire to avoid the closure of the contemporary and to preserve the possibility of difference by cultivating a radical attentiveness to that which is ‘to come’ often risks a too complete disengagement from the present, leading to an empty and ineffectual ethical stance that actually preserves the contemporary situation that it seeks to open up. Corby makes a case for this theoretical investment in the possibility of a non-contemporary (typically futural) rupture as being understood as forming part of a far-reaching romantic tradition. In opposition to this tradition he sketches a post-romantic alternative that would understand difference as an immanent, rather than imminent, matter. He argues that this should be considered congruent with a countertextual impulse oriented not towards a revelatory futurity, but, rather, towards the possible displacements, dislocations, and transformations already inherent in the contemporary. The final part of the essay develops this idea, positioning countertextuality as the articulation of alternative contemporaries. In this regard, the literature of the future is not ‘to come’, it is already here. The challenge is to recognise it as such, and this means being prepared to modify and change the conceptual apparatus that guides us in our thinking of literature and the arts.

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