Augustine’s Defence of Knowledge Against the Sceptics

2019 ◽  
pp. 215-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer Nawar
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
External World ◽  
Directed Thought

In his Contra Academicos, Augustine offers one of the most detailed responses to scepticism to have come down to us from antiquity. In this paper, I examine Augustine’s defence of the existence of infallible knowledge in Contra Academicos 3, focusing on his semantic response to external world scepticism and his appeal to mathematical knowledge to argue against the sceptical thesis that nothing is known. I challenge a number of established views concerning the nature and merit of Augustine’s defence of knowledge and propose a new understanding of several important elements of Augustine’s thought concerning signification, cognition, and object-directed thought. I argue that once we properly understand Augustine’s views on these matters his arguments in defence of knowledge are more interesting and more successful than usually thought.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume 56

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
External World ◽  
The State ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Wide Range

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy provides, twice each year, a collection of the best current work in the field of ancient philosophy. Each volume features original essays that contribute to an understanding of a wide range of themes and problems in all periods of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the beginnings to the threshold of the middle ages. From its first volume in 1983, OSAP has been a highly influential venue for work in the field, and has often featured essays of substantial length as well as critical essays on books of distinctive importance. Volume LVI contains: a reconstruction of the Pythagorean Philolaus’ metaphysics and the role of harmony within it; a reading of the Timaeus as a presentation of Plato’s own systematic views; an argument that while Plato often treats pleasure as the process of replenishing our natural balance, he treats pain asymmetrically as the state of imbalance; a defence of the place of Aristotle’s distinction between activity and change in Metaphysics Book Theta; an investigation of the precise sources of disturbance from which the Pyrrhonist seeks release; and Augustine’s defence of infallible knowledge in the Contra Academicos, in particular his semantic response to external world scepticism and the appeal to mathematical knowledge.

Knowledge and Property in John Locke

Global Jurist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Ruiz-Gallardón García De La Rasilla
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
External World ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Concepts Of Knowledge ◽  
True Knowledge

AbstractIn this paper, an analysis is performed on the concepts of knowledge and property employed by John Locke to demonstrate the possibility of attaining certainties in moral knowledge and to legitimise private property. His thought was characterised by his desire to trace a connection between the moral, intellectual and material worlds, for the purpose of establishing methodological grounds for a true knowledge of practical principles. Inquiring into the processes of knowledge and into the motivational workings of human behaviour, the English philosopher arrived at the conclusion that thanks to the exercise of his knowledge and will, man acquires, with effort, the ownership of his person and the external world surrounding him, and is capable of attaining knowledge of the content of natural law with a certainty as absolute as that deriving from mathematical knowledge.

Thomas Reid's View of Memorial Conception

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Marina Folescu
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Good Grasp

Thomas Reid believed that the human mind is well equipped, from infancy, to acquire knowledge of the external world, with all its objects, persons and events. There are three main faculties that are involved in the acquisition of knowledge: (original) perception, memory, and imagination. It is thought that we cannot understand how exactly perception works, unless we have a good grasp on Reid's notion of perceptual conception (i.e., of the conception employed in perception). The present paper argues that the same is true of memory, and it offers an answer to the question: what type of conception does it employ?

Mathematics Textbook as an Object of Research/Matematički udžbenik kao predmet istraživanja

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dubravka Glasnović Gracin
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Mathematics Textbooks ◽  
Mathematics Textbook ◽  
Mathematics Book

AbstractA mathematics textbook can be described as an officially authorized and pedagogically designed mathematics book written to provide mathematical knowledge to students. This description suggests the authority of the textbook - because it has been authorized by an administrative source and because it deals with authorized knowledge. This paper provides an overview of research on mathematics textbooks. The emphasis is on questions concerning the extent to which and how textbooks are used in mathematics education in Croatia and in the world.Research results show that mathematics textbooks are widely used in mathematics education worldwide. This finding points to the need for research on the content and structure of textbooks. Such studies are combined with the associated results on how textbooks are used in the classroom and which methods teachers apply in using textbooks in mathematics education. The results of the empirical studies show that teachers use textbooks for lesson preparation and pupils use mathematics textbooks for exercises to a great extent. These results imply that such an important role of textbooks in mathematics education deserves additional attention, with the goal of understanding and improving mathematics education.Key words: mathematics education; overview; research on textbook---SažetakMatematički udžbenik može se opisati kao službeno autorizirana i pedagoki osmiljena matematička knjiga napisana s ciljem da učenicima ponudi matematičke sadržaje. Taj opis sugerira autoritet udžbenika jer ga je autorizirao administrativni izvor i jer sadrži autorizirano znanje. Ovaj članak daje pregled istraživanja matematičkih udžbenika, a naglasak je na pitanjima u kojoj mjeri i kako se udžbenici koriste u nastavi matematike u Hrvatskoj i u svijetu.Rezultati raznih istraživanja pokazuju da se udžbenici u velikoj mjeri koriste u nastavi matematike irom svijeta. Taj nalaz ukazuje na potrebu za istraživanjem sadržaja i strukture matematičkih udžbenika. Uz to, prikazani su rezultati istraživanja o tome na koji se način udžbenici koriste u razredu i koje metode nastavnici prakticiraju prilikom upotrebe udžbenika na nastavi. Rezultati empirijskih studija pokazuju da nastavnici udžbenike većinom koriste za pripremu nastavnog sata, a učenici udžbenike koriste u najvećoj mjeri za vježbanje. Ti rezultati ukazuju na to da tako važna uloga udžbenika u matematičkom obrazovanju zaslužuje dodatnu pažnju s ciljem razumijevanja i poboljanja nastave matematike.Ključne riječi: istraživanje udžbenika; nastava matematike; pregled.

Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ferreirós
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Advanced Mathematics ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Epistemology Of Mathematics ◽  
Actual Experience ◽  
Elementary Math ◽  
Mathematical Tradition

This book presents a new approach to the epistemology of mathematics by viewing mathematics as a human activity whose knowledge is intimately linked with practice. Charting an exciting new direction in the philosophy of mathematics, the book uses the crucial idea of a continuum to provide an account of the development of mathematical knowledge that reflects the actual experience of doing math and makes sense of the perceived objectivity of mathematical results. Describing a historically oriented, agent-based philosophy of mathematics, the book shows how the mathematical tradition evolved from Euclidean geometry to the real numbers and set-theoretic structures. It argues for the need to take into account a whole web of mathematical and other practices that are learned and linked by agents, and whose interplay acts as a constraint. It demonstrates how advanced mathematics, far from being a priori, is based on hypotheses, in contrast to elementary math, which has strong cognitive and practical roots and therefore enjoys certainty. Offering a wealth of philosophical and historical insights, the book challenges us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mathematics, its objectivity, and its relationship to culture and science.

PECULIARITIES OF MANIFESTATION OF MEANING DISSONANCE

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Abakumova I.V. ◽  
Grishina A.V. ◽  
Godunov M.V.
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
External World ◽  
Personal Meaning ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Common Mean ◽  
Personal Meanings ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
The Subject

Modern psychology considers meaning regulation, as an integral mechanism of personal development. A system of personal meanings develops in the processes of under-standing reality. Due to their polymodality personal meanings cannot be good or bad, but they are not the same. When confronted with unknown situations, the unevenness of the emerging personal meanings can lead to match or mismatch with the existing system of mean-ings. Coincidence, as agreement with a new fact, means meaning consonance. Mismatch, as a mismatch between new and existing information, means meaning disso-nance, as a kind of cognitive dissonance. An analysis of modern psychological literature shows that there are two main plans for the action of meaning dissonances: the dissonance of individual meanings in the implementation of real interactions and the dissonance of common mean-ings during the translation of interpersonal meaning formations. It is proposed to consider that meaning ac-quires a personal coloring due to the processes of both consonance and dissonance positioning of meaning con-structs in the meaning sphere of the subject. The revealed dichotomy of the meaning formation processes shows the possibility of manifestation of meanings bipolarity, which is revealed in the process of transition from the internal to the external world and in collisions with oth-er meaning systems. Then it can be assumed that the ef-fect of meaning dissonance manifests itself in two ways: firstly, in terms of real interactions as a discord of indi-vidual meanings, and secondly, in terms of translation of interpersonal meaning constructs as a dissonance of common meanings. In the course of such an external for-mation, meaning becomes already a personal meaning in the consciousness of a particular person.

Some thoughts on lexemes, the dome, and inner speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Benzon
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
The Common

Sydney Lamb’s model focuses our attention on the physicality of language, of the signs themselves as objects in the external world and the neural systems the support them. By means of the metaphor of a cognitive dome, he demonstrates that there is no firm line between linguistic and cognitive structure. In this context, I offer physically grounded accounts of Jakobson’s metalingual and emotive functions. Drawing on Vygotsky’s account of language development, I point out that inner speech, corresponding to the common sense notion of thought, originates in a circuit that goes through the external world and is then internalized.

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