Quine on Ontology

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-199
Author(s):  
Gary Kemp ◽  
Andrew Lugg
Keyword(s):  
Natural Number ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Careful Treatment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Philosophical Project

This chapter presents a section-by-section discussion of chapter 7 of W. V. Quine’s Word and Object, ‘Ontic Decision’. After outlining Quine’s earlier thinking about ontology, it considers his handling of the subject in the chapter––his most careful treatment of ontology in his ‘classical’ period––and comments on how he downplayed the importance of the issue in later works. Among the topics examined are his qualms about nominalism, his plumping for physical objects and sets, his insistence on the difference between concrete general terms and abstract singular terms, his argument that ‘attribute’ and ‘proposition’ are no more referential than ‘sake’ and ‘mile’, his handling of ideal objects such as infinitesimals and geometrical objects, his analysis of ‘ordered pair’, ‘natural number’, and other notions that require paraphrasing rather than elimination, his view of semantic ascent and how he views the philosophical project. Throughout the chapter attends to Quine’s emphasis on science, not common sense.

Language, ancient philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Shields
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Semantic Values ◽  
Independent Inquiry

The earliest interest in language during the ancient Greek period was largely instrumental: presumed facts about language and its features were pressed into service for the purpose of philosophical argumentation. Perhaps inevitably, this activity gave way to the analysis of language for its own sake. Claims, for example, about the relation between the semantic values of general terms and the existence of universals invited independent inquiry into the nature of the meanings of those general terms themselves. Language thus became an object of philosophical inquiry in its own right. Accordingly, philosophers at least from the time of Plato conducted inquiries proper to philosophy of language. They investigated: - how words acquire their semantic values; - how proper names and other singular terms refer; - how words combine to form larger semantic units; - the compositional principles necessary for language understanding; - how sentences, statements, or propositions come to be truth-evaluable; and, among later figures of the classical period, - (6) how propositions, as abstract, mind- and language-independent entities, are to be (a) characterized in terms of their constituents, (b) related to minds and the natural languages used to express them, and (c) related to the language-independent world.

Entre parole et histoire

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 153-176
Author(s):  
Francesca Peruzzotti ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Bond ◽  
First Person ◽  
Ternary Relation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Witnessing is an increasingly important theme in the work of Jean-Luc Marion. According to Marion, the witness can be considered an appropriate figure to define the first person, the “I,” without reducing it to subjectivism and without envisaging the intersubjective tie as binary (dual or dialogic), inasmuch as the testimony refers instead to a ternary relation. The present analysis investigates the difference Marion identifies between the religious witness and what seems to be, according to common sense, the regular witness. While in the latter case, the subject is completely foreign to the event to which s/he testifies, in the case of the religious witness, the commitment is total. We will tackle this difference by showing that the fact of testifying always implies a connection with effectivity, which reveals itself through the profound commitment characterizing the witness’s life, up to the point of death. This becomes obvious when considering the role played by the witness’s confessing speech, which establishes an unsurpassable ternary relationship between the witness, the object of the testimony, and the one to whom it is addressed, by deploying an absolute form of the social bond.

Some Esential Points in Reading The Critique of Pure Reason

1998 ◽  
pp. 165-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Shore
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Physical Objects

(1) Things are not to be found in the Critique (real things also called physical objects-an epoché 'avant la lettre' as in Husserl). The things as appearances are only Vorstellungen (representatio, B376). Confusion arrives because Kant calls these objects with the same names employed in the language of common sense for designating the things. (2) Due to the absence of these things, nothing is said concerning the relation between things and empirical objects (things as appearances, Erscheinungen). (3) Things in themselves, considered in the abstraction of sensible receptivity, are for this very abstraction, unknowable. Consequently, they cannot be considered as the origin of appearances. (4) I propose an explanation of the relation mentioned in (2). (5) What is the use of the Critique of so strange a conception as the thing in itself instead of simply mentioning real things and their representations in the subject? (6) Mind is not an adequate translation of the German gemüt. I think subject is better.

Lycophron Italicised

1984 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 127-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie West
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Times ◽  
Do So

On 12th March, 1800 Charles James Fox wrote thus to Gilbert Wakefield, imprisoned for seditious libel in Dorchester Gaol. ‘I have lately read Lycophron, and am much obliged to you for recommending it to me to do so: besides there being some very charming poetry in him, the variety of stories is very entertaining. … There remain, after all, some few difficulties, which if you can clear up to me, I shall be much obliged to you. … The most important of these is, that which belongs to the part where he speaks of the Romans in a manner that could not be possible for one who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, that is, even before the first Punic war.’ Fox accordingly inferred that either the Roman passages (1226–80, 1446–50) were interpolated (which he thought the more probable hypothesis) or the poem as a whole was not the work of the author to whom it was traditionally ascribed, Lycophron the tragedian, who organised the texts of comedy for the Alexandrian library under Philadelphus. Wakefield, though normally a far from conservative critic, was not convinced: ‘Is it incredible, that an attentive observer of the times, and the rising greatness of the Romans, might venture to predict the extent of their future sway in the general terms of ver. 1229?’ Fox thought this ‘morally impossible’, and the subject continued to occupy their letters during the remaining months of Wakefield's incarceration. In this remarkable correspondence we find clearly adumbrated the main lines on which the Lycophron Question was to develop. If our hearts sink before the considerable bibliography generated by this controversy, we may find reassurance in the characteristic air of invincible common sense with which its initiator, having hit on a peculiarly happy expedient for cheering the enforced leisure of his imprudent friend, steadily maintained his position, armed against Wakefield's superior erudition by better judgement and a stronger sense of style.

Learning Language Levels in Students Accurate with a History Academic Achievement History

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Noorlela Binti Noordin ◽  
Abdul Razaq Ahmad ◽  
Anuar Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Statistical Inference ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Descriptive Statistics ◽  
Language Test ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Learning Language ◽  
The Relationship

This study was aimed to evaluate the Malay proficiency among students in Form Two especially non-Malay students and its relationship to academic achievement History. To achieve the purpose of the study there are two objectives, the first is to look at the difference between mean of Malay Language test influences min of academic achievement of History subject among non-Malay students in Form Two and the second is the relationship between the level of Malay proficiency and their academic achievement for History. This study used quantitative methods, which involved 100 people of Form Two non-Malay students in one of the schools in Klang, Selangor. This study used quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and statistical inference with IBM SPSS Statistics v22 software. This study found that there was a relationship between the proficiency of Malay language among non-Malay students with achievements in the subject of History. The implications of this study are discussed in this article.

The Idea of a Meaningful Synthesis of Marxist and Non-Marxist Systems of Political Economy as a Mirror of Intellectual Turmoil (About V.T. Ryazanov’s Book «Modern Political Economy: Prospects of Neo-Marxist Synthesis»)

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-98
Author(s):  
A.B. Lyubinin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Subjective Assessments ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Political Economic

Review of the monograph indicated in the subtitle V.T. Ryazanov. The reviewer is critical of the position of the author of the book, believing that it is possible and even necessary (to increase the effectiveness of General economic theory and bring it closer to practice) substantial (and not just formal-conventional) synthesis of the Marxist system of political economy with its non-Marxist systems. The article emphasizes the difference between the subject and the method of the classical, including Marxist, school of political economy with its characteristic objective perception of the subject from the neoclassical school with its reduction of objective reality to subjective assessments; this excludes their meaningful synthesis as part of a single «modern political economy». V.T. Ryazanov’s interpretation of commodity production in the economic system of «Capital» of K. Marx as a purely mental abstraction, in fact — a fiction, myth is also counter-argued. On the issue of identification of the discipline «national economy», the reviewer, unlike the author of the book, takes the position that it is a concrete economic science that does not have a political economic status.

Rhythm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lexi Eikelboom
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Philosopher ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Theoretical Category

This book argues that, as a pervasive dimension of human existence with theological implications, rhythm ought to be considered a category of theological significance. Philosophers and theologians have drawn on rhythm—patterned movements of repetition and variation—to describe reality, however, the ways in which rhythm is used and understood differ based on a variety of metaphysical commitments with varying theological implications. This book brings those implications into the open, using resources from phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences to analyse and evaluate uses of rhythm in metaphysical and theological accounts of reality. The analysis relies on a distinction from prosody between a synchronic approach to rhythm—observing the whole at once and considering how various dimensions of a rhythm hold together harmoniously—and a diachronic approach—focusing on the ways in which time unfolds as the subject experiences it. The text engages with the twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara alongside thinkers as diverse as Augustine and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and proposes an approach to rhythm that serves the concerns of theological conversation. It demonstrates the difference that including rhythm in theological conversation makes to how we think about questions such as “what is creation?” and “what is the nature of the God–creature relationship?” from the perspective of rhythm. As a theoretical category, capable of expressing metaphysical commitments, yet shaped by the cultural rhythms in which those expressing such commitments are embedded, rhythm is particularly significant for theology as a phenomenon through which culture and embodied experience influence doctrine.

scholarly journals The enzymes of B. coli communis . Part V.—(a) anaerobic growth followed by anaerobic and aerobic fermentation. (b) the effects of aeration during the fermentation

1921 ◽  
Vol 92 (644) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Keyword(s):  
Anaerobic Growth ◽  
Aerobic Growth ◽  
Aerobic Fermentation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Effect Of Oxygen ◽  
Present Section ◽  
Ferment Glucose

In the present communications the effect of oxygen upon the fermentation of glucose and upon the growth of the bacteria, in so far as this affects fermentation, is considered. To this end the organisms have been grown both aerobically and anaerobically, and subsequently made to ferment glucose, both aerobically and anaerobically, with the object of comparing the products of decomposition in the two cases. There are clearly two problems : firstly, the effect of exposure to oxygen during growth upon the subsequent fermentation, whether aerobic or anaerobic, and, secondly, the effect of oxygen admitted during the fermentation. The first question relates to the part played by oxygen in the formation of enzymes, the second to the part played by oxygen in their action on carbohydrates. The first question is considered, though in but a preliminary way, in Section A, the second, more fully, in Section B. Section A. Object of the Experiments . Two results were aimed at in these experiments. Firstly, to compare the products of fermentation of glucose anaerobically, after anaerobic growth, with the products of fermentation anaerobically after previous growth aerobically. And, secondly, to obtain information as to the effect of introducing oxygen during the fermentation itself. This latter consideration, however, though brought to notice by these experiments, is considered only incidentally here because it forms the subject of Section B. In the present section we wish to direct attention particularly to those differences which exist between the fermentation after anaerobic and aerobic growth, not upon the effect of aeration during the fermentation. To point out the difference which previous growth aerobically or anaerobically has made, several analyses from previous experiments are included in Table IV side by side with the completely anaerobic experiments of Tables I, II, and III.

A Grammar of Religious “Truth”: Pragmatic Considerations on the Nature of Religious Truth

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 338-356
Author(s):  
Lars Albinus
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Concept Of Truth

Abstract This article explores various ways in which the concept of truth is actually used across discursive boundaries separating common sense, science, mathematics, and religion. Although my overall approach is pragmatic, I argue that we also need to take some semantic restrictions into consideration. The main objective of the article is the issue of translating concepts of truth in various linguistic and cultural contexts without losing sight of the particular network of connotations. I come to the conclusion that with regard to a religious discourse, a translatable concept of truth typically enters the grammatical place of the subject rather than the predicate. From this position the discursive constraints of authority, authenticity and expressivity are held in check by an internal predetermination of the implied possibility of falsehood. Most of all, however, the article focuses on non-propositional aspects of a religious expression of truth, in which case the very distinction between true and false becomes patently irrelevant.

Violencia de (L) género: “Hacia una sofística de la materialidad de los cuerpos” / Violent gender: “To a sophistry of the materiality of bodies”

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (09) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Claudio Reyes Lozano
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Material Body ◽  
Aristotelian Logic ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Critical Gender Studies

Los estudios críticos de género sustancialistas desconocen su posición teórico-política en el momento de explayar algunas de sus hipótesis fundamentales. El presente estudio intenta dar cuenta de las consecuencias éticas que asume llevar hasta el final algunas de estas posiciones teóricas. Advertimos así que obras fundamentales de estos estudios se apropian con claridad, y sin saberlo, de una lógica aristotélica para tratar la asunción material del cuerpo, el sujeto y el género ¿Qué encontramos específicamente en esta lógica? Esta última se caracteriza por tener su raíz en una ontología inamovible, en donde cualquier intento de desbaratar el “ser” tiene como respuesta inmediata la exclusión violenta de la diferencia: concretamente observamos esto, dialogando tanto con colegas como legos, en la “violencia académica” pero también en la “violencia cotidiana” ¿Cómo salir del cierre metafísico que ha mantenido durante décadas la violencia y exclusión de aquello que se generó en primera instancia, paradójicamente, como argumentación de tolerancia y emancipación? Pensamos que deconstruyendo el discurso de género aristotélico podremos vislumbrar nuevas hipótesis y posiciones ético-políticas que no recurran, para validarse, a la exclusión violenta de nuevos cuerpos-sujetos-géneros. Some critical gender studies do not know their theoretical and political position at the time to developing some of their basic assumptions. This study attempts to explain the ethical consequences that lead to the end some of these theoretical positions. We realize that fundamental works of these studies clearly appropriating, and without knowing it, an aristotelian logic to justify the assumption of material body, the subject and gender. What specifically found in this logic? It is characterized to found on an immovable ontology, where any attempt to disrupt the “being” has as an immediate violent response to exclude the difference: specifically we observe this, dialoguing with colleagues and laymen, in the “academic violence” but also “everyday violence”. How to get out of the metaphysical closure that maintained for decades the violence and exclusion of what is generated in the first place, paradoxically, as argument of tolerance and emancipation? We think deconstructing the aristotelian discourse of gender can warn new hypotheses and ethical positions that not based, to validate, on a violent exclusion of new bodies-subject-genres positions.

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