The Inherence and Directedness of Powers

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-67
Author(s):  
Stathis Psillos
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The Other ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
The World ◽  
Passive Power ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The One

Stathis Psillos explores a fundamental ontological puzzle pertaining to powers, in the editors’ opinion perhaps the most fundamental one, namely the internal coherence of their dual nature. On the one hand, powers are intrinsic properties of their objects. They are really and truly predicated of their subjects because they are, strictly speaking, constituents of their subjects. Thus their beings are tied to their objects in a way that makes the rest of the world irrelevant for them, and this way is typically characterized through a counterfactual: even if everything else in the world were different, or if nothing else existed in the world, object X would possess any and all powers Φ‎ that it now possesses in the actual world. But, on the other hand, powers are also directed toward their manifestations. This notion of directed is somewhat vague and difficult to nail down, but at the very least it prima facie implies that powers in some important way depend on something external to them and their object. The implication and its externality are crystal clear in most cases: an active/passive power requires the existence of its co-relative as a necessary condition for that power’s ever being manifested. And insofar as the existence of a power depends on the possibility of its being manifested, the existence of any power Φ‎ now seems to require the existence of its co-relatives and, consequently, the bearers of those co-relatives.

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.

scholarly journals Space, Place, Haven: Levinas’s Phenomenology of Home

Problemos ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 58-68
Author(s):  
Jolanta Saldukaitytė
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Natural Place ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Positive Meaning ◽  
The One

By distinguishing between space and place, the article situates and analyses the meaning of the closest place – home – in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. The effort to encounter transcendence, to escape, to leave, to not be attached a particular place, and not to be driven by a nostalgia to return, is dominant in Levinas’s philosophy. This article shows that dwelling in a place, as settling in a home, also has a positive meaning for Levinas. This positive meaning comes, however, not from an ontological but from an ethical relationship with a place. The home is shown as chosen place, warm and human, as opposed to a given or natural place. On the one hand, the home is a necessary condition for security, but also the very condition of interiority and activity, of having the place in the world in contrast to thrownness. On the other hand, it is not a place where I is embodied and rooted in like a vegetable, but a place where I welcome the other.

Actualist versus Naturalist and Conceptual Realist Interpretations of Hegel's Metaphysics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Paul Redding
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Conceptual Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Naturalism ◽  
The One

Abstract The understanding of Hegel's metaphysics that is here argued for—that it is a metaphysics of the actual world—may sound trivial or empty. To counter this, in part one the actualist reading of Hegel's idealism is opposed to two other currently popular interpretations, those of the naturalist and the conceptual realist respectively. While actualism shares motivations with each of these positions, it is argued that it is better equipped to capture what both aim to bring out in Hegel's metaphysics, but also better able to resist criticisms of each of these opposed positions made from the viewpoint of the other. Like the conceptual realist, the actualist wants to affirm the objectivity of concepts in the world—an idea that can seem antithetical to the naturalist. While the position of “liberal naturalism” makes concessions to such a position, this feature is more easily accommodated by the actualist. However, like the liberal naturalist, the actualist is also suspicious of an implicit “supernaturalist” dimension of conceptual realism and, by weakening the scope of realism to the actual world, is better able to avoid it. The second and third parts of the paper attempt to show how the actualist position is reflected in Hegel's account of judgments and syllogisms in The Science of Logic. His account of judgments provides an irreducible place for judgments that are object-presupposing on the one hand and subject-locating on the other. Because such judgments are the components of syllogisms, these syllogisms have objectivity, but this is a type of objectivity within which we, as subjects, are by necessity located. The actual world has a conceptual structure because we conceptualizing beings belong to it.

“There is no such thing as pure fiction”: Impossible worlds and the principle of minimal departure reconsidered

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Literary Devices

AbstractAs has been argued in various theories of fiction, there can be no such thing as a totally fictional world. This paper seeks to examine the principle of minimal departure, defined by David Lewis and Marie-Laure Ryan, as an explanation for the impossibility of total fiction that would undermine all assumptions based on our actual world. The principle says that readers reconstrue the fictional world as being the closest possible to the reality we know, unless otherwise indicated.By drawing examples from the ontologically fluid worlds in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, I suggest new areas in narrative analysis where the principle could be applied and point out some limitations in earlier definitions of this notion. On the one hand, we can examine those narrative and literary devices that directly play upon the principle of mimimal departure and allow fiction to enlarge the scope of the world that must be explained. On the other hand, I argue that questions of modality in fiction may be relatively immune to this principle. I thus introduce the rule of suspension of modal claims, indicating the need to refrain from making assumptions, in any strong sense, about what may be possible, necessary, or contingent in a fictional world. The principle of suspension of modal claims emphasizes the way fiction may encourage epistemological and ontological doubt rather than mimetic or antimimetic expectations (i.e. principles of minimal and maximal departure), compelling our judgement of the possibility and reality of fiction to hesitate, to linger over a range of possibilities.

Indonesian Literature’s Position in World Literature

TEKNOSASTIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dina Amelia
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Western World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

There are two most inevitable issues on national literature, in this case Indonesian literature. First is the translation and the second is the standard of world literature. Can one speak for the other as a representative? Why is this representation matter? Does translation embody the voice of the represented? Without translation Indonesian literature cannot gain its recognition in world literature, yet, translation conveys the voice of other. In the case of production, publication, or distribution of Indonesian Literature to the world, translation works can be very beneficial. The position of Indonesian literature is as a part of world literature. The concept that the Western world should be the one who represent the subaltern can be overcome as long as the subaltern performs as the active speaker. If the subaltern remains silent then it means it allows the “representation” by the Western.

scholarly journals Hiketeia

1973 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 74-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gould
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Working Out

To Professor E. R. Dodds, through his edition of Euripides'Bacchaeand again inThe Greeks and the Irrational, we owe an awareness of new possibilities in our understanding of Greek literature and of the world that produced it. No small part of that awareness was due to Professor Dodds' masterly and tactful use of comparative ethnographic material to throw light on the relation between literature and social institutions in ancient Greece. It is in the hope that something of my own debt to him may be conveyed that this paper is offered here, equally in gratitude, admiration and affection.The working out of the anger of Achilles in theIliadbegins with a great scene of divine supplication in which Thetis prevails upon Zeus to change the course of things before Troy in order to restore honour to Achilles; it ends with another, human act in which Priam supplicates Achilles to abandon his vengeful treatment of the dead body of Hector and restore it for a ransom. The first half of theOdysseyhinges about another supplication scene of crucial significance, Odysseus' supplication of Arete and Alkinoos on Scherie. Aeschylus and Euripides both wrote plays called simplySuppliants, and two cases of a breach of the rights of suppliants, the cases of the coup of Kylon and that of Pausanias, the one dating from the mid-sixth century, the other from around 470 B.C. or soon after, played a dominant role in the diplomatic propaganda of the Spartans and Athenians on the eve of the Peloponnesian War.

scholarly journals Two Conceptions of Second Nature

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg W. Bertram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Activities ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
The One ◽  
First Nature

AbstractThe concept of second nature promises to provide an explanation of how nature and reason can be reconciled. But the concept is laden with ambiguity. On the one hand, second nature is understood as that which binds together all cognitive activities. On the other hand, second nature is conceived of as a kind of nature that can be changed by cognitive activities. The paper tries to investigate this ambiguity by distinguishing a Kantian conception of second nature from a Hegelian conception. It argues that the idea of a transformation from a being of first nature into a being of second nature that stands at the heart of the Kantian conception is mistaken. The Hegelian conception demonstrates that the transformation in question takes place within second nature itself. Thus, the Hegelian conception allows us to understand the way in which second nature is not structurally isomorphic with first nature: It is a process of ongoing selftransformation that is not primarily determined by how the world is, but rather by commitments out of which human beings are bound to the open future.

scholarly journals Possibilities of the Development of Edible Insect-Based Foods in Europe

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 766
Author(s):  
Magdalena Skotnicka ◽  
Kaja Karwowska ◽  
Filip Kłobukowski ◽  
Aleksandra Borkowska ◽  
Magdalena Pieszko
Keyword(s):  
Material Processing ◽  
Functional Food ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Edible Insects ◽  
Mineral Salts ◽  
Edible Insect ◽  
Alternative Protein ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

All over the world, a large proportion of the population consume insects as part of their diet. In Western countries, however, the consumption of insects is perceived as a negative phenomenon. The consumption of insects worldwide can be considered in two ways: on the one hand, as a source of protein in countries affected by hunger, while, on the other, as an alternative protein in highly-developed regions, in response to the need for implementing policies of sustainable development. This review focused on both the regulations concerning the production and marketing of insects in Europe and the characteristics of edible insects that are most likely to establish a presence on the European market. The paper indicates numerous advantages of the consumption of insects, not only as a valuable source of protein but also as a raw material rich in valuable fatty acids, vitamins, and mineral salts. Attention was paid to the functional properties of proteins derived from insects, and to the possibility for using them in the production of functional food. The study also addresses the hazards which undoubtedly contribute to the mistrust and lowered acceptance of European consumers and points to the potential gaps in the knowledge concerning the breeding conditions, raw material processing and health safety. This set of analyzed data allows us to look optimistically at the possibilities for the development of edible insect-based foods, particularly in Europe.

Domesticated mammoths: Mythic and material in Nenets verbal tradition on ya’ xora

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina Lukin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article discusses language materialities and the Otherworld through the findings of mammoth remains and text-artifacts representing Nenets verbal art. The remains and verbal art are read together as a network of mythic knowledge that forms a semiotic whole, where different signs interact and create potentials for new significations. The article aims to open up a web of relations in which materialities of differing ages and durabilities meet and affect each other through their semiotic potentialities. The materialities operate on several levels of signification, ranging from basic metaphors for mammoths to larger regimes that organize the signification. Consequently, mythic knowledge concerns worlds that are, on the one hand, imperceptible but, on the other, sensible through narration and imagination in terms of materialities. The key material elements of the mythic knowledge are tainted by the narration, such that they cannot be considered without the mythic qualities. In addition, the knowledge concerning the world affects Nenets rituals and ways of dwelling.

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