Immediacy in Aristotle’s Epistemology

Phronesis ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Breno Zuppolini
Keyword(s):  

Abstract This article discusses immediate premises in Aristotle’s epistemology. The traditional interpretation identifies immediacy with indemonstrability: immediate truths are the indemonstrable principles of science from which the theorems are derived by demonstration. Against this common reading, I argue that Aristotle’s recognition of two kinds of epistemic priority (priority by nature and priority to us) commits him to the existence of two types of immediacy, only one of which is equivalent to indemonstrability. As a result, my interpretation offers a better understanding of a puzzling passage (APo. 1.13, 78a22-b4) that seems to contradict the standard view.

Author(s):  
B.A. Voronin ◽  
◽  
I.P. Chupina ◽  
Ya.V. Voronina ◽  
◽  
...  

The article discusses a non-standard view of the formation of human capital for work in organizations of the agricultural sector of the economy, in the context of modern socio-economic transformations. In the classical sense, human capital for agriculture should be formed and developed in rural areas. But in real life, this is not always the case, because there are many factors that prevent the classical solution of this problem. First, the demographic factor affects, second, social and household factors, and third, in many rural areas there are no working agricultural organizations where qualified agricultural specialists can work. All these and other circumstances actualize the problem of the quality of human capital in rural areas in relation to the development of agricultural production.


Author(s):  
David Owens

This chapter develops an intellectualist view of practical freedom according to which practical freedom is a capacity to act on our view of what we ought to do. This view is embodied in a judgement rather than in a belief about what we ought to do. Practical judgement is to be distinguished both from other truth-directed phenomena like believing and guessing and also from non-truth-directed states like imagining and intending. We make practical judgements where we are ignorant of what to do. We also make and act on such judgements where we think we know what to do. This fact suggests a non-standard view of the value of knowledge. It also enables us to defend an intellectualist account of freedom against voluntaristic alternatives.


Author(s):  
Daniel Canarutto

This monograph addresses the need to clarify basic mathematical concepts at the crossroad between gravitation and quantum physics. Selected mathematical and theoretical topics are exposed within a not-too-short, integrated approach that exploits standard and non-standard notions in natural geometric language. The role of structure groups can be regarded as secondary even in the treatment of the gauge fields themselves. Two-spinors yield a partly original ‘minimal geometric data’ approach to Einstein-Cartan-Maxwell-Dirac fields. The gravitational field is jointly represented by a spinor connection and by a soldering form (a ‘tetrad’) valued in a vector bundle naturally constructed from the assumed 2-spinor bundle. We give a presentation of electroweak theory that dispenses with group-related notions, and we introduce a non-standard, natural extension of it. Also within the 2-spinor approach we present: a non-standard view of gauge freedom; a first-order Lagrangian theory of fields with arbitrary spin; an original treatment of Lie derivatives of spinors and spinor connections. Furthermore we introduce an original formulation of Lagrangian field theories based on covariant differentials, which works in the classical and quantum field theories alike and simplifies calculations. We offer a precise mathematical approach to quantum bundles and quantum fields, including ghosts, BRST symmetry and anti-fields, treating the geometry of quantum bundles and their jet prolongations in terms Frölicher's notion of smoothness. We propose an approach to quantum particle physics based on the notion of detector, and illustrate the basic scattering computations in that context.


Author(s):  
Dirk Hoerder

This essay analyzes the actual relationship between natural and manmade crises in longue-durée perspective and questions labels attached by master narrators. It challenges the standard view by differentiating sociologically between groups benefiting or suffering from migration. At the beginning, scales of spatial and temporal analysis are discussed as well as types of migration in relation to their potential impact. Next the elimination of mobility and crises in historiography and political theory regarding Greek and Roman societies are discussed. The following section approaches three distinct mass migrations in terms of push factors perceived, often justly so, as crises: the misnamed “peoples” migrations, migration after the “fall” of the Roman Empire, and settlement of the Yangtze Valley. Then forced labor mass migrations (slaveries) and the migrations in the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and North China migration systems, self-decided under extreme economic and societal constraints, are analyzed. In conclusion present-day discourses are placed in context.


Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Christoph Dörge ◽  
Matthias Holweger

AbstractThat certain paper bills have monetary value, that Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia, and that Prince Philip is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II: such facts are commonly called ‘institutional facts’ (IFF). IFF are, by definition, facts that exist by virtue of collective recognition (where collective recognition can be direct or indirect). The standard view or tacit belief is that such facts really exist. In this paper we argue, however, that they really do not—they really are just well-established illusions. We confront realism about IFF with six criteria of existence, three established and three less so but highly intuitive. We argue that they all tell against the existence of IFF. An obvious objection to IFF non-realism is that since people’s behaviour clearly reflects the existence of IFF, denying their existence leaves an explanatory gap. We reject this argument by introducing a variant of the so-called ‘Thomas Theorem,’ which says that when people collectively recognize a fact as existing, they largely behave accordingly, regardless of whether that fact really exists or not.


2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam McRae-Williams ◽  
Julian Lowe ◽  
Peter Taylor

Responses from a questionnaire survey of wine and tourism businesses operating in regional clusters were analysed using factor analysis. These suggested three factor scores relating to entrepreneurial behaviour; four factor scores relating to cluster activities and attributes; and three factors relating to the respondents' personal characteristics. The three entrepreneurial behaviour factor scores were interpreted as: innovator, calculator and venturer. These were used as dependent variables in regression models. The independent variables were the cluster and personal characteristics factor scores, industry and place. The central result was that the cluster activity variables did not have a significant impact on the innovator behaviour variable, which contradicts the standard view. Cluster activities and attributes were found to attract entrepreneurs of the calculator kind, and to a lesser extent, of the venturer kind. Place did seem to offer an attraction to entrepreneurs beyond those offered by the intensities of the cluster activities and attributes.


2004 ◽  
Vol 06 (04) ◽  
pp. 525-554
Author(s):  
GREGORY K. DOW

This paper replaces the standard view of the firm as a nexus of contracts with a repeated game framework where input contributions and side payments are self-enforced. General production technologies and flexible transfers among team members are allowed. When an incentive constraint binds, input demand and output supply are influenced by the discount factor, the probability of exogenous team dissolution, and the aggregate value of outside options. When this incentive constraint does not bind, the firm maximizes profit in the usual way. I discuss examples involving the Cobb-Douglas technology, firms with a single residual claimant, and partnerships.


2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S Weisbach

This essay reviews Lucian A. Bebchuk and Jesse M. Fried's Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation. Bebchuk and Fried criticize the standard view of executive compensation, in which executives negotiate contracts with shareholders that provide incentives that motivate them to maximize the shareholders' welfare. In contrast, Bebchuk and Fried argue that executive compensation is more consistent with executives who control their own boards and who maximize their own compensation subject to an “outrage constraint.” They provide a host of evidence consistent with this alternative viewpoint. The book can be evaluated from both positive and normative perspectives. From a positive perspective, much of the evidence they present, especially about the camouflage and risk-taking aspects of executive compensation systems, is fairly persuasive. However, from a normative perspective, the book conveys the idea that policy changes can dramatically improve executive compensation systems and consequently overall corporate performance. It is unclear to me how effective potential reforms designed to achieve such changes are likely to be in practice.


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