scholarly journals A library of the mind

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dami Lee

In order to adapt to the explosion of technology and information, our culture has organized knowledge into distinct categories, and has privileged the “known” as the ideal truth. While this reductionist approach allows us to efficiently examine a specific topic, it has also led to a fragmented and oversimplified understanding of an otherwise enigmatic world. Umberto Eco, semiotician and novelist, criticized this rigid categorization and preferred a more complex, labyrinthine system, organizing his personal ad-hoc collection of books into unconventional categories. Venice, the labyrinthine city, is a physical manifestation of the concept of non-linearity and becomes a metaphor and strategy for exploring the idea of mystery and the dérive. The thesis explores the themes of slow reading, serendipity, and mystery, through the design of a Research Library that brings together Eco’s collection.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dami Lee

In order to adapt to the explosion of technology and information, our culture has organized knowledge into distinct categories, and has privileged the “known” as the ideal truth. While this reductionist approach allows us to efficiently examine a specific topic, it has also led to a fragmented and oversimplified understanding of an otherwise enigmatic world. Umberto Eco, semiotician and novelist, criticized this rigid categorization and preferred a more complex, labyrinthine system, organizing his personal ad-hoc collection of books into unconventional categories. Venice, the labyrinthine city, is a physical manifestation of the concept of non-linearity and becomes a metaphor and strategy for exploring the idea of mystery and the dérive. The thesis explores the themes of slow reading, serendipity, and mystery, through the design of a Research Library that brings together Eco’s collection.


Author(s):  
А.Б. Салтыков ◽  
С.В. Грачев

Редукционистский подход в медицине рассматривает живые системы в качестве закрытых (замкнутых) образований, функции которых полностью детерминированы свойствами соответствующих материальных компонентов. Каждое нарушение функции объясняется предшествующими изменениями структур, реализующих эту функцию. Из этого следует, что любая патология структурно-функциональна по своей сути, а понятие «функциональные заболевания» - принципиально ошибочно из-за искажения причинно-следственных отношений. По мере прогресса медицины ожидается открытие собственно первичных структурных маркеров «функциональных» заболеваний, что будет иметь решающее значение для их ранней диагностики и патогенетического лечения (ориентированного прежде всего, на устранение первичного звена расстройств). Вместе с тем, в медицине существует более общий холистический (функционально ориентированный) подход, формирующий иной стереотип клинического мышления. В этих рамках любая патология объясняется недостаточностью адаптивных функций организма в изменившихся условиях существования. Обычно сложный характер функциональных взаимодействий делает невозможным их описание на основе текущих характеристик материальных компонентов системы, особенно при воздействии на организм внешних патогенных факторов. Именно внешние воздействия способны инициировать первичный дефицит адаптивных механизмов с заведомо вторичными структурными изменениями, что позволяет перестать рассматривать «функциональные болезни» как принципиально ошибочное понятие. Первичный дефицит функций наиболее нагляден при информационной патологии, идеальная природа которой не сводится к соответствующим материальным носителям. Все это ставит под сомнение возможность обнаружения собственно первичных структурных маркеров некоторых заболеваний, особенно если в их основе лежит информационная патология (невроз, нервная анорексия, психическая аменорея, морская болезнь, некоторые формы фантомных болей и др.). Reductionist approach in medicine considers living systems as closed (closed) formations whose functions are completely determined by the properties of the corresponding material components. Each disturbance of the function is explained by previous changes in the structures that realize this function. From this it follows that any pathology is structurally functional in its essence, and the concept of «functional diseases» is fundamentally erroneous because of the distortion of cause-effect relationships. As medicine progresses, the actual primary structural markers of «functional» diseases are expected to be discovered, which will be crucial for their early diagnosis and pathogenetic treatment (primarily aimed at eliminating the primary link of disorders). At the same time, in medicine there is a more general holistic (functionally oriented) approach, forming a different stereotype of clinical thinking. Within this framework, any pathology is due to the lack of adaptive functions of the organism in the changed conditions of existence. Usually the complex nature of functional interactions makes it impossible to describe them on the basis of the current characteristics of the material components of the system, especially when external pathogenic factors influence the organism. It is external actions that can initiate a primary deficit of adaptive mechanisms with known secondary structural changes, which allows us to stop treating «functional diseases» as a fundamentally wrong concept. The primary deficit of functions is most evident in information pathology, the ideal nature of which is not reduced to the corresponding material carriers. All this calls into question the possibility of detecting the primary structural markers of certain diseases, especially if they are based on information pathology (neurosis, anorexia nervosa, mental amenorrhea, seasickness, some forms of phantom pains, etc.).


1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Miller

The reputation of Jonathan Edwards, impressive though it is, rests upon only a fragmentary representation of the range or profundity of his thinking. Harassed by events and controversies, he was forced repeatedly to put aside his real work and to expend his energies in turning out sermons, defenses of the Great Awakening, or theological polemics. Only two of his published books (and those the shortest), The Nature of True Virtue and The End for which God Created the World, were not ad hoc productions. Even The Freedom of the Will is primarily a dispute, aimed at silencing the enemy rather than expounding a philosophy. He died with his Summa still a mass of notes in a bundle of home-made folios, the handwriting barely legible. The conventional estimate that Edwards was America's greatest metaphysical genius is a tribute to his youthful Notes on the Mind — which were a crude forecast of the system at which he labored for the rest of his days — and to a few incidental flashes that illumine his forensic argumentations. The American mind is immeasurably the poorer that he was not permitted to bring into order his accumulated meditations.


Author(s):  
Eric Beerbohm

This chapter challenges an account of citizenship that treats us as political philosophers or perennial deliberators and instead proposes the model of the philosopher-citizen who exhibits a computationally intense life of the mind. It first describes the ideal of the philosopher-citizen before considering how a theory of justice is to be employed by well-intentioned citizens by taking into account the views of John Rawls. It argues that the model of the philosopher-citizens tends to be monistic, collapsing the diversity of moral achievements that citizens can make in a democracy, and that this ideal should be separated from an account of the citizen's decision-making obligations. The chapter also examines the principles for citizens and for representatives in the context of Justice as Fairness and concludes by outlining the essential assumptions of a nonideal democratic theory.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andries Raath ◽  
Shaun De Freitas

The celebrated author on the mind of Samuel Rutherford, John Coffey, chose the Calvinist tradition as the appropriate context for interpreting Rutherford’s covenantal perspectives. The authors question this assumption and produce evidence to the effect that the Bullinger– Vermigli approach to theologico-political federalism in Rutherford’s views proves to be a more cogent paradigm for understanding Rutherford’s thoughts. It is concluded that Rutherford utilised the insights of both Bullinger and Vermigli in structuring the ideal form of government in the Christian state as well as the relationships between ecclesiastical and political offices in the state, a theory that gained in importance in later political theories.


1975 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Lennon

Occasionalism is often taken by historians of philosophy to have been an ad hoc hypothesis to establish the mind-body causal connections which on Cartesian principles are thought otherwise impossible. My aim in this paper is to show that this view is utterly without historical foundation, that, on the contrary, the view that only God can be a real cause of mind-body interaction was but a special case of a claim argued on grounds transcending the mind-body problem, and, what will be part of this, that the logical character of occasionalism anyhow precluded it from the role into which it was later miscast. More specifically, I shall show that occasionalism was but a consequence of the metaphysics adopted by the Cartesians in their general account of change. Though the same case could be made for the views of Clauberg and Geulincx, my concern will be with the occasionalism of Malebranche. My case here will be that his view is the historical and logical dénouement of principles more or less explicit both in Descartes and in two of his lesser known disciples, LaForge and Cordemoy.


Author(s):  
A.K EROKHIN ◽  

The article considers the influence of Greek philosophy on the ideas of the formation of the Hellenistic philosopher Philo of Alexandria. The object of study was the philosophical work of Philo. This study aimed to discover the ambiguity of the term logos as a central concept that defines in Philo's philosophy the relationship between God (the ideal creative teacher) and the world. In the works of Philo, the Logos appears as the highest, sub-divine, infinite power of the mind, which has no signs, but at the same time is identified with God. The transcendental nature of the Logos, embodied in the image of God's mind, in its paradoxical nature closely corresponds to holiness and higher wisdom. The research methodology is based on an interpretation that allows us to define the allegory and, therefore, the real meaning of Philo's philosophy, the central part of which is the philosophical reflection of the Holy Scriptures as the main source of education and the concept of Scripture, undergoing specific and simultaneously incomparable modifications. To identify these meanings, methods of systematization and hermeneutics are used. The result of the study is expressed in identifying various forms of embodiment and educational activity and the Logos.


Author(s):  
Maksim Prikhodko

The present paper investigates the interaction between Logos and language in the treatise of Philo of Alexandria "The Worse attacks the Better". Language is regarded by Philo as the actualization of thought in its articulated expression, as the initial moment of creativity. The source of such action is the divine Logos, but the development of thought in the word happens in two opposite directions: one leads to joy, while the other, to suffering. The starting point of this separation is the initial orientation (love) of the mind to God or to self. In the first case, the mind in the act of utterance (expression) overcomes its own isolation. It comes into contact with the divine Logos and achieves joy. The crucial moment of this "leaving the brackets" of self individual thinking towards the light of the divine Logos is laughter. In another case, when the mind does not link words with their source, false creativity is produced, leading to suffering. Аpplying the concept of laughter to the doctrine of Logos and language, Philo reconciles the ideal plan of conceiving truth and its interpretation with the real functioning of the human mind and speech.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasil Penchev

“Super-humans” is usually to be linked to Nietzsche or to Heidegger’s criticism to Nietzsche, or even to the ideology of Nazism. However, they can be properly underlain by philosophical and scientific anthropology as that biological species who will originate from humans eventually in the course of evolution. There is a series of more or less well-established facts in anthropogenesis, which would be relevant to the philosophical question about the “super-humans”: bipedalism, cooling by sweating, specific hair or its lack, omnivorous-ness, thumb opposition and apposition, vocal system of speech production, human brain, long childhood; our species is evolutionary young (about 200 000 years old), but it is the last survived descendant being genetically exceptionally homogenous (<00,01% genetic differences) of the genus “homo” (about 6 000 000 old). All this generates a few main features of our population: society, technics, language, and mind, which guarantee the contemporary absolute domination of mankind. The society has reached a natural limitation of earth. The technics depends on how much energy is produced. The mind is restricted by its carrier, i.e. by the brain. Thus only the language seems to be the frontier of any future development inducing a much better use of the former three. The recent informational technologies suggest the same. Language is defined as symbolic image of the world doubling it by an ideal or virtual world, which is fruitful for creativity and any modeling of the real world. Consequently, a gap between the material and the ideal world produces language. The language increases that gap in turn. Furthermore, the ideal world is secondary and derivative from the material world in origin and objectivity: Language serves for the world to be ordered. Thus language refers to the philosophical categories of ‘being’ and ‘time’. Any “super-language” should transcend some of those definitive borders of language and be a generalization. The involving of infinity can extend the language. Any human language is finite and addresses some finite reality. Thus the gap between reality and any model in language can be seen as that between infinity and its limitation to any finite representation: Finite representations dominate over society, technics, and the mind use. A “super-language” as an “infinite language” can be approached in a few reference frames: Husserl’s “Back to the things themselves!” if “phenomenon” in his philosophy is thought as the ‘word’ of the language of consciousness; the semantic and philosophical theory of symbol: from consciousness and language to reality; the concept of infinity in mathematics and its foundation: set or category theory; quantum mechanics and information: the coincidence of the quantum model and reality; quantum computer. Mankind is approached the problem of infinite language as the language of nature


Author(s):  
Brunello Lotti

This chapter reconstructs the topic of universals in the English Platonists’ epistemologies and ontologies. More and Cudworth restrict universals to the mental realm, stating that whatsoever exists without the mind is singular. Despite this nominalistic principle, universal concepts are not inductive constructions, but primarily divine thoughts and secondarily a priori innate ideas in the human mind. The archetypal theory of creation and the connection of finite minds to God’s Mind ensure their objective validity, in antithesis to Hobbes’ phenomenalism and sensationalism. Norris shares the archetypal theory of creation, but refuses innatism, and his doctrine of universals is framed in terms of his theory of the ideal world inspired by Malebranche. Both the Cambridge Platonists and Norris, opposing theological voluntarism, discuss the status of ideas in God’s mind, which oscillate from being merely thoughts of the divine intellect to being its eternal objects.


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