Gründe für Gott: Ein Indizienbeweis

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-92
Author(s):  
Harald Seubert

SUMMARYErnst Welti’s ‘Evidence of Circumstantial Evidence’ confidently combines the aprioric, apostioric and pragmatic lines of reasoning of the newer analytical philosophy. The author’s competence in analytical philosophy of religion and in mathematical logic (Goedel’s proof) makes his book a crystalline overall view of the standardised form of the argument for the plausibility of a form of monotheism, which has good reasons to accept faith in the Christian God.RÉSUMÉDans cet ouvrage, Ernst Welti mêle des lignes d’argumentation a priori et a posteriori, ainsi que des manières de raisonnement pragmatiques empruntées à la nouvelle philosophie analytique. Sa compétence en matière de philosophie analytique de la religion et de logique mathématique (la preuve de Goedel) lui permet de produire une vue générale claire de la forme standard de l’argument en faveur de la plausibilité d’une forme de monothéisme, qui fournit de bonnes raisons d’accepter la foi au Dieu du christianisme.ZUSAMMENFASSUNGErnst Weltis ,,Indizienbeweis“ fügt in souveräner Weise apriorische, aposteriorische und pragmatische Argumentationslinien der neueren analytischen Philosophie zusammen. Die Kompetenz des Verfassers in analytischer Religionsphilosophie und in mathematischer Logik (Goedelscher Beweis) macht sein Buch zu einer kristallinen Gesamtschau auf die standardisierte Form des Argumentes für die Plausibilität eines Monotheismus, der mit guten Gründen auch den Glauben an den christlichen Gott nahelegen kann.

Author(s):  
Paul Burger

Hume and Kant destroyed the belief in the apriori de re, i.e. the rationalist’s doctrine of direct awareness of necessary facts about the nature of being. Later on, analytical philosophy told us that there are only two general classes of statements, synthetics a posteriori and analytics a priori. Quine eventually rejected the a priori in general and advanced a radical empiricism. However, both moderate and radical empiricism has recently been challenged by realistic minded philosophers. They have argued that ontological topics such as the nature of properties, laws or causation remain strongly undetermined by semantic ascent and Quinean ontological commitment, and announced an ontological turn. Are not ontological or metaphysical explanations a priori explanations? Despite his preferred talk in terms of a posteriori realism and inference of the best explanation, Armstrong’s defence of universals looks very much like an apriori one. Others, such as Barry Smith, explicitly defend that there are synthetic propositions a priori de re. I believe in both: Kant was right in claiming that an understanding of what metaphysics can teach us is dependent upon a clear concept of the synthetic a priori, but—against Kant— synthetics a priori de re are legitimate. In this paper I will defend synthetics a priori de re. However, I will reject the rationalist’s appeal to direct awareness of necessary facts as well as undeniableness or infallibility as necessary conditions for a prioris. Instead I will claim that all synthetics a priori express hypothetical truths.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazimierz Wolsza

The philosophy of religion constituted one of the main fields of research by Prof. Józef Herbut. He created an original version of the analytical philosophy of religion. With the use of logical means, he analysed various dimensions of religion, primarily religious language. During the last period of his work, Herbut included ecumenical issues in his philosophical research. His research on these issues consisted of two stages. During the first stage, Herbut tried to create a specific logic of ecumenism. He hypothesised that the reason for the crisis of ecumenical dialogue consists in the lack of a clearly defined goal. Using the logical set theory, Herbut constructed possible models of doctrinal unity of different denominations. These models were constructed a priori, without reference to actual dialogues. During the second stage of his project, Herbut focused on the content of Catholic and Evangelical doctrines presented in catechisms. Here, he also put forward a research hypothesis that the languages of Catholic and Evangelical theology are different because they include different philosophical assumptions. These assumptions reach back to the medieval problem of universals. The language of Catholic theology is heavily influenced by moderate realism, and the language of Evangelical theology is influenced by moderate nominalism (these are two of the four standpoints in the problem of universals). Herbut's research project is original and innovative in terms of Polish philosophical and theological literature. However, in foreign language literature it is possible to find ones analogous to Herbut's project (József Fuisz, Charles Morerod).


Author(s):  
D.V. Ankin ◽  

The term «agnosticism» is used quite often in the philosophical literature. Usually, the meaning of this term is associated with the presence of boundaries in knowledge, and as an example of agnosticism, they refer to the philosophy of I. Kant. Nevertheless, the meaning of this term raises many questions. What are these boundaries? What exactly does Kant consider unknowable? And a number of other questions are still waiting to be answered. Our goal will be to remove some of the existing uncertainties and to demonstrate, if not senselessness, then the problematicity of the very term «agnosticism». We will try to show that what is suitable for the philosophy of religion is not always meaningful and suitable for epistemology. Our methodology will be the analysis of the logical form of statements about the existence / non-existence of something. Such statements are called existential. The methodology for studying problems through the analysis of their linguistic form is the norm for analytical philosophy. For the definition of analytic philosophy, see V. Ye. Borisov and [7]. This methodology is associated with a «linguistic turn in philosophy» [14]. In this case, the term «agnosticism» should be investigated through existential statements, through statements about the existence / non-existence of something (God, spirits, etc.). In defining the concept of agnosticism, the interpretation of the position of I. Kant in relation to the boundaries of knowledge is of great importance. The position of I. Kant is also appropriate to interpret through the ways of using existential statements. Some existential statements according to Kant turn out to be cognitively insoluble. Such are the statements about God, about spirits, about a world transcendent to our experience (things in themselves), etc. For example, it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God — this is not a question of cognition (epistemology), but exclusively of faith. Of particular importance is I. Kant’s division of thinking and cognition. The research carried out shows that the term «agnosticism» is often used unreasonably and even meaninglessly, especially when some a priori negative characteristic is attached to it. The use of this term turns out to be very problematic.


Author(s):  
Heinrich Schepers ◽  
Giorgio Tonelli ◽  
Rudolf Eisler
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-503
Author(s):  
Masudul Alum Choudhury

Is it the realm of theoretical constructs or positive applications thatdefines the essence of scientific inquiry? Is there unison between thenormative and the positive, between the inductive and deductivecontents, between perception and reality, between the micro- andmacro-phenomena of reality as technically understood? In short, isthere a possibility for unification of knowledge in modernist epistemologicalcomprehension? Is knowledge perceived in conceptionand application as systemic dichotomy between the purely epistemic(in the metaphysically a priori sense) and the purely ontic (in thepurely positivistically a posteriori sense) at all a reflection of reality?Is knowledge possible in such a dichotomy or plurality?Answers to these foundational questions are primal in order tounderstand a critique of modernist synthesis in Islamic thought thathas been raging among Muslim scholars for some time now. Theconsequences emanating from the modernist approach underlie muchof the nature of development in methodology, thinking, institutions,and behavior in the Muslim world throughout its history. They arefound to pervade more intensively, I will argue here, as the consequenceof a taqlid of modernism among Islamic thinkers. I will thenargue that this debility has arisen not because of a comparativemodem scientific investigation, but due to a failure to fathom theuniqueness of a truly Qur'anic epistemological inquiry in the understandingof the nature of the Islamic socioscientific worldview ...


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
M. LE MOAL

Les systèmes d’information géographique (SIG) sont devenus incontournables dans la gestion des réseaux d’eau et d’assainissement et leur efficacité repose en très grande partie sur la qualité des données exploitées. Parallèlement, les évolutions réglementaires et les pratiques des utilisateurs augmentant notamment les échanges d’informations renforcent le rôle central des données et de leur qualité. Si la plupart des solutions SIG du marché disposent de fonctions dédiées à la qualification de la qualité des données, elles procèdent de la traduction préalable de spécifications des données en règles informatiques avant de procéder aux tests qualitatifs. Cette approche chronophage requiert des compétences métier. Pour éviter ces contraintes, Axes Conseil a élaboré un procédé de contrôle des données SIG rapide et accessible à des acteurs métier de l’eau et de l’assainissement. Plutôt qu’une lourde approche de modélisation a priori, le principe est de générer un ensemble d’indicateurs explicites facilement exploitables a posteriori par les acteurs du métier. Cette approche offre une grande souplesse d’analyse et ne nécessite pas de compétences informatiques avancées.


Author(s):  
Barry Stroud

This chapter presents a straightforward structural description of Immanuel Kant’s conception of what the transcendental deduction is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. The ‘deduction’ Kant thinks is needed for understanding the human mind would establish and explain our ‘right’ or ‘entitlement’ to something we seem to possess and employ in ‘the highly complicated web of human knowledge’. This is: experience, concepts, and principles. The chapter explains the point and strategy of the ‘deduction’ as Kant understands it, as well as the demanding conditions of its success, without entering into complexities of interpretation or critical assessment of the degree of success actually achieved. It also analyses Kant’s arguments regarding a priori concepts as well as a posteriori knowledge of the world around us, along with his claim that our position in the world must be understood as ‘empirical realism’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Held

The positive/negative distinction works well in many fields—for example, in mathematics negative numbers hold their own, and in medical pathology negative results are usually celebrated. But in positive psychology negativity should be replaced with positivity for flourishing/optimal functioning to occur. That the designation of the psychological states and processes deemed positive (good/desirable) and negative (bad/undesirable) is made a priori, independent of circumstantial particularity, both intrapersonal and interpersonal, does not seem to bother positive psychologists. But it should, as it results in conceptual muddles and dead ends that cannot be solved within their conceptual framework of positivity and negativity. Especially problematic is an ambiguity I find in positive psychologists’ a priori and a posteriori understandings of positivity and negativity, an ambiguity about constitutive and causal relations that pervades their science and the conclusions drawn from it. By eliminating their a priori dichotomy of positivity and negativity, positive psychologists might well find themselves in a better position to put back together the psychological reality that they have fractured in their ontologically dubious move of carving up psychological reality a priori into positive and negative phenomena. They then might find themselves better placed to “broaden and build” their own science of flourishing.


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