scholarly journals Zusammenhang (Nexus)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Shields
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Middle Term ◽  
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre ◽  
The World ◽  
Elective Affinities

The lexeme Zusammenhang (nexus) was introduced into philosophy by the German rationalists, who conceived of the world as a multiplicity of independent substances coordinated in a system of pre-established harmony. In his critique of these metaphysicians, Kant insisted that things hang together in not one but two ways—as an aggregate of a posteriorisense data, or as a system of a priori concepts—and that these two nexus are separated by an epistemological chasm. This entry proposes that Goethe’s nexus concept recovers the middle term excluded by Kant’s binary distinction and that this middle term plays a key role in both his scientific and literary writings, including the Hefte zur Morphologie (1817-1824; Notebooks on Morphology), Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), and Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities). By comparing Goethe’s theoretical use of the nexus concept with his literary use of the nexus motif, this entry articulates a relation of part to whole that displays more coherence than a mere aggregate, yet is more dynamic than an absolute system.

1968: On Social, Epistemic, and Historiographic(?) Revolutions

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto D. Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Young Students ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Agent Of Change

This article addresses the meaning and significance of the “world revolution of 1968,” as well as the historiography of 1968. I critically interrogate how the production of a narrative about 1968 and the creation of ethnic studies, despite its world-historic significance, has tended to perpetuate a limiting, essentialized and static notion of “the student” as the primary actor and an inherent agent of change. Although students did play an enormous role in the events leading up to, through, and after 1968 in various parts of the world—and I in no way wish to diminish this fact—this article nonetheless argues that the now hegemonic narrative of a student-led revolt has also had a number of negative consequences, two of which will be the focus here. One problem is that the generation-driven models that situate 1968 as a revolt of the young students versus a presumably older generation, embodied by both their parents and the dominant institutions of the time, are in effect a sociosymbolic reproduction of modernity/coloniality’s logic or driving impulse and obsession with newness. Hence an a priori valuation is assigned to the new, embodied in this case by the student, at the expense of the presumably outmoded old. Secondly, this apparent essentializing of “the student” has entrapped ethnic studies scholars, and many of the period’s activists (some of whom had been students themselves), into said logic, thereby risking the foreclosure of a politics beyond (re)enchantment or even obsession with newness yet again.

How Reality is Reasonable

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Dimensional Manifold ◽  
The World ◽  
Being There ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Fundamental Entity ◽  
Spatiotemporal Relations ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This chapter begins with a systematic presentation of the doctrine of actualism. According to actualism, all that exists is actual, determinate, and of one way of being. There are no possible objects, nor is there any indeterminacy in the world. In addition, there are no ways of being. It is proposed that actual entities stand in three fundamental relations: mereological, spatiotemporal, and resemblance relations. These relations govern the fundamental entities. Each fundamental entity stands in parthood relations, spatiotemporal relations, and resemblance relations to other entities. The resulting picture is one that represents the world as a four-dimensional manifold of actual ‘qualitied contents’—upon which all else supervenes. It is then explained how actualism accounts for classes, quantity, number, causation, laws, a priori knowledge, necessity, and induction.

Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
The World ◽  
Empirical Realism

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’.

Hegel's Critique of Foundationalism in the “Doctrine of Essence”

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Houlgate
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
The World

It is a commonplace among certain recent philosophers that there is no such thing as the essence of anything. Nietzsche, for example, asserts that things have no essence of their own, because they are nothing but ceaselessly changing ways of acting on, and reacting to, other things. Wittgenstein, famously, rejects the idea that there is an essence to language and thought — at least if we mean by that some a priori logical structure underlying our everyday utterances. Finally, Richard Rorty urges that we “abandon […] the notion of ‘essence’ altogether”, along with “the notion that man's essence is to be a knower of essences”.It would be wrong to maintain that these writers understand the concept of essence in precisely the same way, or that they are all working towards the same philosophical goal. Nevertheless, they do share one aim in common: to undermine the idea that there is some deeper reality or identity underlying and grounding what we encounter in the world, what we say and what we do. That is to say, they may all be described as anti-foundationalist thinkers — thinkers who want us to attend to the specific processes and practices of nature and humanity without understanding them to be the product of some fundamental essence or “absolute”.

scholarly journals The weirdest people in the world?

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 61-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Henrich ◽  
Steven J. Heine ◽  
Ara Norenzayan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Spatial Reasoning ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
The World ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Behavioral Phenomenon

AbstractBehavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

scholarly journals Reconstruindo sentidos na interface de histórias: uma discussão fenomenológico-existencial da constituição do sujeito borderline

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Anna Karynne da Silva MELO ◽  
Georges Daniel Janja Bloc BORIS ◽  
Violeta STOLTENBORG
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Gestalt Therapy ◽  
Disease Classification ◽  
Existential Phenomenology ◽  
Borderline Disorder ◽  
The World ◽  
Borderline Patients ◽  
Health And Sickness

This paper discusses a clinical case of a 40 years old woman, diagnosed as a borderline personality disorder, conforming to CID-10 (2003). The paper proposes, by a concrete clinical experience, to discuss the phenomenological and existential psychopathology. At first, it describes borderline disorder according to existential phenomenology. So, the authors discuss the conceptions about the relation between health and sickness in Gestalt-Therapy and Daseins-analysis, trying to understand the way of 'being-in-the-world' and the constitution of the psychopathological phenomenon in borderline patients from the perspective of the construction of his life story, that is unique. At the end, the authors detach the great challenge of existential-phenomenological psychotherapist: putting the patient's clinical picture in stand by 'a priori' and considering how she expresses herself and sees the world, giving up the mere disease classification itself.

scholarly journals Maß (Moderation, Measure)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Holland
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Nodal Point ◽  
Torquato Tasso ◽  
Societal Norms ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre ◽  
Elective Affinities ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
Narrative Control

This entry on Maß (moderation, measure) explores a concept that has not received much attention in Goethe scholarship and makes a case for its usefulness and versatility in tracking how Goethe addresses a philosophical issue with a history stretching at least back to Aristotle’s conception of “the golden mean.” It shows how Goethe’s writings respond to numerous issues connected with the concept of moderation, ranging from the problem of self-moderation, when an individual’s own internal calibration comes in conflict with societal norms, to the more theoretical question of how to define the correct standard of measure (Maßstab). The discussion of moderation in Goethe’s work is, to be sure, coupled with its opposite, namely the potentially deadly threat of immoderation and excess, such as one finds in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther), Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), and Torquato Tasso (1790). Such potential conflicts, which also raise questions of where to position the standard of measure (Maßstab) of behavior, lead naturally into contexts of scientific experimentation, as in Goethe’s essay “Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt” (1792; The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject), where such standards take on a different valence from their role in mathematically based natural sciences. In addition, Goethe’s novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities), provides a poetic model where conflicts between individually and socially calibrated notions of measure and moderation play out with major ethical consequences. The entry concludes with a reflection on different kinds of aesthetic experience, each with its particular understanding of Maß: the individual’s appreciation of the sublime, the theatrical performance, and the embodiment of the self through poetic meter. Throughout these examples, the entry will underscore the role of narrative constraints: regardless of whether the medium is prose or poetry, one finds that questions of Maß as moderation in Goethe’s writings are often accompanied by questions of narrative control and excess. The following overview and analysis of Maß in Goethe’s writing will show that this term is a nodal point of ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic concerns.

scholarly journals A benchmarking procedure for PIGE related differential cross-sections

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
M. Axiotis ◽  
A. Lagoyannis ◽  
S. Fazinić ◽  
S. Harrisopulos ◽  
M. Kokkoris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Differential Cross Section ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Differential Cross ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Light Element ◽  
Thick Target ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Differential Cross Sections ◽  
The World

The application of standard-less PIGE requires the a priori knowledge of the differential cross section of the reaction used for the quantification of each detected light element. Towards this end, a lot of datasets have been published the last few years from several laboratories around the world. The discrepancies found can be resolved by applying a rigorous benchmarking procedure through the measurement of thick target yields. Such a procedure is proposed in the present paper and is applied in the case of the 19F(p,p’γ)19F reaction.

scholarly journals In the footsteps of Einstein and Wiener

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emir Ashursky
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Electron Neutrino ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Mathematical Foundation ◽  
Molecular Models ◽  
Computer Clusters ◽  
Modern Computer ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe

To date the recognition of universal, a priori inherent in them connection between the objects of the world around us is quite rightly considered almost an accomplished fact. But on what laws do these or those sometimes rather variegated systems function in live and inert nature (including - in modern computer clusters)? Where are the origins of their self-organization activity lurked: whether at the level of still hypothetical quantum-molecular models, finite bio-automata or hugely fashionable now artificial neural networks? Answers to all these questions if perhaps will ever appear then certainly not soon. That is why the bold innovative developments presented in following article are capable in something, possibly, even to refresh the database of informatics so familiar to many of us. And moreover, in principle, the pivotal idea developed here, frankly speaking, is quite simple in itself: if, for example, the laws of the universe are one, then all the characteristic differences between any evolving objects should be determined by their outwardly-hidden informative (or, according to author’s terminology - “mental") rationale. By the way, these are not at all empty words, as it might seem at first glance, because they are fully, where possible, supported with the generally accepted physical & mathematical foundation here. So as a result, the reader by himself comes sooner or later to the inevitable conclusion, to wit: only the smallest electron-neutrino ensembles contain everything the most valuable and meaningful for any natural system! At that even no matter, what namely global outlook paradigm we here hold...

Phenomenology of Interior Life and the Trinity

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Robert Farrugia
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Michel Henry ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Static Nature

Michel Henry radicalises phenomenology by putting forward the idea of a double manifestation: the “Truth of Life” and “truth of the world.” For Henry, the world turns out to be empty of Life. To find its essence, the self must dive completely inward, away from the exterior movements of intentionality. Hence, Life, or God, for Henry, lies in non‑intentional, immanent self-experience, which is felt and yet remains invisible, in an absolutist sense, as an a priori condition of all conscious experience. In Christian theology, the doctrine of the Trinity illuminates the distinction between the immanent Trinity (God’s self‑relation) and the economic workings of the Trinity (God‑world relation). However, the mystery of God’s inmost being and the economy of salvation are here understood as inseparable. In light of this, the paper aims to: 1) elucidate the significance of Henry’s engagement with the phenomenological tradition and his proposal of a phenomenology of Life which advocates an immanent auto‑affection, radically separate from the ek‑static nature of intentionality, and 2) confront the division between Life and world in Henry’s Christian phenomenology and its discordancy with the doctrine of the Trinity, as the latter attests to the harmonious unity that subsists between inner life and the world.

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