Philosophie in der Welt und für die Welt – Realitätsbezüge einer Disziplin zweiter Ordnung

Methodus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Oliver R. Scholz

According to a widely accepted conception, philosophy is essentially a second-order discipline raising second-order questions about the procedures and products of first-order reasonings (concepts; principles; theories etc.). While this conception has considerable prima facie plausibility and, carefully put, contains a grain of truth, it also invites serious misunderstandings that may be detrimental to an adequate understanding and public image of philosophy. To work out the grain of truth while avoiding the misunderstandings, I begin by asking: What is philosophical understanding? In answering this question, understanding in philosophy is compared and contrasted with everyday understanding, on the one hand, and scientific understanding, on the other hand. While philosophy itself is a scientific practice in a wide sense, in contrast to normal understanding within a special scientific discipline (physics; chemistry; biology; psychology; etc.) philosophical understanding is characterized by a particular critical attitude and particular principles of rational acceptability.

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1016
Author(s):  
Camelia Liliana Moldovan ◽  
Radu Păltănea

The paper presents a multidimensional generalization of the Schoenberg operators of higher order. The new operators are powerful tools that can be used for approximation processes in many fields of applied sciences. The construction of these operators uses a symmetry regarding the domain of definition. The degree of approximation by sequences of such operators is given in terms of the first and the second order moduli of continuity. Extending certain results obtained by Marsden in the one-dimensional case, the property of preservation of monotonicity and convexity is proved.


Author(s):  
Dr Rose Fazli ◽  
Dr Anahita Seifi

The present article is an attempt to offer the concept of political development from a novel perspective and perceive the Afghan Women image in accordance with the aforementioned viewpoint. To do so, first many efforts have been made to elucidate the author’s outlook as it contrasts with the classic stance of the concept of power and political development by reviewing the literature in development and particularly political development during the previous decades. For example Post-World War II approaches to political development which consider political development, from the Hobbesian perspective toward power, as one of the functions of government. However in a different view of power, political development found another place when it has been understood via postmodern approaches, it means power in a network of relationships, not limited to the one-way relationship between ruler and obedient. Therefore newer concept and forces find their way on political development likewise “image” as a considerable social, political and cultural concept and women as the new force. Then, the meaning of “image” as a symbolic one portraying the common universal aspect is explained. The Afghan woman image emphasizing the historic period of 2001 till now is scrutinized both formally and informally and finally the relationship between this reproduced image of Afghan women and Afghanistan political development from a novel perspective of understanding is represented.


1943 ◽  
Vol 37 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 101-111
Author(s):  
F. A. Todd

Blockhead or or Baldhead?(i) Petron. Sat. 39. 12: ‘in Aquario (nascuntur) copones et cucurbitae’.(ii) Apul.Met. I. 15: ‘nos cucurbitae caput non habemus ut pro te moriamur’.Cucurbita in its literal use is the name of many varieties of the numerous family of Cucurbitaceae, as one may learn, e.g. from Plin. Nat. Hist. xix. It is also the name of the cupping instrument called by Juvenal, xiv. 58, uentosa cucurbita, for which see Mayor's note ad loc. For other metaphorical uses of the name, Forcellini and the Thes. Ling. Lat. cite only the two passages quoted above; of these two, Lewis and Short cite only the former. Lexicographers and editors,1 comparing the one passage with the other, concur in the view that the cucurbita is the symbol of stupidity, and that a stupid man may be called a cucurbita, as in Petronius, or be said cucurbitae caput habere, as in Apuleius. At first sight their interpretation of the Apuleian phrase is plausible, for it makes tolerable sense in the context and appears to be supported by such modern expressions as ‘pumpkin-head’ and Kürbiskopf and κεχλι κολοκνθνιον, all of which liken the head of a stupid man to a pumpkin or other gourd which, though bearing some resemblance to a human head, encloses not a brain but an insensate mass of pulp and seeds. But ‘to have a pumpkin-head’ and ‘to be a pumpkin’ are prima facie very different, for the latter equates the man himself with the cucurbita, whereas it is only qua substitute for a head that the cucurbita can typify stupidity; and when it is further observed that in the Petronian passage cucurbitae so interpreted accords ill with the context, it becomes clear that some other explanation must be sought.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
D. V. Mukhetdinov

This paper focuses on the analysis of the Islamic thinker Kh. A. ElFadl’s political and legal conception. This conception assesses the potential of the Islamic tradition for the legitimization of democracy. We indicates that El-Fadl’s concept is not another ‘Islamic democracy’ project, but an analysis of the relationship between democratic ethos and Islamic political values. It is demonstrated that an adequate understanding of this relationship requires a comprehension of Qur’anic anthropology — the idea of human call, in particular. The logical transition from acceptance of God’s sovereignty and the status of man as His earthly governor (a successive authority’) to the inadmissibility of usurpation of power is considered reasonable. The article proves that El-Fadl allows historical variability of the forms of checks and balances that impede usurpation of power. Therefore, he emphasizes precisely the democratic ethos, and not a particular political theory or a specific political regime. The irregularity of the monopolization of a democratic ethos by the Western culture, on the one hand, and the monopolization of Shari‘a by Islamists, on the other, is thoroughly noted. In the conclusion the author outlines a general understanding of the nature of Shari‘a and the Shari‘ah foundations of political practice in the concept of El-Fadl.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Adam Nedeljkovic

The aim of this paper is an attempt at analyses and reconciliation of some prima facie confronted theories of reliability in the context of formal theories of coherence. Formal coherentists attempted to show that there is an epistemologically interesting connection between coherence of an information set and reliability of information sources. Amongst these authors there are divisions and differences concerning the nature of coherence, as well as the nature of reliability. On the one side, we have before us probabilistic coherentists who support a statistical understanding of reliability. On the other side we have supporters of explanatory coherence who see reliability as a dispostition. There are two goals that we shall attempt to achieve in this paper: to present and explain some ideas of reliability, without going into fine detailes and depths of theories in which they were formulated and to show that those ideas about reliability are not that irreconcilable as they might appear, but that they together can form something that we shall call ?reliability profile of an information source?, ?the most basic version?, or shorter: RPISbasic.


Author(s):  
John M. Cooper

This chapter examines the philosophy of Plotinus. It argues that philosophy, and only philosophy, can prepare us adequately for our true life, a life consisting of contemplation of Forms, in self-absorption into Intellect and into Intellect's own origin, the One. Furthermore, this very contemplation, which constitutes both our natural good and our true life, is an exercise of completely achieved philosophical understanding. For Plotinus, and the late ancient Platonists in general, philosophy is the sole road to happiness, and also its very essence. Thus, the Platonist way of life is doubly a philosophical life. The practice of philosophy is the sole necessary means to happiness. Moreover, the highest level of active philosophical understanding is happiness. It is the very essence of happiness.


Author(s):  
Naomi Oreskes

William Bowie settled on a theoretical position that accounted for isostasy and the jigsaw-puzzle fit of the continents but ignored the facts of historical geology. And yet, as we have seen, he interacted and corresponded with historical geologists, particularly with Charles Schuchert (1858–1942). Of all the American geologists who ultimately rejected the theory of drift, Schuchert was perhaps the one who engaged the problem the most seriously. As America’s foremost historical geologist, Schuchert was well placed to argue the case for or against drift, and he grappled with the question of continental connections for at least fifteen years. In the end, however, Schuchert, like Bowie, rejected continental drift. Just as Bowie argued against drift because of beliefs grounded in the exigencies of geodetic practice, Schuchert ultimately argued against drift because of beliefs grounded in the exigencies of geological practice. For Bowie, the practice was Pratt isostasy, for Schuchert, it was Uniformitarianism. Charles Schuchert rejected continental drift because he interpreted it to be incompatible with Uniformitarianism. However, he did not reject it because he could not see drift taking place, as might be supposed. Uniformitarianism has meant many things to many people, and to Charles Schuchert in the late 1920s, it meant—rightly or wrongly—an essentially steady-state earth, whose details were forever changing but whose large-scale patterns and relationships remained the same. And this seemed to him to deny the possibility of major changes in the configuration of the continents. Moreover—and perhaps more importantly—for Schuchert, as for most historical geologists, Uniformitarianism was a form of scientific practice, a means of doing historical geology. It was, in fact, the primary means of doing historical geology. For Schuchert, abandoning Uniformitarianism was nearly tantamount to abandoning historical geology altogether. Not surprisingly, he declined to do this. Like William Bowie, Charles Schuchert settled on a theoretical position that preserved his scientific practice. But whereas Bowie’s theoretical ideas had little staying power, the alternative that Schuchert embraced influenced a generation of geologists to believe that drift was not so much impossible as unnecessary.


Author(s):  
Marco Orru

Émile Durkheim is generally recognized to be one of the founders of sociology as a distinct scientific discipline. Trained as a philosopher, Durkheim identified the central theme of sociology as the emergence and persistence of morality and social solidarity (along with their pathologies) in modern and traditional human societies. His distinctive approach to sociology was to adopt the positivistic method in identifying and explaining social facts – the facts of the moral life. Sociology was to be, in Durkheim’s own words, a science of ethics. Durkheim’s sociology combined a positivistic methodology of research with an idealistic theory of social solidarity. On the one hand, Durkheim forcefully claimed that the empirical observation and analysis of regularities in the social world must be the starting point of the sociological enterprise; on the other hand, he was equally emphatic in claiming that sociological investigation must deal with the ultimate ends of human action – the moral values and goals that guide human conduct and create the essential conditions for social solidarity. Accordingly, in his scholarly writings on the division of labour, on suicide, on education, and on religion, Durkheim sought to identify through empirical evidence the major sources of social solidarity and of the social pathologies that undermine it.


Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang B. Hamer ◽  
Daniel Knitter ◽  
Sonja B. Grimm ◽  
Benjamin Serbe ◽  
Berit Valentin Eriksen ◽  
...  

Location modeling, both inductive and deductive, is widely used in archaeology to predict or investigate the spatial distribution of sites. The commonality among these approaches is their consideration of only spatial effects of the first order (i.e., the interaction of the locations with the site characteristics). Second-order effects (i.e., the interaction of locations with each other) are rarely considered. We introduce a deductive approach to investigating such second-order effects using linguistic hypotheses about settling behavior in the Final Palaeolithic. A Poisson process was used to simulate a point distribution using expert knowledge of two distinct hunter–gatherer groups, namely, reindeer hunters and elk hunters. The modeled points and point densities were compared with the actual finds. The G-, F-, and K-function, which allow for the identification of second-order effects of varying intensity for different periods, were applied. The results reveal differences between the two investigated groups, with the reindeer hunters showing location-related interaction patterns, indicating a spatial memory of the preferred locations over an extended period of time. Overall, this paper shows that second-order effects occur in the geographical modeling of archaeological finds and should be taken into account by using approaches such as the one presented in this paper.


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