scholarly journals Towards a Rigorous Basis for a Natural Law Theory of Integration

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 131-147
Author(s):  
Frederick D. Boley ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Cognition ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Faith Tradition ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
Christian Counselors ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Final Answer

Fr. Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) proposed that human desire can prove the existence of God. The structure of human thought implies a Final Answer to the set of all questions, which can only be what everyone calls “God”—but what implications does this fact have for human happiness, and for counseling? This paper argues that counseling must have, as its ultimate aim, helping people to know Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, which is God. The fact that we can observe the facts about human cognition means that Catholic Christian counselors can ethically and effectively work with people from any faith tradition.

Science Regained [1962]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Aubenque
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Motion Time ◽  
First Philosophy

Pierre Aubenque’s “Science Regained” (1962; translated by Clayton Shoppa) was originally published as the concluding chapter of Le Problème de l’Être chez Aristote, one of the most important and original books on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In this essay, Aubenque contends that the impasses which beset the project of first philosophy paradoxically become its greatest accomplishments. Although science stabilizes motion and thereby introduces necessity into human cognition, human thought always occurs amidst an inescapable movement of change and contingency. Aristotle’s ontology, as a discourse that strives to achieve being in its unity, succeeds by means of the failure of the structure of its own approach: the search of philosophy – dialectic – becomes the philosophy of the search. Aubenque traces this same structure of scission, mediation, and recovery across Aristotelian discussions of theology, motion, time, imitation, and human activity.

scholarly journals Permasalahan Iman : Kritik Atas Iman Dalam Filsafat Barat dan Tawaran Jawaban

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Setyo Wibowo
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Infinite Horizon ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
New Situation ◽  
Fallacious Reasoning

<div><p><strong>Abstract :</strong> Faith becomes problematic in our modern world. In the age of secularization and emancipation man masters the Nature with his growing reason and ever developing technology. This new situation brings with itself a discredit toward faith and religion. Without refusing the existence of God, Immanuel Kant declares that theology is a paralogism (a fallacious reasoning). Auguste Comte corners the religion in the realm of infantile age to be overcomed by the progress of science. Meanwhile Friedrich Nietzsche, from his own view, analyses that the phenomenon of fanatism in religion hides the uncontrallble “need to believe” typically found among the weaks.The central critique of Martin Heidegger toward ontotheological metaphysics shows that theology defined as science does not think. Man of faith has already all the answer before a question is posed, therefore he cannot truly pariticipate in the question of Being. This article tries to consider these objections against faith. As an answer, this article offers to acknowledge “the act of believe” as an universal disposition in man. Much wider than his need to possess knowledge, man is driven by a desire for the infinite. Faith resumes this human desire for infinite.</p><p><em>Keywords : Emancipation, theology, metaphysics, faith, knowledge, way of belief, act of belief, passivity, infinite horizon, anthropological disposision.</em></p><p><em><br /></em></p><p><strong>Abstrak :</strong> Iman menjadi problem di dunia modern. Gerak sekularisasi dan emansipasi manusia berkat perkembangan rasionya, yang tampak dalam penguasaan manusia atas alam lewat teknologi, membuat keyakinan pada Tuhan dianggap ketinggalan roh jaman. Meskipun tidak menolak Tuhan, Immanuel Kant menganggap bahwa teologi adalah sebuah paralogisme. Auguste Comte tegas-tegas mengatakan bahwa jaman teologi dan agama adalah era kekanak-kanakan yang harus dilampaui demi kemajuan jaman. Friedrich Nietzsche memperingatkan bahwa fanatisme dalam agama adalah tanda besarnya kebutuhan manusia untuk percaya, yang tidak lain adalah kelemahan diri manusia. Kritikan besar Martin Heidegger kepada metafisika onto-teologis semakin menunjukkan inferioritas iman di depan pemikiran. Beriman artinya tidak bisa berpikir secara sungguh-sungguh. Artikel ini hendak menimbang keberatan-keberatan atas iman di atas dan sekaligus menawarkan bahwa “tindak percaya” adalah sesuatu yang secara antropologis menjadi disposisi setiap manusia. Lebih luas daripada obsesi pada “pengetahuan”, manusia memiliki hasrat akan ketakterbatasan yang menemukan ekspresinya dalam apa yang kita sebut sebagai iman.</p><p><em>Kata kunci : Emansipasi, teologi, metafisika, iman, pengetahuan, cara beriman, tindak percaya, pasitivitas, horison ketakterbatasan, disposisi antropologis.</em></p></div>

scholarly journals Ideal Cognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-117
Author(s):  
Kate Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Human Cognition ◽  
Sole Purpose ◽  
Human Thought

Both the nature and aim of human cognition are philosophically divisive topics. On one side, there are the evidentialists who believe that the sole purpose of cognition is to seek and find truths. In contrast, pragmatists appeal to cognition solely as a tool, something that helps people achieve their goals. In this paper, I put forward an account of cognition and its aims fundamentally based on a pragmatic viewpoint.Crucially, however, I claim that an evolutionary pragmatic picture of cognition must assert rationality as a core tenant of human thought, mooring a relative pragmatism within a system logic and rationality.

scholarly journals A cognitive meta-theory for TESOL

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorin Friesen ◽  
Angelina Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Second Language Learner ◽  
Neurological Research ◽  
Identity Constitution ◽  
Meta Theory

A general theory of human cognition must be able to explain all aspects of human thought including scientific and rational thinking, normal thought, and personal identity and emotions. We present a theory that began as a system of cognitive styles, was expanded through an analysis of biographies, mapped onto neurology, developed through a study of personality, and then tested by using it to explain human thought in a number of dissimilar fields. This paper will introduce the theory, show briefly how it is consistent with neurological research, and then use it to analyze the TESOL field, a ‘specialization’ that brings together a broad range of topics related to human thought and behavior which are normally viewed in isolation. The typical second language learner is struggling to learn a new language with all of its idiosyncrasies, while acquiring new paradigms, navigating culture and negotiating personal identity. Examining the mechanisms involved in diverse elements of TESOL, such as language acquisition and learning, identity constitution, intercultural pragmatics, research methodology, critical discourse analysis, and male and female intellectual development through the lens of a general meta-theory of human cognition has application both for TESOL and for cognitive science in general.

scholarly journals Emptying Śūnyatā: a Critical Reading of Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
Ramunas Motiekaitis
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modes Of Thought

Abstract In this article, invoking some terms of phenomenology and general principles of structural semiotics, I critically examine and reveal some aporetic aspects of Nishitani’s interpretation of Buddhist concept of sūnyatā presented in his seminal work Religion and Nothingness. My critics are directed to deeply ingrained claims among scholars of a “rejection of any form of dualism” and “non-substantial philosophy” as unique characteristics of the Kyoto school or “logic of the East”. My arguments are based on examining how linguistic differentiating articulation and narrative rendering that perform a fundamental role in human cognition are at work in definition of “emptiness” (sūnyatā) too. Thus emptiness is not completely empty; being certain philosophical identity it can be articulated only by differentiation from other identities, and thus different is included in it. Nishitani needed logocentric modes of thought, as a dialectical (m)other for constructing his sūnyatā ontology. Accordingly, the realms that are considered to be secondary or derivative (i.e. sensual and rational, or linguistic representations) appear to be the condition for constituting the primary (suchness of things, sūnyatā). Considering universal mechanisms of the articulation of values I am also asking whether sūnyatā paradigm indeed is so fundamentally different from Western paradigms centered on idea, God, or a rational subject as Nishitani wants to think. Since we find a clear hierarchical differentiation into truth and illusion, authentic and inauthentic modes of thought and time, and initial and derivative ontological realms, features of “strong thought” (in sense of Vattimo) are evident in his work. I am also suggesting, that possibly by considering not sūnyatā or “idea” but human languages as a universal “house of being”, we would be able to “empty” discourses of radical difference and uniqueness, and in this way become post-nationalistically modern. Philosophy, in order not to turn into a onesided ideology, should reflect on its mythological and narratological conditions, i.e. dances on certain semiotic axes. From such a perspective, the gravitational trajectory of human thought, longing for conjunction with the absolute, defined either as God or as sūnyatā, will seem similar rather than different.

scholarly journals The Objectivity of Ethics

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Michael Bissex ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Functional System ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Ethical Standards ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Moral Skepticism ◽  
Natural Law Theory

In 1977, the atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie published the book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. In it, he notably argued that objective ethical standards simply do not exist. He acknowledges that the existence of God would undermine moral skepticism, but assumes an atheistic position, and therefore concludes that objective morality is an intellectual incoherence. The debate, therefore, does not hinge on the existence of God, but rather on whether or not ethics are an objective reality without referring to God as their basis. From the standpoint of Catholic social teaching, the objectivity of ethics is a reality that should be defended over and against the claims of moral skepticism that Mackie argues are valid. In fact, the existence of objective ethics not only provides a defense of the system of Catholic social teaching, but illustrates its value to those who may be skeptical of its claims. With this defense of objective ethics as the goal, this paper claims that Mackie’s argument fails due to his deficient epistemological approach. Assuming the proper epistemic sense, natural law theory is a functional system of objective ethical truth, drawn out through a Thomistic understanding of the human pursuit of what is good.

scholarly journals New fundamental evidence of non-classical structure in the combination of natural concepts

2016 ◽  
Vol 374 (2058) ◽  
pp. 20150095 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Aerts ◽  
S. Sozzo ◽  
T. Veloz
Keyword(s):  
Fock Space ◽  
Space Structure ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Conceptual Reasoning ◽  
Systematic Pattern ◽  
Classical Effect ◽  
Concept Theory ◽  
Classical Mechanism

We recently performed cognitive experiments on conjunctions and negations of two concepts with the aim of investigating the combination problem of concepts. Our experiments confirmed the deviations (conceptual vagueness, underextension, overextension etc.) from the rules of classical (fuzzy) logic and probability theory observed by several scholars in concept theory, while our data were successfully modelled in a quantum-theoretic framework developed by ourselves. In this paper, we isolate a new, very stable and systematic pattern of violation of classicality that occurs in concept combinations. In addition, the strength and regularity of this non-classical effect leads us to believe that it occurs at a more fundamental level than the deviations observed up to now. It is our opinion that we have identified a deep non-classical mechanism determining not only how concepts are combined but, rather, how they are formed. We show that this effect can be faithfully modelled in a two-sector Fock space structure, and that it can be exactly explained by assuming that human thought is the superposition of two processes, a ‘logical reasoning’, guided by ‘logic’, and a ‘conceptual reasoning’, guided by ‘emergence’, and that the latter generally prevails over the former. All these findings provide new fundamental support to our quantum-theoretic approach to human cognition.

Quantum structure and human thought

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diederik Aerts ◽  
Jan Broekaert ◽  
Liane Gabora ◽  
Sandro Sozzo
Keyword(s):  
Fock Space ◽  
Quantum Probability ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Complex Numbers ◽  
Quantum Structure ◽  
Mathematical Structures ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
As Effects

AbstractWe support the authors' claims, except that we point out that also quantum structure different from quantum probability abundantly plays a role in human cognition. We put forward several elements to illustrate our point, mentioning entanglement, contextuality, interference, and emergence as effects, and states, observables, complex numbers, and Fock space as specific mathematical structures.

Knowledge of God in Bernard Lonergan and Hans Küng

1977 ◽  
Vol 70 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 327-341
Author(s):  
Edward K. Braxton
Keyword(s):  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Hans Küng

Can the existence of God be rationally demonstrated? This question has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries and in a particular way since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. This essay will examine the question of the knowledge of God as it is met by two contemporary Catholic theologians, Bernard Lonergan and Hans Küng. These two scholars are not chosen arbitrarily for comparison. Not only is each of them on the forefront of current theological development, but I shall argue that on the question of God the ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts of the former are significantly complemented by the latter.

scholarly journals Very Like a Whale: Analogy and the Law

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-352
Author(s):  
Jeffrey D. Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Legal Writing ◽  
Long Term Consequences ◽  
Social Divide ◽  
The Relationship

Analogical reasoning is common in legal writing, just as analogies are a part of everyday life. Indeed, they may be inescapable features of human cognition. Used well, analogies illuminate the writer’s reasons and persuade the reader. Used poorly, however, they may obscure or even replace the precision and detail in reasoning that is crucial to the development of law. Without entering the ongoing debate about the nature of human thought, this article explores some of the dangers present in the relationship that analogy maintains with law. In particular, the article examines the risks inherent in analogizing across a technological or social divide. The article concludes by noting the long-term consequences of analogies and metaphors in shaping thought and, therefore, society.

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