Late Scholastic Analyses of Inductive Reasoning

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-66
Author(s):  
Miroslav Hanke ◽  

The late scholastic era was, among others, contemporary to the “emergence of probability”, the German academic philosophy from Leibniz to Kant, and the introduction of Newtonian physics. Within this era, two branches of the late-scholastic analysis of induction can be identified, one which can be thought of as a continual development of earlier scholastic approaches, while the other one absorbed influences of early modern philosophy, mathematics, and physics. Both branches of scholastic philosophy share the terminology of modalities, probability, and forms of (inductive) arguments. Furthermore, induction was commonly considered valid as a result of being a covert syllogism. Last but not least, there appears to be a difference in emphasis between the two traditions’ analyses of induction: while Tolomei discussed the theological presuppositions of induction, Amort’s “leges contingentium” exemplify the principles of induction by aleatory phenomena and Boscovich’s rules for inductive arguments are predominately concerned with the generalisation of macro-level observations to the micro-level.

Philosophy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia LoLordo

In 21st century academic philosophy, “early modern philosophy” refers to the study of texts written in a specific time and place, and understood as works of philosophy in that context. The time is, roughly, the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. This article is limited to philosophers who published or wrote most of their major works between 1600 and 1750, thus including Hume and Condillac but omitting near-contemporaries like Rousseau. The place is often described as Western Europe, but this is a bit misleading: with very few exceptions, the philosophers discussed here were from France, Holland, or what is now the United Kingdom. The traditional canon of Early Modern philosophers was very small: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume on one side of the English Channel; Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza on the other. In the last decades of the 20th century and first decades of the 21st century, the canon was expanded significantly. Two main factors drove the expansion of the canon. One was increased attention to works of what was then called natural philosophy, like Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The other was increased attention to the work of women. This bibliography aims to capture some of this expansion, but still, hundreds of other works could have been included—and more will be as time goes on.


Mind ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 128 (512) ◽  
pp. 1117-1147
Author(s):  
Anat Schechtman

Abstract Many historical and philosophical studies treat infinity as an exclusively quantitative notion, whose proper domain of application is mathematics and physics. The main aim of this paper is to disentangle, by critically examining, three notions of infinity in the early modern period, and to argue that one—but only one—of them is quantitative. One of these non-quantitative notions concerns being or reality, while the other concerns a particular iterative property of an aggregate. These three notions will emerge through examination of three central figures in the period: Locke (for quantitative infinity), Descartes (ontic infinity), and Leibniz (iterative infinity).


The ancient topic of universals was central to scholastic philosophy, which raised the question of whether universals exist as Platonic forms, as instantiated Aristotelian forms, as concepts abstracted from singular things, or as words that have universal signification. It might be thought that this question lost its importance after the decline of scholasticism in the modern period. However, the fourteen contributions to this volume indicate that the issue of universals retained its vitality in modern philosophy. Modern philosophers in fact were interested in three sets of issues concerning universals: (1) issues concerning the ontological status of universals, (2) issues concerning the psychology of the formation of universal concepts or terms, and (3) issues concerning the value and use of universal concepts or terms in the acquisition of knowledge. Chapters in this volume consider the various forms of “Platonism,” “conceptualism,” and “nominalism” (and distinctive combinations thereof) that emerged from the consideration of such issues in the work of modern philosophers. The volume covers not only the canonical modern figures, namely, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, but also more neglected figures such as Pierre Gassendi, Pierre-Sylvain Regis, Nicolas Malebranche, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and John Norris.


2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lodi Nauta

AbstractWell-known for his Ciceronianism as well as for his crass nominalism and virulent attack on universals, the humanist Mario Nizolio (1488–1567) is often considered to be a forerunner of early modern philosophy. But although his name duly features in general accounts of Renaissance humanism and philosophy, his work, edited by Leibniz in 1670, has hardly been the subject of a philosophically sensitive analysis. This article examines Nizolio's attempt to reform scholastic philosophy, paying particular attention to the way in which he de-ontologized the scholastic categories and predicables (genus, species, etc.) and replaced philosophical abstraction with the rhetorical concept of synecdoche. His views on science, proof, argumentation, and rhetoric are discussed, as well as the humanist inspiration from which they issue. We will then be able to evaluate the strength and limitations of Nizolio's program in the wider tradition of early modern philosophy.


1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Westpbal Irwin

This study examined the relationship between the number of cohesive ties in a passage, as defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976), and free and prompted recall scores. Two versions of a passage on gibbons were developed, with one version containing about twice as many ties as the other. Sixty college students participated; each read one of the passage-versions and then, either immediately or after 20 minutes, recorded his/her free recall and answered the prompted-recall questions. Though there were no differences between the treatment groups in terms of the numbers of micro-level propositions recalled, there were significant differences between these groups in terms of the theoretical reading time/100-propositions-recalled ratios, the numbers of reported macro-level statements, and the numbers of prompted-recall questions answered correctly in the delayed condition. These results support theories stressing the importance of coherent links in the comprehension process and suggest a new “readability” variable.


2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Engdahl ◽  
Anders Ögren

AbstractComplementarity of money means that two or more kinds of monies together fulfil the demands of the users better than they would without the existence of the other(s). In this article we study complementarity between paper monies in Sweden. We address four questions: 1. What was used as money at a macro-level (money supply) and at a micro-level (monetary remittances)? 2. What was the relative value of different monies in parallel circulation? 3. Were there seasonal variations in use and/or value of these monies? 4. Were there geographical variations in use and value? What we find is that the complementarity helped to solve the problem of providing sufficient liquidity domestically over time and space and thus contributed to the maintenance of a stable value of the currency.


2011 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Yu. Olsevich

The article analyzes the psychological basis of the theory and economic policy of libertarianism, as contained in the book by A. Greenspan "The Age of Turbulence", clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of this doctrine that led to its discredit in 2008. It presents a new understanding of liberalization in 1980-1990s as a process of institutional transformation at the micro and meso levels, implemented by politicians and entrepreneurs with predatory and opportunistic mentality. That process caused, on the one hand, the acceleration of growth, on the other hand - the erosion of informal foundations of a market system. With psychology and ideology of libertarianism, it is impossible to perceive real macro risks generated at the micro level, which lead to a systemic crisis, and to develop measures to prevent it.


Corpora ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Partington

In this paper, I want to examine the special relevance of (non)obviousness in corpus linguistics through drawing on case studies. The research discussion is divided into two parts. The first is an examination of (non)obviousness at the micro-level, that is, in lexico-grammatical analyses, whilst the second looks at the more macro-level of (non)obviousness on the plane of discourse. In the final sections, I will examine various types of non-obvious meaning one can come across in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), which range from: ‘I knew that all along (now)’ to ‘that's interesting’ to ‘I sensed that but didn't know why’ (intuitive impressions and corpus-assisted explanations) to ‘I never even knew I never knew that’ (serendipity or ‘non-obvious non-obviousness’, analogous to ‘unknown unknowns’).


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