The Organic Roots of Conatus in Early Greek Thought

The focus of this paper will be on the earliest Greek treatments of impulse, motivation, and self-animation – a cluster of concepts tied to the hormē-conatus concept. I hope to offer a plausible account of how the earliest recorded views on this subject in mythological, pre-Socratic, and Classical writings might have inspired later philosophical developments by establishing the foundations for an organic, wholly naturalized approach to human inquiry. Three pillars of that approach which I wish to emphasize are: practical intelligence (i.e., a continuity between knowing and doing), natural normativity (i.e., a continuity between human norms and the environment), and an ontology of philosophical dialectic (i.e., a continuity between the growth of human understanding and the growth of physis).

Introduction

This introduction presents the project of the book, to examine the seventeenth-century debate about materialism that began with the work of Thomas Hobbes. Among those who responded directly to Hobbes, the book focuses on Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. The introduction and book then look at John Locke’s discussion of materialism in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which draws on and responds to that earlier discussion. A central question for all these philosophers is whether human minds are material. They also consider whether animal minds are material, and whether God is. Other philosophical issues, including theories of substance and of the nature of ideas, are repeatedly involved in the discussion. The relation of these discussions to the work of René Descartes is noted.

Materialism from Hobbes to Locke

Are human beings purely material creatures, or is there something else to them, an immaterial part that does some (or all) of the thinking, and might even be able to outlive the death of the body? This book is about how a series of seventeenth-century philosophers tried to answer that question. It begins by looking at the views of Thomas Hobbes, who developed a thoroughly materialist account of the human mind, and later of God as well. All this is in obvious contrast to the approach of his contemporary René Descartes. After examining Hobbes’s materialism, the book considers the views of three of his English critics: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. Both More and Cudworth thought Hobbes’s materialism radically inadequate to explain the workings of the world, while Cavendish developed a distinctive, anti-Hobbesian materialism of her own. The second half of the book focuses on the discussion of materialism in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, arguing that we can better understand Locke’s discussion if we see how and where he is responding to this earlier debate. At crucial points Locke draws on More and Cudworth to argue against Hobbes and other materialists. Nevertheless, Locke did a good deal to reveal how materialism was a genuinely possible view, by showing how one could develop a detailed account of the human mind without presuming it was an immaterial substance.

MASALAH PEMAHAMAN COVID-19 DAN TUGAS FILSAFAT

<em>Public understanding of Covid 19 is often seen as a source of problems in pandemic time. This article presents a discussion that the logic of understanding is different from the logic of explanation. If in scientific explanation, law and scientific theory are regarded as the premises, all human understanding departs from the historical experience of the world which belongs to the community. In a phenomenological perspective, human understanding is rational because it is oriented toward convergence without coincidence, unification without equivalence, commonality without identity, and cooperation without uniformity. The Study of the musical experiences of East Nusa Tenggara shows that the people of East Nusa Tenggara have a transverse rationality, in a sense that is convergent with the health protocol, although is based on the mythical cosmology. Based on this kind of logos, any effort in solving Covid 19's problem as a point of convergence needs interpretation of local community different understanding.</em><br /><br /><strong>Key words:</strong> Covid 19, Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology, rationality, transversality.

Gadamerian and Chinese Philosophical Reflections on the Developments of Chung-ying Cheng’s Post-Dialogue Onto-hermeneutic Philosophy

In light of developments in Chung-ying Cheng’s (1935-) onto-hermeneutic philosophy during the years after his dialogue with Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) took place in Heidelberg in May 2000, I explore several new issues related to Cheng’s understanding of Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy. First of all, I argue that Cheng has not addressed the vital concept of the “inner word” in Gadamer’s Truth and Method, and point toward some of its fecund hermeneutic significance, especially with regard to its characterization of Sprache/Language and its dynamics within human understanding. Secondly, I underscore the fact that Cheng (and the majority of other contemporary Chinese philosophers) have not understood the profound impact of Christian philosophical writings in Gadamer’s work, particularly in his claim that Christian ontology offers an alternative to ancient Greek ontologies that are “categorically significant.” Finally, I describe and analyze the development of a new theistic understanding of reality within Cheng’s post-dialogue publications, suggesting ways of critically advancing his claims in the light of Gadamer’s account of the “inner word” and the Christian ontological claims grounded in the logos-theology as presented in the prologue to the Gospel of John.

Is artificial intelligence capable of understanding? An analysis based on philosophical hermeneutics

From Deep Blue to AlphaGo, the rapid advance of artificial intelligence (AI) in the areas of problem solving and deep learning has lent credence to the prospect that it may one day develop an ability for understanding similar to that of humans or even surpass human intelligence. However, understanding is not a piece of knowledge, a method or an ability. Knowledge can be possessed as an impersonal and public resource. In a certain sense, it can be objectified by a group's understanding, which is characterized by certainty, whereas understanding seems to be in a state of constant transformation and movement. Moreover, a method cannot be separated from the subject and is always subsumed by understanding and interpretation. For a method to be useful, it must be the product of understanding and interpretation. Understanding is not enabled by a method; rather, it is understanding that possesses the method. Finally, understanding cannot be described and defined simply as ability. As an important manifestation of human intelligence, understanding is not an empty shell of method filled by its objects, but an appreciation and extension of the meaning of the objects. Computers are good at dealing with simple and formalized activities that are not associated with a context, but the human activities of understanding are not formalized. From the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, understanding is filled with elements of reflection and in itself is a form of self-understanding. Furthermore, AI lacks the fore-structure of human understanding. Therefore, whether understanding can be viewed from the perspective of historicity is an important difference between human intelligence and AI, and the missing historical connection of computational programs of AI may be an important reason why it cannot acquire understanding in a real sense.

Understanding, Explanation, and Active Inference

While machine learning techniques have been transformative in solving a range of problems, an important challenge is to understand why they arrive at the decisions they output. Some have argued that this necessitates augmenting machine intelligence with understanding such that, when queried, a machine is able to explain its behaviour (i.e., explainable AI). In this article, we address the issue of machine understanding from the perspective of active inference. This paradigm enables decision making based upon a model of how data are generated. The generative model contains those variables required to explain sensory data, and its inversion may be seen as an attempt to explain the causes of these data. Here we are interested in explanations of one’s own actions. This implies a deep generative model that includes a model of the world, used to infer policies, and a higher-level model that attempts to predict which policies will be selected based upon a space of hypothetical (i.e., counterfactual) explanations—and which can subsequently be used to provide (retrospective) explanations about the policies pursued. We illustrate the construct validity of this notion of understanding in relation to human understanding by highlighting the similarities in computational architecture and the consequences of its dysfunction.

Technology Advances, High-Risk Research, and a Safe Way Forward

The human and economic toll of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the unknowns regarding the origins of the virus, with a backdrop of enormous advances in technologies and human understanding of molecular virology, have raised global concerns about the safety of the legitimate infectious disease research enterprise. We acknowledge the safety and security risks resulting from the broad availability of tools and knowledge, tools and knowledge that can be exploited equally for good or harm.