"Theory of modus concipiendi in Richard Burthogge’s Epistemology" The paper focuses on the epistemology of Richard Burthogge, the lesser known seventeenth-century English philosopher and author, among other works, of the Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism. The (...) most important claim of this approach is that the external objects are never presented to the mind directly, as they are in themselves, but always under the modus concipiendi, a particular form of conceiving or conceptualising, performed by the human cognitive powers (both intellectual and sensuous) in the manner and with the means determined by their structural and functional properties. Thus, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that the external world is unknowable in itself, being accessible to the human mind only through the phenomena that the mind itself co-produces. The paper provides an outline of the theory of modus concipiendi, including its historical context and idealistic consequences, preceded by the brief presentation of Burthogge’s epistemology. (shrink)

Článek se zabývá pojmem panteismus v období renesance. Ačkoli termín panteismus se objevil až na konci 17. století a později v kontextu tzv. “Pantheismusstreit”, za předchůdce moderního panteistického myšlení byl označen renesanční filosof Giordano Bruno. Následně i Mikuláš Kusánský, a to jakožto pokračovatel myšlení Mistra Eckharta, začal být považován za panteistu. Jak Kusánský, tak Bruno v určitém smyslu obhajovali imanenci božského ve světě, avšak zároveň oba zdůrazňovali rozdíl mezi Bohem a přírodou a připisovali Bohu transcendenci nebo přinejmenším transcendentální aspekty. Toto (...) není v souladu s definicí panteismu v tzv. silném slova smyslu, kdy se tvrdí striktní identita Boha a světa. Zdá se, že pojem renesanční panteismus je konstruktem, který byl vytvořen skrze násilnou aplikaci terminologie osvícenské filosofie na renesanční období. (shrink)

Investigating the neo-Kantian origins of structuralism and culturalism, this article analyses the development of Cassirer's thought by following his intellectual progression from knowledge to culture, and from culture to praxis. The article is in two parts. In the first part, the author presents an analysis of Cassirer's relational conception of knowledge. In the second part, the critique of knowledge is superseded by a critique of culture. The author analyses Cassirer's anthropological philosophy of symbolic forms and critically compares it to Simmel's (...) vitalist theory of culture. The article ends with a plea for a practical sociology inspired by Cassirer's return to Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I will deal with the analogy between Cassirer’s interpretation of relativity and his philosophy of culture. As to the structure of the paper, it will be divided into six parts. I will start with a brief introduction, after which I will succinctly outline Cassirer’s reading of Einstein’s theory, and in particular of general covariance. I will then focus on the presentation of his project for a “systematic philosophy” in the last chapter of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and (...) subsequently delve into the lexical references to relativity made in Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. After this, I will tackle Cassirer’s rectorship speech, where relativity and the philosophy of culture are explicitly interwoven, but with the important clarification (already provided in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) that not all kinds of knowledge align with de-anthropomorphized objectivity. The final section contains the concluding remarks. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse how Ernst Cassirer’s approach of a phenomenology of knowledge deals with the general question of disunity in science and society. By elaborating on the concept of functional unity, which presupposes difference, Cassirer’s work helps to revise foundational concepts of modern science and society, such as pluralism and truth. Relating Cassirer’s approach to the current interest in political epistemology, we show the implications of Cassirer’s theory of knowledge and analyses of modern science, particularly physics. In these (...) analyses, Cassirer carves out the relational logic of scientific knowledge and its consequences on epistemological and ethico-political levels. While this logic of relations relativises absolute claims on either level, it entails its distinct normative criteria as elements of the scientific ideal. Cassirer’s project defends this ideal and thus can simultaneously defend plurality _in_ science (including the humanities) in terms of methods, perspectives and aims, and preserve the unity _of_ science as a normative ideal and symbolic form in constant interaction with other forms. Thus, Cassirer’s pluralism must be distinguished from mere historicist or relativist conceptions. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

In 1912, Ernst Cassirer contributed to the special issue of the Kant-Studien that honored Hermann Cohen's retirement—his mentor and teacher, and the recognized founding father of the so-called 'Marburg school' of Neo-Kantianism. In the context of an otherwise rather conventional presentation of Cohen's interpretation of Kant, Cassirer made a remark that is initially surprising. It is “anything but accurate,” he wrote, to regard Cohen's philosophy as focused “exclusively on the mathematical theory of nature,” as is usually done. A reconstruction of (...) the genesis of Cohen's thought, Cassirer continued, would already refute this interpretation. Actually, “[t]he... (shrink)

The article considers Cassirer’s philosophy of mathematics in opposition to empiricist theories, Frege’s logicism, and its realism, Hilbert’s formalism and its nominalism, and Brouwer’s intuitionism grounding mathematics in the intuition of time. For Cassirer mathematical objects are purely relational structures and not abstractions of certain characteristics, as is the case with empiricists and Frege. In opposition to logicists, Cassirer argues for the synthetic nature of mathematics. Contrary to Brouwer, he does not ground this in intuition but ascribes to mathematics a (...) purely logical nature and relates it to the purely rational faculty of the spirit. He thus turns away from Hilbert, who takes sensuous objects to be the object of mathematics; he also cannot agree with his formalism, which reduces all progress in mathematics to a mere combination of signs, thus stripping it of all meaning. The article considers these differences in view of the opposition between the cardinal and ordinal theories of number and the introduction of ideal elements. (shrink)

From the perspective of Cartesian doubt, this article explores the concept of the limitations of reasoning through the use of the Kantian words 'boundary' and 'barrier' in his Critique of Pure Reason. Hegel's critical dialogue with Kant is presented focusing on the limitation that the latter imposed on reason for the acquisition of the true knowledge of philosophical/metaphysical objects. For this purpose, the Hegelian position is presented from its discussion on the second chapter of the first section of the The (...) Doctrine of Being and references are made to conceptual elements of the Phenomenology of Spirit. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between some corpuscularian and Aristotelian strands that run through the thought of the sixteenth-century philosopher and physician Julius Caesar Scaliger. Scaliger often uses the concepts of corpuscles, pores, and vacuum. At the same time, he also describes mixture as involving the fusion of particles into a continuous body. The paper explores how Scaliger’s combination of corpuscularian and non-corpuscularian views is shaped, in substantial aspects, by his response to the views on corpuscles and the vacuum in (...) the work of his contemporary, Girolamo Fracastoro. Fracastoro frequently appears in Scaliger’s work as an opponent against whom numerous objections are directed. However, if one follows up Scaliger’s references, it soon becomes clear that Scaliger also shares some of Fracastoro’s views. Like Scaliger, Fracastoro suggests corpuscularian explanations of phenomena such as water rising in lime while at the same time ascribing some non-corpuscularian properties to his natural minima. Like Scaliger, Fracastoro maintains that there is no vacuum devoid of bodies since places cannot exist independently of bodies (although their opinions diverge regarding how exactly the relevant dependency relation might be explicated). Finally, like Scaliger, Fracastoro connects a continuum view of mixture with a theory of natural minima. (shrink)

A Estética Transcendental é uma peça chave no programa de pesquisa que Kant desenvolveu e nomeou de filosofia transcendental. Ela se anuncia na Dissertação de 1770 e se configura de forma bem explícita na primeira edição da Crítica da razão pura, de 1781. O modo como Kant a concebeu permitiu-lhe separar radicalmente intelecto e sensibilidade, mas seria importante compreender a raiz dessa separação. Nesse texto procuramos mostrar que o opúsculo “Sobre o primeiro fundamento da distinção de direções no espaço”, de (...) 1768, traz características bastante decisivas para a estética proposta no período crítico. Para evidenciar isso, expusemos ideias marcantes do texto sobre as contrapartidas incongruentes e as cotejamos com as reflexões expostas nos itens 3 e 4 relativos à Exposição Metafísica do conceito de espaço e aquelas apresentadas nos itens 4 e 5 relativos à Exposição Metafísica do conceito de tempo. (shrink)

Whenever one reads internal histories of psychology what is covered is the establishment of a lab by Wundt in 1879 as the initiating act and then the breakaway movements of the 20th Century are discussed: Behaviorism, Gestalt Theory, Psychoanalysis, and most recently the Cognitive revival. However, Aron Gurwitsch described a perspective noted by Cassirer and first developed by Malebranche, which dates the founding of psychology at the same time as that of physics in the 17th Century. This external perspective shows (...) the dependency of psychology upon the concepts, methods and procedures of physics and the natural sciences in general up until the present time. Gurwitsch argues that this approach has blocked the growth of psychology and has assured its status as a minor science. He argued that the everyday Lifeworld achievements of subjectivity are the true subject matter of psychology and that a phenomenological approach to subjectivity could give psychology the authenticity it has been forever seeking but never finding as a naturalistic science. Some clarifying thoughts concerning this phenomenologically grounded psychology are offered, especially the role of desire. The assumption of an external perspective toward the history of psychology fostered the insights about psychology’s scientific role. (shrink)

To explore the relation between mathematical models and reality, four different domains of reality are distinguished: observer-independent reality, personal reality, social reality and mathematical/formal reality. The concepts of personal and social reality are strongly inspired by constructivist ideas. Mathematical reality is social as well, but constructed as an autonomous system in order to make absolute agreement possible. The essential problem of mathematical modelling is that within mathematics there is agreement about ‘truth’, but the assignment of mathematics to informal reality is (...) not itself formally analysable, and it is dependent on social and personal construction processes. On these levels, absolute agreement cannot be expected. Starting from this point of view, repercussion of mathematical on social and personal reality, the historical development of mathematical modelling, and the role, use and interpretation of mathematical models in scientific practice are discussed. (shrink)

The significance or vacuity of the statement, “Everything has just doubled in size,” attracted considerable attention last century from scientists and philosophers. Presenting his conventionalism in geometry, Poincaré insisted on the emptiness of a hypothesis that all objects have doubled in size overnight. Such expansion could have meaning, he argued, “only for those who reason as if space were absolute … it would be better to say that space being relative, nothing at all has happened.” The logical empiricists concurred, viewing (...) the universal doubling hypothesis as illustrating the intrinsic metrical amorphousness of continuous manifolds. It is striking, therefore, to find Kant invoking a universal contraction in space and time to support his famous doctrine of transcendental idealism. In one of several completely neglected passages, he writes: “The proof that the things in space and time are mere appearances can also be grounded on the fact that the whole world could be contained in a nutshell and the entirety of elapsed time in a second without the least difference being met with.” Kant's “also” may suggest an idealist argument distinct from any proposed in published works. Here I ask: What is the meaning of Kant's Nutshell Argument for Idealism? (shrink)

In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant formulates teleological principles, or rather ideas, and explicates them referring to concrete examples of natural science such as chemistry, astronomy, biology, empirical psychology, and physical geography. Despite the increasing interest in the systematic relevance of the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and its importance for Kant’s conception of natural science, the numerous historical sources for the regulative use of reason have not yet been investigated. One that is very central is Maupertuis’ principle (...) of least action. In 1781, Kant transformed teleology into heuristics and methodology, but in doing so, he partially develops a teleology which was disqualified by Maupertuis because its starting point lies in the construction of animals or plants, the structure of the earth, and the immensity of the celestial bodies. Based on Maupertuis’ principle of action, it can be shown that the Appendix forms a systematic interface between Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens and Critique of Judgement which allows the reconstruction of Kant’s regulative use of reason and its specific status in the context of natural science and his critical appraisal of Maupertuis. (shrink)

The paper considers Cassirer’s account of the philosophical problems raised by the theory of relativity. The main question the paper addresses is how Cassirer, as a Neokantian, responds to the discoveries made by Einstein. The problem here is especially the presupposition of the a priori nature of Euclidean geometry. Cassirer’s answer lies in showing that Kant’s philosophy is broad enough to include also non-Euclidean geometries in the determination of the physical world. He does this by showing that though Kant conceived (...) space and time as forms of pure intuition he already connected them with certain theoretical factors, with the rules of the understanding. Space as the pure form of coexistence and time as the pure form of succession imply no special relations of measurement and it is thus a mistake to assume the a priori nature of Euclidean geometry. The way different geometries can figure in the determination of the physical world is explained in reference to the Klein approach to geometry, which defines geometrical properties as those that stay invariant according to a certain group of transformations. It is the concept of a group that is the real concept a priori. Group theory plays an even larger role in physical theories as well as Cassirer’s epistemology. Namely, with the theory of relativity it becomes evident that physical theories are theories of invariants according to a group of transformations. Cassirer claims that the general doctrine of invariability of certain values must recur in some form in any theory of nature, because it belongs to the logical and epistemological nature of such a theory. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck is a pioneer of the contemporary social constructionist trend in scientific theory, where his central concept of thinking style has become standard fare. Yet the concept is too often misunderstood and simplified with serious consequences not only for Fleck studies. My essay situates Fleck’s concept of thinking style in the historical context of the 1920s and ‘30s, when the notion of style was first applied to the natural sciences, in order to illustrate the uniqueness of Fleck’s concept among (...) the uses of style by his contemporaries and, finally, to examine the epistemological, methodological, and political consequences of this distinction. (shrink)

Matthias Neuber’s book represents an important contribution to the relatively young discipline of the History of Philosophy of Science. Starting roughly in the 1980s, increasing attention has been devoted not only to the relationship between philosophy and the history of science, but to an accurate historical reconstruction of earlier projects within philosophy of science. One of the most outstanding results of these investigations has probably been the radical reshaping of the rather caricatural image of logical empiricism—for better or worse the (...) core of the philosophical heritage of many philosophers of science—summarized in the so-called ‘standard view’. By analyzing the historical, sociological, and philosophical questions surrounding logical empiricism new light has been shed on the sense of a cultural, social, and political mission that characterized it before its emigration from Europe to North America in the 1930s and 1940s. What came to be known as .. (shrink)

In 1870, Hermann von Helmholtz criticized the Kantian conception of geometrical axioms as a priori synthetic judgments grounded in spatial intuition. However, during his dispute with Albrecht Krause (Kant und Helmholtz über den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Raumanschauung und der geometrischen Axiome. Lahr, Schauenburg, 1878), Helmholtz maintained that space can be transcendental without the axioms being so. In this paper, I will analyze Helmholtz’s claim in connection with his theory of measurement. Helmholtz uses a Kantian argument that can be (...) summarized as follows: mathematical structures that can be defined independently of the objects we experience are necessary for judgments about magnitudes to be generally valid. I suggest that space is conceived by Helmholtz as one such structure. I will analyze his argument in its most detailed version, which is found in Helmholtz (Zählen und Messen, erkenntnistheoretisch betrachtet 1887. In: Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. Springer, Berlin, 1921, 70–97). In support of my view, I will consider alternative formulations of the same argument by Ernst Cassirer and Otto Hölder. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of J. H. Randall’s thesis that modern empiricism is rooted in the Scholastic regressus method epitomized by Jacopo Zabarella in De Regressu (1578). Randall’s critics note that the empirical practice of Galileo and his contemporaries does not follow Zabarella. However, Zabarella’s account of the regressus is imprecise, which permitted an interpretation introducing empirical hypothesis testing into the framework. The discourse surrounding Galileo’s lunar observations in Sidereus Nuncius (1610) suggests that both Galileo and his interlocutors amended (...) the regressus method in this way, such that a developmental narrative links Scholastic logic to Galilean science. (shrink)