This paper is a critical suvery on the philosophy and the Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics.

In this brief paper, we argue about some epistemological positions about quantum non-locality.

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it before”; this revelatory capacity provides us with evidence for the existence of (...) the Good, a metaphor for a transcendent reality of which God was also a symbol; art is a “hall of reflection” in which “everything under the sun can be examined and considered”; art provides us with an analogue for the way in which we should try to perceive our world; and art enables us to transcend our selfish concerns. I consider three possible objections: that Murdoch’s theory is not applicable to all forms of art; that the meaning of works of art is often ambiguous; and that there is disagreement about what constitutes a great work of art. I argue that none of these objections are decisive, and that all forms of art have at least the potential to furnish us with important tools for developing the insight required to live a moral/religious life. (shrink)

How we define the anarchist canon—let alone how we decide which thinkers, theories, and texts should count as canonical—depends very much on what we take the purpose of the anarchist canon to be. In this essay, I distinguish between thinkers, theories, or texts that are “anarchist,” by virtue of belonging to actually-existing historical anarchist movements, and those which are “anarchist” in virtue of expressing “anarchistic” (or “anarchic”) ideas. I argue that the anarchist canon is best conceived as a repository of (...) historically-expressed anarchistic ideas and, for this reason, should include both kinds of theories, thinkers, and texts. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has argued that attention to the necessarily public character of language shows that we cannot be massively mistaken about the world around us, and that consequently skeptical doubts about empirical knowledge are misplaced. The arguments Davidson advances rely on taking as the fundamental methodological standpoint for investigating meaning and related concepts the standpoint of the interpreter of another speaker, on the grounds that it is from the interpreter’s standpoint that we discover what constraints are placed on meaning by (...) the public character of language. In this paper, I argue that although Davidson’s arguments reveal important conceptual connections between meaning and belief on the one hand, and truth and interpretation on the other, they do not show that it is impossible that we are massively mistaken about the external world. (shrink)

'Interpretational' accounts of meaning are frequently treated as incompatible with accounts stressing language's 'social' character. However, this paper argues that one can reconcile interpretational and social accounts by distinguishing "methodological" from "ascriptional" individualism. While methodological individualism requires only that the meaning of one's terms ultimately be grounded in facts about oneself, ascriptional individualism requires that the meaning of one's terms be independent of how others use theirs. Interpretational accounts are committed only to methodological individualism, while arguments for languages social character (...) are best understood as attacks on ascriptional individualism. As a result, one can recognize language's social character and still be an interpretationalist. (shrink)

The paper is an attempt at a logical explication of some crucial notions of current general semantics and pragmatics. A general, axiomatic, formal-logical theory of meaning and interpretation is outlined in this paper.In the theory, accordingto the token-type distinction of Peirce, language is formalised on two levels: first as a language of token-objects (understood as material, empirical, enduring through time-and space objects) and then – as a language of type-objects (understood as abstract objects, as classes of tokens). The basic concepts (...) of the theory, i.e. the notions: meaning, denotation and interpretation of well-formed expressions (wfes) of the language are formalised on the type-level, by utilising some semantic-pragmatic primitive notions introduced on the token-level. The paper is divided into two parts.In Part Ia theoryof meaningand denotation is proposed, and in Part II - its expansion to the theory of meaning and interpretation is presented.The meaninga wfe is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of using types (cf. Ajdukiewicz [1934], Wittgenstein [1953]). The concept of denotation is defined by means of the relation of referring which holds between wfe-types and objects of reality described by the given language. (shrink)

There are numerous books which seek to interpret Martin Heidegger’s seminal text, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), and others which address the question of how to translate his writings. By joining these two tasks, Translation and Interpretation: Learning from Beiträge, stands out from other such books in the field of Heidegger studies. The volume begins with Parvis Emad’s translation of an original essay by Martin Heidegger, “Contributions of Philosophy. The Da-sein and the Be-ing (Enowning).” -/- Through six carefully crafted (...) essays, Emad then takes the reader through a journey which examines the relationship between Heidegger’s being-historical thinking and such key figures—including Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Friedrich Hölderlin—who either occupy the forefront at the end of metaphysics or mark the “crossing” to the “other beginning.” -/- This book will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students alike, whether in philosophy or such diverse fields as poetry and linguistics. (shrink)

The structural theory of metaphor (STM) uses techniques from possible worlds semantics to generate and interpret metaphors. STM is presented in detail in The Logic of Metaphor: Analogous Parts of Possible Worlds (Steinhart, 2001). STM is based on Kittay’s semantic field theory of metaphor (1987) and ultimately on Black’s interactionist theory (1962, 1979). STM uses an intensional calculus to specify truth-conditions for many grammatical forms of metaphor. The truth-conditional analysis in STM is inspired in part by Miller (1979) and Hintikka (...) & Sandu (1994). STM is by no means a toy theory. It has been successfully tested on dozens of large texts taken from real authors. Its methods can be applied in very large linguistic databases like WordNet or MindNet. (shrink)

In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, one of the principal Upaniṣads, we find a venerable and famous story where the god Prajāpati separately instructs three groups of people (gods, humans, and demons) simply by uttering the syllable “Da.” In this paper, our concern is not with ethics but theories of meaning and interpretation: How can all divergent interpretations of a single expression be correct, and, indeed, endorsed by the speaker? As an exercise in cross-cultural philosophical reflection, we consider some of the (...) leading modern theories of meaning—those of Grice, Quine, and Davidson—in order to see if the Upaniṣadic story receives a natural home in any of them. We conclude that the story is best understood through Grice’s theory of meaning rather than Quine’s or Davidson’s. (shrink)

In a beautiful recent essay, the philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong explains the reasons for his departure from evangelical Christianity, the religious culture in which he was brought up. Sinnot-Armstrong contrasts the interpretive methods used by good philosophers and fundamentalist believers: Good philosophers face objections and uncertainties. They follow where arguments lead, even when their conclusions are surprising and disturbing. Intellectual honesty is also required of scholars who interpret philosophical texts. If I had distorted Kant’s view to make him reach a conclusion (...) that I preferred, then my philosophy professor would have failed me. The contrast with religious reasoning is stark. My Christian friends seemed happy to hide serious problems in the Bible and in their arguments. They preferred comfort to intellectual honesty. I couldn’t. To what extent can we, historians of philosophy, claim the virtue of intellectual honesty? Speaking frankly, I do not find the practice criticized by Sinnot-Armstrong’s philosophy professor rare or unusual at all. We very frequently distort the views of past philosophers in order to reach the conclusions we prefer. We just call it “Charitable Interpretation.” In this essay, I discuss and criticize the logic behind so-called charitable interpretations in the history of philosophy. This phenomenon is ubiquitous and is not at all restricted to a particular philosophical strand or ideology. Analytic philosophers and post-modernists, Marxists, liberals, secularists, and fundamentalists, we all engage in the very same domestication project. Even more disturbing than the sheer ideological pervasiveness of this phenomenon is the fact that, on many occasions, superb philosophers and historians take part in this fairly childish endeavor. In the first part of this essay, I discuss the general logic of charitable interpretations in the history of philosophy, mostly by addressing discussions in metaphysics and epistemology. In the second part, I focus on the somewhat less noticed use of charitable interpretations in the study of political philosophy, and point out the quintessential role ideology plays in these discussions. In both parts, I concentrate mostly on the interpretation of Spinoza’s thought. I do so not because I have special fondness for Spinoza (“guilty as charged,” I admit), but because Spinoza is such a beast (and may I add, an enchanting beast) and attracts a disproportionate share of the domestication efforts from historians and philosophers of all creeds and persuasions. In the third and final part of the paper, I will begin to outline an alternative methodology, which suggests that past philosophers can be most relevant to our current philosophical discussion, to the extent that they provide us with well-motivated challenges to our common-sense beliefs. Such challenges have the invaluable virtue of being able to undermine our most fundamental and secure beliefs, and force us to engage with the most fundamental questions. What more can we expect from good philosophy? (shrink)

The idea of dreams being mere internal artifacts of the mind does not seem to be essential to externalism and extended mind theories, which seem as if they would function as well without this additional assumption. The Many Bubble Interpretation could allow a simpler rationale to externalist theories, which may be even simpler if the assumption that dreams have no worthwhile content outside the mind is omitted.

This paper determines the relation between philosophy and anthropology. It further shows the intimate correspondence on the basis of metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, language, culture and environment. This paper examines the evolution of anthropology with respect to history of philosophy which includes; Ancient Greek, Medieval and Modern philosophy. In this write up I assume to show that how philosophers have interpreted the subject matter anthropology. Since anthropology is the study of humans and what this science acquires has been (...) explained and clarified in the science of philosophy, whether it is a metaphysical study of human person, his ethical, aesthetic, rational, environmental, physical and psychological investigations. This paper exhibits the role and dimensions of humans within the scope of time, space, environment, existence and language. (shrink)

The third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts is centered on a series of questions related to the nature of images. What properties characterize them? Do they exist also in our minds? What relationship do they have with phenomena such as perception, memory, language and interpretation? The authors participating in this issue have been asked to answer these and other questions starting from and in dialogue with the two philosophical perspectives that have (...) most enriched the study of our object of research since the second half of the twentieth century: analytical philosophy and visual culture studies. The first four essays address problems related to ontology (Didi-Huberman, Prinz, Bantinaki, Manzotti). In their pages the question will be asked not only about the nature of images but also about what it means for an image to represent an object or an action realistically. The second part contains discussions related to the topics of perception, appreciation and creation of pictures (Ferretti; Gavaler, Goldberg; Pigoni, Coraci, Carlenzi). The third section goes through the problems related to the very concept of representing by images (Biggs; Weichert; Derby). The last section of the issue is devoted to two cases in which images are used not so much and not only to represent something, but also to convey ethical-political values (Fasnacht; Olesiejuk). (shrink)

Plato extends a bold, confident, and surprising empirical challenge. It is implicitly a claim about the psychological — more specifically motivational — economies of human beings, asserting that within each such economy there is a desire to live well. Call this claim ‘psychological eudaimonism’ (‘PE’). Further, the context makes clear that Plato thinks that this desire dominates in those who have it. In other words, the desire to live well can reliably be counted on (when accompanied with correct beliefs about (...) the role of morality or virtue in living well) to move people be virtuous. As we will argue, this general claim appears in not only Plato but Aristotle and the Stoics as well. But it is one we might wonder about, in three ways. First, we might wonder about its warrant. After all, the claim is universal in scope; yet it is about a highly contingent fact about the motivational propensities of individual human organisms, and there is abundant variability in the individual forms human nature takes. What grounds could the ancients have for their confidence that there are no outliers (assuming, as we do, that they do not merely misspeak in framing general claims as universal ones)? Second, we might wonder about its truth. For were it true, it would entail something remarkable about the nature of rationality that we (post-)moderns would be wise to heed. And third, we might wonder about its relationship with normative eudaimonism. By ‘normative eudaimonism’ (‘NE’) we mean the claim that we have conclusive reason to act in ways that conduce to our own eudaimonia. As we will show, the key to these three questions is the first. If we consider what justification the ancients have for their claim, we can see why that claim must be true. Moreover, as we will also show, it must be true because of the nature of practical rationality as the ancients understood it — that is, in terms of normative eudaimonism. We will show this by marshalling unexpected resources: Donald Davidson’s work in understanding how we interpret others and in so doing make sense of them as rational beings. If we couple Davidson’s account of interpretation with the eudaimonist structure of practical rationality essential to these ancient ethical theories, psychological eudaimonism is a consequence. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section I, we lay out the textual basis for ascribing PE to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Section II, we introduce Davidson’s account of interpretation. This allows us to appropriate that account in Section III to the particular purposes of normative eudaimonism, to support the claim that we must ascribe the desire to live well to those whom we would see as rational. Finally, in Section IV we consider challenges to this strategy. (shrink)

This monograph is an in-depth and engaging discourse on the deeply cognitive roots of human scientific quest. The process of making scientific inferences is continuous with the day-to-day inferential activity of individuals, and is predominantly inductive in nature. Inductive inference, which is fallible, exploratory, and open-ended, is of essential relevance in our incessant efforts at making sense of a complex and uncertain world around us, and covers a vast range of cognitive activities, among which scientific exploration constitutes the pinnacle. Inductive (...) inference has a personal aspect to it, being rooted in the cognitive unconscious of individuals, which has recently been found to be of paramount importance in a wide range of complex cognitive processes. One other major aspect of the process of inference making, including the making of scientific inferences, is the role of a vast web of beliefs lodged in the human mind, as also of a huge repertoire of heuristics, that constitute an important component of ‘unconscious intelligence’. Finally, human cognitive activity is dependent in a large measure on emotions and affects, that operate mostly at an unconscious level. Of special importance in scientific inferential activity is the process of hypothesis making, which is examined in this book, along with the above aspects of inductive inference, at considerable depth. The book focuses on the inadequacy of the viewpoint of naive realism in understanding the contextual nature of scientific theories, where a cumulative progress towards an ultimate truth about Nature appears to be too simplistic a generalization. It poses a critique to the commonly perceived image of science which is seen as the last word in logic and objectivity, the latter in the double sense of being independent of individual psychological propensities and, at the same time, approaching a correct understanding of the workings of a mind-independent nature. Adopting the naturalist point of view, it examines the essential tension between the cognitive endeavours of individuals and scientific communities, immersed in belief systems and cultures, on the one hand, and the engagement with a mind-independent reality on the other. In the end, science emerges as an interpretation of nature, which is perceived by us only contextually, as successively emerging cross-sections of limited scope and extent. Successive waves of theory building in science appear as episodic and kaleidoscopic changes in perspective as certain in-built borders are crossed, rather than as a cumulative progress towards some ultimate truth. While written in an informal and conversational style, the book raises a number of deep and intriguing questions located at the interface of cognitive psychology and philosophy of science, meant for both the general lay reader and the specialist. Of particular interest is the way it explores the role of belief (aided by emotions and affects) in making the process of inductive inference possible since belief is a subtle though all-pervasive cognitive factor not adequately investigated in the current literature. (shrink)

This review analyzes Chomsky’s rationale for devising a theory of generative grammar to replace the “standard theory” of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) by one that shifts responsibility for the semantic interpretation of sentences from the forms generated in deep structure to those generated by the entire syntactic apparatus of generative grammar. The shift was very much a work in progress when this review was written, and the outcome it predicted occurred only a few years later with the (...) publication of Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures (1981). (shrink)

The focus of this chapter will be Kant’s understanding of Hume, and its impact on Kant’s critical philosophy. Contrary to the traditional reading of this relationship, which focuses on Kant’s (admittedly real) dissatisfaction with Hume’s account of causation, my discussion will focus on broader issues of philosophical methodology. Following a number of recent interpreters, I will argue that Kant sees Hume as raising, in a particularly forceful fashion, a ‘demarcation challenge’ concerning how to distinguish the legitimate use of reason (...) in (say) natural scientific contexts from the illegitimate use of it in (say) dogmatic metaphysics. I will then go on to argue that Kant sees Hume’s tendency to slide into more radical forms of skepticism as a symptom of his failure to provide a systematic or principled account of this distinction. This failure, I argue, can be traced (according to Kant) to Hume’s impoverished, non-hylomorphic account of our faculties – which both robs Hume of the materials necessary to construct a genuinely systematic philosophy as Kant understands this, and makes it impossible for Hume to clearly conceive of what Kant calls ‘Formal Idealism.’ In this way, the failings of Hume’s account of causation are (for Kant) symptoms of more fundamental limitations within Hume’s philosophy. I close by briefly discussing the similarities between Hume and Kant’s understanding of the relationship between, first, philosophical methodology and, second, the nature of our faculties. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that the empirical knowledge of the world depends on a priori conditions of human sensibility and understanding, i. e., our capacities of sense experience and concept formation. The objective knowledge presupposes, on one hand, space and time as a priori conditions of sensibility and, on another hand, a priori judgments, like the principle of causality, as constitutive conditions of understanding. The problem is that in the XX century the physical science completely changed (...) how we conceive our knowledge of the world. Face to this new situation, what was changed in our classical reason? However, if the transcendental point of view is adopted, in the specific case of quantum mechanics, we have to wonder about the general conditions of this theory that make possible such knowledge, which predictive value is much more accurate than the classical physics. The aim of this work is firstly to show the Kantian implications on Bohr’s interpretation of quantum phenomena and secondly to provide an overview of the key elements for understanding the transcendental locus of ordinary language in the quantum mechanics context, in order to give support to a transcendental pragmatic position in the analysis of science. (shrink)

This article connects François Laruelle's non-philosophical experiments with the axiomatic method to non-philosophy's anti-hermeneutic stance. Focusing on two texts from 1987 composed using the axiomatic method, "The Truth According to Hermes" and "Theorems on the Good News," I demonstrate how non-philosophy utilizes structural mechanisms to both expand and contract the field of potential models allowed by non-philosophy. This demonstration involves developing a notion of interpretation, which synthesizes Rocco Gangle's work on model theory with respect to non-philosophy (...) with Laruelle's critique of hermeneutics. I use Alexander Galloway's interpretation of "The Truth According to Hermes" as a case study of the limits non-philosophy sets upon its use as a basis for philosophical models, in contrast to arguments by Gangle regarding non-philosophy's greater genericity in comparison to philosophy. (shrink)

On a common reading of Davidson, the motivation for his proposal that a meaning theory is to take the form of a truth theory is at least partly guided by concern with the ends and means of interpretation. At the same time, the consensus seems to be that this proposal faces a particularly stubborn justificatory burden. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to suggest that there is a promising route to discharging this burden, albeit one that is visible (...) only once we shift our attention away from the so-called ‘problem of interpretation’; second, to make the case that, contrary to initial appearances, the line of justification offered here gives us a plausible interpretation of Davidson’s own goals. (shrink)

In the recent past, especially in the last quarter of 20th century, there have been drastic changes which have taken place. People all over the world, started feeling the pinch of “rate of change” in emerging contemporary society. It has influenced all the aspects of human life. It also influenced the ancient conception of philosophy that it seeks to understand the mysteries of existence and reality. It was also influenced by present scientific development which raised philosophical speculations towards linguistic (...) analysis, mental content and later on cognitive science studies. It is true that philosophy tries to discover the nature of truth and knowledge and to find what is of basic value and importance in life. It also examines the relationships between humanity and nature and between the individual and society. Philosophy arises out of wonder, curiosity, and the desire to know and understand. Philosophy is thus a form of inquiry--a process of analysis, criticism, interpretation, and speculation. It is contributing in the process of human development since ancient times. The process of human development begins with the conceptions and continues throughout life. It takes as many different courses as every human being develops in a unique way, embedded in the context of his or her environment. In the light of above assumptions, we are going to study the role of philosophy and values in public affairs and how philosophy shaping the human life with its continuous progress. (shrink)

The Early Han enjoyed some prosperity while it struggled with centralization and political control of the kingdom. The Later Han was plagued by the court intrigue, corrupt eunuchs, and massive flooding of the Yellow River that eventually culminated in popular uprisings that led to the demise of the dynasty. The period that followed was a renewed warring states period that likewise stimulated a rebirth of philosophical and religious debate, growth, and innovations. Alan K. L. Chan and Yuet-Keung Lo's Philosophy (...) and Religion in Early Medieval China is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on medieval China. It is a companion volume to their coauthored work, Interpretation and Literature in Early .. (shrink)

According to ordinary language philosophy (OLP), philosophical problems can be solved by investigating ordinary language, often because the problems stem from its misuse. According to ideal language philosophy (ILP), on the other hand, philosophical problems exist because ordinary language is flawed and has to be improved or replaced by constructed languages that do not exhibit these flaws. OLP and ILP together make up linguistic philosophy, the view that philosophical problems are problems of language. Linguistic philosophy is (...) opposed to what may be called, for lack of a better word, ‘traditional philosophy’ (TP), the view that philosophical problems can be solved by discovering non-linguistic facts. In the following, OLP, ILP, and TP are taken to be methodologies, that is, frameworks in which to interpret and evaluate different philosophical methods (i.e., argumentative strategies). The two linguistic methodologies are discussed separately with TP as a foil, and then used to interpret the status of different philosophical methods. While each of the methods discussed here finds a plausible interpretation in each methodology, there are other arguments for and against linguistic philosophy in general, and for and against ILP and OLP in particular. As none of these arguments is decisive, I conclude with a superficial moral about peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

This is a thoroughly revised version of a paper that I originally presented at the "Kant in Asia" international conference on "The Unity of Human Personhood, held in Hong Kong in May of 2009. After explaining what Kant means by his "architectonic" form of reasoning, I argue that the Yijing (the Chinese "Book of Changes") exhibits the same type of reasoning. I contrast two uses of architectonic reasoning: divining the truth vs. divination. The article concludes with an illustration of how (...) the Yijing might be used as a guidebook for obtaining wisdom. (shrink)

Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks (...) and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysical research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein's objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind. Contents: Introduction (Robert Vinten); Ch.1: 'Wittgenstein, Concepts, and Human Nature' (Roger Trigg); Ch.2: 'On Truth, Language, and Objectivity' (Florian Franken Figueiredo); Ch.3 'Pascal Boyer's Miscellany of Homunculi: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Religion Explained' (Robert Vinten); Ch.4 'The Brain Perceives/Infers' (Hans van Eyghen); Ch.5 'The Imaginary Inner Inside Cognitive Science of Religion' (Christopher Hoyt); Ch.6 'Cognitive Theories and Wittgenstein: Looking for Convergence not for Divergence' (Olympia Panagiotidou); Ch. 7 'Wittgenstein, Naturalism, and Interpreting Religious Phenomena' (Thomas Carroll); Ch.8 'Natural Thoughts and Unnatural Oughts: Lessing, Wittgenstein, and Contemporary CSR' (Guy Axtell); Ch.9 'Normative Cognition in Cognitive Science of Religion' (Mark Addis); Ch.10 'Brains as the Source of Being: Mind/Brain Focus and the Western Model of Mind in Dominant Cognitive Science Discourse' (Rita McNamara); Ch.11 'On Religious Practices as Multiscale Active Inference: Certainties Emerging From Recurrent Interactions Within and Across Individuals and Groups' (Inês Hipólito and Casper Hesp). (shrink)

When we say that we interpret customary international law, what is this thing that we actually interpret? Depending on how we answer this question, our view on interpretative methodology will change. It seems that the most promising approach is to say that interpretation of customary international law is an interpretation of certain legal practices. However, here we also encounter some problems. The dominant doctrine of customary international law requiring state practice and opinio juris assumes that only by adding a psychological (...) element to a regularity of behaviour can we speak of customary international law. That is, opinio juris performs a function of generating both legality and normativity of practices. -/- The article challenges this view by drawing on jurisprudential ideas that define practices as inherently normative. State practices are normative regardless of opinio juris, otherwise they are not practices at all. This view allows to differentiate between two instances of interpretation of customary international law. One is focused on clarification of the normative content of state practices, another is focusing on identification of these practices as legal ones. -/- Interpretation as clarification involves assessing structures of practical reasoning inherent in given practices. Drawing on Joseph Raz's theory of normativity, the article suggests that interpretation of customary rules implies establishing connections between first- and second-order reasons that form the practice and give it meaning. This entails that interpretation of customary international law focuses on dynamics of reasons, their inclusion and exclusion within an existing normative framework. That is, evolutive interpretation of customary international law is not only possible, it is inevitable. -/- Interpretation as identification does not focus on the normative content of practices, but rather involves showing that existing second-order reasons meet a threshold of legal validity. This threshold may take shape of opinio juris, but may as well be treated functionally, when legality of a practice is linked to its relevance in a broader set of legal practices. (shrink)

This article aims to show that in his little-known work Denkbewegungen (MS 183), Wittgenstein sketchesan existential philosophy that has been influenced by Kierkegaard. While earlier interpretations of Denkbewegungen stress that this is a diary and tend to favour a biographical orpsychological approach to the diary, I try – with a thematic andhistorical approach − to show that this book sheds new light upon how Wittgenstein was occupied with Kierkegaard (and Christian-ity) on the one hand, and ethics, religion, and (...) existential philoso-phy on the other. Because of this, Denkbewegungen can provideus with a better understanding of how Wittgenstein, during animportant period in the 1930s, developed his thinking. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of Seneca's 58th letter to Lucilius and Porphyry's Isagoge, which were the origin of the tree diagrams that became popular in philosophy and logic from the early Middle Ages onwards. These diagrams visualise the extent to which a concept can be understood as a category, genus, species or individual and what the method of dihairesis (division) means. The paper explores the dissimilarities between Seneca's and Porphyry's tree structures, scrutinising them through the perspective of modern (...) graph theory. Although traditional trees can be interpreted in a modern way, their terms and definitions defy modern standardisation. These distinctions are not only useful for differentiating between Seneca's and Porphyry's trees, but also for comprehending the evolution of this philosophical tradition. Thus the paper highlights the continued significance of these tree diagrams in analysing concepts and categories in philosophy and structuring objects and information in modern fields such as artificial intelligence, computer science, bioinformatics, graph theory, and many more. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to establish a connection between modelling practices and interpretive approaches in quantum mechanics, taking as a starting point the literature on scientific representation. Different types of modalities play different roles in scientific representation. I postulate that the way theoretical structures are interpreted in this respect affects the way models are constructed. In quantum mechanics, this would be the case in particular of initial conditions and observables. I examine two formulations of quantum mechanics, the standard (...) wave-function formulation and the consistent histories formulation, and show that they correspond to opposite stances, which confirms my approach. Finally, I examine possible strategies for deciding between these stances. (shrink)

This short article is based on my special lecture entitled "Aristotle and the Philosophy of Education" at Tamagawa University Research Institute in Tokyo on September 19, 2015, through a recording of the spoken language transcribed in written form with some corrections. The lecture delivered on that day consists of two parts: referring to historical research and a statistical survey, the first half focuses on uncovering the fact that the philosophy of education has been slighted both in Japanese and (...) Western academia and that this fact is valid for both Aristotle's and contemporary studies on the philosophy of education; the second half endeavors to describe two possible research projects - namely, a classical-philosophical and interpretative study of Aristotle's philosophy of education and a contemporary-philosophical and Aristotelian study of the philosophy education. Some of these topics have been published but others have not. This short article concerns the first half of the lecture and measures the gap between philosophy and the philosophy of education in Japan through a statistical survey of the largest competitive research funding database in Japan: KAKEN. (shrink)

Jorge Portilla argues that authentic philosophical inquiry plays a liberating function. This function is that of bringing more fully to consciousness aspects of identities or ways of being‐in‐the world that have been, up until then, tacit or opaque to the agent herself to facilitate her endorsement, rejection, or modification of these identities. For Portilla, this function facilitates greater self‐mastery by increasing the range of free variations of subjectivity available to the agent, and this increase in self‐mastery itself constitutes a kind (...) of liberation. The main goal of this article is to provide a substantive interpretation of the nature of liberation Portilla thinks is embedded in this central function of authentic philosophical inquiry. I argue that this type of liberation should be understood ultimately in terms of increases in human agency, so I label it “agential liberation.” For Portilla, agential liberation involves two central elements: (i) a type of agential flourishing central to human flourishing, and (ii) an increase in the reach of intentional action that I describe as an expansion in the arena of human agency. (shrink)

Kant’s example of lying to the murderer at the door has been a cherished source of scorn for thinkers with little sympathy for Kant’s philosophy and a source of deep puzzlement for those more favorably inclined. The problem is that Kant seems to say that it’s always wrong to lie – even if necessary to prevent a murderer from reaching his victim – and that if one does lie, one becomes partially responsible for the killing of the victim. If (...) this is correct, then Kant’s account seems not only to require us to respect the murderer more than the victim, but also that we somehow can become responsible for the consequences that ultimately result from someone else’s wrongdoing. After World War II our spontaneous negative reaction to this apparently absurd line of argument is brought out even more starkly by making the murderer at the door a Nazi officer looking for Jews hidden in people’s homes. This paper argues that Kant’s discussion of lying to the murderer at the door has been seriously misinterpreted. The suggested root of the problem is that the Doctrine of Right has been given insufficient attention in Kant interpretation. It is in this work we find many of the arguments needed to understand Kant’s analysis of lying to the murderer in “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy”. When we interpret this essay in light of Kant’s discussion in the Doctrine of Right, we can make sense of why lying to the murderer isn’t to wrong the murderer, why we nevertheless become responsible for the consequences of the lie and why choosing to lie to do wrong ‘in the highest degree’. Finally, the Doctrine of Right account of rightful relations makes it possible for us to analyze the example when we make the murderer at the door a Nazi officer. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that before the emergence of terms like “consciousness” and “Bewusstsein,” philosophers and scientists relied on intuitions about phenomena of subjective experience that we would now classify as “conscious.” In other words, pre-modern thinkers availed themselves of one or another concept of consciousness as they developed their theories of mind, perception, representation, the self, etc., although they did not attend to consciousness in its own right. In the early modern period, terminology of consciousness emerges to pick (...) out concept(s) of consciousness. This brings with it an occasion for philosophical disagreements concerning consciousness among contemporaries, on the one hand, and an occasion for us as interpreters of historical authors to better assess their views on consciousness, on the other. (shrink)

In this article I interpret resilience and evolution in view of the philosophy of Leibniz. First, I discuss resilience as a substance’s or a monad’s “quantity of essence” — its “degree of perfection” — which I express as the quality of the Whole with respect to the sum of the qualities of the Parts. Then I discuss evolution, which I interpret here as the autopoietic Principle that sets Itself in motion and creates all reality, including Itself. This Principle may (...) be considered as a sort of ante-litteram metaphysical Darwinian Selection. My interpretations provide a different formulation for questions such as “why natural evolution evolves?” and “why is this the best of all possible worlds?” In this article I also provide a geometrical interpretation of a key aspect behind the “divine mathematics” of the autopoietic Principle. (shrink)

In this article we explore the underpinnings of what we view as a recent "backlash" in English law, a judicial reaction against considering children's and young people's expressions of their own feelings about treatment as their "true" wishes. We use this case law as a springboard to conceptual discussion, rooted in (a) empirical psychological work on child development and (b) three key philosophical ideas: rationality, autonomy and identity. Using these three concepts, we explore different understandings of our central theme, true (...) wishes. These different conceptual interpretations, we argue, help to elucidate important clinical questions in the area of children's informed consent to treatment. For example, how much should a child's own wishes count in making medical decisions? Does it make a difference if the child or young person is undergoing psychiatric treatment?—if in some sense her wishes are abnormal, not "true" expressions of what she really wants? If the child's wishes do not count, why not? If they do matter but count for less, how much less? We conclude by advocating functional tests of a young person's true wishes, applicable on a case-by-case basis, rather than a black-and-white distinction between "incompetent" children and "competent" adults. (shrink)

The well-known paradox between Marxism and morality is that on the one hand, Marx claims that morality is a form of ideology that should be abandoned, while on the other hand, Marx makes quite a few moral judgments in his writings. It is in the research after Marx’s death that the paradox is found, explored and solved. This paper surveys the history of interpreting Marx from the aspect of moral philosophy by dividing it into three sequential phases. Then it (...) presents the research on Marx in each phase, points out conflicting questions within the different periods and puts forward the solution in the end. This paper points out that a philosophical viewpoint based on Marx’s theory of historical materialism is the key to solving the paradox between Marxism and morality. (shrink)

In contrast to a stereotypical account of Indian philosophy that are entailments of the interpreter’s beliefs (an approach that violates basic standards of reason), an approach to Indian philosophy grounded on the constraints of formal reason reveals not only a wide spread disagreement on dharma (THE RIGHT OR THE GOOD), but also a pervasive commitment to the practical foundation of life’s challenges. The flip side of this practical orientation is the criticism of ordinary experience as erroneous and reducible (...) to the agent’s mental states. If we ignore the background practical orientation in Indian philosophy, this seems not like an error theory, that I call Ironic Idealism, but as a defense of idealism. I consider salient candidates for Indian Idealism (Advaita Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, Kāśmīra Śaivism and the Yogavāsiṣṭha) and note that these positions continue a theme in Indian philosophy of articulating Ironic Idealism. Ironic Idealism depends upon the very Indian distinction between ultimate and provisional truth, and Ironic Idealism criticizes the mundane, provisional sort of "truth" as psychological and mental --- and ultimately false. Interpretation, the common approach to the study of Indian philosophy, is an example of what Ironic Idealism criticizes. This explains why authors incorrectly find Idealism everywhere in Indian thought. (shrink)

Wittgenstein once wrote, “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism,” and Nyberg’s explanation as to why Hilary Putnam’s answer to the question of whether we might intelligibly suppose ourselves to be “brains in a vat” is wrong takes us, by way of Wittgenstein’s statement, to the intersection of metaphysics and epistemology, i.e., to the very cornerstone of western philosophy, where we find, waiting for us, the absolute I of (...) solipsism. Yet, it is the solipsistic I which in its articulation most obviously violates the private language argument’s stricture against criterionless reference, though the solipsist has available a reply of sorts – the reply of silence, a complete silence which shrouds equally the blank slates of absolute solipsism and pure realism. Through silence, the I of solipsism becomes the eye of realism and, no longer visible even to itself, vanishes from the realm of analytic discourse, only to be reborn at the correspondent point of each successive incarnation of the paradigm. Other methods of philosophy must, thus, be adopted if we are ever to escape the analytic paradigm’s cyclic limits. It is here, at the point where analysis alone can carry us no further, that “Zen” transitions from an unusually-structured but still traditional philosophic essay into something else entirely, with the incorporation into its closing pages of 15 poetic pieces, each drawn from Nyberg’s 100, a longer text of philosophical poetry which takes up where “Zen” leaves off. [email protected] Iowa City, Iowa/Palo Alto, California/New York, New York/Los Angeles, California/Rapid City, South Dakota June 1982-January 2020 . (shrink)

The question on the essence of man and his relationship to nature is certainly one of the most important themes in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. One of the ways by which Jonas approaches the issue consists in a comparison between the contemporary interpretation of man and forms of wisdom such as those conveyed by ancient Greek philosophy and the Jewish tradition. The reconstruction and discussion of these frameworks play a fundamental role in Jonas’s critique of the modern (...) mind. In the first section I introduce the anthropological problem in Hans Jonas’s oeuvre. Moreover, I clarify why it becomes essential for Jonas to resort to different forms of traditional wisdom. In the second and third sections I try to give an account (as complete as possible) of the two generalisations which Jonas shapes in order to criticise the modern concepts of man and nature. In the last section I show how Jonas links these generalisations to his own philosophical assessment of modernity. Finally, I focus on his methodology, which exemplifies how critical thinking may arise from a reconsideration of traditional contents. (shrink)

The conspicuous similarities between interpretive strategies in classical statistical mechanics and in quantum mechanics may be grounded on their employment of common implementations of probability. The objective probabilities which represent the underlying stochasticity of these theories can be naturally associated with three of their common formal features: initial conditions, dynamics, and observables. Various well-known interpretations of the two theories line up with particular choices among these three ways of implementing probability. This perspective has significant application to debates on primitive (...) ontology and to the quantum measurement problem. (shrink)

Reeves and Sinnicks present Theodor Adorno as a philosopher with a sombre message to business ethics. Capitalist markets distort our needs and work in business organisations stultifies our moral capacities. Thus, the discipline’s self-understanding must be revised, and supplemented with reflections on what would be good work: free creative activity. After raising some questions about their interpretation of Adorno’s writings on human needs, I argue that the paper does not contain all the necessary resources to support its ferociously critical claims. (...) Once such resources are made available, however, the appeal to a notion of good work is no longer viable. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what constitutes an apt interpreted model for the purpose of analyzing causation. I first collect universally adopted aptness principles into a basic account, flagging open questions and choice points along the way. I then explore various additional aptness principles that have been proposed in the literature but have not been widely adopted, the motivations behind their proposals, and the concerns with each that stand in the way of universal adoption. I conclude that the remaining (...) work of articulating aptness for a SEM analysis of causation is tied up with issue to do with modality, ontology, and mereology. Continuing this work is therefore likely to shed light on the relationship between these areas and causation more generally. (shrink)

The question “what is an interpretation?” is often intertwined with the perhaps even harder question “what is a scientific theory?”. Given this proximity, we try to clarify the first question to acquire some ground for the latter. The quarrel between the syntactic and semantic conceptions of scientific theories occupied a large part of the scenario of the philosophy of science in the 20th century. For many authors, one of the two currents needed to be victorious. We endorse that such (...) debate, at least in the terms commonly expressed, can be misleading. We argue that the traditional notion of “interpretation” within the syntax/semantic debate is not the same as that of the debate concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics. As much as the term is the same, the term “interpretation” as employed in quantum mechanics has its meaning beyond (pure) logic. Our main focus here lies on the formal aspects of the solutions to the measurement problem. There are many versions of quantum theory, many of them incompatible with each other. In order to encompass a wider variety of approaches to quantum theory, we propose a different one with an emphasis on pure formalism. This perspective has the intent of elucidating the role of each so-called “interpretation” of quantum mechanics, as well as the precise origin of the need to interpret it. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between philosophy and science in the writings of Karl Jaspers and with its reception in the wider scholarly literature. The problem discussed is how to characterize the relationship that exists between science—defined on pure Kantian grounds as a universally valid knowledge of phenomenal objects—and philosophy—conceived by Jaspers as the transcending mode of thinking of personal Existenz rising towards the totality and unity of Being. Two solutions to that problem arise from Jaspers’s writings. (...) The oppositionist view is based in his earlier philosophy of Existenz. It describes the discrepancy between determinateness, bestowed by science to its objects, and freedom of self-determination, which is both a synonym and a condition of possibility for Existenz. The reciprocal view is based in Jaspers’s later works, where he focuses on exploration of his concept of Being (das Umgreifende). By contrast with most of Jaspers’s commentators, the present interpretation is anchored in a developmentaland contextual understanding of Jaspers’s thought. Showing the transcendental background of this topic, the proposed interpretation allows us to abstain from viewing the two solutions as incoherent or contradictory and instead to see them as constitutive of a single philosophical course. (shrink)

It is not by thinking that we create worlds. It is by understanding the world that we learn to think. Cosmovision is a term that should mean a set of foundations from which emerges a systemic understanding of the Universe, its components as life, the world we live in, nature, human phenomena, and their relationships. It is, therefore, a field of analytical philosophy fed by the sciences, whose objective is this aggregated and epistemologically sustainable knowledge about everything that we (...) are and contain, that surrounds us, and that relates to us in any way. It is something as old as human thought, and, in addition to using elements of scientific cosmology, it encompasses everything in philosophy and science that refers to the universe and life. A cosmovision is not a set of ideas, hypotheses, and assumptions but a system based on observation, analysis, evidence, and demonstration. No cosmovision intends to define, establish, or propose but only to understand, analyse, and interpret. Each of us builds and transports his cosmovision throughout life, without establishing forms, as a background for our thinking and behaviour. Linguistically, the term “cosmovision” would derive from the German, equivalent to the concept of “ Weltanschauung,” as used by several philosophers. However, this linguistic relationship is not applicable because it contradicts what we propose as a cosmovision. This German word refers to a pre-logical or proto- experimental vision of reality, with an intuitive context and far from critical knowledge still non-existent at the time of its formulation. Undoubtedly, cosmovisions, in the sense in which we understand them, house and use these proto-experimental or pre-logical elements that include history, the collective unconscious, and all the archetypes we carry. However, in the concept that we apply here, the cosmovision goes far beyond this content, firstly by constantly submitting it to present critical thinking, and finally by making the analytic experience ( and not the thought itself or intuition) its actual universe. António Lopes expose the breadth of this content: -/- "Cosmovisions are not the product of thought. They do not spring from the simple desire to know. The apprehension of reality is an important moment in its configuration, but, nevertheless, it is only one. It comes from the vital conduct, from the experience of life's evaluation, and from the structure of our psychic totality. The elevation of life to consciousness in the knowledge of reality, in the valuation, and in the volitional reality is the slow and arduous work that humanity has done in the development of the conceptions of life. (W. Dilthey, 1992 [1911]: 120)”(1) -/- In this work, we seek to outline a cosmovision based on the realities that science offers today. We do not propose, at any time, to do science; or theorise philosophy, but we will always seek to be supported by them or, at least, protected by them from the cognitive distortions that we usually carry. ________________________________________________ (1) Lopes , Antonio – “ Weltanschauung (Cosmovision)” (2009 ) in Carlos Ceia's E-Dictionary of Literary Terms. -/- . (shrink)