Contents: Anna Lemańska, The Autonomous Philosophy of Nature ; Anna Latawiec, The Progress in the Philosophy of Nature ; Grzegorz Bugajak, Philosophy of Nature, Realism, and the Postulated Ontology of Scientific Theories ; Maria-Magdalena Weker, Multi-dimensional Image of the World ; Jarosław Kukowski, The Application of Principia Mathematica and Principia Metaphisica for Resolving the Incommensurate Paradigms. The Comparative Study in Philosophy of Physics and Philosophy of Nature ; Danuta Ługowska, The Dilemmas (...) Concerning the Essence of Life ; Adam Świeżyński, The Beginning of the Universe in the Concept of Creation and in Contemporary Cosmology. The Philosopher’s of Nature Considerations . (shrink)

Enactivists frequently argue their account heralds a revolution in cognitive science: enactivism will unseat cognitivism as the dominant paradigm. We examine the lines of reasoning enactivists employ in stirring revolt, but show that none of these prove compelling reasons for cognitivism to be replaced by enactivism. First, we examine the hard sell of enactivism: enactivism reveals a critical explanatory gap at the heart of cognitivism. We show that enactivism does not meet the requirements to incite a paradigm shift in the (...) Kuhnian sense—there is no internal crisis in cognitivism. Nor does it provide inherently better explanations of cognition as some have claimed. Second, we consider the soft sell of enactivism: enactivism provides a more attractive, parsimonious, or clear-eyed lens on cognition. This move proves to boil down to a misunderstanding of how theories are selected in science. Instead we lend support to a broader and more desirable way to conceive of enactivism, the recent proposal that enactivism is a philosophy of nature. We explain how a philosophy of nature does more than support a single research paradigm by integrating scientific questions into a cohesive picture. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to look at the differential (as in interventionist) readings undertaken by speculative realists (A school of contemporary thought reacting against post-Kantian 'Correlationism') Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier, with the former concentrating on reading Schelling's naturalism relating to reason, while the latter claiming the constancy of thought's connection to thought. For Brassier, thought must be transcendentally separate from nature, or what he calls 'exteriority', and Grant insists on nature's thinking as plain nature. (...) This doesn't mean 'interiority' is given weight in Grant's thought, but, on the contrary isn't a concern, as for him, the limiting factor of thinking (dichotomy in subject-object relationality) is the regionality of a particular identity attempting to grasp nature's infintude. Brassier maintains scientific statements as capable of supplying reasons for believing in the possibilities of determining thought's tracking and missing nature. He accomplishes this by clarifying notions of concept and distinguishing objects from concepts. This alien-ness of thought generates the possibilities of questioning the human production as against nature. This cardinal issue tries to answer the repercussions probably generated in the wake of either apathetic aspects of mind or the deepest powers of speculation. Not only that, a simultaneous questioning of the legitimacy of ontology and epistemology in the natural world is encountered. Grant advocates the objectifying of the self to grasp the productivity of self's thinking, but at the same time considering objectifying as an ongoing process, a kind of 'becoming'. In other words, it is the questioning of the limits of 'being' in the creation of episteme that takes precedence in Grant. Brassier on the other hand is concerned with the doing away of the dichotomy of being and thinking of meaning. This tension raises the issue of nature philosophy in a duel of 'eliminativism' and 'materialism', between the extent that calls for grounding nature without reliance on a structure undermining the discovery of contemporary science or supporting an anthropic view. (shrink)

Contra widespread readings of Karoline von Günderrode’s 1805 “Idea of the Earth ” as a creative adaptation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, this article proposes that “Idea of the Earth” furnishes a moral account of the human relation to the natural world, one which does not map onto any of the more well-known romantic or idealist accounts of the human-nature relation. Specifically, I argue that “Idea of the Earth” responds to the great Enlightenment question concerning the human (...) vocation, but from a distinctive romantic-idealist angle. I begin by demonstrating the influence of Fichte’s 1800 Vocation of Humanity on Günderrode’s thinking, which involves an investigation of both Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s critical response to it. I then turn to “Idea of the Earth” where I analyse Günderrode’s understanding of nature and the self in light of her critique of Fichte, and thereby distinguish her position from Fichte’s and from the position espoused by her fellow romantics and idealists. By reading “Idea of the Earth” alongside Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s remarks on it, this article sheds new light on both Günderrode’s understanding and defence of Naturphilosophie – against Fichte’s critique of it – and her distinctive contribution to romantic philosophies of nature. (shrink)

The philosophy of nature operates as one complete and systematic aspect of Schelling’s philosophy in the years 1797-1801 and as complement to Schelling’s transcendental philosophy at this time. The philosophy of nature comes with its own, naturalistic epistemology, according to which human natural productivity provides the basis for human access to nature’s own productive laws. On the basis of one’s natural productivity, one can consciously formulate principles which match nature’s own lawful principles. (...) One refines these principles through a process of experimentation, which relies on the human being’s naturalness in productivity. By making natural activity central to knowledge, Schelling takes seriously the naturalness of humans, without denying the dramatic shift that occurs when consciousness and rationality factor into experience. This epistemology can thus be fruitfully put in conversation with current philosophical discussions of mind and nature, in that it offers a naturalized account of mind which does not suffer from the typical weaknesses of a contemporary Kantian or Hegelian account. The paper thus concludes with a discussion of John McDowell’s Mind and World, and shows how Schelling’s philosophy can resolve some tensions in that work. (shrink)

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its (...) physical condition. Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature. (shrink)

The Cartesian concept of nature, which has determined modern thinking until the present time, has become obsolete. It shall be shown that Hegel's objective-idealistic conception of nature discloses, in comparison to that of Descartes, new perspectives for the comprehension of nature and that this, in turn, results in possibilities of actualizing Hegel's philosophy of nature. If the argumentation concerning philosophy of nature is intended to catch up with the concrete Being-of-nature and to (...) meet it in its concretion, then this is impossible for the finite spirit in a strictly a priori sense – this is the thesis supported here which is not at all close to Hegel. As the argumentation rather has to consider the conditions of realization concerning the Being-of-nature, too, it is compelled to take up empirical elements – concerning the organism, for instance, system-theoretical aspects, physical and chemical features of the nervous system, etc. With that, on the one hand, empirical-scientific premises are assumed (e.g. the lawlikeness of nature), which on the other hand become (now close to Hegel) possibly able to be founded in the frame of a Hegelian-idealistic conception. In this sense, a double strategy of empirical-scientific concretization and objective-idealistic foundation is followed up, which represents the methodical basic principle of the developed considerations. In the course of the undertaking, the main aspects of the whole Hegelian design concerning the philosophy of nature are considered – space and time, mass and motion, force and law of nature, the organism, the pro-blem of evolution, psychic being – as well as Hegel's basic thesis concerning the philosophy of nature, that therein a tendency toward coherence and idealization manifests itself in the sense of a (categorically) gradually rising succession of nature: from the separateness of space to the ideality of sensation. In the sense of the double strategy of concretization and foundation it is shown that on the one hand possibilities of philosophical penetration concerning actual empirical-scientific results are opened, and on the other hand – in turn – a re-interpretation of Hegel's theorem on the basis of physical, evolution-theoretical and system-theoretical argumentation also becomes possible. In this mutual crossing-over and elucidation of empirical and Hegelian argumentation not only do perspectives of a new comprehension of nature become visible, but also, at the same time – as an essential consequence of this methodical principle – thoughts on the possibilities of actualizing Hegel's philosophy of nature. (shrink)

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. Because of this new scientific understanding of our universe, the nature of miracles must be predetermined events that (...) occur within our static block universe. The predetermined static nature of our universe lends itself to the predetermined occurrence of miracles without the necessity of any intervention in time or interference with the laws of physics. Moreover, the new philosophy of superdeterminism supports the existence of a Creator God capable of predetermining the occurrence of miracles in human events. (shrink)

This paper explores the anatomical foundations of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Rather than simply looking at the body, he contrives specific procedures for revealing unmanifest phenomena. In some cases, these interventions seem extensive enough to qualify as experiments. At the work bench, one can observe the parts of animals in the manner Aristotle describes, even if his descriptions seem at odds with 20th century textbooks. Manipulating animals allows us to recover his teleological thought more fully. This consideration of Aristotle as (...) a sophisticated biologist helps our reading of his writings in other areas of philosophy. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy, once central to the self-understanding of modern philosophy, is under attack from at least two sides: (1) on the one side, there is a reawakened interest in naturalist philosophy, questioning the hybris of human self-understanding as being “above nature” and essentially free and rational; (2) on the other side, there is the feminist critique of autonomy as the wrongful generalization of a certain masculine/western understanding of the subject as independent person. Both aim at (...) the core of what the term “autonomy” normatively stands for: the capacity for rational self-determination. We inherit this concept of autonomy from Kant and encounter a variety of post-Kantian variations of it. In my paper, I will turn to Hegel in order to show that, although conceptualizing autonomy as rational self-determination, in his Philosophy of Nature, he incorporates elements of both naturalism and relational autonomy. Under revision, his concept of spirit provides us with a picture of the human as self-conscious animal or nature grasping itself. His notion of autonomy then turns out to be surprisingly fruitful for current debates, enabling us to understand our animalistic nature and our fundamental interdependency in a way that is not opposed to such concepts as rationality, freedom, and autonomy. As I will try to show, re-reading Hegel thus allows us to reconceptualize autonomy in a way that accords with its critics. (shrink)

This paper ties together several anthropological and naturphilosophische themes in Hegel in order to re-examine the place of the philosophy of nature in the Encyclopedia. By taking Hegel’s anthropology as a starting point, I argue that his philosophy of nature has for its subject not nature “as such,” but nature as cognized by Geist, so that the identity of these two natures is only constructed by spirit itself retroactively. I trace the origin of this (...) difference to the revolutionary event that institutes Hegel’s anthropology – which is not a transition from nature to spirit, but a pure break or new beginning, culminating in the creation of the conceptual world of nature as “we” know it. As a result, the philosophy of nature does not precede, but follows from, the anthropology and the philosophy of spirit; the natural foundation is retroactively replaced by the philosopher with the anthropological one. (shrink)

Two seemingly contradictory tendencies have accompanied the development of the natural sciences in the past 150 years. On the one hand, the natural sciences have been instrumental in effecting a thoroughgoing transformation of social structures and have made a permanent impact on the conceptual world of human beings. This historical period has, on the other hand, also brought to light the merely hypothetical validity of scientific knowledge. As late as the middle of the 19th century the truth-pathos in the natural (...) sciences was still unbroken. Yet in the succeeding years these claims to certain knowledge underwent a fundamental crisis. For scientists today, of course, the fact that their knowledge can possess only relative validity is a matter of self-evidence. The present analysis investigates the early phase of this fundamental change in the concept of science through an examination of Hermann von Helmholtz's conception of science and his mechanistic interpretation of nature. Helmholtz (1821-1894) was one of the most important natural scientists in Germany. The development of this thoughts offers an impressive but, until now, relatively little considered report from the field of the experimental sciences chronicling the erosion of certainty. (shrink)

Abstract: The paper argues that mainstream economics and mainstream philosophy of natural science had much in common during the period 1945-1965. It examines seven common features of the two fields and suggests a number of historical developments that might help explain these similarities. The historical developments include: the Vienna Circle connection, the Samuelson-Harvard-Foundations connection, and the Cold War operations research connection.

Foundations of Relational Realism presents an intuitive interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on a revised decoherent histories interpretation, structured within a category theoretic topological formalism. -/- If there is a central conceptual framework that has reliably borne the weight of modern physics as it ascends into the twenty-first century, it is the framework of quantum mechanics. Because of its enduring stability in experimental application, physics has today reached heights that not only inspire wonder, but arguably exceed the limits of intuitive (...) vision, if not intuitive comprehension. For many physicists and philosophers, however, the currently fashionable tendency toward exotic interpretation of the theoretical formalism is recognized not as a mark of ascent for the tower of physics, but rather an indicator of sway—one that must be dampened rather than encouraged if practical progress is to continue. -/- In this unique two-part volume, designed to be comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists, the authors chart out a pathway forward by identifying the central deficiency in most interpretations of quantum mechanics: That in its conventional, metrical depiction of extension, inherited from the Enlightenment, objects are characterized as fundamental to relations—i.e., such that relations presuppose objects but objects do not presuppose relations. The authors, by contrast, argue that quantum mechanics exemplifies the fact that physical extensiveness is fundamentally topological rather than metrical, with its proper logico-mathematical framework being category theoretic rather than set theoretic. -/- By this thesis, extensiveness fundamentally entails not only relations of objects, but also relations of relations. Thus, the fundamental quanta of quantum physics are properly defined as units of logico-physical relation rather than merely units of physical relata as is the current convention. Objects are always understood as relata, and likewise relations are always understood objectively. In this way, objects and relations are coherently defined as mutually implicative. The conventional notion of a history as “a story about fundamental objects” is thereby reversed, such that the classical “objects” become the story by which we understand physical systems that are fundamentally histories of quantum events. -/- These are just a few of the novel critical claims explored in this volume—claims whose exemplification in quantum mechanics will, the authors argue, serve more broadly as foundational principles for the philosophy of nature as it evolves through the twenty-first century and beyond. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments, whether defended by Street (2006), Joyce (2006), or others against moral realism, or by Plantinga (1993, 2011) and others against atheism, seek to determine the implications of the still-dominant worldview of naturalism. Examining them is thus a critical component of any defense of a theistic philosophy of nature. Recently, several authors have explored the connection between evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism (hence: EDAs) and Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalistic atheism (hence: EAAN). Typically, responses in (...) this vein have been critical of EDAs, arguing that they are in some way self-undermining. Different critics have argued that, in the course of defending the EAAN, the theist loses her best response to the probabilistic argument from evil for atheism. Here, I provide the first systematic comparison of all three arguments—EDAs, the EAAN, and the problem of evil—and suggest that the first charge succeeds while the second fails. (shrink)

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. In the absence of cause and effect in physics, past, present and future events must all exist equally in (...) logical relationship. Our experience of time must be an illusion, because our experience of change in our world is not actually caused in time. Rather, the change we experience in our world is caused by the changing appearances in our static block universe in the static fourth dimension of time. We should think of time as a distance in the fourth dimension of time from our present position in the dimension of time to another position either towards or away from the beginning of the universe. Because physical reality is not actually caused to change in our static block universe, then static physical reality is actually timeless. But, because very good evidence supports the creation of timeless physical reality, then non-temporal causation of timeless physical reality outside of time is real. (shrink)

The paper examines the interest of the Sophists in the problems of the Pre-socratic philosophy of nature.

This paper examines the Hegelian moment of the for-another in its negative relation to the other moment of particularity: the for-itself. I identify the dissolving, fluidifying action of the for-another by examining figures within the Philosophy of Nature, particularly comets and moons, but also Hegel’s physics of light and sound. The dissolution of the lunar for-itself at the hands of the cometary for-another illustrates how the dynamic relation between the two moments of particularity participates in the presentation of (...) essence, within the Hegelian syllogism, i.e. as mediating between the universal and the singular. The dynamic action of cometary negativity occurs throughout the Philosophy of Nature and therefore should be pivotal to how the work is read. (shrink)

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De (...) Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

This article aims to present a detailed analysis of the “Christian natural philosophy” elaborated by the German humanist philosopher and theologian Otto Casmann (1562–1607) in his various works. To this end, Casmann’s general idea of philosophia Christiana is discussed and critically evaluated. Regarding natural philosophy, or physics, attention is paid mainly to topics such as cosmogony and cosmology, which Casmann promised to have developed biblically and independently of the pagan (namely Aristotelian) tradition. However, when Casmann’s natural philosophy (...) is analyzed in detail, his resolute emphasis on the literal reading of the Bible, the cornerstone of his entire concept, turns out to be problematic. Similarly, despite his resolutions, his natural‑philosophical views are, to a considerable extent, still dependent on Aristotelian terms and concepts. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is seen by most as a meta-discipline – one that takes science as its subject matter, and seeks to acquire knowledge and understanding about science without in any way affecting, or contributing to, science itself. Karl Popper’s approach is very different. His first love is natural philosophy or, as he would put it, cosmology. This intermingles cosmology and the rest of natural science with epistemology, methodology and metaphysics. Paradoxically, however, one of his best known contributions, (...) his proposed solution to the problem of demarcation, helps to maintain the gulf that separates science from metaphysics, thus fragmenting cosmology into falsifiable science on the one hand, untestable philosophy on the other. This has damaging repercussions for a number of issues Popper tackles, from the problem of induction to simplicity of theory and quantum theory. But his proposed solution to the demarcation problem is untenable. Metaphysical assumptions are an integral part of scientific knowledge, inherent in the persistent acceptance of unified theories against the evidence. Once this is appreciated, it becomes obvious that natural philosophy, a synthesis of science and philosophy, is both more rigorous and of greater intellectual value than the two dissociated components we have today. What Popper sought for could come to full fruition. Problems that Popper tackled, from the problem of induction, to the problem of unity of theory, problems of quantum theory, and problems concerning the scope and limits of physics, all receive more adequate resolution within the new, fully-fledged natural philosophy. (shrink)

The central thesis of this book is that we need to reform philosophy and join it to science to recreate a modern version of natural philosophy; we need to do this in the interests of rigour, intellectual honesty, and so that science may serve the best interests of humanity. Modern science began as natural philosophy. In the time of Newton, what we call science and philosophy today – the disparate endeavours – formed one mutually interacting, integrated (...) endeavour of natural philosophy: to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and to improve our understanding of ourselves as a part of it. Profound discoveries were made, indeed one should say unprecedented discoveries. It was a time of quite astonishing intellectual excitement and achievement. And then natural philosophy died. It split into science on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. This happened during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the split is now built into our intellectual landscape. But the two fragments, science and philosophy, are defective shadows of the glorious unified endeavour of natural philosophy. Rigour, sheer intellectual good sense and decisive argument demand that we put the two together again, and rediscover the immense merits of the integrated enterprise of natural philosophy. This requires an intellectual revolution, with dramatic implications for how we understand our world, how we understand and do science, and how we understand and do philosophy. There are dramatic implications, too, for education. And it does not stop there. For, as I show in the final chapter, resurrected natural philosophy has dramatic, indeed revolutionary methodological implications for social science and the humanities, indeed for the whole academic enterprise. It means academic inquiry needs to be reorganized so that it comes to take, as its basic task, to seek and promote wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge, technological know-how and understanding, but much else besides. The outcome is institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us tackle our immense global problems in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, thus helping us make progress towards a good world – or at least as good a world as possible. (shrink)

Unlike almost all other philosophers of science, Karl Popper sought to contribute to natural philosophy or cosmology – a synthesis of science and philosophy. I consider his contributions to the philosophy of science and quantum theory in this light. There is, however, a paradox. Popper’s most famous contribution – his principle of demarcation – in driving a wedge between science and metaphysics, serves to undermine the very thing he professes to love: natural philosophy. I argue that (...) Popper’s philosophy of science is, in this respect, defective. Science cannot proceed without making highly problematic metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe. Precisely because these assumptions are problematic, rigour requires that they be subjected to sustained critical scrutiny, as an integral part of science itself. Popper’s principle of demarcation must be rejected. Metaphysics and philosophy of science become a vital part of science. Natural philosophy is reborn. A solution to the problem of what it means to say a theory is unified is proposed, a problem Popper failed to solve. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper made important contributions to the interpretation of quantum theory, especially in connection with Heisenberg's uncertainty relations. Popper's advocacy of natural philosophy has important implications for education. (shrink)

Modern science began as natural philosophy. In the time of Newton, what we call science and philosophy today – the disparate endeavours – formed one mutually interacting, integrated endeavour of natural philosophy: to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and to improve our understanding of ourselves as a part of it. Profound, indeed unprecedented discoveries were made. But then natural philosophy died. It split into science on the one hand, and philosophy on the (...) other. This happened during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the split is now built into our intellectual landscape. But the two fragments, science and philosophy, are defective shadows of the glorious unified endeavour of natural philosophy. Rigour, sheer intellectual good sense and decisive argument demand that we put the two together again, and rediscover the immense merits of the integrated enterprise of natural philosophy. This requires an intellectual revolution, with dramatic implications for how we understand our world, how we understand and do science, and how we understand and do philosophy. There are dramatic implications, too, for education, and for the entire academic endeavour, and its capacity to help us discover how to tackle more successfully our immense global problems. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the manner in which Herder’s philosophy of language grounds his approach to hermeneutical issues regarding history, interpretation, and translation. Herder’s approach to the question of language has been repeatedly lauded for its important influence on the later work done by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer, but in this discussion I am going to put him more directly in conversation with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although recent critics have derided Humboldt’s theory as both derivative and wrong, I (...) will argue that we should instead recognize that Humboldt’s philosophy of language represents a significant development of Herder’s thesis. This development is accomplished by way of Humboldt’s application of Kant’s mature theory of reason to a program for comparative linguistics. In Humboldt’s hands, this amounts to a new strain of philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Michael B. Gill’s A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art focuses on Shaftesbury’s thinking about nature, religion, morality, and art. This beautifully and engagingly written book is insightful for scholars and general readers alike, and invites readers to explore the philosophical issues that arise from Shaftesbury’s philosophy. Gill not only shows how Shaftesbury’s ideas were revolutionary at the turn of the eighteenth century but also how they remain relevant today. Shaftesbury’s major work, Characteristicks (...) of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, was one of the most influential books published during the first half of the eighteenth century. According to Gill, “[i]t played a momentous role in turning European thought away from the negative and toward the positive—in nature, religion, morality, and art” (1). Although Characteristicks serves as a major source, Gill also engages with numerous other published and unpublished writings by Shaftesbury. A Philosophy of Beauty is divided into five chapters which focus respectively on nature and God, virtue, art, painting, and writing. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature of reality by looking at the philosophical debate between realism and idealism and at scientific investigations in quantum physics and at recent studies of animal senses, neurology and cognitive psychology. The concept of perceptual relativity is examined and this involves looking at sense perception in other animals and various examples of perceptual relativity in science. It will be concluded that the universe is observer dependent and that there is no reality independent of the observer, (...) which is knowable to the observer. The paper concludes by an investigation of what an observer dependent universe would be like and that recognition of an observer dependent world would lead to a more open minded and tolerant world. (shrink)

The notion of being-at-home-in-otherness is the distinctive way of thinking of freedom that Hegel develops in his social and political thought. When I am at one with myself in social and political structures they are not external powers to which I am subjected but are rather constitutive of my self-relation, that is my self-conception is mediated andexpandedthrough those objective structures. How successfully Hegel may achieve being-at-home-in-otherness with regard to these objective structures of right in thePhilosophy of Rightis arguable. What is (...) at issue in this paper is however to argue that there is a blind spot in the text with regard to nature. In Ethical Life the rational subject's passions and inclinations are brought into the subject such that she is ‘with herself’ in them; with regard to external nature no such reconciliation is achieved or even attempted. In Abstract Right external nature is effectively dominated by and subsumed into the will and it is never something in which one is with oneself. It remains outside the model of freedom that Hegel develops in thePhilosophy of Right. There is something troubling about this formulation, since it excludes nature from freedom, but also something accurate, as it reflects the unresolved attitude of moderns to the natural world. (shrink)

Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different (...) guise when one adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

It is widely held that, in his pre-Critical works, Kant endorsed a necessitation account of laws of nature, where laws are grounded in essences or causal powers. Against this, I argue that the early Kant endorsed the priority of laws in explaining and unifying the natural world, as well as their irreducible role in in grounding natural necessity. Laws are a key constituent of Kant’s explanatory naturalism, rather than undermining it. By laying out neglected distinctions Kant draws among types (...) of natural law, grounding relations, and ontological levels, I show that his early works present a coherent and sophisticated laws-first account of the natural order. (shrink)

I propose an approach to naturalized philosophy of science that takes the social nature of scientific practice seriously. I criticize several prominent naturalistic approaches for adopting "cognitive individualism", which limits the study of science to an examination of the internal psychological mechanisms of scientists. I argue that this limits the explanatory capacity of these approaches. I then propose a three-level model of the social nature of scientific practice, and use the model to defend the claim that scientific (...) knowledge is socially produced. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work on the reference of proper names and natural kind terms. The reliability of expert judgments vs. the judgments of ordinary speakers, the role that ambiguity (...) plays in influencing responses to experiments, and the reliability of metalinguistic judgments are also assessed. (shrink)

This book contextualizes David Hume's philosophy of physical science, exploring both Hume's background in the history of early modern natural philosophy and its subsequent impact on the scientific tradition.

The theory of evolution of complex and comprising of human systems and algorithm for its constructing are the synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern (transdisciplinary) science. «Trans-disciplinary» in the context is interpreted as a completely new epistemological situation, which is fraught with the initiation of a civilizational crisis. Philosophy and ideology of technogenic civilization is based on the possibility of unambiguous demarcation of public value and descriptive scientific discourses (1), and the object (...) and subject of the cognitive process (2). Both of these attributes are no longer valid. For mass, everyday consciousness and institutional philosophical tradition it is intuitively obvious that having the ability to control the evolutionary process, Homo sapiens came close to the borders of their own biological and cultural identity. The spontaneous coevolutionary process of interaction between the «subject» (rational living organisms) and the «object» (material world), is the teleological trend of the movement towards the complete rationalization of the World as It Is, its merger with the World of Due. The stratification of the global evolutionary process into selective and semantic (teleological) coevolutionary and therefore ontologically inseparable components follows. With the entry of anthropogenic civilization into the stage of the information society, firsty, the post-academic phase of the historical evolution of scientific rationality began, the attributes of which are the specific methodology of scientific knowledge, scientific ethos and ontology. Bioethics as a phenomenon of intellectual culture represents a natural philosophical core of modern post- academic (human-dimensional) science, in which the ethical neutrality of scientific theory principle is inapplicable, and elements of public-axiological and scientific-descriptive discourses are integrated into a single logic construction. As result, hermeneutics precedes epistemology not only methodologically, but also meaningfully, and natural philosophy is regaining the status of the backbone of the theory of evolution – in an explicit form. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature of reality by looking at the philosophical debate between realism and idealism and at scientific investigations in quantum physics and at recent studies of animal senses, neurology and cognitive psychology. The concept of perceptual relativity is examined and this involves looking at sense perception in other animals and various examples of perceptual relativity in science. It will be concluded that the universe is observer dependent and that there is no reality independent of the observer, (...) which is knowable to the observer. The paper concludes by an investigation of what an observer dependent universe would be like and that recognition of an observer dependent world would lead to a more open minded and tolerant world. (shrink)

The exploration of laughter’s philosophical significance within the realm of performing arts, particularly the French classical theatre of the seventeenth century, reveals a profound connection to the comedic genre. This literary form, characterized by its gentle yet satirical nature, aims to critique and amend the behavioral and societal flaws of individuals. It often portrays a protagonist whose moral attributes and actions defy societal norms, depicted on stage in an exaggerated manner, amplified and interwoven with theatrical techniques such as verbal (...) wit, comedic behavior, and the humorous repetition of scenarios. Through this lens, comedic dialogue not only elicits laughter but also conveys an ethical message, emerging from the critique of society’s distasteful customs and pervasive misconceptions. The comic and humorous approach offers a fresh, conciliatory perspective on life, contrasting the somber, oppressive reality presented in tragedy, thus serving as a potent vehicle for engaging diverse social groups. This study briefly touches upon the history and evolution of the laughter element, or the comedic genre, within French literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It delves into the critical issue and examines the techniques and performances that induce laughter in The Miser, extending the discussion to encompass the philosophy of laughter. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the (...) DSM's diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

Humeanism about laws of nature is, roughly, the view that the laws of nature are just patterns, or ways of describing patterns, in the mosaic of events. In this paper I survey some of the (many!) objections that have been raised to Humeanism, considering how the Humean might respond. And I consider how we might make a positive case for Humeanism. The common thread running through all this is that the viability of the Humean view relies on the (...) Humean having an importantly different conception of explanation to the anti-Humean. (shrink)

Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about (...) the metaphysical nature of reality? This book is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism. Within the book, Letheby integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple conclusion: this "Comforting Delusion Objection" to psychedelic therapy fails. While exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics lead to lasting benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives-not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality. The upshot is that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism (the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is). Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms of knowledge gain and spiritual growth-even if no Cosmic Consciousness or transcendent divine Reality exists. Philosophy of Psychedelics is an indispensable guide to the literature for researchers already engaged in the field of psychedelic psychiatry, and for researchers-especially philosophers-who want to become acquainted with this increasingly topical field. (shrink)

In the Symposium, Plato has Socrates claim that the priestess Diotima once claimed that Eros is a lover of wisdom or someone who is “in between wisdom and ignorance. In fact, you see, none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise—for they are wise—and no one else who is wise loves wisdom.” Perhaps the best starting point for understanding the philosophy of Aristotle is that in principle, he rejects Diotima’s etymological wordplay that claims that philosophy (...) implies an absence of wisdom. At the heart of Aristotle’s philosophy is the claim not only that all humans desire to know, but also that human animals (and indeed some non-human animals) are capable of understanding the world and its contents in a broad array of epistemic capacities, including veridical perception, artisanal expertise, theoretical science, practical wisdom, and, indeed, even σοφία itself of the highest objects of cognition, namely the nature of the gods (Metaph. 1.1.980a22–981b7). My chapter explores the philosophy of Aristotle in five different parts. Part I examines the “organon” or linguistic and logical tool-kit that analyzes human reasoning from the most basic components of a proposition up through syllogistic presentation of the causes that explain what research has uncovered. Parts II and III of the chapter explore the main contours of Aristotle’s “theoretical sciences”—what today we call natural science, metaphysics, and theology. Part IV of the chapter examines what the Nicomachean Ethics calls “the philosophy of human things,” namely the study of ethics and politics. Finally, Part V looks at how Aristotle and his school systemized two different fields of human study, namely that of artistic mimesis or the art of poetry, and deliberative, judicial, and epidictic oratory or the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

Philosophy of Science; Ukraine; Polysytemic nature of theories; Practical theories; Subsystems of a theory.

The term ‘natural theology’ provokes a variety of reactions, spanning from whole-hearted endorsement to passionate rejection. Charged as it is with polemical and pejorative undertones, this debate begs for an intervention. If the scholarly community is to engage constructively with the concept and practice of natural theology — either by way of acceptance, rejection, or something in between — clarity in its definition and identification is imperative. The aim of this paper, then, is to try to shed some light on (...) three of the most common definitions of ‘natural theology’ in contemporary scholarship, to provide clarity about the ways in which they differ, and to propose some conceptual refinements in the hope that, if adopted, more fruitful discourse may take place in relation to this much-debated and interdisciplinary phrase. (shrink)

Acknowledging that Nature is one unified whole, we expect that physics and biology are intimately related. Keeping in mind that physics became an exact science with which we are already familiar with, while, apparently, we do not have at present a similar knowledge about biology, we consider how can we make useful the clarity of physics to shed light to biology. The next question will be what are the most basic categories of physics and biology. If we do not (...) want to cut laws of Nature into different parts, we obtain a constraint, and the remaining part of physics will be the input data to the equations of physics. In these terms, our question will be: if we keep biological laws intact, as indivisible units, what remains in case of biology? This approach, just because it is more fundamental, has significant consequences for philosophy, and obviously offers a new conceptual framework considering the relation between the ontopoietic principle of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and the biological principle. The quintessence of science, namely, the first essentially complete scientific world picture is presented in a detailed form. (shrink)

The philosophy of hope centers on two interlocking sets of questions. The first concerns the nature of hope. Specific questions here include how to analyze hope, how hope motivates us, and whether there is only one type of hope. The second set concerns the value of hope. Key questions here include whether and when it is good to hope and whether there is a virtue of hope. Philosophers of hope tend to proceed from the first set of questions (...) to the second. This is a natural approach, for one might expect that you must develop a basic understanding of what hope is before you can determine its value. The structure of this chapter thus follows this approach. But readers should not be misled: there is in fact a good deal of feedback between the two sets of questions. A theory of hope is more plausible to the extent that it fits well with plausible ideas about the value of hope. So the movement from hope’s nature to its value is one of emphasis rather than a strict, step-wise process. (shrink)

An outline of "philosophy of life" as a philosophical discipline is discussed. In today’s academic philosophy, we have “philosophy of biology,” which deals with creatures’ biological phenomena, “philosophy of death,” which concentrates on the concept of human death, and “philosophy of meaning of life,” which investigates difficult problems concerning the meaning of life and living. However, we do not have “philosophy of life,” which deals with philosophical problems concerning human life and the life of (...) non-human creatures. Hence, I proposed to establish “philosophy of life” as an academic discipline. We define philosophy of life as an academic research field that encompasses the following activities: 1) Cross-cultural, comparative, or historical research on philosophies of life, death, and nature. 2) Philosophical and ethical analysis of contemporary issues concerning human and non-human life in the age of modern technology. 3) philosophical analysis of the concepts surrounding life, death, and nature. (shrink)

This chapter examines philosophical issues surrounding the classification of mental disorders by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In particular, the chapter focuses on issues concerning the relative merits of descriptive versus theoretical approaches to psychiatric classification and whether the DSM should classify natural kinds. These issues are presented with reference to the history of the DSM, which has been published regularly by the American Psychiatric Association since 1952 and is currently in its fifth edition. While the (...) first two editions of the DSM adopted a theoretical (psychoanalytic) and etiological approach to classification, subsequent editions of the DSM have adopted an atheoretical and purely descriptive (“neo-Kraepelinian”) approach. It is argued that largest problem with the DSM at present—viz., its failure to provide valid diagnostic categories—is directly related to the purely descriptive methodology championed by the DSM since the third edition of the DSM. In light of this problem, the chapter discusses the prospects of a theoretical and causal approach to psychiatric classification and critically examines the assumption that the DSM should classify natural kinds. (shrink)

What is the nature of reality? The truth is that no academic anywhere in the world really knows the answer to this question. As long as this remains the case, one can exclude neither the possibility that parallel universes, spirit ontologies, or telepathy exist nor the possibility that reality could be a time-space transcending non-local awareness. Neither scientists nor scholars can, therefore, ever reject epistemologies based on any of these presumptions. Enlightenment-based rationalists and empiricists, however, did just that. The (...) point of departure of Roothaan’s deconstructionist environmental philosophy is, on the contrary, that since reality itself is unknown, the question of what nature remains undefined at best. Human relationships towards nature in various cultures and eras can then be perceived as the outcome of an ongoing negotiation. In this way, Roothaan aims to open up a space for intercultural philosophical and dialogical thinking about the contributions and limitations of various epistemologies that philosophers and others have used to discuss the relations to their environment. (shrink)