Online research in philosophy

It is commonly taken for granted that in Vedānta, as also in Indian philosophy in general, yukti, anumāna, and tarka, translate into “reason” (of Western thought) while śruti is rendered as “revelation.” I reject this translation-interpretation; it is a good example of theway in which Sanskrit philosophical discourse is often misconstrued. The term śruti does not refer to revelation, nor do yukti, anumāna, or tarka to reason. Reason, I argue, comprehends all the pramānas; these are all means of legitimizing beliefs. I distinguish between different levels of the application of “reason,” and I maintain that the mere reasoner (tārkika) has not grasped the true nature of “reason.” In effect, I maintain that śabda, both lauika and alukika, is a component of reason, and so is perception. There is no concept of “revelation” in Indian philosophy, and no opposition between reason and experience.

I am writing a mediocre paper on a topic you are not particularly interested in. You don't have, it seems safe to assume, a (normative) reason to read my draft. I then ask whether you would be willing to have a look and tell me what you think. Suddenly you do have a (normative) reason to read my draft. What exactly happened here? Your having the reason to read my draft – indeed, the very fact that there is such a reason – depends, it seems, on my having asked you to read it. By my asking, I managed to make it the case that you have such a reason, or to give you the reason to read the draft. What does such reason-giving consist in? And how is it that we can do it? In the next section, I distinguish between purely epistemic reason-giving, merely triggering reason-giving, and the kind of reason-giving I will be primarily interested in, the kind presumably involved in requests, which I call robust reasongiving. Then, in section 3, I try to characterize in some detail the intuitive or phenomenological data. I try, in other words, to clarify what it is we want an account of robust reason-giving to accommodate. But at the end of section 3 it remains entirely open whether any possible account in fact satisfies the desiderata elaborated in that section. In section 4 I thus proceed to inquire whether such an account is there to be found. I argue that the only plausible way of making sense of robust reason-.

v. 1. Reason in common sense.- v. 2. Reason in society.- v. 3. Reason in religion.- v. 4. Reason in art.- v. 5. Reason in science.

Between 1100 and 1600, the emphasis on reason in the learning and intellectual life of Western Europe became more pervasive and widespread than ever before in the history of human civilization. Of crucial significance was the invention of the university around 1200, within which reason was institutionalized and where it became a deeply embedded, permanent feature of Western thought and culture. It is therefore appropriate to speak of an Age of Reason in the Middle Ages, and to view it as a forerunner and herald of the Age of Reason that was to come in the seventeenth century. The object of this study is twofold: to describe how reason was manifested in the curriculum of medieval universities, especially in the subjects of logic, natural philosophy and theology; and to explain how the Middle Ages acquired an undeserved reputation as an age of superstition, barbarism, and unreason.

In this paper I argue that if one is to do justice to reason's unity in Kant, then one must acknowledge that reason's practical ends are presupposed in every theoretical investigation of nature. Thus, contrary to some other commentators, I contend that the notion of the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature should not be attributed to the “dynamics of reason” and its “own practical purposes.” Instead, the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature is in fact an indispensable and necessary notion for reason in both its theoretical and practical functions, but this need of reason to presuppose such a notion can only find its adequate proof in the practical. By offering a synopsis of Kant's accounts of nature's systematicity in the Transcendental Ideal of the Critique of Pure Reason (Part I), the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (Part II), and in the Critique of Judgment (Part III), I identify in each section Kant's theoretical and practical arguments for reason's presupposition of the “unconditioned,” demonstrate their structural interdependence, and show a general continuity in Kant's position on this issue throughout his critical system.

The title of Emmanuel Eze’s final, posthumously published book uses the words “reason” and “rationality” in a manner that might suggest they are interchangeable. I would like to suggest that we not treat them as the same, but rather tease out a difference in emphasis and reference between the two. In African philosophy, the problem of reason is really two separate problems, the first of which I will call the “problem of reason” (that is, the question of whether there are diverse forms of reason or only one universal form) and the second the “problem of rationality” (that is, the question of whether everyone has the capacity to deploy reason past what mimicry or programming makes possible). Both of these problems are addressed by Eze’s schema for forms of reason. He identifies several forms, but focuses on “ordinary reason”, which allows all the other forms to operate. Ordinary reason also makes rationality possible, that is, the culturally specific yet emergent way of navigating forms of reason. Reason is necessarily diverse, because its multiple forms are deployed differently by different rationalities.

Beings of reason or non-existent objects have always been a source of mind-boggling paradoxes that have vexed philosophers and thinkers in the past and present. Consider Bertrand Russell’s paradox: “if A and B are not different, then the difference between A and B does not subsist. But how can a non-entity be the subject of a proposition?” Or Meinong’s paradox: “There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects.” At the root of these troubling conundrums are two basic questions: What are beings of reason? What kind of existence do they have? Francisco Suárez was well aware that a solution to the metaphysical questions concerning the essential character of beings of reason and their ontological status would serve as the key to solving the puzzles and paradoxes just described. A solution to these metaphysical questions would also bring about an understanding of how we talk about beings of reason and other problems that they give rise to in the philosophy of language. In this paper, I present Suárez’s view on the nature andontological status of beings of reason and clarify some of the following questions: What kind of beings (entia) are beings of reason? What kind of being (esse) do beings of reason have? This latter concern is related to the following metaphysical issues: What are real beings? What is the nature and ontological status of possible beings? What is the distinction between real beings, actual beings, and possible beings?

The principle of sufficient reason asserts that anything that happens does so for a reason: no definite state of affairs can come into being unless there is a sufficient reason why that particular thing should happen. This principle is usually attributed to Leibniz, although the first recorded Western philosopher to use it was Anaximander of Miletus. The demand that nature be rational, in the sense that it be compatible with the principle of sufficient reason, conflicts with a basic feature of contemporary orthodox physical theory, namely the notion that nature’s response to the probing action of an observer is determined by pure chance, and hence on the basis of absolutely no reason at all. This appeal to pure chance can be deemed to have no rational fundamental place in reason-based Western science. It is argued here, on the basis of other basic principles of quantum physics, that in a world that conforms to the principle of sufficient reason, the usual quantum statistical rules will naturally emerge at the pragmatic level, in cases where the reason behind nature’s choice of response is unknown, but that the usual statistics can become biased when the reason for the choice is empirically identifiable. It is explained here that if the statistical laws of quantum mechanics were to be biased in this way then the basically forward-in-time unfolding of empirical reality described by orthodox quantum mechanics would generate the appearances of backward-time-effects of the kind that have been reported in the scientific literature.

This paper asks how we find our way in the hitherto unknown. In search of an answer, the author returns to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant, noting especially their grounding in the geometric mode of (re)presentation and the thingification processes connected therewith. It is argued that Kant's choice of metaphors in effect makes him more of a geographer than of a philosopher. To understand the taken-for-granted of thought-and-action, the time has therefore come for the writing of a fourth volume entitled A Critique of Cartographical Reason. The focus must there be on the relations between personal pronouns and prepositions, on the one hand, and the powers of tautology, on the other.