In 1583 the Italian botanist and physician Andrea Cesalpino (1524–1603) published De Plantis Libri XVI, considered to be the first treatise where botany is treated independently from medicine. In so doing, he broke with a long tradition inherited in Western science from Antiquity and perpetuated during the Middle Ages through the early Renaissance. At the same time, Cesalpino grounded his new approach in an original but well-informed interpretation of Aristotelian epistemology. This allowed the Italian philosopher to propose his own naturalistic (...) teleology, as well as innovative uses of the old method of analogy. De Plantis laid the foundations of scientific systematics through a new focus on plant morphology and natural similarities and became a milestone in the history of Western botany. It is a precious testimony to the evolution of botanical and physiological knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and illustrates the role of Aristotelian philosophy in 16th-century science. (shrink)

This paper explores an adverbial account of introspection that contrasts with both acquaintance and rationality theories of introspection. The bulk of the account consists of the following claim: for any subject S, mental state M, and object O, S introspects M if S is aware of O through M with a view to determining the character of M. This claim is fleshed out by drawing on considerations offered by early analytic British philosophers (namely: Alexander, Stout, Hicks).

This article raises the question of whether an AI such as Chat GPT can be considered an author in art. The author chooses to explore this question by directly engaging Chat GPT as an interlocutor. The heart of the article is therefore a reported conversation between Chat GPT and the author. The philosophical notions implicitly invoked in the conversation are made explicit in a glossary. The notion of Intentionality, in the sense of Searle, rather than artistic intentionality, constitutes the decisive (...) argument for denying Chat GPT the status of author. A thought experiment inspired by Arthur Danto's methodology contributes to the problematics addressed. (shrink)

In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint of 1874, Franz Brentano strongly criticizes Lotze for sticking to the Aristotelian view of psychology as a “theory of the soul”. He also disagrees with him on some key methodological issues. Most significantly, his analytical approach may seem hardly compatible with Lotze’s claim that mental relations, unlike physical ones, are essentially obscure. My suggestion in this paper is that, these differences notwithstanding, the two authors’ views on psychology share important similarities. After outlining some (...) theses underlying Lotze’s psychology (occasionalism, psychophysical mechanism, panpsychism), I discuss a couple of unexpected convergences with Brentano’s views. (shrink)

MéThéor - Métaphysique et Théorie de la Connaissance - ULiège [BE].