Regarding the exhaustive discussions of the fundamentality of existence versus the fundamentality of quiddity, it is a necessary preliminary to examine and analyze the first documented statement of the fundamentality of existence. Following this, we must inquire how the concept is obtained on the basis of which such a judgment could be formed. Then we must illuminate the meaning of propositions that state only that an object is or exists (ontological propositions). Finally, by explaining the (...) meaning of the words “quiddity” and “existence” and comparing them, indications are found of confusion between epistemological and ontological issues. (shrink)

It would not be an overstatement to say that Mulla Sadra’s metaphysical system—commonly known as transcendent philosophy or transcendent wisdom (hikmat muta‘aliyyah)—is founded on the fundamentality of existence and the subjectivity of quiddity or whatness. I will begin this essay by drawing a rather simple picture of this principle under the title “A Common Error.” Then I will proceed by explaining its background and the reasoning supporting it, while offering a more detailed elucidation of the problem. The essay (...) will end by examining two recent interpretations that have gone to extremes in describing quiddity’s subjective nature. (shrink)

In metaphysics, fundamentality is a central theme involving debates on the nature of existents, as wholes. These debates are largely object-oriented in their standpoint and engage with composites or wholes through the mereological notion of compositionality. The ontological significance of the parts overrides that of wholes since the existence and identity of the latter are dependent on that of the former. Broadly, the candidates for fundamental entities are considered to be elementary particles of modern physics (since they appear (...) to play the role of ultimate parts to all phenomena). The paper intends to show the inadequacy of the object-oriented notion of conditionality by pointing out that the parts and wholes possess varying conditions of existence. By alleging that only the parts are ontologically significant is to conflate such conditions and neglect the spectrum of conditions which exist in our world. A proposal for a revised notion of compositionality in terms of structural relatedness is also put forward. (shrink)

Our concept of the universe and the material world is foundational for our thinking and our moral lives. In an earlier contribution to the URAM project I presented what I called 'the ultimate organizational principle' of the universe. In that article (Grandpierre 2000, pp. 12-35) I took as an adversary the wide-spread system of thinking which I called 'materialism'. According to those who espouse this way of thinking, the universe consists of inanimate units or sets of material such as atoms (...) or elementary particles. Against this point of view on reality, I argued that it is 'logic', which exists in our inner world as a function of our mind, that is the universal organizing power of the universe. The present contribution builds upon this insight. Then I focussed on rationality; now I am interested in the responsibility that is the driving force behind our effort to find coherence and ultimate perspectives in our cosmos. It is shown that biology fundamentally differs from physics. Biology has its own fundamental principle, which is formulated for the first time in history in a scientific manner by Ervin Bauer. This fundamental principle is the cosmic life principle. I show that if one considers the physical laws as corresponding to reality, as in scientific realism, than physicalism becomes fundamentally spiritual because the physical laws are not material. I point out that the physical laws originate from the fundamental principle of physics which is the least action principle. I show that the fundamental principle of physics can be considered as the "instinct of atoms". Our research has found deep and meaningful connections between the basic principle of physics and the ultimate principles of the universe: matter, life and reason. Therefore, the principle of least action is not necessarily an expression of sterile inanimateness. On the contrary, the principle of physics is related to the life principle of the universe, to the world of instincts behind the atomic world, in which the principles of physics, biology, and psychology arise from the same ultimate principle. Our research sheds new light to the sciences of physics, biology, and psychology in close relation to the basic principles. These ultimate principles have a primary importance in our understanding of the nature of Man and the Universe, together with the relations between Man and Nature, Man and the Universe. The results offer new foundations for our understanding our own role in the Earth, in the Nature and in the Universe. Even the apparently inanimate world of physics shows itself to be animate on long timescales and having a kind of pre- human consciousness in its basic organisation. This hypothesis offers a way to understand when and how the biological laws may direct physical laws, and, moreover, offers a new perspective to study and understand under which conditions can self-consciousness govern the laws of biology and physics. This point of view offers living beings and humans the possibility of strengthening our natural identity, and recognising the wide perspective arising from having access to the deepest ranges of our own human resources and realising the task for which human and individual life has been created. (shrink)

Many authors, including Derek Parfit, T. M. Scanlon, and Mark Schroeder, favor a “reasons-first” ontology of normativity, which treats reasons as normatively fundamental. Others, most famously G. E. Moore, favor a “value-first” ontology, which treats value or goodness as normatively fundamental. Chapter 10 argues that both the reasons-first and value-first ontologies should be rejected because neither can account for all of the normative reasons that, intuitively, there are. It advances an ontology of normativity, originally suggested by Franz Brentano and A. (...) C. Ewing, according to which fittingness is normatively fundamental. The normative relation of fittingness is the relation in which a response stands to an object when the object merits—or is worthy of—that response. The author argues that his “fittingness-first” ontology is no less parsimonious than either the reasons- or the value-first ontology, but it can plausibly accommodate the existence of all the normative reasons there are. It therefore provides a superior ontology of normativity. (shrink)

Russell is often taken as a forerunner of the Quinean position that “to be is to be the value of a bound variable”, whereupon the ontological commitment of a theory is given by what it quantifies over. Among other reasons, Russell was among the first to suggest that all existence statements should be analyzed by means of existential quantification. That there was more to Russell’s metaphysics than what existential quantifications come out as true is obvious in the earlier period (...) where Russell still made a distinction between existence and being/subsistence. But even the later Russell, including that of the Logical Atomism lectures period, would not have understood ontological questions to be first and foremost questions of quantification. He would take fundamentality to be important too, which explains in part his assertions to the effect the the values of individual variables have a reality not attributable to values of higher-order variables, even ineliminable higher-order variables. (shrink)

This essay aims to outline in what ways Kierkegaard’s thinking of existence not only brings into view a concept of existence, but, more fundamentally, enables one to locate an opening to questioning anew the relation of thinking and existence. This thinking of existence does not seek to dissolve existence into knowledge but aims at intensifying the question of a thinking grounded not in the conclusion made in “an external relation between a knower and a non-knower” (...) of which non-knowledge is the negative determination of knowledge, but rather of a thinking grounded in existence. (shrink)

The paper presents a very brief overview of Per Martin-Löf's Constructive Type Theory (CTT for short). It is thought as handout for a mastersl level seminar? Sicne it is an overview on existing literatures there is no claim on originaliyt here.

The aim of this paper is to make presentism a dynamic view of reality by basing it on a notion of dynamic existence, that is, on a notion of existence which has a dynamic character. The paper shows that both of the notions of existence which are used in metaphysical theories of time have a static character and, while such a notion is useful for eternalists, it is useless for presentists if they want to make their view (...) able to remain in agreement with our everyday experience and self-consistent. It is demonstrated that both empirical and theoretical arguments indicate that the presentist should replace the notion of this static existence with the notion of a dynamic existence and that this maneuver allows the presentist to treat his/her existential thesis as equivalent to the thesis that time flows. Not only does this strategy allow us to express presentism in a simple, homogenous way which remains in agreement with our experience, but also permits us to solve some of the difficult problems which presentism faces, such as, for example, the objection of triviality and the question about the rate of time passage. Moreover, such an approach to presentism allows us to solve fundamental metaphysical problems concerning time such as the problem of the openness of the future and the fixity of the past, direction of causation, and relations between presentism and persistence through time by endurance. (shrink)

The Oxford Monographs On Criminal Law And Justice series aims to cover all aspects of criminal law and procedure including criminal evidence. the scope of the series is wide, encompassing both practical and theoretical works. Series Editor: Professor Andrew Ashworth, Vinerian Professor of English Law, All Souls College, Oxford. This volume is a thematic collection of essays on sentencing theory by leading writers. The essays fall into three groups. Part I considers the underlying justifications for the imposition of punishment by (...) the State, and examines the relationship between victims, offenders and the State. Part II addresses a number of areas of sentencing policy that have given rise to particular difficulty, such as the sentencing of drug offenders, the rationale for discounting sentences for multiple offenders, the existence of special sentencing for young offenders, and cases where the injury done to the victim is of a different magnitude from what might have been expected. Part III raises various questions about the unequal impact on offenders of different sentencing measures, and examines the extent to which sentences should be adjusted to take account of these different impacts and of broader social inequalities. This volume is dedicated to Professor Andrew von Hirsch, whose continuing work on sentencing theory provided the stimulus for the collection. (shrink)

The volume collects essays by an international team of philosophers aimed at elucidating three fundamental and interconnected themes in ontology. In the first instance, there is the issue of the kind of thing that, in the primary sense, is or exists: must the primitive terms be particular or universal? Any reply will itself raise the question of how to treat discourse that appears to refer to things that cannot be met with in time and space: what difference is there between (...) saying that someone is not sad and saying that something does not exist? If we can speak meaningfully about fictions, what makes those statements true and how can the entities in question be identified? Assessment of the options that have been opened up in these fields since the work of Bertrand Russell and Alexius Meinong at the beginning of the twentieth century remains an important testing-ground for metaphysical principles and intuitions. (shrink)

This groundbreaking volume investigates the most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is explored from diverse and radical perspectives: religious, naturalistic, platonistic and skeptical. Does science answer the question? Or does theology? Does everything need an explanation? Or can there be brute, inexplicable facts? Could there have been nothing whatsoever? Or is there any being that could not have failed to exist? Is the question meaningful after all? The volume advances cutting-edge debates in (...) metaphysics, philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion, and will intrigue and challenge readers interested in any of these subjects. (shrink)

Limited capability of the existing international environment funds in financing of sustainable low-carbon development is considered in this article. The reasons are given that those limitations are introduced to the funds’ statutory instruments, including newly established Green Climate Fund. It is proved in the article that optional participation of countries and companies in those funds, voluntary character of contributions, lack of income consistency doesn’t allow to fill the funds with sufficient resources necessary to finance anti-carbon measures. The scientific novelty of (...) this article consists in developing special global anti-carbon fund concept. This concept implies inclusion of all carbon emissions1 producers, binding character and regularity of contributions to the fund basing on the principle “if you pollute more, you pay more”, organization of systematic financing by fund of anti-carbon activities using principle “If you clean more and clean cheap, you receive more money”. The practical meaning of this article consists in substantiation of principles and priorities of the global anti-carbon fund. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of certain entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I assume the cogency of Swinburne’s explanatory framework and seek to resituate it within a new philosophical context-that of the field of contemporary metaphysics-which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the non-fundamental entities (...) that fill up the various levels of the layered structure of reality. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have one more good reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

This research endeavors to introduce a novel concept in ethics, namely ethics based on the primacy of existence, drawing upon Aṣālat al-wujūd, the theory of the primacy of existence in ontology. Mullā Sadrā's philosophy, which has three basic tenets—the primacy of existence, substantial motion (Ḥarakat-i Juharī), and gradation in existence (Tashkīk-i wujūd)—is the basis for this doctrine. The primacy of existence holds that quiddity is a mental construct and that existence is fundamental. The writers (...) distinguished between two conceptions of ethics in this regard: one based on existence and the other on quiddity. Human quiddity is fixed and does not grade, hence ethics based on quiddity's primacy will always be fixed and the same for every individual. Moral obligations are universal and shared by all individuals. On the other hand, moral obligations for humans might vary depending on their existential status, according to ethics grounded in the primacy of existence. Moral oughts and ought nots are established by human existential grades in this ethics. This ethical model is flexible and dynamic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify Spinoza’s views on some of the most fundamental issues of his metaphysics: the nature of God’s attributes, the nature of existence and eternity, and the relation between essence and existence in God. While there is an extensive literature on each of these topics, it seems that the following question was hardly raised so far: What is, for Spinoza, the relation between God’s existence and the divine attributes? Given Spinoza’s claims (...) that there are intimate connections between God’s essence and his existence – “God’s essence and his existence are one and the same”(E1p20) – and between God’s essence and the attributes – “By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of substance, as constituting its essence” (E1d4), we would naturally expect that by transitivity, there is a significant relation between God’s existence and the attributes. Yet, as far as I know, there is little, if any, attempt in the existing literature to explicate such a relation, and it is one of my aims of this study to both raise the question and answer it. Eventually, I will argue that for Spinoza God is nothing but existence, and that the divine attributes are just fundamental kinds of existence, or, what is the same, as I will later argue, the intellect’s most fundamental and adequate conceptions of existence. In the first part of the paper I provide some background for Spinoza’s brief discussion in the TTP of God’s name and essence by studying the claims of Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed that God’s true essence is necessary existence, and that this essence is denoted by the ineffable Hebrew name of God, the Tetragrammaton (YHVH). In the second part of the paper I point out similar claims Spinoza presents in the TTP, and show how they respond to and echo Maimonides’ discussion in the Guide. In the third part, I examine Spinoza’s apparently conflicting claims in the Ethics about the relationship between God’s essence and existence. In some places Spinoza claims that God’s essence and existence are strictly identical (E1p10: “God’s essence his existence are one and the same”), but in other passages he makes the apparently much more modest claim that God’s essence involves existence (E1d1, E1p7d and E1p11d), which may lead one to believe that there is more to God’s essence than mere existence. I show that Spinoza’s understanding of the relation denoted by the Latin ‘involvit’ is consistent with the strict identification of essence and existence in God, and that Spinoza identifies God’s essence with self-necessitated existence, or eternity. Indeed, Spinoza’s understanding of eternity [aeternitas] as self-necessitated existence (E1d8) is one of the very few Spinozistic concepts that has no trace in Descartes. In this part I will also solve the long-standing problem of the sense in which the infinite modes can be called ‘eternal.’ In the fourth part I turn to the relation between the divine attributes and God’s existence and argue that, for Spinoza, the attributes are self-sufficient and adequate conceptions of existence. Finally, I will attempt to explain what brought Spinoza to deify existence. -/- Part I: “In that Day shall God be One, and his Name One”- Maimonides on God’s Name and Essence. -/- 1.1 Before we delve into the texts, let me suggest a few distinctions between various views on the issue of the relation between essence and existence in God. The view I suspect both Maimonides and Spinoza subscribe to can be termed the divine essence-existence Identity Thesis. -/- Identity Thesis (IT): God’s essence is existence and nothing but existence. We should distinguish the Identity Thesis from the much more common view according to which God’s essence contains existence, or (which I take to be roughly the same) that existence is one of the properties or perfections which constitute God’s essence. The latter view allows for the possibility (though it does not demand) that there is more to God’s essence than bare existence (e.g., God’s essence may include omniscience, omnipotence, etc.). I will term this view the divine essence-existence Containment Thesis. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reconstruct the meaning of existence in the Pāli discourses of the Buddha by considering how the notion is used in the most systematic contexts in which it appears, and how it could be best interpreted. The discourses are concerned with how existence is used to support and consolidate a certain attitude of ownership, appropriation, and entitlement over contents of experience, in virtue of which one can claim that this or that is ‘mine’. The problem (...) with this move is that it seems to require a degree of stability that is at odds with the fundamental uncertainty (anicca) of all conditioned realities. Existence is used to somehow cover up uncertainty, and thus allow for a semblance of genuine ownership and possession, while in fact possession and ownership are just deluded views doomed to be contradicted by the structural uncertainty of actual experience. This reading entails that the early discourses do share with later traditions an anti-realist inspiration, which is worth exploring in its own right. (shrink)

In a non-German-speaking environment is Jaspers sometimes mistakenly called as an existentialist. But Jaspers saw himself as a philosopher of existence, and he sharply criticized existentialism. This error arose because of confusion in the translations of the names Existenzphilosophie and Existentialismus from German into other languages. The difference between these terms was actively discussed immediately after Sartre’s lecture on humanism, in which Sartre, as he thought, announced a new direction in philosophy — existentialism (Existentialisme), to which he also included (...) Jaspers as a religious member of this direction. The purpose of paper is to investigate and analyze Jaspers’ criticism of existentialism and his rejection of it. Because long before Sart re’s lecture, Jaspers wrote about the false philosophical method of the investigation of human being as opposed to the true way — the elucidation of existence (Existenzerhellung), and also noted that he created a new word to denote this false method — existentialism (Existentialismus). While Jaspers understood the elucidation of existence as self-reflection and self-experience, which deepen in the experiences of boundary situations (Grenzsituationen), he considers existentialism as the knowledge of human being as a certain object among other objects. Already later — after Sartre’s lecture — Jaspers began to criticize existentialism as a direction that arose under the influence of the philosophy of existence and as its decline. Jaspers connected existentialism mainly with Sartre and outlined the main grounds of his criticism: existentialism is based on bare abstraction and Sartre’s main slogan — existence (of personality) precedes essence — is an evidence of this; existentialism uses a certain poetic vagueness of some statements, and is an attempt to overcome nihilism through nihilism itself; this philosophy denies the existence of any transcendent basis of human and world. For these reasons, Jaspers rejected existentialism, which is fundamentally different from the philosophy of existence. (shrink)

In recent decades, attempts to create and argue a new ontology of existence that could provide a robust alternative to the mainstream physicalist metaphysics have been made in science and philosophy. A new book by Bernardo Kastrup, a well-known specialist in the field of philosophy of mind and neuroscience of consciousness, offers the author's conceptually clear and rigorous formulation of the philosophical system. The author proves that appearance and reality in ontology are fundamentally experiential. A universal phenomenal consciousness is (...) the sole ontological primitive, which patterns of excitation constitute existence, and a human being is dissociated mental complexes of this universal consciousness, surrounded like islands by the ocean of its mentation. Kastrup’s idea of the World has an idealist ontological underpinning. The author contrasts his vision of the world with the existing ideas of the world perception, such as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism. The quality of the argument, which is given in the book, suggests the revival of the philosophy of idealism as the next paradigm, according to which a form of universal mind will be viewed as nature's sole fundamental entity. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with answering the question, what is the central argument of Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing that brings its opening ontological approach to the subject of first philosophy to its ultimate theological goal and conclusion? This dissertation contends that it is the function of the fundamental scientific first principles of metaphysics, and in particular the fundamental primary notion necessary, to provide the intelligible link that Avicenna employs to demonstrate the existence and true-nature of the divine necessary (...) existence in itself on the basis of his doctrine of being. This conclusion is pursued through a systematic and cumulative line of inquiry that begins in Part I with Avicenna’s logical–cum–epistemological doctrine of conceptualization and assent, the heuristic order of the basic scientific questions, and his theory of a demonstrative science. The thesis then moves from the wider concentric circles concerned with logical matters into a series of narrowing concentric circles pertaining to the scientific order of the MH. Part II presents a close analysis of the Metaphysics of the Healing’s novel reception and reorganization of Aristotelian metaphysics according to Avicenna’s theory of demonstrative science, which consists in a subject, scientific first principles, and objects of inquiry that includes the species, proper accidents, and the science’s ultimate goal which is the aitiological–cum–theological inquiry into the causes of being. Part III transitions into a still narrower set of concentric circles that provide a detailed explication of the formal and material aspects of the scientific first principles of the Metaphysics of the Healing. Finally, the main argument of the thesis reaches the central point and question of the dissertation in Part IV, which establishes the fundamentality of the primary notion the necessary in the ontology, aitiology, and theology of the Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing. Part IV concludes that the principal function of the fundamental primary notion the necessary is to provide the intelligible link that connects Avicenna’s doctrine of being with the divine necessary existence in itself. (shrink)

A widespread thesis in the analytical theory of law is that norms exist as linguistic entities. Rodolfo Sacco is one of the authors who have most fruitfully insisted, on the contrary, that there is no necessary correlation between norms and language, not even in the specific context of law. He thus extended the conceptualisation of legal normativity well beyond the boundaries of language through the notions of cryptotype and mute law. This paper takes into account two alternative hypotheses to the (...) hypothesis that norms exist as linguistic entities, which are respectively based on the concepts of deontic state-of-affairs and deontic noema. Both hypotheses are tested for their applicability to the phenomena investigated by Sacco under the notion of mute law, notably with reference to cryptotypes. The question is raised then of how the existence of cryptotypes can be inferred from behaviour. The paper emphasizes the role that can be played in this context by nomotrophic behaviour, that is, the behaviour that consists in a reaction to the violation of a norm. (shrink)

A traditional conception of ontology takes existence to be its proprietary subject matter—ontology is the study of what exists (§ 1). Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that ontology is better thought of rather as the study of what is basic or fundamental in reality (§ 2). My goal here is twofold. First, I want to argue that while Schaffer’s characterization is quite plausible for some ontological questions, for others it is not (§ 3). More importantly, I want to offer (...) a unified characterization of ontology that covers both existence and fundamentality questions (§§ 4-5). (shrink)

The article highlights the conceptual issues related to Kant’s analysis of the soul, a concept of utmost importance for the metaphysics and psychology of German academic philosophy (Schulphilosophie) of the Enlightenment was significantly dependent on the developed and systematically presented philosophical and scientific ideas and concepts of Christian Wolff. Kantian philosophy, its themes, and conceptual language were formed in the crucible of Wolfean discourse, and from the early 1770s in the struggle against it, which led to the emergence of a (...) new, critical philosophy – transcendental idealism, in which the problem of the soul, consciousness, and self-awareness became fundamental. It is this issue that was thoroughly covered in the «Critique of Pure Reason» and other works that were published later, after the first Critique. The article draws attention to Kant’s Lectures, which, on the one hand, demonstrate his critical attitude towards the so-called Wolfians, their metaphysics, and psychology, and, on the other hand, the lecture materials illustrate Kant's new conceptual position, and, what is important, develop, supplement and clarify it. The sources of Kant’s lectures are highlighted, taking into account the fact that we have at our disposal lecture notes, the authors of which are either unknown or, if known, their authorship is still somewhat doubtful, since they are notes that different people have rewritten. The article analyses lecture notes on psychology, the authors of which are more or less well-known, and experts recognize these notes as quite valid. The conceptual content of these lectures allows us to look at Kant’s understanding of the problem of the soul in a somewhat broader context compared to the «Critique of Pure Reason», where this problem is analyzed in connection with the paralogisms of reason and the transcendental deduction of categories. In his lectures on psychology, Kant draws attention to the problem of the interaction of the soul with the human body, the «location of the soul», linking it not so much to the organs of the human body (for example, the head) as to the location of a person as a bodily being in the world makes all acts of consciousness, self-awareness, and sense perception possible. Kant emphasizes the basic importance of such a spatial location of a person for the soul, as something that belongs to a person with a certain integrity, and not a separate organ, to act properly, to perform its cognitive functions. The article analyses the problem of existence, which is important for critical philosophy, its various modalities, and predication, with a special emphasis on the problem of the existence of metaphysical objects - the soul, God, and the world as a whole. (shrink)

Taking the good (generosity), the true (enquiry), and the beautiful (creativity) as exemplars of what can make a life noticeably meaningful, elsewhere I have advanced a principle that entails and plausibly explains all three. Specifically, I have proffered the view that great meaning in life, at least insofar as it comes from this triad, is a matter of positively orienting one’s rational nature towards fundamental conditions of human existence, conditions of human life responsible for much else about it. Iddo (...) Landau has raised important objections to this principle, arguing in particular that contouring one’s rationality towards fundamentality is neither necessary nor sufficient for great meaning in life. In this article, I reply to Landau’s objections to the fundamentality account of what makes life very meaningful. I thereby aim to enrich reflection about what it is about the lives of Neslon Mandela, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso that made them so significant as well as to indicate how fundamentality implicitly plays a key role in theistic conceptions of meaning in life. (shrink)

The “phenomenology of existence” is one of the contemporary currents of philosophy which have developed taking existence as its central concern. The purpose of this article is to present my conception of this fundamental field of phenomenological research. In order to do this, I will analyze phenomenology of existence in the double sense of the genitive or better as a bidirectional phenomenological- existential movement; that is to say, on the one hand, I will explore the sense and (...) scope of phenomenology for existence and, on the other hand, the meaning of existence for the phenomenological existential movement. With the aim of describing this twofold dynamics, I will begin by clarifying certain concepts of the Husserlian method that have frequently either been ignored or misinterpreted and, therefore, have impeded us from understanding the meaning of what the founder of phenomenology called “personal existence.” After this elucidation that takes place at the static level of phenomenology, I will apply some key concepts of genetic phenomenology to existence in order to develop my own account of the existential phenomenology. Given that Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) was a pioneer in the study of the most representative Husserlian texts dealing with the major issues of genetic phenomenology–such as time, space, lived body, intersubjectivity and lifeworld—, I will draw from his philosophy to open a dialogue with María Zambrano (1904–1991), as an example of the possibilities offered by a—comparative—phenomenology for the study of existential problems, specifically for the development of a phenomenology of sensing and being sensed that goes beyond of the paradigm of representation. (shrink)

The proposed publication is oriented to those who are interested in the issues of being and thinking (consciousness). The emphasis on matter and movement in its dynamically stable state - tetrainertia, as a special phenomenon and the essence and quality of objective reality are considered.

To turn then to our own question, I should say, in order to supply the fundamental puzzle at once, that a work of art has an intermittent existence.

Resumen El sentimiento trágico de la vida fue una de las grandes aportaciones filosófico-religiosas de don Miguel de Unamuno. Si es cierto que, al lado de su concepción trágica de la existencia, se yuxtaponen conceptos tan fundamentales y decisivos como los de conatus essendi, lucha por la vida, fe y Dios, en el presente estudio nos ceñiremos a la relación polémica y angustiada que la pistis mantiene con la gnosis o, si se quiere, que la fe mantiene con la razón (...) en cuanto al destino último de las conciencias individuales. Con ello intentaremos poner de relieve los rasgos más característicos y simbólicos de la existencia humana así como la conceptualizó Unamuno en su época finisecular decimonónica, cuando el positivismo y la fenomenología impugnaban la metafísica como rama legítima del conocimiento.The Tragic Sense of Life was one of Miguel de Unamuno’s great philosophical-religious contributions. It is true that next to his tragic conception of existence we find juxtaposed concepts as fundamental and decisive as those of conatus essendi, life struggle, faith and God, but, while admitting these, in the present study we address only the polemical and anguished relation that pistis has with gnosis, or in other words, that faith has with reason, in relation to the ultimate fate of individual consciences. Thus we attempt to highlight the most characteristic and symbolic traits of human existence as conceptualized by Unamuno at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, when positivism and phenomenology seemed to challenge metaphysics as a legitimate branch of knowledge. (shrink)

SummaryIn a relational epistemology and ontology, we are allowed to speak freely about the existence of atoms, chairs, love, and God, on the condition that we are prepared to give an account of the relations we have to them. At first sight, Caputo seems to endorse such a relational view. When it comes to concepts like democracy, hospitability, justice, and God, though, Caputo argues that the relations we have to the realities to which these concepts refer inhibit us to (...) speak of their existence. They are events which insist, but do not exist. In this article, it is argued that the differences between the relations of human beings to existing X’s and the relations of human beings to insisting X’s are not as fundamental as to make a distinction in principle between insistence and existence. In our relational view, insistence is a particular instance of existence. (shrink)

The paper is focused on some aspects of experimental realism of Ian Hacking, and especially on his manipulability criterion of existence. The problem is here related to chemical molecules, the objects of interest in chemical research. The authors consider whether and to what extent this criterion has been applied in experimental practice of chemistry. They argue that experimentation on is a fundamental criterion of existence of entities in chemistry rather than experimentation with. Some examples regarding studies of structures (...) of complex compounds, taken from organic chemistry, are presented to support the authors' considerations. Chemists' laboratory practice depends strongly on the way that representations of entities on (or with) the experiments are used. The authors show that this point has not been given sufficient attention by the new experimentalists. (shrink)

Suhrawardī has presented arguments to support the existence of wājib al-wujūd in many of his works. One of the most fundamental of these arguments, which also has a forward-looking feature, is the one he presents in his books al-Talwīḥāt and Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq. To prove the existence of God, Suhrawardī devised three arguments in al-Talwīḥāt and one argument in Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq, all of which are interpretations of the ṣiddīqīn argument. In this article four of Suhrawardī’s arguments, three of them (...) in al-Talwīḥāt and one of them in Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq are reviewed. the main aim of this study is to analyze and explain Suhrawardī’s arguments, due to their importance in philosophy and theology, with the descriptive-analytical method and using library-based collecting data. The arguments presented in the al-Talwīḥāt are succinct, and what made these claims essential was the evaluation of their robustness and content. The significance of his first and third arguments in this book is that they do not require the denial of the vicious circle as a precondition, and by assuming the likelihood of both the vicious circle and infinite regress, the necessity of existence is demonstrated. On the other hand, his argument in Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq, which, like his second argument, is based on the refutation of the vicious circle and infinite regress, includes innovative features and should be investigated thoroughly. (shrink)

As phenomenology rose to prominence at the beginning of the 20th century, several aestheticians tried to establish the Husserlian method of “phenomenological reduction” in the field of aesthetics. These ventures were met with resistance from psychological aesthetics, which was the predominant form of aesthetics in the German-speaking world at the time. This paper examines, first, practical attempts to apply the method of “phenomenological reduction” in aesthetics. Using Waldemar Conrad and Moritz Geiger as examples, I try to trace what aestheticians actually (...) did when they applied this method in their investigations. Secondly, I reconstruct the four central objections with which psychological aesthetics reacted to such attempts. I have identified four central counterarguments in the work of Johannes Volkelt and Oswald Külpe, who were among the most eminent critics of phenomenological aesthetics: the transcendental argument, the susceptibility-to-errors argument, the constructivism argument, and the non-normativity argument. Finally, I also discuss the refusal of psychological aesthetics to acknowledge that a genuine phenomenological method even existed and the consequences of this refusal. (shrink)

Resumen: En el presente trabajo intentaremos destacar la necesidad que existe hoy, para la terapia ocupacional, de entablar un diálogo con la filosofía, enfatizando la relevancia de plantear la pregunta concerniente al ser humano en cuanto ocupación. Se plantea que la terapia ocupacional se encontraría en una situación de crisis de los fundamentos que la orientan y le brindan sentido a su práctica, proponiendo como posible solución una revisión de los aspectos principales de la analítica del Dasein de Martin Heidegger, (...) con el objeto de clarificar por qué y cómo el fenómeno de la ocupación puede ser considerado como un momento constitutivo de cada existencia humana.: This paper aims to emphasize the current need for occupational therapy to have a dialogue with philosophy, to highlight the question concerning the human being as occupation. The article argues that occupational therapy could be in a crisis concerning its fundamental grounds that, on the one hand, guide it and, on the other hand, give it sense to its own practice, proposing as a possible answer following Martin Heidegger’s analytics of Dasein. In this context, we will try to clarify why and how the phenomenon of occupation can be considered as an essential and constitutive moment of each human person. (shrink)

Exploring Augustine's Confessions as far more than autobiography, more than an elaboration and admission of guilt, more so than a chronicle and more precisely as the very act of coming into the truth in his heart, in front of God, in his confession, and in his public writings. His Confessions charts his becoming a witness to his self-witnessing, as his matter of testimony. Confession becomes an onto-existential practice. But, what is the mode or nature of the type of confession at (...) work when confession becomes ontological? Using Heidegger, the paper hinges on two poetic instances, one in Confessions, one in Being and Time, to develop an idea of ontology as testimony when being is a diligent witness to Being. It is confession as an admission of guilt insofar as being seeks absolution of its presumptions of being as a genus, as indefinable, and as the most self-evident concept, and being then acknowledges the question of Being. This acknowledgement of the obligation of the question is, then, a confession as a public declaration of faith, of the openness to question. The ontological project, for Heidegger, is then confession and testimony perhaps more fundamentally than Augustine’s Confessions, whose autobiographical detail and positing of the self as a relation to God must carefully elaborate itself so as not to be guilty of the offense of metaphysics. (shrink)

The existence and fundamentality of spacetime has been questioned in quantum gravity where spacetime is frequently described as emerging from a more fundamental non-spatiotemporal ontology. This is supposed to lead to various philosophical issues such as the problem of empirical coherence. Yet those issues assume beforehand that we actually understand and agree on the nature of spacetime. Reviewing popular conceptions of spacetime, we find that there is substantial disagreement on this matter, and little hope of resolving it. However, (...) we argue that this should not trouble us as these issues, which seem to suggest the need for an account of spacetime in quantum gravity, can be addressed without one. (shrink)

Patočka and Merleau-Ponty are both interested in appearing as such. Both attempt to understand this in terms of the body. Despite this agreement, there is a fundamental difference. For Merleau-Ponty, the body’s determination of appearing is ultimately a function of its intertwining with the world. Indeed, its very status as an animated body or “flesh” involves the fact that, located in the world, it also is able to internalize the world that encloses it. This intertwining or “chiasm” is its form (...) as flesh. For Patočka, by contrast, what is crucial is the body’s motility, a motility whose sense embraces all of its actions. He claims that “movement … first makes this or that being apparent, causes it to manifest itself in its own original manner.” I bring these approaches into dialogue by seeing Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm, not just as the form of flesh, but also as the form of its movement. (shrink)

One important task of metaphysics is to answer the question of what it is for an object to exist. The first part of this book offers a systematic reconstruction and critique of contemporary views on existence. The upshot of this part is that the contemporary debate has reached an impasse because none of the considered views is able to formulate a satisfactory answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The second part reconstructs Thomas Aquinas’s view on existence (esse) and (...) argues that it contributes a new perspective which allows us to see why the contemporary debate has reached this impasse. It has come to this point because it has taken a premise for granted which Aquinas’s view rejects, namely, that the existence of an object consists in something’s having a property. A decisive contribution of Aquinas’s theory of esse is that it makes use of the ideas of metaphysical participation and composition. In this way, it can be explained how an object can have esse without being the case that esse is a property of it. This book brings together a reconstruction from the history of philosophy with a systematic study on existence and is therefore relevant for scholars interested in contemporary or medieval theories of existence. (shrink)

Since last year, major initiatives have been undertaken by the chair of theoretical philosophy at the University of Tübingen in order to enhance the reception of analytic metaphysics in the European landscape. Here we review the 2013 summer workshop, intended to be the first of an annual series, on “Existence, Truth and Fundamentality”, the invited speakers being Graham Priest (Melbourne), Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow), Dan López de Sa (Barcelona), Francesco Berto (Aberdeen), Friederike Moltmann (Paris – Pantheon Sorbonne) and Jason (...) Turner (Leeds). The workshop’s scope is fairly large, focusing on three different aspects of contemporary research in metaphysics. However, the underlying idea of organizers Thomas Sattig and Alessandro Torza consisted in exploring their interconnections and even new areas which possibly share the same problem spectrum. Also, they thought of bringing together both young and senior protagonists of the contemporary debate. In this sense, the main thread followed by the speakers consisted in enquiring the ideas of fundamentality, dependence and grounding with respect to ontology (Berto, López de Sa, Turner) and the truthmaking debate (Priest, Moltmann, Leuenberger), thus pretty much in line with some latest tendencies in metaphysics, such as, prima inter paria, the works of Kit Fine. When we say that something is more fundamental than something else, we move into a non-conventional (for the standards of 20 th century philosophy) metodological framework, hardly focusing on the question about what there is, and rather tackling the issue of how fundamentally there is what there is, or how the existence of something is required as a ground for the existence of other things. Here is how Jonathan Schaffer explains the methodological transition in his influential “On What Grounds What” (2009): -/- Among the many assumptions Quine and Carnap share is that metaphysical questions are existence questions, such as whether numbers exist. They only disagree on the further issue of whether such questions are meaningful (at least as the metaphysician might pose them). But why think that metaphysical questions are existence question of this sort? Return to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There are virtually no existence question posed. The whole discussion is about substances (fundamental units of being). At one point Aristotle pauses to ask if numbers exist, and his answer is a brief and dismissive yes. [. . . ] For Aristotle, the question about numbers is whether they are transcendent substances or grounded in concreta. The question is not whether numbers exist, but how. (Schaffer, 2009, p. 347) -/- The conference opened with Graham Priest’s intriguing and peculiar review of Buddhist cornerstone “The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way” (Mūlamadhyakamakārikā) by Nāgārjuna (ca. 150-ca. 250 AD), seen as a unrecognized forerunner of multi-valued semantics and dialetheism. Priest shows that Nagarjuna’s thought indeed has valuable analytic grip (contrary to the traditional mystical dismiss of his works altogether) and is even in accord to some formal schemas rejecting both the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction. Dan López de Sa was interested in the topic of grounding, raising concerns about how to explain the kind of “reality” exemplified by what is not fundamental, but rather derivative on something else. He proposes a conceptual and non-primitive analysis of grounding as linked to fundamentality and derivation, and argues that the view can be advocated along with the acceptance that at least something is not fundamental. Subsequently, he illustrates an impressive range of applications linked to contemporary debates in meta-ontology, truthmaking and philosophy of time. Stephan Leuenberger discussed a semantics for “total logic”, a variant of first order logic which is claimed to have several applications with respect to the issue of excluding negative existentials from the scope of theories accounting for a given ’totality’ of facts. For example, materialism is the claim that everything there is can be traced back to physical facts or to truth implied by those facts. What about the claim that “There are no angels”? According to Leuenberger, ordinary logic falls prey of modal arguments (if it is possible that there are angels, by modus tollens, that it is not metaphysically necessary that everything there is is physical). So, there is space for the introduction of a new operator, the totality operator, claiming of what enters its scope that “that’s the whole truth”. Consequently, total logic’s semantics tackles David Chalmers’ well-known conceivability-based argument in favour of zombie’s (subjects producing behaviour but experiencing no qualia) possible existence. Friederike Moltmann presented a massive array of natural language-based examples on the role played by case-constructions, such as “it is the case that Caesar crossed the Rubicon”, “the case of the stolen statue”, “the case in which it might rain”, and so forth. She suggests that we should take surface phenomena of our language very seriously with regard to the determination of ontological categories and truth-makers. Cases are provided by many natural languages with their own existence predicates (“to occur” and “to present itself ”), and these do not apply to other kind of entities, such as objects and events. Trying to derive a substantive thesis on their nature, she claims that they are filtered entities, a structure taking into account some features of the corresponding objects and events and preserving their relational pattern. Jason Turner discussed meta-ontological concerns against the claim that ontological debates are defective. Analysed the structure of a metaphysical theory and identified two different forms of defectiveness that can occur in ontological questions, the defection from without and the defection from within, the author provided an original solution in order to avoid such difficulties. He argued thus in favor of a logical constancy, a translation principle thanks to it would be possible reconceive an ontological defection. Lastly, Francesco Berto’s talk closed the workshop with a sagacious discussion of meinongian quantification. He substains that Meinongians and Quineans experience no conceptual equivocation. Even if the former claims that “There are things that do not exist”, something that the latter contrasts with the interpretation of existential quantifiers as all-including, they still rely upon the same concept of “existence” and they understand each other when they are outside the ontology room, so that it cannot be that they lack competence. Subsequently, Berto deals with the objection that Meinongians commit analytic falsehood in separating the meaning of “to be” from that of “exists”. The Quinean has no independent evidence for analytic equivalence aside from her emphatic stress on the “is” in “there is”. Meinongians, however, can retort to linguistic considerations and claim that existence predicates display fairly different functions. -/- As for what regards our internal division of the “philosophical labor”, Fabio Ceravolo reviewed Moltmann and Berto’s talks; whereas Mattia Cozzi took care of Priest’s and Leuenberger’s, and Mattia Sorgon of those given by López de Sa and Turner. Conclusively, we would like to thank Thomas Sattig and Alessandro Torza for all of their organizational efforts and the kind welcome they reserved to us. We hope we will have further opportunities to collaborate with Tübingen in supporting similarly innovative and valiant european initiatives. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that the ethics of environmental economy must search for a virtue-ethical basis. The traditional utilitarian approach has been the dominant ethical paradigm in neoclassical economics, but it is very problematic regarding environmental issues. Alternative orientations for an environmentally responsible economy can be found from the history of economics, especially from the Aristotelian tradition, and recent discussions about values in nature. Through these, one can look for economic virtues which are ecologically sound and, at the (...) same time, socially and culturally possible. Some such virtues do already exist which must be interpreted only ecologically. Others can be found from the economic ethics of Antiquity. Economic virtues are usually followed unconsciously and alternatives are scarce. The ethics of ecological economics must develop ecologically meaningful virtues: through that it can make a place for new environmentally sound practices and policy. (shrink)

Polish society has found itself at a very important point in its history. The transformation from a traditional to a postmodern pluralistic society involves changes in many spheres of social life. These trends give rise to the question of which way the younger generation of Polish nurses will be going. The main objective of this research was to elucidate the opinions of nurses on life and health as basic values, and on their ethical and religious background regarding their nursing care. (...) The study made use of a questionnaire for collection and interpretation of the data. Although this article shows some lack of consistency, and even contradictions, it is possible to conclude that life and health are cherished with affection by the great majority of nurses as positive factors of human existence. (shrink)

An important shift occurs in Martin Heidegger’s thinking one year after the publication of Being and Time , in the Appendix to the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic . The shift is from his project of fundamental ontology—which provides an existential analysis of human existence on an ontological level—to metontology . Metontology is a neologism that refers to the ontic sphere of human experience and to the regional ontologies that were excluded from Being and Time. It is within metontology, Heidegger (...) states, that “the question of ethics may be raised for the first time.” This paper makes explicit both Heidegger’s argument for metontology , and the relation between metontology and ethics. In examining what he means by “the art of existing,” the paper argues that there is an ethical dimension to Heidegger’s thinking that corresponds to a moderate form of moral particularism. In order to justify this position, a comparative analysis is made between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

this article has three aims. Firstly, to elaborate the distinction made by Gabriel Tarde in Monadology and Sociology between "to have" and "to be" as a philosophy of being. In doing so, the concept of possession that forms an essential part of this distinction will be enriched from the insights of recent anthropological literature, especially anthropology of science. The distinction will be examined using the concepts of ambulatory and saltatory relations propounded by William James in his book The Meaning of (...) Truth so as to enable the understanding of the processes through which relations are forged and networks are extended, and to see more clearly the fundamental differences between "to have" and "to be." Once... (shrink)

The concept of information has been extensively studied and written about, yet no consensus on a unified definition of information has to date been reached. This paper seeks to establish the basis for a unified definition of information. We claim a biosemiotics perspective, based on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information, provides a footing on which to build because the frame this provides has applicability to both the sciences and humanities. A key issue in reaching a unified definition of information is (...) the fundamental problem of identifying how a human organism, in a self-referential process, develops from a state in which its knowledge of the human-organism-in-its-environment is almost non-existent to a state in which the human organism not only recognizes the existence of the environment but also sees itself as part of the human-organism-in-its-environment system. This allows a human organism not only to self-referentially engage with the environment and navigate through it, but also to transform it in its own image and likeness. In other words, the Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information concerns the phylogenetic development process, as well as the ontogenetic development process of Homo sapiens sapiens from a single cell to our current multicellular selves, all in a changing long-term and short-term environment, respectively. (shrink)

In the Freedom Essay, Schelling provides four different accounts of the copula, two of which are largely implicit. In this paper, I focus on the first of these accounts, which I call the "mediated account." I argue that this explanation of the copula articulates a fundamental ontological structure in Schelling's philosophy. In the first half of the paper, I analyze the structural features of the account, drawing on Schelling's more extensive treatment in the Ages of the World. In the second (...) half of the paper, I argue that Schelling's fundamental distinction between that-which-exists and the ground of existence exhibits the same structure as the mediated account of the copula. This has implications for understanding the enigmatic relationship of these two principles to the Ungrund. I conclude by briefly suggesting other applications of this fundamental structure in Schelling's philosophy. (shrink)

Speech recognition by second language (L2) learners in optimal and suboptimal conditions has been examined extensively with English as the target language in most previous studies. This study extended existing experimental protocols ( Wang et al., 2013 ) to investigate Mandarin speech recognition by Japanese learners of Mandarin at two different levels (elementary vs. intermediate) of proficiency. The overall results showed that in addition to L2 proficiency, semantic context, F0 contours, and listening condition all affected the recognition performance on the (...) Mandarin sentences. However, the effects of semantic context and F0 contours on L2 speech recognition diverged to some extent. Specifically, there was significant modulation effect of listening condition on semantic context, indicating that L2 learners made use of semantic context less efficiently in the interfering background than in quiet. In contrast, no significant modulation effect of listening condition on F0 contours was found. Furthermore, there was significant interaction between semantic context and F0 contours, indicating that semantic context becomes more important for L2 speech recognition when F0 information is degraded. None of these effects were found to be modulated by L2 proficiency. The discrepancy in the effects of semantic context and F0 contours on L2 speech recognition in the interfering background might be related to differences in processing capacities required by the two types of information in adverse listening conditions. (shrink)