I argue that Kant’s threefold synthesis of the fundamental act-types of the apprehension, reproduction, and recognition of a manifold of sense-impressions, as presented in the A-Deduction (see A97-110), holds the key to understanding the origin of the categories, or concepts of an object in general, as treated in their Metaphysical Deduction. To that end, I reconstruct Kant’s analysis of a synthesis of empirical intuition (I.), in order to then, on that basis, reconstruct Kant’s concept-formation of the categories (...) (II.). As it turns out, the threefold synthesis as exercised regarding a manifold of sense-impressions in an empirical intuition of an object can indeed account for the representational contents of the categories of quality (apprehension), quantity (reproduction), relation (recognition), and modality (relating to the object through a manifold of sense-impressions). It is in this sense that the categories are “concepts of synthesis” (A80/B106) or, more precisely, “concepts of the synthesis of possible sensations” (A723/B751). (shrink)

In this chapter I advance a moderately conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s account of the threefold synthesis in the A-Deduction. Often the first version of TD, the A-Deduction, is thought to be less conceptualist than the later B-version from 1787 (e.g. Heidegger 1991, 1995). Certainly, it seems that in the B-Deduction Kant puts more emphasis on the role of the understanding in determining the manifold of representations in intuition than he does in the A-Deduction. It also appears that in (...) the A-Deduction the seemingly pre-conceptual aspects of a priori synthesis, namely those of the synthesis of apprehension and the imagination, are more prominently featured than in the B-Deduction. And the fact that in the A-Deduction judgement does not appear to play any significant role reinforces the view that the A-Deduction is less strongly conceptualist. I believe that Kant is a conceptualist also in the A-Deduction (as much as in the B-Deduction) in the sense that all syntheses, which are expounded in the second section of the A-Deduction, must be seen as involving the categories or the understanding as the seat of the categories. However, despite some apparent strong modal claims regarding apperception in the A-Deduction, I argue that Kant is a moderate conceptualist in the sense that he allows for the real possibility that some representations are apprehended that are not subsumed or subsumable under the categories, or determined or determinable by the understanding as the seat of the categories. Not all representations must be synthesised and hence be conceptualised (by means of the categories), nor are all representations necessarily conceptualisable (by means of the categories). Often it is argued that the application of the categories must be seen as separate from or prior to conceptualisation (that is, employment of concepts in a judgement), so that the categories must be considered to apply to representations at least to the extent that the productive imagination or recognitive synthesis is involved, even if no empirical concepts are applied in an actual judgement. But it is difficult to see how categories can apply outside the context of an actual judgement in which ipso facto empirical concepts are employed, because, after all, categories are nothing but logical functions of judgement (e.g. B143). More in particular, I shall argue for the claims that (1) appearances to the contrary, all three levels of syntheses in the A-Deduction, including the synthesis of recognition, are interdependent and are not to be seen as operating singly or independently of each other, and hence of the categories; (2) ‘mere’ apprehension, or ‘mere’ intuition, is not dependent on the understanding and the application or possible application of the categories; and that (3) ‘mere’ apprehension does not even invoke a priori synthesis of apprehension and hence is as such fully lawless in terms of Kantian a priori laws. In this context, I also address Kant’s argument in the A-Deduction about the role of the imagination in the production of spatial objects and explain his apt use of the example of cinnabar to show that the kind of association that is at issue here concerns the possibility of knowledge, not the possibility of mere association, as is often assumed. (shrink)

Talk at University of Turin, 'Kant, oltre Kant, May 5th 2023. --- -/- It is useful, while keeping in mind a holistic approach, to concentrate on a common theme in Kant’s text, which it will turn out is the quintessential element of his novel ‘way of thinking’, as he himself put it in preface of the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. This common theme is the idea of synthesis, which is what holds together, and is the (...) entryway to, all the other familiar aspects of Kant’s thought: his concept of self-consciousness or how mind is involved in cognition, his ideas about the role of the imagination, his theory of knowledge and his metaphysics of experience, and not unimportantly, its relation to what is probably the most Kantian element here: the categories of the understanding as the first principles of knowledge. But the meaning of synthesis and its role in its various facets, though frequently the subject of discussion in papers and monographs alike, is hardly understood in contemporary Kant scholarship. Most readings of the text of the Deduction, the part in which Kant elucidates his concept of synthesis, exhibit a shallow, mechanical understanding of it. -/- A compounding factor is that synthesis can’t really be understood independently of the other aforementioned elements of Kant’s thought. Grasping the meaning of synthesis implies coming to grips with his concept of self-consciousness and the way both self-consciousness and the categories are intricately and intimately involved. Most interpretations consider these aspects too much as if they were indeed separable faculties or entities that serve separable functions, undercutting an important feature of Kant’s metaphysics: the possibility of a priori unified cognition, for which an indivisible self-legislating subject is responsible. Rather, they are expressions of various aspects of a singular function of the mind as the ground of possible unified knowledge. -/- One striking example of such a superficial reading of the text is the way the relation between figurative synthesis and intellectual synthesis—or in the case of the A-Deduction the threefold synthesis—is standardly interpreted, as if the two are independent or quasi-independent functions of different faculties of the mind, the imagination and the understanding. In this paper, I focus on the relation between figurative and intellectual synthesis, while arguing that failing to understand this properly, indeed the relation between the imagination and the understanding, leads to a vicious regress in the explanation of the ground of knowledge, for which a priori synthesis is specifically designed. In other words, failing to see the intimate relation between the imagination and the understanding, the very identity that lies at their root, risks losing sight of the primary aim of Kant’s thought: the possibility of a priori unified knowledge. (shrink)

h e "Urban Legend" of Punctuated Equilibrium's Threefold History: The opponents of punctuated equilibrium have constructed a fictional history of the theory, primarily (I suppose) as a largely unconscious expression of their hope for its minor importance […] This supposed threefold history of punctuated equilibrium also ranks about as close to pure fiction as any recent commentary by scientists has ever generated. In stage one, the story goes, we were properly modest, obedient to the theoretical hegemony of the (...) Modern Synthesis, and merely trying to bring paleontology into the fold. But the prospect of worldly fame beguiled us, so we broke our ties of fealty and tried, in stage two, to usurp power by painting punctuated equilibrium as a revolutionary doctrine that would dethrone the Synthesis, resurrect the memory of the exiled martyr (Richard Goldschmidt), and reign over a reconstructed realm of theory. But we were too big for our breeches, and the old guard still retained some life. They fought back mightily and effectively, exposing our bombast and emptiness. We began to hedge, retreat, and apologize, and have been doing so ever since in an effort to regain grace and, chastened in stage three, to sit again, in heaven or Valhalla, with the evolutionary elite. (shrink)

In our experience, we see more than what we see in a strict sense. We see things as identical through (and despite) multiple spatio‐temporal appearances; we recognize things as something. In this article, I address this issue by asking how temporality allows us to see more in the present than what the present actually contains. I argue that presence and absence are “available,” not just as they are perceived through our senses, but as they are encountered through time, and notably, (...) according to the relations that unify past, present, and future. To support this view, I refer to Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's notion of synthesis. Specifically, I consider Heidegger's reading of the so‐called A‐Deduction, where Kant describes our relation with objects as enabled by three syntheses (i.e., apprehension, reproduction, and recognition). I reconstruct Heidegger's holistic interpretation of the threefold synthesis as an interplay of past, present, and future. I show how in such interplay, temporal dimensions are unified by relations that do not rely on perception; these “time‐relations,” which Heidegger also calls “rules,” allow us to see what we see not just as it is literally perceived, but as part of an “image” of the manifold. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is threefold: To show the basic contours of transcendental subjectivity in the later work of Edmund Husserl, especially the Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis, and in the strictly phenomenological work of Michel Henry, especially Material Phenomenology; to highlight Henry’s radical critique of Husserlian intersubjectivity and show that such critique, while valuable in its intention, is ultimately misguided because it neglects the important contribution Husserl’s complicated vocabulary of lifeworld makes to the study of intersubjectivity; and (...) to point toward a phenomenological conception of intersubjective practice we may call the realm of we-synthesis that prioritizes the first-person perspective rooted in empathy, which enables meaningful engagement with the second-person perspective. Working in conjunction with Husserl and Henry on the phenomenological conception of shared life enables the recuperation of the fragile line between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof (...) of the validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)

A central issue in debates about Kant and nonconceptualism concerns the nature of intuition. There is sharp disagreement among Kant scholars about both whether, prior to conceptualization, mere intuition can be considered conscious and, if so, how determinate this consciousness is. In this article, I argue that Kant regards pre-synthesized intuition as conscious but indeterminate. To make this case, I contextualize Kant's position through the work of H.S. Reimarus, a predecessor of Kant who influenced his views on animals, infants, and (...) the role of attention. I use Reimarus to clarify Kant's otherwise ambiguous commitments on the determinacy of intuition in animals and newborns, and the role attention, concepts, and judgment play in making intuited contents determinate. This contextualization helps to shed light on Kant's discussion of pre-synthesized intuition in the threefold synthesis of the A-Deduction by demonstrating that Kant's theory of mind in the deduction offers transcendental grounding for empirical accounts of infant development like Kant and Reimarus's. The upshot is a Kant at odds with many recent interpretations of his theory of mind: pre-synthesized intuition is conscious but indeterminate. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss, in a Heideggerian context, the possibility of de-subjectivizing the notion of the transcendental time-horizon and reinterpreting it as a formally indicated ‘whereto’ of releasement. The structures of the time-horizon depict the way beings unfold in the fullness of time in their alterity, and they orient the subject’s activity of ‘projection.’ What results is a field-oriented (as opposed to self-oriented) transcendental philosophy which would survive Heidegger’s critique of his own transcendental project, and which would avoid mystification. (...) I take three steps. First, I point out that the problematization of ‘transcendental Heidegger’ is based on the subjectivist interpretation of the time-horizon. I problematize a recent account in the subjectivist vein, arguing that it is neither indispensable, nor very plausible, nor the most illuminative of Heidegger’s work. Second, with the help of Dahlstrom, Golob, Engelland, Sheehan, and Vasterling, I gradually dissociate the notion of the horizon from subjectivism, the visual metaphor, and the assumption of an absolute ground. I suggest instead that the horizonality of the horizon be understood temporally, i.e., as an interplay of presencing and absencing where what matter most are the structures, themselves affected by time, which the transcendental field displays when beings unfold themselves within it. Third, I identify three of those structures when performing a de-subjectivizing reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the threefold synthesis in Kant’s A-Deduction. These structures capture the way every being manifests itself, without themselves being necessarily grounded in the subject’s activity. This gives an example of how transcendental philosophy can clarify what the time-horizon is like while bracketing the question of its provenance. (shrink)

The paper aims to reconstruct Heidegger’s historical-intentional assumptions in his ontological interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The paper presents young Heidegger’s project of the “metaphysical-teleological interpretation of consciousness.” The project indicates the direction of his further ontological interpretation of transcendentalism: Heidegger stands up to the traditional, well known neo-Kantian interpretation of the Critique, and offers a new conception of ontological knowledge and cognition. According to this conception, cognition is grounded in transcendental imagination where a threefold synthesis (...) takes place. Heidegger’s original temporal interpretation of transcendental schematism is also recalled to stress the significance of his new ontological approach to Kant’s theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that Lessing develops in his aesthetics a pre-Kantian philosophy of consciousness. The concept of virtuality that the german writer puts forward in his essay Laocoon implies an interweaving of temporal dimensions similar to the threefold temporal synthesis described by Kant in the transcendental deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason. But whereas Kant thematizes an a priori of consciousness, Lessing is in search of an a priori of plastic art. It will be seen (...) that perfect sculpture presupposes the choice of that moment in time which can open the imagination to the past and the future in a way that enriches the present by transforming it into a "pregnant moment". The final aim of the article is to trace the genesis of the concept of simultaneity of temporal dimensions presupposed by the idea of the pregnant moment, and its implications for the idea of the temporality of consciousness. (shrink)

The thesis of the dissertation is that Husserl's phenomenological analyses of the human body are important in assessing the claim that phenomenology provides the basis for a "transcendental idealism". The central role of these analyses is to reconcile the sense of consciousness as a world-creating transcendental synthesis and as an empirical self: if successful, Husserl's idealism could boast a sensitivity to the empirical that would significantly augment its plausibility. ;The argument begins by setting up the problem vis-a-vis the experience (...) of the other person. The issue at hand is how the body of the other person expresses the presence of a consciousness. Yet the question that guides the analysis is: if "consciousness" means a world-creating, transcendental synthesis , then in what sense can we speak of an empirical consciousness that belongs to the world, thus of a person standing before us ? Part of the answer, it is asserted, lies in the expressive nature of a person's body: that is, the human body is a concrete thing in the world that yet expresses the sense of consciousness as world-creating, thereby providing for it a "worldly", empirical manifestation. ;The main part of the dissertation is a presentation of Husserl's analyses of the human body, which is described as a threefold unity of extension, materiality, and time. An understanding of each of these dimensions provides a piece of the puzzle as to how the body of the other is expressive of consciousness. ;The study ends with the problem of phenomenology as a transcendental idealism. The conclusion is that, for Husserl, consciousness is the condition for the manifestation of the "world" only as an empirical, bodily consciousness. I believe the tenability of this position can be demonstrated through Husserl's phenomenology of the human body, where the body is understood as a special mode of the expression of consciousness. For these analyses, taken as a whole, lend to his idealism a subtlety that significantly boosts both its plausibility and the force of its presentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ecumenical Relational Ontology in Dialogue with ThomismGiulio MasperoIntroduction: Challenged by a FrescoEntering the Chapel of San Brice in the right transept of the Orvieto Cathedral, a city where Thomas lived for three years, one can admire a fresco by Luca Signorelli, painted in 1500, whose subject is the doctorum sapiens ordo. Here it is possible to recognize Aquinas surrounded by a group of fourteen doctors of the Church, the (...) first row of which are St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Augustine. The bishop of Hippo is symbolically conversing with the sixth-century Pope in front of a book he is holding open, and Thomas, behind them, with his right hand raised, is leaning over Augustine. The obvious connection between the two great thinkers is thus visually highlighted. This contribution aims to stress another dimension of Aquinas's thought, starting with a reading of Thomas Joseph White's impressive volume on the Trinity.1If one were to attempt the desperate feat of encapsulating the content of this book in a few keywords, the subtitle would naturally offer the three terms "nature," "mystery," and "unity." From this perspective, the text is classic and aims to highlight certain elements that unfortunately risk remaining in the shadows in contemporary Trinitarian theology. At the same time, the analysis of the narrative proposed by the author immediately shows [End Page 509] that the intention of this reconstruction of Aquinas's Trinitarian thought is explicitly relational. In fact, absolutely non-trivial elements emerge from the historical reconstruction of his sources, such as the ontological reshaping of relation by the Cappadocians before Augustine.2 Particularly valuable is the defense of the psychological analogy, often overshadowed in the social Trinitarianism prevalent today.3 Even on the critical front, the distance from process theologies and the Rahner-inspired economic Trinity is evident and interesting in White's book.The reference to relational ontology before Augustine together with the discussion of psychological analogy suggest an approach to the volume from the perspective of Trinitarian ontology. These elements, moreover, appear particularly important from an ecumenical point of view. Hence, the proposed reading of the volume presented here will start from the absolute ontological novelty introduced both by the Cappadocians and Augustine, who, from two different perspectives, held that in divinis relationships are not accidental. We wonder here: to whom is Aquinas closer? What is the meaning of this question for ecumenism?To answer such questions, this contribution will be articulated around three dogmatic cores: (1) relation in divinis; (2) the Holy Spirit; (3) how the transition from the triune God to creation is elaborated. These three elements could be recognized behind in the following quote from White's book:Creatures resemble the Trinity, then, in a threefold way. They bear the ontological insignia of the Father insofar as each one of them is substantial and enduring. However they also refer back to him as each originates from another, and is given being. Their derived existence is itself a testimony to the gift of being, which stems ultimately from the divine paternity. Insofar as creatures are intelligible, they bear the imprint of the generated Word, through whom God made all things, and who is the source of order and intelligibility in creation. Insofar as they are good in themselves and tend toward perfection, they resemble the goodness of the Spirit, the Love in whom God has made all that is good. Human beings, who are made in the image of God, resemble the Trinity in a particularly privileged way, as persons, with immaterial faculties of intellect and will. They are able to image [End Page 510] the Trinity both individually and collectively, by spiritual communion in truth and in love.4The text describes very clearly the program of a Trinitarian ontology, without departing, however, from the spirit of Thomas. The questions that will guide this contribution would like to make possible a real dialogue with the Thomist tradition on this point, so as to foster that relational dimension that seems to structure White's synthesis itself. It is to be hoped that this will also help the ecumenical enterprise, which the postmodern crisis makes... (shrink)

Why Deleuze and Ricoeur? -- Fields for potential and possible connectors -- Investigative strategies -- Towards the cohesion of a life : chapter outline -- Problematizing the field of the self -- Between rigidification and dehiscence : context and counter-context -- Ancestry for the self in a problematic field -- Conceptual personae and the self -- Aporia of the inscrutability of the self -- Sweeney : philosophical bathyscope -- Critique on the kantian self -- Pretensions of the kantian self -- (...) Divided self still surrounded by the mad and the replicant -- The narrative self -- Oneself as another or onselves as myself -- The narrative self : origins in Kant -- Appearance and exposition of the narrative self -- Working through narrative -- Towards an interrogation of the narrative self -- Questioning the narrative self through its progenitors -- Methodology : questioning back -- The narrative self in retrospect -- The poetic composition of the self : threefold mimesis -- Summary : problems for narrative identity -- Transversals between Ricoeur and Deleuze -- In the land of the larval selves -- Origins in Schelling -- Ontology of productivity -- The dogmatic image of thought -- The narrative self as twin multiplicities -- Dissolving the narrative self -- From multiplicity to the narrative self -- Obscure stammering for a new narrative self -- Between time and the self : a fractured I -- Laws in the germplasm of narrative : the dark precursor -- Narrative persona -- From debt to excess -- Ricoeur's dilemma of the self : substance or illusion? -- Deleuze and Aristotle : a disavowed affinity -- Interzone -- Between dark precursor and narrative self : gelassenheit -- Inhering problems for the becoming-narrative self -- An unguessed axis for narrative selves -- From excess to debt : evolving constraints to narrative identity -- Where to start, three stations : natality, personhood, narrative selfhood -- First constraint : proustian love and lack -- Narrative constraints : implications for the synthesis of the heterogeneous -- The poetic imagination within the evolving constraints of narrative productivity -- Where Deleuze was, there Ricoeur shall be? -- The narrative self : a badly posed question -- Second constraint : imagination within structure and obligation -- A self entombed in a debt to the past. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of BeingLatimah-Parvin Peerwani ArlingtonMullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being. By Sajjad H. Rizvi. Culture and Civilization in the Middle East Series, edited by Ian Richard Netton. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. xii + 222. Hardcover $135.00.In Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being, Sajjad H. Rizvi focuses on tashkīk (modulation), variously translated as the systematic ambiguity, analogical gradation, or just (...) gradation of being from the perspective of Mullā Ṣadrā, comparing it with classical Islamic philosophy and contemporary Western philosophy. He states that he makes two major claims in this study. First, he argues that modulation is a hermeneutic concept that describes the threefold division of being and its gradation. Second, gradation and modulation occur in each mode of being. Each mode of being refers to a branch of Ṣadrā's philosophy: mental being is a discussion of epistemology and psychology; 'being-in-language' is critical to Sadrian semantic theory; being in re focuses on 'traditional metaphysics.' But the philosophy of Ṣadrā is not compartmentalized; being cuts across these fields and unites them. Each mode of being as modulated shares features of intensification. According to Rizvi, Ṣadrā has extended the normal understanding of modulation and of being beyond the simple division of the two realms of mental and concrete existence to bring out the semantics of being. This aspect of Islamic philosophy, according to Rizvi, has often been neglected (p. 3). [End Page 278]This study consists of an Introduction and two parts. In the Introduction, Rizvi states the problem of tashkīk as the central hermeneutic of Ṣadrian ontology. An analysis of this critical concept, according to Rizvi, facilitates our understanding of Ṣadrā's position on a wide variety of important philosophical issues such as predication, the problem of reconciling unity and plurality in being, and God-world relationship. It provides an answer to the age-old problem of the One and the many, and the median way between the ontological monism of Ibn ʿArabi and the metaphysical pluralism of Avicenna. Rizvi says that according to Ṣadrā there are four levels of being: the concept of being, its reality, its uttered manifestation (sound), and its written manifestation.Part 1 consists of two chapters. In the first chapter Rizvi outlines his methodology and some of his assumptions about the cultural history of the period and the context of Ṣadrā. The significant contention, according to Rizvi, is that a proper understanding of Ṣadrā's philosophy requires an appreciation of philosophy in the Neoplatonic traditions "as a way of life" that is often closely related to spiritual practice and religious commitment. The aim of philosophical inquiry for Ṣadrā, according to Rizvi, is therapy for the rational soul and its perfecting and development in its path of return to its origins in the One.Four methodological approaches are utilized in this study. (1) Tashkīk is seen as the central hermeneutic of Ṣadrian metaphilosophy, and not ontology; Rizvi argues that tashkīk is a central guiding principle in Ṣadrā's metaphilosophy and permeates all branches of his philosophical system. (2) The aporetic method is used in analyzing Ṣadrā's philosophy. (3) Rizvi maintains that Ṣadrā's philosophy is processual, for it represents a shift from substance to process metaphysics. (4) Ṣadrian hikmat (philosophy, wisdom) is approached as a metaphilosophical inquiry. Metaphysics is a foundational science for Ṣadrā, instrumental in the possibility of acquiring knowledge and in the construction of definitions and meaningful discourse. Hikmat, according to Rizvi, is doubly transcendent, (1) as a higher synthesis of Avicennan, Illuminationist, Sufi, and esoteric Shiʿite systematic thought, and (2) as a prophetic philosophy that claims to be derived from direct 'revelation.'The second chapter introduces the tashkīk (modulation) of being. Rizvi traces its historical development from the Aristotelian pros hen homonym to Avicenna, Nasir al-Din Tusi, and Ibn ʿArabi, and offers an account of an intensifying scale of being toward a hierarchy of being that is singular but with multiple degrees defined by their intensity, that is, in terms of scales of intensification and deliberation. He makes explicit the Neoplatonic logic of being that this implies and examines how... (shrink)

In this paper, I combine the actor-network economic sociology of disability with recent developments in phenomenological, embodied cognitive science, to discuss how ability, calculative agency, and meaning are distributed throughout materially situated sociocognitive systems. I begin by outlining the actor-network approach to disability, market formation, and economic agency. Next, I turn to the cognitive sciences, and describe the emergence of consciousness and meaning in embodied human being. With an operative synthesis of the two projects in place, I turn to (...) government-organized disability savings plans in Canada. I suggest that the low uptake of these plans can be explained using the theoretical synthesis provided in the first two sections of this paper, giving a robust account of the threefold distribution of ability, calculative agency, and meaning. (shrink)

This article reconstructs and defends Husserl's argument for the indubitability of the existence of the world as grounded in ultimate principles. Responding to criticisms about the feasibility of a Husserlian‐informed metaphysical cosmology, it offers a systematic account that explores the question of the world's existence at three distinct levels (factual‐empirical, eidetic, and transcendental), leading to a threefold characterization of the world. First, the obviousness of the world's existence serves as our point of departure. The analysis then moves from a (...) conception of the world as (i) an ontic factum and pregiven ground of all theoretical and practical endeavors in the natural attitude, to a priori ontological considerations of (ii) the essence of “world in general.” However, the insufficiency of both factual‐empirical and a priori investigations necessitates a further displacement of the analysis into the transcendental field of pure phenomena. In accordance with the fundamental principle of synthesis, the world is thus reconceived of as (iii) a phenomenological factum. In this context, the clarification of the existence of the world as both an irrational and a “rational” fact provides all the elements necessary to demonstrate the relative apodicticity and empirical indubitability of the world. This justifies our doxic certainty of the world's existence. (shrink)

Among the studies on the history of philosophy recently published in Italy, one that may be of some interest to the English reader is by D R . Abbagnano , a young pupil of Aliotta , and is devoted to the new English idealism. 1 Truthfully speaking, the term ‘ new ’ is inappropriate, or partly so, because Abbagnano dedicates the greater part of his study to what we might call the ‘ old ’ idealism in England, represented by Stirling, (...) the two Cairds, Wallace, Green, and Bradley. However, he does also pass in review the more recent doctrines, particularly those of J. H. Muirhead, G. H. Howison, D. G. Richtie, J. E. Creighton, J. B. Baillie, J. S. Mackenzie, H. Jones, W. E. Hocking, A. S. Pringle Pattison, and G. P. Adams. Abbagnano regards as a distinctive trait of English idealism inspired by Hegel as opposed to Hegel himself, this, that “for Hegel the absolute is essentially process, change and becoming; it is thought which differentiates itself and becomes articulate in a life of its own, in the threefold rhythm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in which each moment passes into the next. For Green, Bradley, and Royce, the absolute is on the other hand immutability, completeness, static perfection, in which each process and becoming is overcome and resolved.” At any rate, Abbagnano is equally unsympathetic towards Hegel and towards his followers, against whom he opposes, not without scholastic ingenuity, his own irrationalistic views, set out in another book whose contents are sufficiently expressed in the title. 1. (shrink)

This essay situates Gregory’s treatment of the soul—especially, but not exclusively, in his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection—within the philosophical tradition of treatises On the Soul (περὶ ψυχῆς, to which he significantly added the Christian component περὶ ἀναστάσεως) and in conversation with Origen’s complex psychology. While Origen never wrote a work On the Soul, for precise reasons, he did write one On the Resurrection. His older contemporary Tertullian composed both a work On the Soul and one On the (...) Resurrection. Gregory opted for a synthesis—not in two separate treatises, but in the same dialogue—of the philosophical genre On the Soul with the Christian (for him Origenian) genre On the Resurrection (which in his view, as in Origen’s, coincided with restoration-apokatastasis) within the framework of a remake of a Platonic dialogue—namely, the Platonic dialogue on the immortality of the soul par excellence, the Phaedo. An investigation into the meaning of restoration with respect to the soul will be conducted in the light of Gregory’s philosophical definition of the soul and of the Platonic ideal of harmony and unity that are paramount in Gregory’s doctrine of the soul and nous. I shall finally tease out the role of the soul in what I call Gregory’s ‘theology of freedom’, deeply rooted in Plato’s philosophy, and the influence that he seems to have exerted on Evagrius’s theories of the threefold resurrection (of body, soul, and nous) and of the subsumption of body into soul and soul into nous (the so-called ‘unified nous’): it will be argued that the Christian Neoplatonist Eriugena was right to trace the latter doctrine back to Gregory of Nyssa. -/- . (shrink)

What is the relationship between our perceptions and reality? What is the relationship between the mind and the body? These are questions with which philosophers have grappled for centuries, and they are topics of considerable contemporary debate as well. Hilary Putnam has approached the divisions between perception and reality and between mind and body with great creativity throughout his career. Now, in _The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World,_ he expounds upon these issues, elucidating both the strengths and weaknesses (...) of current schools of thought. With his characteristic wit and acuity, Putnam offers refreshing solutions to some of philosophy's most vexing problems. Putnam first examines the problem of realism: is objective truth possible? He acknowledges the deep impasse between empirical and idealist approaches to this question, critiquing them both, however, by highlighting the false assumption they share, that we cannot perceive the world directly. Drawing on the work of J. L. Austin and William James, Putnam develops a subtle and creative alternative, which he calls "natural realism." The second part of the book explores the mind-body question: is the mind independent of our interactions with the physical world? Again, Putnam critically assesses two sharply antithetical contemporary approaches and finds them both lacking. _The Threefold Cord_ shows the entire mind-body debate to be miscast and draws on the later work of Wittgenstein, once more advancing original views on perception and thought and their relationship with both the body and the external world. Finally, Putnam takes up two related problems--the role of causality in human behavior and whether or not thoughts and sensations have an "existence" all their own. With Putnam's lucid prose and insightful examples, _The Threefold Cord_ loosens the Gordian knots into which philosophy has bound itself over the issue of epistemology. (shrink)

The paper discusses Edmund Husserl’s threefold pictorial experience and the threefold aesthetic experience of pictures accordingly. It aims to show what the advantages are of the threefold account of pictorial experience, in contrast to the twofold account, to explain aesthetic experience. More specifically, it explains the role of the image object’s fold in aesthetic experience. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part explains and defends Husserl’s theory of threefold pictorial experience, which is an (...) experience of seeing-in or, in Husserl’s terminology, image consciousness. A comparison will be made with other seeing-in theories, especially with Bence Nanay’s threefold account of picture perception. The second part explains the relationship between the second and the third fold, namely the resemblance and difference between the image object and the image subject. The focus is on explaining the terms of analogizing and non-analogizing moments of the image object. The third part of the paper discusses Husserl’s theory of the threefold aesthetic experience of pictures. It will be shown that aesthetic attitude is turned toward the how of representation, instead of the what of representation. Also, a comparison between Husserl and Richard Wollheim’s theories of representation is made. More specifically, the paper will show that Richard Wollheim’s different hows of representation are similar to Husserl’s view on analogizing and non-analogizing moments of the image object. (shrink)

Theories of picture perception aim to understand our perceptual relation to both the picture surface and the depicted object. I argue that we should talk about not two, but three entities when understanding picture perception: the picture surface, the three dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes and the three dimensional depicted object. As and can come apart, we get a more complex picture of picture perception than normally assumed and one where the notion of twofoldness, which has played an (...) important albeit controversial role in understanding picture perception is replaced by the concept of threefoldness. (shrink)

This book elucidates the ways post-cinema engages with potential futures, arguing that the morph is the crucial figure to understand both how the future is constrained and how hope for the future might be produced. The author draws on Deleuzian and Whiteheadian insights to argue for a new model of digital cinema.

AbstractṢadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498) has proposed a solution to the liar paradox according to which the liar sentence is a self-referential sentence in which the predicate ‘false’ is iterated. Discussing the conditions for the truth-aptness of the sentences with nested and iterated instances of the predicates ‘true’ and/or ‘false’, Dashtakī argued that the liar sentence is not truth-apt at all. In the tradition of Arabic logic, the central elements of Dashtakī's solution—the self-referentiality of the liar sentence and the implicit (...) iteration of the predicate ‘false’—were initially highlighted in two earlier solutions proposed by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) and Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 1322), respectively. Here I investigate all three solutions and show that Dashtakī's solution can be taken as a synthesis of the other two. None of these solutions seems to be convincing at the end of the day. Nevertheless, all of them include significant logical and philosophical insights. In particular, although Dashtakī's solution is not itself compelling, it is only a few steps away from a promising solution. The appendix to this paper includes translations of the relevant passages. (shrink)

The levels of different classes of mitochondrially encoded transcripts are developmentally regulated in sea urchin embryos, as a result of selection between mutually exclusive synthetic pathways. I propose a simple model to explain these observations, based on a dual role for mitochondrial ribosomes and translation factors in RNA synthesis as well as in translation. This effect may be exerted either at the transcriptional or post‐transcriptional level (or both), and is potentially generalizable to mammalian mtDNA and to other systems.

Originally published in 1961, this book originated in the belief that there was an urgent need for a greater association between philosophers and scientists and of both with men of religion. The problem of bringing this association into being is approached from different angles by the two authors, who, while agreeing on the main thesis, differ on many details, and the discussion is largely concerned with an examination of the points of difference. It ranges over the significance of scientific concepts, (...) such as ether, energy, space and time, the place of mathematics in science and of linguistics in philosophy, the nature of scientific thought in relation to the universe as a whole, problems of life, mind, ethics and theology. It also raises questions of importance concerning the present attitudes of organizations dealing with these matters towards their respective concerns. While the main purpose is always kept in view, a certain amount of discursiveness allows for the introduction of incidental matters of interest in themselves as well as in their relation to the central theme. The book has been written for the layman, and the student, while not, by over-simplification, offending the expert and the erudite. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between the theory of many-sidedness (_anekāntavāda_), the theory of viewpoints (_nayavāda_), and the theory of sevenfold conditional predication (_syādvāda_) in the philosophical monographs of the Jaina philosopher Akalaṅka (c. 720-780 CE). Despite being celebrated as novel Jaina contributions to Indian philosophy, the mutual relationship between these three theories is poorly understood. Do these three theories represent three distinct frameworks with distinct purposes? Or do these three theories ultimately synthesise to form a single unified framework? Through (...) a careful study of the _Laghīyastraya_ and the _Nyāyaviniścaya_, this paper shows how Akalaṅka understands _syādvāda_ as the central organising framework for integrating the theory of many-sidedness and the theory of viewpoints. On the one hand, _syādvāda_ is analysed as the synthesis of multiple viewpoints because each of the seven conditional predications, when taken individually, represents a genuine viewpoint. On the other hand, the seven conditional predications of _syādvāda_, when taken collectively and iterated with respect to different characteristics, represent the linguistic formalisation of many-sided (_anekānta_) Jaina ontology. This paper shows how _syādvāda_ as the grand synthesis of the theory of many-sidedness and the theory of viewpoints creates new possibilities as well as new problems within Akalaṅka’s philosophical system. (shrink)

from now on , was to point out that the model commonly used to describe . a decision problem with imperfect recall suffers from major ambiguities in its interpretation. We claimed that several issues which were immaterial in decision problems with perfect recall may be of importance in the analysis of decision problems with imperfect recall. The issues that we raised can be summarized by the following questions.

Edith Stein’s life and thought intersect with many important movements of life and thought in the twentieth century. Through her life and eventual martyrdom, she gave witness to the primacy of truth and faith in the face of political totalitarianism, and in her philosophical works, she contributed to a synthesis of phenomenological thought with the thought of Thomas Aquinas and the living philosophy of Thomism, while also progressively advancing a compelling form of philosophical personalism. As a result, Stein represents (...) one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century and is a figure of growing fascination and devotion among believers and nonbelievers alike. The Personalism of Edith Stein is an investigation of Stein’s mature philosophical anthropology, exploring her engagement with the thought of Aquinas and Thomism while maintaining the phenomenological mode of investigation. Through a careful examination of Stein’s later works under the themes of human nature, the human individual, and the human being’s relation to God, the author shows that Stein’s mature personalism is considerably expanded and substantiated by her assimilation of key anthropological and metaphysical teachings of Aquinas and Thomism, and, conversely, that Stein significantly develops and deepens these same teachings through a phenomenological reconsideration of each from a personalist perspective. As a whole, the study reveals the profound accord between Stein’s mature thought and the received teachings of Aquinas, while yet carefully attending to the remaining differences between them. Ultimately, the author proposes that Stein imbues the teachings of Aquinas with a fundamental personalization such that her mature anthropology can be understood as a Thomistically informed personalism which represents a significant, original contribution to the anthropological dimension of the philosophia perennis. (shrink)