Everyone, according to W.A. Mathieu, is musical by nature--it goes right along with being human. And if you don't believe it, this book will convince you. In a series of interrelated short essays, Mathieu takes the reader on a journey through ordinary experiences to open our ears to the rich variety of music that surrounds us but that we are trained to ignore; such as the variety of pitches produced by different objects, like glassware, furniture, drums--anything you can (...) tap; or sounds that hover on the border of music, like laughter, the clinking of glasses in a toast, or the unintentional falsetto produced by yawning. Along the way the author teaches aspects of music theory that nonmusicians might ordinarily shy away from. He reveals the way of music to be a profoundly spiritual path--one that is everyone's birthright. (shrink)
Recenzja książek W. Buchner, Wojna i konkwista. Hiszpańska myśl polityczna Złotego Wieku i A.A. Chaufe, Wiara i wolność. Myśl ekonomiczna późnych scholastyków.
In an unsung yet excellent paper, W.Z. Harvey set out to explain how both Maimonides and Spinoza have similarly problematic views on the nature of the knowledge of good and evil. In it, he proposed an answer to solving the problem. In the many decades since, debates surrounding this topic have flourished. A recent paper by Joshua Parens, his conclusions mark a distinction between Spinoza and Maimonides that threaten to undermine Harvey’s solution to the problem. I will argue that, although (...) Parens’ distinction forces us to revise Harvey’s contention, Harvey’s argument is still generally valid. (shrink)
Se presenta el argumento de W. T. Stace sobre el realismo señalando no que éste sea falso sino solamente que no hay absolutamente ninguna razón para considerar que sea verdadero y por tanto no tenemos por qué creerlo. Esto se aplica a la discusión de la pregunta: ¿Cómo sabemos que los átomos existen? Haciendo referencia a algunas de las respuestas científicas más importantes conocidas que son en orden cronológico: i) La ley de las proporciones definidas o Ley de Proust, ii) (...) la teoría cinética de los gases, iii) el movimiento Browniano y, iv) imágenes de microscopio de efecto túnel. (shrink)
Artykuł przedstawia sformułowaną przez M.A. Krąpca propozycję filozoficznego wyjaśnienia bytu społecznego na podstawie rozumienia człowieka jako spotencjalizowanej osoby. Kluczowe dla zaprezentowanej w artykule koncepcji M.A. Krąpca jest filozoficzne ujęcie dobra wspólnego rozumianego personalistycznie, jako analogicznie wspólny wszystkim ludziom cel: aktualizacja potencjalności osobowych człowieka, a więc rozwój moralny, wolitywny i twórczy każdego człowieka. Zapewnienie środków realizacji tak rozumianego dobra wspólnego stanowi zasadniczą rację bytu społeczeństwa i państwa. Wszelki byt społeczny jest bowiem — jako rzeczywistość relacyjna — ontycznie „słabszy” niż istniejąca w (...) sposób podmiotowy osoba ludzka. Dobro wspólne rozumiane personalistycznie stanowi jedyne dobro w pełni nieantagonistyczne: rozwój osobowy poszczególnych ludzi nikogo nie uszczupla, a wszystkich ubogaca. Zatem nie stanowi ono podporządkowania jednostki dobru całości rozumianej w sposób kolektywny. Jednocześnie pozwala na wskazanie racjonalnych podstaw dla konieczności istnienia rozmaitych społeczności, bez których rozwój osobowy nie mógłby się dokonać. Zaproponowana w artykule koncepcja M.A. Krąpca, akcentując prymat osoby względem bytu społecznego, jednocześnie wskazuje na fakt konieczności istnienia różnorakich społeczności jako ugruntowanych w ludzkiej spotencjalizowanej naturze środowisk umożliwiających rozwój osobowy człowieka. Tym samym pozwala na przekroczenie dychotomii indywidualizm — kolektywizm. (shrink)
W niniejszej pracy staram się osłabić gruntowną krytykę Dawida Hume’a dotyczącą „teizmu empirycznego” : a) odróżniam „realizm empiryczny”, który przypisuję Kleantesowi, od „idealizmu empirycznego”, koncepcji, co istotne, nie stwarzającej dodatkowych trudności teoretycznych, oraz b) wykazuję, że jeżeli przez „teizm empiryczny” rozumieć się będzie także to drugie stanowisko, ów teizm okaże się w istocie niepodatny na część zarzutów wysuniętych przez Hume’a.
This Companion brings together a team of leading figures in contemporary philosophy to provide an in-depth exposition and analysis of Quine’s extensive influence across philosophy’s many subfields, highlighting the breadth of his work, and revealing his continued significance today. Provides an in-depth account and analysis of W.V.O. Quine’s contribution to American Philosophy, and his position as one of the late twentieth-century’s most influential analytic philosophers Brings together newly-commissioned essays by leading figures within contemporary philosophy Covers Quine’s work across philosophy of (...) logic, philosophy of language, ontology and metaphysics, epistemology, and more Explores his work in relation to the origins of analytic philosophy in America, and to the history of philosophy more broadly Highlights the breadth of Quine’s work across the discipline, and demonstrates the continuing influence of his work within the philosophical community. (shrink)
Autorka nawiązuje do artykułu J.F. Lyotarda „A Few Words to Sing” w której filozof podejmuje się analizy utworu Sequenza III Luciano Berio napisanego i śpiewanego przez Cathy Bereberian. „A Few Words to Sing” jest przykładem podejmowania przez Lyotarda tematów muzycznych „na granicy”. W tym konkretnym przypadku autorka sugeruje, że wspomniana analiza bardzo dobrze wpisuje się w postulowane przez Lyotarda kategorie figury oraz oddania głosu [ofierze] w opozycji wobec tego co [czysto]estetyczne (resisting the aesthetic). Zainteresowania muzyczne Lyotarda, być może nie tak (...) wyeksponowane jak jego zainteresowania obrazem (choć kategorie figury i gestu okazują się łatwo przekraczać granice rodzajów sztuki) także bardzo wyraźnie wskazują na szczególny rodzaj [anty]estetyki uprawiany przez Lyotrada, gdzie udzielenie głosu ofierze staje się istotnym, jeśli nie podstawowym kryterium sztuki. (shrink)
In his paper “The Catholic Church, the American Military, and Homosexual Reorientation Therapy,” David W. Lutz ultimately concludes that it is “appropriate, and highly ethical” for the American military to offer reorientation therapy to help homosexuals overcome “the vice of sodomy.” The major thrust of his paper, however, is to call for abandonment of the “Don't Ask/Don't Tell” policy currently in place in the military. Lutz's paper covers much ground, and this review begins by examining whether such a wide view (...) is necessary for the ultimate conclusions. It goes on to ask whether Lutz has omitted to mention important considerations bearing on this issue, and whether Lutz's call for the introduction of reorientation therapy is a serious call or a symbolic response to homosexual activities. Lutz fails to address essential issues such as the actual experiences of other nations having homosexuals in the military, and issues regarding what constitutes “reorientation therapy,” the latter leading to questions about how such a therapy would actually be implemented. (shrink)
My title is a quotation from Davidson's essay ‘On Saying That’. And although my concerns are at some remove from his, they do connect at one significant point. We find ourselves under the continual pressure of theory to deny that ordinary familiar semantic features of ordinary familiar words equip them to serve certain ordinary familiar functions. One of Davidson's aims is to resist that pressure as far as the function of reporting indirect speech is concerned. In similar vein I want (...) to look at some common things that we do with words and show how we can hold fast to a simple common-sense view of what we are doing despite the doubts to which reflection is apt to give rise. In fact I want to look at six things we do with words, six linguistic moves we make. These six moves are related in a number of important ways. Even so, they are really the subjects of six separate essays, and I am well aware that treating them together in the way that I shall be doing—worse still, trying thereby to make some headway with solving one or two extremely difficult philosophical problems, as I shall also be doing—will mean that in each case I can at best produce something highly programmatic. (shrink)
We all ‘know’ that public opinion came to prominence in the political vocabulary of the late eighteenth century. It may be that this dates its rise a bit late, but it is not relevant to argue the matter here. My concern is rather that we be equally aware of the purposes for which people made use of the concept. Here I wish to consider various possible contexts for speaking or writing of public opinion, or ‘opinion’, as it was usually called (...) prior to the mid-eighteenth century. It may be possible to define, more fully than heretofore, the work that the expression did in eighteenth-century thought. As contemporary students of public opinion have been learning, an answer to this question may not even be wholly irrelevant to the task of specifying the nature of public opinion in our own time. (shrink)
Different questions generate different forms of practical reasoning. A contextually unrestricted ‘What shall I do?’ is too open to focus reflection. More determinately, an agent may ask, ‘Shall I do X, or Y?’ To answer that, he may need to weigh things up—as fits the derivation of ‘deliberation’ from libra. Ubiquitous and indispensable though this is, I mention it only to salute it in passing. Or he may ask how to achieve a proposed end: if his end is to do (...) X, he may ask ‘How shall I do X?’ Or he may ask how to apply a universal rule or particular maxim. Aristotle supplies examples in De Motu Animalium, whose wording I freely adapt to my own purposes: A1 reasons to a necessary means to achieving an end: I will make a cloak. To make a cloak I must do A. So, I will do A. (shrink)
There is not, and may there never be, any treatise by me …onthese things, for the subject is not communicable in words, as othersciences are. Rather is it that, after long association in the business itself and a shared life, a light is lit in the soul, kindled, as it were, by a leaping flame, and thenceforward feeds itself.
If we cannot agree that evaluations are judgements that both describe things and express sentiments, we lack any shared understanding of a common topic. If we ever come to agree how the describing and expressing relate, we shall lose a debate. Suppose that evaluation is a mode of description essentially expressive of sentiment, and that some evaluations can be known to be true: then there must exist properties of such a kind that they can be apprehended only from appropriately affective (...) points of view. Alternatively, it may be that evaluation involves some element distinct from description, so that, in principle, one could always accept the descriptive core of an evaluation while distancing oneself from a non-descriptive element that makes it evaluative. We may distinguish the two kinds of view as lumping , or descriptivist- cum -expressivist, and splitting , or descriptivist- plus -expressivist. Both ascribe to evaluations an expressive aspect as well as a descriptive content; what is at issue is whether the former is integral to the latter, or detachable from it. (shrink)
Garrett W. Brown has argued that donor voting caucuses produce a deliberative deficit between donor and non-donor members in the Global Fund International Board. Although we agree with this assessment, in our research on low-transaction cost alternatives to cope with consistent deliberative conditions we have found that deliberation and interest-based preference maximisation are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as long as we manage to stop donor members from behaving like monopolists. To this end, we have to open up the Board from (...) its present state of non-transparency, so that new input can be obtained from new constituents. This will also soften the current principal-agent structure that links members to their donors, easing the transition to market-driven governance rules that provide for the replacement of Board members if they do not fulfil the new constituents' expectations. (shrink)
The world of John Dewey scholarship recently lost one of its most thoughtful contributors, and teachers of all kinds lost one of their most passionate and committed advocates. Philip W. Jackson was born in 1928 in Vineland, New Jersey, a locale known historically for its excellent grape-growing soil and veterinarian Arthur Goldhaft’s famous pledge to “put a chicken in every pot.” Jackson’s adoptive parents were, appropriately enough, chicken farmers, and, as the story goes, they noticed early on his indisputable knack (...) for singing and poetry recitation. Feeling very at home on the stage, the plucky six-year-old even tried his hand as a vaudevillian, performing a snake charmer act between reels at.. (shrink)
How, in pursuit of ontological neutrality, should one talk about values? I propose to say: there are values . Those three words do nothing to define within what kind of conception of a world values are at home. 1 I take it that the ‘realist’ must have more to say about values and their world . I recognize that an ‘anti-realist’ may prefer to talk of value- terms ; I ask him to wait and see whether taking the linguistic turn (...) is the only way to put values in their place. (shrink)
In the 21stcentury, there is a turn of thinking toward its reorientation first of all to the human as an author of thought and not to the nature, existing independently of us and of the process of scientific knowledge obtaining. It is possible to see the difference of these two types of thinking in the context of dialogue between W. Whewell’s philosophy and the scientific investigations after the scientific revolution in the beginning of the 20thcentury. In the philosophy of 21stcentury, (...) man is a social being and this is the basis of social philosophy. The artificial world around us is created by a human, it has its foundation in the laws of thinking but not the laws of nature. The foundations of both systems are quite different. In what way can we achieve mutual understanding between them? From both sides some aspects can be put forward, for instance, the concept of a mediator of a thought. This concept is studied actively by W. Whewell and by philosophers of our time, and this leads in both cases to some unexpected interpretation of the basic question of philosophy: the border between thing and thought is becoming less noticeable. We can come to the same result, going by different ways. Whewell finds common qualities for some group of things. Social philosophers are interested in what makes things different. Not one of these idealizations corresponds completely to the reality. Always something is not taken into consideration. A thinker chooses out of real world some of its characteristics that become a basis of a thought system, which explains everything but in its own way. The paper demonstrates the way of possible creation of a new type of thinking. (shrink)
Em 1821, Friedrich W. Schelling inaugura um novo caminho para o seu pensamento. Esse novo caminho, como afirma o próprio filósofo, divide sua filosofia em duas partes, a saber, a filosofia negativa, que diz respeito a toda sua produção anterior, e a filosofia positiva que se inaugura a partir das aulas de Erlangen. Contudo, como veremos neste artigo, suas duas filosofias estão unidas na busca pelo pensamento da Unidade. Essa busca traduz-se na Spätphilosophie como busca do Absoluto. O presente artigo (...) tem como objetivo refletir sobre os escritos da chamada Filosofia da Mitologia que visam pensar o caminho do Absoluto. Tal caminho relaciona-se com o caminho percorrido pela própria consciência humana e, ao mesmo tempo, coincide com ela. Portanto, a análise culminará no que chamou de processo mitológico e sua relação com o politeísmo sucessivo, já que a mitologia teria se constituído graças à sucessão dos deuses efetuada na consciência humana. In 1821, Friedrich W. Schelling opens a new path for his thinking. This new path, as affirmed by the philosopher himself, he divides his philosophy in two parts: the negative philosophy, which concerns all his previous production, and the positive philosophy that is inaugurated by the Erlangen courses. However, both philosophies are linked together by the search of the thought of the Unity, a search manifested in the Spätphilosophie as the quest for the Absolute. The present article aims to reflect upon the writings of the so-called Philosophy of Mythology, which intends to think about the way to the Absolute. Such way is related to the path followed by the human conscience itself and, at the same time, it coincides with the conscience itself. Therefore, the analysis shall culminate in what Schelling called "mythological process" and in its relation with the successive polytheism, since mythology may have constituted itself by the succession of gods, effected in human conscience. (shrink)
