Hasil untuk "Metaphysics"

J. Ladyman, D. Ross

In this rejoinder, I engage with the criticism my book Systematic Theology as a Rationally Justified Public Discourse about God receives from Lois Malcolm and Dirk Evers. First, I answer two objections from Malcolm focusing on the comprehensiveness of my vision for theology and my understanding of “public.” As to the comprehensiveness, I defend my stricter understanding of realism based on the notion of theoretical frameworks; I defend my stricter notion of truth as coherence as the most fruitful understanding for academic theology. As to the public character, I reject Malcolm’s critique that my understanding of “public” is too narrow, since I deliberately limit the investigated context to research universities; thus, I have no problem accepting that there are other publics of theological interest at another point. Second, I answer five objections from Evers that are stated as clusters of critical questions: (1) I accept that I see the change in metaphysics as the context that calls for renewed theological answers, but (2), I reject that this is a problem. The institutional problems for theology are related to a changed metaphysical context in the Western world. (3), I defend the place of logic in metaphysics even though it is in a weakened form compared with classical logic. (4), I defend the need for a third-level academic theology that sustains everyday belief. (5), I accept that God is semper maior but reject that this makes theological theories of God superfluous.

Laczházi Gyula

The distinction between the necessary and the accidental, between events that serve a purpose and those that are meaningless, can be found in the semantics developed by a wide variety of cultures to interpret the world. In the religiously dominated culture of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the question of contingency was thematized primarily in relation to the concept of providence, and its most typical manifestation was the ancient-rooted notion of fortuna. However, the fortune concept lost its explanatory power during the 17th century, in connection with scientific, economic and social changes. There are many signs that, at the same time, ideas about divine providence were transformed. Although there are signs of this already in the 16th century (such as in the popular Fortunatus), especially from the end of the 17th century onwards there is a noticeable erosion of the traditional metaphysics based on the centrality of the providential God. Literary studies can also contribute to the study of changing ideas about providence, since it is often in genres that provide a more flexible framework than theological or philosophical discourse that the first signs of change appear. Miklós Bethlen’s autobiography, written in the early 18th century is a good example of this. The overall framework of the self-interpretation of the autobiography is a belief in providence, yet there are also elements that are in tension with it. These have so far only been referred to in a few scattered references in the literature, but have not been comprehensively examined and interpreted. An examination of the literary conceptualisation of providence and chance can show how traditional conceptual frameworks become problematic in the face of new experiences, while their meaning is also modified.

Ramon Harvey

The concept of fiṭra (primordial human nature or natural disposition) plays an important role in Islamic theological anthropology. It is first and foremost a scriptural concept, being present both within the Qur’an (Q. 30:30) and the Hadith (especially the hadith ‘every child is born upon the fiṭra […]’). The primary sense of fiṭra is that the devotion to God characterizing the ethical monotheism of Islam is in some sense an inbuilt capacity or inclination of the human being. The key texts of Islamic scripture relate fiṭra to the purity in belief and practice associated with the Abrahamic legacy and the Prophet Muḥammad’s renewal thereof. Though the impact of early controversies concerning the divine decree can be felt in some of the related hadiths and their theological reception, the prophetic core is free from strong predestinationism. There is a significant dividing line in the Islamic theological tradition over whether to link the interpretation of fiṭra to a metaphysical primordial covenant between God and all human beings (usually connected to Qur’anic verse 7:172) or if emphasis is to be placed instead on human natural capacities within the world. In the former case, the human religious experience is fundamentally one of recall and return, whereas in the latter it is one of instinctual and intellectual realization. This difference in interpretation impacts the epistemic dimension of fiṭra, its role in knowing God and making moral valuations, as well as the way that it is framed within the social lives of Muslims.

Hélio Rebello Cardoso Jr, María Inés Mudrovcic, Achim Landwehr

Abstract This article proposes a four-layered diagram that displays as an overview of the current field of historical time studies according to the following branches of investigation: 1) the metaphysics of natural time, 2) the metaphysics of historical time, 3) the regimes of historicity, and 4) historiographical regimes. By defining these fields and their connections, identifying essential concepts, revealing the questions they address, and sketching tendencies that have emerged since the 2000s, this article tackles historical temporality as a theoretical and historiographical subject. This framework, which portrays the state of the art in temporal studies, allows for the presentation and classification of the variety of contributions gathered in this special edition.

Tuğba Yavuz

Ontolojik nesnenin belirlenişinde matematiğin etkisi bugün adeta kayıp bir gönderge gibidir. Oysa tarihlerinin başlangıcında bu ilişki açıkça görünür biçimdeydi. Matematiğin ve bilimlerin 17. yy. ve sonrasındaki gelişimi, felsefe ve mantıkta da yeni açılımlar sağlamıştır. Aristoteles fiziği üzerine bina edilen Aristoteles mantığı, yeni matematikle kurulan ve yeni fizikle güncellenen bir kavrayışı gerektiren bu yeni dünyanın nesnelerinin belirlenimi üzerindeki otoritesini yitirmiştir. Matematiğin belirleyici olduğu bu yeni dünyada matematiksel mantıklar geliştirilmiş, böylece nesnenin belirlediği matematiğin sınırından, nesnenin matematik yoluyla belirlenebilmesinin yolunun açıldığı günümüze, mantıksal ve metafiziksel bir evrim gerçekleşmiştir. Matematiğin nesnelerine varlık atfetmeyen Aristoteles metafiziğinden, mümkün ve imkansız dünyaların nesnelerini içerecek metafiziklerin inşa edilebileceği bir aşamaya gelinmiştir. Çalışmamızın amacı, tüm bu arka planda, söz konusu açıdan belki de hiç görünür olmamış ancak çağdaş nesne kuramı tartışmalarını ve mantıksal gelişmeleri neredeyse yakalayan yöntem ve içeriğe sahip bir detay olarak 9. yy. matematikçisi Hârizmî ve onun başyapıtı el-Kitabu’l Cebr’inin mantıksal-metafiziksel bir okumasını yapmaktır.

Svein Aage Christoffersen

In K.E. Løgstrup’s (1905–1981) theology, the point of intersection between phenomenology and systematic theology is our life experiences. In this article, Løgstrup’s way of combining phenomenology and theology is explored from the 1930s to the 1970s. The idea that life is not an amorphous abyss, but God’s creation runs like a connecting thread throughout Løgstrup’s oeuvre. This idea negating a nihilistic understanding of life requires a phenomenology of the social world that explores both the ethical and the metaphysical implications of our life experiences. Human beings are interdependent animals, and in this interdependency, an anonymous and unavoidable ethical demand makes itself present, saying that you have to take care of the life you have in your hands. Sovereign expressions of life are phenomena that support the ethical demand and the idea of creation. In the 1970s, Løgstrup broadened the perspective and explored how the universe is present in our life experiences through our bodily existence and our senses. Even so, there is not an unbroken way from these metaphysical considerations to theology. Christian Faith is based on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Life experiences are just the horizon against which it is possible to understand what the Christian message is. Systematic theology connects phenomenology on the one hand and the proclamation of the Gospel on the other hand.

I. Kant, R. Sullivan

Raymond D. Boisvert

Whitehead's response to the epistemological challenges of Hume and Kant, written in a style devoid of the metaphysical intricacies of his later works, Symbolism makes accessible his theory of perception and his more general insights into the function of symbols in culture and society.

Nicholas F. Stang

J. Williams

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.

J. Wolff

This book articulates and defends a new and original answer to two questions: What are physical quantities and what makes them quantitative? This novel position—substantival structuralism—says that quantitativeness is an irreducible feature of particular attributes, and quantitative attributes are best understood as substantival structured spaces. Physical quantities like mass, momentum, or temperature play an important role in formulating laws of nature and in testing scientific theories. It is therefore important to have a clear philosophical understanding of what makes these attributes special. Traditional views of quantities have either suggested that quantities are determinables, that is, attributes that require determination by magnitudes, or that quantities are in some sense numerical, but neither view is satisfactory. The book shows how to use the representational theory of measurement to provide a better, more abstract criterion for quantitativeness: only attributes whose numerical representation has a high degree of uniqueness are quantitative. The best ontology for quantities is offered by a form of sophisticated substantivalism applied to quantities as structured spaces. Substantivalism, because an infinite domain is required to satisfy the formal requirements of quantitativeness; structured spaces, because they contain fundamental relations; sophisticated substantivalism because the identity of positions in such spaces is irrelevant. The resulting view is a form structuralism about quantities. The topic of the book falls squarely in the metaphysics of science, with contributions to general metaphysics and philosophy of science.

D. Baker

According to comparativist theories of quantities, their intrinsic values are not fundamental. Instead, all the quantity facts are grounded in scale-independent relations like “twice as massive as” or “more massive than.” I show that this sort of scale independence is best understood as a sort of metaphysical symmetry—a principle about which transformations of the non-fundamental ontology leave the fundamental ontology unchanged. Determinism—a core scientific concept easily formulated in absolutist terms—is more difficult for the comparativist to define. After settling on the most plausible comparativist understanding of determinism, I offer some examples of physical systems that the comparativist must count as indeterministic, although the relevant physical theory gives deterministic predictions. Several morals are drawn. In particular: comparativism is metaphysically contingent if true, and it is most natural for a comparativist to accept an at-at theory of motion.

Marcus Willaschek

Peter J. Lewis

R. Rega, Tom Cumming

Javier Suárez, Javier Suárez, Vanessa Triviño

Contemporary biological research has suggested that some host–microbiome multispecies systems (referred to as “holobionts”) can in certain circumstances evolve as unique biological individual, thus being a unit of selection in evolution. If this is so, then it is arguably the case that some biological adaptations have evolved at the level of the multispecies system, what we call hologenomic adaptations. However, no research has yet been devoted to investigating their nature, or how these adaptations can be distinguished from adaptations at the species-level (genomic adaptations). In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the nature of hologenomic adaptations. By drawing on the case of the evolution of sanguivory diet in vampire bats, we argue that a trait constitutes a hologenomic adaptation when its evolution can only be explained if the holobiont is considered the biological individual that manifests this adaptation, while the bacterial taxa that bear the trait are only opportunistic beneficiaries of it. We then use the philosophical notions of emergence and inter-identity to explain the nature of this form of individuality and argue why it is special of holobionts. Overall, our paper illustrates how the use of philosophical concepts can illuminate scientific discussions, in the trend of what has recently been called metaphysics of biology.

Salah Al-ddin Abdi, Akram Zolfaghari

The phenomenon of deconstruction emerged in the late sixties of the twentieth century from the point of view of structuralism. Associated with breach of the metaphysics of presence, deconstructing criticism was raised by Jacques Derrida, within which the verbal/parole aspects of the texts are violated. The purpose of this comprehensive outlook is to delve into the hidden meanings of the text and its metaphysical dimensions. Dimashq al-Ḥarāʼiq was written byZakaria Tamer, a well-known short story writer in the Arab world. This article deals with the collection of two short stories, "Mot al-Sha'r al-Asvad" and "vajh al-ghamar" by analyzing the text using the deconstruction approach. The research method is descriptive-analytic. After the text analysis, it emerges that the main contradictions in the stories are hope / despair, dignity / inferiority and captivity / freedom. By analyzing these contradictions and deconstructing them, it is concluded that the existence of contradictory inversion in the stories is due to the disapproval of the higher classes by the oppressed lower class, which is attributed to the lack of knowledge or the lack of power for confrontation.

Douglas Edwards

What is truth? What role does truth play in the connections between language and the world? What is the relationship between truth and being? The Metaphysics of Truth tackles these fundamental philosophical questions and develops a distinctive metaphysical worldview. Moreover, it does so in a climate where the traditionally central issue of the nature of truth has diminished in significance due to the rise of deflationary and primitivist views, which deny that there are interesting and informative things to say about truth. This book responds to these views, and demonstrates the importance of the metaphysics of truth with regard to both the study of truth itself, and metaphysical debates more generally. It also develops a detailed pluralist metaphysical approach, which starts with the diversity of different subject areas, and holds that there are different relationships between language and the world in different areas, or ‘domains’. A pluralist approach is constructed that explains what domains are; how different domains are individuated; which metaphysical frameworks apply in different domains; and how truth plays a key role in the picture. The picture is extended to incorporate ontological pluralism—the idea that there are different ways of being—which increases the explanatory power of the view. Particular focus is given to important domains that have not yet received a great deal of attention in debates about truth, namely the institutional and social domains, which connects work on the metaphysics of truth and being to key issues in social construction.

Nicholas F. Stang

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) says that everything has a reason that fully explains it. Leibniz expresses the PSR in Latin and French, respectively, as the principle that everything has a ratio or raison. When German philosophers of the eighteenth century, heavily influenced by the Leibnizian writings available to them, formulated similar ideas in their native tongue, they translated ratio as Grund and expressed the PSR accordingly as: Everything has a ground that fully explains it. This Principle of Sufficient Ground (Satz des zureichenden Grundes) or PSG is, so to speak, the Leibnizian PSR translated into German. The PSG – how to correctly formulate it, whether it holds without restriction – became one of the major topics of debate within the Leibnizian tradition of late eighteenth-century German philosophy, commonly known as German rationalism. It comes as no surprise then that Kant, steeped as he was in German rationalism and its debates, would extensively discuss the PSG and the notion of ground (Grund) in the metaphysics lectures he gave virtually every semester at the University of Königsberg from 1755 until his retirement from teaching in 1796. Nearly every extant transcript of those lectures contains extended discussions of the correct definition of “ground,” critical comments on the views of his near contemporaries (especially those of Wolff, Baumgarten and Crusius) about what grounds are, distinctions among different kinds of ground and considerations about the correct formulation and range of application of the PSG. While scholars have extensively discussed Kant’s treatment of the PSG in the Antinomies chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason, and, more