Isaac Newton affirms on several occasions that human understanding cannot reach the essence of bodies. The article seeks to answer the question of why we cannot reach their essence either through our reflection or our senses, which confines our cognition to their appearances. I argue that the answer to this problem lies in Newton’s theological voluntarism, which he fully developed for the first time and explicitly in relation to the problem of the nature of bodies in his manuscript De gravitatione. (...) Newton’s God could create beings similar to bodies, which display all their actions and exhibit all their phenomena, and yet they would not be bodies in their essential and metaphysical constitution. Newton’s theological voluntarism has other important epistemological consequences, such as God’s ability to freely change the laws of nature according to his will. (shrink)

The author argues that Newton’s distinction between absolute and relative motion, i.e. the refusal to define motion in relation to sensible things, in “Scholium on time, space, place and motion” from _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_, stems in great part from his critical stance towards Descartes’s philosophy of nature. This is apparent from the comparison of “Scholium”, in which Descartes is not mentioned at all, with Newton’s criticism of him in his manuscript _De gravitatione_. The positive results of Newton’s encounter (...) with Descartes’s theory of motion is almost completely identical to those of the “Scholium”: the definition of motion must concern the whole body and not just its surface; instead of “mutual translation”, it must include the force that is the cause of the physical motion; the motion of the bodies is uniform and straightforward, which can only be achieved within absolute space. As far as the theory of motion is concerned, Newton’s philosophical challenge was always Descartes. (shrink)

The article focuses on Galileo's Letter to Castelli, 21 December 1613. The author analyzes Galileo's hermeneutical principles established in the first part of the letter and his literal interpretation of the passage from the Book of Joshua 10, 12-13, in Copernican terms, in the second part of the letter. Galileo appears to use the Bible as a scientific authority, supporting his Copernican views, and thus he seems to contradict his own hermeneutical principles. The author argues that Galileo's position is consistent, (...) especially if one takes into account the historical context of its genesis, that is, in the context of the constant, theologically-inspired attacks on Copernicus and Galileo and his commitment to the heliocentric world system and in the context of his newly-made telescopic observations and discoveries. (shrink)

Copernicus’ work was for long considered a turning point in astronomy; some historians even consider it a turning point in science in general. But numerous recent studies have turned this image upside-down. It was revealed that Copernicus’ work was firmly rooted in the traditional conceptual apparatus. The aim of the article is to show that Copernicus’ work, in spite of everything, does indeed represent a radical epistemological shift regarding a certain point, which can be appropriately illuminated by the analysis of (...) the Copernicus’ introduction of the concept of Earth’s motion in astronomy. Copernicus, in contrast to the pre-Copernican tradition, finds mathematical-astronomical reasons that transcend the field of sensory perceptions to be decisive, and rejects the physical or cosmological reasons given by the traditional natural sciences, which are eventually all based on direct or indirect “evidence immediate”. (shrink)

Recenze: Matjaž Vesel, Copernicus: Platonist Astronomer-Philosopher. Cosmic Order, the Movement of the Earth, and the Scientific Revolution. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2014, 541 s.

V pričujočem sklopu so prevedena izbrana pisma Galilea Galileija ter njegovih korespondentov o problematiki razmerja med naravoslovnim oz. filozofskim raziskovanjem in Svetim pismom in s to problematiko povezani dokumenti iz Vatikanskega tajnega arhiva iz obdobja t. i. Galileijevega prvega procesa. Sklop zaključuje Galileijeva Razprava o morskem plimovanju, ki vsebinsko sicer ne zadeva omenjene problematike, je pa nastala kot posledica takratnega dogajanja. Vsa pisma so prevedena po kritični izdaji Galileijevih del, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, ur. Antonio Favaro, Barbèra, Firence 1890–1909. (...) Dokumenti iz Vatikanskega tajnega arhiva so prevedeni po kritični izdaji I documenti vaticani del processo di Galileo Galilei. Nuova edizione accresciuta, rivista e annotata da Sergio Pagano, Archivio segreto vaticano, Mesto Vatikan 2009. Prevod Mojca Mihelič. Besedili Galileo Galilei poklican h kardinalu Bellarminu in Ukor kardinala Roberta Bellarmina Galileu Galileiju je prevedel Gašper Kvartič. Opombe in komentarji Matjaž Vesel in Mojca Mihelič. (shrink)

The shocking statement made by Robert Fogelin over 20 years ago when he claimed that discourses that are in deep disagreement cannot be resolved rationally, is still causing many problems to argumentation theorists. In this paper, however, I argue that discourses that are in deep disagreement, at least some of them, can be rationally resolved by introducing the concept of “third party” to those particular discourses.

Most linguists have defined African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) as a regular and systematic form of vernacular language which contains distinctive grammatical and phonological features. AAVE is considered a social dialect or a non-standard variety of American English, which is spoken by the majority of African Americans. This article explores variability of the selected AAVE features in the interviews with ten African-American public figures, ranging from Hip Hop artists and blues musicians (Redman, Chuck D, Prodigy, MC Lyte, B.B. King) to talk (...) show hosts (Oprah Winfrey), from Hollywood actresses (Queen Latifah,Whoopi Goldberg) to former government officials (Colin Powell) and residents of the White House (Michelle Obama). The selected features of AAVE treated in this study include the absence of copula, the third person singular –s absence, the possessive –s absence, the plural –s absence, and the generalization of is and was to plural and second person pronouns.We consider the influence of social parameters (i.e., gender, age, social status, ethnicity, and affiliation with Hip Hop culture) on the degree of speech formality within a frame of interspeaker variation by examining the correlation between the frequencies of AAVE features and social factors of individual interviewees. The frequencies of individual AAVE variants are calculated into percentages which represent the levels of vernacular usage of each interviewee. Our results are then compared with the outcomes of previous sociolinguistic findings on external factors that have been reported to affect the degree of linguistic formality in a spoken discourse. (shrink)

M. Gams et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, "Strong AI": an Adolescent Disorder Donald Michie Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh, UK Associate ...

In his ontology, Badiou operates with historical situations that are identified as situations whose representation regime is prone to change. Similarly, his Greater Logic operates with changes and modifications of the transcendental related to a change in a particular world determined by its transcendental. In both ontology and logic, Badiou often loosely relates the occurrence of change to temporality, but the operative concept of temporality remains unclear. The paper aims to provide a concept of temporality, borrowed from physics, and which (...) seems consistent with Badiou’s system of thought and helps in comprehending it. We use this concept of time, which explicitly links disorder and temporality in an attempt to elucidate certain parts of Badiou’s ontology and logic. (shrink)

One of the basic elements of Nicholas of Cusa's philosophy of mathematics is his theory of mathematical objects as “entities-of-reason” (entia rationis). He refers to these as being “abstracted from sensible things”. That is why it is possible to assume that Nicholas bases his theory of mathematics on Aristotle's philosophy of mathematics. Aristotle too describes mathematical objects as coming into being through abstraction (ex aphaireseos). The author analyses Cusa's understanding of abstraction in De docta ignorantia and De mente and tries (...) to show that – according to Nicholas of Cusa – the abstraction, which is ens rationis, simultaneously stimulates the human mind to produce mathematical objects from within itself. The author attempts to show how Cusa's philosophy of mathematics is not directly based on Aristotle's philosophy of mathematics – Aristotle is not an abstractionist and does not ascribe the existence of mathematical objects to the mind of the mathematician – but on the abstractionist interpretation of Aristotle by Alexander of Aphodisias, who was followed by the predominantly neoplatonist commentators of Aristotle. These commentators did not see any important differences in the metaphysical or epistemological underpinnings of abstractionism and the so-called projectionism, i.e. the theory according to which mathematical objects pre-exist in the soul. (shrink)

Can mind be modeled as a Turing machine? If you find such questions irrelevant, e.g. because the subject is already exhausted, then you need not read the book Mind versus Computer (Gams et al., 1991). If, on the other hand, you do find such questions relevant, then perhaps you need not read Dunlop's review of the book (Dunlop, 2000). (...).

A provocative ontological-cum-semantic position asserting that the right ontology is austere in its exclusion of numerous common-sense and scientific posits and that many statements employing such posits are nonetheless true. The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence (...) Horgan and Matjaz Potrc argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call "blobjectivism"--the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos, which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts. The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach--products of a decade-long collaboration--will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy. (shrink)

In the formation of epistemically justified beliefs, what is the role of attention, and what is the role (if any) of non-attentional aspects of cognition? We will here argue that there is an essential role for certain nonattentional aspects. These involve epistemically relevant background information that is implicit in the standing structure of an epistemic agent’s cognitive architecture and that does not get explicitly represented during belief-forming cognitive processing. Since such “morphological content” (as we call it) does not become explicit (...) during belief formation, it cannot be information that is within the scope of attention. Nevertheless,it does exert a subtle influence on the character of conscious experience, rather than operating in a purely unconscious way. (shrink)

The thought and the findings of moral particularism are extended to contextualism. Moral particularism asserts that reasons for moral actions are not governed by general principles, but by a mixture of situation bound deliberation and values. Particularism was established in the area of moral philosophy and its main results include delimitation with various forms of moral generalism. Many insights were accumulated along the way. The book claims that a serious contextualist approach needs to embrace particularist normativity. Thesis is then applied (...) to the traditional areas of philosophy such as semantics, epistemology and ontology. This makes it possible to ask questions about the positive and not just negative story and about the wider impact of particularism. The book is an attempt of such a positive story. Foundations are laid for an exciting new field of research in the main systematic branches of philosophy, urging you to rethink the normative basis of semantics, epistemology and metaphysics, in their interweaving with moral thought. The importance of narration and of phenomenology is stressed for these areas. (shrink)

Ontology is the name of the philosophical discipline that provides answers about what there is. The view laid out in the paper, i.e. austere realism, is realistic in that it defends the existence of a thought and language independent world. It is also inclined towards austerity in that it does not take this world to be as richly ontologically populated with entities as common sense initially presupposes. Yet it is a view that results from common sense taking a reflexive attitude (...) about its ontological commitments. Despite its austere consequences, according to this view, many thoughts and sentences expressed by common sense are true, provided that truth is not considered as direct correspondence, i.e. not as the ultimate ontological correspondence to the world. This is enabled by the construal of truth as indirect correspondence that merges the world and contextually operative semantic standards. Such a combined ontological cum semantic view seems a plausible and a well defendable position. (shrink)

Existence monism is defended against priority monism. Schaffer's arguments for priority monism and against pluralism are reviewed, such as the argument from gunk. The whole does not require parts. Ontological vagueness is impossible. If ordinary objects are in the right ontology then they are vague. So ordinary objects are not included in the right ontology; and hence thought and talk about them cannot be accommodated via fully ontological vindication. Partially ontological vindication is not viable. Semantical theorizing outside the ontology room (...) and semantical theorizing in the doorway. Existence monism is theoretically preferable to priority monism. (shrink)

In this paper we point out some interesting structural similarities between vagueness and moral dilemmas as well as between some of the proposed solutions to both problems. Moral dilemma involves a situation with opposed obligations that cannot all be satisfied. Transvaluationism as an approach to vagueness makes three claims concerning the nature of vagueness: (1) it involves incompatibility between mutually unsatisfiable requirements, (2) the underlying requirements retain their normative power even when they happen to be overruled, and (3) this incompatibility (...) turns out to be rather benign in practice. Given that transvaluationism is inspired by moral dilemmas, these claims are assessed in respect to them. Transvaluationism provides a smooth account of the mentioned claims concerning vagueness. Following a brief discussion of Sorensen’s views on moral dilemmas and conflict vagueness, we offer a model of moral pluralism accommodating structurally similar claims about the nature of moral conflict and moral dilemmas. (shrink)