Many Jewish groups of late antiquity assumed that they were obligated to observe the Divine Law. This book attempts to study the various rationales offered by these groups to explain the authority that the Divine Law had over them. Second Temple groups tended to look towards philosophy or metaphysics to justify the Divine Law's authority. The tannaim, though, formulated legal arguments that obligate Israel to observe the Divine Law. While this turn towards legalism is pan-tannaitic, two distinct legal arguments can (...) be identified in tannaitic literature. These specific arguments about the Divine Law's authority, link to a set of issues regarding the tannaim's conception of Divine Law and of Israel's election. (shrink)

David Bronstein sheds new light on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics--one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy--by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. He argues that the Posterior Analytics is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge, an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind's ascent from sense-perception of particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. Bronstein goes on to highlight Plato's influence (...) on Aristotle's text, and argues against current orthodoxy that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing's essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes. (shrink)

The notion of Socratic Note Taking is introduced to enhance students’ learning from assigned readings. SNT features students asking questions and answering their own questions while doing the readings. To test the effectiveness of SNT, half the students from two sections of a philosophy course were assigned SNT on alternating weeks. Quizzes each week alternated between the two classes as either high or low stakes in a counterbalanced format. The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 within-participants factorial. On (...) ten-point quizzes, SNT made an average difference of 1.22 points. Furthermore, the results indicate that SNT is particularly effective with weaker students, e.g., we found a nearly three-point increase on ten-point quizzes for the weakest students. (shrink)

Abstract In Posterior Analytics II.19 Aristotle raises and answers the question, how do first principles become known? The usual view is that the question asks about the process or method by which we learn principles and that his answer is induction. I argue that the question asks about the original prior knowledge from which principles become known and that his answer is perception. Hence the aim of II.19 is not to explain how we get all the way to principles but (...) to defend the claim that our knowledge of them originates in perception. Aristotle explains how we learn principles earlier in book II, in his account of definitional inquiry. In II.19 he explains how we reach by induction the preliminary accounts necessary for such inquiries. (shrink)

Plato in the Meno is standardly interpreted as committed to condition innatism: human beings are born with latent innate states of knowledge. Against this view, Gail Fine has argued for prenatalism: human souls possess knowledge in a disembodied state but lose it upon being embodied. We argue against both views and in favor of content innatism: human beings are born with innate cognitive contents that can be, but do not exist innately in the soul as, the contents of states of (...) knowledge. Content innatism has strong textual support and constitutes a philosophically interesting theory. (shrink)

In Posterior Analytics 2.19, Aristotle argues that we cannot have innate knowledge of first principles because if we did we would have the most precise items of knowledge without noticing, which is impossible. To understand Aristotle’s argument we need to understand why he thinks we cannot possess these items of knowledge without noticing. In this paper, I present three different answers to this question and three different readings of his argument corresponding to them. The first two readings focus on the (...) fact that we do not use the knowledge we allegedly possess innately. However, I argue that these readings fail to produce convincing arguments. I then offer a third reading, which focuses on the fact that we do not notice the knowledge we allegedly possess innately when we use it for the first time. I argue that this reading produces a more convincing argument than either of the first two. (shrink)

I argue against the standard interpretation of Aristotle’s account of ‘natural predication’ in Posterior Analytics 1.19 and 1.22 according to which only substances can serve as subjects in such predications. I argue that this interpretation cannot accommodate a number of demonstrations Aristotle sanctions. I propose a new interpretation that can accommodate them.

For decades, technologies that ease information sharing (e.g., the wireless telegraph; Mckernon, 1925) have inspired concerns about the proliferation of misinformation. Today, these worries often c...

Eugene D. Bronstein; Miss Stebbing's Directional Analysis and Basic Facts, Analysis, Volume 2, Issue 1-2, 1 October 1934, Pages 10–14, https://doi.org/10.1093/a.

The introduction summarizes the six new papers collected in Volume 1, Tome 5: Eleatic Ontology and Aristotle. The papers take a fresh look at virtually every aspect of Aristotle’s engagement with Eleaticism. They are particularly concerned with Aristotle’s responses to Parmenidean monism, the Eleatic rejection of change, and Zeno’s paradoxes. The contributions also focus on the ways in which Aristotle developed several of his own theories in metaphysics and natural science partly in reaction to Eleatic puzzles and arguments.

This chapter examines Plato’s account of the method of learning by paradeigma (‘model’) in the Statesman. I first explain what the method is. I then consider the two parties who are described as using it: children who are learning to read and write and the dialogue’s two interlocutors. I highlight some parallels between each party’s use of the method. These parallels illuminate important features of dialectical inquiry in general and the Visitor and Young Socrates’ inquiry in particular, including the nature (...) of the knowledge they ultimately hope to achieve and one stage in the complex process by which they aim achieve it. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 152-154, April-June.

Is reality one or many? If one, is there exactly one thing or exactly one kind of thing? And is this one (kind of) thing material or immaterial? These questions.

Chapter One WHAT IS RELIGION?. Edgar S. Brightman 7. Alfred North Whitehead X. William Ernest Hocking 8. Albert Einstein 5. William James 9. ...

Contemporary virtue epistemologists argue that cognitive acts are knowledge by issuing from capacities that constitute intellectual virtues. This chapter argues that Aristotle rejects this thesis in favour of the view that capacities constitute intellectual virtues by issuing in cognitive acts that are knowledge.

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to identify current trends in library and information science education related to the user‐centred approach adopted by libraries and information professionals in response to the advent of the internet.Design/methodology/approachCourse descriptions of 30 LIS departments around the world were analyzed based on Wilson's map of information science that proposes five basic foundations fields: information content, information systems, people, organizations, and policy. The analysis focused on the user‐centred people field and on the interactions between this field (...) and the other four fields proposed by the model. Course descriptions found in the departments' web sites were analyzed using the content analysis method and eight categories were revealed in the analysis that represent the different interactions between the fields.FindingsFindings show that LIS departments have been successful in infusing the traditional information‐related curricula with a user‐centred approach but they have yet to develop areas of study that strengthen the students' social skills.Research limitations/implicationsThe data collection method limited the scope of the study. By restricting the data collection to course descriptions as advertised in the departments' web sites the study could only analyze the departments' intent and not their actual work in the field.Originality/valueThe study recommends the implementation of courses dealing with social or personal skills. (shrink)

Aristoteles’ Theorie der Demonstration ist in seinen Analytica posteriora enthalten, einem Werk, das seine in den Analytica priora präsentierte Theorie des Syllogismus zur Voraussetzung hat und auf ihm aufbaut. Eine Demonstration ist ein spezieller Typ von Syllogismus, nämlich ein solcher, der beweist, dass eine Tatsache notwendig ist, indem er deren Ursache oder Erklärung aus bestimmten Prämissen aufzeigt, die ihrerseits bestimmte Bedingungen erfüllen müssen. Aristoteles’ Theorie der Demonstration ist eng mit seinem Begriff des wissenschaftlichen Wissens verknüpft, weil wissenschaftliches Wissen seiner Auffassung (...) nach durch Demonstration erlangt wird. Von daher steht die Demonstration im Mittelpunkt seiner Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Eine Wissenschaft stellt dabei eine bestimmte Abfolge von miteinander verbundenen Demonstrationen dar, die kausale Relationen unter den in ihren Bereich fallenden Tatsachen aufzeigt. (shrink)

Domjan, Cusato & Villarreal's target article is reviewed in the context of historical difficulty for learning studies in discriminating between learned and unlearned components of behavior. The research surveyed in the target article meets the criterion of differentiating between some learned and the unlearned aspects of social behavior, with Pavlovian conditioning shown repeatedly as a route by which reproductive and aggressive behavior is modulated.