This article, by analysing, annotating en interpreting the most recent research in all relevant departments, provides a fresh and updated overview of the Neoplatonic metaphysics of Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 500). After providing an introduction to Dionysius’ metaphysics in terms of the contributions of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism, the article explores his broader philosophical system. A number of traits that are uniquely Dionysic-metaphysical, are eventually isolated: the interpretation of transcendence as bound to immanence; the affirmation of God’s transcendence in the world (...) (that is, a metaphysics of ‘creation as teophany’; following E.D. Perl); the radical transcendence and simultaneous radical immanence of God (that is, God as ‘Beingness’); fundamental restrictions of language and the analogical ‘Naming’ of God; creation as a system of dialectical symbols about God; the analogical participation of the subject in creation; and unification (reditus, the ‘flowing of things back to God’). These traits are utilised to reappraise the metaphysics of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) in a subsequent article. (shrink)

This article investigates the palimpsest reception of Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 500) in the metaphysics of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). The article covers Cusa’s political theory and metaphysics, which are intertwined. Reading Cusa against the backdrop of an analysis of Pseudo-Dionysius’ metaphysics in a preceding article, the author, in a synthetic conclusion, isolates seven Dionysic ‘trails’ (S1 to S7) in Cusa’s metaphysics: the interpretation of transcendence as bound to immanence; the affirmation of God’s transcendence in the world (or a metaphysics (...) of ‘creation as teophany’); the radical transcendence and simultaneous radical immanence of God (that is, God as ‘Beingness’); fundamental restrictions of language and the analogical ‘Naming’ of God; creation as a system of dialectical symbols about God; the analogical participation of the subject in creation; and unification (reditus, the ‘flowing of things back to God’). The Dionysic trails in Cusa’s metaphysics are described as a noteworthy, if not important, palimpsest in the corpus of late Medieval philosophy and is indicative of what the author puts forward as ‘discursive memory’, which is presented as a modern-critical concept. (shrink)

In der Geschichte der Logik spielt die Darstellung verschiedener formallogischer Sachverhalte in veranschaulichenden Figuren eine grosse Rolle. Eines der bekanntesten Beispiele solcher Figuren ist die beruhmte pons asinorum oder Eselsbrucke. Diese Figur findet sich zum erstenmal in dem Kommentar des Johannes Philoponos zu den Ersten Analytiken des Aristoteles. Die griechischen Aristoteliker haben einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung der Syllogistik geleistet. Einige ihrer Beitrage - wie dieser der Eselsbrucke - wurden durch Averroes und Albert den Grossen der lateinischen Tradition weitergegeben. (...) Die meisten haben aber auf die Ubersetzertatigkeit des 16. Jahrhunderts warten mussen, bevor sie im Rahmen der Argumentationstheorie voll zur Geltung kamen. (shrink)

The standard understanding of tautologies is that they are semantically vacuous. Yet tautological utterances occur frequently in conversational discourse. One approach contends that apparent tautological statements are either genuinely tautologous and thereby semantically vacuous or are what we term ¿pseudo-tautologies¿, i.e., sentences that only bear a formal syntactic resemblance to tautologies but are not in fact tautologous. Another approach follows Grice and asserts that the meaning of a tautological utterance derives from an inference made by the listener from the (...) utterance via universal rules of conversation to a non-tautological proposition. We deny both accounts for a subset of tautological utterances that are both content-bearing and truly tautological. Such ¿deep tautologies¿ acquire meaning not by shedding their tautological status, but by drawing attention to it. Since only non-vague noun phrases will support tautological statements of the form N is N, the use of a tautology of this form in conversational context will, by its use as a tautology, indicate the speaker¿s intention that the noun phrase be considered non-vague. (shrink)

The standard understanding of tautologies is that they are semantically vacuous. Yet tautological utterances occur frequently in conversational discourse. One approach contends that apparent tautological statements are either genuinely tautologous and thereby semantically vacuous or are what we term “pseudo-tautologies”, i.e., sentences that only bear a formal syntactic resemblance to tautologies but are not in fact tautologous. Another approach follows Grice and asserts that the meaning of a tautological utterance derives from an inference made by the listener from the (...) utterance via universal rules of conversation to a non-tautological proposition. We deny both accounts for a subset of tautological utterances that are both content-bearing and truly tautological. Such “deep tautologies” acquire meaning not by shedding their tautological status, but by drawing attention to it. Since only non-vague noun phrases will support tautological statements of the form N is N, the use of a tautology of this form in conversational context will, by its use as a tautology, indicate the speaker’s intention that the noun phrase be considered non-vague. (shrink)

Chapter II of Foucault's The Care of the Self, 'The Cultivation of the Self,' is arguably one of the most controversial sections of the entire History of Sexuality. The diatribe over this chapter was initially mounted by Pierre Hadot's critical essay 'Reflections on the Idea of the 'Cultivation of the Self." Therein, Hadot objects to Foucault’s dissolution of the Stoic doctrinal antinomy between voluptas ('pleasure') and gaudium ('joy') and, thereby, to the relegation of the latter notion to the subordinate status (...) of 'another form of pleasure', on the one side, and of Seneca himself to the problematic rank of a sort of Epicurean on the other. The present investigation aims to unveil this aspect of the Foucault-Hadot querelle as only a pseudo-controversy engendered by Seneca recurring to two different terminological registers throughout his writings: the so-called verbum publicum and the significatio Stoica. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

Aristotle’s notion of experience occupies an important place in his account of scientific understanding and its methodology. It is linked, not only to sense-perception and the principles of skill and scientific understanding, but also, methodologically, to ἐπαγωγή. Due to its various involvements it has a complex job to perform. Such a complexity – or Janus-face – gives rise to many questions concerning its status and content. Many of these questions were raised in later antiquity. In the introductory part of the (...) paper I shall give a very brief summary of Aristotle’s notion of experience, concentrating on issues that will be relevant next, and then discuss the explanation we find in a commentary which has come down to us under the name of Philoponus. I do it in the hope that the discussion sheds light on novelties in the commentator’s approach which deserve attention. (shrink)

The article presents 111 newly-identified texts in manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which had hitherto all been attributed to Augustine of Hippo. Only thirty of them, however, proved to be authentic, fifty originate from works of other patristic and medieval authors, while thirty-one remain anonymous. Especially remarkable is the identification of two fragments from the new letters of St Augustine discovered by Johannes Divjak in Paris and Marseille, which predate the two manuscripts of his edition. These results complement (...) the catalogues on the manuscript transmission of Augustine’s works compiled by the Vienna Academy and continue the Author’s earlier publications on manuscripts in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. (shrink)

Le présent texte discute les méthodes utilisées par Philopon et Pseudo-Simplicius lorsqu’ils commentent la théorie de la perception sensible d’Aristote, et il marque leurs différences. Philopon fait un fréquent usage de théories médicales et de matériel empirique, empruntés principalement à Aristote, afin de mettre en lumière non pas seulement les activités des différents sens, mais aussi une certaine conscience ainsi que la façon dont nous expérimentons nos états intérieurs. Par contre, son contemporain Athénien, Pseudo-Simplicius, méconnaît complètement de tels (...) aspects. Sa méthode est déductive: il fait appel à une thèse générale, empruntée en partie à Iamblichus, dont il déduit des thèses relatives à la perception sensible. L’accent est mis ici sur la doctrine de Philopon, car son recours à des perspectives médicales donne lieu à un mélange intéressant de théories platoniciennes et de théories médicales empiriques. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky and Frances Egan argue that David Marr’s computational theory of vision is not intentional, claiming that the formal scientific theory does not include description of visual content. They also argue that the theory is internalist in the sense of not describing things physically external to the perceiver. They argue that these claims hold for computational theories of vision in general. Beyond theories of vision, they argue that representational content does not figure as a topic within formal computational theories (...) in cognitive science. I demonstrate that Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims about Marr’s theory are false. Marr’s computational theory contains a mathematical theory of visual content, based on empirical psychophysical evidence. It also contains mathematical descriptions of distal physical surfaces and objects, and of their optic projection to the perceiver. Much computational research on vision contains these types of intentional and externalist components within the formal, mathematical, theories. Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims demonstrate inadequate study and understanding of Marr’s work and other research in this area. Computational theories of vision, by containing empirically based mathematical theories of visual content, to this extent present naturalizations of semantics. (shrink)

In this article, I examine a Latin paraphrase of Aristotle's De caelo known as the Liber celi et mundi. The text was translated from Arabic in the third quarter of the twelfth century, and thus pre-dates all four Latin translations of De caelo in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was probably written by the ninth century Arab, Hunayn ibn Ishaq. I show the weakness of a previous theory that the Liber celi et mundi derives indirectly from Themistius's paraphrase of (...) De caelo. The text was translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus and his Jewish colleague, Johannes Hispanus. From c.1250, it was mis-attributed to Avicenna, and there is evidence that it had earlier been attributed to Aristotle by certain English writers. I consider the function of the Liber cell el mundi within the corpus of early Aristotelian translations, and the date of its expulsion from the corpus. (shrink)

We claim that adjustable parameters play a crucial role in building and applying simulation models. We analyze that role and illustrate our findings using examples from equations of state in thermodynamics. In building simulation models, two types of experiments, namely, simulation and classical experiments, interact in a feedback loop, in which model parameters are adjusted. A critical discussion of how adjustable parameters function shows that they are boon and bane of simulation. They help to enlarge the scope of simulation far (...) beyond what can be determined by theoretical knowledge, but at the same time undercut the epistemic value of simulation models. (shrink)

This volume completes, starting from chapter 6, the commentary by the young Philoponus on Aristotle's Categories, chapters 1-5 of which were previously published in this series. This ancient commentary was the first work in the Aristotelian syllabus after a general introduction to Aristotle by the same author. It is influenced by an extant short anonymous record of his teacher Ammonius' lecturees on the same work, but Philoponus' commentary is two and a half times as long as that anonymous (...) record, and includes special contributions of Philoponus' own, for example in philology, Christian theology and in disagreements with Aristotle. This English translation of Philoponus' work is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. (shrink)

Philosophers and historians have long been suspicious of modal and counterfactual claims. I argue, however, that historians often legitimately use modal and counterfactual claims for a variety of purposes. They help identify causes, and hence help explain events in history. They are used to defend judgments about people, and to highlight the importance of particular events. I defend these uses of modal claims against two arguments often used to criticize modal reasoning, using the philosophy of science to ground the truth (...) of modal claims. This analysis puts several important points into perspective, including how certain we can be about our claims about what might have been, and the role that determinism plays in those claims. The proper analysis of modality shows, I argue, that counterfactual claims are legitimate and important, if often uncertain, and that issues of determinism are irrelevant to the modal claims used in historical analysis. (shrink)

The philosophy of Christian Wolff is regarded to represent one of the most important schools of thought of the 18th century Enlightenment. The influence of this philosophy was based on a network of followers and disciples who propagated Wolff s work in the scholarly community and defended it against critics. This book, for the first time, explores the role of Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel. As imperial count, minister in the Cabinet of Poland Saxony and an agent of the Court of (...) Vienna, he was the decisive figure who initiated this network and led it for more than one and a half decades until his death in 1749. ". (shrink)

Pars 1. Contemplativa -- Pars 2. Activa.

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential,autonoeticcharacter. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the (...) past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in future-oriented mental time travel do justice neither to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events. (shrink)

This paper discusses the formation of Castoriadis’s concept of imaginary significations and relates it to his changing readings of Marx and Weber. Castoriadis’s reflections on modern capitalism took off from the Marxian understanding of its internal contradictions, but he always had reservations about the orthodox version of this idea. His writings in the late 1950s, already critical of basic assumptions in Marx’s work, located the central contradiction in the very relationship between capital and wage labour. Labour power was not simply (...) transformed into a commodity, as Marx had argued; rather, the instituted attempt to treat it as a commodity was a contradiction in itself, between the subjectivity and the objectification of labour. Castoriadis then moved on to link this claim to Weber’s analysis of the interconnections between capitalism and bureaucracy. The main contradiction of modern capitalism, whether wholly bureaucratised as in the Soviet model or increasingly bureaucratised as in the West, now seemed to be a matter of incompatible systemic imperatives: the need to control and to mobilise the workforce. Finally, difficulties with this model – and with the revolutionary expectations based on it – led to a more decisive break with classical theories and to the formulation of a bipolar image of modernity, where the vision of an autonomous society is opposed to the logic of calculation and domination, embodied in capitalist development. On both sides there is an imaginary component, irreducible to empirical givens or systemic principles. In this regard, Castoriadis remained closer to Weber than to Marx, but he also anticipated, in a distinctive way, later emphasis on the cultural dimension of modernity, and more specifi cally the notion of modernity as a new civilisation. (shrink)

Abstrakt Der vorliegende Artikel befasst sich mit der Theorie des Schönen und der Schönheit im Denken des Johannes Scottus Eriugena, basierend auf seinem Hauptwerk Periphyseon, den ‚Aulae sidereae‘, einem Gedicht Eriugenas, und dem Kommentar zur Schrift ‚Über die himmlische Rangfolge‘ des Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. Dazu werden zunächst die metaphysischen Grundlagen für eine Theorie des Schönen im System des Eriugena, wie er sie im s.o. erarbeitet, kurz und prägnant vorgestellt: Für Eriugena ist das Seiende eine Erscheinung und Manifestation Gottes, des (...) unsagbaren Prinzips, des Einen. Danach wird aufgezeigt, wie Eriugena das Schöne als Konkretwerdung des Einen denkt, wobei zuerst die Schönheit der Natur besprochen wird, um dann einen Blick auf den Sonderfall der menschengemachten Kunst zu werfen. Das Ergebnis der Untersuchung ist, dass Eriugena die Kunst als eine reflexive Haltung des Menschen zur Welt und ihrem Ursprung versteht. (shrink)

Aim of the lectures -- Early Brahmanical literature -- Panini's grammar -- A passage from the Chandogya Upanisad -- The structures of languages -- The Buddhist contribution -- Vaisesika and language -- Verbal knowledge -- The contradictions of Nagarjuna -- The reactions of other thinkers -- Sarvastivada Samkhya -- The Agamasastra of Gaudapada -- Sankara -- Kashmiri Saivism -- Jainism -- Early Vaisesika -- Critiques of the existence of a thing before its arising -- Nyaya -- Mimamsa -- The Abhidharmakosa (...) bhasya of Vasubandhu -- The Abhidharmasamuccaya of Asanga and its bhasya -- Bhartrhari -- The problem of negation -- Dignaga and verbal knowledge -- The Bodhisattvabhumi -- Prajnakaragupta -- Indian thinkers and the correspondence principle -- Appendix. The Mahaprajnaparamitasastra and the Samkhya tanmatras. (shrink)

In chapters 12-18 of "Against Proclus," Philoponus continues to do battle against Proclus' arguments for the beginninglessness and everlastingness of the ordered universe. In this final section there are three notable issues under discussion. The first concerns the composition of the heavens and its manner of movement. Philoponus argues against the Aristotelian thesis that there is a fifth heavenly body that has a natural circular motion. He concludes that even though the celestial region is composed of fire and (...) the other three elements, it can move in a circle by the agency of its soul, and that this circular motion is not compromised in any way by the innate natural motion of the fire. Chapter 16 contains an extended discussion of the will of God and His relation to particulars. Here Philoponus addresses issues that become central to medieval philosophical and theological discussions, including the unity, timelessness and indivisibility of God's will. Finally, throughout these seven chapters Philoponus is engaged in a detailed exegesis of Plato's Timaeus which aims to settle a number of familiar interpretive problems, notably how we should properly understand the pre-cosmic state of disorderly motion, and the statement that the visible cosmos is an image of the paradigm. Philoponus' exegetical concerns culminate in chapter 18 with an extensive discussion of Plato's attitude to poetry and myth. (shrink)

Designing and building complex artifacts like simulation models often rely on the strategy of modularity. My main claim is that the validation of simulation models faces a challenge of holismHolism because modularityModularity tends to erode over the process of building a simulation model. Two different reasons that fuel the tendency to erosion are analyzed. Both are based on the methodologyMethodology of simulation, but on different levels. The first has to do with the way parameter adjustment works in simulation; the second (...) comes from how different groups of software programmers work together. The chapter will conclude by drawing lessons about how holism challenges the validation of simulation and by discussing a corollary to conformational holism: the boundary between validation and verification tends to become blurred, thus undermining a strategy that insists on keeping them separate. (shrink)

This important new book by a major voice in the Social Imaginaries movement offers the most systematic attempt to establish conceptual and historical links between the idea of modernity as a new civilization and the notion of multiple modernities. Arnason demonstrates a theory of globalization that is still compatible with the emphasis on unity and diversity of modernity as a civilization.

Based on historical data pertaining to the Krummhörn population (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Germany), we compared reproductive histories of mothers according to whether the maternal grandmother (MGM) or the paternal grandmother (PGM) or neither of them was resident in the parents’ parish at the time of the mother’s first birth. In contrast to effects of PGMs, we discovered conditional differences in the MGM’s effects between landless people and wealthier, commercial farmers. Our data indicate that the presence of the MGM only (...) lowers the woman’s age at marriage (AAM) and her age at the birth of her first child (AFB) in the case of landless families. However, among commercial farmers, who can generally be characterized by a lower AAM and AFB, we found opposite tendencies for the MGM’s effect leading to a relatively small delay in AAM and AFB. Moreover, we also analyzed differences in the completed fertility (i.e., children ever born: CEB). Results indicate that landless families in general do have fewer CEB compared with commercial farmers except for those families in which the MGM has been present. Emphasizing that the adaptiveness of investment decisions should depend on the interaction of genetic, lineage-specific (intrinsic) and ecologically imposed (extrinsic) constraints, we conclude that kin strategies consequently address different fitness components under different conditions. (shrink)