In this paper the author examines the ontology of Byzantine music in its self, its aesthetical ground, the philosophical and cultural principles of creation, its episteme, the epistemological field that produced its forms from the 12th till the 14th century, and why that musical ontology hasn’t change through the centuries. The paper discusses in partucular Ernst Bloch’s view that the only evolutionary expression of the Absolute spirit as far as music is concerned, is Western classical music. The author claims that (...) the Western and the Byzantine music stand for two totally distinct and diverse ontologies of the musical being, something that Bloch seems to overlook; this, according to the author, is mostly due to the different systems of representation that have been used, and especially the representational ideas of the time-space relation. The author supports the view that while Western music is spatially-modeled, Byzantine music is time-modeled. (shrink)

This paper argues that the main global critiques of scientism lose their punch because they rely on an uncharitable definition of their target. It focuses on epistemological scientism and divides it into four categories in terms of how strong (science is the only source of knowledge) or weak (science is the best source of knowledge) and how narrow (only natural sciences) or broad (all sciences or at least not only the natural sciences) they are. Two central arguments against scientism, the (...) (false) dilemma and self‐referential incoherence, are analysed. Of the four types of epistemological scientism, three can deal with these counterarguments by utilizing two methodological principles: epistemic evaluability of reliability and epistemic opportunism. One hopes that these considerations will steer the discussion on scientism to more fruitful pastures in the future. For example, there are interesting methodological considerations concerning what evaluability or reliability and epistemic opportunism entail. (shrink)

A distributed neural network model called SPEC for processing sentences with recursive relative clauses is described. The model is based on separating the tasks of segmenting the input word sequence into clauses, forming the case‐role representations, and keeping track of the recursive embeddings into different modules. The system needs to be trained only with the basic sentence constructs, and it generalizes not only to new instances of familiar relative clause structures but to novel structures as well. SPEC exhibits plausible memory (...) degradation as the depth of the center embeddings increases, its memory is primed by earlier constituents, and its performance is aided by semantic constraints between the constituents. The ability to process structure is largely due to a central executive network that monitors and controls the execution of the entire system. This way, in contrast to earlier subsymbolic systems, parsing is modeled as a controlled high‐level process rather than one based on automatic reflex responses. (shrink)

This article addresses the ability of Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) networks to generate stagewise cognitive development in accordance with Piaget's theory of cognitive epigenesis. We carried out a replication study of the simulation experiments by McClelland (1989) and McClelland and Jenkins (1991) in which a PDP network learns to solve balance scale problems. In objective tests motivated from catastrophe theory, a mathematical theory of transitions in epigenetical systems, no evidence for stage transitions in network performance was found. It is concluded (...) that PDP networks lack the ability to recover the positive outcomes of analogous catastrophe analyses of real cognitive developmental data. In an attempt to further characterize the learning behaviour of PDP networks, we carried out a second simulation study using the discrimination‐shift paradigm. The results thus obtained indicate that PDP learning is compatible with the learning of stimulus‐response relationships, not with the acquisition of mediating rules such as conceived in (neo‐)Piagetian theory. In closing, we speculate about the feasibility of simulating stagewise development with alternative network architectures. (shrink)

The character of Finnish political culture stems from the country’s specific position as a polity which emerged in the interface between Sweden and Russia. Western, or Scandinavian, by institutions and structures and Eastern by dependence on a multinational empire in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, this minority region in the Russian empire underwent a bloody civil war in 1918, in the wake of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. The resulting ambiguity between ‘national’ and ‘not national’, between (...) what was Finland’s ‘own’ and what was ‘alien’, remained a central dimension defining Finnish political culture, due to the strength of the communists in Finland and their close relation to the Soviet Union. What remains today, in the conditions of Finland’s membership in the European Union, is a deep-seated attitude stressing the need to adapt to perceived necessities and constraints induced from outside. (shrink)

This paper argues that the proponents of epistemological scientism must take some stand on scientific methodology. The supporters of scientism cannot simply defer to the social organisation of science because the social processes themselves must meet some methodological criteria. Among such criteria is epistemic evaluability, which demands intersubjective access to reasons. We derive twelve theses outlining some implications of epistemic evaluability. Evaluability can support weak and broad variants of epistemological scientism, which state that sciences, broadly construed, are the best sources (...) of knowledge or some other epistemic goods. Since humanities and social sciences produce epistemically evaluable results, narrow types of scientism that take only natural sciences as sources of knowledge require additional argumentation in their support. Strong scientism, which takes sciences as the only source of knowledge, also needs to appeal to some further principles since evaluability is not an all-or-nothing affair. (shrink)

One of the characteristic features of contemporary logic is that it incorporates the Frege‐Russell thesis according to which verbs for being are multiply ambiguous. This thesis was not accepted before the nineteenth century. In Aristotle existence could not serve alone as a predicate term. However, it could be a part of the force of the predicate term, depending on the context. For Kant existence could not even be a part of the force of the predicate term. Hence, after Kant, existence (...) was left homeless. It found a home in the algebra of logic in which the operators corresponding to universal and particular judgments were treated as duals, and universal judgments were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse. Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The orphaned notion of existence thus found a new home in the existential quantifier. (shrink)

Recognition and Religion: A Historical and Systematic Study outlines the first intellectual history of religious recognition, stretching from the New Testament to present day. Risto Saarinen connects the history of religion with philosophical approaches, arguing that philosophers owe a considerable historical and conceptual debt to the religious processes of recognition. At the same time, religious recognition has a distinctive profile that differs from philosophy in some important respects. Saarinen undertakes a systematic elaboration of the insights provided by the tradition (...) of religious recognition. He proposes that theology and philosophy can make creative use of the long history of religious recognition. (shrink)

The paper argues that something is art only if (i) it belongs to a special kind of internal history and (ii) needs to be understood and appreciated in the light of such history. This goes against both the traditional view that art has a timeless, ahistorical essence and the historicist view that there can be no ahistorical perspective for understanding art. The paper draws on Hegel’s view that art needs to be understood through its history, but rejects the idea that (...) the history of art has an end in the double sense of a goal and an end point. It also rejects Arthur Danto’s Hegel-inspired claim that the ahistorical essence of art is revealed at the end of its history and opens the door to a natural alliance between philosophers of art and art historians. (shrink)

We prove convergence laws for logics of the form equation image, where equation image is a properly chosen collection of generalized quantifiers, on very sparse finite random structures. We also study probabilistic collapsing of the logics equation image, where equation image is a collection of generalized quantifiers and k ∈ ℕ+, under arbitrary probability measures of finite structures.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Herbart's theory of the structures of thought. It then discusses Drobisch's formal philosophy, Hegel's dialectical logic, Trendelenburg's logical investigations, and Herbartian and Hegelian reactions to the criticism.

In this chapter we examine Moti Mizrahi’s claim that philosophers’ opposition of scientism is founded on their worry that scientism poses “a threat to the soul or essence of philosophy as an a priori discipline”. We find Mizrahi’s methodology for testing this thesis wanting. We offer an alternative hypothesis for the increased resistance of scientism: the antipathy started as a reaction to the New Atheist movement. We also consider two varieties of weak scientism, narrow and broad, and argue that narrow (...) versions of scientism draw unnatural and unfounded distinctions within science. Mizrahi belongs somewhere between these two types, but he commits the same mistakes as proponents of the narrow variety. We demonstrate that Mizrahi’s defence of weak scientism is problematic, once again, due to methodological reasons. As an alternative, we propose that weak scientism should be based on epistemic opportunism. Epistemic opportunism explains the success of science with scientists’ willingness to adopt any methods that demonstrably work. We also show how opportunistic scientism can avoid charges of triviality. (shrink)

Many results in fuzzy logic depend on the mathematical structure the truth value set obeys. In this textbook the algebraic foundations of many-valued and fuzzy reasoning are introduced. The book is self-contained, thus no previous knowledge in algebra or in logic is required. It contains 134 exercises with complete answers, and can therefore be used as teaching material at universities for both undergraduated and post-graduated courses. Chapter 1 starts from such basic concepts as order, lattice, equivalence and residuated lattice. It (...) contains a full section on BL-algebras. Chapter 2 concerns MV-algebra and its basic properties. Chapter 3 applies these mathematical results on Lukasiewicz-Pavelka style fuzzy logic, which is studied in details; besides semantics, syntax and completeness of this logic, a lot of examples are given. Chapter 4 shows the connection between fuzzy relations, approximate reasoning and fuzzy IF-THEN rules to residuated lattices. (shrink)

BL-algebras rise as Lindenbaum algebras from many valued logic introduced by Hájek [2]. In this paper Boolean ds and implicative ds of BL-algebras are defined and studied. The following is proved to be equivalent: (i) a ds D is implicative, (ii) D is Boolean, (iii) L/D is a Boolean algebra. Moreover, a BL-algebra L contains a proper Boolean ds iff L is bipartite. Local BL-algebras, too, are characterized. These results generalize some theorems presented in [4], [5], [6] for MV-algebras which (...) are BL-algebras fulfiling an additional double negation law x = x **. (shrink)

En recension av Figurationen des J¨üdischen. Spurensuchen in der skandinavischen Literatur, utg. Clemens Räthel och Stefanie von Schnurbein.

This volume examines the medieval understanding of Aristotle's "weakness of the will". The medieval views are outlined on the basis of five major commentaries on Aristotle's _Nicomachean Ethics_ between 1250 and 1350.

The cognitive science of religion that has emerged over the last twenty years is a multidisciplinary field that often challenges established theories in anthropology and comparative religion. This new approach raises many questions for biblical studies as well. What are the cross-cultural cognitive mechanisms which explain the transmission of biblical texts? How did the local and particular cultural traditions of ancient Israel and early Christianity develop? What does the embodied and socially embedded nature of the human mind imply for the (...) exegesis of biblical texts? "Mind, Morality and Magic" draws on a range of approaches to the study of the human mind - including memory studies, computer modeling, cognitive theories of ritual, social cognition, evolutionary psychology, biology of emotions, and research on religious experience. The volume explores how cognitive approaches to religion can shed light on classical concerns in biblical scholarship - such as the transmission of traditions, ritual and magic, and ethics - as well as uncover new questions and offer new methodologies. (shrink)

In addition to considering the work of a broad range of Renaissance authors (including Petrarch, Donato Acciaiuoli, John Mair, and Francesco Piccolomini), Risto ...

This paper investigates Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (1768–1834) use of recognition (Anerkennung) terminology, focusing on the early On Religion (1799) and the late Glaubenslehre (1830). While the term occurs only rarely in On Religion, Schleiermacher speaks of the “recognition of otherness” (Anerkennen des Fremden) in a distinctive fashion in this work. In Glaubenslehre, recognition terminology is frequently used. Here, Schleiermacher considers that the doctrine of justification should be considered as an event in which God recognizes human beings. Recognition is compared with the (...) adoption terminology of the Roman law (agnitio filii). Schleiermacher’s use of the term is to some extent indebted to Johann Joachim Spalding and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. As Schleiermacher highlights the role of feeling, he also participates in the sentimentalist current of the Enlightenment. In theological contexts, however, his view is highly original, replacing the older upward model of a servant recognizing the Lord frequently with downward and horizontal models of religious recognition. Philosophically, Schleiermacher does not embrace Hegelian recognition but moves within the pre-Hegelian models of Fichte and sentimentalism. (shrink)

Many historians and philosophers of logic have claimed that during the modern classical era there was a long period of stagnation or even of decline in the field of logic. The aim of this paper is to convince the audience that this standard evaluation of the development of modern logic during the period from Leibniz to Frege is misdirected and needs to be corrected. Even though it is true that the now usual way of understanding logic merely as the doctrine (...) of syntax and semantics of explicit languages would not have appealed even to most 19th century logicians, it is still not the case that there is nothing worth discussing with regard to the development of logic during the modern classical period. The algebraic period culminated with Schroder's contribution and neither Herbartian formal logic nor Trendelenburg's critical epistemology aroused much interest among the 20th century mathematical logicians and analytic philosophers. Nevertheless, the development of symbolic logic can only be understood properly by relating its emergence to the immediately preceding philosophically-oriented discussion about the reform of logic. (shrink)

Many historians and philosophers of logic have claimed that during the modern classical era there was a long period of stagnation or even of decline in the field of logic. The aim of this paper is to convince the audience that this standard evaluation of the development of modern logic during the period from Leibniz to Frege is misdirected and needs to be corrected. Even though it is true that the now usual way of understanding logic merely as the doctrine (...) of syntax and semantics of explicit languages would not have appealed even to most 19th century logicians, it is still not the case that there is nothing worth discussing with regard to the development of logic during the modern classical period. The algebraic period culminated with Schroder's contribution and neither Herbartian formal logic nor Trendelenburg's critical epistemology aroused much interest among the 20th century mathematical logicians and analytic philosophers. Nevertheless, the development of symbolic logic can only be understood properly by relating its emergence to the immediately preceding philosophically-oriented discussion about the reform of logic. (shrink)

Risto Hilpinen; X*—Authors and Artifacts, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 155–178, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.