Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates traces the reception of Saint Augustine’s concept of beatific enjoyment in Peter Lombard’s Sentences. It identifies the main themes and problems which shaped the discussion of the concept in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century scholastic commentaries. Bringing together theological and scientific approaches to the idea of enjoyment, Severin Kitanov exposes the intricacy of the discourse and develops a new perspective for students and scholars.

Apart from references to perception, words such as see and listen have shared, non-literal meanings across diverse languages. Such cross-linguistic meanings have not been systematically investigated as they appear in their natural home — informal spoken interaction. We present a qualitative examination of the semantic associations of perception verbs based on recorded everyday conversation in thirteen diverse languages. Across these diverse communities, spontaneous interaction provides evidence for two commonly-discussed extensions of perception verbs — perception~cognition, hearing~linguistic communication — as well as (...) illustrating other meanings and functions that have been less appreciated heretofore. The range of usage that is readily observable in informal conversation makes it clear that this type of data must take center stage for the empirically grounded study of semantics. Moreover, these data suggest that commonalities in polysemous meanings may rely not only on universal cognition, but also on the universal exigencies of social interaction. (shrink)

The growing interest and major advances of the last decades in evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) have led to the recognition of the incompleteness of the Modern Synthesis of evolutionary theory. Here we discuss how paleontology makes significant contributions to integrate evolution and development. First, extinct organisms often inform us about developmental processes by showing a combination of features unrecorded in living species. We illustrate this point using the vertebrate fossil record and studies relating bone ossification to life history traits. Second, (...) we discuss exceptionally preserved fossils that document rare ontogenetic sequences and illustrate this case with the patterns of heterochrony observed in Cambrian crustacean larvae preserved three-dimensionally. Third, most fossils potentially document the evolutionary patterns of allometry and modularity, as well as some of the (paleo)ecological factors that had influenced them. The temporal persistence of adaptive patterns in rodent evolution serves to address the importance of ecological constraints in evolution. Fourth, we discuss how the macroevolutionary patterns observed in the tetrapod limb, in the mammal molar proportions, and in the molluscan shell provide independent tests of the validity of morphogenetic models proposed on living species. Reciprocally, these macroevolutionary patterns often act as a source of inspiration to investigate the underlying rules of development, because, at the end, they are the patterns that the neo-Darwinian theory was unable to account for. (shrink)

This paper argues that despite recent tendencies to minimize the differences between Posidonius and the Early Stoics, there are some important aspects of Stoic ethics in which Posidonius deviated from the orthodox doctrine. According to two passages in Diogenes Laertius, Posidonius counted health and wealth among the goods and held that virtue alone is insufficient for happiness. While Kidd in his commentary dismissed this report as spurious, there are good reasons to take Diogenes’ remarks seriously. Through a careful analysis of (...) the sources, in particular of Galen's De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, this article offers a new interpretation of Posidonius’ ethics. It sheds light on Posidonius’ theory of virtues and shows that Posidonius must have granted a special status to things like health and wealth even if he did not regard them as genuine goods. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Voluntary Action Reasons and Causes References.

According to Wittgenstein, mathematical propositions are rules of grammar, that is, conventions, or implications of conventions. So his position can be regarded as a form of conventionalism. However, mathematical conventionalism is widely thought to be untenable due to objections presented by Quine, Dummett and Crispin Wright. It has also been argued that only an implausibly radical form of conventionalism could withstand the critical implications of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. In this article I discuss those objections to conventionalism and argue that none (...) of them is convincing. (shrink)

The present experiment investigates the involvement of awareness in functional dissociations between explicit and implicit tests. In the explicit condition, participants attempted to recall lexically or semantically studied words using word stems. In the implicit condition, they were instructed to complete each stem with the first word which came to mind. Subjective awareness was subsequently measured on an item-by-item basis. As voluntary retrieval strategies are known to be time consuming, the time taken to complete each stem was recorded. In the (...) explicit task, semantically studied words were associated with higher levels of recall and faster response times than lexically studied words. By contrast, in the implicit task, these effects failed to reach significance, although deep encoding made the contents of memory more accessible to awareness. As expected, performance was slower in the explicit than in the implicit task, but in the latter condition, times to produce old words with and without awareness were comparable, and both of these responses were produced more quickly than control words. This finding suggests that although participants may become aware in implicit paradigms, they do not adopt voluntary retrieval strategies. (shrink)

The article revisits the originality of Hobbes's concept of happiness on the basis of Hobbes's two accounts found respectively in Thomas White's De Mundo Examined and Leviathan. It is argued that Hobbes's claim that happiness consists in the unhindered advance from one acquired good to another ought to be understood against the background of Hobbes's theory of sensation and the imagination, on the one hand, and Hobbes's doctrine of conatus, on the other. It is further claimed that the account of (...) happiness in White's De Mundo differs from that in Leviathan. In the former work, happiness is defined not as the mere progression from one good to another but as the joy/mental pleasure derived from the awareness of one's unhindered advance. The traditional claim that Hobbes is an ethical subjectivist is examined in connection with Hobbes's view of the subjectivity of happiness and the rejection of the summum bonum. Lastly, Hobbes's distinction between worldly and everlasting happiness is discussed. (shrink)

In contrast to the robust mutual interpretability phenomenon in set theory, Ali Enayat proved that bi-interpretation is absent: distinct theories extending ZF are never bi-interpretable and models of ZF are bi-interpretable only when they are isomorphic. Nevertheless, for natural weaker set theories, we prove, including Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory $\mathrm {ZFC}^{-}$ without power set and Zermelo set theory Z, there are nontrivial instances of bi-interpretation. Specifically, there are well-founded models of $\mathrm {ZFC}^{-}$ that are bi-interpretable, but not isomorphic—even $\langle H_{\omega _1},\in (...) \rangle $ and $ \langle H_{\omega _2},\in \rangle $ can be bi-interpretable—and there are distinct bi-interpretable theories extending $\mathrm {ZFC}^{-}$. Similarly, using a construction of Mathias, we prove that every model of ZF is bi-interpretable with a model of Zermelo set theory in which the replacement axiom fails. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread interpretation, Wittgenstein did not regard credal statements as merely metaphorical expressions of an attitude towards life. He accepted that Christian faith involves belief in God's existence. At the same time he held that although as a hypothesis, God's existence is extremely implausible, Christian faith is not unreasonable. Is that a consistent view? According to Wittgenstein, religious faith should not be seen as a hypothesis, based on evidence, but as grounded in a proto‐religious attitude, a way of (...) experiencing the world or certain aspects of it. A belief in religious metaphysics is not the basis of one's faith, but a mere epiphenomenon. Given further that religious doctrine is both falsification‐transcendent and that religious faith is likely to have beneficial psychological effects, religious doctrine can be exempt from ordinary standards of epistemic support. An unsupported religious belief need not be unreasonable. However, it is hard to see how one could knowingly have such an unsupported belief, as Wittgenstein seems to envisage. How can one believe what, at the same time, one believes is not likely to be true? This, I argue, is the unresolved tension in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. (shrink)

According to Wittgenstein, mathematics is embedded in, and partly constituting, a form of life. Hence, to imagine different, alternative forms of elementary mathematics, we should have to imagine different practices, different forms of life in which they could play a role. If we tried to imagine a radically different arithmetic we should think either of a strange world or of people acting and responding in very peculiar ways. If such was their practice, a calculus expressing the norms of representation they (...) applied could not be called false. Rather, our criticism could only be to dismiss such a practice as foolish and to dismiss their norms as too different from ours to be called ‘mathematics’. (shrink)

To what extent does perceptual language reflect universals of experience and cognition, and to what extent is it shaped by particular cultural preoccupations? This paper investigates the universality~relativity of perceptual language by examining the use of basic perception terms in spontaneous conversation across 13 diverse languages and cultures. We analyze the frequency of perception words to test two universalist hypotheses: that sight is always a dominant sense, and that the relative ranking of the senses will be the same across different (...) cultures. We find that references to sight outstrip references to the other senses, suggesting a pan-human preoccupation with visual phenomena. However, the relative frequency of the other senses was found to vary cross-linguistically. Cultural relativity was conspicuous as exemplified by the high ranking of smell in Semai, an Aslian language. Together these results suggest a place for both universal constraints and cultural shaping of the language of perception. (shrink)

It is widely held that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. I examine arguments by B. O’Shaughnessy and J. Hornsby, and considerations by P. Grice in support of that thesis. I argue that none of them are convincing. The remainder of the paper defends an analysis of the concept of trying along the lines opposed by Grice et al. By speaking of someone’s trying to φ the speaker leaves the room for failure or the possibility of failure. (...) This account of the function of the word ‘try’ makes it clear what is wrong with the claim that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. For that claim amounts to saying that every action is either a failure or a possible failure – which clearly one can’t say of any action that one has already acknowledged to be successful. Furthermore, whether an action is possibly a failure depends on how much one knows about it. Hence the question whether in itself an action does or does not involve trying is as misguided as the question whether it’s intrinsically unexpected. It may be correct for some to describe it as ‘an attempt to φ’, but incorrect for others. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V Bibliography.

La cohabitation avec la dialyse à domicile, ce lieu privé habituellement préservé de la maladie, invite à des questionnements sur la dynamique du couple au regard du nouveau rôle de soignant endossé par le conjoint et de celui de patient assigné au conjoint malade. Les auteurs, psychologues cliniciennes, interrogent ici les motivations conscientes et inconscientes qui conduisent à cette décision commune et leurs retentissements sur la dynamique du couple. Différentes configurations relationnelles observées dans notre clinique seront abordées. L’article, cas clinique (...) à l’appui, montre l’intérêt d’un groupe thérapeutique avec malades et conjoints pour mettre à jour les enjeux, au niveau de la relation de couple, d’une prise en charge à domicile. (shrink)

Les structures attributives en tête d’énoncé sont courantes et variées en allemand. Si une projection d’éléments en fonction d’attribut n’est pas envisageable telle quelle en français, compte tenu des contraintes syntaxiques et positionnelles propres à cette langue, la comparaison entreprise nous a permis de constater que l’on peut malgré tout trouver en position initiale les mêmes contenus sémantiques remplissant des fonctions textuelles similaires, mais présentant d’importantes différences avec les structures allemandes – différences en termes de fréquence et surtout en termes (...) de fonction (syntaxique). (shrink)

English summary: This book attests that a study on the history of philosophy has its place in contemporary debates. This book attempts to reconstruct William of Ockham's position on the nature and function of real definitions in order to show that nominalism does not oblige a particular position on essences. French description: Guillaume d'Ockham, defenseur bien connu du nominalisme, a manifeste un interet soutenu pour les definitions reelles. Cet ouvrage s'efforce de reconstruire sa position sur la nature et la fonction (...) des definitions reelles. Un examen de ce qu'est une definition reelle appelle une etude de ce qu'est une essence et de la nature du lien a poser entre l'essentiel et le necessaire. Cet ouvrage a pour objectif de montrer que le nominalisme ne contraint pas a une position determinee sur les essences. Saul Kripke nous dit que l'essentiel se reduit au necessaire. Kit Fine, par contre, affirme qu'il faut revenir a Aristote et soutenir que l'essentiel est irreductible au necessaire. Notre examen atteste qu'une etude en histoire de la philosophie a toute sa place dans les debats contemporains. L'essentialisme de Guillaume d'Ockham incite a rendre a Aristote ce qui lui revient et a faire preuve de circonspection. En definitive, les deux positions en presence ne sont peut-etre pas incompatibles. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the debate between William of Ockham and his contemporary Peter Auriol on how to account for the intension and remission of forms. Peter Auriol denies that an added degree of a quality such as the theological virtue of charity could be anything other than something which is neither a universal nor an individual and which cannot be grasped by intuition, but must be posited in order to account for the possibility that an accidental form can vary (...) in intensity. Ockham aims at proving that Auriol’s account is inconsistent. In my opinion, Ockham does not succeed, nor does he succeed in defending a consistent account of the metaphysics underlying the intension and remission of forms. Indeed, he conceives of the degree of a quality as a part of the intensified quality which, while being an individual that is really distinct from the quality and can be picked out, forms a unity with it in such a way that the union of the degree and the quality is itself an individual. Ockham fails to distinguish the notion of maximal resemblance holding between a quality’s degree and the quality from the notion of maximal resemblance which holds between individuals of the same species. In the end, he is led to give up the idea that a degree is an individual that can be picked out in order to protect the core thesis of his nominalism about universals. (shrink)

For the last 25 years, human development has become part of official development discourses. It takes the normative position that the success of policies depends on whether they have expanded human flourishing, or expanded the 'freedoms' or 'capabilities' people have 'reason to value', as Amartya Sen would put it. It emphasises the importance of institutions to facilitate such expansion, and the agency of people to create such institutions. The ability of institutions to be conducive to human flourishing depends on the (...) nature of human interaction. When human interaction no longer has the flourishing of other persons as its aim, it can create structures which then constrain human agency. The article argues that the human development perspective could be enriched by theological insights such as structural sin and the contribution of religious narratives to public reasoning. It concentrates on the idea of justice of one biblical parable, and illustrates its argument with examples from the Argentine labour context. (shrink)

Wittgenstein shows that understanding is a capacity, and cannot be accounted for by mental representations of what is understood. But if a person’s understanding or thinking cannot be accounted for by occurrences of mental representations, then understanding that person cannot be a matter of knowing what is going on inside him or her: what representations he or she has in his or her mind. That, I argue, is the point of Wittgenstein’s famous and frequently misunderstood saying, “If a lion could (...) talk we wouldn’t be able to understand it.” Our inability to understand a strange creature would not be overcome if that creature could speak and lay open to us on the mental operations inside its mind. Finally, I explain in what way understanding other people is not an entirely intellectual affair, but also has moral and aesthetic dimensions. -/- . (shrink)

It is widely held that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. I examine arguments by B. O’Shaughnessy and J. Hornsby, and considerations by P. Grice in support of that thesis. I argue that none of them are convincing. The remainder of the paper defends an analysis of the concept of trying along the lines opposed by Grice et al. By speaking of someone’s trying to φ the speaker leaves the room for failure or the possibility of failure. (...) This account of the function of the word ‘try’ makes it clear what is wrong with the claim that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. For that claim amounts to saying that every action is either a failure or a possible failure – which clearly one can’t say of any action that one has already acknowledged to be successful. Furthermore, whether an action is possibly a failure depends on how much one knows about it. Hence the question whether in itself an action does or does not involve trying is as misguided as the question whether it’s intrinsically unexpected. It may be correct for some to describe it as ‘an attempt to φ’, but incorrect for others. (shrink)

Excerpt from Kants Begriff der Erkenntnis: Verglichen mit dem des Aristoteles Im ganzen Erkenntnisprozess. Die Einbildungskraft trotzdem sinnlich. Einbildungskraft und Verstand. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as (...) a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

Les internautes chinois investissent avec enthousiasme tous les outils de présentation de soi proposés sur Internet. Ils racontent par exemple leur histoire personnelle sur leur blog, se présentent au travers d'un avatar sur la messagerie instantanée QQ, et commentent sur les forums les embûches qu'ils rencontrent dans la vie quotidienne. Ils ont donc la possibilité d'affirmer leur identité et leurs goûts de manière extrêmement personnalisée. Sur la base de ces goûts, ils s'insèrent dans des réseaux sociaux choisis, beaucoup plus souples (...) que leurs attaches familiales ou professionnelles, et dans lesquels l'individu est central. Cela fait d'Internet un support privilégié pour l'irruption de l'individu, dépouillé de certaines allégeances traditionnelles, mais également assujetti à de nouvelles normes sociales. En effet les internautes chinois se donnent comme référence un mode de vie ' moderne ', sur le modèle duquel ils peuvent affirmer une certaine ' distinction '. Je rends compte de cette ambivalence sur la base d'entretiens approfondis effectués en 2006 et 2007 avec cinquante internautes pékinois ' ordinaires '. (shrink)

Evoca-se neste artigoo P. António Alves Durão enquanto professor de filosofia, desenvolvendo especialmente a partir de duas temáticas da sua docência - a mentira e a sociedade mundial - as suas qualidades de mestre eminente. /// Cet article évoque le Père António Alves Durâo en tant que professeur de philosophie, en développant spécialement à partir de deux thématiques de son enseignement - le mensonge et la société mondiale - ses qualités de maître éminent. /// This article recalls Father António Alves (...) Durão, in his role as professor of philosophy. It seeks to describe his pedagogical qualities with special reference to two themes: lying and word society. (shrink)

In this article, I intend to link four topics or essential acts of philosophical practice: listening, caring, writing and transmitting, with special attention to children--what they inspire and teach us about philosophical practice, with special attention to the situation of confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. A first task is to recover the function of listening and desire, in the context of the concept and the game, and against any abuse or violence. Second, we emphasize the role of care--its expansion (...) and reformulation in these difficult circumstances, especially in interrupting the logic of servitude and of the activity-debt-reward circuit by way of the pleasure of inquiry. Third, we practice writing as a technology of self that overcomes the dichotomy between personal and academic form, in order to become a practice of care and transmission, along with other self-practices: abstinence, self-examination, exercises, etc. Finally, we consider the question of the “Name of the Father”--how to understand the decline of patriarchy in relation to love, self-esteem, the transmission and the use of a symbolic legacy, given that the decline in question is not merely a weakening, but an unfolding of a singular-generic power that binds us together: learning to decline names, words, concepts, and traditions, which is what drives true subject formation. (shrink)

En el presente artículo me propongo interrogar el estatuto ético-político de la ley en su diferencia ontológica respecto a lo meramente normativo o contable, para ello comento algunos aportes teóricos de autores como Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Jacques Lacan, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek, Jean-Luc Nancy y Roland Barthes, que nos permitirán pensar más acá de lo discernible por el lenguaje establecido. La idea principal que conlleva el cruce de estas referencias afines aunque disímiles, es la de circunscribir el acto fugaz (...) de afirmación de la ley qua diferencia que habilita la constitución de un sujeto político, remarcando así su dimensión esencialmente ética. (shrink)

Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of perception verbs. Studies 1 and 2 examine the acquisition trajectories of perception verbs across 12 languages using parent questionnaire responses, while Study 3 examines their relative frequencies in English corpus data. We (...) find the vision verbs see and look are acquired first, consistent with the typological prevalence hypothesis. However, for children at 12–23 months, touch—not audition—verbs take precedence in terms of their age of acquisition, frequency in child‐produced speech, and frequency in child‐directed speech, consistent with the embodiment hypothesis. Later at 24–35 months old, frequency rates are observably different and audition begins to align with what has previously been reported in adult English data. It seems the initial orientation to verbalizing touch over audition in child–caregiver interaction is especially related to the control of physically and socially appropriate behaviors. Taken together, the results indicate children's acquisition of perception verbs arises from the complex interplay of embodiment, language‐specific input, and child‐directed socialization routines. (shrink)