Phenomenological sociology was founded at the beginning of 1930s by Alfred Schutz. His mundane phenomenology sought to combine impulses drawn from Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and Weber's action theory. It was made famous at the turn of 1960s and 1970s by Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Berger & Luckmann's social constructionism. This paper deals with the notable accomplishments of Schutz and his followers and then proceeds to a shared shortcoming, which is that the phenomenological approach is unable to understand meaning in any other (...) way but as actors's knowledge. Therefore, phenomenological sociologists are forced to describe the actor's interpretations of meaning as transparent to the actor him/herself, even if they sometimes make heroic attempts to escape the limitations of the phenomenological conception. The limitation is apparent in Husserl's and Schutz's definition of meaning as a “reflective intentional act”, Garfinkel's use of the term “accounting” to refer to a signifying effect, and the way Berger and Luckmann describe their social theory as “sociology of knowledge”. Today, similar confusions are present in Michael Polanyi's “tacit knowledge”and in Giddens' structuration theory. (shrink)

Gender system can be understood as a cultural system rooted in biological differences. Semiotically speaking, it is a binary sign system (male/female) with some variation involved (transsexuals, homosexuals, etc.). In the process of modernity, the biological motivation of the gender system is being loosened by technological innovations such as contraception and mother's milk substitute. At the same time, the state has replaced family and kin as the organizing structure of society and the cultural ideal of equality has gained a strong (...) position. These and similar changes together have made gender flow in ‘post-traditional’ societies. The paper deals with this process in paying attention to the three theoretically possible constellations in the determination of semiotic identities in social process: functional order in Parsonian sense, formation of struggling parties in the sense of Weber and Bourdieu, and anomie in the sense of Durkheim and Berger and Luckmann. It turns out that elements of all of these three theoretical constellations are present in the current transformation of the gender system. This is elaborated with empirical material drawn from the change of the Finnish gender system from the 1950s to the 1990s. (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.

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)

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)

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

Peirce discusses the nature and structure of propositions in several manuscripts written in the 1890’s and during the first decade of this century. In this paper I shall outline the main features of Peirce’s theory of the proposition, especially his account of what may be called indeterminate indices in propositions.

RésuméCet article traite de la théorie de l'action du début du XIVesiècle, en particulier de l'émergence et de la cohérence des jugements suscitant l'action. Pour Thomas d'Aquin, les trois «parties de la prudence» sont: 1) l'eubulia(la «bonne délibération»); 2) lasynesis(le «bon jugement»); 3) le commandement d'agir qui en résulte. Le vocabulaire de Thomas d'Aquin, emprunté à l'Éthique à Nicomaqued'Aristote, livre VI, se raffine substantiellement dans les écrits de Gérard Odon et Jean Buridan. Entre autres, leur discussion de la circonspection et (...) de la prudence lors du processus de délibération jette un éclairage nouveau sur la conception que le Moyen Âge sefaisait de la «faiblesse de la volonté». (shrink)

The present volume is a sequel to Deontic Logic: Introductory and Systematic Readings : its purpose is to offer a view of some of the main directions of research in contemporary deontic logic. Most of the articles included in Introductory and Systematic Readings represent what may be called the standard modal approach to deontic logic, in which de on tic logic is treated as a branch of modal logic, and the normative concepts of obligation, permission and prohibition are regarded as (...) analogous to the "alethic" modalities necessity, possibility and impossibility. As Simo Knuuttila shows in his contribution to the present volume, this approach goes back to late medieval philosophy. Several 14th century philosophers observed the analogies between deontic and alethic modalities and discussed the deontic interpretations of various laws of modal logic. In contemporary deontic logic the modal approach was revived by G. H. von Wright's classic paper 'Deontic Logic'. Certain analogies between deontic and alethic modalities are obvious and uncontroversial, but the standard approach has often been criticized on the ground that it exaggerates the analogies and tends to ignore those features of normative concepts which distinguish them from other modalities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT 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)

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 present volume is a product of an international research program 'Foundations of Science and Ethics', launched in 1976 by the Inter University Centre of Post-Graduate Studies, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, with the financial support of the V olkswagen Foundation. According to the outline ofthe program, formulated in 1976 by a committee consisting of Professors Dagfinn F~llesdal, Rudolf Haller (coordinator), Lorenz Kruger, Karel Lambert, Keith Lehrer, Kuno Lorenz, Gunther Patzig, Ivan Supek and Paul Weingartner, its general purpose was to investigate the interplay (...) of various internal and external factors in the development of science. Generous financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation made it possible to plan four annual conferences, the first of which was held in Dubrovnik on March 6-12, 1978. This volume contains the majority of the papers presented in the first Dubrovnik conference; the main theme of this conference was 'Rationality in Science and Ethics' (Some of the papers appear here in a thoroughly revised form. ) Further results of the research program will be discussed in three other conferences, to be held in Dubrovnik in 1979-1981; the papers presented in these conferences will be published separately. Professor Rudolf Haller of the University of Graz assumed the burden of the practical planning and organization of the first conference (as well as that of the other three conferences). I wish to thank Professor Haller on behalf of all participants for carrying out this demanding and time-consuming task. (shrink)

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

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)

Die lateinischen Verben agnoscere, recognoscere beleuchten die Theologie der Anerkennung. Seit der pseudoklementinischen Schrift Recognitiones werden sie für die Schilderung von religiösen Phänomenen wie Konversion, relationale Selbstbestimmung und existenziale Statusveränderung des Gegenstandes gebraucht. Das deutsche Wort „Anerkennung“ erhält programmatische theologische Bedeutung bei J. J. Spalding um 1797.

Expressions of the form "s represents an F", "s represents t as G", and "s represents an F as G" are analysed by means of C. S. Peirce's and Nelson Goodman's semiotic theories, and these theories are compared with each other. It is argued that Peirce's concept of interpretant provides a plausible account of what Goodman calls the exemplification features of aesthetic signs (works of art).

In his semiotic system Peirce distinguished between two interpretants and two objects of a sign: an immediate and a dynamical interpretant, and an immediate and a dynamical object. It is argued that Peirce’s immediate object can be interpreted a qua-object which has the dynamical object as its basis, and the dynamical interpretant consists of an interpreter’s conception of the object of the sign. Peirce semiotic system is compared with the accounts given by Frege, Husserl, Meinong, and the Stoics.

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 discusses the probabilities of inductive generalizations in languages containing two-place predicates. The depth of the sentences considered here is restricted to two, that is, they contain at most two layers of quantifiers. The analysis of relational hypotheses presented below is based on the theory of distributive normal forms in first-order logic. The main purpose of this paper is not to present methods of calculating unique probability-values for various generalizations, but rather to clarify the general conceptual situation and concentrate (...) on issues of philosophical interest. (shrink)

Many philosophers have used the concept of belief system or some related notion as a basic tool of epistemological discussion and analysis. A belief system is a set of propositions or statements which represents a person’s doxastic state or credal state in a certain situation; it consists of the propositions which the person either explicitly or implicitly accepts in the situation. One of the many concerns of epistemologists is to attempt to formulate general “conditions of rationality” for belief systems. I (...) want to suggest in the present paper that in this endeavour philosophers usually treat belief systems as if they were artifacts or tools made for various epistemic purposes: for providing satisfactory answers to interesting questions, for helping to find answers to new questions, and for providing resources for argumentation and research. Insofar as epistemology and philosophy of science can legitimately be viewed in this way, they may be regarded as “sciences of the artificial” in Herbert Simon’s sense, and not as sciences of the “natural world” or parts of natural science, as some proponents of “naturalised epistemology” have recently suggested. (shrink)

Dust jacket, back cover: In this book, Risto Saarinen studies Martin Luther's understanding of the gift and related issues such as favours and benefits, faith and justification, virtues and merits, ethics and doctrine, law and Christ. He shows that Luther both continues and criticizes the classical discusssions regarding the differences and parallels between gifts and sales.

THIS PAPER DISCUSSES A CONCEPT OF IMPERSONAL KNOWLEDGE ('Kp') SATISFYING THE PRINCIPLE ('K subscript a'p implies Kp), BUT NOT ITS CONVERSE. IT IS ARGUED THAT SEVERAL GETTIER-TYPE COUNTEREXAMPLES TO THE CLASSICAL ANALYSIS KNOWLEDGE (ESPECIALLY THOSE DEPENDING UPON THE 'SOCIAL' ASPECT OF KNOWLEDGE) CAN BE ACCOUNTED FOR IN TERMS OF THE ABOVE PRINCIPLE.