Burlamaqui, J[ean] J[acques]. The Principles of Natural Law.

An outgrowth of the Bicentennial. White examines the metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy which influenced American revolutionary thought. Focusing on the doctrines of self-evident truth and natural law expressed in the Declaration of Independence, he elucidates them by erudite explications and critical analyses of such 17th and 18th century thinkers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, and Jean Jacques Burlamaqui. Traditional interpretations, best represented by Carl Becker’s The Declaration of Independence, have stressed the role of Locke. More recently, intellectual historians (...) have reassessed the Scottish influence on American thought, apparent in White’s own Science & Sentiment in America, chap. 3, and in Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Wills claims for Hutcheson the place formerly reserved for Locke as the philosopher who most directly shaped Jefferson’s thought and style in the Declaration. Now White makes a case for the neglected 18th century Swiss legal philosopher, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui. (shrink)

REASON, SKEPTICISM, REVOLUTION, AND COMMON SENSE--these are the four characteristics which Henry F. May has found to designate the four categories, or stages, in the development of the Enlightenment in Europe and America. These categories, useful for the classification, description, and analysis of the copious intellectual and cultural materials which comprise the Enlightenment, overlap in the formulation of basic documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, which are fundamental American laws. The interweaving (...) of reason and revolution in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States has been examined by direct references to the European philosophers whose ideas were employed, with modifications, and implemented by means of newly invented institutions on the part of the American founders. The ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, Burlamaqui, Hutcheson, Hume, and many other thinkers, became instruments of political change in the hands of the Americans. Revolution, moderated by reason and common sense, led to constitution, in order to secure the gains of revolution. (shrink)

A many-valued (aka multiple- or multi-valued) semantics, in the strict sense, is one which employs more than two truth values; in the loose sense it is one which countenances more than two truth statuses. So if, for example, we say that there are only two truth values—True and False—but allow that as well as possessing the value True and possessing the value False, propositions may also have a third truth status—possessing neither truth value—then we have a many-valued semantics in the (...) loose but not the strict sense. A many-valued logic is one which arises from a many-valued semantics and does not also arise from any two-valued semantics [Malinowski, 1993, 30]. By a ‘logic’ here we mean either a set of tautologies, or a consequence relation. We can best explain these ideas by considering the case of classical propositional logic. The language contains the usual basic symbols (propositional constants p, q, r, . . .; connectives ¬, ∧, ∨, →, ↔; and parentheses) and well-formed formulas are defined in the standard way. With the language thus specified—as a set of well-formed formulas—its semantics is then given in three parts. (i) A model of a logical language consists in a free assignment of semantic values to basic items of the non-logical vocabulary. Here the basic items of the non-logical vocabulary are the propositional constants. The appropriate kind of semantic value for a proposition is a truth value, and so a model of the language consists in a free assignment of truth values to basic propositions. Two truth values are countenanced: 1 (representing truth) and 0 (representing falsity). (ii) Rules are presented which determine a truth value for every proposition of the language, given a model. The most common way of presenting these rules is via truth tables (Figure 1). Another way of stating such rules—which will be useful below—is first to introduce functions on the truth values themselves: a unary function ¬ and four binary functions ∧, ∨, → and ↔ (Figure 2).. (shrink)

In this comment to Kehrer (2014) the relevance of atheistic argumentation in the domain of ethics as an important part of religion is sketched.

Was die Frage nach der Funktion der Sprache im Erkenntnisprozeß betrifft, haben wir zuerst die verschiedenen Theorien dargestellt. Nach einer Reihe alleinstehender Personen wie Derbolav, Bühler, Jost, Glinz behandeln wir die Strömungen der symbolischen Logik und der linguistic analysis. Die symbolische Logik will das Denken in einer logischen Modellsprache analysieren. Die linguistic Analysis betrachtet die gewöhnliche Umgangssprache als Trägerin des Denkens und will, daß alle Philosophen und Wissenschaftler sich in dieser gewöhnlichen Umgangssprache ausdrücken, die bei guter Analyse für jeden intelligenten (...) Menschen verständlich ist. Die Strömungen der Phänomenologie und des Existentialismus äußern die Erfahrung, daß der Mensch seine Existenz ganz in einer sprechenden Welt erfährt und daß sich seine Existenz in der Sprache vollzieht : die Sprache ist das Haus seines Daseins. Keine Sache kann in unserem Bewußtsein zur Existenz gelangen, wenn wir sie nicht zu Wort bringen können. Die Ethnolinguisten und Psycholinguisten sind zu dem Ergebnis gekommen, daß die Formen, in denen ein Mensch jeweils denkt, von den unerbittlichen und unentrinnbaren Strukturen der Wörter mit ihren Bedeutungen und den Strukturen der Wortkombinationen kontrolliert werden. Diese Strukturen sind die Strukturen der jeweiligen Muttersprache. Das Denken eines Menschen vollzieht sich in seiner Sprache. Die Strukturen der Sprache liefern die Modelle für das Denken, für die Analyse der Eindrücke. Unser ganzes Denken bewegt sich in einer denkerisch-sprachigen Welt. Jedes Denken muß sich in Sprachstrukturen kanalisieren lassen. Die Sprache ist das formgebende Organ des Denkens. Die Denkanalyse vollzieht sich in Sprache. In einem bestimmten Augenblick der Entwicklung des Kindes begegnen sich Sprache und Denken ; dann wird das Denken „sprachig” und das Sprechen „denkerisch”. Von nun an werden die meisten Reize der physischen Welt durch ein sprachiges zweites Reizsystem gefiltert ; die Reize werden „in Sprache übersetzt”. Dieser Sprachfilter ist auch in der Analyse nach der dynamischen Erfassung der Reize vorhanden. Diese Daten aus den Theorien der Linguistic Analysis, der Phänomenologie, des Existentialismus, der Ethnolinguistik und Psycholinguistik kann man in direkte Verbindung bringen mit der neoklassischien Theorie, die über ein Erfassen von Erkenntnis-Daten in einer Intuition spricht, die implizit die Möglichkeit zu einem Explizitieren und Analysieren enthält. Somit kommen wir zu folgendem Schema : Reize, sprachiger Empfangsapparat ↓ Erfassung der Reize, Konzeption, Sicht ↓ Denk-Sprachanalyse ↓ Die phonische Äußerung der Denk-Sprachanalyse. Zum Schluß geben wir noch ein Beispiel für eine Kons ta tierungs-Sicht, Ihre Denk-Sprachanalyse und die phonische Äußerung ihrer Denk-Sparchanalyse. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn two experimental studies, we explored the role of attachment in predicting emotional reactivity after frustration induction. In the first study, using a cognitive frustration task, we examined in a college sample how attachment styles related to the experience and expression of emotions after frustration induction. In the second study, we investigated in college students the effect of conscious priming of the secure base schema on mood disturbance after the performance of a cognitive frustration task. Results showed that individuals experienced (...) and expressed emotions after frustration induction independent of their attachment styles. Conscious priming of the secure base script attenuated self-reported emotional reactivity after frustration induction independent of individuals’ attachment styles. These findings suggest that the mechanism of attachment-related emotional reactivity might not pertain to frustration during an unsolvable cognitive task, but that the activation of... (shrink)