The word "modem" in the title of this book refers primarily to post-medieval discussions, but it also hints at those medieval mo dal theories which were considered modem in contradistinction to ancient conceptions and which in different ways influenced philosophical discussions during the early modem period. The me dieval developments are investigated in the opening paper, 'The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and His Predecessors', by Lilli Alanen and Simo Knuuttila. Boethius's works from the early sixth century (...) belonged to the sources from which early medieval thinkers obtained their knowledge of ancient thought. They offered extensive discus sions of traditional modal conceptions the basic forms of which were: (1) the paradigm of possibility as a potency striving to realize itself; (2) the "statistical" interpretation of modal no tions where necessity means actuality in all relevant cases or omnitemporal actuality, possibility means actuality in some rel evant cases or sometimes, and impossibility means omnitemporal non-actuality; and (3) the "logical" definition of possibility as something which, being assumed, results in nothing contradic tory. Boethius accepted the Aristotelian view according to which total possibilities in the first sense must prove their met tle through actualization and possibilities in the third sense are assumed to be realized in our actual history. On these presump tions, all of the above-mentioned ancient paradigms imply the Principle of Plenitude according to which no genuine possibility remains unrealized. (shrink)

JAAKKO HINTIKKA GAPS IN THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING: AN EXERCISE IN THE METHODOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS* For some historians, to understand everything is to pardon everything. For others, like Lord Acton, history is not only a judge, ...

My purpose is to analyze the peculiar thinking of Weil, according to the categories of reasoning, as a choice to avoid violence. In his definition of man, Weil recovers the notion of realization, with which man is redefined in terms of what he must be and not merely for what he is. There-to, man is ..

J.S. Mill has formulated a classical statement of the "argument from analogy� concerning knowledge of other minds: "I must either believe them [other human beings] to be alive, or to be automatons� (Mill 1872, 244). It is possible that Wittgenstein had this in mind when writing the following: "I believe he is suffering.�—Do I also believe that he isn"t an automaton? It would go against the grain to use the word in both connexions. (Or is it like this: I believe (...) he is suffering, but am certain the he is not an automaton? Nonsense!) Suppose I say of a friend: "He isn"t an automaton�.—What information is conveyed by this, and to whom would it be information? To a human being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most that this man always behaves like a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.) "I believe he is not an automaton�, just like that, so far makes no sense. My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul [eine Einstellung zur Seele]. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul. (PI p. 178) Here Wittgenstein contrasts opinion (Meinung) and attitude (Einstellung). How should this contrast be understood? On a view such as Mill"s, to regard someone as a conscious being is to hold certain beliefs about him, beliefs that can perhaps ultimately be grounded in a theory of some sort. To have an "attitude towards a soul� is, on the contrary, to see a person"s gestures and facial expressions as "filled with meaning�. We have an attitude towards a soul when confronted with a person, which means that we react to his presence and behaviour in a certain way. (shrink)

Emotions are the focus of intense debate both in contemporary philosophy and psychology, and increasingly also in the history of ideas. Simo Knuuttila presents a comprehensive survey of philosophical theories of emotion from Plato to Renaissance times, combining rigorous philosophical analysis with careful historical reconstruction. The first part of the book covers the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism and, in addition, their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from Clement and (...) Origen to Augustine and Cassian. Knuuttila then proceeds to a discussion of ancient themes in medieval thought, and of new medieval conceptions, codified in the so-called faculty psychology from Avicenna to Aquinas, in thirteenth century taxonomies, and in the voluntarist approach of Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and their followers. Philosophers, classicists, historians of philosophy, historians of psychology, and anyone interested in emotion will find much to stimulate them in this fascinating book. (shrink)

Current ecological threats, such as the sixth mass extinction or climate change, highlight the need to evaluate the moral implications of changing populations, both human and non-human. The paper sketches a non-anthropocentric and multispecies sufficientarian account of population ethics. After discussing several other options for multispecies population ethics, the paper proposes a two-level account of multispecies sufficientarianism, according to which the value of populations depend on two kinds of sufficientarian thresholds. First, there is a species-relativized individual-level threshold for what species-specific (...) flourishing is for an organism. Second, there is a population-level threshold for a sufficiently viable population enough to support the species-specific flourishing of the current and future members of that population. The paper concludes by discussing some of the practical implications and concerns raised by the two-level account suggested. (shrink)

This book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism, but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination. Pentecostal theologians increasingly acknowledge that their theological methodology should be informed by a Pentecostal rationality, epistemology and theological hermeneutics. Simo Frestadius offers such a Pentecostal rationality from a Foursquare perspective. Frestadius first analyses and evaluates some of the main contemporary Pentecostal rationalities and epistemologies to date, with a particular emphasis on the works of (...) Amos Yong and James K.A. Smith and L. William Oliverio Jr., before proposing that Alasdair MacIntyre's tradition-focused and historically-minded narrative approach is conducive in providing a more tradition-constituted Pentecostal rationality. Utilising the methodological insights of MacIntyre, the book then provides a philosophically informed historical narrative of a major British Pentecostal tradition, namely, the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, by exploring its underlying context and roots as a classical Pentecostal movement, its emergence as a religious tradition, and its two major 'epistemological crises'. Based on this historical narration and analysis, it is argued that Elim's tacit Pentecostal rationality is best defined as Pentecostal Biblical Pragmatism in a Foursquare Gospel framework. This form of rationality is then developed vis-à-vis Elim's Pentecostal concept of truth, biblical hermeneutics, and pragmatic epistemic justification in dialogue with William P. Alston. In doing the above, the book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination. (shrink)

In Neither Physics Nor Chemistry, Kostas Gavroglu and Ana Simoes examine the evolution of quantum chemistry into an autonomous discipline, tracing its development from the publication of early papers in the 1920s to the dramatic changes ...

Krizu moderne kao krizu politickog, autor vidi, pre svega kao krizu "mere" kriterija politickog odlucivanja i delovanja. Ta kriza se u prvom redu shvata kao kriza samosaznanja i prakse obicajnosti. Ovaj problem prvi je pokusao je da resi Makijaveli uvodeci pojam virtus, koji je postao temeljni princip moderne politicke filozofije. Medjutim, mnogi moderni i savremeni tumaci Makijavelijevog ucenja cesto zanemaruju socijalni i politicki konteksta u kojem je nastalo politicko ucenje Firentinskog mislioca. Naime, Makijavelijevo nastojanje da pronadje autenticnu formu politickog cina (...) kojim bi bila omogucena harmonizacija i stabilizacija tadasnjih dramaticnih politickih prilika koje su vladale u italijanskim gradovima, zahtevala je pouzdanu dijagnozu i adekvatna sredstva za uspesnu terapiju obolelog organizma zajednice. Epohalni novum u Makijavelijevoj politickoj teoriji predstavlja prelazak sa anticke teoretizacije vrline na njenu modernu operacionalizaciju. Medjutim, ova promena cesto se tumaci kao radikalno suprotstavljanje grckog pojma arete i rimske virtus, koja se grubo svodi samo na srcanosot i snagu koje su neophodne za osvajanje i ocuvanje politicke vlasti. Vazan deo puta u svojoj filozofiji politike Hegel - vise nesvesno nego svesno - ide s Makijavelijem i Selingom - posebno kad je u pitanju shvatanje neophodnosti snage i srcanosti u procesu operacionalizacije duha slobode u istoriji posredstvom "negacije" kao "moci zla". Posredovanje subjektivnosti i supstancijaliteta zbiva se, po Hegelu, u drzavi surovim krocenjem svetskog duha u kojem on zrtvuje ne samo pojedinca, vec i citave narode - prema slobodi, odnosno njenom ostvarenju u obicajnosnoj zajednici. "Nevolja vremena" posledica je razdvajanja ja i sveta (Entzweiung), i proistice iz redukovanog politickog uma koji za politicko delovanje i odlucivanje nema kriterijuma obicajnosnog totaliteta. Ovaj se um rutinizira razdvajanjem obicajnosti koja redukuje politicko delanje na ogoljenu tehniku osvajanja i zadrzavanja politicke moci. Autor na kraju razmatra krizu politickog odlucivanja i ukazuje u cemu je njen globalni i supstancijalni smisao za povesnu stvarnost na kraju XX veka. (shrink)

The sensible and conflicting scenario of the pandemic postulated many challenges to societies around the world in 2020. Part of this problem refers to how the differences between politics and science are not comprehended in their particularities. The recognition of limits and power of science and politics can not only contribute to reaching the actions and strategies facing novel coronavirus but also optimized many domains of society.

The study of the cultural Cold War and East–West interaction outside diplomacy and high politics has emerged as an important research field during the last two decades. With a few exceptions, however, scholarly interaction has been overshadowed by other forms of interaction. Existing research has mostly paid attention to technological exchange and to espionage, which was at times connected with scientific exchanges across the Iron Curtain. This article discusses scholarly exchanges in the human sciences between Finland and the Soviet Union. (...) Even though Finland was a western-style democracy with a market economy, it had close political ties with the Soviet Union, which allowed for the development of active scholarly connections between the countries. This article discusses the emergence of such connections in the human sciences and the reasons for their rapid expansion in the 1970s. (shrink)

Contribution to a symposium on Kostas Gavroglu and Ana Simões, Neither Physics nor Chemistry, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The last twenty years have seen remarkable developments in our understanding of how the ancient Greek thinkers handled the general concept of being and its several varieties. The most general examination of the meaning of the Greek verb 'esti'/'einai'/'on' both in common usage and in the philosophical literature has been presented by Charles H. Kahn, most extensively in his 1973 book The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek. These discussions are summarized in Kahn's contribution to this volume. By and large, they (...) show that conceptual schemes by means of which philosophers have recently approached Greek thought have not been very well suited to the way the concept of being was actually used by the ancients. For one thing, being in the sense of existence played a very small role in Greek thinking according to Kahn. Even more importantly, Kahn has argued that Frege and Russell's thesis that verbs for being, such as 'esti', are multiply ambiguous is ill suited for the purpose of appreciating the actual conceptual assumptions of the Greek thinkers. Frege and Russell claimed that a verb like 'is' or'esti' is ambiguous between the 'is' of identity, the 'is' of existence, the copulative 'is', and the generic 'is' (the 'is' of class-inclusion). At least a couple of generations of scholars have relied on this thesis and fre quently criticized sundry ancients for confusing these different senses of 'esti' with each other. (shrink)

Originally published in 1993, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy looks at the idea of modality as multiplicity of reference with respect to alternative domains. The book examines how this emerged in early medieval discussions and addresses how it was originally influenced by the theological conception of God acting by choice. After a discussion of ancient modal paradigms, the author traces the interplay of old and new modal views in medieval logic and semantics, philosophy and theology. A detailed account is given of (...) late medieval discussions of the new modal logic, epistemic logic, and the logic norms. These theories show striking similarities to some basic tenets of contemporary approaches to modal matters. This work will be of considerable interest to historians of philosophy and ideas and philosophers of logic and metaphysics. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la visión popperiana de la discusión crítica que, en última instancia, es responsable por la creación de conjeturas osadas, tanto en el campo epistemológico, como en el campo político y social. Presentaremos el presupuesto falibilista de nuestras aleg..

In this review I provide a brief analysis of the main features of the collective volume Shifting Concepts (Oxford University Press, 2020), edited by Teresa Marques and Åsa Wikforss. The volume addresses several related topics, and it contains contributions from psychologists and philosophers. It deals with the topic of concept variation understood in a broad sense, for it tackles diachronic, contextual, interpersonal and even intrapersonal variation; besides, the second part of the book is devoted to the topic of concept revision (...) and amelioration. I provide a brief description of the book and then I critically assess each of the contributions. (shrink)

Semanticists often restrict their theories by imposing constraints on the parameters that can be employed for interpreting the expressions of a language. Such constraints are based on non-logical features of actual contexts of utterance, but they often have important effects on issues that do pertain to logic, like analyticity or entailment. For example, Kaplan’s restriction to so-called “proper contexts” was required in order to count “I am here now” as valid. In this paper I argue that constraints of this kind (...) are often posited in an arbitrary and non-consistent way, and that they yield the intended results only at the price of imposing ad hoc principles whose justification could in turn justify further, often undesirable restrictions into the theory. I also introduce a criterion for telling whether such constraints are imposed in a legitimate manner. (shrink)

In this paper I defend two claims regarding complex demonstratives. On the one hand I argue that, when one of these expressions misdescribes the referred object, the right semantic analysis is to treat the expression as uninterpretable. On the other, I claim that the uninterpretability thesis finds itself in trouble when it comes to dealing with non-deictic uses of complex demonstratives, i.e., uses of “that F” in which the speaker has no acquaintance or direct perception of any object that could (...) satisfy the predicative material. In order to make these two claims compatible, I set out to modify the way the uninterpretability thesis has been traditionally formulated. (shrink)

Review of Sylvia Sauter & Willmar Sauter: _Teater på jiddisch – i Sverige och i världen._ Stockholm: Gidlunds förlag, 2023.

Suvremeni svijet izražava veliku potrebu za etikom u financijskim, gospodarskim, političkim i općenito socijalnim sferama. U tom kontekstu teorija društvenog izbora A. Sena, indijskoga ekonomista, filozofa i dobitnika Nobelove nagrade za osobite doprinose na području ekonomije, predstavlja važan čimbenik u ostvarivanju društvenih ciljeva, a ima i ključnu ulogu u formiranju zdravog društvenopolitičkog poretka. U ovom članku u središtu našeg interesa bit će implementacija skupa sposobnosti u sfere društva, te kritika utilitarističkih pristupa ekonomskom razvoju. Govorit ćemo o slobodama koje se trebaju (...) razumjeti kao obveze koje uključuju odgovornost za druge, kroz racionalan društveni izbor, tako da se na taj način formira razumski čvrsta etička podloga, iz koje se formira koherentan sustav vrijednosti koji se zasniva na povjerenju, spremnosti na suradnju te se na taj način i pojedinac samoostvaruje. Time zapravo dolaze do izražaja individualna i komunitarna razina morala.Contemporary world expresses a great need for a code of ethics in the financial, political and in the social spheres in general. In this context the theory of social choice of A. Sen, the Indian economist, philosopher and winner of the Nobel prize for his personal contribution in the field of economy, represents an important factor in the realization of social goods and also plays a key role in the formation of a sound socio-political order. The implementation of capabilities into the social spheres and the critique of utilitarianism will be in the focus of our interest in this article. At that context we’ll mention freedoms that have to be understood as commitments which include responsibility for other people through rational social choice which is the rational solid ethical base from which we form coherent system of values based on trust, willingness for cooperation, so on that way the individual also fulfils himself/herself. According to that, to the expression also comes individual and communitarian level of moral. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville's poem "The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest" explores the subtle interplay between morality and business practices, particularly through the lens of the term "knave". This article examines Mandeville's use of "knave" in juxtaposition with the value of honesty portrayed in the poem's title. In contrast to the spiritual transformation depicted in the poem, in which all the bees in the hive become honest through divine intervention, Mandeville suggests a different kind of change in moral practice, one that (...) incorporates previously unacceptable behavior into the social fabric. Through a varied historical reconstruction of the uses and understandings of the term in question, the study explores Mandeville's concerns about the acceptance and normalization of dishonesty in various segments of society, as illustrated by the anecdote in Observation B, which shows how dishonesty permeates all aspects of commerce, involving buyers, sellers, merchants, traders, and dealers. By analyzing Mandeville's portrayal of dishonesty and its integration into social dynamics, this study aims to elucidate the underlying tensions between ethical standards and the pursuit of self-interest. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze how movement takes part in creating intersubjective meaning. We discuss what Daniel Stern termed ‘affect attunement,’ a primary way of constituting intersubjectivity. Based on an analysis of how movement, meaning-making, vitality affects, and primordial feelings interrelate in affect attunement, we show that primordial feelings and thereby movement play a much greater role in affect attunement than Stern proposed. This makes movement a primary meaning-making modality, indispensable to the development of intersubjectivity. To illustrate the relation between (...) movement and affect attunement in psychological development, we discuss the role of movement in autism. Recent research suggests that differences in movement precede the onset of social-communicative deficits and may be primary to autistic development. Building on the proposed interrelation of movement and primordial feelings in affect attunement, we suggest that autistic movement differences illuminate the vital role played by movement in early intersubjective development. (shrink)