Bayesians often appeal to “merging of opinions” to rebut charges of excessive subjectivity. But what happens in the short run is often of greater interest than what happens in the limit. Seidenfeld and coauthors use this observation as motivation for investigating the counterintuitive short run phenomenon of dilation, since, they allege, dilation is “the opposite” of asymptotic merging of opinions. The measure of uncertainty relevant for dilation, however, is not the one relevant for merging of opinions. We explicitly investigate the (...) short run behavior of the metric relevant for merging, and show that dilation is independent of the opposite of merging. (shrink)

This essay examines Augustine’s notion that a person can transcend temporal “distention” by “extending” his soul to God by way of “intention”. Augustine conceived of intentio as an activity of the will that functions to connect the soul to beings and objects in the world. Augustine links his notion of “intention” to the activity of “extending oneself to God”. How do the soul’s “intention” and “extension” work together to combat temporal “distention”? Augustine suggests that Paul extended himself to (...) God but could not fully overcome distention. In his vision of God in Confessions 9, by contrast, Augustine transcends distention. Here, Augustine’s memory and self have been transcended as his soul “extends itself” to God “through intention.” Even in this state of self-transcendence, his intentio directs and connects his soul to God. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the problem of novelty as seen from the perspective of two French philosophers: Paul Ricoeur and Gilles Deleuze. As such, a new interpretation of the works of these two philosophers is developed. I argue that two models can be derived from their works: a model that strives to make tensions productive (based on Ricoeur) and a model that aims to organize encounters between bodies (taken from Deleuze). These models are developed on their own terms without superimposing (...) one over the other. Hence, the first part of the dissertation focuses on Ricoeur, the second on Deleuze. Through an extensive reading of Ricoeur’s La métaphore vive, it is shown that the living metaphor creates a productive tension in which two previously distinct domains are drawn together. This results in a semantic innovation that first appears as an image and only later can be conceptualized. This argument is further developed by analyzing Augustine’s notion ‘time is a distention of the mind (distentio animi)’ as an example of how a living metaphor introduces a new language that re-describes reality. This example prepares the way for broadening the model of productive tensions by showing how, from Ricoeur’s perspective, the innovative potential of actions can be understood in terms of a productive tension between two orders of imagination. In contrast to Ricoeur, Deleuze’s conception of novelty is not analyzed in terms of a productive tension between two heterogeneous domains, but in terms of an encounter between bodies in which a creative coupling or an affective relation emerges that links these bodies together in a common trajectory. On the basis of a reading of Deleuze’s essays on literature, it is shown how such an encounter can give rise to a single process of metamorphosis. This process can be divided in two closely connected moments: a mutual metamorphosis that sets the whole process in motion and a continuous metamorphosis of proliferating series that keeps it alive. This first, intuitive understanding of the model is deepened by linking it to a metamorphic ontology of expression that is derived from Deleuze’s works on Spinoza. This provides the model with a more rigorous vocabulary and also shows in how these encounters can be organized in such a way that they create the conditions for novelty in three forms of thinking: science, art, and philosophy. (shrink)

This essay contests the standard historical comparison that links Husserl’s account of time-consciousness to the tradition by way of Book XI of Augustine’sConfessions. This comparison rests on the mistaken assumption that both thinkers attribute the soul’s distention and corresponding apprehension of time to memory. While true for Augustine and Husserl’s 1905 lectures on time, Husserl concluded after 1907 that these lectures advanced the flawed and counter-intuitive position that memory extends perception. I will trace the shortcomings of Augustine’s and Husserl’s (...) conflation of memory with perception. After developing Husserl’s maturely articulated distinction between memory and retention from 1911, I suggest chapters 10–14 of Aristotle’s Physics IV as a more apt anticipation of this second, more adequate half of the Husserlian story. A reconstruction of Aristotle’s definition of time as “the number of movement,” one that privileges the activity of “the mind pronouncing that the ‘nows’ are two,” intimates Husserl’s distinction between memory and retention. For Aristotle, the soul’s recognition of the ‘nows’ as two depends not on memory, but on the soul’s intentional activity of counting, itself dependent on the ability to, as Aristotle writes in his Metaphysics, “grasp mentally and [have] already grasped” at the same time. (shrink)

With the third volume Wilfrid Desan completes a trilogy begun in 1961 and continued with the 1972 Macmillan publication of the two first volumes together. Georgetown University Press has reissued the earlier volumes--A Noetic Prelude to a United World and An Ethical Prelude to a United World--as well. The author, a respected interpreter of Sartre's thought, has written a work of enormous scope and daring originality that ventures into the human future far beyond the expected or even the provable. His (...) multiple vision--for we are dealing with a sustained, philosophically articulated vision rather than with a methodic argument--centers around the idea that the perfect consists in the totum. The reader is reminded of Hegel's "The true is the whole." But Desan rejects the Hegelian reconciliation of opposites. Instead he proposes a complementarity of irreconcilable standpoints. For explaining the current condition of society he considers Hegel's dialectic of reconciliation at once too optimistic and not sufficiently radical. Hegel's political structure culminates in the state, which for Desan is no more than a fragment of the future world order. We detect other influences: Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason to which the author devoted an earlier volume, but also Teilhard de Chardin's work which Desan was one of the first to introduce to American readers. But there are also unexpected similarities. The remarkable chapter eight of volume 1, "God and the Human Totality," develops a vision of the totum-as-transcendent that evokes Whitehead and process philosophy. Even more surprising is the presence of ideas remindful of the cabalistic fragmentation of a primeval unity. This gnostic touch holds a symbolic significance in that the author here uses mythical language--down to the very terminology of "contraction" and "distention"--for what he feels occasionally to surpass the capacity of methodic discourse. (shrink)

“영혼의 분산(distentio animi)”으로서 시간 개념은, 시간이 그것을 측정하는 ‘영혼 안에만’ 존재한다는 진술로 인해, 많은 학자들이 아우구스티누스의 시간론을 ‘주관주의적’인 것으로 해석하도록 만들었다. 하지만 이러한 시간 규정을 제대로 이해하기 위해서는 다양한 요소들이 해명되어야 한다. 무엇보다 먼저 『고백록』 제XI권의 주된 목적은 시간에 대한 체계적인 가르침을 주기 위한 것이라기보다는 시간의 창조주가 지닌 영원성과 자비를 찬미하는 데 있음을 유념해야 한다. 또한이 ‘찬미로서의 고백’의 주체인 아우구스티누스의 영혼(“animus meus”)은 ‘자기 내면보다 더 내밀한’ 신에 의해 관통되고 신으로부터 선사된 신을 향한 사랑에 종속된 주체이면서 동시에 육체를 통해 물질세계 전체를 (...) 향해 개방된 관계적 존재이기도 하다. 한편 시간은 ‘아직 존재하지 않는 것’(미래)에서 ‘간격 없는것’(현재)을 통해 ‘이미 존재하지 않는 것’(과거)이 됨으로써만, 곧 ‘비존재(nonesse)를 지향하는’ 방식으로써만 존재하면서, 인간 영혼과 물질세계 전체를 관통하는 객관적인 보편적 창조질서로 제시된다. 하지만 물질이 시간을 소유할 수 있는 ‘내적 공간’을 결하고 있기 때문에 단지 시간에 의해 소유되는 것과는 달리, 인간 영혼은 단지 시간에 의해 소유될 뿐만 아니라 시간을 자기 안에 대상화하고 동시에 소유할 수 있는 능력도 지니고 있다. 이렇게 역설적인 방식으로써만 존재하는 시간에 대한 대상적 소유는 영혼이 지닌 ‘지향작용(intentio)’과 ‘기억(memoria)’이라는 내적 공간으로 인해 가능한데, 동일한 영혼은 지속적으로 생성하고 소멸하는 사물들의 형상적 변화 안에서 개현되는 시간을 지향하며 그것의 흔적들(affectiones)을 기억에 저장함으로써 시간을 지각하고 측정할 수 있게 되는 것이다. 따라서 시간 존재의 아포리아는 오직 기억 안에서 이뤄진 영혼의 ‘분산지향(distentio)’을 통해서만 그 해결의 실마리가 열리지만, 그 경우에도 시간 그 자체의 본성이 영혼에게 개현되는 것이 아니라 분산지향을 통해 자기를 확장하면서 그것을 측정하는 영혼의 존재 그 자체가 지닌 근본적인 시간성, 곧 무를 지향하는 산란된 존재 방식이 개현될 뿐이다. 인간 영혼이 지닌 이러한 시간적 실존은 물질세계를 통해 그리고 그것을 넘어서 신의 영원성을 지향하고 소유함으로써만 궁극적 안식을 발견하도록 창조된 그의 존재론적 소명을 의미한다. (shrink)