L’étude de l’antonomase, qui est en fait un trope double puisqu’il existe des antonomases de nom propre et de nom commun, invite à plaider pour l’existence d’un système du nom propre fondé sur des positions et organisé à partir d’un prototype, les formes se situant à plus ou moins grande distance de celui-ci. Après avoir montré comment la catégorie du nom propre peut être structurée à partir d’un double mouvement de déconceptualisation et de conceptualisation, double mouvement dont les emplois (...) du nom propre portent la trace en discours, on montre que l’antonomase de nom commun, qui fige un lien référentiel, se situe à l’entrée du système du nom propre, quand l’antonomase de nom propre, qui construit une catégorie conceptuelle à partir d’une dénomination individuelle, renvoie à une position au-delà de laquelle disparaît la perception de la proprialité. Ces formes périphériques, qui illustrent un emploi figuré de la description définie et du nom propre, représentent des tropes complémentaires. On souligne in fine l’existence d’antonomases imbriquées, c’est-à-dire d’antonomases (de nom propre ou de nom commun) formées à partir d’une autre antonomase (de nom commun ou de nom propre). (shrink)

La teneur d'un ouvrage philosophique dépend à la fois des thèses qui y sont déployées par son auteur et des références dont celui-ci se nourrit. Dans l'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard, le système référentiel est tout particulièrement abondant : comme si le philosophe redoutait secrètement la vaticination, préférant étayer ses affirmations par des matériaux qu'il puise dans l'univers, pour ainsi dire illimité, de ses lectures. De fait, il n'a jamais caché avoir été un lecteur boulimique, insatiable. Ce faisant, il oublie de (...) dire que toute sa vie est aussi bien un acte d'écriture, dont la table d'existence, c'est-à-dire la table de travail, est le support fondamental. Écriture et lectures s'avèrent pour lui intimement liées. C'est bien pourquoi l'Index que nous proposons ici présente un intérêt majeur. Il dévoile de façon ordonnée l'abondance impressionnante d'une culture qui se met sans arrêt au service d'une pensée. En même temps il agit à la manière d'un spectrographe, qui révèle des zones privilégiées de références et de préoccupations. Dans le cas de Gaston Bachelard, le champ des affinités philosophiques est particulièrement révélateur : il s'y noue un réseau globalement cohérent de références récurrentes, qui apparaît en même temps sur un fond de désaffections implicites : c'est dire qu'il y a de grands absents dans le répertoire bachelardien. De fait, et globalement, il cite beaucoup plus largement les savants et les poètes que les grands philosophes de la tradition classique. D'une utilisation particulièrement aisée, cet Index permettra aux chercheurs, aux étudiants et à tous les lecteurs passionnés de repérer les sources explicites de Gaston Bachelard disséminées à l'intérieur de son oeuvre. (shrink)

Cet article traite la problématique du facteur humain dans la société en réseau en mettant en évidence que les TIC sont à la fois créatrices et destructrices de lien social. Il propose une approche de la fracture numérique selon deux niveaux: - un accès inégalitaire à Internet et aux TIC; - des savoirs et savoir-faire insuffisants pour communiquer dans une société désormais régie par la manipulation et les mécanismes de génération de la connaissance. Il prend comme exemple référentiel la génération (...) Internet née de la double médiation technique et sociale caractéristique du lien social engendré par l'usage des TIC. Et, il situe ainsi la véritable origine de la fracture numérique dans les inégalités socio-économiques et culturelles qui existaient pour la plupart avant l'introduction des TIC et la mise en réseau de la société.This paper addresses the problem of the human factor in the network society by highlighting that ICTs are both creative and destructive social links. It proposes an approach to the digital divide in two levels: - unequal access to the Internet and ICT - knowledge and skills sufficient to communicate in a society now governed by the manipulation and generation mechanisms of knowledge. He takes as an example the Internet generation born repository of double mediation technical and social characteristics of social ties generated by the use of ICT. And it is thus the true origin of the digital divide in the socio-economic and cultural existed mostly before the introduction of ICT and networking company. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous interrogeons le statut linguistique du nom catégorie. Par ses propriétés sémantiques, catégorie peut être considéré comme un nom général ou sommital, tandis qu’il peut être appréhendé comme un nom sous-spécifié ou signalling noun si l’on prend en compte des critères syntaxiques. Nous montrons tout d’abord que catégorie est un nom général du fait de sa position lexicale, de sa non autonomie référentielle, d’une sous-détermination intrinsèque et de son abstraction. Nous mettons également en évidence la nature (...) du lien existant entre N2 et catégorie dans la structure Dét catégorie de Dét N2, ainsi que la nature sémantique de la structure. Les propriétés sémantiques de catégorie sont ensuite mises en lien avec ses caractéristiques syntaxiques. Ces dernières ne permettent pas de conclure à une affiliation de catégorie à la classe des noms sous-spécifiés, si ce n’est à la marge de celle-ci. (shrink)

Résumé Je défends une solution référentielle anti-réaliste au problème de l'identité intentionnelle. Je développe la solution réaliste référentielle de Nathan Salmon — selon laquelle les objets mythiques existent et que nous pouvons y faire référence en utilisant des noms d'objets mythiques — et je considère les objections de David Braun à son égard. Je soutiens que la solution de Salmon donne l'identité réelle des objets des pensées de plusieurs sujets, plutôt que leur identité intentionnelle. Je développe enfin une (...) variante référentielle anti-réaliste du point de vue de Salmon qui évite cette inquiétude — selon laquelle les objets mythiques n'existent pas et ne sont pas réels par ailleurs, bien que nous puissions néanmoins nous y référer. (shrink)

English summary: This book offers a historical and critical study of one of the most important questions in contemporary philosophy: what does signify mean? The author applies Husserls phenomenology, reflecting on the existence of intentional objects, to demonstrate the ontological status of signification that has eluded psychological and referential theories. French description: Le present ouvrage propose une etude historique et critique d'une des questions les plus importantes de la philosophie contemporaine et des sciences humaines : qu'est-ce que signifier veut (...) dire? L'auteur envisage la theorie de la signification dans l'ensemble du corpus husserlien et prend en compte ces differents aspects (discours scientifique et theorique, langage ordinaire). En inscrivant la theorie husserlienne dans son contexte historique (psychologie de Brentano, logique de Bolzano), ce travail s'attache ainsi a eclairer d'un jour nouveau un moment cle de l'histoire de la philosophie. Pour Husserl, la signification n'est ni un acte immanent de la conscience, ni l'objet - reel, fictif ou ideal - auquel il se rapporte, mais une objectite categoriale. En tant que telle, elle est une espece d'objet intentionnel : le correlat de l'activite categoriale, autrement dit l'objet tel qu'il est pense, a distinguer soigneusement de l'objet qui est pense et des vecus psychiques et linguistiques au moyen desquels il est pense et exprime. C'est a partir d'une reflexion sur le mode d'etre de l'objet intentionnel que la phenomenologie de Husserl a pu devoiler le statut ontologique de la signification qui avait echappe aux theories psychologiques et referentielles. (shrink)

Mon intention est de discuter quelques aspects du débat actuel sur la perception qui oppose les partisans du conceptualisme (essentiellement John McDowell et Bill Brewer) aux partisans du non-conceptualisme (Fred Dretske, Gareth Evans, Christopher Peacocke, Michael Tye, Tim Crane, José Luis Bermúdez, Adina Roskies et d?autres). Je commencerai par fixer le cadre théorique du débat, par clarifier son enjeu et par retracer brièvement son origine. Ensuite, je mettrai en évidence une difficulté majeure de la position conceptualiste. Pour finir, j?examinerai l?une (...) des approches qui me semblent les plus prometteuses pour décrire adéquatement la manière dont fonctionne le mécanisme référentiel de la perception et le rôle des contenus non conceptuels au sein de ce mécanisme. Cette approche se présente comme une variante de la thèse des « contenus multiples » (voir Siegel 2010, section 3.5). Selon cette variante, le contenu total d?une expérience perceptuelle doit être construit comme un contenu complexe, composé de plusieurs couches ou plusieurs strates distinctes. En d?autres termes, l?approche qui m?intéressera ici consiste à admettre l?existence de contenus perceptuels à plusieurs niveaux ou de ce que l?on appellerait, en langue anglaise, multi-levelled perceptual contents . Une telle conception peut être rattachée exemplairement, dans le paysage philosophique des vingt dernières années, à la position de Christopher Peacocke. (shrink)

Quiconque veut tenter de parcourir le chemin de pensée de Karl-Otto Apel – son « Denkweg » – se trouve d'emblée confronté à des difficultés liées à l'accès même aux textes à cause non seulement des traductions en français, encore insuffisantes, ou de l'absence de certains textes, mais surtout à cause de la forme même de ses textes. C'est, en effet, par des articles, essais, reproductions de conférences, introductions à des traductions que la pensée d'Apel s’exprime et se donne à (...) lire. Ses ouvrages majeurs ne sont eux-mêmes, généralement, que des Collected Papers regroupant des textes déjà parus antérieurement. Consciente de toutes ces difficultés d’accès, Martine Le Corre-Chantecaille guide le lecteur dans le présent ouvrage à travers la pensée du philosophe allemand et réussit à retracer les étapes, de la genèse au développement, de la construction de la « pragmatique transcendantale ». Elle parvient, entre autres, à montrer comment, inlassablement, Apel reconstruit, compare, confronte, critique, s’efforçant de penser « avec et contre » les autres membres de la communauté philosophique (Heidegger, Kant, Gadamer, Peirce) et non « sans » eux, mettant ainsi en évidence le choix d’une pratique philosophique « alter-référentielle » qui fournit un fil conducteur permettant de dégager les apports conceptuels ayant contribué à la constitution et au développement de la pragmatique transcendantale. Mais au-delà de l’étude du contenu plus systématique de sa pensée qui apparaît et se développe à partir des années 70, l’ouvrage se propose également, de mettre en évidence et de réfléchir à la pratique intersubjective qu’Apel n’a jamais abandonnée. L’auteur montre que, au-delà de la volonté de mettre en évidence l’existence d’une communauté de communication des philosophes, comme solution contre toute anticipation solipsiste de la vérité définitive, ce qu’Apel veut relever est que « penser avec et contre », c’est refuser que le choix de la violence – celui du penser sans les autres –, puisse se présenter comme valant autant que le choix de la raison, choix d’un penser avec (même quand il prend la forme d’un penser contre qui se veut alors pratique autocritique de la raison). (shrink)

If a potential person would have a good life if he were to come into existence, can we coherently regard his coming into existence as better for him than his never coming into existence? And can we regard the situation in which he never comes into existence as worse for him? In this paper, we argue that both questions should be answered affirmatively. We also explain where prominent arguments to differing conclusions go wrong. Finally, we explore (...) the relevance of our answers to issues in population ethics. (shrink)

Jan Narveson has articulated a deeply held, widely shared intuition regarding what moral law has to say about bringing additional people into existence: while we are “in favour of making people happy,” we are “neutral about making happy people.” Various formulations of the Narvesonian intuition (closely related to the person-affecting intuition or restriction) have been widely criticized. This present paper outlines an off-the-beaten-path alternate construction of the intuition—the existence condition—and argues that that particular construction has the resources to (...) avoid some of those criticisms. But still other considerably more widely recognized alternate constructions have been offered as well. Thus John Broome outlines what he calls the neutrality intuition. While Broome finds the underlying intuition “strongly attractive,” he nonetheless argues that the neutrality intuition itself leads us quickly into inconsistency. Wlodek Rabinowicz disagrees. On his view, Broome’s inconsistency argument shows, not that the neutrality intuition is false, but rather that it doesn’t follow, from the fact that the outcome, or possible future or world, that includes the additional person is neither better nor worse than the (otherwise similar) world that excludes that person, that the one world is exactly as good as the other. The better view, according to Rabinowicz, is that, on occasion, and specifically when the coming into existence of additional people is at stake, the one world is incommensurate with the other. What is called the principle of trichotomy is, in other words, false. Difficulties arise, however, when we try to reject that seemingly compelling conceptual principle. This present paper concludes with the argument that the availability of the existence condition—which, together with certain other uncontroversial moral principles and a handful of conceptual principles, forms the existential approach—shows that we can maintain the most intuitive parts of neutrality intuition while avoiding both Broome’s inconsistency worry and Rabinowicz’s commitment to incommensurability. Incommensurability may be correct on other grounds—but not, this present paper argues, on the grounds provided by Broome’s inconsistency argument. (shrink)

Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defence of the hypothesis that there is a necessarily existing being capable of providing an ultimate foundation for the existence of all things.

Are there nonexistent objects? Can we make sense of objects having properties without thinking that there are nonexistent objects? Is existence a predicate? Can we make sense of necessarily existing objects depending on God? Tackling these central questions, Matthew Davidson explores the metaphysics of existence and nonexistence. -/- He presents an extended argument for independence actualism, a previously undefended view that objects can have properties in worlds and at times at which they do not exist. Among other unique (...) points of discussion, Davidson considers the nature of actualism, arguments for and against serious actualism, the semantics of “exists” as a predicate, the merits of different sorts of Meinongian theories, and different views on which God might ground the existence of necessarily existing abstracta. The book offers a Lewisian-style argument for adopting independence actualism in that the view may be used to solve many problems in metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Four accounts, three of them Kantian, of true sentences of the form “ exists” are contrasted. Russell’s theory that such sentences are meaningless is contrasted with two other Kantian theories that are analogous to one another: Frege’s semantic-ascent theory and the Frege-inspired ungerade (indirect, “oblique”) theory. Frege’s objection to the semantic-ascent account of identity is applied, ironically with equal force, against his account of existence. A second argument favoring the ungerade theory is offered. The argument is then refuted through (...) an application of a general strategy suggested by Kripke. A fourth theory, the deeply anti-Kantian existence-as-predicate theory, fully accommodates these results. (shrink)

This series presents issues which are central to 20th-century European thought, but unfamiliar to students of Anglo-American philosophy. In this book the author traces the development of the concept of situation through the work of Gabriel Marcel, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty.

I shall unfold Kant’s views on three topics. Kant holds that knowledge of anything’s existence is obtained only by existential judgments. He distinguishes several respects in which the predicate of such a judgment differs from other predicates. In the light of these, Kant sets forth what is required for verifying existential judgments.

Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regard­less of whether it is or will be of any particular use to them. This existence value based on preference satisfaction should be taken into account in evaluating activities that come with a risk of species extinction. There are two main objections. The first is that on the preference satisfaction interpretation, the concept lacks moral importance because satisfying people’s preferences may involve no good or (...) well-being for them. However, existence value can be based on a restricted version of the preference satisfaction theory, which is not vulnerable to the skeptical arguments about the link between preference satisfaction and well-being. The second objection is that even if preference satisfaction can be linked to well-being, understanding existence value in terms of individual preference satisfaction is incoherent, because existence value reflects disinterested preferences that involve no benefits to the individual. However, the fact that existence value may involve disinterested preferences does not threaten the coherence of the concept, but suggests that it does not fit smoothly into the “utilitarian” or “welfarist” framework it is commonly considered within. A pluralistic normative approach based on prima facie duties can be an alternative to standard utilitarian-style approaches for considering existence value in concrete cases involving a risk of species extinction, such as through deep sea mining. (shrink)

In the multi-faceted trajectory of post-Kantian thought, Schelling—both the person and his philosophy—has always been a controversial figure. Popular historical accounts focus on his precocious interventions as part of the ‘Jena set’, initially building on Fichte's philosophy of the ‘I’, but quickly coming to challenge his predecessor's philosophical dominance. In the crucial period of the late 1790s, Schelling's most notable intervention was to develop a philosophy of nature alongside the Kantian and Fichtean theories of transcendental subjectivity, which caught the attention (...) of Goethe and led to his appointment, at the age of twenty-three, as professor of philosophy at the University of Jena. But Schelling's life and philosophical work continued well beyond this well-documented period, culminating in a late system in which he developed key ideas surrounding freedom, existence, modality and the history of human consciousness that all revolved around a distinction between what he called negative and positive philosophy. This distinction, and his insistence on the need for the development of the latter mode of philosophy, came to challenge some of the core assumptions of the largely rationalist German idealist project and it remains, to this day, perhaps the most powerful alternative to the Hegelian system that rose to dominance already within Schelling's own lifetime, but also well beyond it. (shrink)

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. (...) Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

The first half of the 20th century witnessed the development of the classic eugenics. Some countries in Europe and the USA of different historical past, cultures and degree of development were universally attracted by the eugenic ideology. This raises few questions concerning the basis of its universal attractiveness for masses and its success. This article answers those questions indicating strong religious-like belief in the myth which served as a base for the eugenical way of thinking being older than this thought. (...) This myth narrates a story about the existence of “real people” who lived in the past, yet unfavourable circumstances caused their degradation, but who—with the assistance of physicians technocrats of the new society and through medical procedures—may be reborn. This paper aims at the reconstruction of the myth on the basis of the writings of Plato, Campanella and Nietzsche. As examples of its “realization” of the myth, I provide the activities of the institutions like Lebensborn houses in Germany and Nobel Sperm Bank in the USA. (shrink)

Today, in a Western secular context, the affective phenomenon of religious zeal is often associated, or even identified, with religious intolerance, violence, and fanaticism. Even if the zealots’ devotion remains restricted to their private lives, “we” as Western secularists still suspect them of a lack of reason, rationality, and autonomy. However, closer consideration reveals that religious zeal is an ethically and politically ambiguous phenomenon. In this article, I explore the question of how this ambiguity can be explained. I do so (...) by drawing on Paul Ricœur’s theory of affective fragility and tracing back the ambiguity of religious zeal to a dialectic inherent to human affectivity and existence itself. According to Ricœur, human affectivity is constituted by the two poles of vital and spiritual desires which are mediated by the thymos. As I show, this theory helps us to understand that religious zeal as a spiritual desire is neither plainly good nor plainly bad, but ambiguous. Moreover, it enables us to acknowledge the entanglement of abstraction and concretion that is inherent to the phenomenon of religious zeal. Finally, this theory helps us to understand why religious zeal, as one possible expression of the human quest for the infinite, is both a promise and a threat. In conclusion, human existence is tragic not in that we necessarily fail, but in that no matter which path we take with regard to our spiritual desires—that of affirmation, rejection, or moderation—we are and remain fallible. (shrink)

Fix 2 < n < ω. Let CA n denote the class of cylindric algebras of dimension n, and let RCA n denote the variety of representable CA n ’s. Let L n denote first-order logic restricted to the first n variables. Roughly, CA n, an instance of Boolean algebras with operators, is the algebraic counterpart of the syntax of L n, namely, its proof theory, while RCA n algebraically and geometrically represents the Tarskian semantics of L n. Unlike Boolean (...) algebras having a Stone representation theorem, RCA n ⊊ CA n. Using combinatorial game theory, we show that the existence of certain finite relation algebras RA, which are algebras whose domain consists of binary relations, implies that the celebrated Henkin omitting types theorem fails in a very strong sense for L n. Using special cases of such finite RA ’s, we recover the classical nonfinite axiomatizability results of Monk, Maddux, and Biro on RCA n and we re-prove Hirsch and Hodkinson’s result that the class of completely representable CA n ’s is not first-order definable. We show that if T is an L n countable theory that admits elimination of quantifiers, λ is a cardinal < 2 ℵ 0, and F = 〈 Γ i : i < λ 〉 is a family of complete nonprincipal types, then F can be omitted in an ordinary countable model of T. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the article is the analysis of the reasons and grounds of the crisis in the sphere of meaning-making, as well as searching answers to the questions about the meaning of human life in the contemporary world, which are maximally relevant in connection with the escalation of global problems, revealing the points of convergence between various theoretical positions, evaluation of their heuristic potential. Theoretical basis of the research is the historical-philosophical, comparative and system approaches, as well as (...) the analysis of philosophical insights in the field of global studies. Originality. Originality lies in the fact that this article is the first attempt to conduct comprehensive analysis in the problem of the sense of the Existence as it is presented in the first quarter of the 21st century and to relate it with the modern social situation that is characterized by a complex range of interconnected and interdependent anthropological problems of our time. Authors emphasize that the main reason in the crisis of meaning is that a man has lost touch with his roots, which is wildlife. He has created an artificial structure, civilization to satisfy his needs and finds no way to the transcendental, which is the true House of his being. Conclusions. A human must refuse from false self-conceit concerning his potential omniscience and omnipotence, cease dictating his own rules to the Existence, determine the boundaries of his freedom and try to clearly realize his place in the objective structure of being. The global situation can change for the better only if a dramatic change in the area of meaning-making happens. The decisive force, which may encourage nudging to the positive changes, can be either the free will of people who have realized the criticality of the situation or external natural and social circumstances that will make people reorganize radically. The proper prioritizing, a deep awareness of universal goals and solidarity between people could be the value basis that will become the foundation to find the meaning and create a more favorable future. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe the way in which I introduce arguments for the existence of God to undergraduate students in Introduction to Philosophy.

Quel rapport entre l'existence d'une oeuvre d'art et celle d'un être vivant? Entre l'existence de l'atome et celle d'une valeur comme la solidarité? Ces questions sont les nôtres à chaque fois qu'une réalité est instaurée, prend consistance et vient à compter dans nos vies, qu'il s'agisse d'un morceau de musique, d'un amour ou de Dieu en personne. Comme James ou Deleuze, Souriau défend méthodiquement la thèse d'un pluralisme existentiel. Il y a, en effet, différentes manières d'exister, et même (...) différents degrés ou intensités d'existence : des purs phénomènes aux choses objectivées, en passant par le virtuel et le " sur-existant " dont témoignent les œuvres de l'esprit ou de l'art, tout comme le fait même de la morale. L'existence est polyphonique, et le monde s'en trouve considérablement enrichi et élargi. Outre ce qui existe au sens ordinaire du terme, il faut compter avec toutes sortes d'états virtuels ou fugaces, de domaines transitionnels, de réalités ébauchées, en devenir, qui sont autant d'" intermondes ". Servi par une érudition stupéfiante qui lui permet de traverser d'un pas allègre toute l'histoire de la philosophie, Souriau donne les éléments d'une grammaire de l'existence. Mais son enquête se veut aussi une introduction à " la pratique de l'art d'exister ". A quoi nous attachons-nous précisément lorsque nous aimons un être? A quoi nous engageons-nous lorsque nous nous identifions à un personnage de roman, lorsque nous valorisons une institution ou adhérons à une théorie? Et finalement, quel(s) mode(s) d'existence(s) sommes-nous capables d'envisager et d'expérimenter pour nous-mêmes? Questions métaphysiques, questions vitales. Cette nouvelle édition est précédée d'une présentation d'Isabelle Stengers et Bruno Latour intitulée " Le sphinx de l'œuvre ". Elle inclut également un article d'Étienne Souriau, " Du mode d'existence de l'œuvre à faire " (1956). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Mangling Aquinas The Argument from Design Why the Argument from Design Fails Dawkins' Case Against Theism A Fundamental Difficulty with Dawkins' Atheistic Argument.

Existence Since Thales fell into the well while gazing at the stars, philosophers have invested considerable effort in trying to understand what, how and why things exist. Even though much ink has been spilled about those questions, this article focuses on the following three questions: What is the nature of existence? Are there … Continue reading Existence →.

This article examines Oyowe’s highly distinctive socio-ontological account of ancestral existence. According to Oyowe, ancestors are intentional objects. Ancestors thus constitute a social kind and are ontologically distinct from natural kinds. The article critiques and rejects Oyowe’s distinction between social and natural kinds. The article then goes on to outline a possible alternative approach that draws on quasi-materialist and pan-psychic metaphysics to argue that ancestors exist as a natural kind—more specifically, ancestral existence consists in the this-worldly survival of (...) the mentalistic aspects of a human person’s biological death. Throughout, the article is concerned with the rationality of belief in ancestral existence rather than with their de facto existence as such. (shrink)

Swinburne relies on principle P in The Existence of God to argue that God is simple and thus likely to exist. In this paper, I argue that Swinburne does not support P. In particular, his arguments from mathematical simplicity and scientists’ preferences both fail. Given the central role P plays in Swinburne’s overall argument in The Existence of God , I conclude that Swinburne should further support P if his argument that God likely exists is to be persuasive.

Philosophers have often debated the truth of microstructural essentialism about chemical substances: whether or not the structure of a chemical substance at the molecular scale is what makes it the substance it is. Oddly they have tended to pursue this debate without identifying what a structure is, and with some confusion and about what a chemical substance is. In this paper I draw on chemistry to rectify those omissions, providing a pluralist account of structure, clarifying what (according to chemistry) a (...) chemical substance is and defending microstructural essentialism, as I understand that position. I then give an account of the existence of composite substances and objects in chemistry, an issue that goes back to Aristotle. (shrink)

Metaphysicians frequently appeal to intuition. But when is that appeal useful? I consider that question by focusing on our existential intuitions. In particular, I want to go some way to answering the question of whether, and when, appeal to existential intuitions is useful, by consid-ering the issue in the light of an argument for unrestricted composition. This argument appeals to a difference in the extent to which restricted and unrestricted compositionalists appeal to existential intuitions, and concludes that at the very (...) least, restricted compositionalists are on shak-ier epistemic ground than unrestricted compositionalists. Having outlined this argument for unrestricted composition, I con-sider the nature of the unrestricted existential quantifier in the context of three different metaphysical scenarios about the way the world might be: scenarios that differ with respect to whether the metaphysics of a world completely or uniquely settles the division of that world into ob-jects. I argue that appeal to intuition is not only useful but necessary if we are to determine the intension of ‘exists’ and hence its extension at any given world. But this appeal is not simply an appeal to our brute ex-istential intuitions—our dispositions actually to quantify over a certain domain. Rather, it requires equilibration over a set of worlds in which we consider our ‘quantificational’ dispositions in each world, where, importantly, included in this set of worlds are worlds in which the meta-physics differently settles the division of those worlds into objects. Ul-timately, I argue, our dispositions yield various conditional claims about our concept <existence>. These are conditional claims of the most ab-stract kind: they tell us, for instance, that if there is some natural, unique division of our world into objects, then the unrestricted quantifier ranges over all and only the objects in that domain. But, I will argue, our untu-tored, world-bound dispositions are no guide at all to what actually ex-ists even on the supposition that metaphysics alone does not uniquely or completely settle a natural division of our world into objects. Hence they are no guide to the nature of composition. And to the extent that certain restricted compositionalist views depend on such intuitions, so much the worse for them. Or so I shall argue. (shrink)

From the Qur'an, Surah Maryam: -/- (21) So she conceived him, and went in seclusion with him to a remote place. (22) And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree: she cried (in her anguish): "Ah! would that I had died before this! Would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!" (23) But (a voice) cried to her from beneath the (palm tree): "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a (...) rivulet beneath thee;" (24) "And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm tree: it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee." (25) "So eat and drink and cool (thine) eye. And if thou dost see any man say 'I have vowed a fast to (Allah) Most Gracious, and this day will I enter into no talk with any human being.'" -/- This Surah depicts a human being in unbearable pain. What makes the pain tolerable is the sympathy that God shows for Mary. Hearing her inner voice, understanding her suffering and her grief, God is moved to provide her with practical and substantive support to help her bear her agony. For me this story portrays a God who is active in the world, hears the supplications of humanity, and has empathy with the needy, the oppressed, and those who are suffering. -/- Yet I am concerned that our theological traditions in the Islamic world (as also in Christendom) have developed through the centuries such that God is now seen, by overwhelming theological consensus, as an immutable being, a being outside time who has determined our providence from the standpoint of eternity, who has foreknowledge of every free action of his creations and has designed all according to His plan for past and future events; who knows in advance even the timings and contents of our petitionary prayers and has decided already whether to answer them. (shrink)

Morals and politics depend on a metaphysical backing. All reality is marked by certain necessary features and a divine purpose inherent in all reality defines the good to which all human life should be directed. These are bold assertions in a climate where the credibility of metaphysics is widely denied. Indeed, for the past two centuries, Western philosophy has been marked by a consensus that questions about moral and political life should be considered separately from questions about ultimate reality. In (...) this challenging work, Franklin I. Gamwell defends metaphysical necessity against both modern and postmodern critiques. The metaphysics vindicated is not the traditional form both critiques typically have in view, however. Instead, Gamwell outlines a neoclassical project for which Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne are the main philosophical resources. As it maintains the significance of theistic metaphysics, the book makes no appeal to religious authority but solely to common human experience, and on this basis articulates principles of human purpose and democratic justice. (shrink)

Chaos theory is a rapidly growing field. As a technical term, chaos refers to deterministic but unpredictable processes being sensitively dependent upon initial conditions. Neurobiological models and experimental results are very complicated and some research groups have tried to pursue the neuronal chaos. Babloyantz's group has studied the fractal dimension (d) of electroencephalograms (EEG) in various physiological and pathological states. From deep sleep (d=4) to full awakening (d>8), a hierarchy of strange attractors paralles the hierarchy of states of consciousness. In (...) epilepsy (petit mal), despite the turbulent aspect of a seizure, the attractor dimension was near to 2. In Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, the regular EEG activity corresponded to an attractor dimension less than the one measured in deep sleep. Is it healthy to be chaotic? An active desynchronisation could be favourable to a physiological system. Rapp's group reported variations of fractal dimension according to particular tasks. During a mental arithmetic task, this dimension increased. In another task, a P300 fractal index decreased when a target was identified. It is clear that the EEG is not representing noise. Its underlying dynamics depends on only a few degrees of freedom despite yet it is difficult to compute accurately the relevant parameters.What is the cognitive role of such a chaotic dynamics? Freeman has studied the olfactory bulb in rabbits and rats for 15 years. Multi-electrode recordings of a few mm2 showed a chaotic hierarchy from deep anaesthesia to alert state. When an animal identified a previously learned odour, the fractal dimension of the dynamics dropped off (near limit cycles). The chaotic activity corresponding to an alert-and-waiting state seems to be a field of all possibilities and a focused activity corresponds to a reduction of the attractor in state space. For a couple of years, Freeman has developed a model of the olfactory bulb-cortex system. The behaviour of the simple model without learning was quite similar to the real behaviour and a model with learning is developed. (shrink)

Language is the product of human’s discursive practice. It is bound to bear speakers’ feelings, attitudes and opinions toward events, that is, linguistic subjectivity (LS). However, the phenomenon of linguistic subjectivity (LS) cannot be fully unravelled by the existing single perspective of semantics, pragmatics, philosophy, or cognitive linguistics. To reveal the philosophical attribute and cognitive nature of linguistic subjectivity (LS), a model of integrating embodied philosophy and cognition of linguistic subjectivity (IEPCLS) was constructed, and a philosophical cognitive analysis framework of (...) linguistic subjectivity (LS) was proposed. By integrating the embodiment and non-objectivity of language meaning in embodied philosophy and the speaker’s self-orientation in cognitive linguistics, the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) was explored. The concrete realisation paths of the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) were investigated on the basis of the framework, and the feasibility of the model and framework was verified by taking discourse constructions as examples. The results show that linguistic subjectivity (LS) is the attribute of speakers as subjects and exists in the speaker’s realistic experience, the speaker’s self, and the speaker’s interaction and perception of the social communication context (SCC). The realisation paths of the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) include the speaker’s self-expressions, the speaker’s meaning assignment to social communication context (SCC), and the speaker’s meaning interpretation of social communication context (SCC). The study provides references for interpreting the subjective factors behind discourse. (shrink)

Consciousness is connected with the fact that a subject is aware and open to the manifestation of whatever appears. Existence, by contrast, is used to express the fact that something is given in experience, is present, or is real. Usually, the two notions are taken to be somehow related. This chapter suggests that existence is at best introduced as a metaphysical (or meta-experiential) concept that inevitably escapes the domain of conscious experience. In order to illustrate this claim, two (...) case studies are considered. The first case is provided by Descartes’s famous treatment of consciousness and existence in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The second case is meant to contrast the Cartesian approach by taking the opposite route, as delineated by Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) in his ‘fundamental ontology’. (shrink)

Symbol and existence will prove fascinating to Walker Percy scholars and fans who wish to decipher Percy's authentic philosophical stance. Percy, an existentialist Catholic at his core, was also a scientist seeking an objective paradigm to portray his views. Symbol and existence demonstrates that Percy was quite methodical and logical in his thought and provides an entirely new perspective on his scholarship. Much of this book is unique and has never been published before; however, some sections were revised (...) and published as isolated journal articles or book chapters, never presented as the unified whole that Percy intended. The orderly unity of Percy's work has not previously been accessible to scholars and fans. Symbol and existences systematic presentation and its new material offer fresh insight and a more accurate view of Percy's ideas. His early philosophical writings were often revised and significantly modified by outside editorial intent to conform to prevailing intellectual currents of the time. Readers of some published articles with corresponding passages in Symbol and Existence will be surprised to discover major changes in meaning from Percy's initial writing due to editorial intrusion and loss of context upon their removal from Symbol and existence. As the only known systematic representation of Percy's general working theory, Symbol and existence gives an important framework for his diverse intellectual background--philosophy and psychology, medicine and anthropology, semiotic and zoology--creating a coherent view of Percy's "radical anthropology. (shrink)

Prompted by questions raised in the public arena concerning the validity of arguments for the existence of God based on “design” in the universe, I explore a traditional teleological argument for the existence of God. Using the arguments offered by Thomas Aquinas as fairly representative of this classical line of argumentation going back to Aristotle, I attempt to uncover the hidden premises and construct arguments for the existence of God which are deductive in nature. To justify the (...) premises of Aquinas’s argument, I begin by presenting an argument to justify the existence of “final causes,” with a focus on answering questions about the biological implications of these causes for evolutionary theory. Then, I attempt to construct two teleological proofs for the existence of God. Finally, I offer some implications of this reasoning for the contemporary disputes over ID/evolution in education. (shrink)