Cause Of Things Research Articles

RELATION BETWEEN EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS - IN THE CONTEXT OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge. It is the knowledge of the eternal and essential nature of things. Aristotle says that 'Philosophy begins in wonder' or man's instinct of curiosity. Indian philosophy is one of the richest philosophical traditions of the world. Epistemology is a systematic reection concerning knowledge and which takes knowledge itself as the object of science. Metaphysics can engage in the study of 'being as such' or 'the rst cause of things'. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with various theories of knowledge. Indian epistemology is rich in terms of its content and logical reasoning. Metaphysics emphasizes on structures of reality, time and eternity, being and nothingness, time hood and personhood, space and time, freedom and determinism, mind and body, thing hood and personhood, and a Supreme Being and nature. It basically encompasses everything that exists, fundamental concepts and beliefs.

Naturalising Agent Causation.

The idea of agent causation—that a system such as a living organism can be a cause of things in the world—is often seen as mysterious and deemed to be at odds with the physicalist thesis that is now commonly embraced in science and philosophy. Instead, the causal power of organisms is attributed to mechanistic components within the system or derived from the causal activity at the lowest level of physical description. In either case, the ‘agent’ itself (i.e., the system as a whole) is left out of the picture entirely, and agent causation is explained away. We argue that this is not the right way to think about causation in biology or in systems more generally. We present a framework of eight criteria that we argue, collectively, describe a system that overcomes the challenges concerning agent causality in an entirely naturalistic and non-mysterious way. They are: (1) thermodynamic autonomy, (2) persistence, (3) endogenous activity, (4) holistic integration, (5) low-level indeterminacy, (6) multiple realisability, (7) historicity, (8) agent-level normativity. Each criterion is taken to be dimensional rather than categorical, and thus we conclude with a short discussion on how researchers working on quantifying agency may use this multidimensional framework to situate and guide their research.

Consent. Ethics of a contractual communication

The context of this study comes from the ambiguities at the time of hospitalizations and at the time of choices for the end of life, choice made by whom and why. The methodology used is based on what has been done and what can be done. In many areas of the social sciences related to the medical sciences, work in ethics revolves around the synthesis and development of applications to examine, consider, and evaluate the phenomenology's that elicit consent. Consent is not limited to a YES and a NO. There are two kind of results: (1) the need for preliminary discussions in order to conceive the peripheral limits of this right and duty; (2) the review of the complete texts by looking closely at the vocabulary used. Discussions are difficult for the sole reason of wanting to keep these partial logics of the trades put forward with their historicity's. The consent is bilateral and must prefigure the presence of two parties, each often composed of several identities and on a fact: “Knowing the cause of things” and “Knowing the supposed results of the action”. Consent is not the conclusion of a decision or a personal will. The clearest will be to arrive at a consensus on the elements of power about the end of life, and admit that medical, jurisdiction and republican laws are not the same subject. To this are grafted the ethical elements of a life in the current of what is going to be lived as much by the persons as by the teams of caregivers.

A method for root cause analysis with a Bayesian belief network and fuzzy cognitive map

People often want to know the root cause of things and events in certain application domains such as intrusion detection, medical diagnosis, and fault diagnosis. In many of these domains, a large amount of data is available. The problem is how to perform root cause analysis by leveraging the data asset at hand. Root cause analysis consists of two main functions, diagnosis of the root cause and prognosis of the effect. In this paper, a method for root cause analysis is proposed. In the first phase, a causal knowledge model is constructed by learning a Bayesian belief network (BBN) from data. BBN’s backward and forward inference mechanisms are used for the diagnosis and prognosis of the root cause. Despite its powerful reasoning capability, the representation of causal strength in BBN as a set of probability values in a conditional probability table (CPT) is not intuitive at all. It is at its worst when the number of probability values needed grows exponentially with the number of variables involved. Conversely, a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) can provide an intuitive interface as the causal strength is simply represented by a single numerical value. Hence, in the second phase of the method, an intuitive interface using FCM is generated from the BBN-based causal knowledge model, applying the migration framework proposed and formulated in this paper.

The concept of thing (res) in Descartes

The article analyzes the meaning of the concept of res in Descartes? metaphysics. The basic meaning is that thing is an essence that could have even real existence. Through the analysis of Descartes? works that meaning has made more precise against the background of the rational distinction between essence and existence. The relations among the thing and the notions of reality (realitas), the degrees of reality and the modes of reality were shown. The special attention is dedicated to the relation between the thing and the causality, i.e., to the problems how the things could cause and what is the cause of things. The problem of causality is connected with Descartes? teaching concerning the creation of eternal truths; that connection expresses the difference between his and scholastics? concept of thing, which is obvious in his concept of the causation of the degrees of reality. At the end the late, scholastics? notion of supertranscendental meaning of thing is shown in Descartes.

Oliver Brüstle: fighting for stem cell research in Germany

Oliver Brüstle: fighting for stem cell research in Germany

The Absent Foundation

Nihil est sine ratione, "nothing is without reason." For everything that is, there is an answer to the question why it is just so and not otherwise-and, ultimately, there is a reason (ratio) grounding the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Reality as a whole is thus "rational" or "reasonable," in the sense that everything is based on something and has a "why" or a "how come" that grounds it, rendering it comprehensible and meaningful and thus letting it be part of meaningful reality. Nothing is without something that lets it be what it is. This is the famous "principle of reason" (principium rationis)-in a slightly different formulation, the "principle of the restoration of sufficient reason" (principium reddendae rationis sufficientis)-which was first explicitly formulated in these words by G. W. Leibniz, although not as a doctrine of his own but as a fundamental and generally accepted philosophical principle. There is in Nature a reason [ratio] why something should exist rather than nothing. This is a consequence of the great principle that nothing comes to be without reason, just as there also must be a reason why this exists, rather than something else.1 Indeed, in one form or another, the principle of reason has been an integral part of Occidental metaphysics ever since antiquity. The central issue of Aristotle's Metaphysics-the question which Heidegger names the leading question (Leitfrage) of Occidental metaphysics as a whole-concerns that-which-is, beings.2 What is a being as such? What is a being insofar as it is a being? Or, as Aristotle reformulates the question, what is the being-ness (ousia), the fundamental being-character, of beings as such? For Aristotle, the first essential characteristic of being-ness is fundamentality, foundationality.3 What truly is must be a hypokeimenon (in Latin substantia, "substance," or subiectum, "subject")-literally, something that "lies beneath" as an ontological basis or foundation, letting other, dependent beings be while itself remaining ontologically independent. The most being of all beings is that on which all other beings are dependent but which is itself absolutely independent of anything beyond itself. The ontological investigation of Books Zeta, Eta, and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics thus finds its culmination in the theology of Book Lambda-a discussion of God as the absolute, the most fundamental and necessary being-ness and principle. The Aristotelian notion of God as absolute self-awareness, as perfect being in-itself and for-itself, was then taken over by medieval Scholasticism-for St. Thomas, God as the uncreated creator and the ultimate cause of things is not only the most being of beings (maxime ens) but subsistence and permanence, that is, being-ness, as such (ipsum esse subsistens).4 Heidegger's famous genealogy of modernity shows how, since Descartes, the self-conscious I, now interpreted with regard to the absolute and immediate self-certainty of the cogito, gradually replaces God as the fundamental subject of reality. As modern metaphysics unfolds, human subjectivity as the basis of meaningfulness becomes more and more absolute, and self-sufficient; this "subjectivization" culminates in Nietzsche's idea of the "superhuman" subject who no longer simply apprehends given objectivity but instead gives itself its own "truths" as fuel for its essence, i.e., the ceaseless will to self-enhancement.5 In asking its leading question concerning the being-ness of beings, the metaphysical tradition has, according to Heidegger, constantly sought a supreme, ideal form of being-ness which all beings could be referred back to and founded upon. Yet from Plato to Nietzsche, metaphysics has been unable to radically pose what Heidegger calls the "basic question" or "fundamental question" (Grundfrage) of philosophy;6 it has never really inquired into the origin of its own "rationality." What are the experience of ideal being-ness as something foundational and the subsequent metaphysical demand for foundations in themselves based on? …

Historia do Futuro (Livro Anteprimeiro) (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 343 Ant6nio Vieira. Historia do Futuro (Livro .4nteprimeiro). Critical edition with commentary by Jos6 van den Besselaar. Portugiesische Forschungen der G6rresgesellschaft, series 3, vol. 3, pts. I & 2. Mtinster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1976. 2 vols. Pp. xl + 282, iv + 264. DM, 178. Antonio Vieira, S.J. (1608-97) was perhaps the major figure in the Portuguese Restoration of 1640. Through his influence protection was given to merchants of Jewish descent whose goods were otherwise liable to Inquisitorial confiscation. Commerce was the backbone of the reign of John IV, the first king of modern Portugal. The Jesuit's motives grew out of a theory of history that attracted learned attention in his time. The preliminary part of his unfinished work, called historia do Futuro, is its most comprehensive statement. This work has been purged of all the abridgments and corruptions of earlier editions and has also been given an exhaustive learned commentary by Professor Besselaar, one of Europe's most distinguished interpreters of Portuguese culture. Vieira's Historia is about things in apocalyptic literature, both canonical and noncanonical. Of the latter the verses of the sixteenth-century cobblerprophet Bandarra are most notable. There is a whole genre of Portuguese literature about the supposed return of King Sebastian, whose death in battle was fatal to Portuguese sovereignty. In 1580, Philip II of Spain became king in Portugal. According to Vieira, both canonical Scripture and Bandarrist apocalyptic received historical fulfillment in 1640 when the Portuguese people overthrew the Hapsburgs in Europe's first bourgeois revolt. The philosophical assumption here is that when one understands history it is because the institutions of speech are, in apocalyptic at least, causally related to things. The nexus of thought and things is not necessary but contingent, since apocalyptic applies to things in the Portuguese liberating themselves from Spain. Indeed, any causal nexus of thought and things must be contingent upon thought and speech being related in a causal way. The absolute cause of things cannot be a necessary cause, allowing for the freedom of man in the light of his knowledge of things. In Christian thought, God causes intellectual beings by first causing them to know and so acts contingently with respect to their acts. The claim in the Historia that seems to underlay its elaborate arguments from Scripture is novel, I believe. It is that there is an element in the history of the Portuguese Restoration that is a principle of understanding a universal relation in things. Thus Vieira seems to be attempting to break new ground in giving an explanation of the traditional belief that such a relation exists, only in historical terms. Understanding the likeness between things of thought and sense is distinctive of wisdom in Christian thought. Descartes attempted it in the Meditations. But Vieira's methodology is very different. Vieira considers the three estates of the restored Portuguese commonwealth in terms of the traditional three elements of salt, viz., air, fire, and water, wherewith the fourth, earth, is preserved from corruption.' Fused into one, the Portuguese church, nobility, and people fulfill the Scriptural dictum "You are the salt of the earth." Crucially, the meaning of the bonding of elements is not in the ordinary language of physics but in that of apocalyptic. Speech about water in the context of apocalyptic is speech about things observed by sense; not just in the imagination of the seer, but also by the eyes of those who see the things spoken of by the seer as history. Such are the eyes of the common people of apocalyptic times, whose awareness of their contingent position in history is evident in the latter-day sovereignty they enjoy in that universal kingdom revealed in messianic prophecy. Such was the kingdom of modern Portugal in Vieira's eyes. ' Obras Escolhidas, 12 vols. (Lisbon: Sa da Costa, 1951-54), t0:208. 344 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Vieira saw this sort of self-awareness marking the impending end of the historical mission of the Church. John IV was the "hidden king" of Bandarrist prophecy. The Iberian people were temporal vicars of Christ in recognition of which the popes had given the Portuguese a universal mission? The refinement of the Portuguese idiom Vieira undertook...

On the Character of Philosophic Problems

Philosophers have ever declared that their problems lie at a different level from the problems of the empirical sciences. Perhaps one may agree with this assertion; the question is, however, where should one seek this level. The metaphysicians wish to seek their object behind the objects of empirical science; they wish to enquire after the essence, the ultimate cause of things. But the logical analysis of the pretended propositions of metaphysics has shown that they are not propositions at all, but empty word arrays, which on account of notional and emotional connections arouse the false appearance of being propositions. This conception that the “propositions” of metaphysics, including those of ethics, have no theoretical content, is to be sure still disputed. We shall not, however, enter here on its demonstration, but, under its guidance, will limit ourselves to non-metaphysical and non-ethical (non-evaluating) philosophical problems.