Metaphysical Foundations Research Articles

Future-like-ours as a metaphysical reductio ad absurdum argument of personal identity.

Don Marquis' future-like-ours account is regarded as the best secular anti-abortion position because he frames abortion as a wrongful killing via deprivation of a valuable future. Marquis objects to the reductio ad absurdum of contraception as being immoral because it is too difficult to identify an individual that is deprived of a future. To demonstrate why Marquis' treatment of the contraception reductio is flawed by his own future-like-ours line of reasoning, I offer an argument for why there is indeed a candidate for harm-the ovum-for it can be viewed as providing the functional foundation for a new life through (1) mitochondrial DNA inheritance, (2) paternal histone restructuring during fertilization, and (3) ability to initiate parthenogenesis. As evidenced by these distinct and natural features of ova, candidate (2) "some ovum or other" should be morally prioritized as the direct candidate for harm in the contraception reductio. By assessing the philosophical inconsistencies in Marquis' future-like-ours argument, this paper provides strong metaphysicalgrounds for rejecting the best secular anti-abortion position.

Davidsonian Metasemantics and Radical Interpretation

In the current debate on the metaphysical grounding of semantic properties Donald Davidson is usually taken to represent interpretationism, a stance according to which the meaning of expressions is metaphysically grounded by the process of assigning them semantic values which maximize certain parameters such as truth or rationality of the speaker. This stance is often contrasted with productivism, which takes circumstances of expression’s production, not interpretation, to ground its meaning. In this article, I argue that this widespread understanding of Davidson’s thought is false and that given such demarcation Davidson should be regarded as a productivist. To support my claim, I begin by briefly outlining the state of debate on metasemantics and main theses of Davidson’s program, and then I present three exegetical arguments against interpretationist reading of Davidson’s work. I conclude by reconstructing what I take to be the actual metaphysical picture of semantic properties emerging from Davidson’s work.

Methodological deflationism and metaphysical grounding: from because via truth to ground

ABSTRACT The paper proposes a strategy for understanding metaphysical grounding in deflationary terms and, more generally, proposes a form of methodological deflationism with respect to the notions of ground. The idea is to define a deflationary is grounded in-predicate by appeal to the two-place non-causal connective ‘because’ and a deflationary truth predicate. To this end, we discuss the explanatory role of the truth-predicate in non-causal explanations and develop a theory of truth for the language of the ‘because’-connective. We argue that at least from a logical perspective our deflationary notion of ground is up to the task.

Metaphysical Aspects of Russian Social Consciousness in Russian Philosophy and Publicity of the beginning of the 20th Century

The article notes that for an in-depth analysis of the worldview and socio-political exhortations of the "Russian world" ideology carriers, it is insufficient to identify only the natural and historical prerequisites for the formation of these exhortations. It is necessary to reveal the deep metaphysical foundations of the Russian ethnic group spirituality. The fact these foundations have transformed into one of the essential elements of the "Russian world" aggressive spiritual substance, increase the relevance of this problem in modern conditions. The author of the article offers an overview of understanding of this problem by the representatives of Russian journalism and philosophy of the beginning of the 20th century, Maxim Gorkiy and Nikolai Berdyaev. The article notes that M. Gorky in his essay "On the Russian Peasantry" criticizes the illusory views of Russian writers of the middle and the second half of the 19th century on the nature of the Russian peasantry (and at the same time the Russian ethnic group in general, because Russian society was mostly peasant) as a wise seeker of truth and justice, a person with a broad and generous soul, a carrier of world humanistic values. The specificity of the development of Russian history, the geographical living conditions formed, in Gorky's opinion, the traits of cruelty, aggressiveness, and contempt for the human personality that define the behavior of the Russian peasant. These features, imprinted on the deep supra-individual level of the Russian peasant, are invariant with respect to the class and political affiliation of their bearers. They can be eradicated only through radical social transformations and long educational processes. The article pays special attention to N. Berdyaev's views on the metaphysical roots of historical and spiritual manifestations of the Russian soul. Under this review, he analyzes the existential ideas of Russians about the value of human life, about their attitude to God, to the ideas about good and evil, as well as their attitude to the state and other peoples. Berdyaev considered the main source of aggressiveness, irrationality and unpredictability of Russian deeds to be the underdevelopment of the personal principle in the spiritual and social life of Russian society. He considers the consequences of such underdevelopment in the history of the social structure of Russian society, in the religious practices of Russians. The conviction of Russians in the divine origin and universality of their values gives them confidence that Russia must become the liberator of the nations.The author of the article expresses the opinion that the value orientations of Russians rooted at the metaphysical level regarding the messianic character of their actions in relation to other peoples, confidence in their chosenness do not provide grounds to hope for changes in these orientations as a result of a change in political, spiritual leaders or political power.

Le concept de discernement moral et la doctrine kantienne du Fait de la raison

In his 1960 paper “The concept of moral insight and the Kantian doctrine of the Fact of Reason” (introduced and translated in french by Laura Tavernier), Dieter Henrich argues that Kant’s doctrine of the Fact of Reason—according to which pure reason can not theoretically anticipate or ground the possibility of its practical use—does not betray a lack of systematicity, as post-Kantians reproached it to Kant. After the repeated failures of his own attempts to deduce moral insight from theoretical reason in the “silent decade”, Kant eventually acknowledges that the moral law and our awareness of it cannot be logically derived from a higher principle. The Kantian doctrine of the Fact of Reason thus remains faithful to the phenomenon of moral insight, the paradoxical knowledge of the good, and offers a methodologically adequate answer to the problem that D. Henrich considers to be at the foundation of metaphysics: Kant thinks of a unity of the theoretical and the practical reason that does not imply any derivation of one from the other, nor any subsumption of the two under a unifying principle.

A Biblical response to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s rejection on God’s Intelligent Design

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most famous scientists in the United States. In particular, Tyson has expertise as an astrophysicist and hehas written several books and received extraordinary awards as an Astrophysician. Tyson is not only a scientist, he also recognizes himself as an agnostic. Tyson’s disbelief in the existence of God by seeing various event such as volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, pestilences, and birth defects that produce suffering is totally against the Nature of Almighty God. Tyson considers God's intelligent Design as a philosophy of ignorance or neglect. The subject raised by Tyson that rejects God’s omnipotence and His Intelligent Design is categorized as a Problem of Evil. This article rejects Neil deGrasse Tyson's opinion built on God's teleological and theodicy philosophy as a form of defense of God's intelligent design and God's omnipotence. It is evident that a plan is needed for the existence of every creature by looking at integrated goals and structures. The beauty of the world also shows the existence of God's intelligent design as the Great Creator. Because the universe has been designed for the life of living things themselves, a plan is needed that is produced through a Person for the lives of the living things themselves. God's omnipotence means that God has no limits and He is able to do something that is impossible for anyone else who is limited through one’s nature and ability. Evil itself arises from humans who are God's creations, but they have free will. The very existence of Evil cannot detract from God's purpose in the creation of the universe. Evil itself requires the existence of an objective standard of goodness with a metaphysical foundation, namely God himself. Christianity cannot ignore the existence of evil itself. Crime is a reality. Crime itself is divided into three types: moral crime, physical crime and natural crime. Evil is in a sense very dependent on the existence of God who opposes evil. Evil cannot take away the Providence of God who has a wise, good and holy purpose. James has taught that there are different attitudes in the face of trials (James 1:2-18). Believers are encouraged to be diligent in facing trials that make one's personality mature and give one spiritual strength. People who believe Jesus Christ is God, have hope as the children of God to obtain certainty of the afterlife in the future based on striving for ideal conditions in their earthly human life. These notions support the existence of God's intelligent design and His Omnipotence.

Göbekli Tepe’s Pillars and Architecture Reveal the Foundation of Religion, Metaphysics, and Science

Once the Luwian hieroglyphics for God “” and Gate “” were discovered at Göbekli Tepe, this author was able to directly link the site’s carved pillars and pillar enclosures to the Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God”, . Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind’s best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to believe that the site he spent years excavating at Göbekli Tepe might be the legendary “Pillars of Enoch”, carved by the first Biblical holy man and scribe. To make this connection, the author first had to decipher Judaism’s Razah D’Oraytah (Secret of Knowledge) from the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation). The Book of Creation is the only text to explain the Secret of Knowledge, and the only text attributed to the prophet Abraham within the rabbinical community. The Zohar, Judaism’s most accessible Kabbalistic text, admits that it lacks knowledge of “deep and hidden things which issue from God’s thought and are taken up by the Voice [of God] which are not disclosed till the Word [] reveals them”. Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God” encrypts the mathematics of sound that emanates from God’s “Voice” in terms of ancient string theory. Just as modern string theory defines a Theory of Everything (ToE) within theoretical physics, so too does this ancient string theory define the Theory of Everything that Abraham named the “Living God”. The author’s previous paper ties Jewish sources to Göbekli Tepe, while the current paper applies this sonic “God Table” to the textual exegesis and hermeneutics structuring all religious creation allegories, including the writings of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, Vedic India, pre-Dynastic Egypt, Ugarit, and Israel. This paper will apply Göbekli Tepe’s structural template to archaeology’s oldest legible cuneiform tablets, including the Kesh Temple Hymn, Sumerian King List, and the Akkadian Ark Tablet. It will also be demonstrated that Göbekli Tepe holds the key to the Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest text, and defines the essence of Plato’s metaphysics.

A Flexible, Sloppy Blob?

Abstract Ladyman and Ross argue that analytic metaphysics is a misguided enterprise that should give way to a naturalized metaphysics that aims to reconcile everyday and special-scientific ontologies with fundamental physics as the authoritative source of knowledge on the general structure of the universe. Le Bihan and Barton (argue, as against this, that analytic metaphysics remains useful as a basis for the body of work in AI known as “applied ontology.” They stop short of claiming, however, that analytic metaphysics is useful as metaphysics. I consider a basis for making the stronger claim: Smith's project for building what he claims to be metaphysical foundations for applied ontology (and for AI generally). Ultimately, the stronger claim is rejected; but in the course of this dialectic new aspects of the naturalistic metaphysical project come to light, including relationships between it and the traditional metaphysical project of providing foundations for philosophical semantics of truth and reference.

Introduction

Introduction

Aspects of the Metaphysical Foundations and Cosmological Functions of the Concept of “Time” in Proclus the Neoplatonis

Aspects of the Metaphysical Foundations and Cosmological Functions of the Concept of “Time” in Proclus the Neoplatonis

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

O papel metafísico da historicidade

ABSTRACT I argue that the philosophy of historicity forms the metaphysical core of the historical way of thinking and, therefore, is relevant as a philosophy of history and historiography. From this perspective, the scope of the theorization of history should extend to the substantive metaphysical ground in which the modern idea of history was built to disclose the main temporal character of the historical phenomena to which historicity refers. Hence, since my goal here is the clarification of the meaningfulness of historicity, I examine the philosophical tradition that investigates the transient nature of reality-a key feature of the historicity of existence represented by G. W. F. Hegel, F. W. J. Schelling, and, above all, Martin Heidegger-since this tradition includes especially valuable ontological arguments for illuminating hidden presuppositions in the still-relevant understanding of history.

POSTMODERN PARODY AS ONTOLOGIZATION OF REALITY (BASED ON THE STORY BY D. BARTHELMY "A SHOWER OF GOLD")

The article examines the problem of postmodern parody from the point of view of its ontologizing potential, namely the interpretation within its limits of the problem of the subject. The concept of ontologization is interpreted in the tradition of the opposition to the paradigm of the philosophy of presence to extra-subjective versions of ontology, in particular the postmodern concept of intertextuality. The actualization of the parody concept as a formative tool along with the explicit or implicit accentuation of the integrity of the world picture is interpreted as a search for metaphysical grounds for the aesthetic system of postmodernism and D. Barthelemy's poetics. The article substantiates the philosophical aspect of the interpretation of parody accepted in the scientific literature as a mode of organization of the structure of the text and the form-content of the text in general for postmodern aesthetics. The universal nature of parody as an interpretive optics and postmodern technique of textual collage for literature in the conditions of the visual turn of the 20th-21st centuries is outlined. It has been found that the use of the collage technique in the form of cataloging reality as its reformatting is inherent in the poetics of D. Barthelemy. It is shown that parody for the writer is a formal and substantive principle, an artistic and aesthetic instruction, and not just a technique. The demonstrativeness, or "nakedness" of the parody is achieved by changing phrasal modes, alternating dialogues and descriptions, and visualizing the action. The structural levels of parody overlap both at the formal intertextual level and at the level of numerous pretexts and supporting semantic and symbolic series. Therefore, the transgression of parody manifests itself through the unity and separation of the coder and the decoder at the moment of forming the ethos of the fragmented text as its experience. It is concluded that grotesque and parody can be considered as synesthetic sense-generative models of postmodern literature. Parody as a vital receptive and cognitive form can ontologize the subject of the text. The grotesque is a paradoxical, finalized, objectified entelechy of parody, which is practically never ontologized and does not acquire features of subjectivity. Postmodern parody reformats the subject of the narrative and the text as a formal structure, thus giving it additional semantic dimensions.

TRANSFORMATIONS OF MOTIVES OF RELIGIOUS DRAMA IN THE LITERATURE OF THE 20TH-21ST CENTURIES: THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT

The article studies the transformation of motives of religious drama in the literature of the 20th-21st centuries from the point of view of religious philosophy, namely the neo-Thomism paradigm. The concept of transformation is interpreted as a transition to the use of meaning-generating models close to drama as a kind of literature in the context of the visual turn in the culture of the 20th-21st centuries. The actualization of action as a form-creating means along with the explicit or implicit accentuation of the integrity of the world picture is interpreted as a search for metaphysical grounds for the aesthetic systems of modernism and postmodernism and the poetics of individual authors and their works. The article substantiates the philosophical aspect of the interpretation of religious drama accepted in scientific literature as a metagenre for the literature of the 20th-21st centuries. The study outlines the universal character of generic methods and means of expressiveness of religious drama for literature in the conditions of the visual turn.
 The aesthetics of literature between phenomenological and metaphysical approaches to human action may be inclined to the fluctuation (metaxis) between them, which conditions the stylistic and genre openness of religious drama. In this context, its elements are used both in traditional genres and to rethink the genre and stylistic boundaries of the representation of human action in art in general and in literature in particular. Motives of religious drama (journey, overcoming obstacles, battle, feat as a leap of faith, love, despair, hatred, boredom as existential aspects of the human condition, service, sacrifice) in the works of P. Claudel, H. Chubai and D. Barthelmy are presented with significant differences, but with the preservation of paradigmatic features – symbolism and metaphysics as an indication of the ultimate integrity, unattainable neither rationally nor sensually. The universalism of the motives of religious drama is interpreted as the present ambivalence, which brings together high and low, profane and sacred, parody and grotesque with pathos, etc.

Metaphysical Foundationalism and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

AbstractThere is a ubiquitous claim in the grounding literature that metaphysical foundationalism violates the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) in virtue of positing a level of ungrounded facts. I argue that foundationalists can accept the PSR if they are willing to replace fundamentality as independence with completeness and deny that ground is a strict partial order. The upshot is that the PSR can be compatible with both metaphysical foundationalism and metaphysical infinitism, and so presupposing this fixed explanatory demand need not beg the question in favour of either view.

Neoplatonic Political Subjectivity?

Abstract I argue that in his commentary on Epictetus’ Encheiridion, Simplicius derives a method by which his students can enter into the process of self-constitution, which is only achieved through completion of the study of Plato’s dialogues. The result of following the method is the attainment of a perspective consonant with the level of political virtue, which I call ‘political subjectivity’. This is a speculative interpretation of the effect the student would. experience in following the method, accomplished through analyses of Simplicius’ interpretation of Epictetus’ concept of to eph’ hēmīn and the related prohairesis. I complement this with an analysis of the metaphysical foundation Simplicius gives the method in light of Charles Taylor’s notion of ‘strong evaluation’. In this way, I show how Simplicius adapts these concepts to his Neoplatonic psychology and virtue theory to make the method serve as preparation for the development of virtue prior to study of Plato.

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context

Універсальні поняття в культурі і методології традиціоналізму

The article examines the methodology of integral traditionalism as a tool for the analysis of myth, art, literature and the identification of universal metaphysical foundations of culture. René Guénon’s teaching is considered as one of methods of literary criticism that goes beyond philology itself. The methodological approaches of traditionalism, whiche were ahead of the structuralist turn in the humanities, allow to enrich the field of literary studies as well. The article points out its advantages and disadvantages, and compares the traditionalists’ approach with the more measured method of Mircea Eliade and his view of “mystical” and “esoteric” creativity in literature. According to traditionalism, some literary texts should be read primarily as works of a metaphysical and occult nature. This means that a purely philological approach to their analysis may be counterproductive. Traditionalists propose to go beyond literary studies and connect it not only with philosophy and religious studies, but also with theology and metaphysics. In this study, we show how René Guenon and his students interpreted the texts of Dante Alighieri, Victor Hugo, Gustav Meyrink, Hermann Hesse and others from the perspective of esotericism. At the same time, we show the limitations of this approach in the analysis of poetry and works of mass literature, where authors are guided by fashion or pure sensual inspiration.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Metaphysically Opaque Grounding

AbstractThis article explores the concept of metaphysically opaque grounding, a largely neglected form of metaphysical grounding that challenges the commonly held assumptions that grounding is an especially intimate and powerful connection between facts and that it is necessarily connected with the essences of things. I provide a definition of opaque grounding, identify some interesting philosophical views that are committed to it, and explore some consequences for the general theory of grounding. Finally, I briefly address some natural initial doubts about opaque grounding and find them unwarranted. The upshot is that the notion deserves more attention than it has previously received.