Metaphysical Knowledge Research Articles

HOBBES AND SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE IN THE LEVIATHAN

Hobbes in the seventeenth century (1639 - 1668), we must emphasize that suggests that taste or infatuation for science bodies (physical), because as he reminds us at the end of the leviathan in 1651; you are happy to return to their initial speculations about (De Corpore) natural bodies. (Hobbes Leviatã, 2003, p. 22). Such luck with these initial observations, we used to locate a context of discussion on the topic of science in the seventeenth century in England, specifically in one of the authors as Kuhn; in late modernity, they propose a new paradigm of scientific knowledge as had been developed by the Scholastics; perhaps its medieval metaphysical knowledge. However, much it has been written about this particular issue. Excuses are many references to the subject in the person of Hobbes; as one of the first authors who knew how to take the first steps on what we now know as science in particular. I do not use science or sacred metaphysical arguments; but he wanted to investigate or propose arguments away from religion to build what was known as truth, from other fundamental axes; different to the subject of God.

Simplicity and Complexity in Metaphysics

The article deals with the problem of simple and complex objects in metaphysical research. It is stated that the ultimate simplification of reality theoretical models follows from the nature of metaphysical knowledge. The modern metaphysical conceptions of fundamental simplicity and fundamental complexity of existing objects are discussed. They are the conceptions of full and distributional monism, mereological nihilism, and the traditional binary or binary-based models of the foundations of reality, ascending to Aristotle. The paper shows that these conceptions and ideas do not simplify reality as much as possible. The problematic and ambiguous nature of the conceptions considered is that all complicating factors are not excluded in them. This leads to a situation where further grounding of the entities that are accepted as the simplest ones is required. The state of the full simplification in metaphysics is defined. It is argued that ultimate simplification requires the exclusion of qualitative multiplicity and quantitative definiteness, the exclusion of the distinction between substance and its qualities, between the entity and the law, the relation or condition which ground it. The entity identified in the process of ultimate simplification must be quantitatively indefinite, identical to its quality and substratum, indistinguishable from the law, the condition or the relationship of its grounding. Such an entity can be the starting point for the construction of a metaphysical model of the world as a consistent complication of entities.

Reflection, Intelligibility, and Leibniz’s Case Against Materialism

Leibniz’s claim that it is possible for us to gain metaphysical knowledge through reflection on the self has intrigued many commentators, but it has also often been criticized as flawed or unintelligible. A similar fate has beset Leibniz’s arguments against materialism. In this paper, I explore one of Leibniz’s lesser-known arguments against materialism from his reply to Bayle’s new note L (1702), and argue that it provides us with an instance of a Leibnizian “argument from reflection”. This argument, I further show, does not constitute a flawed appeal to mere introspection, but is in fact securely grounded in an important corollary of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Leibniz’s Principle of Intelligibility.

Pojam »Metafizike spoznaje« Nicolaia Hartmanna

Metaphysics of knowledge is u unique name for Hartmanns epistemology. According to it, there is a basic difference between ontological and epistemological considerations. Using knowledge at the epistemic level only, epistemology generates problems that cannot be solved by means of its own methodology. The ones that rest on ontological considerations are irreducible, they belong to the very nature of things, or to the structure of mind. Hartmann calls them »metaphysical problems«. To solve the difference between ontological and epistemological judgements, describing existence of phenomena, we have to take a certain standpoint. He calls it »metaphysics of standpoint«. That is precisely what he would like to avoid. For when we do so, we take metaphysical (metaphenomenological) assumptions, illegitnimate from the phenomenological point of view. According to him, minimum of assumptions makes a maximum of metaphysics, valid for a narrow field of phenomena only, and the other way around. The prior emphasis of his »metaphysics of knowledge« is an approval of maximum of phenomena, no matter whether they can be explained or not. That is why he names his epistemology an »outline« for a broader ontological concern. The question is to be raised, nevertheless, whether the paradoxies we delt with, on the epistemological grounds, can be solved simply by taking an ontological standpoint, or does this switch of attitude at the same time produce a »maximum of methaphysics«.

Coleridge and Contemplation ed. by Peter Cheyne

Religion & Literature 146 Wordsworth’s, all part of a single edifice, all of it founded on the Wesleyan revival in one way or another. Brantley’s greatest stretch is in a brief section that originally appeared as an article in Studies in Romanticism, “Keats’s Method” (1983). Here Brantley examines “how far Keats’s allegiance to induction combines with his Methodist-like, and hence equally experiential, allegiance to the ‘holiness of the Heart’s affections’” (267). Some of the claims for Keats as a thinker inspired by Wesleyan theology go farther than most critics would allow, such as a section where lines from Endymion are read as “evangelical in tone” (270). But Brantley is careful not to make a claim for Keats as a believer, or a poet engaged in any extended engagement with Christian doctrine or ideas. Rather, he sees him as a man of his time responding to the influence of Wesley in the intellectual air and points to places in his poetry where this becomes manifest. Transatlantic Trio is divided into four series of essays that provide context and that cover British and American authors. The most attention is given to Emily Dickinson, her skepticism, and her “quarrel with God.” Four series of reviews put Brantley into dialogue with other scholars who have published on the same questions. What emerges is a rich, convincing argument , simultaneously accretive and dialectical in method. Brantley shows the dialectics between writers of the Romantic period, between those writers and Locke and Wesley, and finally between himself and his contemporaries. It is a virtuoso performance, as much an act of curating as writing. The new writing in the prologue and epilogue ties the text together and makes clear that Transatlantic Trio is not a series of disconnected essays, but a sustained argument, and one that is at least as relevant for studies of Romanticism now as it was when Brantley began working on it four decades ago. Christopher Flynn St Edward’s University Coleridge and Contemplation Edited by Peter Cheyne Oxford University Press, 2017. xxii + 332 pp. $90 hardcover. The editor of this excellent contribution to Romantic studies, Peter Cheyne, characterizes Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “something of an omnimath , a Renaissance man of the Romantic era” (7). Indeed, many of the BOOK REVIEWS 147 authors in this robust collection of insightful essays contend that Coleridge scholarship has a place, or many places, outside of the English department. What emerges from these pages also strengthens the case for the literary value of Coleridge’s religious and philosophical writings, which are only infrequently assessed prior to his poetry in literary studies, thereby underscoring the necessity of multidisciplinary treatments of his thought. As the title makes clear, this book’s organizing claim is that contemplation is an essential term in Coleridge’s theory of mind. Not only does contemplation crown Coleridge’s order of the mental powers found in his marginalia, it also challenges the assumption that “Imagination” is the kernel and starting point for scholarly discussions of Coleridge. The eighteen chapters of Coleridge and Contemplation are organized into four principal sections. Part I (“Poetics and Aesthetics”) sets the precedent for the rest of the essays in book: contemplation for Coleridge transcends mere passive receptivity or meditation, nor can it be severed from the active life. Part II treats the importance of contemplation to Coleridge’s worldviews on science, ethics, and politics. Part III is devoted to Coleridge’s metaphysical investigations and multilayered theories of contemplation and metaphysical knowledge. Rounding out the collection, the essays on Coleridge’s philosophy of religion in Part IV drives home the claim, made by Mary Warnock in the book’s preface and reiterated at several junctures throughout the volume, that through contemplation rooted in “Will,” “Reason,” and faith—the “threefold I” of Coleridge’s theory of personal identity discussed in Suzanne Webster’s chapter—Coleridge strives to move beyond the limitations of dualistic contradictions in the philosophy of his peers (vii; 304). Operating from this assumption embraces a holistic approach to Coleridge’s life and thought by uniting the phases of Coleridge’s early intellectual life—gifted but directionless Cambridge profligate, Pantisocratic radical, tortured poetic genius—with his influential...

Practices and Metaphysics of Knowledge

As both a response and a complement to Partha Chatterjee's observations on modern Indian history, this essay speaks to the heterogeneity of cosmopolitanism and its trajectories. It focuses specifically on political and cultural experiments in West and North Africa that over time generated norms of citizenship, subjectivity, and jurisdiction that Grovogui associates with cosmopolitanism. The essay proceeds from a historiography that is necessarily a conjecture, a logical construction based on incomplete information. The scholar of cosmopolitanism divorced from its European heritage can nevertheless overcome the limits presented by such an incompleteness through a hermeneutics based on observations and the materiality of the cultures, traditions, and processes that exist in Africa today. The suppositions involved in this form of argumentation are proper to public life and institutions still found in West Africa, which are themselves independent from practices and processes associated with the slave trade, Western imperialism, and colonialism.

Leonard Nelson and Metaphysical Knowledge against the Neo-Kantian Background

Leonard Nelson is known primarily as a critic of epistemology in the Neo-Kantian meaning of the term. The aim of this paper is to investigate the presuppositions and consequences of his critique. I claim that what has rarely been discussed in this context is the problem of the possibility of metaphysics. By the impossibility of epistemology Nelson means the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. I intend to devote this paper to the analysis of this problem in relation to the Neo-Kantian background.

Pendidikan Sains Berbasis Spiritualitas dalam Persepektif Al-Qur'an

Throughout 2006, Indonesia was rocked by a phenomenal work by Dr. Masaru Emoto about the true power of water. In his book entitled The True Power of Water, Emoto managed to show scientifically the results of his research that when whispered or written good words and certain prayers turn into beautiful crystals that function as "Hado" for human health.The Qur'an, though, was created more than fourteen years ago as a human guideline for achieving the salvation of the world and the hereafter. This is proven by several discoveries, one of which is Dr. Masaru Emoto who succeeded in creating "Hado" as a scientific finding that uses water media. For Muslims, the belief in the miracles of the Qur'an given to mankind itself opens the eyes of the heart to continue to hold fast to the Qur'an. Besides the greatness of the Qur'an as a source of knowledge that can be proven based on in-depth study of scientific science.Thus, the Qur'an provides knowledge about the principles of science and education, which are always associated with knowledge of metaphysics, morality and spirituality. The human method in getting knowledge is very relative to get it, but all is done not apart from the source that is essential that is the source of knowledge from God Almighty. That way, this is what is in the education process.

Der Homo-Mensura-Satz des Protagoras

The paper presents a subjectivist interpretation of Protagoras’ man-measure fragment, by explaining some key terms (‘all things’, ‘measure’, ‘man’) and reconstructing his ontological, epistemological and anthropological views. The argument uses other fragments and testimonies of Protagoras as well as intertextual allusions to previous authors (especially Anaxagoras) and instances of reception of Protagoras by Plato, Aristotle and Isocrates which are particularly used here for the first time in order to interpret the man-measure fragment. It is argued that Protagoras denied metaphysical speculation and preferred human knowledge based on subjective perception and made plausible by intersubjective discourse.

Metaphysics and Religious Education in Primary School – Readiness for the concept of “diakoultouralismos”

The existence of “Collective Unconscious” that contains the inherent human tendency to seek truth and the will for good, composes the “intercultural metaphysics”. The universality of metaphysics appears in every culture, in every person and age. Metaphysics and religiousness are connected with pedagogy, as well with psychology which is referred to the human unconscious “archetypes”. The existential questions appear from childhood and find answers in the history of religious and cultural expression of all the people worldwide. Therefore, the access to the culture’s ontology is elliptical, and also every educational plan for education without the metaphysical knowledge of human nature is deficient and imperfect. Pedagogy draws intercultural and “diakoultouralistic” content from any civilization and culture, in cases interested to integrate to the Curriculum topics that include experiences of mental and moral ethics. Recalling the existential and social reflection of Metaphysics and religion’s history provide an opportunity for the discovery of both the substance of life and the meaning of human existence and human relations. The appropriate use of a religion’s universal values eliminates the religious competition or cultural conflict and promotes the concept of “diakoultouralismos”. An essential chapter of any national education is the distinction awareness of the distinction between what “seems to be” and what it finally “is”, giving examples and authentic narratives of the familiar and world culture. Moreover, the memory of faiths’ and beliefs’ standards, which hypostatize universal virtues and values of life in connection with historical facts, are timeless hopes and inherent clues of education.

OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE, PURE BEING AND METAPHYSICS

Purpose. The author will show that metaphysical concepts and the concepts of empirical sciences derive from experience. The only difference is that metaphysical concepts derive from unusual experience, i.e. out-of-body experience, while empirical sciences – from usual one. The example set metaphysical concept of pure being. Methodology. In order to obtain this goal the author uses two methods. The first one is comparative method. With the help of this method the stories of men who experienced clinical death and returned to life are compared with the famous philosophers’ metaphysical statements (Plato, Descartes, and Bonaventura). The second one is transpersonal method. It helps to study the peculiarities of the extraordinary experience in the state of clinical death or mystical ecstasy. Such experience lies in experience of transcendence, pure being as light, ultimate awareness of truth, which are identical to the metaphysical statements of philosophers and mystics. These ultimate experiences belong to different people, who lived and grown in different cultures, but nevertheless metaphysical statements of philosophers or mystics and statements of the ordinary people who experienced clinical death are the same. Therefore we can say that out-of-body experience is transpersonal. Originality. Metaphysics is neither speculative nor withdrawn from experience of a human being sphere. It arises from out-of-body experience while empirical sciences – from usual experience. Therefore, metaphysical concepts, in particular, pure being, are empirical, because they are based also on (extraordinary) experience. In general, metaphysics becomes possible on the basis of out-of-body experience. Conclusions. In this article the author argues that the concepts of metaphysics are not a priori because they originate from out-of-body experience that is from the experience of the distinction between body and soul or body and mind. As a result of such experience appear, for instance, Plato’s metaphysics, Descartes’ metaphysics, and the Christian mysticism of Bonaventure, which theoretical constructs are deriving from experience of pure being (light). In this context metaphysics is seen as the path of gradual separation of a human being from his or her physical body, i.e. “the art of dying” (Plato). Therefore, the author proves that there are no a priori concepts. All concepts are aposteriori, in empirical sciences and in metaphysics as well. We simply talk about two different experiences: usual and unusual experience. The author also argues that there is direct connection between out of body experience and metaphysics, mystics. In the case of out-of-body experience, the temporary death of a human being is the cause of his/her change in perception of himself/herself and the world; it is the cause of metaphysical knowledge.

Metaphysics and the Limit of the Natural Sciences Explanatory Power

The article concern is the problem of natural sciences – metaphysics relations. The criterion of metaphysical knowledge as the knowledge about fundamental objects is formulated. It is argued that natural sciences and mathematics do not meet this criterion. They cannot be metaphysics being engaged in the study of exclusively non-fundamental entities. The inference is made that only the speculative metaphysics (if such metaphysics is possible) has the means to solve metaphysical problems relying entirely on its own foundation.

Neo-shamans, Curanderismo and Scholars

This essay explores how some contemporary curanderas/os (“healers”) in the American Southwest, in concert with North American New Age clients and interlocutors, have incorporated neo-shamanic techniques into their healing practices. Curanderismo, a religious and folk healthway, emerged from the colonial encounter between Spanish Catholics and indigenous North and Mesoamericans and did not typically involve the ecstatic dream states characteristic of shamanism. This makes the emergence of neo-shamanic dream journeying, trance states and use of “power animals” all the more surprising in contemporary curanderismo. This essay traces the history of how shamanism first entered the New Age counterculture in the 1970s by way of spiritually curious and enterprising anthropologists and later influenced contemporary Mexican American curanderas/os. Mexican American and other Latino/a healers using neo-shamanic techniques continue to heal, teach and achieve wholeness for themselves and others even as their metaphysical knowledge and ritual practices are valorized by multiethnic, metaphysically inclined clients.

Pensar arriscado: a relação entre filosofia e educação

Este trabalho foi produzido no âmbito de uma sessão especial da Associação Nacional de Pós-graduação em Educação (ANPEd) a respeito das relações entre a filosofia, a história, a psicologia e a sociologia da educação. Discute, primeiramente, a relação de familiaridade da filosofia com a educação, apontando seu vínculo originário, iniciado no mundo grego, sob a rubrica de fundamentos da educação, para, então, explicitar um movimento de afastamento provocado pela cientificização da pedagogia. Com o avanço dos processos de modernização e o êxito do conhecimento científico, a área dos fundamentos sofreu os impactos da racionalidade científica, sendo os resultados cada vez mais incontestáveis e que destituem o saber metafísico. Tal impacto, contudo, não desautorizou a despedida da filosofia, mas provocou uma mudança conceitual e de seu papel na relação com a educação e a cultura. A área então assume uma posição mais humilde diante das ciências e de outras expressões simbólicas, dialogando e interpretando os paradoxos e as tensões geradas pelas nossas relações com o mundo. A partir dessa abordagem, o artigo encaminha duas sugestões para a relação entre filosofia e educação. A primeira, apoiada na hermenêutica de Hans-Georg Gadamer e na racionalidade transversal de Wolfgang Welsch, retoma a perspectiva dos novos diálogos científicos, chamados de interdisciplinaridade, como um modo de superar os limites da especialização e de atender a complexidade das questões educacionais. Na segunda sugestão, indica-se a posição de Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht a respeito da relevância das humanidades para desenvolver um pensamento arriscado, capaz de produzir complexidades nas análises que iluminem as questões educacionais.

Metaphysics and Empowerment

In the discussion of Spinoza contained in his Evolution of Modern Metaphysics , Adrian Moore argues that Spinoza views metaphysics as a kind of sense-making that enables us to live more affirmative and joyful lives. I engage with two aspects of Moore’s argument. Where he claims that Spinoza regards metaphysics as the fruit of reasoning, and thus as a species of what is labeled in the Ethics as knowledge of the second kind, I argue that metaphysics also belongs with what Spinoza calls imagining or knowledge of the first kind. And where Moore holds that, in order to render metaphysical knowledge practical, one must take a leap to a kind of knowledge that is partly ineffable (so-called knowledge of the third kind), I argue that each of Spinoza’s three kinds of knowledge is practically oriented.

Evolution, the Origin of Human Persons, and Original Sin: Physical Continuity with an Ontological Leap

Evolution, the Origin of Human Persons, and Original Sin: Physical Continuity with an Ontological Leap

Facing being: the significance of Thomist ontological epistemology to realism in post-Kantian philosophy

The Kantian ‘Copernican Revolution’ contained in his Prologomena and The Critique of Pure Reason deemed metaphysical statements to be ‘transcendental illusions’, so directing metaphysics to its dearth. As a consequence, no longer could objects be known ‘in-themselves’ by the sensorily-reliant human. This perceived impossibility of metaphysical knowledge in the turn to the subject from Kant through Nietzsche's rejection of true knowledge has heavily inclined Continental Philosophy to an anti-metaphysical quandary. Analytic Philosophy is no different following the influence of Carnap, Wittgenstein and Rorty upon its own ‘linguistic turn’. An inevitable consequence of things not being knowable in themselves is the philosophical distance from ‘the world’, which Stephen Hawking has argued, makes the philosophical enterprise ‘dead’. In dialogue with this widespread decline in metaphysics, I will attempt to reclaim realist metaphysics through the employment of a Thomist paradigm. If philosophy is to be relevant to the knowledge economy, it is compelled to be in relation with what is. Thus, in my theoretical framework, being will be considered as central to all knowledge systems seeking to correspond to ‘hard’ science. The Thomist realist natural philosophy of ‘scientia’ – wherein truth is conformed with being – will be at the core of the argument. This paper challenges the ignoring of being because extant reality is composed of all that is, continuously faced and never evadable. Consequently, Thomism is recaptured as significant to post-Kantian philosophy as Aquinas articulated a means through which the thinking subject engages with being through sensation and cognition.

Kajian Kritis Pemikiran Epistemologi Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998)

The purpose of this article is to construct and employ a critical study to Frithjof Schuon’ thought on epistemology which includes the nature of knowledge, the object of knowledge and the process of acquiring knowledge. This study is a literature research which utilize his scientific works both primary and secondary sources. The results showed that Schuon epistemology could not eluded the paradigm of Western dualism as truth and certainty viewed double, which are relative truth and absolute truth. Relative truth and certainty of the truth according to Schuon are obtained through religious dogma, but the total truth and certainty of ‘being’ could only be obtained through spiritual realization, namely gnosis or metaphysics. Thus, religious knowledge status which derived from revelation is lower than the metaphysical knowledge derived from the intellect through meditation. It is conclude that Schuon’s view is very much contrary to the principles of Islamic epistemology. Islam has asserted al- Qur’an as an authentic revelation from Allah SWT and acknowledged it as the highest source of knowledge. Epistemology of Islam never affirms the necessity of spiritual realization through meditation to enhance the revelation.

Exploring Methodologies for Researching Indigenous Knowledge of Plant Healing for Integration into Classroom Science: Insights Related to the Data Collection Phase

This article forms part of a major study being conducted in Zimbabwe to explore the possibilities of integrating indigenous knowledge of plant healing (Ikoph) into western-oriented classroom science. The article reports on an aspect of research methodology. This study explored appropriate strategies for gaining access to indigenous knowledge holders, and for generating indigenous knowledge data from these knowledge holders. It is a descriptive study rooted in an African indigenous research methodology. Data were generated through field-noted observations and audio-recorded conversations with 12 participants during the phases of attaining access and of data generation. The findings demonstrated that the participants hold a solid spiritual worldview alongside that of western science and Christianity. Ikoph occupies these participants' metaphysical knowledge zone, although when asked they initially display western science and Christian worldviews related to plant healing. The use of the knowledge holders' language, terminology and metaphors, and of socio-cultural research protocols and methods, was pivotal in accessing the indigenous knowledge of plant healing. It also emerged that spirits play a central role in penetrating this metaphysical knowledge zone. It is argued that classical interpretive research approaches are constricting research involving indigenous knowledge. A shift from such approaches to those that accommodate unique aspects of spirituality, language, methods and protocols of the researched—that is, indigenous African interpretive approaches—is being called for.

The Religious Notion in Epistemology

The aim of this article is to highlight the issue of religiousness from the epistemological perspective. This involves, on the one hand, a scientific approach, and on the other hand the relation between science and religion as the basis of the spirituality of the entire existence, by approaching the religious exposure at social level. If at the scientific level religion occupies a secondary place in terms of the object of research, at the social and anthropological level it plays a vital role by approaching the divine-human relationship of all human expressions in relation to the creation and the Creator. Addressing this type of knowledge in such a sensitive field indicates the moment when the question surrounded by a whole plea that defines the relation between mystical and metaphysical knowledge is raised. We cannot not pretend to know religion as we know biology, but we also cannot say that we will know religion as we know mathematics, even if in they all lead to the same result. Since they are metaphysical or transcendental, religious sciences require a special approach regarding the object of research, because everything that is said or approved will permanently reflect uncertainty and ambiguity within not knowing, precisely by the very essence of the great mystery of the central point that gives vitality to the whole circle of religious knowledge. We shall systematically present the relation between the religious content and what can be perceived and known by using all our systems of understanding and exposure in order to provide a satisfactory answer both from the symbolic point of view as well as by indicating the type of knowledge applied for finding the epistemological relevance.