Philosophical Proof Research Articles

On the philosophical proofs of absolute death by schizophrenia

On the philosophical proofs of absolute death by schizophrenia

Doxography and Eschatology in Clement of Alexandria

Abstract In strom. V.9.1 and strom. V.14.103–106, Clement of Alexandria presents opinions (doxai) of Greek philosophers regarding ‘eschatology’. By making use of so-called doxographies (i.e. the collection of philosophical opinions on a particular topic), Clement employs a popular method in contemporary philosophical debate. In this article, I will show how Clement reinterprets philosophers’ opinions and modifies them to construct a philosophical proof for (Christian) eschatology. It allows him to make controversial topics such as ‘final judgement’ and ‘resurrection’ more plausible to his philosophically educated readers, as according to him, these ideas have already been discussed and confirmed by several well-known philosophers (Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato and the Stoics).

Abundantly more.

Abundantly More is far more than another monograph on theology and the arts, or a dummy’s guide to theological aesthetics. It is a Christian apologia in the classical sense – a carefully reasoned and theologically astute response to a world struggling for abundant life but seduced by the reductionist consequences of secularism and scientism. But, argues Begbie, “there is more to the world than we will ever be able to account for, more than could ever be fully discovered, thought, or spoken.” This “more” is beyond philosophical proof; it is discerned by the theological insight that it arises “from the sustaining presence of the infinitely living God”, that is “from the world’s being upheld by a limitless plenitude of meaning and significance.” (p. 177)

Sollte die Kritik der reinen Vernunft die Vollständigkeit der Urteilstafel tatsächlich (nur) „vor Augen stellen“? Allgemeine reine Logik und Transzendentalphilosophie in Kants Deduktion der reinen Verstandesbegriffe

Abstract As Kant shows in A 71–76 of the First Critique, his table of the twelve “logical functions of understanding” (in A 70) is an indispensable extension of a table of four well-known logical functions that we find in a section of the Logic that was “already finished” in Aristotle’s times: The Square of Oppositions. The undisputed completeness of this special table thus warrants the completeness of Kant’s general table as well. Any further philosophical proof of completeness for Kant’s table of judgements as a whole is therefore not necessary at all. And due to the contingency of “kind and number” of human forms of intuition and functions of judgment, such a ‘proof’ would not even be possible according to Kant – and thus it is not a subject (or even a part) of his Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. A concluding evaluation of Kant’s own statements about the proof-structure of the B-Deduction as a whole supports this claim.

Трансцендентальная дедукция категорий как философское доказательство

My aim is to reconstruct the basic steps and the fundamental idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction of categories as well as Hegel’s interpretation and reframing of Kant’s idea. Hegel’s reading is crucial for two reasons: first, for fixing the basic form of the Kant­ian argument and secondly, for understanding its metaphilosophical relevance. For Hegel, philosophical proof has a specific nature, which distinguishes it from scientific proof and brings it closer to a juridical one. In this perspective the transcendental deduction, which is universally considered one of the most difficult chapters in the history of philosophy, reveals itself as the genuine clarification of specifically philosophical proof. I first present the idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as its Hegelian reading in the Science of Logic and reformulation as the very method of philosophy in the Philo­sophy of Right. I show what in the Kantian argumentation constituted the basis for Hegel’s own interpretation and transformation. In so doing, I highlight a ‘red thread’ between the two ideas of the transcendental deduction. I conclude by proposing a formal account of Kant’s and Hegel’s ideas and by summing up the main metaphilosophical insights we can gain from Kant’s idea and its Hegelian interpretation.

Kant on the (self) determined and reflective subject

This paper aims at presenting the Kantian consideration of the subject regarding the possibility of his theoretical-scientific determination and his practical-moral self-determination as well as the problematization of the relationship of these determinations. Initially, in view of the argumentation that characterizes the subject in the 1st Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued that such determination culminates in a subjectivist stance. Then, bearing in mind the characterization of the subject in the 2nd Edition of the Critique, it is argued that Kant structures a logical approach to the subject that enables the justification of his (self) determination. It is taken into consideration, afterwards, Kant's attempts to prove the relationship of these determinations and the result, attested in the Critique of Practical Reason, of his self-sufficiency. Finally, regarding the Critique of the Power of Judgment, the systematic outcome of the approach to the relationship of these determinations in the context of reflection is considered. The conclusion reached is that, aiming at the possibility of justifying scientific knowledge and ethical acting, the Kantian theory limits the characterization of the subject to a logical approach and, therefore, that this limitation does not allow - whether in the domains of knowledge and moral acting, or in the sphere of reflection – an objectively valid philosophical proof of its necessary relationship to be established.

Against philosophical proofs against common sense

Abstract Many philosophers think that common sense knowledge survives sophisticated philosophical proofs against it. Recently, however, Bryan Frances (‘Philosophical proofs against common sense’ 2021) has advanced a philosophical proof that he thinks common sense cannot survive. Exploiting philosophical paradoxes like the Sorites, Frances attempts to show how common sense leads to paradox and therefore that common sense methodology is unstable. In this paper, we show how Frances’s proof fails and then present Frances with a dilemma.

Ibn-Rushd (<i>Averroes</i>). The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Part Four

This series of publications is a translation of selected sections from the book “The Incoherence of the Incoherence” (Tahafut at-Tahafut) by a peripatetic philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198), written in response to the book by asharite mutakallim al-Ghazali (d. 1111) “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” (Tahafut al-Falasifa).In this part Ibn Rushd completes the analysis of al-Ghazali’s criticism of the philosophical proofs for the eternity of the world. Here are the answers to the last part of Ghazalian objections to the second proof (“from the eternity of time”), as well as to the objections to the third (“from the eternity of possibility”) and the fourth (“from the eternity of matter”).

Philosophical proofs against common sense

AbstractMany philosophers are sceptical about the power of philosophy to refute commonsensical claims. They look at the famous attempts and judge them inconclusive. I prove that, even if those famous attempts are failures, there are alternative successful philosophical proofs against commonsensical claims. After presenting the proofs I briefly comment on their significance .

Daemons in the pocket: Contract, commodities and witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay

New England in 1692 was a community grappling with the cosmic meaning of capitalism in an age during which the market came to define life in the Atlantic world. Binding contracts, mobile capital and commodity exchange offered both philosophical proof and significant peril for a community rooted in a firm belief in the sacredness of contract covenants and in the reality of spectral forces intervening into the material world. As a result, the legal documents produced during the bloody witchcraft crisis that swept Massachusetts in those terrible years articulate a widespread anxiety about the potentially accursed nature of commodities that travel through and index social connections, the morally ambiguous incursions of invisible economic forces into everyday life, the compelling experience of contracts given divine or diabolical aegis and the cultural syncretism of a constellated culture bound together through market interrelations. As tales of witchcraft have taken root firmly as American narrative touchstones, those anxieties have remained central to representations of the witch trials in popular imagination. The novels, plays and films that return to the crisis’ collection of legal documents, economic contracts and oral performances, position contested issues of obliterative commodification, troubled economic social contact and cultural and racial insecurity at the heart of American folklore. This reading re-centres both primary sources and subsequent popular depictions of the witch crisis around the stories told through contracts and around the commodities and commodity exchanges that remained persistent features of Massachusetts Bay’s imbricated modes of storytelling. It reads these documents as evidence for the emergence of Atlantic market capitalism as a cosmic force, an obscure but interventionist God made powerful through market logic, and it argues that this force continues to define America’s central bloody myth of self.

The Philosophical Proof for God’s Existence between Europe and the Islamic World: Reflections on an Entangled History of Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance

Abstract The Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World. Drawing on Aristotle, various forms of the argument were appropriated by both rational Islamic Theology (kalām) and Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. Whereas the argument, reshaped, refined and modified, has been intensively discussed throughout the entire post-classical era, particularly in the Islamic East, it has likewise been adopted in the West by thinkers such as the Hebrew Polymath Maimonides and the Medieval Latin Philosopher and Theologian Thomas Aquinas. However, these mutual reception-processes did not end in the middle ages. They can be witnessed in the twentieth century and even up until today: On the one hand, we see a Middle Eastern thinker like the Iranian philosopher Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī re-evaluating Kant’s fundamental critique of the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence, in particular of the ontological proof, and refuting the critique. On the other hand, an argument from creation brought forward by the Islamic Theologian and critic of the peripatetic tradition al-Ghazāli has been adopted by a strand of Western philosophers who label their own version “The Kalām-cosmological Argument”. By discussing important cornerstones in the history of the philosophical proof for God’s existence we argue for a re-consideration of current Eurocentric narratives in the history of philosophy and suggest that such a transcultural perspective may also provide inspiration for current philosophical discourses between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

Несбывшийся спор об этикотеологии

Написанная в жанре антикритики статья делает попытку взвесить основательность критических замечаний А.Г. Мясникова о противоречиях в структуре аргументации Кантом его «постулата бытия Божия», в связи с учением о добродетели и счастье/блаженстве. В этой связи, останавливаясь на вопросе о характере доктрины о высшем производном благе в «Основоположении к метафизике нравов» и о сущности процедуры этической универсализации по Канту, в статье проясняется, что спор кантоведов не состоялся, поскольку аргументы оппонента не затрагивают проблемы, поднятой в критикуемом тексте. Разбор возражений на «этические нескладности» в обосновании морального аргумента, приводит к тому же итогу: Критический пафос оппонента обращен не на анализ реконструкции обоснования «постулата бытия Божия», но только на мои замечания по поводу этого обоснования, представляющиеся поэтому оппоненту предвзятым поиском «нескладностей» в этической доктрине Канта, а не специально в этикотеологии. Аргументация против соображений, мотивированных кантовской этикотеологией, в сферу собственно этикотеологии не вступает, поскольку сферу теологии оппонент считает вненаучной. В заключение в статье формулируется аргументированное возражение на мнение оппонента, якобы Христос Евангелий дарует ученикам и исцеляемым блаженство в этом мире. Если же высшее благо евангельской морали односоставно, то и вопрос о соотношении кантианства и христианства предстает совсем в ином виде.

A critical analysis of Avicenna's proofs of the impossibility of human reincarnation

The topic of reincarnation is one that has been discussed in a number of different fields, under different headings and with different methods. For example, this topic has been discussed in philosophy in relation to the soul. This is because reincarnation implies that a soul is transferred from one body to another. When philosophers discuss reincarnation, they do so by using reason. However, this topic has also been discussed in theology, in the section concerned with the Afterlife. This is because sometimes reincarnation is presented as an alternative to the concept of Ma'ad - the reattachment of human souls to their bodies in another world, with the purpose of being judged and recompensed for the actions they did in this world. When theologians treat this topic, they do so from a rational-religious perspective. For the most part, Muslim scholars have denied the possibility of reincarnation. However, some of them say that it is something that is rationally impossible. Others say that it is rationally possible but does not occur - as religion tells us. Generally, philosophers were of the opinion that reincarnation is something that is rationally impossible. They have presented many philosophical proofs to substantiate this claim. One of the philosophers who discussed this subject at length was Avicenna. He was adamant about the impossibility of reincarnation and presented some complicated rational proofs for this matter. One of the proofs provided by Avicenna was one in which he presented a number of different scenarios in which this phenomenon might occur. Avicenna proved that all of these scenarios are impossible. As a result, reincarnation must also be impossible. In another proof, Avicenna said that reincarnation is something that goes against intuition and would lead to one person's being two people. There are numerous problems with both of Avicenna's proofs and therefore they must be rejected or reconstructed. This article seeks to present these proofs in a structured manner and then to critique them.

Book Review: Theology's Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide a Unified Response

Theology's Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide a Unified Response. By Kevin Diller. Downers Grove, 111.: IVP Academic, 2014. 352 pp. $38.00 (paper).Theological realism, often beleaguered by postmodernist and postliberal thinkers, is staging a bit of a comeback. In one comer, Reformed philosophers of religion, such as Alvin Plantinga, have meticulously chipped away at modern Enlightenment skepticism to articulate a rational defense of belief. In the other comer, some scholars have retrieved Karl Barths commitment to the objective character of revelation. In this impressive study, Kevin Diller, associate professor of philosophy and religion at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, has woven together insights from these seminal Reformed thinkers to articulate a revamped paradigm for critical realism in theology.Such a convergence is not self-evident. When Plantinga and his colleagues have interrogated Barth, they typically have highlighted critical differences-say, over Barth's supposed denial of a sensus divinitatis in human nature and his trenchant attack on natural theology. Diller remains undaunted: he argues that both Barth and Plantinga, although adhering to different methods, both strongly affirm that revelation is sui generis-that God's special revealing action alone is the basis for knowledge of God among finite and sinful human creatures. These two scholars, Diller argues, offer an alternative to the extremes of fideist credulity and agnostic skepticism. This combined Barth-Plantinga proposal seeks to address what Diller considers to be the fundamental dilemma afflicting epistemology: Christian theologians are required to adopt a high view of theological knowledge while also maintaining a low view of the unaided capacities of the human knower to secure such knowledge. To use the biblical imagery, theology must acknowledge itself an impoverished earthen vessel while daring not to diminish the value of the treasure it confesses (p. 17).Part 1 articulates the main lines of this synthesis, which Diller labels theo-foundationalism. Revelation, he argues, is a personal, self-bestowing gift of Creator to creatures in the illuminating and personal transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Knowledge of God depends neither upon philosophical proofs nor upon natural human capacities; it is objectively real, both cognitive and affective in scope. Unlike modern subjectivists, Diller insists, both Plantinga and Barth view revelation as mediated to concrete communities of faith. Since God is both the author and the content of revelation, it is rendered truly in human speech while remaining intrinsically inexhaustible. Finally, theological epistemology, while independent in its source and authority basis, is not incongruent with general, non-religious theories of knowledge from philosophy or the human sciences. …

POLIFORMNOST KAO NASTAVNI, NAUČNI I FILOZOFSKI PRINCIP

<p>U ovom spisu, autori su razmotrili dijaloškim putem veoma aktualno pitanje misaonog susreta filozofije i matematike. U svom kolegijalnom diskursu, oni su pošli od metodološke pozicije, da je poliformnost nezaobilazno načelo, koje se bazira na dijalektičkom zakonu negacije, koji je u nauci filozofije i matematici prisutan od Aristotelovog vremena do danas. Ključno esencijalno pitanje ovog naučnog i filozofskog fenomena je u njegovom permanentnom insistiranju na integrirnom sagledavanju raznovrsnih pristupa hermeneutičkog razumijevanja i rezoniranja pojmova, posebno u proučavanju naučnih, nastavnih ili filozofskih fenomena. Proučavajući i istraživajući mogućnosti primjenjivanja ovog načela, autori su došli do slijedećeg rezultata: Ako je nesporno da je očiglednost (prezentovanje trivijalnim dokazivanjem primjenom logičkih zakona), princip, a <strong>permanencije </strong>(očuvanje formalnih zakonitosti) utemeljene na očiglednim dokazivanjima, također princip, onda je svaki lanac konjukcija konačnog broja, očiglednih naučnih, metodičkih, filozofskih dokazivanja, ili višestruka konjukcija takvih dokazivanja naučno metodičko ili filozofsko načelo.</p>

A Unified Explanation of Quantum Phenomena? The Case for the Peer‐to‐Peer Simulation Hypothesis as an Interdisciplinary Research Program

In my 2013 article, A New Theory of Free Will, I argued that several serious hypotheses in philosophy and modern physics jointly entail that our reality is structurally identical to a peer-to-peer (P2P) networked computer simulation. The present paper outlines how quantum phenomena emerge naturally from the computational structure of a P2P simulation. §1 explains the P2P Hypothesis. §2 then sketches how the structure of any P2P simulation realizes quantum superposition and wave-function collapse (§2.1.), quantum indeterminacy (§2.2.), wave-particle duality (§2.3.), and quantum entanglement (§2.4.). Finally, §3 argues that although this is by no means a philosophical proof that our reality is a P2P simulation, it provides ample reasons to investigate the hypothesis further using the methods of computer science, physics, philosophy, and mathematics. Quantum mechanics is an exquisitely well-verified theory of how our physical world operates at a microscopic level. However, it presents us with two very deep puzzles: one of interpretation and one of explanation. First, there is the question of how to interpret its equations. Although there are dozens of different interpretations of the equations of quantum mechanics, every mainstream interpretation appears problematic. 1 Second, there is the much deeper—and less well-understood—question of not just interpreting its equations, but of explaining why the world is quantum mechanical, that is, why the world operates according to such bizarre laws of nature. For, make no mistake about it, quantum mechanics is bizarre. According to quantum mechanics, microscopic objects such as electrons: A. Appear 2 to have properties of particles and of waves (wave-particle duality),

Thought Experimenting with God. Revisiting the Ontological Argument

The ontological argument is one of the most intriguing lines of reasoning in Western thought. Leaving behind debates over the proper relation between science and religion, it makes a simple move from conceptual analysis to existence in order to prove the existence of god. The ontological argument will be reviewed against the background of the contemporary debate on thought experiments. Assuming that the ontological argument fails as a philosophical proof, I will argue that its move from concept to existence might best be understood as a thought experiment of revealed theology (a theology based on revelation – unlike philosophical theology/natural theology). Viewed from this perspective it makes sense that Anselm of Canterbury offered his versions of the ontological argument in the form of a prayer, which, presupposing the existence of god, seems to run counter to a proof of god's existence.

La provenance de la chair: le souci henryen de la contingence

What's worth a philosophy which achieves a phenomenological reduction in an opposite direction of Husserl's one? This contribution, disputing Rudolf Bernet's accurate critiques, intends to demonstrate that Michel Henry doesn't take a theological turn by investigating the Christian Logos, but chooses it as a philosophical proof of his previous researches about affectivity as rationality, which were stemming from a rigorous analysis of everyday life. According to Henry and his New Testament interpretation, truth is affectivity and life, and because there's an ipseite in life, truth is a self. Yet, the Greek Logos just can't consider the profoundness of life but the bodies, whereas the fleshy living Self generates and feels it in the first and pathetic immanence.

Ghazālī and Metaphorical Predication in the Third Discussion of the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa

Ghazālī's Th e Incoherence of the Philosophers is an unusual philosophical work for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the author's explicit dis- avowal of any of the conclusions contained within it. Th e present essay examines some of the hermeneutical challenges that face readers of the work and off ers an exegetical account of the much-neglected Th ird Discussion, which examines a key point of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Th e paper argues that Ghazālī's maintaining of the incompatibility of metaphysical creationism and Neoplatonic emanationism should not be viewed as simply a rhetorical or dialectical argument, but rather is best understood, to use Ghazālī's words, as a philosophical proof. Essential to this proof in the solution to the argument of the Th ird Discussion is an implicit theory of metaphorical predication that can be pieced together from several of Ghazālī's remarks as well as a reductio ad absurdum argument about the very pos- sibility of ethical discourse.

Religious belief, meaning and argument

This paper continues the discussion in recent Anglo-American epistemology of religion concerning "truth" in religion and the relevance of argument or philosophical proof. The author proposes an analysis of religious belief that takes into account both the practice of believers and the understanding of religious truth frequently given by them. Such an analysis provides a description of the character of religious truth, holds that the meaning and truth of religious beliefs are not determined purely within religious practices or discourses, and offers an explanation as to why it is generally difficult to reach agreement about the truth of specific religious beliefs.