Essence Of Theory Research Articles

Praxis and сriticism of action: reasoning about the role of hypothetical necessity in Aristotle

The article offers an interpretation of hypothetical necessity, which is important for understanding Aristotle’s future contingent events, based on praxis. For this purpose, the concept of becoming, the ways of expanding knowledge and the consequences for them of incomplete information about the conditions for the occurrence of future contingent events are used. Hypothetical necessity is the basis of praxis, where it is created by choice and decision, which allows us to see our actions not as absolutely contingent. It is difficult to indicate the absolute meaning of hypothetical necessity outside the theory of essence and becoming. But its difference from simple (metaphysical) necessity allows us to form a basis for criticizing actions that generate future contingent events. They are determined by the conditions that act in us and can change along with our ideas about the current situation, about the good and about the ways to achieve it. An act is not necessary, and not completely contingent, although it becomes necessary after its commission. The fact that a person himself does not control the formation of moral conditional necessity, and for him changes in opinions and preferences are usually spontaneous, contains the basis for criticism of the act. The latter is justified by speaking about the realization of the essence, and condemned by pointing to moral conditional necessity associated with dubious circumstances, for example, with delusions, prejudices, laziness, lack of will, etc.

Generalized Identity, Zero-Ground, and Necessity

Abstract This paper offers a modification of Fabrice Correia’s and Alexander Skiles’ (Grounding, Essence, and Identity) definition of grounding in terms of generalized identity that extends it to zero-grounding. The definition promises (1) to improve our understanding of zero-grounding by capturing it within the framework of generalized identity, and (2) to unlock the theoretical potential of zero-grounding for Correia’s and Skiles’ account. The latter is demonstrated by arguing that the definition allows an essentialist theory of modality based on Correia’s and Skiles’ account to answer a recent explanatory challenge by Jessica Leech (From Essence to Necessity via Identity) by combining the following two ideas: (1) Some necessities are grounded in truths about zero-grounding, and (2) at least some identity-propositions are zero-grounded. Finally, some advantages of the zero-grounding approach over Correia’s and Skiles’ recent definition of necessity in terms of generalized identity and logical consequence are argued for.

On Splits, Big and Little: Towards an Intensive Model of Media and Mediation

This essay forwards an intensive model of mediation contrasted with the extensive model implicit in much of media theory, which conceives of communication media as an extension of human faculties. An intensive model, instead, conceives of mediation as a phenomenological process of splitting or folding affective capacities. An extensive model results in a dualistic, essentialist theory of communication media and unresolvable normative debates about the connecting or disconnecting consequences of media. An intensive model avoids these limitations by diagramming various modes of mediation and illustrating how their consequences stem from alterations to intensive properties, thereby helping constitute subjects and media objects alike rather than presuming a media bridge between pre-existing subjects and objects. The essay employs a number of examples to illustrate the extensive model, including telephone conversations, cinema, animation, and social media. The essay concludes with the division of families over QAnon conspiracies to illustrate the analytic gain from an intensive model.

"The Zygote as the Theory of Essence “first perfection” According to Ibn Sina. A new preliminary philosophical and Genetic approach"

"The Zygote as the Theory of Essence “first perfection” According to Ibn Sina. A new preliminary philosophical and Genetic approach"

A study on the inner correspondence between Marx's theory of Human Essence and Confucian View of Community and its contemporary value

In the new era, the socialist culture with Chinese characteristics must open the interactive development of integrity and innovation. The problem of human nature is often new in the process of development. In the excellent traditional Chinese culture, the people-oriented thought is an important political philosophy thought. Standing at a new starting point, taking the spirit of the Party's 20th Congress as the ideological guidance, and strengthening cultural self-confidence and unremitting self-improvement as the starting point, the paper reviews the internal compatibility of Marx's theory of human essence and the Confucian community view, aiming to constantly sort out the integration of Marx's theory of human essence and the Confucian community view, fully grasp the new space of coupling, and make new answers in line with The Times. Thus deepening the conscious understanding of human nature, promoting the "combination" of the new era, and gradually advancing to a new stage of popularization, so that the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics has more rich philosophical connotation and profound philosophical heritage, and condenses the soul for social development.

J. Freund: interaccionismo dialéctico y equilibrio social. Precepción crítica de la sociología de Simmel y Pareto en la construcción de una filosofía social

his article explores the influence of Simmel and Pareto on the social theory of J. Freund (1921-1993). Recognized as an interpreter and promoter of the sociology of both authors in the French academic context of the last third of the past century, both play a fundamental role in the construction of his social philosophy, a central part of which is his theory of essences, developed especially in L’essence du politique (1965). However, this influence has not been yet sufficiently studied. This article proposes a preliminary approach, highlighting the presence of both authors in the definition of what I will be described here as Freundian “dialectical interactionism”, his methodological perspective for the study of dynamics and social equilibrium.

The Early Modern Rationalists and Substantial Form

This paper argues that, contrary to what one might think, early modern rationalism displays an increasing and well-grounded sensitivity to certain metaphysical questions substantial form was designed to answer— despite the fact that the notion itself was in such disrepute, and emphatically banished from natural philosophy. This main thesis is established by exami­ning the thought of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz through the framework constituted by what have been designated as the two aspects, metaphysical and physical, of substantial form. This examination shows that Descartes ends up assigning to soul a notable metaphysical task formerly assigned to substantial form, whereas Spinoza advances a theory of essences motivated by the philo­sophical concerns behind the two aspects of substantial form. Leibniz finally makes a sharp distinction between natural philosophy and metaphysics as he develops a dynamistic theory that deliberately aims at understanding substan­tial form in a new fashion. This line of development is designated as one major factor contributing to the separation of philosophy and natural science.

Метафизика Аристотеля

The article offers a new reconstruction of Aristotle's metaphysics, showing what place metaphysics occupies in the Aristotelian system of scientific knowledge, what its subject matter is, and into what parts it naturally divides. The author discusses in detail the Aristotelian doctrine of categories; his theory of essence; the doctrine of potential and actual being; explanatory model of four causes and the doctrine of the divine Intellect, in which metaphysics meets theology. In expounding the Aristotelian doctrine of essence, the author challenges the traditional view that the theory of essence in the Categories, where concrete things are recognized as essences in the strict and proper sense of the word, is radically different from the theory of essence in Metaphysics VII (Z), where essence is identified with form. The author shows that in both treatises Aristotle regards essence as identical with the concrete thing, but only in so far as it is taken without its accidental properties and reduced solely to the substantive ones.

Can essences mix? An essentialist theory of genetic hybrids in the human and animal domain

Can essences mix? An essentialist theory of genetic hybrids in the human and animal domain

Close, but No Cigar

Close, but No Cigar

Associations between Gendered Family Structures and Adolescent Stress, Loneliness, and Sadness in South Korea.

While a large literature connects family environments characterized by access to two married biological parents to better child mental health outcomes, we know less about the mechanisms linking family structure to mental health outcomes for children living in other family structures. While essentialist theory suggests that access to both male and female parents will be an important determinant of child mental health, some research directly comparing single-mother and single-father families found no difference in child outcomes by parent gender, suggesting evidence for more structural theories of gender. However, most of this research uses data from Western countries and seldom extends to examining mental health outcomes. In this paper, we used data from a large, generalizable survey of Korean adolescents (the 2021 Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey) to compare the mental health of children living in families with two married biological parents, single mothers, and single fathers. Our findings underscore the importance of examining family environments in different contexts.

NATURAL KIND SEMANTICS FOR A CLASSICAL ESSENTIALIST THEORY OF KINDS

Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide a complete Natural Kind Semantics for an Essentialist Theory of Kinds. The theory is formulated in two-sorted first order monadic modal logic with identity. The natural kind semantics is based on Rudolf Willes Theory of Concept Lattices. The semantics is then used to explain several consequences of the theory, including results about the specificity (species–genus) relations between kinds, the definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences and the existence of negative kinds. First, I show under which conditions the Hierarchy principle, which has been subjected to counterexamples in the literature, holds. I also show that a different principle about the species–genus relations between kinds, namely Kant’s Law, follows from the essentialist theory. Second, I introduce two new operations for kinds and show that they can be used to provide traditional definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences. Finally, I show that these operations of specific difference induce, for each kind, a uniquely specified contrary kind and a uniquely specified subcontrary kind, which can be used as semantic values for non-classical predicate negations of kind terms.

How to Measure a World? A Philosophy of Judaism by Martin Shuster

Reviewed by: How to Measure a World? A Philosophy of Judaism by Martin Shuster Kenneth Seeskin Martin Shuster. How to Measure a World? A Philosophy of Judaism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2021. 241 pp. Anyone who sets out to write a philosophy of Judaism faces two problems. The first is that essentialist theories which try to identify a small set of commitments with which to characterize all of Jewish existence have fallen into disfavor. The second is that one must balance reliance on classical Jewish sources with appeal to arguments designed to reach a nonsectarian audience. Put too much emphasis on the first, and you will be criticized for being parochial. Put too much on the second, and you will be criticized for not having enough Jewish content. Martin Shuster tries to avoid these pitfalls by beginning with Emmanuel Levinas's observation that Judaism is best understood as a kind of anachronism. By anachronism, Shuster takes Levinas to mean that there is a fundamental dissonance, friction, or conflict between the self and the world. As Levinas says in Difficult Freedom, the distinguishing feature of Jewish existence is its ability to stand apart from history and be its judge. Or, as Shuster says, it is a moral imperative not to feel at home in a world where violence, oppression, or genocide rule the day. Yet, as Shuster hastens to add, the self cannot be completely divorced from the world since the whole question of what counts as a world must be investigated. It is not just a huge collection of things but rather a consideration of how things emerge for us in the first place. To explicate this sense of emergence, Shuster turns to phenomenology as practiced by Husserl and Heidegger. [End Page 456] It will be objected that Levinas's understanding of anachronism is not just a way of characterizing Jewish existence but a critical feature of the human condition in general. As Shuster points out, such a view of the self's relation to the world is a legitimate way of understanding what it means for a person to be free. What, then, is specifically Jewish about this inquiry? Shuster answers by referring to Levinas's quip that we are all "a little bit Jewish." On the issue of essentialism, Shuster admits that what he is offering is a "sort of" essentialism in that it stresses the form rather than the specific content of Judaism. This means that rather than going into Jewish history or liturgy in detail, Shuster rests his case on the alienation we feel toward the world. The best way to understand Shuster's project is to look at the first two chapters. In chapter 1, he takes up Maimonides's understanding of how we are situated in the world and concludes that for him, our primary orientation is that of awe and wonder. Recall that while Moses was not allowed to see the face of God in Exodus 33, he was permitted to see God's back, which Maimonides takes to be everything God created and which the Torah describes as "very good" (tov me'od). This is followed in chapter 2 by a discussion of Theodor Adorno, whose primary orientation is moral outrage. Although the world that God created may invite wonder, the horrors that people inflict on each other invite disgust. Taken together, these approaches tell us how to distance oneself from the world in order to take a reflective stance on it. The next two chapters take us into important themes in Continental philosophy. Chapter 3 deals with the philosophy of history as seen in a comparison between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Chapter 4 takes up the philosophy of language, with a comparison between Levinas and Stanley Cavell. The virtues of this book are not hard to spot. Levinas's insight about the distance from the world runs through a great deal of Jewish history. Abraham was not at home in his father's house, nor was Moses at home in Egypt. Although Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were in their native land, they were profoundly dissatisfied with what they saw. With the destruction of the Second Temple and two millennia...

Autism as emergent and transactional.

The current epistemology of autism as a phenotype derives from the consistency of historical accounts and decades of work within the tradition of descriptive epidemiology, culminating in current categorical descriptions within DSM and ICD nosologies and the concept of “prototypical autism.” The demonstrated high heritability of this phenotype has led to an essentialist theory of autism as a biological entity and the concerted search within the developmental brain and genetic science for discrete biological markers. This search has not revealed simple markers explaining autistic outcomes and has led to moves towards a more dimensional account. This article proposes an alternative transactional approach. It proposes to understand autistic states as an emergent property within a complex developmental system; as the neurodivergent brain, and mind and body, encounter their social and physical environment within early development. Key evidence in support of this approach comes from random allocation intervention trials based on such transactional development theory, both in the infancy pre-diagnostic prodrome and the early post-diagnostic period. In replicated evidence, these intervention trials show that a targeted alteration in the quality of social transactional environment available for the child leads to significant, predictable, and sustained alterations in the outcome dimensional autistic phenotype over time; and further, in one prodromal trial, to a significant reduction in later categorical classification status. The inference from this evidence is that the prototypical autistic phenotype is to a degree malleable with a changed experienced social environment and that it is emergent from its constituent traits. Such a transactional approach enlarges our notion of the phenotype and brings the study of autism within mainstream individual difference developmental science. It challenges essentialist views, for instance as to intrinsic autistic “social avoidance” or theory of mind empathy deficits, integrates dimensional and categorical perspectives, and is consistent with the lived experience of autistic people and their advocacy for improved understanding within a social model.

Ontology and Epistemology in Husserl’s Ideen-I

Abstract This paper is concerned with the reappraisal of Husserl’s ontology and epistemology, sketched in book one of Ideen. The main issue is Husserl’s theory of essence and essential insight. I present the fundamental distinction between facts and essences, and, over and above it, Husserl’s defense of an a priori knowledge based on essential insight as well as his partition of the whole realm of a priori knowledge into a formal set of material, regional ontologies. I will show how the theory of essential insight presented in Ideen gives rise to several criticisms, namely those made by Neo-Kantians, like Rickert and Natorp. In the last part, I will show how the mathematical concept of an invariant under a group of variations was the leading case for Husserl’s mature notion of eidetic insight.

Plato's Essentialism. Reinterpreting the Theory of Forms

The revival of interest in the concept of essence witnessed in analytic metaphysics over the past half century has customarily been accompanied by the association of the original idea of (and of some of the main lines of thought on) essence with Aristotle. The book under review aims instead to show that Plato already ‘defends a comprehensive, coherent, and well-argued theory of essence’ (p. 11). Politis frames this claim in an overall interpretation of Plato's theory of Forms, governed by a two-pronged principal thesis: (i) Platonic Forms simply are essences, not (as some believe) things that have essences—meaning by ‘essence’ specifically the entity ‘designated by an adequate and true answer to the question. ‘What is F?’ (p. 3), as opposed to an answer that accounts for what F is by merely appealing to an ‘example or exemplar’ of F (ch. 1). (ii) All chief attributes Plato ascribes to Forms follow uniquely from this basic notion, including their being non-perceptible by the senses (ch. 2), unitary, uniform, incomposite, changeless, eternal, and non-logically independent from each other (ch. 3), knowable only by reasoning (ch. 4), distinct and separate from perceptible things (chs. 5 and 9), the basis of causation and explanation (ch. 6), necessary for thought and speech (chs. 7–8).

Pursuit of Moksha through Existential Anxiety and Karma in Ghanashyam Khadka’s Nirvana

The idea of struggle for existence is always the turning point for the search for ultimate reality. Reality leads to realization. Moksha is the point of ultimate realization. Based on the theme of Moksha, the novel Nirvana by Ghanashyam Khadka proposes a new mode of defining and exemplifying the process of Moksha. This study explores how the transitoriness in life and the realization of meaninglessness in life have conditioned us to accept every dimension of Dukha, which ultimately leads us to enlightenment and Nirvana. Grounded on the principles of existential anxiety and the search for Moksha through Gita philosophy, this study examines how the queries on the truth of life and death lead to the realization of the value of death in life. These queries are meant for existence and they properly lead to the level of Moksha. Before knowing the truth of human limitation to the knowledge of worldly existence and life, human beings are disturbed by the destined events of life, but these events become the sources of the perfect knowledge to enable one to be free from all worldly sorrows and pains. The experience of sadness and loneliness in life makes people think that they should give up anger and malice on the journey of life to understanding the truth, the Moksha. The novel, Nirvana, shows the central characters, Monika and the narrator, undergoing long troubles of life individually, have realized ultimate peace when they have followed Buddhist meditation in search of Nirvana, but throughout their life, they are guided by the Gita theory of Karma and essence.

The Magical Santayanan Groundwork for Metaphysical Coherentism

The Magical Santayanan Groundwork for Metaphysical Coherentism

A Husserlian Critique of Pannenberg’s Understanding of Subjectivity

Abstract I argue that Wolfhart Pannenberg’s view of human subjectivity presupposes a metaphysics of eternity that both contracts and expands the human subject. For this purpose, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology is a useful criterion. Pannenberg rejects substantialist theories of subjectivity that give priority to the agency of the ego over the passivity of the self. Following Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pannenberg thinks self-reflection must be grounded on a symbiotic totality of life, and he views essences, even of subjectivity, as determined by that totality. In contrast, Husserl provides both an essentialist theory of subjectivity and a viable model for self-reflection that does not suffer from infinite regress. Husserl does more justice to the mineness of consciousness and the agency of the ego, while not discarding the narrativity of the self.

СУЩНОСТЬ ПРИБЫЛИ С АСПЕКТА РАЗЛИЧНЫХ ТИПОВ КОНКУРЕНЦИИ

The paper presents different points of scientists-economists view regarding the essence of profit in the conditions of competition’s various types. The theory of the profit essence from the aspect of The Theory of Monopolistic Competition by E. Chamberlin is considered. The author came to the conclusion that the modern Western theory of profit is characterized by electivity, the presence of very different ideas about its economic content. Integrity is noted only in relation to the interpretation of the social essence of profit - in the denial of its exploitative nature and the recognition of its legitimate, “natural” form of income.