The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy

Maimon schreibt in seinem Werk: „Die termini: Erkenntnis a priori und Erkenntnis a posteriori sind sehr unglücklich gewählt, und daher sind sie nach meiner Meinung der Hauptgrund ernster Streitereien und Mißverständnisse der Philosophie. Man könnte jedoch diese Begriffe weiterhin beibehalten, aber nur unter der Bedingung, daß sie genauer präzisiert werden, als es bisher der Fall war." Indem ich mich hier auf den Gedankengang Maimons berufe, möchte ich die Darstellung der Maimomschen Interpretation des Apriorismus Kants beginnnen. Das Problem der Erkenntnis im weiteren Sinne postulierte auch die Unentbehrlichkeit der tieferen Analyse und der gennaueren Präzisierung solcher Begriffe für die Tanszendentalphilosophie wie: die Begriffe „a priori", „Erkenntniss a priori", „reine Erkenntnis a priori", sowie die Notwendigkeit der Analyse des Unterschieds, der unter ihnen auftritt. Dem Unterschied zwishen „Erkenntnis a priori" und der „reinen Erkenntnis" maß Maimon besondere Bedeutung bei, wie wir es noch sehen werden. Er stellt fest: „A priori, absolut betrachtet, ist nach Kant eine Art der Erkenntnis, wie sie jeglicher Wahtnehnung im Gemüt entspringt. Dagegen ist nach mir, a priori absolut behandelt, die Art der Erkenntnis, die der Erkenntnis des Objekts der Kenntnis vorausgeht, d.h. der Begriff des Objekts im allgemeinen und alles das, was man von ihm als solche behaupten kann. Sie tritt ebenfalls dort auf, wo da Objekt nur durch die Relation bestimmt wird, wie zum Beispiel in der Mathematik" Der Unterschied der Standpunkte ist enorm. Maimon, der seiner prinzipiellen Tendenz treu ist, nämlich der maximalen Erweiterung der Erkenntnis, geht auch in diesem Fall entschieden über die „empirische" Orientation Kantsshinaus. Ihm genügt es schon nicht, den Begriff „a priori" nur darauf zurückzuführen, was jedes Mal der Erfahrung oder auch gar „jeglicher Erfahrung" vorausgeht. Er will nämlich diesen Begriff auf „das Objekt der Erkenntnis überhaupt" beziehen, also auch in Bezug auf die mathematischen Wissenschaften.

There are various approaches to epistemology as well as to the philosophy of science. The attempt to naturalize them is the newest approach. In the naturalistic framework, epistemology turns out to be identical with the philosophy of science. The main characteristic of both naturalized epistemology and naturalized philosophy of science is their methodological monism. Therefore, both of these meta-level areas of philosophy pursue only one scientific discipline to be a meta-method for themselves. There are objections to naturalism on the basis that (from a methodological point of view) naturalized philosophy is monistic.

William Alston argues that there is no way to show that any of our basic sources of belief is reliable without falling into epistemic circularity, i.e. relying at some point on premises that are themselves derived from the very same source. His appeal to practical rationality is an attempt to evaluate our sources of belief without relying on beliefs that are based on the sources under scrutiny and thus without just presupposing their reliability. I argue that this attempt fails and that Ernest Sosa’s appeal to the coherence theory of justification fails, too, if it is understood as an attempt to find a similar external evaluation of our sources of belief that does not just assume their reliability. I concluded that there is no alternative to taking an internal view to our own reliability and embracing epistemic circularity.

Dividing knowledge to knowledge by presence and knowledge by representation, Mullâ Sadrâ treats the subject-object relation with regard to each one of them differently. In the former, the subject is united with the object, or rather they are one, and the reality of knowledge is this very unity. In this type of knowledge, there is no medium. Such unity culminates, on the one hand, in knowledge by presence comprehensively and completely conveying the objective reality, and in its untransferability on the other. By contrast, in knowledge by representation, the subject experiences another kind of relation to the object of knowledge thanks to the presence of a medium in the subject’s mind, called "mental form." Mullâ Sadrâ considers mental forms as the mental existence of the same quiddities (mâhîyyât) existing in the external world. The only difference is that they have another type of existence. In this essay, I argue that this approach is congruent with the principality of quiddity, which is rejected by Mullâ Sadrâ. To be consistent with the basic pillar of Mullâ Sadrâ’s philosophy, viz., the principle of existence, I hold that one should begin with the continuity of existence through mental, imagery and external worlds from which the mind abstracts the same quiddity, not vice versa.

Two processes develop in human culture and society that implicate each other. The first is, according to Hegel, the development of universal experience and knowledge in any individual since individuals are never born complete as what they are supposed to be. The second is the subjectivization of the universal experience and knowledge into unique and singular forms of the self and self-consciousness. An analysis of these two processes in the history of philosophy has revealed the interconnections between the cognizing subject, truth and education and paideia. A hermeneutical principle of "self-care" that develops the skill of ruling and caring for others represents one of the traditions that includes these features in unity and determines a type of paideia. This principle is developed by Socratic, Platonic, Epicurean and Stoic morality, and was actualized by Descartes in his movement to the cogito. "Self-care" was considered in the 17th century as a condition of acquiring scientific knowledge; later, however, it was labeled as egotism and individualism and replaced by self-cognition. Foucault gives proof of the necessity to revive the "self-care" principle in its initial sense as a foundation of the modern hermeneutical conception of upbringing. Hence, the role of philosophy as "an adviser" or "tutor" is to be revived in the process.

This paper aims at a critical exposition of some arguments by Nagarjuna against the cognitivist claims of the Nyaya philosophers, and a possible cognitivist critique of the skeptical arguments of Nagarjuna. My argument is presented in two broad sections. The first deals mainly with an exposition of Nagarjuna's charges against the concept of pramana, while the second is devoted to critical evaluation of the Nagarjunian charges. I conclude with the impression that there is hardly any common ground on which a Nyaya cognitivist and a Nagarjunian skeptic can meet. For this reason, the Nagarjunian cognitive skepticism seems to be theoretically 'irrefutable' but 'psychologically incorrigible.'

Many theorists of explanation from Hempel onward have worked with the explicit or implicit assumption that considerations of the subjective sense of understanding should be kept out of the formulation of a proper theory of explanation. They claim that genuine understanding of an event comes only from being in an appropriate cognitive relation to the true explanation of that event. I argue that considerations of the subjective sense of understanding cannot be completely removed from the process of formulating and justifying an acceptable theory of explanation. Although understanding is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for an explanation, understanding is necessary as an initial guide to the nature of explanation. The widespread method of providing counterexamples for criticizing theories of explanation presupposes that there is a neutral method of identifying at least some clear cases of explanation and some clear cases of non-explanations. I argue that the only plausible method to fill this role relies essentially on the subjective sense of understanding. Objective validation of judgments about explanatoriness comes only through a complex process of social correction of our initial intuitive judgments regarding explanation.

Davidson’s argument against the possibility of defining truth draws upon the work of Tarski. However, Tarski’s assumption that the semantic conception of truth holds only for formal languages which are not semantically closed is not as plausible as it seems to be since it can be shown that this would result in the impossibility of formulating a theory of truth, because the epistemological presuppositions of formal semantics undermine any theory of representation of reality in which our cognitions can be true or false representations. Yet Davidson concludes that "there cannot be a definition of ‘For all languages L, and all sentences s in L, s is true in L if and only if . . . s . . . L’." I am challenging Davidson by introducing into his above scheme my own definition of truth — "For all languages L, and all sentences s in L, s is true in L if and only if we prove s in L" — and then showing how to prove this definition philosophically.

The attempt to hold both anti-individualism and privileged self-knowledge may have the absurd consequence that someone could know a priori propositions that are knowable only empirically. This would be so if such an attempt entailed that one could know a priori both the contents of one’s own thoughts and the anti-individualistic entailments from those thought-contents to the world. For then one could also come to know a priori (by simple deduction) the empirical conditions entailed by one’s thoughts. But I argue that there is no construal of a priori knowledge that could be used to raise an incompatibility problem of this sort. First, I suggest that the incompatibilist a priori must be a stipulative one, since in none of the main philosophical traditions does knowledge of the contents of one’s thoughts count as a priori. Then, I show that under various possible construals of a priori, the incompatibilist argument would be invalid: either a fallacy of equivocation or an argument without a plausible closure principle guaranteeing transmission of epistemic status from premises to conclusion. Finally, I maintain that the only possible construal of the property of being knowable a priori that avoids invalidity is one that fails to generate the intended reductio.

Is consistency always epistemically virtuous? In this paper, I examine one threat to the traditional view that consistency is a minimum requirement for rational belief. Central to the argument is the notion of epistemic probability, understood as the degree of support or confirmation provided by the total available evidence. My strategy in examining this argument is to apply analogous reasoning to carefully tailored examples. The conclusions which emerge are substantive, informative and utterly implausible. I conclude, first, that the argument for inconsistency fails and, second, that it fails because epistemic probability does not conform to the axioms of the probability calculus. A plausible alternate model for determining degree of support is briefly considered.

I consider how the notion of event is used in such important branches of twentieth-century thought as relativity, quantum mechanics, Marxist sociology and psychoanalysis. I show that in each case there is the same concept of event as of a series of communications. It is also shown that this new concept of event corresponds to traditional concepts of historical events. I analyze the difference between the concept of event and that of fact. Since a fact presupposes "an external observer" it is impossible to deal with an event without being involved in it. Since a fact presupposes its permanent logical form as a necessary condition of knowledge about it, any condition of knowledge about an event appears to be empirical itself. I show that the division between history and prehistory has the same basis as that between event and fact. The crucial question is how knowledge about an event is possible. The problem is that the concept of identity applicable to fact appears to be inapplicable to event. However, it appears possible to define an identity of event with an identity of media or "places" of communication. An open system of such "places" we call "milieu." A language is a paradigm for it. However, I suppose that unlike "the linguistic paradigm," the "paradigm of milieu" should refute the idea of the exceptional status of human language.

I dispute the claim that the disclosure of the life-world by phenomenology is an accomplishment of 'permanent' significance. By briefly reviewing the meaning of the "world" and "life-world" in the writings of Husserl, Gurwitsch, Schutz-Luckmann, Ortega, Heidegger, Jonas, Straus, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, I show that they all treat the world, or rather the affairs which comprise it, as passively present whether viewed as a mental acquisition or as the "Other." But the meaning of the world-as that wherein are met physical demands upon us which must be satisfied if we are to continue living-cannot be considered either as a mental acquisition or as something that is "other" and over against us. A living being as living cannot fail to attend to the agency of the affairs of which the life-world consists, as well as one's own exploring and coping actions. If we are to really speak of life, then we must acknowledge the mutual and reciprocal activities of living beings and world.

By offering four epistemological structures as guidelines, I will review the relationships as described by Freud between internal and external perceptions, conversion, and over-determination. In doing so, I have speculated that a second preconscious dynamic should be recognized as functioning within this system, namely the psychical body. The activity of this preconscious psychical body promises to resolve the aporias that arise in Freud's work concerning the role of internal perceptions in the processes of conversion and over-determination. In the end, I show that the positing of an imaginary, psychical body is the means by which the arguably intuitive, internal perceptions which Freud at times refers to as sensations and feelings are expressed according to the logic of imagination.

This paper presents an epistemological approach to the investigation of material properties that is opposed to both phenomenalistic epistemology and recent linguistical and ontological accounts of matter/mass terms. Emphasis is laid on the inherent context dependence of material properties. It is shown that, if this is taken seriously, some deep epistemological problems arise, like unavoidable uncertainty, incompleteness, inductivity, and nonderivableness. It is further argued that some widely held epistemological accounts, namely that of essentialism, constructivism, and pragmatism, all reveal some serious defects if related to the recognition of materials. In order to responsibly manage our material environment, a more realistic estimation of our epistemic abilities and prospects is suggested.

I explore the connection between expertise and rationality. I first make explicit the philosophically dominant view on this connection, i.e., the ‘expert-consultation’ view. This view captures the rather obvious idea that a rational way of proceeding on a matter of importance when one lacks knowledge is to consult experts. Next, I enumerate the difficulties which beset this view, locating them to some extent in the current philosophical literature on expertise and rationality. I then propose that different lessons should be drawn for rationality from the fact of expertise. One is that some empirical and phenomenological studies of the nature of expertise can be fruitfully applied by analogy to theories of the rational agent.

This paper shows new perspectives derived from the theory of knowledge propounded by Leonardo Polo, a contemporary Spanish philosopher who rediscovered the Aristotelian notion of knowledge as energeia. It is impossible to understand this notion without giving up the "limite mental" — a Polian discovery — with which modern philosophy has conditioned us. Abandoning the limite mental opens new horizons, making it possible for us to revise some of the theses of contemporary philosophy of education, such as the idea of the "voluntarisma cognoscitivo" which confuses the operations of two human faculties, intelligence and will.

This paper addresses the question of whether probabilistic coherence is a requirement of rationality. The concept of probabilistic coherence is examined and compared with the familiar notion of consistency for simple beliefs. Several reasons are given for thinking rationality does not require coherence. Finally, it is argued that incoherence does not necessarily involve fallacious reasoning.

Berkeley introduces his water experiment in order to demonstrate that in perception the perceiver does not reach the world itself but is confined to a realm of representations or sense data. We will attempt to demonstrate that Berkeley's description of our experience at the end of the water experiment is inauthentic, that it is not so much a description of an experience as a reconstruction of what we would experience if the receptor organs (the left and right hands) were objects existing in a space partes extra partes. Our argument is that there is nothing in our experience of the illusion to suggest that under normal conditions perception does not reach the world itself.

The aim of this paper is to describe the classical conception of rationality, i.e., to indicate the theses traditionally associated with this conception. I do not intend to discuss these theses in detail. Rather, I focus on the question regarding the main elements of the classical conception of rationality. I am interested in the rationality of cognition and of knowledge (epistemic/epistemological rationality), especially in the rationality of science (scientific rationality).

Though many agree that we need to account for the role that social factors play in inquiry, developing a viable social epistemology has proved to be a difficult task. According to Longino, it is the processes that make inquiry possible that are aptly described as social, for they require a number of people to sustain them. These processes not only facilitate inquiry, but also ensure that the results of inquiry are more than mere subjective opinions, and thus deserve to be called knowledge. In this paper, I explain Longino’s epistemology and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Kitcher, Schmitt and Solomon. Longino rightly recognizes that not all social factors have the same (adverse) affect on inquiry. She also recommends that we reconceptualize ‘knowledge,’ distinguishing knowledge from opinion by reference to a social standard.