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Copyright of Scripta Mediaevalia is the property of Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The whole mankind history represents a constant human aspiration to attain the Divine truth and knowledge. However, it is not an easy job. Because of that, in order to search adequately for the Truth, it is necessary to primarly be satisfied a couple of scientific criteria (more precisely six) in order to one research would be called scientific, and in the same time to be true. Therefore, the aim of this article would be directed to the claim that science, although is based on the philosophical principles, it has its own limitationts, while the real beauty and the mining of the life could be seen from the angle of Art, Poetry and Religion. In support of that, there are the words of the famous philosopher Nietzsche, who once pointed out that, thanaks to the world of Art and Philosophy, man builds an “immortal intellect”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Did Florensky bring something new to the field of philosophy of culture? His merit lies primarily in his intentional use of the concept of ὁµοουσία, oneness-in-substance, in both metaphysics and cosmology. Florensky wrapped his philosophical and cosmological visions into "a religious garment" and theological terminology and attempted, in his unique approach, to solve the problem of "universal unity", "all-human consciousness", especially "all-human principles", questions which had engaged numerous Slavophilia philosophers earlier. His philosophy of culture is not about despising the world, but about the bright and loving adoption of life which enriches man, if he rises to a higher level of existence and desires to unite with the "other" invisible world. According to Florensky, all philosophical systems can be classified into two groups. They either acknowledge ὁµοουσία, the oneness-in-substance, or restrict themselves to ὁµοιουσία, the similarity-in-substance. Only a philosophy that recognises the oneness-in-substance is, according to Florensky, the philosophy of true culture, that is, the philosophy of "ideas and the true intellect, the philosophy of person and true self-realization". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Scripta Mediaevalia is the property of Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Even more than 60 years after his death the interest in Wittgenstein's philosophy is still unbroken. Within the last two or three decades, however, we can observe an additional emphasis on the philosopher's personality and his socio-cultural background. One way of explaining this development is the assumption that the work of an author, artist, or other intellectual cannot be separated from the person and his or her biographical setting. If this thesis is correct, one also has to take into account the lifeworld context within which any kind of intellectual oeuvre is ingrained. In this paper I try to give a very rough sketch of Wittgenstein's Vienna and its socio-economic and cultural milieu around 1900. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antonio Ramos Díaz has recently given an extensive critique of what I have called the "storage problem" for materialism about the human mind. I respond to Díaz, showing that his critique fails. First, I rehearse the storage problem, explaining what claims it does and does not involve. I then consider Díaz's "strong" and "weak" interpretations of my argument, explaining why I do not subscribe to the strong version, which misinterprets my position, especially concerning the meaning of the term "concrete." His weak version of my argument is closer to what I intend, but Díaz's own unpacking of this interpretation also commits me to claims I do not, for very good reasons, accept. Díaz does not, in the end, show the storage problem to be--as he thinks--an unsound way of arguing for dualism. Getting concepts into a purely material human intellect still looks like the metaphysical equivalent of fitting a square peg into a round hole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical documents show that urban life and urbanization is the first manifestation of complete form of human life, and it seems that most of human thoughts, like philosophies, were shaped in the cities and urbanizations. It means that the urban life is a society which has many social factors like: social classes and groups, economy, political power, organizations, family, cultures and geographical and environmental circumstances, that they cause to form many thoughts like human philosophies, then we see that most of past philosophers were in the cities in where urbanization was formed and thinkers could think by using of elements which are grown in such urbanizations. So, the being of urban life is necessary for making philosophical thoughts, because there are such social factors of urban living, can effect human's thinking and shape his/her worldview. But we can see the role of humankinds as a free existent who has divine position, intellect and freedom, then, he/she can manage, control and change the impacts of urban factors on philosophical thought. It means that effects of urbanizations and cultures as clear manifestation of urban life on philosophies is possible only by using of human's will and thinking as the central factor of the urban life and philosophy, while he/she can control and change these impacts. In fact, although human is under the impact of social and urban factors, he/she is not determined absolutely, but has freedom and intellect to control and change them. So, there is no place for absolute determinism due to social forces of urban life, but it seems there is a kind of intermediate state between absolute determinism and libertarianism. In this paper, it is tries to analysis the role of social and urban factors as the most important elements of the urban life on philosophy and philosophical thinking, and to argue that how human can manage this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on analytic philosophy as a superficial intellectual exercise. The characteristic of the discipline leads to strange disputes. The most prominent of which is the cleavage between analytic and continental philosophy. Continental philosophers get straight to the point is to misunderstand the nature of their activity.

The idea of our text focuses on Dimitrie Cantemir's conception of logic, illustrated throughout the work of the great Romanian scholar, as propaedeutics for the other sciences, as "organon" of the concrete thinking. This is also the reason why the Prince philosopher recommends the teaching of logic in schools as an outstanding tool for conquering the truth and the "kingdom of philosophy". It is not known if he taught logic. But, through the educational valences of his work, Dimitrie Cantemir remained and will remain forever the first reformer and true educator of the Romanian nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues against the idea of most philosophers that human and animal minds are radically different from another either architecturally or that humans possess a second mind non-human animals lack. It notes that the differences between humans and other animals are qualitative involving a distinctive kind of functional organization that qualifies as a mind that is not possessed by other animals. It argues that animal minds are real and are the only minds that humans possess.

Over the last several years a number of leading philosophers - including Catherine Elgin, Linda Zagzebski, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Duncan Pritchard - have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the contemporary focus on knowledge in epistemology and have attempted to 'recover' the notion of understanding. According to some of these philosophers, in fact, understanding deserves not just to be recovered, but to supplant knowledge as the focus of epistemological inquiry. This entry considers some of the main reasons why philosophers have taken understanding to be more valuable than knowledge, focusing on claims that it is more transparent, that it better reflects or mirrors the world, and that it is a greater intellectual achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper Weinberg (2007) claims that there is an essential mark of trustworthiness which typical sources of evidence as perception or memory have, but philosophical intuitions lack, namely that we are able to detect and correct errors produced by these “hopeful” sources. In my paper I will argue that being a hopeful source isn't necessary for providing us with evidence. I then will show that, given some plausible background assumptions, intuitions at least come close to being hopeful, if they are reliable. If this is true, Weinberg's new challenge comes down to the claim that philosophical intuitions are not reliable since they are significantly unstable. In the second part of my paper I will argue that and why the experimentally established instability of folk intuitions about philosophical cases does not show that philosopher's expert intuitions about these cases are instable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dominican theologian Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) was one of the first to investigate into the system of the world on the basis of an acquaintance with the entire Aristotelian corpus, which he read under the influence of Islamic philosophers. The present study aims to understand the core of Albert's natural philosophy. Albert's emblematic phrase, “every work of nature is the work of intelligence” (omne opus naturae est opus intelligentiae), expresses the conviction that natural things are produced by the intellects that move the celestial bodies, just as houses are made by architects moving their instruments. Albert tried to fathom the secret of generation of natural things with his novel notion of “formative power” (virtus formativa), which flows from the celestial intellects into the sublunary elements. His conception of the natural world represents an alternative to the dominant medieval view on the relationship between the artificial and the natural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the subject of love, based on the perception of philosopher Jacques Derrida. The author explained that Derrida explored the capabilities of an individual in love matters. He inquired on whether one loves someone for absolute singularity or seeks for the personal qualities like beauty, youth and intelligence. He determined that the history of love came apart the who and what in any situation. Furthermore, Plato's dialogues have also involved the practice of love and its ambivalent powers.

The article focuses on the life and philosophical concept of German-Jewish philosopher Edith Stein and German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The failure to secure an academic appointment, work experience as a war-time nurse, and personal relationships have influenced Stein's philosophy in life. It contradicts Heidegger's philosophy on the separation of intellect and moral values to the success of the person. Moral values are the basic factors for intellectual achievements.

Peter Geach describes the ‘doctrine of distribution’ as the view that a term is distributed if it refers to everything that it denotes, and undistributed if it refers to only some of the things that it denotes. He argues that the notion, so explained, is incoherent. He claims that the doctrine of distribution originates from a degenerate use of the notion of ‘distributive supposition’ in medieval supposition theory sometime in the 16th century. This paper proposes instead that the doctrine of distribution occurs at least as early as the 12th century, and that it originates from a study of Aristotle's notion of a term's being ‘taken universally’, and not from the much later theory of distributive supposition. A detailed version of the doctrine found in the Port Royal Logic is articulated, and compared with a slightly different modern version. Finally, Geach's arguments for the incoherence of the doctrine are discussed and rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plato builds an impressive theatrical gear-system and choreography of images at the beginning of book VII of The Republic, which aims at narrating the human condition in a figurative and vivid manner. He draws upon an important flow of images to awaken originally immobilized awarenesses so that they can liberate themselves and conquer wisdom in order to act, socially, with justice. At the same time, essential theses of its theory are being explained: dualism, the ontological and antithetic difference between the sensible and comprehensible world; the relationships of immediate perception to the senses and the order of ideal realities, the "be" in itself, mediate knowledge that can be apprehended by the intellect. Through pictures, the philosopher draws necessary steps for the spirit to attain the science of the absolute, a body of truths determining the essence oνσία, when he formulates a discourse of formal abstraction, the Theory of Ideas; and with all the problems this theory, in its philosophical history, causes him and his successors, controversial reflections are being set off that later will be called "metaphysics". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers some of the material in philosopher Immanuel Kant which are speculated to emphasize on the development of pragmatism. Passages in which Kant uses pragmatic formulations and the term pragmatism itself are offered. Kant believes the concept of a highest intelligence which he calls a mere idea and a heuristic concept.

The article looks into the views of philosopher Henri Bergson on the future of philosophy in his book "Matter and Memory." Bergson cited the history of metaphysics and its shortcomings. He also emphasized the importance for human beings to possess perception, intelligence and language for them to respond to the essentials of the social life. Moreover, he claimed that failure of philosophy to take into account the essential pragmatic nature of these tools.

The article examines several essays which discuss the philosophical thought of philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson's concept of intuition have been evaluated for its application in intellectual discussion. One of the essays evaluated Bergon's philosophy of evolution and scientific truth. His argument on nature was compared to that espoused by Albert Einstein.

The proposal about human being's supreme objective offered by Avempace -philosopher and Aristotelian commentator-, consists on the absolute union of both: the subject's intellect-soul and the agent intellect, the latter characterized by being one, separated, eternal, in addition that in itself contains the universal spiritual forms of all things. For this reason the soul's immateriality as well as its immortality are guaranteed, due to the intellect's absolute spirituality. Because of the corruption given in societies and political practices, this final objective is reached through the best way of life, which consists on solitude and reflection; only this way the highest perfection is acquired. After understanding the relevance Avempace granted to the agent intellect, Albert the Great denied the possibility of union with the mentioned intellect, due to the abolition of all plurality as well as the dissolution of all individuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Filosóficos is the property of Estudios Filosoficos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Discusses the book "Aquinas on Being," by Anthony Kenny and logicism. Observations regarding the book; Metaphysical doctrine of Thomas Aquinas; Views of both Aquinas and Kenny on logicism.

The article presents the author's reply to comments of philosopher James Muir on the author's ignorance of the history of philosophy of education. According to the author, too many currently influential educationists, professor J. White in particular, are literally unaware that educational philosophy has a history more than three hundred years in duration. The author also believes that the history of philosophy of education has no contemporary intellectual value for philosophers of education and that in turning their back on this history in favour of attachment to currently fashionable theories in general philosophy, the latter have taken a wrong turning.

Jerome Bruner points out in his prologue to the first volume of the English translation of The Collected Works that Vygotsky flirts with the idea that language creates free will. This article attempts to consider the influence of the Dutch seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza on Vygotsky. An account of Spinoza's anti-Cartesian conception of will is given, to which Vygotsky recognizes his indebtedness. We will consider elements of Spinoza's philosophy that were important to Vygotsky's theory of the development of intellect, and claim that an appreciation of the philosophy informing Vygotsky's theory of the development of intellect is necessary if the full implications of his project are to be grasped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the philosophical work of Willard Van Orman Quine regarding intensional entities. Importance of his work in contemporary philosophy and logic; Focus on extensionalism; Foundations of his extensionalist shift.

Discusses the differences in ideas between Hubert Dreyfus and Harry Collins about the intelligent behavior of human beings. Determination whether Collins or Dreyfus has the most defensible position; Examples that Dreyfus provides that gives meaning to an embodied human perceiver; View of Dreyfus on the basis of of the claim that an able body is required for intelligence;

The article presents the views of Greek philosophers regarding rhetoric. Greek philosophers who preceded Aristotle, especially Plato, and Isocrates, developed their respective views on persuasive discourse or rhetoric based upon their larger philosophical projects. Aristotle developed his understanding of rhetoric as a part of his larger philosophical project. Other writers have certainly related aspects of Aristotle's rhetoric to aspects of his philosophy. Aristotle's enthymeme fits into his rhetorical scheme. The conception of the value of argument, the process of invention by which arguments are to be discovered, the extent to which the devices of elocution are to be employed, is a the result of his evaluation of the reliability of the intellect, the nature and availability of truth, and the existence of certitude. While Gorgias developed a non-formal, epistemological system based upon what can be reductively called a kind of relativism from which his view of rhetoric necessarily followed, Plato assailed against what he considered to be Gorgias's incorrect use of language as opposed to what he considered to be his more correct understanding of language's use through a primitive and constructed dialectic.

Presents comments on the essay "Plotinus," by L.P. Gerson regarding the philosophy of Plotinus. Overview of the intellectual milieu of the late Roman Empire; Discussion of imputation of scholastic anachronism; Recognition of multiplicity in either the physical world of the Nous.

Examines the roles of reason and sense-experience in epistemology and methodology in the "Phaedo," by the philosopher Plato. Argument for recollection in the "Phaedo"; Description of the philosopher's practice of death; Theory of the gradual development of the human mind.

El artículo habla de la esfera política y como intenta de fusionar lo político y lo social a través de la filosofía de Xavier Zubiri. Según el filósofo español, la realidad es parte del proceso de sentir, que tiene un lugar determinado. El campo social se consiste de tres partes: la acción social, la socialidad de las acciones, y la socialidad de la persona. Zubiri interpreta la filosofía entre la logificación de la inteligencia y de la realidad.

Explores some aspects in Charles Sanders Peirce's philosophical logic. Distinction between a proposition and an assertion or affirmation; Difference between the immediate object and the dynamical object; Ways of using fictional names.

The article discusses the fundamental propositions of philosophy, reason and literacy in the context of education. Educational philosophers often lecture on rationality as fundamental to the literacy obtained through education. Philosophers have attached varied connotations to the concept of reason. A few of them stressed on reason as it has been used in the context of critical judgments, while a few others on reason as specified in the conception or symbolic structuring of experience. Some philosophers attach importance to the regulative role of reason with regard to thought and action, that are assumed to be guided by human rationality. Philosophers have also stressed the importance of critical reflection in the formation of rational action.

Discusses philosophers' ways of loving wisdom. Distinction between theoretical knowledge as justified belief in propositions of a certain high order of abstraction and wisdom as a mature and intuitive nonpropositional grasp of practical truths; Understanding of wisdom as insight into the extra-empirical nature of reality and the human condition, the unwritten rules of effective interaction with other persons or reasonable expectations about the prospects of life and death; Limit of philosophy's romance.