Philosophia

Η διδακτική αυτή προσέγγιση αφορά στο σχεδιασμό και την υλοποίηση της διδασκαλίας στο πλαίσιο ενός μαθήματος φιλοσοφίας σχετικά με τις θεωρίες της γνώσης στη Β΄ Γενικού Λυκείου,  με  βάση  το διδακτικό  βιβλίο  Αρχές  Φιλοσοφίας  στο  πλαίσιο  του  αναλυτικού προγράμματος.  Πιο  συγκεκριμένα,  θα  προσπαθήσουμε  να  προτείνουμε  τον  εμπλουτισμό του κεφαλαίου 3: Αναζητώντας τη γνώση, ενότητα τρίτη: Θεωρίες για την πηγή της γνώσης, χρησιμοποιώντας  στοιχεία  θεωρίας  της  γνώσης  και  της  αντίληψης  των  Προσωκρατικών.  Στόχος  μας  είναι  να  εμπλουτίσουμε  το  κεφάλαιο  αυτό  με  στοιχεία  προσωκρατικής  φιλοσοφίας ως παλαιότερης χρονολογικά και προϋπάρχουσας εκείνης της Κλασικής εποχής  και των Νεοτέρων χρόνων.

This paper considers three essential gestures in Levinas’s theology, highlighting in each case how Levinas’s thinking allows him to either incorporate or sidestep some of the fiercest modern criticisms of traditional theism. First, we present Levinas’s vision of divine transcendence, outlining his ontological atheism and explaining how this obviates proving the existence of God and avoids the tangles of traditional

In “What is Wrong with Rational Suicide,” Pilpel and Amsel develop a counterexample that allegedly confounds attempts to condition the moral permissibility of suicide on its rationality. In this counterexample, a healthy middle aged woman with significant life accomplishments, but no dependents, disease, or mental disorder opts to end her life painlessly after reading philosophical texts that persuade her that life is meaningless and bereft of intrinsic value. Many people would judge her suicide “a bad mistake” despite its meeting “robust” conditions for rationality. Hence, Pilpel and Amsel conclude, even robust conditions for the rationality of suicide “fail to do their job: to exclude intuitively unacceptable suicides from being permissible.” I argue here that this counterexample fails to cast doubt on philosophical attempts to account for the moral permissibility of suicide in terms of its rationality.

A popular stance amongst philosophers is one according to which, in Lewis’ words, “identity is utterly simple and unproblematic”. Building from Lewis’ famous passage on the matter, we reconstruct, and then criticize, an argument to the conclusion that identities cannot be grounded. With the help of relatively uncontroversial assumption concerning identity facts, we show that not all identities are equi-fundamental, and, on the contrary, some appear to be provided potential grounding bases using two-level identity criteria. Further potential grounding bases for identities are presented. Identity might be utterly simple and unproblematic, but this is not sufficient to conclude that identities are ungrounded, or fundamental.

This paper studies Xenophon’s sixteen uses of the term philosophos and its cognates.  I present the unfamiliar observation that Xenophon never in his own voice calls Socrates a philosopher, and his Socrates refers to himself as a philosopher only once (Oec. 16.9), in a way that seems rather more conversationally incidental than self-descriptive. My point is to explore Xenophon’s diffidence about calling Socrates a philosopher. I find it related to his apologetic goals and his skepticism about certain intellectual movements. I also show, more briefly, that there are similar difficulties in understanding Plato’s frequent diffidence in calling Socrates a philosopher. This similarity prompts new and useful reflections about the image of Socrates (and philosophy) in the first half of the fourth century.

This paper focuses on one of the major criticisms made to Aristotle's virtue ethics, namely that it lacks explicit moral action guidance. The same criticism has been addressed to later developments of virtue ethics. There have been several attempts to overcome this objection and to demonstrate that modern theories of virtue ethics do provide principles of right action. In this paper, I discuss mainly two such major attempts: the exemplarist approach and the virtue rules approach. My aim is to examine whether, if applied to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, these two approaches can provide a convincing answer to the criticism that Aristotle’s ethics does not offer explicit moral action guidance .

The present article aims to examine George Eliot’s Silas Marner through the lens of Kierkegaard’s notion of three spheres of
existence. Soren Kierkeggard as theistic existentialist, reshaped existential notions in the framework of religion since, for him, the main
problem lies in redefining the true Christianity. In other words he painted all existential problems in religious light, perceiving God as the
only source anyone can pin his faith on to transcend the temporal. The focus of this article is to analyze four characters of the novel, Silas,
Godfrey, Dunstan and William Dane, in the light of three spheres of life, i.e. aesthetic, ethical and religious modes of life. Furthermore, the
researcher will examine the notions of infinite resignation and leap of faith in connection with unique character of Silas at the point in the
novel where he renounces God, sinking into despair in the aftermath of drawing lot.
Keywords: Kierkegaard, Silas, Three Spheres of Existence, Leap of Faith, Infinite Resignation.

Il se pourrait qu’il n’y ait pas grand chose de commun entre ce que nous nommons philosophie et ce que Platon nomme philosophia. Chez lui, la philosophie n’est encore assurée ni de sa possibilité, ni de sa réalité, ni de sa définition, ni même de son nom, elle l’est seulement, et seulement pour elle-même, de sa nécessité. En s’élevant, déjà, contre une étymologie qui fait de la philosophia un « désir de savoir » ou « un amour de la sagesse » et croit ainsi en avoir assez dit sur elle, Platon explore toutes les implications d’un mot dont il invente le sens « philosophique ».
Il s’agit donc, dans ce livre, de faire deux choses en même temps. Il s’attache à déterminer les différents sens donnés par Platon au terme philosophia : dénommant, dans les premiers Dialogues, la force obstinée qui anime un personnage, Socrate, la philosophia reçoit du Phédon jusqu’au Phèdre ses dimensions intérieures, l’ironie destructrice s’alliant dans un naturel philosophe à un délire érotique et inventif; pour finir, sa modalité dialectique et interrogative se précise tandis que s’opère sa déduction politique et cosmologique. Mais voir dans les Dialogues l’expression d’une philosophia prenant conscience de sa puissance a pour condition et pour effet de détourner l’attention du contenu doctrinal vers la manière dont les problèmes sont posés, reposés et repensés. Le seul but de cette entreprise est donc d’inviter à lire avec scrupule et liberté les textes les plus subtilement déroutants, les plus volontairement fragmentés, les plus multiplement médiatisés qui soient.

The Greek identification of certain Indian people as philosophoi at the end of the fourth century bce provides unique information about the meaning of the term philosophia, especially with respect to its reference to a certain kind of "way of life" (bios), at the time of its greatest maturity (at the start of the Hellenistic period). The Indica of Megasthenes, an ambassador to northern India after the death of Alexander, is our most important evidence; fragments from earlier works by Nearchus and Onesicritus, intellectuals in Alexander's cortege, provide corroboration. This essay argues that late classical Greeks did largely think of philosophia as a way of life.

This paper maintains (following Yougrau 1987; 2000 and Hinchliff 1996) that the dead and other former existents count as examples of non-existent objects. If the dead number among the things there are, a further question arises: what is it to be dead—how should the state of being dead be characterised? It is argued that this state should be characterised negatively: the dead are not persons, philosophers etc. They lack any of the (intrinsic) qualities they had while they lived. The only facts involving the dead are facts about the relations they stand in—including the relations they bear to the qualities they formerly instantiated, and the intentional relations they stand in to us. Given an appropriate conception of qualities the dead can be said to be quality-less objects: bare particulars. The ‘Bare Particular Theory’ of individuals, it is argued, is coherent if and only if it concedes that the bare particulars it allows for don’t exist. The account of the dead and other former existents as bare particulars does justice to the misfortune of death, and points the way to a general theory of nonexistent objects.

By pointing to deep philosophical confusions endemic to cognitive science, Wittgenstein might seem an enemy of computational approaches. We agree (with Mills 1993) that while Wittgenstein would reject the classicist’s symbols and rules approach, his observations align well with connectionist or neural network approaches. While many connectionisms that dominated the later twentieth century could fall prey to criticisms of biological, pedagogical, and linguistic implausibility, current connectionist approaches can resolve those problems in a Wittgenstein-friendly manner. We (a) present the basics of a Vector Symbolic Architecture formalism, inspired by Smolensky (1990), and indicate how high-dimensional vectors can operate in a context-sensitive and object-independent manner in biologically plausible time scales, reflecting Wittgenstein’s notions of language-games and family resemblance; we (b) show how “soft” symbols for such a formalism can be formed with plausible learning cycles u...

These teachings are, therefore, no novelties, no inventions of today, but long since stated, if not stressed; our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier and can show the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of Plato himself.-- Plotinus, Enneads V. 1. 8

Heyrmayîn, wekî hest (pathos) arkeya (arkhe ) fîlozofîyê ye. Em, divê peyva Grekî arkhe’yê, bi hemî maneyên wê fam bikin. Ew derdibire ku tiştek “ji ku” dest pê dike. Lê ev “ji ku”, wexta em ji wê dest pê dikin, li dû me namîne; berovajî vê arkhe, werdigere tişta ku lêkera arkhein (archein) wê tîne zimên, werdigere tişta serwer. Hesta (pathos) heyrmayînê weha bi awayekî hêsan li destpêka fîlozofîyê nasekine; li ser meselê, ne wekî şûştina destan a berî emelîyatê ye. Heyrmayîn, fîlozofîyê hildigire û ji destpêkê heta dawîyê serwer e.

I offer consequentialist and deontological arguments for a competitive market in human organs, from live as well as dead donors. I consider the objections that a market in organs will frustrate altruism, coerce the desperate, expose under-informed agents to unacceptable risks, exacerbate inequality, degrade those who participate in it, involve a kind of slavery, impose invidious costs, and impair third-party choice sets. I show that each of these objections is without merit and that, in consequence, the opposition to markets in organs is an untenable endorsement of death, suffering and the suppression of freedom.

Bu makalede, Platon diyaloglarından da anlaşılacağı üzere alethiea, psuche itibariyle söz konusu bütünsel bir tecrübe olarak ele alınmıştır. Bu anlamda Platon tarafından belirlenen philosophia sadece bir bilgi değil aynı zamanda bir katharsis; bir sağaltımdır. Dahası özel türden bir hatırlama edimidir; amnezi olarak çoktandır unutulanın yeniden hatırlanmasıdır. Adı Platon düşüncesinde anamnesis olarak belirlenen bu durum aslında aletheia’nın tecrübi şeklidir ve philosophia’yı da yine başka bir biçimde belirler. İşte bu nedenledir ki dramaturgos yeteneğiyle Platon tarafından icat edilen periaktoi (dönerek sahne değiştirme) philosophos’un doxa’dan çekip çıkarılması tanımlarken bir pathos’a ihtiyaç doğar. Bunu oluşturabilecek itici güç ise bir pathos olarak sadece eros’ta vardır. Bütünüyle kendi etrafında dönerek psuche, doxa sahnesinden aletheia sahnesine döner ve nôêsis vasıtasıyla eidos cihetinde saklandığı yerden açığa çıkan hakiki varlıkla (ontos on) karşı karşıya gelir.Aletheia i...

Alethic functionalism, as propounded by Michael Lynch, is the view that there are different ways to be true, but that these differences nevertheless contain enough unity to forestall outright pluralism. This view has many virtues. Yet, since one could conceivably apply Lynch's "one and many" strategy to other debates, I try show to how his argumentative steps can be used to solve—not just the controversy pertaining to truth—but any controversy that surrounds a "What is X?" question.