Descartes

L'eredità cartesiana. Conversazione con Giulia Belgioioso.

by Simone Guidi

in "Lo Sguardo", n. II, 2010 (I)

Recensione di Igor Agostini, "L'infinità di Dio. Il dibattito da Suarez a Caterus", Editori Riuniti University Press 2008

by Simone Guidi

in "Lo Sguardo", n. II, 2010 (I)

Unità e scissione del "capire" cartesiano. Gli "Scritti Su Cartesio" di Luigi Scaravelli

by Simone Guidi

in "La Cultura", 2 (2009), pp. 349-356

Il teatro cartesiano: sulla funzione della "teatralità" barocca nella Prima Meditazione di Descartes

by Simone Guidi

In M. Gatto, L. Viglialoro (eds), "L'esperienza dell'arte", Galaad Edizioni 2011, pp. 21-55.

Descartes em Kant

by Luciano Codato

About Descartes and Kant, a certain relation of inherency has already been noticed, as if one should recognize that... more About Descartes and Kant, a certain relation of inherency has already been noticed, as if one should recognize that “when Kant thinks, Descartes still implicitly advances”. However, is a probable convergence between ontological theses - as Heidegger remarks - sufficient to nullify divergences as to methodological choices? In order to investigate this “Descartes in Kant” relationship, one has to move from the standpoint of being to that correlate of thinking, and observe in what measure words like “evidence” and “certainty”, once redefined, allow the clarification of the originality of the methodological problem in the Critique of Pure Reason. If the purpose is a sketch of the question “how are synthetic judgments a priori possible?”, it is so because it could be possible to verify, through a brief genealogy, in what sense Kant conceives the scientific form of philosophy having Descartes as his ground, however against Descartes as well.

¿Qué es sentir? Aspectos fenomenológicos de la interacción mente-cuerpo en la Sexta Meditación

by Ariela Battán Horenstein

David Hume'un Epistemolojisinde İki Kavram : Bellek ve İmgelem

by Sinan Kösedağ

Levinas: Öznenin Hükümranlığından Yüzün Hükümranlığına

by Sinan Kösedağ

Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities

by Jon Awbrey

Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (May 2001), “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities”, Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, pp. 269–284.

Today’s society looks to universities for solutions to broad-based issues that require cross-disciplinary expertise.... more Today’s society looks to universities for solutions to broad-based issues that require cross-disciplinary expertise. Yet, the organizational structure of our institutions remains locked in academic and administrative silos that have little genuine ability to communicate or to recognize the interdependence of knowledge. Why does the capacity to communicate between disciplines and units remain limited? How do formalizations of our experience create barriers? What kind of reflection would it take to subject our mental models of knowledge and learning to critical inquiry? This discussion highlights one of the most entrenched ‘group identity myths’ that underlie the structure of modern academic institutions, the ‘triviality of integration’ thesis.

Legitimating the Machine: The Epistemological Foundations of Technological Metaphor in the Natural Philosophy of René Descartes

by Andres Vaccari

Philosophies of Technology: Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries. Edited by Claus Zittel. Volume 11: Intersections - Yearbook for Early Modern Studies (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2008).

This paper examines the role of machine metaphors in the natural philosophy and metaphysics of René Descartes... more This paper examines the role of machine metaphors in the natural philosophy and metaphysics of René Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes was a key figure in the close alliance of systematic reason and technological practice that characterizes the technoscientific turn of the seventeenth century. I argue that for Descartes the machine was a technological thesis and a heuristic device, and that these two aspects are closely interdependent in his philosophy.

Descartes’ contribution was to ground the machine on an ontological and epistemological basis, exploring, among other things, the poetic and conceptual possibilities of a mechanical theory of life. The machine is, on one hand, a true expression of how the world really is, as well as the conceptual foundation for our understanding of this same world. I focus, then, on these two main aspects: how technical artifacts and processes enter Descartes’ philosophy of nature, and the role of analogy in his scientific method.

I begin by situating Descartes in his historical, conceptual and technological milieu, pinpointing the material and cultural sources of natural-philosophical explanation. I move on to a broad outline of Descartes’ physics, which has a markedly metaphysical character. Then, to the heuristic machinery of epistemology: the apparatus of perception and how mechanics serves as the basis for clear and distinct knowledge. I argue that, for Descartes, science is about the creation of intermediary hypotheses, and situate this approach in the context of the Cartesian view of human knowledge in the larger scheme of things (i.e., the theological framework for Descartes’ philosophy of science and technology). In turn, Descartes’ perspective is informed by a ‘semiotics’ of non-resemblance (in which our impressions do not ‘resemble’ their referent or source). I then examine how the machine becomes the ‘master’ metaphor, constitutive and productive of knowledge.

I hope this paper is a contribution to the historical understanding of the scientific revolution—in particular, as establishing one of the most influential paths through which technology and science entered in dialogue, and became productive of each other. More generally, it is a historical case study on the role of metaphors in scientific knowledge.

Plato's Ontological Proof

by Mark Faller

Performance as Guerrilla Ontology: The Case of Stelarc

by Chris Fleming

Published in "Body & Society."

Is Nothing Sacred? Privatization and the Person.

by Chris Fleming

Published in "Nebula."

A Peace More Primordial Than War: William Desmond and the Sabbath as Festive Mindfulness

by Brendan Sammon

Paper presented at the Popular Culture Association Conference on Leisure, Chaminade University, HI, 2007.

It is often assumed that at the very base of all existence resides a primordial conflict, or war, that human reason... more It is often assumed that at the very base of all existence resides a primordial conflict, or war, that human reason alone orders and disciplines. But such a conclusion derives from certain philosophical assumptions as arbitrary as they are misguided. This presentation considers a different point of view, that of the contemporary philosopher William Desmond, whose metaphysics is based upon a primordial peace at the heart of all being. Recognizing this primordial peace requires recognizing the nature and limits of the kind of mind that concludes on a primordial war. The Sabbath for thought, configured as festive mindfulness – that is, as the contemplative celebration of mind’s limits in the face of being’s generous excess – becomes a way in which the original peace of being may be continually verified precisely as it is offered in this Sabbath.  That there is a peace more primordial than war is a reality whose truth is in excess of determinate categories.  This is why it requires a Sabbath: only when the mind willingly relinquishes its act of determination can it arrive at the contemplation of that after which this act is striving.  Only then can the mind experience the peace more primordial than war. 

4. On Language, Concepts, and Automata: Rational and Irrational Animals in Aristotle and Descartes

by Catherine Rowett

Available in Oxford Scholarship Online

This chapter considers whether language or concepts are necessary for intelligent purposive agency, and argues that... more This chapter considers whether language or concepts are necessary for intelligent purposive agency, and argues that neither humans nor animals require propositional thought or concepts for normal decisions and purposive behaviour. The idea that second order reflection on reasons and intentions is additionally available to humans is shown to be irrelevant to first order intention. Descartes' mechanistic account of human and animal behaviour is inspired by Aristotle's discussion in De motu animalium, but deliberately rejects ‘imagination’ (phantasia), which served for Aristotle to secure intelligent agency by means of stored perceptions, without mental concepts or complex propositions. Aristotle's account (including Posterior Analytics B19) is compared to Plato's notion of recollection (anamnesis) as a source of concepts in humans and animals, with a view to illustrating the similarity of the two models, and the relative merits of the Platonic one.

The Building Blocks of Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance, Attributes, and Modes

by Yitzhak Melamed

Forthcoming in Michael Della Rocca (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Clear and Distinct Perceptions and Clear and Dtistinct Ideas: The Cartesian Circle

by Marco Motta

This paper explores a famous criticism to Descartes’ argument concerning the cogito and its relation to the arguments... more This paper explores a famous criticism to Descartes’ argument concerning the cogito and its relation to the arguments for the existence of God, which is traditionally referred to as the Cartesian Circle. In an attempt to provide a clear formulation of the problem itself, this article will attempt to draw a distinction between the concepts of clear and distinct perceptions and clear and distinct ideas. While clear and distinct perceptions, like the cogito, or the mathematical geometrical truths, would yield no more than a performative necessity, clear and distinct ideas, like the idea of God, imply a formal/objective necessity.
In conclusion, this paper argues that, despite Descartes does not explicitly solve the problem of the Cartesian Circle, the distinction he draws between the epistemological truth yielded by perceptions and the formal/objective truth given in ideas, clears the ground for different possible solutions which will be explored by following philosophers.

Psychology and Physics Reconciled: Whitehead's Vision of Metaphysics

by Anderson Weekes

In: Franz Riffert and Michel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts: Whiteheadian Contributions to Contemporary Challenges in Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishers, ISBN 3-631-39089-0), 2003, pp. 347–374.
English

Major schools of thought in the 20th century agreed in repudiating metaphysical speculation, but the agreement was... more Major schools of thought in the 20th century agreed in repudiating metaphysical speculation, but the agreement was superficial, for what they repudiated as “metaphysical” was often one another. Whitehead’s defense of speculative philosophy as “productive of important knowledge” singled him out for scorn from all sides at the same time that it enabled him to move beyond dogmatic standoffs . Employing the same method of speculative generalization that led to the most celebrated theoretical discoveries of the 20th century, quantum theory and special relativity, Whitehead sought to resolve the conflict between objectifying, causal explanations of the world and its inhabitants and the “folk” attitudes defended and elaborated by humanistic psychologies and philosophies. The result was his theory of the “dipolar actual occasion” as the fundamental unit of existence. Recent work by leading scientists continues this effort to elaborate a nonreductive monism that accounts for both meaning and causation.

Nota sobre a Dúvida Cartesiana

by Alexandre N. Machado

(2007) em: Dois Pontos, vol. 4, n. 2, pp. 81-102

Esta nota tem como objetivo formular questões que mostram certas dificuldades na compreensão da dúvida metódica... more Esta nota tem como objetivo formular questões que mostram certas dificuldades na compreensão da dúvida metódica cartesiana. Trata-se de uma avaliação crítica que parte da seguinte hipótese: ou a dúvida metódica não é inteligível ou ela não é uma dúvida.Prima facie, a dúvida metódica parece ser irracional, pois em seu escopo estão proposições que parecem ser paradigmas de racionalidade. Algumas explicações da inteligibilidade da dúvi- da metódica parecem destituí-la do caráter de dúvida, como aquelas que procuram compatibilizar a dúvida metódica e a crença. As principais questões tratadas nesta nota são: (1) Qual é a motivação epistêmica da dúvida metódica? (2) Dado o que está disponível ao medi- tador na Primeira Meditação, o que é apresentado como razão para duvidar pode ser cons ide- rado realmente desse mo do? Em especial, por que o apelo ao provável não ne u t raliza essas supostas razões? (3) A dúvida metódica é compatível com as necessidades epistêmicas da vida prática? (4) Qual é a na t u reza da atitude denominada “dúvida” e qual é o seu objeto?

Viète, Descartes, and the emergence of modern mathematics

by Danielle Macbeth