scholarly journals What Caused the Bhopal Gas Tragedy? The Philosophical Importance of Causal and Pragmatic Details

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Importance

Three Kantian Routes to the Synthetic A Priori

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Importance

Abstract Kant influentially distinguished analytic from synthetic a priori propositions, and he took certain propositions in the latter category to be of immense philosophical importance. His distinction between the analytic and the synthetic has been accepted by many and attacked by others; but despite its importance, a number of discussions of it since at least W. V. Quine’s have paid insufficient attention to some of the passages in which Kant draws the distinction. This paper seeks to clarify what appear to be three distinct conceptions of the analytic (and implicitly of the synthetic) that are presented in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and in some other Kantian texts. The conceptions are important in themselves, and their differences are significant even if they are extensionally equivalent. The paper is also aimed at showing how the proposed understanding of these conceptions—and especially the one that has received insufficient attention from philosophers—may bear on how we should conceive the synthetic a priori, in and beyond Kant’s own writings.

Mathematical Determinacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-275
Author(s):  
Jared Warren
Keyword(s):  
Set Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mathematical Truth ◽  
Church’S Thesis ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Church's Thesis ◽  
Philosophical Importance

This chapter addresses the second major challenge for the extension of conventionalism from logic to mathematics: the richness of mathematical truth. The chapter begins by distinguishing indeterminacy from pluralism and clarifying the crucial notion of open-endedness. It then critically discusses the two major strategies for securing arithmetical categoricity using open-endedness; one based on a collapse theorem, the other on a kind of anti-overspill idea. With this done, a new argument for the categoricity of arithmetic is then presented. In subsequent discussion, the philosophical importance of this categoricity result is called into question to some degree. The categoricity argument is then supplemented by an appeal to the infinitary omega rule, and an argument is given that beings like us can actually follow the omega rule without any violation of Church’s thesis. Finally, the chapter discusses the extension of this type of approach beyond arithmetic, to set theory and the rest of mathematics.

scholarly journals Plausible Emergence of Autocatalytic Cycles under Prebiotic Conditions

Life ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Piotto ◽  
Lucia Sessa ◽  
Andrea Piotto ◽  
Anna Nardiello ◽  
Simona Concilio
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Scientific Question ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
Autopoietic Systems ◽  
Simulation Based ◽  
Simple Rules ◽  
Prebiotic Environments ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Emergence Of Life ◽  
Philosophical Importance

The emergence of life in a prebiotic world is an enormous scientific question of paramount philosophical importance. Even when life (in any sense we can define it) can be observed and replicated in the laboratory, it is only an indication of one possible pathway for life emergence, and is by no means be a demonstration of how life really emerged. The best we can hope for is to indicate plausible chemical–physical conditions and mechanisms that might lead to self-organizing and autopoietic systems. Here we present a stochastic simulation, based on chemical reactions already observed in prebiotic environments, that might help in the design of new experiments. We will show how the definition of simple rules for the synthesis of random peptides may lead to the appearance of networks of autocatalytic cycles and the emergence of memory.

Experimental Philosophy

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Feltz
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Philosophical Importance

AbstractExperimental philosophy is a new approach to philosophy that incorporates the experimental methodologies of psychology, behavioral economics, and sociology. Experimental philosophers generally maintain that, in addition to traditional philosophical practices, these ways of gathering evidence can be instrumental in shedding light on philosophically important issues. Rather than relying on their own intuitions about specific cases, experimental philosophers perform systematic experiments to determine what intuitions people have about those cases. These intuitions are then used as evidence. In this context, four main approaches to experimental philosophy are introduced, a sample of experimental philosophy's results is offered, and some of the philosophical importance of those results is explained.

Against the Sartrean Background: Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saulias Geniusas
Keyword(s):  
The Real ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Philosophical Importance ◽  
Reproductive Imagination

The paper addresses Ricoeur’s critique of Sartre in light of Ricoeur’s unpublished Lectures on Imagination. I argue that Ricoeur’s critique is twofold: hermeneutical and phenomenological. The hermeneutical critique relies on two central claims, namely, that Sartre fails to distinguish productive and reproductive imagination and that this distinction is language-based. I argue that neither claim is justified. The phenomenological critique casts doubts on Sartre’s sharp distinction between the real and the imaginary. It relies on Ricoeur’s phenomenology of painting, which offers an alternative way to distinguish productive and reproductive imagination. In place of a conclusion, I inquire into the reasons why Ricoeur, who considers imagination a theme of central philosophical importance, never wrote a separate book on imagination. I maintain that the reasons are methodological: the phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches to imagination are irreconcilable since the first one relies on the primacy of pre-predicative experience, while the second one is based on the primacy of language.

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