Pragmatic Diction:Owen Barfield, the Inklings and Pragmatism

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Prof. Giovanni Maddalena
Keyword(s):  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Scholastic Realism

Owen Barfield (1898-1997) has been a very eclectic writer: poet, novelist, and philosopher. Though almost unknown to philosophy scholars, his thought has been very influential on the work of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and it is worth being studied, understood, and used in connection with pragmatism. His philosophy amounts to a strong metaphysical realism that can parallel Peirce’s view of scholastic realism and, more generally, the pragmatist attitude toward a comprehension of reality based on continuity. Moreover, Barfield sustains a view of knowledge as ‘participation’ that is very close to Peirce’s understanding of knowledge as representation. Finally, he proposes a form of ‘synthetic’ reasoning that goes the same direction as many classical pragmatists’ attempts. Therefore, the threefold philosophical aim of this paper is (1) to introduce Owen Barfield’s main theories, (2) to show the parallel between Barfield’s and pragmatists’, and especially Peirce’s tenets, and (3) to show how pragmatism and Barfield’s theory can be reciprocally useful Men do not invent those mysterious relationsbetween separate external objects,and between objects and feelings or ideas,which it is the function of poetry to reveal.These relations exist independently, not indeed of Thoughtbut of any individual thinker. (Poetic Diction, 79)

Abduction as a Method of Inductive Metaphysics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Gerhard Schurz
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Common Causes

Like scientific theories, metaphysical theories can and should be justified by the inference of creative abduction (sec. 1–2). Two rationality conditions are proposed that distinguish scientific from speculative abductions: achievement of unification and independent testability (sec. 3). Particularly important in science is common cause abduction (sec. 4). The justification of metaphysical realism is structurally similar to scientific abductions: external objects are justified as common causes of perceptual experiences (sec. 6). While the reliability of common cause abduction is entailed by a principle of (Markov) causality (sec. 5), the latter principle has an abductive justification based on statistical phenomena (sec. 7).

Text Prophetism

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Elvira Lumi ◽  
Lediona Lumi
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
Poetic Text ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Life On Earth

"Utterance universalism" as a phrase is unclear, but it is enough to include the term "prophetism". As a metaphysical concept, it refers to a text written with inspiration which confirms visions of a "divine inspiration", "poetic" - "legal", that contains trace, revelation or interpretation of the origin of the creation of the world and life on earth but it warns and prospects their future in the form of a projection, literary paradigm, religious doctrine and law. Prophetic texts reformulate "toll-telling" with messages, ideas, which put forth (lat. "Utters Forth" gr. "Forthteller") hidden facts from fiction and imagination. Prometheus, gr. Prometheus (/ prəmiθprə-mee-mo means "forethought") is a Titan in Greek mythology, best known as the deity in Greek mythology who was the creator of humanity and charity of its largest, who stole fire from the mount Olympus and gave it to the mankind. Prophetic texts derive from a range of artifacts and prophetic elements, as the creative magic or the miracle of literary texts, symbolism, musicality, rhythm, images, poetic rhetoric, valence of meaning of the text, code of poetic diction that refers to either a singer in a trance or a person inspired in delirium, who believes he is sent by his God with a message to tell about events and figures that have existed, or the imaginary ancient and modern world. Text Prophetism is a combination of artifacts and platonic idealism. Key words: text Prophetism, holy text, poetic text, law text, vision, image, figure

Measuring the World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Sophie Barwich
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Information ◽  
Network Models ◽  
Model System ◽  
Stimulus Input ◽  
Expectancy Effects ◽  
Neural Network Models ◽  
Perceptual Object ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain

How much does stimulus input shape perception? The common-sense view is that our perceptions are representations of objects and their features and that the stimulus structures the perceptual object. The problem for this view concerns perceptual biases as responsible for distortions and the subjectivity of perceptual experience. These biases are increasingly studied as constitutive factors of brain processes in recent neuroscience. In neural network models the brain is said to cope with the plethora of sensory information by predicting stimulus regularities on the basis of previous experiences. Drawing on this development, this chapter analyses perceptions as processes. Looking at olfaction as a model system, it argues for the need to abandon a stimulus-centred perspective, where smells are thought of as stable percepts, computationally linked to external objects such as odorous molecules. Perception here is presented as a measure of changing signal ratios in an environment informed by expectancy effects from top-down processes.

scholarly journals Edgar Wind on Experiment and Metaphysics

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Falkenburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Theory Formation ◽  
Internal Realism ◽  
Detailed Interpretation ◽  
Holistic Theory ◽  
Central Claim

Abstract The paper presents a detailed interpretation of Edgar Wind’s Experiment and Metaphysics (1934), a unique work on the philosophy of physics which broke with the Neo-Kantian tradition under the influence of American pragmatism. Taking up Cassirer’s interpretation of physics, Wind develops a holistic theory of the experiment and a constructivist account of empirical facts. Based on the concept of embodiment which plays a key role in Wind’s later writings on art history, he argues, however, that the outcomes of measurements are contingent. He then proposes an anti-Kantian conception of a metaphysics of nature. For him, nature is an unknown totality which manifests itself in discrepancies between theories and experiment, and hence the theory formation of physics can increasingly approximate the structure of nature. It is shown that this view is ambiguous between a transcendental, metaphysical realism in Kant’s sense and an internal realism in Putnam’s sense. Wind’s central claim is that twentieth century physics offers new options for resolving Kant’s cosmological antinomies. In particular, he connected quantum indeterminism with the possibility of human freedom, a connection that Cassirer sharply opposed.

Hume's Account of Knowledge of External Objects

1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-480
Author(s):  
Robert Fendel Anderson
Keyword(s):  
External Objects

scholarly journals Kant and the forms of realism

Synthese ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietmar Heidemann
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Philosophical Questions

AbstractRealism takes many forms. The aim of this paper is to show that the “Critique of pure Reason” is the founding document of realism and that to the present-day Kant’s discussion of realism has shaped the theoretical landscape of the debates over realism. Kant not only invents the now common philosophical term ‘realism’. He also lays out the theoretical topography of the forms of realism that still frames our understanding of philosophical questions concerning reality. The paper explores this by analysis of Kant’s methodological procedure to distinguish between empirical (i.e. nonmetaphysical) and transcendental (metaphysical) realism. This methodological procedure is still of great help in contemporary philosophy, although it has its limits.

Remarks on Roman Poetic Diction (Concluded)

1919 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 188
Author(s):  
Arthur L. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Poetic Diction
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