Concept of education: Confluence of definition criteria, temporary formative orientation and common activity as core content of its meaning

In this work, the purpose is to establish the need to go beyond the nominal definition of the concept of education and justify the existence of distinctive traits of the real definition of the term ‘education’ in character and sense inherent in its meaning, which must be taken into account at all times and places, whenever we carry out pedagogical intervention. It is about forming criteria on meaning of ‘education’ and importance of Pedagogy in the construction of education fields. Knowledge of education makes it possible to build fields of education over cultural areas, transforming information into knowledge and knowledge into education. And this requires executing pedagogical function with competence, establishing an educational relationship in which common activity is the working tool.

A Logical Reconstruction of Leibniz’s Argument for His Complete Concept Conception of the Nature of Substance in Discours §8

This paper develops a valid reconstruction in first-order predicate logic of Leibniz’s argument for his complete concept definition of substance in §8 of the Discours de Métaphysique. Following G. Rodriguez-Pereyra, it construes the argument as resting on two substantial premises, the “merely verbal” Aristotelian definition and Leibniz’s concept containment theory of truth, and it understands the resulting “real” definition as saying not that an entity is a substance iff its complete concept contains every predicate of that entity, but iff its complete concept contains every predicate of any subject to which that concept is truly attributable. An account is suggested of why Leibniz criticises the Aristotelian definition as merely nominal and how he takes his own definition to overcome this shortcoming: while on the Aristotelian basis the predication relation could generate endless chains, so that substances as endpoints of predication would be impossible, Leibniz’s definition reveals lowest species as such endpoints, which he therefore identifies with individual substances. Since duplicate lowest species make no sense, the Identity of Indiscernibles for substances follows. The reading suggests a Platonist interpretation according to which substances do not so much have but are individual essences, natures or forms.

Essence, Potentiality, and Modality

According to essentialism, metaphysical modality is founded in the essences of things, where the essence of a thing is roughly akin to its real definition. According to potentialism (also known as dispositionalism), metaphysical modality is founded in the potentialities of things, where a potentiality is roughly the generalized notion of a disposition. Essentialism and potentialism have much in common, but little has been written about their relation to each other. The aim of this paper is to understand better the relations between essence and potentiality, on the one hand, and between essentialism and potentialism, on the other. It is argued, first, that essence and potentiality are not duals but interestingly linked by a weaker relation dubbed ‘semi-duality’; second, that given this weaker relation, essentialism and potentialism are not natural allies but rather natural competitors; and third, that the semi-duality of essence and potentiality allows the potentialist to respond to an important explanatory challenge by using essentialist resources without thereby committing to essentialism.

Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?

In his hugely influential paper “Essence and Modality” (1994), Kit Fine argued that the then orthodox view that essence can be understood in terms of metaphysical modality is fundamentally flawed. He proposed, in its place, the view that all metaphysical modality has its source in the essences or natures of things, where the notion of a thing’s essence or nature can be understood in terms of a broadly Aristotelian notion of real definition. This theory appears to require that the relevant conception of real definition can itself be isolated without appeal to metaphysical modality. I argue that this requirement cannot be met. I then briefly consider the implications of my argument for the relation between essence and metaphysical modality.

Can You Tell by Looking? A Postvisible Definition of Asian American Literature

This essay identifies a need for a postvisible definition of Asian American literature. Traditionally Asian American literature has been identified by the racial descent of the writer and recognizable “Asian American” content, but such qualifications are no longer sufficient and prompt the question, “But is it Asian American?” In order to theorize a postvisible definition, this essay engages twentieth-century philosophy of art to delineate three distinct approaches to definition in Asian American literary history: a “real” definition in its founding period that pursued exactitude and empiricism in substantiating a new category of art called Asian American literature, to an anti-definition in the 1990s, and to the pluralist, nonnormative definition since 2000 in which identifying a text as Asian American is an exercise in persuasively situating the text within the Asian American literary artworld, not in identifying visibly “detectible” properties.

Essence and Definition by Abstraction

We may define words. We may also define the things for which words stand. Definitions of words may be explicit or implicit, and may seek to report pre-existing synonymies, but they may instead be wholly or partly stipulative. Definition by abstraction seeks to define a term-forming operator by fixing the truth-conditions of identity-statements featuring terms formed by means of that operator. Such definitions are a species of implicit definition. They are typically at least partly stipulative. Definitions of things (real definitions) are typically conceived as statements about the essence of their definienda, and so not stipulative. There thus appears to be a clash between taking Hume's principle as an implicit, at least partly stipulative definition of the number operator and as a real definition of cardinal numbers. This chapter argues that this apparent tension can be resolved, and that resolving it shows how some modal knowledge can be a priori.

Solving the Caesar Problem—with Metaphysics

According to neo-Fregean Platonism, abstraction principles—such as the principle that the direction of line a is identical to the direction of line b iff a and b are parallel—may in some cases be regarded as introducing new singular terms (e.g., “the direction of line a”) and as fixing the truth-conditions of genuine identity statements featuring them. If neo-Fregeanism is to vindicate Frege’s idea that a plausible philosophy of arithmetic can and should treat the natural numbers as a species of object, it must address the so-called “Caesar Problem”: the problem of explaining in general terms which objects given in other terms they are to be distinguished from. This chapter pilots a novel solution to the Caesar Problem via the notion of a real definition: a definition whose purpose is not to explain a meaning, but to characterize the essential nature of the thing introduced.

What Makes Public Space Public? The Chaos of Public Space Definitions and a New Epistemological Approach

While the concept of public space is frequently referenced, its definition is ambiguous. Current studies have attempted to clarify the definitions of public space. However, the supposed definitions of public space are usually contradictory upon further inspection. This article argues that epistemological assumptions are the main reason for these logical problems. The entity view, the preference for a real definition, and the concentration on “space in plan” should be changed. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s epistemology, this article proposes a framework for defining public space, which will help administrators flexibly and consistently identify the public nature of diverse semipublic spaces.

Archival Knowledge: Conceptual Frameworks for Recent Terminology in the KO Domain

Despite having the principle of provenance as its guiding element, the archival knowledge organization still prescinds, for conceptual purposes, of greater clarity of its object-the archival knowledge-a fundamental aspect for the sedimentation of the archival studies and of its discursive community in the scope of KO. This article aims to define a conceptual framework to archival knowledge by using Dahlberg’s concept theory. In this vein, it established the nominal concept or definiendum-archival knowledge-seeking to analyze its real definition, composed by three inseparable definiens: the concept of fonds, the knowledge of documentary form and the knowledge of document creation context. At the end, it demonstrates that archival knowledge can be defined as being a reunion of three indivisible facets in which the archival bond will be contemplated.

Brick-by-Brick: Rebuilding the Language-Games

Wittgenstein gave no real definition of the strategy of language, so that clear definitions of the