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1. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Gerasimos Santas

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2. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Christian Pfeiffer

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According to Aristotle, the way in which the parts of a whole are is different from the way in which the whole exists. Parts of an object are only potentially, whereas the whole exists actually. Although commentators agree that Aristotle held this doctrine, little effort has been made to spell out precisely what it could mean to say that the parts are only potentially. In this paper, I shall attempt to elucidate that claim and explain the philosophical motivation behind it. I will argue that the motivation of mereological potentialism is to account for the unity of material substance. For a part to be potentially is, I will argue, a form of ontological dependence of the part on the whole. Potential parts have their being as a possible division of the whole. I will further explain this by specifying how the parts are grounded in the capacities of the whole and how the parts are individuated by the whole.

3. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Christos Terezis

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4. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Mika Suojanen

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The basic entity in phenomenology is the phenomenon. Knowing the phenomenon is another issue. The phenomenon has been described as the real natural object or the appearance directly perceived in phenomenology and analytic philosophy of perception. Within both traditions, philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Russell and Wittgenstein have considered that perceptual experience demonstrates what a phenomenon is on the line between the mind and the external world. Therefore, conceptualizing the phenomenon is based on the perceptual evidence. However, if the belief that perception is “theory-laden” is true, then perception can also be “philosophy-laden”. These philosophers have not noticed whether perceptual knowledge is independent of philosophies. If perceptual knowledge is not independent of philosophies, a philosopher’s background language can influence what he or she claims to know about the phenomenon. For Husserl, experience is direct evidence of what exists. The textual evidence shows that Sartre’s denial of the distinction between appearance and reality lies behind his claim to know the phenomenon, however. By examining Husserl's Ideas and Sartre's Being and Nothingness I conclude that these philosophers’ philosophical languages influence their experience of the phenomenon and perceptual knowledge. Philosophical traditions affect the thoughts of perception.

5. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
W. Balzer, A. Eleftheriadis, D. Kurzawe

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6. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Mohammad Alwahaib

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This paper clarifies the philosophical connection between Al-Ghazali and Descartes, with the goal to articulate similarities and differences in their famous journeys from doubt to certainty. As such, its primary focus is on the chain of their reasoning, starting from their conceptions of truth and doubt arguments, until their arrival at truth. Both philosophers agreed on the ambiguous character of ordinary everyday knowledge and decided to set forth in undermining its foundations. As such, most scholars tend to agree that the doubt arguments used by Descartes and Al-Ghazali are similar, but identify their departures from doubt as radically different: while Descartes found his way out of doubt through the cogito and so reason, Al-Ghazali ended his philosophical journey as a Sufi in a sheer state of passivity, waiting for the truth to be revealed to him by God. This paper proves this is not the case. Under close textual scrutiny and through the use of basic Husserlian-phenomenological concepts, I show that Al-Ghazali's position was misunderstood, thus disclosing his true philosophic nature.

7. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Justin Mc Brayer

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Incompatibilism is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism. Combatibilism is the view that free will is compatible with determinism. The debate between the two positions is seemingly intractable. However, just as elsewhere in philosophy, leveraging assumptions about value can offer progress. A promising value argument against incompatibilism is as follows: given facts about both human psychology and the value of free will, incompatibilism is false. This is because we would want our choices to be free but we also would not want indeterminism anywhere in the process leading up to our choices. Hence freedom can’t require a lack of determinism.

8. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Dionysios A. Anapolitanos

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9. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Alexiadou Anastasia-Sofia

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10. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 3/4
Grigoriou Christos

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11. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
William Outhwaite

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12. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Kolja Möller

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This article investigates the relationship between popular sovereignty, populism, and deliberative democracy. My main thesis is that populisms resurrect the polemical dimension of popular sovereignty by turning “the people” against the “powerbloc” or the “elite”, and that it is crucial thatthis terrain not be ceded to authoritarian distortions of this basic contestatory grammar. Furthermore, I contend that populist forms of politics are compatible with a procedural and deliberative conception of democracy. Ifirst engage with the assumption that populism and a procedural model of democracy are incompatible, demonstrating that this assumption relies on a conservative bias which tiesthe exercising of communicative power to a “duty of civility” (Rawls). I then engage with radical-democratic reconstructions of the procedural notion of popular sovereignty which emphasize the unleashing and diversification of peoplehood in communication circuits and the mutual permeability of constitutional politics, parliamentary legislation, and the public sphere. Thirdly, I conclude that populisms are an essential part of communicative power in modern democracies and part of its dialectical structure.

13. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Wilhelm Dagmar

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14. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Anastasia Marinopoulou

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15. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Julian Nida-Rümelin

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16. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Cristina Lafont

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In this essay, I analyze the cosmopolitan project for a new international order that Habermas has articulated in recent publications. I argue that his presentation of the project oscillates between two models. The first is a very ambitious model for a future international order geared to fulfill the peace and human rights goals of the UN Charter. The second is a minimalist model, in which the obligation to protect human rights by the international community is circumscribed to the negative duty of preventing wars of aggression and massive human rights violations due to armed conflicts such as ethnic cleansing or genocide. According to this model, any more ambitious goals should be left to a global domestic politics, which would have to come about through negotiated compromises among domesticated major powers at the transnational level. I defend the ambitious model by arguing that there is no basis for drawing a normatively significant distinction between massive human rights violations due to armed conflicts and those due to regulations of the global economic order. I conclude that the cosmopolitan goals of the Habermasian project can only be achieved if the principles of transnational justice recognized by the international community are ambitious enough to cover economic justice.

17. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Darrow Schecter

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18. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Stefan Müller-Doohm

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19. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Piet Strydom

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This essay deals with Habermas’ concept of truth in his late theoretical philosophy. Assuming his suggestive yet highly inspiring inauguration of a cognitive turn in Critical Theory, it probes his use of the notion of limit concept against the background of the tradition of thought from which it originally derives with the intention of identifying the notion’s potential for taking this promising departure further. It brings to the fore a number of issues in his late writings that reveal the presence of what may be considered the problem of limit concepts in his thought. For present purposes, these issues are located in two areas: Habermas’ revision of his long-held concept of truth and the related criticism of Peirce; and his account of the role of limit concepts like truth and warranted assertibility or rational acceptability in processes of discursive justification. The analysis finds that there is a structural deficit in his presentation that could be filled by cognitively conceived cultural structures that not only correspond to the major types of limit concepts, but also answer to his undeveloped vision of the ‘cultural embodiment of reason’.

20. Philosophical Inquiry: Volume > 42 > Issue: 1/2
Hauke Brunkhorst

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Aim is a robust theory of deliberative democracy. Therefore, three theses are explained by two historical examples, the revolution of 1848 in France (Chapter I), and the new social movements that emerged in the 1960s (Chapter II). The theses are that (1) democratic will-formation is related internally to truth. The foundation and justification of all legal norms in public will-formation presupposes (2) the sublation of the liberal dualism of democracy and rights and of the idealist dualism of rationality and reality in favor of (3) a continuum of public debates, social struggles, and legislative procedures.