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121. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 1
Steven Haug The Artworks in Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art”
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Three artworks are discussed in detail by Heidegger in his lecture “Origin of the Work of Art.” Prioritizing one work above the others affects what is understood to be the overall project of the lecture. Because of this, we need to attend closely to the debate in the literature about the most important work of art in Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art.” This article explores the debate by looking at three positions. I examine each of these positions independently. In the final section I side with those scholars who take the ancient Greek temple to be the most important work in Heidegger’s lecture. I argue that the reason why the temple is the most important is its ability to disclose community.
122. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 1
Alexander Earl Lovable and Love and Love of Himself: Intimations of Trinitarian Theology in the Metaphysics of Plotinus
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Current trends in scholarship—epitomized in the works of, inter alia, Lewis Ayres, Adrian Pabst, and Rowan Williams—argue for a metaphysics of relationality at the heart of Christian thought that is at its root Platonic. This metaphysic is in turn typified by its commitment to divine simplicity and its corresponding apophatic grammar, which serve as useful points of contact with Plotinus’s own thought. Examination of key texts in Plotinus’s Enneads demonstrates a shared trinitarian grammar when speaking about the first principle. These connections prompt a need to articulate trinitarian dogma as an important step in the history of philosophy, and not just theology, especially for resolving the perennial problem of the one and the many. This “Christian Platonism” has been in a necessary process of recovery and re-articulation, of which the above is put forward as a contribution.
123. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 1
Dimitrios Dentsoras Carving Up Virtue: The Stoics on Wisdom’s Scope and the Multiplicity of Virtues
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This essay examines the early Stoic debates concerning the number of virtues and the differentiation among them. It begins with the defense of virtue’s unity offered by the heterodox Stoic Aristo of Chios and with a comparison between the definitions that Aristo and Zeno offered for the four primary virtues. Aristo maintained that virtue consists exclusively in the knowledge of good and bad. Zeno and his successors presented the virtues as epistemic dispositions whose scopes differ. I conclude that by adding the knowledge of indifferents to the definition of virtue, Zeno and his successors were able to avoid the circularity to which Aristo’s definition of virtue fell victim while providing a way to differentiate among the virtues.
124. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 1
Hao Liu Intentional Directedness and Immanent Content: Aristotle and Brentano on Intentionality
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This paper will investigate the roots of intentionality in Aristotle’s theory of perception and assess the accuracy of Brentano’s proposed location of intentionality in Aristotle. When introducing intentionality into contemporary philosophy, Brentano attributed it to Aristotle, whose theory of psychology he believed to reveal the characteristics of intentional inexistence. After setting up a working definition of intentionality that stresses such features as immanent content and intentional directedness, I will then clarify Aristotle’s theory of perception with regard to these two characteristics. I draw the conclusion that we can only find the roots of immanent content in Aristotle’s perceptual theory. For him, directedness moves from the sensible object to the sensitive soul, and thus it does not correspond to what contemporary philosophers define as intentional directedness.
125. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 1
Patrick H. Byrne Desiring and Practical Reasoning: MacIntyre and Lonergan
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In his most recent book Alasdair MacIntyre criticizes the dominant moral system of advanced societies, which “presents itself as morality as such.” Yet, he argues, its primary function is to channel human desires into patterns that will minimize conflict amid distinctively modern economic and political arrangements. Although he appreciates how what he calls “expressionism” has unmasked this ideological function of modern morality, he points out that expressionism is also impotent to provide adequate moral guidance amidst the “conflicts of modernity.” He proposes that Neo-Aristotelianism’s account of reasoning and desire has the ability to overcome the moral failings of these modern modes of thought. Yet he relies on an excessively deductive version of reason and overlooks Aristotle’s fuller account of desire. The article shows how Bernard Lonergan’s account of both provides a superior account of both Aristotle’s own writings and the actual human phenomena of reasoning and desire.
126. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 1
Eric LaRock, Jeffrey Schwartz, Iliyan Ivanov, David Carreon A Strong Emergence Hypothesis of Conscious Integration and Neural Rewiring
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In this paper we discuss the two-system framework, examine its strengths, point out a fundamental weakness concerning the unity of conscious experience, and then propose a new hypothesis that avoids that weakness and other related concerns. According to our strong emergence hypothesis, what emerges are not merely mental properties in specialized, distributed neural areas, but also a new, irreducibly singular entity (i.e., an emergent self) that functions in a recurrent (or top-down) manner to integrate its mental properties and to rewire its brain. We argue that the former function is suggested, in part, by the effects of anesthetics on sensory integration, and that the latter function is suggested by evidence garnered from the neuroscience of mindfulness, constraint-induced movement therapy for stroke, and neuroimaging data surrounding mental illness. We then discuss how our strong emergence hypothesis relates to the description and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. Finally, potential objections are addressed.
127. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 2
Shane Drefcinski “For the Most Part” Generalizations and Practical Wisdom
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My objective in this paper is to contribute to our understanding of Aristotle’s science of ethics by defending two claims. (1) There is a way in which generalizations hold only for the most part that is unlike any of the types of generalizations in the natural sciences that hold only for the most part. These ethical generalizations depict ideals that, although grounded in and perfective of our human nature, are only rarely realized. (2) Aristotle’s account of practical wisdom provides all the resources we need for understanding how the person with practical wisdom can tell when the for the most part generalization in ethics is true and when it is not.
128. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 2
Jerome A. Miller Robust Evolution in Historical Time
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The normalized, deterministic conception of evolution espoused by Dennett is increasingly being challenged by theorists who, following Gould, emphasize the role that historical contingencies play in it. I explore the conflict between these views and argue that correcting our understanding of the relationship between nature’s systematic necessities and historical temporality can resolve it. The mathematically precise laws science formulates describe the systematic patterns of nature abstractly and, as abstractions, these laws do not preclude but allow for the contingencies of historical time. Drawing on Heidegger and Hume, I argue that historical time is characterized by the ingression of the unprecedented future into the present. This is the ontological infrastructure that makes the evolution of unprecedented ontological alterities possible.
129. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 2
Hili Razinsky Defeated Ambivalence
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Ambivalence is often presented through cases of defeated ambivalence and multivalence, in which opposed attitudes suggest mutual isolation and defeat each other. Properly understood, however, ambivalence implies the existence of poles that are conflictually yet rationally interlinked and are open to non-defeated joint conduct. This paper considers cases that range from indecisiveness and easy adoption of conflicting attitudes (when hungry, stressed, or exhausted), to tragically conflicted deliberation and to cases of shifting between self-deceptively serious attitudes. Analyzing such cases as variants of defeated ambivalence, I argue that the phenomena of defeated ambivalence are marginal to ambivalence even though they are by the same token exemplary of it. The poles in such cases are connected as opposing attitudes in such a way that the attitudes and the opposition are both undermined. The article focuses on two forms of vague multivalence, one of which is taken from Heidegger’s analysis of curiosity.
130. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 2
Pirooz Fatoorchi Self-Knowledge and a Refutation of the Immateriality of Human Nature: On an Epistemological Argument Reported by Razi
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The paper deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that was used to attempt to refute the immateriality of human nature. This argument is based on an epistemic asymmetry between our self-knowledge and our knowledge of immaterial things. After some preliminary remarks, the paper analyzes the structure of the argument in four steps. From a methodological point of view, the argument is similar to a family of epistemological arguments (notably, the Cartesian argument from doubt) and is vulnerable to the same objection that can be raised against that form of reasoning. The last section points out that the argument can be used indirectly to highlight the weakness in some arguments for the claim that there is something immaterial in human beings.
131. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 2
Frank P. Saunders, Jr. Ethics in the Zhuangzi: Diversity and Sagacity
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Philosophers in China during the Warring States period generally saw themselves as investigators into the Dao—the uniquely authoritative Way to live and to flourish. Certain voices found in the Zhuangzi, however, offer a radical response to this project by rejecting the premise that there exists such a uniquely authoritative Dao. Instead, they argue that there exist myriad, diverse dao, none of which has absolute moral authority. Yet the very texts that undermine the idea of an authoritative Dao simultaneously make positive ethical suggestions regarding how to live and flourish. In this paper I explore texts in the Zhuangzi that discuss the diversity of dao and sagely flourishing, and I argue that these two themes come together to form the basis of a comprehensive ethical view that I call Zhuangist pluralism.
132. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 2
Stephen Chamberlain Truth, Fiction and Narrative Understanding
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This paper defends the cognitive value of literary fiction by showing how Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative understanding emphasizes the productive and creative elements of fictional discourse and defends its referential capacity insofar as fiction reshapes reality according to some universal aspect. Central to this analysis is Ricoeur’s retrieval of Aristotelian mimesis and mythos and their convergence in the notion of emplotment. This paper also supplements and specifies further Ricoeur’s account by retrieving an Aristotelian concept disregarded by Riceour, namely, synesis (understanding). Although Ricoeur connects narrative understanding to the intelligibility of praxis and in turn phronêsis, as opposed to theoretical knowledge (theōria or epistēmē), he overlooks Aristotle’s discussion of synesis. This paper then clarifies how the fictional truth of narrative understanding remains related to, and yet distinct from, both theoretical discourse (science) and praxis (politics).
133. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 3
George J. Aulisio The Deontological Foundation of Neo-Confucian Virtue Ethics
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I show that Neo-Confucianism is practiced in two ways: (1) deontologically and (2) as a virtue ethical theory. When fully appreciated, Neo-Confucianism is a virtue ethical theory, but to set out on the path of the sage and behave like a junzi, Neo-Confucianism must first be practiced deontologically. I show this by examining the importance of Neo-Confucian metaphysics to ethical practice and by drawing out the major practical differences between “lesser learning” and “higher learning.” In my view, Neo-Confucianism can be practiced deontologically because some adherents may never move to practicing Neo-Confucianism as a virtue theory.
134. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 3
K. Lauriston Smith Entering the World: Perception in Merleau-Ponty and Critical Realism
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There is a significant lack of clarity among critical realists in the language they use to discuss perception. In this paper I illustrate this lack of clarity and then argue that a critical realist view of perception is best understood as conceiving of perception as an active process in direct contact with the world. I connect this view with the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views of perception and embodiment and argue that seeing this point has implications for our understanding of perception by offering a path through the direct/indirect debate. It suggests challenges both to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief and to the reduction of knowledge to effectiveness. It bears on the question of truth insofar as it challenges the view that truth can be reduced to propositions.
135. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 3
Josef Novák Abstract Painting: Some Remarks on its Affiliation with Phenomenology
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Since the beginning of the twentieth century, abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art. To attain purely aesthetic goals, many avant-garde artists turned painting in particular into a pursuit of breaking off the relations with natural forms. Instead of copying them, they have merely relied on their inner visions. When externalizing these visions directly on the canvas or sheets of paper, the practitioners of abstract art have inadvertently used the phenomenological method and its epoché. In this essay I argue that the philosophies of Kupka and Husserl are largely compatible. This is not because the two use the same terminology, but because they virtually mean and do the same thing in their respective fields. Even where there are significant differences between them, these are not as great as it might at first seem. In the essay’s conclusion I sum up some of the most significant implications their compatible theories have for the philosophy of art and for various theories of art today.
136. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 3
Fiorella Tomassini Kant and the Notion of a Juridical Duty to Oneself
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In the Doctrine of Right Kant holds that the classical Ulpian command honeste vive is a juridical duty that has the particular feature (in contrast to the other juridical duties) of being internal. In this paper I explore the reasons why Kant denies that the duty to be an honorable human being comprises an ethical obligation (as, for example, Pufendorf and Achenwall thought) and conceives it as a juridical duty to oneself. I will argue that, despite the conceptual problems that the systematical incorporation of this type of duty into the doctrine of morals might entail, these reasons are coherent. The fulfillment of the duty honeste vive involves a coercion to the self but at the same time does not necessarily imply the adoption of a moral end.
137. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 3
Winnie Sung Xin: Being Trustworthy
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This essay analyses the Confucian conception of xin, an attribute that broadly resembles what we would ordinarily call trustworthiness. More specifically, it provides an analysis of the psychology of someone who is xin and highlights a feature of the Confucian conception of trustworthiness: the trustworthy person has to ensure that there is a match between her self-presentation and the way she is. My goal is not to argue against any of the existing accounts of trustworthiness but to draw on Confucian insights so as to shed light on features of trustworthiness that are overlooked in current discussions. I hope to show that the Confucian conception of trustworthiness puts more emphasis on the way a trustworthy person actively tries to make sure another’s dependency on her is not unwarranted than on how the trustworthy person responds to the one who gives trust.
138. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 3
Travis Dumsday Thomist vs. Scotist Perspectives on Ontic Structural Realism
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Structural realism has re-emerged as part of the debate between scientific realism and antirealism. Since then it has branched into several different versions, notably epistemic structural realism and ontic structural realism. The latter theory (which itself has now divided into competing formulations) is still an important perspective in the realism/antirealism dialectic; however, its significance has expanded well beyond that debate. Today ontic structural realism is also an important player in the metaphysics of science literature, engaging with a variety of ontological questions. One of these pertains to the basic categories of ontology, with the proponents of ontic structural realism typically advocating a radical rethinking of how to view substance and relation while calling into question the (allegedly) traditional privileging of the former over and against the latter. In this paper I assess ontic structural realism from the perspective of two major systems: Thomism and Scotism. I argue that the basic commitments of Thomism allow for some surprising convergences with ontic structural realism, while Scotism does not.
139. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 4
Thomas Feeney Cartesian Circles and the Analytic Method
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The apparently circular arguments in Descartes’s Meditations should be read as analytic arguments, as Descartes himself suggested. This both explains and excuses the appearance of circularity. Analysis “digs out” what is already present in the meditator’s mind but not yet “expressly known” (Letter to Voetius). Once this is achieved, the meditator may take the result of analysis as an epistemic starting point independent of the original argument. That is, analytic arguments may be reversed to yield demonstrative proofs that follow an already worked-out order of ideas. The “Cartesian Circle,” for example, is circular only when Descartes’s original analytic argument is mistaken for the demonstration that it enables. This approach to Cartesian Circles is unlike the standard approach, which attempts to show that Descartes’s original arguments do work as demonstrations after all.
140. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 60 > Issue: 4
Andy German Orcid-ID Cosmic Mathematics, Human Erōs: A Comparison of Plato’s Timaeus and Symposium
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In her 2014 monograph, Sarah Broadie argues that Timaeus’s cosmology points to a radical Platonic insight: the full rationality of the cosmos requires the existence of individualized, autonomous, and finite beings like us. Only human life makes the cosmos truly complete. But can Timaeus do full justice to the uniquely human way of being and hence to his own insight? My paper argues that he cannot and that Plato means for us to see that he cannot, by showing how Timaeus treats a famous Platonic theme: eros. Timaeus describes human perfection as assimilation to the mathematical proportions of the cosmos, but by comparing Timaeus with the Symposium I show that, given his deeply mathematized conception of reason, Timaeus cannot provide what Diotima can: a phenomenologically satisfactory account of how we come to identify ourselves with this perfection. Such identification is a transformation in our self-understanding explicable only because of the desirous and reflexive character of the soul. Expressing this character, however, requires combining the mathematical with a poetic, or even mantic, register. Only these sensibilities together grant access to Plato’s cosmology in its fullness.