Category: philosophy

  • Aquinas and modern theology

    Quote from John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century p. 298-299 “”Aquinas’s metaphysics of esse is the foundation of his theology, insofar as theology is an edifice of contemplative reason expressed in discourse in the light of faith, as is…

  • Nominalism and Psychologism

    A quote from Frederik Stjernfelt, Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns p. 107 “If no universals refer to real structure, then all universals are but labels invented by the human mind. If propositions do not exist in reality they, as well, must be creations of the human mind. … The implication is…

  • Evald Ilyenkov: A Cosmology of the Spirit

    Searching in Internet information about Ilyenkov and his A Cosmology of the Spirit in English, I found a message on Marxism-Thaxis list: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-May/000655.html Below is the copy of the abstract of Ilyenkov’s work from the link above. Evald Ilyenkov “A Cosmology of the Spirit: An Attempt to Establish in General the Objective Role of Thinking…

  • Does the World exist?

    From The Empirical Stance (The Terry Lectures Series) by van Fraassen: Lecture 1. Against Analytic Metaphysics 3. Does the World Exist? p. 5 “Doesn’t the answer seem obvious to us? We are all part of this earthly ecosystem, which is part of the solar system, and that is part of the Milky Way galaxy, and…

  • Max Velmans on Kant

    Quotes from Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness p. 202 «Uncertainty appears to be intrinsic to representational knowledge. Kant’s view that the thing itself in unknowable is nevertheless extreme.» p. 202 «We necessarily base our interactions with the world on the experiences, concepts and theories we have of it, and these representations enable us to interact with…

  • Quantum Leap from Physics to Psychology

    A quote from Karl H Pribram, The Form Within: My Point of View p. 514 “The revolution in science inaugurated by quantum physics made us aware, as never before, of taking into consideration the role of observation and measurement in the construction of data. A personal experience illuminates the extent of this revolution. Eugene Wigner…

  • David Bohm on Free Will

    Quotes from David Bohm, Thought as a System p.  72 “We have to be able to think on this clearly; even though, as I said, that by itself won’t really change the reflexes. But if we don’t think of it clearly then all our attempts to get into this will go wrong. Clear thinking implies…

  • Logic and Liberal Arts

    Quote from John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century p. 596-597 “In short, adoption of Locke’s proposal as the rationale for logic in the tradition of liberal arts, in place of the original Aristotelian rationale opposed to the Stoic conception,…