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CARTESIAN “I THINK, THEREFORE, I AM” IN THE PERSPECTIVES OF LOGIC AND PHENOMENOLOGY
Full text linkIn this article the questions under discussion are the properties of Descartes’s application of the first
rule of his method, which requires not to agree with anything that could give rise to doubt. It is well
known that Descartes came to the conclusion that only the truth “I think, therefore I am” is undoubted.
The article examines the logical status of this truth and reveals that it is an entimeme where the major
premise is unstated. An analysis of Descartes’s works shows that the premise that he does not explicitly
express is the proposition “If I think, therefore I exist, and if I do not think, then I do not exist.”
It follows that Descartes’ complete syllogism would be like this: “I exist if and only if I think; I think;
therefore, I exist.” In this paper, the discussion focuses on the proof of the certainty of the position
“I exist,” proposed by St Augustin in his treatise The City of God. St Augustin proves the proposition
“I am deceived that I exist” to be false in every possible interpretation. Hence the position “I exist” is
true in every possible interpretation. According to Descartes, the only undoubted statements are those
that are kept within the limits of “I think,” or within the limits of inner experience, while the data of
external experience are always dubious. Thus, the statement “I walk” is not obvious, since it can only
seem to me that I am walking. At the same time, the judgment “It seems to me that I walk” is undoubtedly.
Ancient sceptics also believed that the data of internal experience are doubtless, and the data of
external experience are not due to the fact that all objects of the external world are in fact not what they
seem to be. However, there is a significant difference between the ancient sceptical approach and that of
Descartes. I put forward the view that the ancient sceptics, although they are convinced that the things
of the external world are not what they seem, still surely believe that each item in that world exists. But
Descartes surpassed both ancient sceptics and academics in their scepticism, since he doubted the very
existence of the external world. He was able to imagine that he exists exclusively as a thinking entity
with no body, no world around him, and no space to store that world. It is by the fact that Descartes
doubts the existence of the external world that he has cleared the way for transcendental philosophy
and phenomenology
Category of nothing in the philosophy of Plato
No full textThe article analyses the interpretation of the relationship between being and nothing provided
by Plato. Plato does not question Parmenides’ thesis “being is, but nothing is not,” but he
believes that if philosophers do not look beyond that thesis, there will be stagnation. There
is no absolute nothing, but according to Plato, nothing is somehow and in some other forms still interacts with being. In the dialogues “Parmenides” and “Sophist,” Plato illustrates how
nothing penetrates being, deprives it of oneness and integrity and thus transforms it into the
set of particles where each particle appears to be itself, but unlike the others. By “others” Plato
means nothing, which is not the absolute nothing, but only the relative nothing — the nothing
of something or other. In the dialogues the interaction of being and nothing is analysed in
respect to the Realm of Ideas — to the domain of types and varieties, and their universal qualities.
In his “Timaeus,” alongside types and properties, Plato introduces individuals with their
individual qualities. The nothing of something or other is also in the realm of individuals, but
here it manifests yet another aspect of itself. Here we see the nothing that creates and destroys
things, which is not the case in the Realm of Ideas. It is true that every individual and every individual
quality emerges from nothing and immerses in it, while no such thing happens with
types, varieties, and their universal qualities. From the viewpoint of Plato, individuals emerge
because of some force that influences types, varieties, and their universal qualities. The same
force brings into the realm of individuals nothing that creates and destroys. Again this force is
the basis for the four elements of which every natural object is composed: fire, air, water and
earth. Here both Aristotle and Plato are in agreement. Aristotelian prior matter has shared
features with the force of Plato: it brings into existence the realm of individuals and serves as
the basis for the same four elements. The author argues that the bringing into existence of individuals
is the primary function of Aristotelian prior matter and of Plato’s force, while serving
as the basis for the four elements is secondary and optional. Indeed Empedocles believes the
four elements are autonomous and has no common background
Силлогизм о добродетельных мудрецах
No full textThe article deals with the Aristotelian doctrine of induction and its influence on the theory of induction of Al-Farabi. Inductive syllogisms of antiquity and the Middle Ages are compared with modern inferences by induction
On the consequences of phenomenological reduction
Full text linkIn the paper, we discuss the consequences of the phenomenological reduction introduced by E. Husserl
who intended to apply it for refuting relativism and skepticism, which were the prevailing trends
in the Western European philosophy of his time. According to him, what was true was so absolutely
and regardless of any circumstances. To discover such truths, he proposed phenomenological reduction
which he regarded a modernized Cartesian method of doubt.
Like Descartes, Husserl believed that the absolute truth has to be indubitable. The phenomenological
reduction demonstrated that only the existence of the transcendental ego is indubitable. This
result corresponds to Descartes’s idea of his sum cogito indubitableness. However, unlike Descartes,
Husserl took into account that cogito has an intentional structure: every act of consciousness is directed
at an object. Husserl called the objects of acts of consciousness intentional objects, or phenomena.
The world of phenomena is included in the content of the transcendental ego and is immanent to it. The phenomenal world “duplicates” the transcendental world of the natural objects, but, unlike
the latter, exists indubitably. Thus, Husserl came to the conclusion that the phenomenal world has an
apodictic existence while the existence of the world of nature is only problematic.
But what about other egos? Husserl believed that they had a transcendental existence independent
of sum cogito. In his opinion, this is evidenced by the special appresentation in in the composition
of sum cogito, which is an analogous apperception. According to Husserl, sum cogito together with
other egos forms a community of monads, in which it is a minor central monad. However, we argue
that the analogous apperception is incapable of giving an obvious and unquestionable testimony that
other egos exist transcendently. The result is that the phenomenological reduction leads to a kind of
transcendental solipsism, when the central monad has an apodictic existence, and all peripheral monads
are only problematic. Refs 11
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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