درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Radical constructivism (RC), introduced by Ernst von Glasersfeld, is an instrumentalist theory of knowledge that challenges the notion of knowledge as a picture or representation of a real, external world. Instead, RC, by integrating ideas from different theoretical fields - such as cybernetics, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary psychology - considers the purpose of the cognitive organism to construct knowledge not to achieve truth, but to construct perceptual and conceptual structures that help to maintain adaptation and cognitive equilibrium. However, the basic question here is, by what character these structures can achieve the purpose. By examining Glasersfeld's writings, this paper argues that the character is a "functional fit", which is based on a fundamental shift in RC, i.e. the shift from "matching" to "fitness". From this point of view, the "fit knowledge" is not due to its match with the external reality, but due to its repeated success in solving a specific problem, it is viable, and by preventing unwanted changes or perturbations, it gives order to the experiential world of the organism and helps to maintain its cognitive equilibrium. This perspective has the potential to create transformation in various fields, from education to ethics and social issues. Therefore, this paper, while examining the basic concepts of radical constructivist epistemology, also deals with its theoretical and practical applications.

I argue in the essay that the conceptualist understanding of the mind-world relation ultimately leads to the kind of view that Panayot Butchvarov calls conceptual or linguistic creationism. According to this view, “there is nothing we have not conceptualized”. In addition to being an antithesis of metaphysical realism, which maintains that there is a reality independent of us, the term refers to the kind of thinking that sees human cognitive experience (and reality itself) as thoroughly constituted according to our concepts. While it might be easy to attribute this kind of position to Kant as well, especially when read through a conceptualist lens, I argue that such a position is not in accord with Kant’s philosophical intentions. Using the Deduction and Schematism chapters of the Critique of Pure Reason as examples, I also argue that on the conceptualist understanding of the mind-world relation too much is read into Kant’s idea that sensibility and understanding must be cognitively compatible with one another.

The functions of the intellect - which is one of the topics raised in the field of epistemology - are the activities and effects that the intellect performs in acquiring knowledge and recognizing objects and facts. The purpose of this research is to know the various functions of philosophical intellect and their application in the births and innovations of Islamic philosophy. This article has been made using analytical and argumentative strategies and document methods, logical and syllogistic analysis. The functions of intellect in philosophy should not be considered exclusive to its argumentative function. Philosophical intellect has various functions, and in order to know the differences of Islamic philosophy from other philosophical schools and to continue the growth of Islamic philosophy, we must pay attention to all these functions. The functions of philosophical intellect include imaginations perception, finding universal concepts, dividing concepts; combining concepts; making new concepts; building coherence between related objects, imaginations or affirmations; to affirm; questioning; description; explanation; interpretation; analysis; reasoning; ideation; theorizing; And the criticism that the application of the mentioned functions in Islamic philosophy has led to many births, such as the presentation of some divisions of existence by Islamic philosophers, the conceptualization of the perpetual origination by Mir Damad, the presentation of the problem of mental existence byFakhr al-Din al-Razi, a new reading of Plato's political philosophy by Farabi, the analysis of how existence Generalities by Avicenna, evidences proving the originality of existence, the supreme spacious of energy by Allameh Tabataba'i, Suhrawardi's illuminated metaphysical theory, etc.

This paper has the ambitious aim to clarify the putative different meanings of "consciousness" in Kant's Critique, particularly focusing on the concept of apperception. Often misinterpreted merely as the potential for self-attributions of experiences and mental states—technically, as the individual's ability to knowingly refer to himself—such readings overlook the pivot role of transcendental apperception in bridging the inherent gap between nonconceptual content of sensible intuitions and the higher-level conceptual content of propositional attitudes, essential for reasoning and the rational control of actions. In this context, "consciousness" or "self-consciousness" means cognitive accessibility (in Block's sense). But Kant's texts reveal additional meanings of consciousness. Notably, "sensation" means the raw material of intuition when it is apprehended through a synthesis of imagination without conceptual determination, capturing the subjective "what-it-is-like" phenomenal aspect of perception. Conversely, its objective correlate—the ability to discriminate and single out objects from their surroundings—embodies what can be described as "de re awareness" of a yet conceptually undetermined object of intuition. 

In this essay, I want to address two main aspects of the arguably central topic of Kant's treatise on Enlightenment, namely maturity: these concern the notion of the freedom of thought (Section I) and the idea of emancipation that is conveyed by maturity, the fact that it involves a process of growing up to become a citizen (Section II). Freedom of thought denotes the idea of self-agency which all human beings possess in principle whereas emancipation points to the fact that maturity is something that is not a matter of course, neither in individual cases nor for society at large. Maturity is not a natural disposition that one either possesses or not but must be developed. This means that not all human beings are de facto mature always, everywhere and all of the time. That this situation is not something that is in principle unalterable can be demonstrated by way of assessing Kant's apparent views on women's presumable minority 'according to sex'. 

I consider the principle of sufficient reason (henceforth, PSR) as it functions in both Leibniz and Kant. The issue separating these thinkers is a modal status of absolute contingency, which is exempt from PSR insofar as it is neither logically necessary, nor does it necessarily follow from the given causal series. Leibniz’s ambitious metaphysics applies PSR even to God’s choices, which, since they must rest on a reason that makes sense of them, necessarily tend to the creation of the best of all possible worlds. Through PSR, the exercise of human freedom represents the unfolding of a concept God already has chosen, with an eye to the best possible world aligned with the universal intelligibility enjoined by PSR. PSR, in Kant’s critical period, is not a principle of being, but one of mere experience, since any extension of thought beyond possible experience can yield no knowledge. Human agency, for Kant, has an intelligible aspect that is beyond possible experience. Since PSR is only a principle of experience for Kant, the agent in its intelligible aspect is not subject to it. Human free will introduces a special modal category of absolute contingency. Kant provides impetus for a humanism that makes the absolute freedom of the human will a competitor with the sovereignty of God, and also liberates the human will from contemporary ideologies that would subordinate it to natural determinism or group dynamics.