Avicenna (Ibn Sina): Logic Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (c. 980-1037 C.E., or 375-428 of Hegira) is one of the most important philosophers and logicians in the Arabic world. His logical works are presented in several treatises. Some of them are commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon, and are presented in al-Shifa al-Mantiq, the logical part of the Encyclopedic Book al-Shifa (The Cure), which also contains a

Donald Herbert Davidson: Mind and Action Donald Davidson was a 20th century American philosopher whose most profound influences on contemporary philosophy were in the philosophy of mind and action. This article examines in detail two leading motifs in Davidson’s philosophy. One is that mental phenomena resist being “captured in the nomological net of physical theory.” Davidson claims there are no strict deterministic laws on the

Philosophy of Peace Peace is notoriously difficult to define, and this poses a special challenge for articulating any comprehensive philosophy of peace. Any discussion on what might constitute a comprehensive philosophy of peace invariably overlaps with wider questions of the meaning and purpose of human existence. The definitional problem is, paradoxically, a key to understanding what is involved in articulating a philosophy of peace. In

Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669) Arnold (oder Arnout) Geulincx war ein frühneuzeitlicher flämischer Philosoph, der zunächst in Leuven lehrte (Löwen) Universität, floh jedoch aus den katholischen Niederlanden, als er dort 1658 entlassen wurde. Er ließ sich in Leiden nieder, im protestantischen Norden, wo er unter der Schirmherrschaft des kartesisch-kalvinistischen Theologen Abraham Heidanus arbeitete (1597-1678), und versuchte, eine Stelle an der Universität Leiden zu bekommen. Geulincx war

Mathematical Structuralism The theme of mathematical structuralism is that what matters to a mathematical theory is not the internal nature of its objects, such as its numbers, Funktionen, Sätze, or points, but how those objects relate to each other. In gewisser Weise, the thesis is that mathematical objects (if there are such objects) simply have no intrinsic nature. The structuralist theme grew most notably from

Ninon de Lenclos (1620—1705) A salonnière during the reign of Louis XIV, Ninon de Lenclos embodied libertinism in both theory and practice. As a notorious courtesan, Lenclos scandalized France by her numerous affairs with prominent statesmen and ecclesiastics. Als Philosoph, she justified sexual license by her naturalistic theories of human nature and of morality. In Lenclos’s perspective, the human person is demonstrably a part of material