Nyāya Nyāya (literally “rule or method of reasoning”) is a leading school of philosophy within the “Hindu umbrella”—those communities which saw themselves as the inheritors of the ancient Vedic civilization and allied cultural traditions. Epistemologically, Nyāya develops of a sophisticated precursor to contemporary reliabilism (particularly process reliabilism), centered on the notion of “knowledge-sources” (pramāṇa), and a conception of epistemic responsibility which allows for default, unreflective

Simone Weil (1909—1943) The French philosopher Simone Weil is a confronting and disconcerting figure in modern philosophy. This is not simply because she was so many things at once—ascetic and mystic, teacher and factory worker, labour activist and political militant, social thinker and piercing moral psychologist, critical Marxist and heterodox Christian theologian—but because of the striking “untimeliness” of her thought. For unlike philosophers in the

Paul Ricoeur (1913—2005) Paul Ricoeur was among the most impressive philosophers of the 20th century continental philosophers, both in the unusual breadth and depth of his philosophical scholarship and in the innovative nature of his thought. He was a prolific writer, and his work is essentially concerned with that grand theme of philosophy: le sens de la vie. Ricoeur’s “tensive” style focuses on the tensions running

Art and Interpretation Interpretation in art refers to the attribution of meaning to a work. A point on which people often disagree is whether the artist’s or author’s intention is relevant to the interpretation of the work. In the Anglo-American analytic philosophy of art, views about interpretation branch into two major camps: intentionalism and anti-intentionalism, with an initial focus on one art, namely literature. Le

Structuralisme mathématique Le thème du structuralisme mathématique est que ce qui compte pour une théorie mathématique n'est pas la nature interne de ses objets., comme ses chiffres, fonctions, ensembles, ou des points, mais comment ces objets sont liés les uns aux autres. Dans un sens, la thèse est que les objets mathématiques (s'il existe de tels objets) n'ont tout simplement aucune nature intrinsèque. Le thème structuraliste s'est développé notamment à partir de

Immanuel Kant At the foundation of Kant’s system is the doctrine of “transcendental idealism,” which emphasizes a distinction between what we can experience (the natural, observable world) and what we cannot (“supersensible” objects such as God and the soul). Kant argued that we can only have knowledge of things we can experience. Par conséquent, in answer to the question, “What can I know?” Kant replies that