Mental language Panaccio, Claude; Hochschild, Joshua P; Ziebart, Meredith K
2017, 20170201, 2017-02-01, 2017-02-08
eBook
The notion that human thought is structured like a language, with a precise syntax and semantics, has been pivotal in recent philosophy of mind. Yet it is not a new idea: it was systematically ...explored in the fourteenth century by William of Ockham and became central in late medieval philosophy. Mental Language examines the background of Ockham's innovation by tracing the history of the mental language theme in ancient and medieval thought.
Panaccio identifies two important traditions: one philosophical, stemming from Plato and Aristotle, and the other theological, rooted in the Fathers of the Christian Church. The study then focuses on the merging of the two traditions in the Middle Ages, as they gave rise to detailed discussions over the structure of human thought and its relations with signs and language. Ultimately, Panaccio stresses the originality and significance of Ockham's doctrine of the oratio mentalis (mental discourse) and the strong impression it made upon his immediate successors.
Various economic and political developments may have caused this tectonic shift. Since Brooks's essay appeared, an entirely new environment of attention has emerged, occasioned by constant digital ...connectivity. (Brooks's only mention of cell phones is in reference to parents' concern that a nanny might use one while driving.) Today's college students do not remember life without smartphones; most have carried one since middle school. By contrast, today's digital natives are keenly aware of themselves as distracted» Their characteristic vice is curiositas, another daughter of acedia, but specifically a vice of wandering awareness, a disordering of attention» No wonder social media have opened up discussions of mental health, including by destigmatizing those discussions» Ask even the highest-performing students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and many will claim psychological diagnoses and psychiatric prescriptions that were never mentioned to David Brooks in 2001» Whereas organization kids were made nervous by questions of virtue and character, the distracted generation is wounded and eager for help, especially in articulating their questions about how to direct the energy of their souls» Brooks's observations about busyness at elite colleges were disturbing above all because college has, historically, been a time of orchestrated leisure» It insulated students from certain practical concerns so that they could attend to the cultivation of intellectual and social habits» The classical college experience democratized an aristocratic privilege:
Living Well without Knowledge HOCHSCHILD, JOSHUA P.
Revista portuguesa de filosofia,
2023, Letnik:
79, Številka:
1/2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Thomists typically emphasize and defend Aquinas’s “realist” approach to knowledge as an alternative to modern skepticism, but Aquinas is attuned to the common experience of uncertainty, and gives ...principled reasons for the limits of knowledge across various domains, including especially in the realm of human action. Virtue in general, and Thomistic practical wisdom specifically, can be understood as a habit for responsibly managing choice in the face of imperfect knowledge, unpredictable circumstances, and risk. Several modern specialized disciplines – especially economics, psychology, and various applied social sciences – have highlighted interesting questions about uncertainty and its practical significance, especially in evaluating risk. Emphasizing the role of uncertainty in life is thus not only an invitation for Thomists to notice neglected aspects of Aquinas’s thought, but an opportunity to bring Aquinas’s writings into conversations in other disciplines. Catholic social teaching presents a particularly promising area to engage and learn from those other disciplines in the ongoing elaboration of Thomistic thought.
A TREATISE ON TWO CITIES Hochschild, Joshua P
First things (New York, N.Y.),
05/2021
Journal Article
Novak rightly emphasizes that the God who reveals himself in Jewish Scripture is a transcendent creator, personally involved in his creation and especially in the lives of human beings, an active and ...free governor, respecting the integrity of human beings while asking our obedience. Aristotle's thought-thinking-itself is so essentially relational and active as to be simultaneously an activity's subject and object and the activity itself. Because he rejects this understanding of divine immutability, Novak finds a wider gulf than some others do between the Greek and Jewish ethical perspectives. According to Novak, Aristotle's god was neither an active nor an efficient cause, his visions of the political and contemplative life cannot be reconciled, and his natural teleology has been superseded by modern cosmology. Against Cohen, Novak argues for the historical reality of the Jews' covenant with God and affirms that the primary reason God created the universe was to establish the relationship with human beings described in the Torah.
PUBLISHERS' BIND Hochschild, Joshua P
First things (New York, N.Y.),
11/2020
Journal Article
The gold standard for ink transfer is offset printing, which uses physical plates to press liquid ink onto paper. Print-on-demand means that many books are staying "in print" (or at least ..."printable"), and it can't be denied that advances in glue technology, and in how pages are prepared for gluing, mean that many glued books are reasonably well-made. Why not add an ISBN number (and corresponding price point) for digitally printed perfect-bound hardbacks? ...there could be other ways (likely requiring the coordination of publishers and booksellers) to encode and display more information about the physical specifications of books for sale.
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