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life
it is like a fruit that is watered by the Grace of God.

3.1 Discourse and Action

In a seminal essay, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” (TA, 146-67). Ricoeur's aim is both to set forth the essential constituents of all actions and to show that action is intelligible and the proper object of the social sciences. To do so he builds on his conception of discourse, of language in use.

Language contains within itself resources that allow it to be used creatively. Two important ways in which these resources come to light are (a) in the coining of metaphors and (b) in the fashoning of narratives. In The Rule of Metaphor, Ricoeur argues that there is a linguistic imagination that "generates and regenerates meaning through the living power of metaphoricity."[8] For him, fresh metaphors, metaphors that have not been reduced to the commonplace, reveal a new way of seeing their referents. They creatively transform language. Thus they are not merely rhetorical ornaments. They have genuine cognitive import in their own right and are untranslatable without remainder into literal language. In a similar manner, as I will develop more fully below, acts of narrating create new plots and characters, thereby also producing new meanings. Thus to become aware of the metaphorical and narrative resources resident in language is to see that notwithstanding the many rules and codes that govern language usage, it is always able to be used to be inventive, to produce new meanings.

Four traits of discourse, as distinct from language as a system, are of central importance for the analogy Ricoeur makes between texts and actions. First, a language system as conceived by structuralists is simply virtual and hence timeless, but discourse always occurs at some particular moment of time. Second, a language system is self-contained, but discourse always refers to persons who say or write or hear or read. Third, though a language system is a necessary condition for communication inasmuch as it provides the codes for communication, it itself does not communicate. Only discourse communicates among interlocutors. And fourth, the signs in a language system refer only to other signs in it, but discourse “refers to a world that it claims to describe, to express, or to represent.”[9]

Action is analogous to discourse because, to make full sense of any action, one has to recognize that its meaning is distinguishable from its occurrence as a particular spationtemporal event. Nevertheless, every genuine action is meaningful only because it is some specific person's doing at some particular moment.

To clarify the analogy between discourse and action, Ricoeur draws on speech act theory. First, action has the structure of a locutionary act inasmuch as it has a “propositional content” that we can identify and reidentify. For example, we can recognize the activity of putting on clothes or digging in the ground whenever we encounter anyone doing them.

Second, action has “illocutionary” characteristics that closely resemble the speech acts in discourse. Each type of action has constitutive “rules,” rules that make an action a specific type of action. An obvious example of the “illocutionary” character of actions is that of promises. Actions of a certain sort, for example, stepping forward when volunteers are called for, can, in the appropriate context, count as a promise no less than a verbal pledge can.

Though Ricoeur does not explicitly discuss the counterpart in action of the perlocutionary act in discourse, it is easy to infer. Just as we can anticipate how people are likely to react to things that we might say or write, so we can anticipate how they would likely react to what we might do. We know that there some deeds that people are quite likely to put up with and others that they are likely not to do so.

It follows from the analogies between discourse and action that all action is in principle interaction just as all discourse is in principle dialogical. Because of this similarity, action, like discourse, is inherently subject to interpretation. Like discourse, actions are “open worlds” whose meanings are not fully determined by their performers and their immediate audiences. As the study of history shows, there are two main ways that a past action remains open to interpretation. One can reasonably investigate what it meant to those who knew about it when it occurred. And one can also ask how those who came later understood and assessed it.

Furthermore, we interpret the whole of a discourse or text, whether spoken or written, in the light of its several parts and a particular part in the light of the whole. Similarly, we interpret a complex of actions, for example, a war, in the light of the particular actions of its participants and vice versa.

All interpretative activity proceeds by way of a dialectic between guessing and validating. We make a guess about the meaning of a part and check it against the whole and vice versa. Also we guess about the relative importance of the several parts. Throughout the process of guess and validation, there is no definitive outcome. It is always possible reasonably to relate sentences, or actions, to one another in more than one way.

To validate an interpretation is not to verify it empirically. One validates an interpretation by vindicating it against competing interpretations. Thus validation “is an argumentative discipline comparable to the judicial procedures of legal interpretation. It is a logic of uncertainty and qualitative probability.”[10]

Through the conflict of interpretations one can find criteria, such as comprehensiveness, for determining which interpretation is more likely. Sometimes, though, more than one interpretation will satisfy the criteria equally well. But some interpretations have little or no likelihood. Hence:

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal…. The text is a limited field of possible constructions. The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism. It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach.[11]

What holds good for the interpretation of discourse holds good also for the interpretation of action.

Each discourse and action is, of course, an event that occurs at a particular place and time. Accordingly, besides interpreting it, one ought also to seek for a causal explanation of its occurrence. Only an account that provides both a causal explanation and an interpretation of its meaning that enjoys probability does justice to the action or discourse.

Ricoeur finds in his reflections on discourse and action a capital lesson about the world and the persons or selves that inhabit it. Selves as agents are, to be sure, entities in the world. But they are fundamentally different from all other worldly entities.

kuhn
. Incommensurability and World-Change

The standard empiricist conception of theory evaluation regards our judgment of the epistemic quality of a theory to be a matter of applying rules of method to the theory and the evidence. Kuhn's contrasting view is that we judge the quality of a theory (and its treatment of the evidence) by comparing it to a paradigmatic theory. The standards of assessment therefore are not permanent, theory-independent rules. They are not rules, because they involve perceived relations of similarity (of puzzle-solution to a paradigm). They are not theory-independent, since they involve comparison to a (paradigm) theory. They are not permanent, since the paradigm may change in a scientific revolution. For example, to many in the seventeenth century, Newton's account of gravitation, involving action at a distance with no underlying explanation, seemed a poor account, in that respect at least, when compared, for example, to Ptolemy's explanation of the motion of the planets in terms of contiguous crystalline spheres or to Descartes’ explanation in terms of vortices. However, later, once Newton's theory had become accepted and the paradigm by which later theories were judged, the lack of an underlying mechanism for a fundamental force was regarded as no objection, as, for example, in the case of Coulomb's law of electrostatic attraction. Indeed, in the latter case the very similarity of Coulomb's equation to Newton's was taken to be in its favour.

Consequently, comparison between theories will not be as straightforward as the standard empiricist picture would have it, since the standards of evaluation are themselves subject to change. This sort of difficulty in theory comparison is an instance of what Kuhn and Feyerabend called ‘incommensurability’. Theories are incommensurable when they share no common measure. Thus, if paradigms are the measures of attempted puzzle-solutions, then puzzle-solutions developed in different eras of normal science will be judged by comparison to differing paradigms and so lack a common measure. The term ‘incommensurable’ derives from a mathematical use, according to which the side and diagonal of a square are incommensurable in virtue of there being no unit that can be used to measure both exactly. Kuhn stressed that incommensurability did not mean non-comparability (just as the side and diagonal of a square are comparable in many respects). Even so, it is clear that at the very least Kuhn's incommensurability thesis would make theory comparison rather more difficult than had commonly been supposed, and in some cases impossible.

We can distinguish three types of incommensurability in Kuhn's remarks: (1) methodological—there is no common measure because the methods of comparison and evaluation change; (2) perceptual/observational - observational evidence cannot provide a common basis for theory comparison, since perceptual experience is theory-dependent; (3) semantic—the fact that the languages of theories from different periods of normal science may not be inter-translatable presents an obstacle to the comparison of those theories. 4.1 Methodological Incommensurability

The incommensurability illustrated above whereby puzzle-solutions from different eras of normal science are evaluated by reference to different paradigms, is methodological incommensurability. Another source of methodological incommensurability is the fact that proponents of competing paradigms may not agree on which problems a candidate paradigm should solve (1962/1970a, 148). In general the factors that determine our choices of theory (whether puzzle-solutions or potential paradigm theories) are not fixed and neutral but vary and are dependent in particular on the disciplinary matrix within which the scientist is working. Indeed, since decision making is not rule-governed or algorithmic, there is no guarantee that those working within the same disciplinary matrix must agree on their evaluation of theory (1962/1970a, 200), although in such cases the room for divergence will be less than when the disputants operate within different disciplinary matrices. Despite the possibility of divergence, there is nonetheless widespread agreement on the desirable features of a new puzzle-solution or theory. Kuhn (1977, 321-322) identifies five characteristics that provide the shared basis for a choice of theory: 1. accuracy; 2. consistency (both internal and with other relevant currently accepted theories); 3. scope (its consequences should extend beyond the data it is required to explain); 4. simplicity (organizing otherwise confused and isolated phenomena); 5. fruitfulness (for further research). Even though these are, for Kuhn, constitutive of science (1977c, 331; 1993, 338) they cannot determine scientific choice. First, these criteria are imprecise, and so there is room for disagreement about the degree to which they hold. Secondly, there can be disagreement about how they play off against one another, especially when they conflict. 4.2 Perception, Observational Incommensurability, and World-Change

An important focus of Kuhn's interest in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was on the nature of perception and how it may be that what a scientist observes may change as a result of scientific revolution. He developed what has become known as the thesis of the theory-dependence of observation, building on the work of N. R. Hanson (1958) while also referring to psychological studies carried out by his Harvard colleagues, Leo Postman and Jerome Bruner (Bruner and Postman 1949). The standard positivist view was that observation provides the neutral arbiter between competing theories. The thesis that Kuhn and Hanson promoted denied this, holding that the nature of observation may be influenced by prior beliefs and experiences. Consequently it cannot be expected that two scientists when observing the same scene will make the same theory-neutral observations. Kuhn asserts that Galileo and an Aristotelian when both looking at a pendulum will see different things (see quoted passage below).

The theory-dependence of observation, by rejecting the role of observation as a theory-neutral arbiter among theories, provides another source of incommensurability. Methodological incommensurability (§4.1 above) denies that there are universal methods for making inferences from the data. The theory-dependence of observation means that even if there were agreed methods of inference and interpretation, incommensurability could still arise since scientists might disagree on the nature of the observational data themselves.

Kuhn expresses or builds on the idea that participants in different disciplinary matrices will see the world differently by claiming that their worlds are different:

In a sense I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction (1962/1970a, 150).(19

Remarks such as these gave some commentators the impression that Kuhn was a strong kind of constructivist, holding that the way the world literally is, depends on accepted scientific theory. Kuhn, however, denied any constructivist import to his remarks on world-change. The closest Kuhn came to constructivism was to acknowledge a parallel with Kantian idealism. Paul Hoyningen-Huene (1989/1993), as a result of working with Kuhn, developed a neo-Kantian interpretation of his discussion of perception and world-change. We may distinguish between the world-in-itself and the ‘world’ of our perceptual and related experiences (the phenomenal world). This corresponds to the Kantian distinction between the noumena and the phenomena. The important difference between Kant and Kuhn is that Kuhn regards the general form of the phenomena not to be fixed but instead to be changeable. A shift in paradigm can lead, via the theory-dependence of observation, to a difference in one's experiences of things and thus to a change in one's phenomenal world.

Kuhn likened the change in the phenomenal world to the Gestalt-switch that occurs when one sees the duck-rabbit diagram first as (similar to) a duck then as (similar to) a rabbit, although he himself acknowledged that he was not sure whether the Gestalt case was just an analogy or whether it illustrated some more general truth about the way the mind works that encompasses the scientific case too. 4.3 Kuhn's Early Semantic Incommensurability Thesis

Although the theory-dependence of observation plays a significant role in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, neither it nor methodological incommensurability could account for all the phenomena that Kuhn wanted to capture with the notion of incommensurability. Some of his own examples are rather stretched—for exmple, he says Lavoisier saw oxygen where Priestley saw dephlogisticated air, describing this as a ‘transformation of vision’ (1962/1970a, 118). Moreover observation—conceived of as a form of perception—does not play a significant part in every science. Kuhn wanted to explain his own experience of reading Aristotle, which first left him with the impression that Aristotle was an inexplicably poor scientist. But careful study led to a change in his understanding that allowed him to see that Aristotle was indeed an excellent scientist. This could not simply be a matter of literally perceiving things differently. Kuhn took the incommensurability that prevented him from properly understanding Aristotle to be at least partly a linguistic, semantic matter. Indeed, Kuhn spent much of his career after The Structure of Scientific Revolutions attempting to articulate a semantic conception of incommensurability.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn asserts that there are important shifts in the meanings of key terms as a consequence of a scientific revolution. For example, Kuhn says:

… the physical referents of these Einsteinian concepts are by no means identical with those of the Newtonian concepts that bear the same name. (Newtonian mass is conserved; Einsteinian is convertible with energy. Only at low relative velocities may the two be measured in the same way, and even then they must not be conceived to be the same.) (1962/1970a, 102)

This is important, because a standard conception of the transition from classical to relativistic physics is that although Einstein's theory of relativity supersedes Newton's theory, what we have is an improvement or generalization whereby Newton's theory is a special case of Einstein's (to a close approximation). We can therefore say that the later theory is closer to the truth than the older theory. Kuhn's view that ‘mass’ as used by Newton cannot be translated by ‘mass’ as used by Einstein allegedly renders this kind of comparison impossible. Hence incommensurability is supposed to rule out convergent realism, the view that science shows ever improving approximation to the truth. (Kuhn also thinks, for independent reasons, that the very idea of matching or similarity to the truth is incoherent (1970a, 206).)

Kuhn's view as expressed in the passage quoted above depends upon meaning holism—the claim that the meanings of terms are interrelated in such a way that changing the meaning of one term results in changes in the meanings of related terms: “To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force, and so on, had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole.” (1962/1970a, 149) The assumption of meaning holism is a long standing one in Kuhn's work. One source for this is the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. Another not unrelated source is the assumption of holism in the philosophy of science that is consequent upon the positivist conception of theoretical meaning. According to the latter, it is not the function of the theoretical part of scientific language to refer to and describe unobserved entities. Only observational sentences directly describe the world, and this accounts for them having the meaning that they do. Theories permit the deduction of observational sentences. This is what gives theoretical expressions their meaning. Theoretical statements cannot, however, be reduced to observational ones. This is because, first, theoretical propositions are collectively involved in the deduction of observational statements, rather than singly. Secondly, theories generate dispositional statements (e.g. about the solubility of a substance, about how they would appear if observed under certain circumstances, etc.), and dispositional statements, being modal, are not equivalent to any truth-function of (non-modal) observation statements. Consequently, the meaning of a theoretical sentence is not equivalent to the meaning of any observational sentence or combination of observational sentences. The meaning of a theoretical term is a product of two factors: the relationship of the theory or theories of which it is a part to its observational consequences and the role that particular term plays within those theories. This is the double-language model of the language of science and was the standard picture of the relationship of a scientific theory to the world when Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's challenge to it lay not in rejecting the anti-realism implicit in the view that theories do not refer to the world but rather in undermining the assumption that the relationship of observation sentence to the world is unproblematic. By insisting on the theory-dependence of observation, Kuhn in effect argued that the holism of theoretical meaning is shared by apparently observational terms also, and for this reason the problem of incommensurability cannot be solved by recourse to theory-neutral observation sentences.

(Although it is true that Kuhn uses the expression ‘physical referent’ in the passage quoted above, this should not be taken to mean an independently existing worldly entity. If that were the case, Kuhn would be committed to the worldly existence of both Newtonian mass and Einsteinian mass (which are nonetheless not the same). It is implausible that Kuhn intended to endorse such a view. A better interpretation is to understand Kuhn as taking reference, in this context, to be a relation between a term and a hypothetical rather than worldly entity. Reference of anything like the Fregean, worldly kind plays no part in Kuhn's thinking. Again this may be seen as a reflection of the influence of one or other or both of the (later) Wittgensteinian downplaying of reference and of the positivist view that theories are not descriptions of the world but are in one way or another tools for the organization or prediction of observations.) 4.4 Kuhn's Later Semantic Incommensurability Thesis

Although Kuhn asserted a semantic incommensurability thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions he did not there articulate or argue for the thesis in detail. This he attempted in subsequent work, with the result that the nature of the thesis changed over time. The heart of the incommensurability thesis after The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the idea that certain kinds of translation are impossible. Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are translating one language into another, there are inevitably a multitude of ways of providing a translation that is adequate to the behaviour of the speakers. None of the translations is the uniquely correct one, and in Quine's view there is no such thing as the meaning of the words to be translated. It was nonetheless clear that Quine's thesis was rather far from Kuhn's thesis, indeed that they are incompatible. First, Kuhn thought that incommensurability was a matter of there being no fully adequate translation whereas Quine's thesis involved the availability of multiple translations. Secondly, Kuhn does believe that the translated expressions do have a meaning, whereas Quine denies this. Thirdly, Kuhn later went on to say that unlike Quine he does not think that reference is inscrutable—it is just very difficult to recover (1976, 191).

Subsequently, Kuhn developed the view that incommensurability arises from differences in classificatory schemes—taxonomic incommensurability. A field of science is governed by a taxonomy, which divides its subject matter into kinds. Associated with a taxonomy is a lexical network—a network of related terms. A significant scientific change will bring with it an alteration in the lexical network which in turn will lead to a re-alignment of the taxonomy of the field. The terms of the new and old taxonomies will not be inter-translatable.

The problematic nature of translation arises from two assumptions. First, as we have seen, Kuhn assumes that meaning is (locally) holistic. A change in the meaning of one part of the lexical structure will result in a change to all its parts. This would rule out preservation of the translatability of taxonomies by redefining the changed part in terms of the unchanged part. Secondly, Kuhn adopts the ‘no-overlap’ principle which states that categories in a taxonomy must either be disjoint or one be a subset of the other. They cannot simply overlap. This rules out the possibility of an all-encompassing taxonomy that incorporates both the original and the changed taxonomies.

Kuhn continued to develop his conceptual approach to incommensurability. At the time of his death he had made considerable progress on a book in which he related incommensurability to issues in developmental psychology and concept acquisition.

6.2 Incommensurability

Kuhn's incommensurability thesis presented a challenge not only to positivist conceptions of scientific change but also to realist ones. For a realist conception of scientific progress also wishes to assert that, by and large, later science improves on earlier science, in particular by approaching closer to the truth. A standard realist response from the late 1960s was to reject the anti-realism and anti-referentialism shared by both Kuhn's picture and the preceding double-language model. If we do take theories to be potential descriptions of the world, involving reference to worldly entities, kind, and properties, then the problems raised by incommensurability largely evaporate. As we have seen, Kuhn thinks that we cannot properly say that Einstein's theory is an improvement on Newton's in the sense that the latter as deals reasonably accurately (only) with a special case of the former. Whether or not the key terms (such as ‘mass’) in the two theories differ in meaning, a realist and referentialist approach to theories permits one to say that Einstein's theory is closer to the truth than Newton's. For truth and nearness to the truth depend only on reference and not on sense. Two terms can differ in sense yet share the same reference, and correspondingly two sentences may relate to one another as regards truth without their sharing terms with the same sense. And so even if we retain a holism about the sense of theoretical terms and allow that revolutions lead to shifts in sense, there is no direct inference from this to a shift in reference. Consequently, there is no inference to the inadmissibility of the comparison of theories with respect to their truth-nearness.

While this referentialist response to the incommensurability thesis was initially framed in Fregean terms (Scheffler 1967), it received further impetus from the work of Kripke (1980) and Putnam (1975b), which argued that reference could be achieved without anything akin to Fregean sense and that the natural kind terms of science exemplified this sense-free reference. In particular, causal theories of reference permit continuity of reference even through fairly radical theoretical change. (They do not guarantee continuity in reference, and changes in reference can occur on some causal theories, e.g. Gareth Evan's (1973). Arguing that they do occur would require more, however, than merely pointing to a change in theory. Rather, it seems, cases of reference change must be identified and argued for on a case by case basis.) Therefore, if taken to encompass terms for quantities and properties (such as ‘mass’) the changes that Kuhn identified as changes in meaning (e.g. those involved in the shift from Newtonian to relativistic physics) would not necessarily be changes that bear on reference, nor, consequently, on comparison for nearness to the truth. The simple causal theory of reference does have its problems, such as explaining the referential mechanism of empty theoretical terms (e.g.caloric and phlogiston) (c.f. Enç 1976, Nola 1980). Causal-descriptive theories (which allow for a descriptive component) tackle such problems while retaining the key idea that referential continuity is possible despite radical theory change (Kroon 1985, Sankey 1994).

Of course, the referentialist response shows only that reference can be retained, not that it must be. Consequently it is only a partial defence of realism against semantic incommensurability. Additionally, a further component of the defence of realism against incommensurability must be an epistemic one. For referentialism shows that a term can retain reference and hence that the relevant theories may be such that the later constitutes a better approximation to the truth than the earlier. Nonetheless it may not be possible for philosophers or others to know that there has been such progress. Methodological incommensurability in particular seems to threaten the possibility of this knowledge. Kuhn thinks that in order to be in a position to compare theories from older and more recent periods of normal science one needs a perspective external to each and indeed any era of science - what he calls an ‘Archimedean platform’ (1992, 14). However, we never are able to escape from our current perspective. A realist response to this kind of incommensurability may appeal to externalist or naturalized epistemology. These (related) approaches reject the idea that for a method to yield knowledge it must be independent of any particular theory, perspective, or historical/cognitive circumstance. So long as the method has an appropriate kind of reliability it can generate knowledge. Contrary to the internalist view characteristic of the positivists (and, it appears, shared by Kuhn) the reliability of a method does not need to be one that must be evaluable independently of any particular scientific perspective (e.g. a priori). Thus the methods developed in one era may indeed generate knowledge, including knowledge that some previous era got certain matters wrong, or right but only to a certain degree. A naturalized epistemology may add that science itself is in the business of investigating and developing methods. As science develops we would expect its methods to change and develop also.

derida
DECONSTRUCTION What is it?

Deconstruction: A school of philosophy that originated in France in the late 1960s, has had an enormous impact on Anglo-American criticism. Largely the creation of its chief proponent Jacques Derrida, deconstruction upends the Western metaphysical tradition. It represents a complex response to a variety of theoretical and philosophical movements of the 20th century, most notably Husserlian phenomenology, Saussurean and French structuralism, and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. [First paragraph of a seven-page explanation in the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).]

Deconstruction: The term denotes a particular kind of practice in reading and, thereby, a method of criticism and mode of analytical inquiry. In her book The Critical Difference (1981), Barbara Johnson clarifies the term: "Deconstruction is not synonymous with "destruction", however. It is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word 'analysis' itself, which etymologically means "to undo" -- a virtual synonym for "to de-construct." ... If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself." [First paragraph of a four-page definition of the term deconstruction in J.A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, third ed. (London: Blackwell, 1991)]. Los Angeles Times Magazine

July 21, 1991, Sunday

NAME: JACQUES DERRIDA

LENGTH: 4539 words

SUBJECTS: Profile of Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction, literary theory, contemporary philosophy, postmodernism, poststructuralism

HEADLINE: DECONSTRUCTING JACQUES DERRIDA; THE MOST REVILED PROFESSOR IN THE WORLD DEFENDS HIS DIABOLICALLY DIFFICULT THEORY

BYLINE: By Mitchell Stephens, Mitchell Stephens is a journalism professor at New York University and the author of A History of News (Penguin).

(another article by Mitchell Stephens on Jacques Derrida)

THE WORLD'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL LIVING philosopher, arguably its most controversial living thinker, is sitting at a concrete picnic table at an outdoor snack bar at UC Irvine. Few of the undergraduates who stroll by in jams or jeans seem to notice Jacques Derrida, with his carefully tailored gray suit and purple tie. Few would recognize his name if they were introduced. * But as Derrida sips his coffee from a plastic cup, a crowd of world-class graduate students and star professors from as far away as China is already hustling for the best seats in his classroom. In a few minutes, Derrida will present two immensely difficult hours on the latest applications of his renowned method -- deconstruction -- and that room full of scholars will barely allow itself a cough. * Echoes of Derrida's ideas can now be heard in the most unlikely places. The word deconstruction (albeit shorn of much of its meaning) now appears in newspaper reviews and at dinner parties: "Let's deconstruct this scene." It is becoming, like existentialism before it, a part of the language -- to the point where a State Department official can speak of a plan for the "deconstruction" of part of the American Embassy in Moscow, and Mick Jagger can ask, "Does anyone really know what deconstructivist means?"("Deconstructivist" has been the most controversial variety of architecture in recent years.) But the main impact of Derrida's method has been felt on college campuses. * Deconstruction -- which Derrida gave birth to in Paris in the 1960s -- swept through American universities in the '70s and '80s, presuming to remake nothing less than the way professors and students perform their most basic activity: reading.

Deconstructive readings focus -- intently, obsessively -- on the metaphors writers use to make their points. Their purpose is to demonstrate, through comparisons of a work's arguments and its metaphors, that writers contradict themselves -- not just occasionally, but invariably -- and that these contradictions reflect deep fissures in the very foundations of Western culture. In other words, deconstruction claims to have uncovered serious problems in the way Plato and Hemingway and you and I think about matters ranging from truth and friendship to politics and masturbation. Such suggestions have, to say the least, proved controversial. University departments and scholarly associations have split in two over Derrida's complex, often misunderstood method. Friendships have been ruined. His followers tell tales of enlightenment: "It was a little like the moment when Helen Keller first understands the connection between the signing she is being taught and meaning," recalls Harvard English Department's Barbara Johnson of her first encounter with Derrida and deconstruction while a graduate student at Yale. "Keller wanted to go back and sign everything; I wanted to reread everything," Johnson says. But those academics who remain unconverted call Derrida's movement a "cult" or even a "fraud." * "Deconstruction has rather obvious and manifest intellectual weaknesses," writes Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle. "It should be fairly obvious to the careful reader that the emperor has no clothes." * When Irvine displaced Yale as Derrida's main American base four years ago (paying him more than $30,000 a year for an academic quarter compressed into five weeks), there were, along with the proud press releases, predictable outbursts of hard-headed cynicism and fiscal outrage. The shrieks might have been louder if the residents of Orange County understood just how profound a challenge to their thought this distinguished new visiting professor would bring.

DERRIDA'S DARK MEDITERRANEAN skin contrasts with a wide, still full frame of silver hair. "Striking," one of his female graduate students had commented, twice. The word most of his friends use to describe him is "gracious." "Jacques is the mildest of persons," adds Yale professor Harold Bloom. Nevertheless, Derrida is occasionally unwilling or unable to play the roles expected of him. I had been warned that he would not respond well in particular to personal questions of the sort the subject of a magazine profile must face. "Ah, you want me to tell you things like 'I-was-born-in-a-petit-bourgeois-Jewish-family-which-was-assimilated-but . . .' " is how Derrida parried one such query by a French magazine reporter. "Is this really necessary? I just can't do it," he protested to that reporter.

For a celebrity of sorts, Derrida is unusually private and reserved. "There is a certain distance," concedes the avant-garde architect Peter Eisenman, who collaborated with Derrida on the design for a garden in Paris. (Eisenman teasingly accuses Derrida of believing a garden ought to have some benches and trees, a charge Derrida vehemently denies. The design the two of them came up with -- as yet unbuilt -- includes no such reactionary elements.) "He's not the kind of guy," Eisenman notes, "to whom you say, 'Hey, come on, Jacques, let's go have a beer.' We sniff around each other."

And to Derrida's natural reserve -- his tendency to sniff around -- has been added a professional suspicion of easy answers and simple categories. Note, for example, the hesitations that accompany one brief attempt to define his method: "Deconstruction," Derrida says, "if there is such a thing as deconstruction -- and I wouldn't say there is just one deconstruction -- is something heterogeneous, complex. Deconstructions are ways of accounting for the main assumptions common to the culture, common to what we call Western culture.

"Again, I don't think there is one Western culture," he quickly adds. "It's plural."

It's not easy even to apply a designation as simple as "philosopher" to Derrida, though he was educated in philosophy and is, at the moment, fingering the traditional token of a philosopher: a pipe. "I never thought I had something to say philosophically," he tells me. The word philosopher sometimes gets relegated to quotation marks in his writings.

Derrida is also suspicious of the standard biographical accounts we append to the work of our writers. In fact, deconstruction (singular or plural) is known for the extent to which it turns attention to "texts" -- the actual words on paper -- and away from such distractions as the lives of the authors of those texts. One of Derrida's best known and most controversial pronouncements was, "There is nothing outside the text." And for a time it looked as though Derrida wanted nothing to appear in print about himself outside the actual texts he and his interpreters had written. For 17 years, from 1962 to 1979, he would not even allow himself to be photographed for publication.

Consequently, Derrida wears, along with his stylish suits, a certain air of mystery. While there are a couple dozen books in English that feature Jacques Derrida's name in their titles or subtitles, it is almost impossible to find such basic biographical information as the fact that he is married (Derrida's wife of 33 years, Margaret, is a psychoanalyst), or that he has two sons, now in their 20s (one of whom has embarked on a career in philosophy).

Derrida is aware of his elusiveness. His fascination with words extends to their sound, and in the name "Derrida" (pronounced Dare-ee-DA) he says he hears the sounds "derriere le rideau" -- behind the curtain. Rather than attempt to yank the curtain back, I was prepared to tiptoe around the personal questions, but that proved unnecessary. Derrida is surprisingly forthright.

"Why did you refuse to allow yourself to be photographed?"

"My surface motivation was political," Derrida says, softly. "I thought that the things I was writing were not compatible with this silly image of the writer in his office with his books. If there was a deep motivation, it had to do with my relationship with my face, my body."

"Why then this change in policy?"

"It's a kind of resignation. I gave up this image of the non-image."

JACQUES DERRIDA WAS BORN, in 1930, into-a-petit-bourgeois-Jewish-family-which-was-assimilated-into-French-life-in- Algeria-but. . . . (The word but appears often in his story.) But not entirely assimilated. "There were insults," he recalls, "and all the usual manifestations of anti-Semitism." Jacques was the middle child ("this explains everything in my life," he quips), always fighting with his older brother, never fighting with his younger sister. His father was a salesman; his brother became a pharmacist. Jacques, who would grow up to be the only intellectual in his immediate family, was a "very good pupil" until the age of 12. "Then things got complicated."

In 1942, a less common form of anti-Semitism reached Algeria. On the first day of school, the principal called Jacques into his office and said, "You're going to go back home. Your parents will explain."

While the young Derrida was feeling some small part of the horror of Nazism, Paul de Man, the late Yale literature professor who became Derrida's friend and most influential supporter, was writing literary articles, one of which seems clearly anti-Semitic for a collaborationist newspaper in Nazi-occupied Belgium.

Inspired in part by this terrible news, which was revealed four years after De Man's death, Derrida recently has been questioning (i.e., reading "texts" on) the concept of friendship -- among the larger stones in the foundation of our civilization. Derrida, characteristically, is investigating the concept's cracks, its contradictions: the extent to which friendship is necessary but impossible, loving but not too loving, caring but competitive, a form of union but, as are all our relations with others, also a form of separation.

For Derrida, many of these contradictions are embodied in the statement, "Oh my friends, there is no friend." For years, each of Derrida's lectures has begun with this enigmatic -- Derrida would say "undecidable" -- quotation attributed to Aristotle but not actually found anywhere in Aristotle's writings.

The problem of friendship was an important theme in Derrida's early life, too. His childhood friends at the lycee in Algeria were put to the test after their Jewish playmate was expelled. They failed. "It was a very, very painful situation," he admits, "something which probably left deep scars."

The Jewish community in Algeria reacted by organizing its own school. "But I didn't like it," Derrida says. In his work, Derrida has emphasized the importance of that which does not quite belong: the marginal. He finds many of the ambiguities, loose ends and contradictions for which he is searching buried in the margins of writings -- in the footnotes, parentheses and prefaces other readers overlook. And he sees himself as having lived on the margins -- not quite French, not quite Algerian and also not simply Jewish.

It took four months for the Free French government to repeal the "racial laws" in Algeria, but eventually Derrida was allowed back in the lycee. He returned, he says, as a "very irregular pupil -- very good in some disciplines, not so good in others." Good enough in philosophy and literature, however, to move to Paris at the age of 19 to prepare himself for the Ecole Normale Superieure, France's most prestigious college (where Jean-Paul Sartre met Simone de Beauvoir). And Derrida -- a boy not just from the provinces but from way beyond the provinces -- went on to secure a reputation among Parisian intellectuals that could begin to be compared to Sartre's. But. . ..

But Derrida continued to view himself as something of an outsider: "There is this distance, a distance because I was Jewish" -- a word he pronounces quietly -- "because I wasn't totally French." Although he published widely -- three books in 1967 alone -- and gained notoriety, as a philosopher can only in France, his fame was as a rebel, someone who challenged the dominant culture. (Politically, Derrida inhabits the left margin.) And, although he soon was teaching at the Ecole Normale, Derrida continued to see himself as removed from the academic establishment.

"In the academy there are two images of me," Derrida suggests. "One is of a professor with authority, given honorary degrees, legitimized in so many ways. But the other is of a man who doesn't belong to the university, who is just destroying the norms, who is not an authentic scholar. These images constantly conflict with each other, and I'm in the middle, just traveling between the two. Sometimes I naively ask myself, 'Where am I?' "

JACQUES DERRIDA'S IDEAS first established a beachhead in America in 1966 at a conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins University. Structuralism is the belief, then all the rage among Parisian intellectuals, that "structures" -- like the rules and relationships that make words into a language -- underlie all forms of "communication," from tribal myths to French fashions. The American literary scholars gathered at that conference had been delighting themselves with their own perspicacity when Derrida, the youngest of the Frenchmen invited to perform for them, took the stage and announced, in effect, that the structuralism the au courant were so proud of having adopted was dead -- hopelessly entangled with the same unsupported beliefs in ultimate meanings and final answers that permeate all of Western thought. That caused some flutters beneath the cardigans.

And the impression that an original and important new thinker had been discovered was furthered when Derrida's writings started drifting across the Atlantic and being translated. They were, to say the least, unconventional: A sentence might begin on page 319 and not end until page 322; a single footnote might run the length of an article; two separate narrations might share the pages of a book.

Still, it was Derrida's reading, not his writing, that won most of the converts. He gave literature professors a special gift: a chance to confront -- not as mere second-rate philosophers, not as mere interpreters of novelists, but as full-fledged explorers in their own right -- the most profound paradoxes of Western thought (which helps explain why he has been accepted in American literature, not philosophy, departments). If they really read, if they stared intently enough at the metaphors, literature professors, from the comfort of their own easy chairs, could reveal the hollowness of the basic assumptions that lie behind all our writings.

Language is an endlessly complex and unwieldy medium, Derrida argued, and writers are never entirely in control of their words. When Plato, the father of Western thought, is trying to explain, for example, why speech is a dramatically more effective way to communicate than writing, he ends up with this justification: Speech "is written in the soul of the listener." The metaphor and the argument conflict. Ernest Hemingway, arguing that bullfighting is "a tragedy, not a sport," continually explains bullfighting with analogies drawn from American sports. Again, the metaphors -- like Freudian slips -- seemingly unconsciously subvert the argument.

Derrida was trying to show that most of the distinctions we attempt to draw can in some ultimate sense be thrown into question: Speech is not closer to our souls than writing; Hemingway's bullfighting is not of a different order than mere sports; sex (to choose another of his examples) is not purer than masturbation. Male/female, human/animal, good/evil -- if we read carefully enough, suspiciously enough, the value-laden comparisons upon which we base our ethical, aesthetic and political behavior can be, to use the lingo, "disturbed."

Derrida's acolytes were convinced that he had presented them with new eyes, new ways of seeing the tangles and dissonances of what was rapidly becoming the postmodern world. His opponents, whose number was becoming legion, saw fog banks, intentional obscurity and a cynicism that threatened to undercut all accepted notions of what is good, beautiful and politically important.

"OH MY FRIENDS, THERE IS NO friend. . . ." Derrida, a short man with a square face, strong nose and thick eyebrows, sits in front of an overcrowded class at UC Irvine.

While they still attract a throng of intellectual heavyweights, Derrida's lectures are no longer so clearly the place to be for academe's trailblazers. Deconstruction has lost a little of its newness and glamour. In fact, some trendsetters in the universities already have a new theory with which to perplex their students: the "new historicism," which reasserts (in an unexpected, provocative kind of way, of course) the importance of historical circumstances -- circumstances outside the "text" -- on works of literature.

The fact that the cognoscenti are losing some of their excitement, however, is often a sign that a fashion is establishing itself with a larger public, and in a sense this is happening with deconstruction. Derrida himself -- with his increasing willingness to step out from behind his texts -- has appeared in a movie, "Ghost Dance," and even inspired a rock song by the English group Scritti Politti: "I'm in love with Jacques Derrida/Read a page and I know what I need ta/Take apart/My baby's heart. . . ." (Derrida had lunch with band leader Green and described him as "a very intelligent young man, really knows his Wittgenstein.")

Deconstructivist architects acknowledge Derrida as an inspiration for their work: uncentered, marginal, committed to mocking expectations -- gardens without benches and trees. And Derrida's name has begun showing up in non-academic publications and broadcasts -- as the scourge of the author, as the epitome of the incomprehensible intellectual, as the postmodern era's "post man" and, most recently, as a patron saint of that controversial "multiculturalism" (though those Derrida favors with his deconstructions are almost exclusively white, male, European authors: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Freud, Mallarme, Genet).

In France, where deconstruction fell in and out of fashion about half a decade earlier than it did here, Derrida remains an important force, a public figure who has involved himself in such political causes as the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and in favor of freedom of expression in pre-1989 Czechoslovakia. (Derrida was jailed in Czechoslovakia in 1982 after meeting with some dissident writers.) He breaks the stereotype of the French leftist intellectual by living not in Paris but in a suburb, Ris-Orangis -- on the margins of Paris. He does not spend his evenings in Left Bank cafes.

In the United States, Derrida first began giving his dense, iconoclastic lectures and seminars as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins, then at Yale, where in the late '70s and early '80s he played the role of guru to some members of the influential "Yale School" of literary criticism, which included De Man, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller.

DERRIDA'S SQUARE HANDS are folded in front of him. A pair of clear-framed half-glasses rests on his nose. He is reading, or rather translating, from his French notes, notes that themselves are spotted with citations in German and Greek. Derrida began lecturing in English for the first time at Irvine, but English words still escape from his mouth slowly.

After 30 minutes, we reach what the professor says will be his starting point. After 43 minutes he announces, "That's where we are beginning today." Not that he could be accused of wasting time. Like most of those rare individuals endowed with gravity, Derrida seems to circle but not drift. Fifty minutes into the lecture, Derrida's investigation of some sentence from a great philosopher becomes particularly obtuse, and his audience allows itself a collective fidget -- its first and last.

"One often, if not always, speaks too fast, too early," Derrida is explaining. "One often speaks without seeing, without knowing, without meaning what one says." One often speaks without. . . meaning what one says? You can see why Derrida drives those accustomed to more cautious statements batty. Not only is he arguing that we contradict ourselves, occasionally switching positions in mid-thought -- "Oh my friends, there is no friend" -- but also that it is impossible for us to communicate with friends, or even with ourselves, with perfect clarity, that it is impossible to achieve some sort of ultimate, unambiguous understanding.

The problem, Derrida contends, is that meaning is always dependent on context. " 'There is nothing outside the text,' " he explains in a recent book, "means there is nothing outside context." And since the context in which words might be read or heard can always shift, meanings are impossible to completely pin down -- and the distinctions we base on them ultimately rest on sand.

Remember that one magic moment -- perhaps you were in a garden, on a bench, under a tree -- when the meaning of existence suddenly came into focus? Well, Derrida has bad news, especially for those who have devoted their lives to the truth of such magnificent, all-encompassing visions: The world, he maintains, can be viewed from a limitless number of different perspectives. There is no one true answer. Aha! But doesn't deconstruction itself pretend to be such an answer? No, says Derrida, who presents deconstruction not as a conclusive theory but as a method for uncovering the contradictions at the heart of attempts to formulate such conclusive theories.

For those political or intellectual conservatives who insist on the validity of simple truths, straightforward values and a single cultural tradition, Derrida is indeed the enemy. He sees instead a world that is complex, contradictory and plural. Derrida is no friend to doctrinaire leftists either. His views allow too much room for doubt. Even those of us who are simply trying to hang our beliefs on one or two solid principles will find Derrida's work troubling.

Nevertheless, as he and his friends emphasize and re-emphasize, Derrida is not a nihilist. The fact that, in Derrida's view, there is no one meaning does not mean that there is no meaning at all. We can, of course, determine whether statements are true or false within the specified contexts of, say, science or magazine profiles. And this does not mean, as Derrida notes in this lecture, that we are freed of responsibility to try as hard as we can to say what we think we mean. It does mean that we can never know all there is to know about a sentence attributed to Aristotle, about our existence, about what is good, even about the words we are saying -- all of which will always remain open to interpretation and reinterpretation.

It is no coincidence that deconstruction has arrived as this self-conscious century totters, coughing and wheezing, into its last years. One of the last great attempts to impose a single perspective upon human societies has crumbled before our eyes in Eastern Europe. Our "great war," the Cold War, was fought with interpretations of weapons, not weapons. Our businesses sell by placing their products in finely worked contexts. Our politicians triumph by manipulating the interpretation of the events in which they participate. Our governments are run as much by "spin doctors" as by policy makers. Derrida might be dubbed a "spin scholar."

"What marks Derrida's work," Tom Keenan of Princeton explains, "is this incredibly serious thinking of the idea that communication is not something transparent" -- that meaning does not simply shine through, that messages arrive bearing a variety of spins, that there is no one correct interpretation. This is an idea that has marked the work of other 20th-Century thinkers -- from Marshall McLuhan to Roland Barthes to Republican media-strategist Roger Ailes. It is perhaps the idea of the century, and Derrida -- with his attempts to think the limits of our ability to communicate, even with ourselves, his attempts to think the limits of thought -- may be following it to its most extreme, most disturbing, conclusions.

One often speaks without. . . meaning what one says.

WE ARE DINING AT A RESTAURANT called Hemingway's (his choice) -- a warm and dimly lighted place, since closed, near Newport Beach -- when Derrida says, with unexpected wistfulness, that he dreams of writing something naive, something straightforward, something -- of all things -- simple.

"Derrida is able to surprise you even when you think you know his thoughts," notes Jonathan Culler, whose book "On Deconstruction" provides one of the clearest introductions to Derrida's work.

Derrida write simply? It is pretty to think it possible, but this is the thinker who seems always ready to strike off in a disconcerting new direction. (Derrida's ongoing seminar on friendship, for example, has been metamorphosing of late into an investigation of "the rhetoric of cannibalism" -- the ultimate attempt to become one with a friend.) This is the thinker who seems always eager to substitute a new ramification for a mere restatement, who refuses to settle for the more straightforward forms of prose, who has earned a reputation for being perhaps the most complex writer of our time.

And the density, the complexity of Derrida's writing is no mere accident. It seems central to his thought -- to his circling, suspicious way of responding. (Indeed, Derrida has been attacked recently for his inability to offer a simple condemnation of De Man's wartime writings.) Derrida is the prophet of complexity -- the person who continually takes responsibility for noting the difficulties, the inescapable contradictions; the person who has finally accepted the impossibility of simplicity. "The world is complex," he tells me, "and I'm afraid -- or I hope -- it will remain so."

Nevertheless, this dream -- the simple book (not text) that rests unborn within him -- will come up again and again in our conversations. It would be a novel, perhaps. And in place of the great philosophers whose work he has so often deconstructed, the book's subject would be: a 12-year-old boy in Algeria, French but not French, Jewish but not Jewish, with friends but no friends; a 19-year-old boy in Paris struggling to cross the "psychological/sociological borders" into and out of the world of Parisian intellectuals.

"I have the deep feeling of not having written what I would like to write and what I should have written," Derrida says, adding that in a sense he views all that he has written -- and Derrida has been remarkably prolific -- as a "preliminary exercise" for "the one-and-only project," which he suspects he will never write. "I know it's not possible to write in an absolutely naive fashion, but that's my dream."

Which may be where we stand after deconstruction: Derrida has been demonstrating the extent to which our dreams -- of naivete and simplicity, of perfect friendship, of indisputable meaning, of God, for that matter -- are impossible. But he also knows that we remain incapable of not dreaming.

To contact Mitchell Stephens

turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (pronounced /ˈtjʊərɪŋ/, TYOOR-ing; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was influential in the development of computer science and providing a formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, playing a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.[1]

Turing's test The "standard interpretation" of the Turing Test, in which player C, the interrogator, is tasked with trying to determine which player - A or B - is a computer and which is a human. Main article: Turing test

Rather than trying to determine if a machine is thinking, Turing suggests we should ask if the machine can win a game, called the "Imitation Game". It involves three participants in isolated rooms: a computer (which is being tested), a human, and a (human) judge. The human judge can converse with both the human and the computer by typing into a terminal. Both the computer and human try to convince the judge that they are the human. If the judge cannot consistently tell which is which, then the computer wins the game.[2]

Turing writes 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?'"[3]

As Stevan Harnad notes, the question has become "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?"[4] In other words, Turing is no longer asking if a machine can think, he asking if a machine can act like it is thinking. This question avoids the difficult philosophical problem of defining the verb "to think." [edit] Digital machines See also: Turing machine and Church-Turing thesis

Turing also notes that we need to determine which "machines" we wish to consider. He points out that a human clone, while man-made, would not provide a very interesting example. Turing suggested that we should focus on the capabilities of digital machinery—machines which manipulate the binary digits of 1 and 0, rewriting them into memory using simple rules. He gave two reasons.

First, there is no reason to speculate whether or not they can exist. They already did in 1950.

Second, digital machinery is "universal." Turing's research into the foundations of computation had proved that a digital computer can, in theory, simulate the behaviour of any other digital machine, given enough memory and time. (This is the essential insight of the Church-Turing thesis and the universal Turing machine.) Therefore, if any digital machine can "act like it is thinking" then, every sufficiently powerful digital machine can. Turing writes, "all digital computers are in a sense equivalent."[5]

This allows the original question to be made even more specific. Turing now restates the original question as "Let us fix our attention on one particular digital computer C. Is it true that by modifying this computer to have an adequate storage, suitably increasing its speed of action, and providing it with an appropriate programme, C can be made to play satisfactorily the part of A in the imitation game, the part of B being taken by a man?"[5] This question, he believes, can be answered without resorting to speculation or philosophy. It has become a straightforward question of software engineering.

Paradigm shift From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search

Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.

The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt an array of stances (e.g., Marxist criticism, Deconstruction, 19th-century-style literary criticism), which may be more of less fashionable during any given period but which are all regarded as legitimate.

Since the 1960s, the term has been found useful to thinkers in numerous non-scientific contexts. Compare as a structured form of Zeitgeist.

kuhn paradigm
Kuhnian paradigm shifts Kuhn used the duck-rabbit optical illusion to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm shift could cause one to see the same information in an entirely different way.

An epistemological paradigm shift was called a scientific revolution by epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. It is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.

When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.

byronic hero
3.1 Discourse and Action

In a seminal essay, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” (TA, 146-67). Ricoeur's aim is both to set forth the essential constituents of all actions and to show that action is intelligible and the proper object of the social sciences. To do so he builds on his conception of discourse, of language in use.

Language contains within itself resources that allow it to be used creatively. Two important ways in which these resources come to light are (a) in the coining of metaphors and (b) in the fashoning of narratives. In The Rule of Metaphor, Ricoeur argues that there is a linguistic imagination that "generates and regenerates meaning through the living power of metaphoricity."[8] For him, fresh metaphors, metaphors that have not been reduced to the commonplace, reveal a new way of seeing their referents. They creatively transform language. Thus they are not merely rhetorical ornaments. They have genuine cognitive import in their own right and are untranslatable without remainder into literal language. In a similar manner, as I will develop more fully below, acts of narrating create new plots and characters, thereby also producing new meanings. Thus to become aware of the metaphorical and narrative resources resident in language is to see that notwithstanding the many rules and codes that govern language usage, it is always able to be used to be inventive, to produce new meanings.

Four traits of discourse, as distinct from language as a system, are of central importance for the analogy Ricoeur makes between texts and actions. First, a language system as conceived by structuralists is simply virtual and hence timeless, but discourse always occurs at some particular moment of time. Second, a language system is self-contained, but discourse always refers to persons who say or write or hear or read. Third, though a language system is a necessary condition for communication inasmuch as it provides the codes for communication, it itself does not communicate. Only discourse communicates among interlocutors. And fourth, the signs in a language system refer only to other signs in it, but discourse “refers to a world that it claims to describe, to express, or to represent.”[9]

Action is analogous to discourse because, to make full sense of any action, one has to recognize that its meaning is distinguishable from its occurrence as a particular spationtemporal event. Nevertheless, every genuine action is meaningful only because it is some specific person's doing at some particular moment.

To clarify the analogy between discourse and action, Ricoeur draws on speech act theory. First, action has the structure of a locutionary act inasmuch as it has a “propositional content” that we can identify and reidentify. For example, we can recognize the activity of putting on clothes or digging in the ground whenever we encounter anyone doing them.

Second, action has “illocutionary” characteristics that closely resemble the speech acts in discourse. Each type of action has constitutive “rules,” rules that make an action a specific type of action. An obvious example of the “illocutionary” character of actions is that of promises. Actions of a certain sort, for example, stepping forward when volunteers are called for, can, in the appropriate context, count as a promise no less than a verbal pledge can.

Though Ricoeur does not explicitly discuss the counterpart in action of the perlocutionary act in discourse, it is easy to infer. Just as we can anticipate how people are likely to react to things that we might say or write, so we can anticipate how they would likely react to what we might do. We know that there some deeds that people are quite likely to put up with and others that they are likely not to do so.

It follows from the analogies between discourse and action that all action is in principle interaction just as all discourse is in principle dialogical. Because of this similarity, action, like discourse, is inherently subject to interpretation. Like discourse, actions are “open worlds” whose meanings are not fully determined by their performers and their immediate audiences. As the study of history shows, there are two main ways that a past action remains open to interpretation. One can reasonably investigate what it meant to those who knew about it when it occurred. And one can also ask how those who came later understood and assessed it.

Furthermore, we interpret the whole of a discourse or text, whether spoken or written, in the light of its several parts and a particular part in the light of the whole. Similarly, we interpret a complex of actions, for example, a war, in the light of the particular actions of its participants and vice versa.

All interpretative activity proceeds by way of a dialectic between guessing and validating. We make a guess about the meaning of a part and check it against the whole and vice versa. Also we guess about the relative importance of the several parts. Throughout the process of guess and validation, there is no definitive outcome. It is always possible reasonably to relate sentences, or actions, to one another in more than one way.

To validate an interpretation is not to verify it empirically. One validates an interpretation by vindicating it against competing interpretations. Thus validation “is an argumentative discipline comparable to the judicial procedures of legal interpretation. It is a logic of uncertainty and qualitative probability.”[10]

Through the conflict of interpretations one can find criteria, such as comprehensiveness, for determining which interpretation is more likely. Sometimes, though, more than one interpretation will satisfy the criteria equally well. But some interpretations have little or no likelihood. Hence:

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal…. The text is a limited field of possible constructions. The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism. It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach.[11]

What holds good for the interpretation of discourse holds good also for the interpretation of action.

Each discourse and action is, of course, an event that occurs at a particular place and time. Accordingly, besides interpreting it, one ought also to seek for a causal explanation of its occurrence. Only an account that provides both a causal explanation and an interpretation of its meaning that enjoys probability does justice to the action or discourse.

Ricoeur finds in his reflections on discourse and action a capital lesson about the world and the persons or selves that inhabit it. Selves as agents are, to be sure, entities in the world. But they are fundamentally different from all other worldly entities.

byronic2
George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, created the Byronic Hero in the nineteenth century. His writing and hero have influenced many others to incorporate these characteristics into their characters. The Byronic Hero generally has these characteristics:

Ø rebels against convention or society

Ø has a low tolerance for societal norms and social institutions

Ø is isolated or has chosen isolation from society

Ø is not impressed with rank and/or privilege

Ø has larger-than-life abilities and larger-than-life pride

Ø suspected of committing a crime or has been cursed

Ø suffers from grandiose passions

Ø has a tendency to be self-destructive

Byron created characters that have these characteristics. His two most famous, Manfred and Harold, are classic examples. Both had a low tolerance for social institutions and were isolated wanderers by choice: Manfred wandered the mountaintops – physically isolated – while his Childe Harold exiled himself to Europe and while still in society, wasn’t part of it. Both were not easily impressed, considered themselves cursed and tended to be self-destructive.

philo.man intro
Chapter I Introduction

Etymologically speaking, the term man is derived from Old English man, meaning “person”. Wherefore, man is a person, a human being as distinguished from a thing or lower animal; individual man, woman, or child.(New World Dictionary,1979) However, there are many philosophical meaning of man, but the real meaning of man can be defined by himself through the use of his rational power. Or he can know himself through his own effort. Besides that, our former Pope John Paul II said that, “the man who wish to understand himself thoroughly..., he must with his unrest... draw near to Christ” It is true in that way that in Christ the full meaning of man's existence is ultimately revealed. However, to have a systematic reflection of who man is in his ultimate being in this world, with the further reflection of above quotation, would lead to conclude in one phrase that man is ,indeed, a great being. This is the bases of the writer to compose his title. It is the product of his contemplative reflection as he pondered man in his existence and uniqueness. For him, man is the center of all. He is the unique being among any other beings in the sense that man has been blessed by God with the gifts of intellect and free will, capable of rationalizing, a highest thinking animal, possess the characteristics that are distinct from plant, or animal whether in soul or instinct. And above all, man is the only being that capable of building up a relationship with his Creator. Thus, for that reason, man is indeed a great being of beings. This term paper is not composed by one idea of a person, but it is made by the effort of the researcher in collecting the ideas of many authors and famous philosopher from their books, wherein their views of man is written. They have many ideas about man and his other fellow beings. Moreover the reader may found inside how we conclude that man become great being from the other beings in terms of his rational power, soul, dexterity, and etc. With that we can able to identify that truly man is great creature of God. Thus, in reading this simple term paper, you may at least acquire basic knowledge about man and is being.

Statement of a Problem This questions stated are just simple guidance to lead your mind for your easy understanding as you are about to get inside of this term paper.

1.What is man? 2.Man's uniqueness and gifts? 3.How man distinct from plant and animal?

Chapter II The Review of Related Literature

I. Definition Of Man In defining man, there are many philosophers gave their descriptions of what man is in their different perspectives. However, let us define man first in its somehow general means as it is stated in the book of Howard (1981), man is the animal who is resigned to death, but also can conceive the possibility of transcending death; who is limited to the five senses, but also can go beyond them; who is the product of organic evolution, but at the same time has the audacity to want to control evolution; who is conscious of a duality, even a plurality, in his nature, but is nevertheless able to attain an experience of unity completely beyond the reach of other animals; who is controlled by every conceivable kind of external and internal necessity, but by his understanding of, and adaption to, or countercontrol of these necessities is able to attain a high degree of individual and social freedom. Moreover, in the philosophers view, Aristotle gave his definition of man as he said that man is a rational animal, an animal that is capable of rational thinking. He added also that man is a political animal, the only animal capable of organizing into complex communities, cities, states. He also stated his definition to man in less essential one, that man is the resistible animal (the animal with sense of humor); or man is a two-legged animal without feathers. Furthermore, 'man is the measure of all things, of these that they are, of those that they are not' is the best statement of Protagoras describing about man. He meant not the individual man, but man in the specific sense. He is saying that the community or group or the whole human species is the criterion and standard of truth. Moreover, Frederich Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Moral, taking an existential point of view, described man as the only being who can make promises for the future, i.e., one who can commit himself to a certain line of action and stick to it responsibly. Thus, the man is capable of uttering his words for promises and is responsible to act it as far as he is concern. This act is not done to any other being like animal since he is incapable of language and many other to engage in making promises. Lastly, another one, Ernst Cassirer defined man as the animal  who can make and use symbols, i.e., created meanings (as contrasted with the natural or instinctive signals that animal are capable of giving to one another and to man.) Though animal capable of making symbol, but the man's symbol has a certain pattern to point out what he is trying to express in communicating to other, whereas the animal is has no certain or somehow no fixed pattern to convey its expression.( The Philosophy of Man, 1981)

II. Man Is A Unique Being Man's uniqueness can be traced back from the creation of God. In Genesis, God made the human species, first male and then the female, as a single species separated from the animal world. 'Man is separated from the animals in terms of his moral conscience, self-knowledge, and capacity for a spiritual communion with his Creator.'(NIV, 1989) Animal has not been gifted with such grace, but only man, who is the precious among God's creatures. Man is indeed blessed since to him that God's image is reflected, whereby as it is said in the book of Genesis(1:26-27) that God created man in his image and likeness of himself. For that reason, man is unique and the best being in the sense that man is the reflection of God's image, and the only being that capable of communion with His Creator. He can build an intimacy with the Lord. He can communicate with Him, can serve Him, can love Him, and can please Him through his good deeds. In the side of the Creator, He can communicate His grace and mercy to man, and can love man alone. And whereby, man has become the subject of His redemption through Christ as the great manifestation of His unsurpassable to man. Thus, all of these are possible only to man. He is a being which has a great relationship with the Lord. And therefore, man is proper to be called a unique being among the others.

III. Gifts only To Man Man is an intelligent and free creature infused by God since the time of his birth. He is gifted with such human intellect and will. Only man possesses these gifts that which makes his superior to the other beings, which are moved by their instinct. Free will means man has a freedom to make a choice for his life by directing himself toward his true good. 'He finds perfection in seeking and living what is true and good'(CCC, 1994) On the other hand, by his reason, 'he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator'(CCC,1994) Intellect makes man capable to think and to rationalize through the use of his power to reason out. Indeed, Aristotle said in his philosophy that 'man is a rational animal.'(Babor, 2007) But his animality is higher than that of animal since animal don't have a rational thinking. Hence, man is the only being, having gifted with rational thinking, capable of having wide range of understanding of the world. Through his thinking, man is able to communicate with other the same being. And through thinking, man is able to search and explore beyond the meaning of his existence, the existence of other beings and the existence of the world. Moreover, it was made verify by Socrates in his view that 'man is a being who thinks and wills.'(Babor, 2007) Thus, with these all. Only man has these gifts, not animal has these, nor plants, nor any other beings, which stand as a great evidence of his being a great. So, man is the being with such intellect and will to live and to know the reality in this comprehensive world.

IV. Man: A being in the World It is said from the book of Babor (2007) that, man is a being in the world; he is not a being in an environment. An environment is only true to animals, not to man. Man has a world, not an environment. Man is not bound to an environment; he is open to the world. So in that case it is clearly implies that man in his existence must be in the world and not in the world of brutes, which is the environment. It is simply because man has peculiar power like reason to cultivate the world, whereby to make the world better and better in every future generation. Whereas animal live a life that always seek satisfaction like food from their environment, and being contented what the environment give to them. Animal simply move for themselves without having any effort to contribute for the growth of their environment since they don't have rational power. Moreover, it is stated in the same book of Babor (2007) that, in truth, man makes the furture through his past and present. If the world unconceals itself to man so that it can mold and give man a broader horizon of possibilities so that he can rightly exercise his freedom, then, the world is waiting for man to be developed further. Thus, man's transformation of the world into a world of culture and civilized can still be improved further. There is a better world waiting to be built by man; there is a vast horizon of the future waiting to be made by man. In doing this, man can find his existence a more meaningful one. So man has a great function to make up his world to be good and better for the days to come. He is as if the one being that can transform the world.

V. Plant, Animal, and Man These three distinct beings are the most important being that occupied in the world. Each is distinct and has its own capacity for their existence. But these three are indispensable to one another as it is stated in the book of Max Scheler (1961) “ the plant existed for the sake of the animals, the animal for the sake of man.” Thus, each being has its own purpose, whereby it contributes for the sake of one another. But, however, let us now dwell on the distinction between the beings, the plant, animal, from man.

a. Plant and Man In plant, obviously it is the lowest form of being. It has no sensation and consciousness, nor soul. According to the findings of the Dutch Botanist Blaauw, 'we cannot ascribe to the plant any specific tropism, or sensation, not even the slightest semblance of a reflex arc,or associations and the conditioned reflex.' So int that case,we may infer the incapability of plant. It has no sensation ans no specific memory beyond the dependence of its condition upon the whole of its life history. It does not have the capacity for moving in space, if it does it is no longer called as plant since motion is onl attributes to animal and man. Thus, plant's capability only is to grow, production and death. The plant will germinate, and can produce other living plant in the process of its production, then later will be banish. That is the circular process of plant the same as the other beings. (Man's Place in Human Nature, 1961) On the other hand, comparing it to man,there would be similar to them but only in the case of production and death. That means, man can do the same as plant did, that man can produce it own siblings as substitutes to his existence after him. Moreover, obviously plant has a big difference in comparing to man since man is a rational, capable of anything that the plant can impossibly do. Man has the power of sensing, can move by his own self, can eat and enjoy life of anything he wants. Plant never possess that since it is rely only to its environment for its grow. Thus, man is obviously great from the the existence of plant for man's activity is deeply unreachable by plant for it can't perform any act beyond its capability.

b. Animal and Man There should be a great discussion to be taken to contrast man and animal since both of them are capable of motion, sensation etc. both of them has a soul. To clarify our mind in their distinction let us try to differentiate them in my, the writer of this paper, research. In the view of G.W.F. Hegel,in his Philosophy of Right, he distinguished man from the lower animals on the basis of needs. Animals have needs that are limited in number, while man has an ineluctable tendency to multiply his needs infinitely, a tendency of which advertising men, in our culture, seem to be very much aware. Moreover, man, so lacking of instincts and built-in equipage (fur, special teeth, claws, especially acute sense of smell, etc.), certainly has a greater need for outside supports than other animals, and he has exhibited an extraordinary versatility in seeing and finding new ways to satisfy his needs and to enjoy himself. Thus, man has its own freedom for his wants and pleasure for life.( The Philosophy of Man, 1981) Another philosopher Schopenhauer sees the characteristic difference between animal and man in the animal's inability to perform the redeeming negation of the will to live which man, in his highest types, is capable of achieving. It is this negation which for Schopenhauer is the source of all higher forms of consciousness and knowledge in metaphysics, art and in the ethics of sympathy. There is, however, other one who conform to his view. He was known as his follower, and as a follower he supported his master's claim by asserting that the principle of humanity consists exclusively in man's being capable of releasing his organs from the struggle for survival as an individual or as a species in favor of developing tolls, language, and concepts. The latter are explained in terms of the principle of canceling sensory organs and functions or in terms of March's principle of achieving the highest possible economy respect to sensory contents. (Man's Place in Human Nature, 1961)

bi. Instincts in Terms of Learning Like animals, man has also an instinct but his instinct is also different from that of the animals like in the aspect of learning. The anthropologist in their vies said that the instinct in man would be paradoxical, insofar as it would be unlearned tendency to learn. They added that animals are also presumed to have an instinct to learn, but in man this instinct has become mush more complex, involving such things as recollection, abstraction, categorization, analysis and synthesis, syllogistic reasoning etc. By dint of these complex cognitive process, man is able to handle his environment without much dependence upon instincts. But humans don't have to be taught to learn, can't be taught to learn, and in fact must even learn (by themselves) to be taught before teaching can have any effect on them.(The Philosophy of Man, 1981) So by that we may at least recognize that man's instinct in learning is indeed open to accommodate all learnings with sufficient understanding of them. In other words, they just not only learn something but also include their cognition of that thing. Whereas the animal is just learn without having knowledge of what it is all about. However, connection to this, that ability of animal is similar to what they called the estimative power, a kind of internal sense, defined as 'the power by which an animal recognizes, prior to learning and without understanding, suitable behavior regarding a sensed object.'(Man an His Nature, 1961) It is by that estimative power that animals able to initiate their action whether to eat, to build nest, to swim, and etc. They are operated by their instinct that is restricted only to level of learning without the collaboration of their intellectual understanding since brutes don't have it. On the other hand, man has also that power and it is called 'cogitative power', the discursive power, the comparative sense, or even particular reason. Such names attribute to man is used to emphasize that in man this sense power works every intimately with the intellect and to the extent differs from the sense powers of other animals. This power is so greater than the other in the sense that it has a connection with the intellect of man, which is capable of any intellectual activities such as knowing a thing, even its substantial form. Thus, man's instinct is so to say unlimited in terms of learning and understanding since he can go deeper beyond the perception of the things, whereas animal just know only without that prioress of understanding.

bi. Soul To define soul means it is simply the substantial form of a living thing, or that by which we live. (James, 1961) Often we may confuse of the difference between the soul of man and soul of animal especially when we read the comment from the Answers. Com stated that 'there is no difference. Pure soul does not differentiate between an animal and man, only the body.' This is so because many cultures believe that the soul after its separation from the body through death, it unites again in th body of a different form, whether as another human, or an animal. So, therefore, the believers of this might conclude that there is no distinction in soul of man and animal, but both are the same soul. Only the in the form of body makes them distinct. This belief, however, is somehow resemblance to the view of Pythagoras that the soul is immortal and divine. It undergoes reincarnation for its purification to unite itself again to the divine. Thus, soul will unite in the body to absolve its impurity. And so by that, soul will come in any forms of bodies. Perhaps, it is where those many cultures come to their conclusion about their belief that the soul is the same in both man and animal for it unites again whether to animal or man. But, however, let us clarify our mind by excavating the other views from the ancient philosophers regarding the soul. In the view of Aristotle, he may clarify our mind by identifying the function and role of soul in any kind beings. He enumerated the three kinds of soul; the first one is the vegetative soul, the lowest type, which is proper only to all things like plants; the second one is the sensitive soul, which possesses in animal, and is described as the highest of that first mentioned. In this sensitive soul, St. Thomas maintained clearly that of itself it has no operation; its operation belongs as such to the composite. Since it is the composite that lives and senses, this activity bespeaks the activity of a material thing that has a limited degree of formal perfection, that is, life but not a self-subsistent.( Reflection On Man, 1966) And lastly the third one is the rational soul, which exists only in man. Aristotle considered this soul of man as the highest type because, besides capable of thinking and reasoning and judging, it has a power to unite itself to the lowest part, the vegetative and the sensitive.(Babor, 2007) Thus, upon pondering that we may see that there is such a distinction between the soul of man and animal, that the soul of man is not the same as the soul of animal. Man is moved by by his rational soul, capable to be dominant of the others. This distinction will be more clear to us as Plato said that ' it is the rational part of the soul that is the most important and the higher because for him, it is the rational part that specifically distinguishes man from the brutes.(Babor, 2007) Thus, with that we may infer the greatness of man a being distinct from the others in the aspect of soul.

Summary Man, in his general definition, is an animal who is resigned to death, but also can conceive the possibility of transcending death. Many philosopher view man in their different perspectives like Aristotle, who said that man is a rational animal, Frederich Nietzsche, Protagoras, and Ernst Cassirer. Moreover, man is viewed in his uniqueness in his relationship with his Creator; he is being infused the gift of intellect and free will, which make him also distinct from other beings. He lives in the world and not in the environment, which is only for the animal. He is the only being that the world's progress is dependent upon him. Moreover, the distinctions of these two beings, plant and animal, are clearly shown the greatness of man in terms of capacity, ability, characteristic, etc. Man is opposite to the ability of plant that plant can never do what man have. Animal is distinct from animal in terms of instinct; animal is moved by its sensitive power, whereas man by his rational power. In the soul, man has the highest soul, which termed as rational soul. Thus, with that all man is great and distinct from them.

Conclusion From the book entitled Reflection on Man (1966), the researcher quoted as his conclusion as it is stated that, man Is not only an individual, but because he enjoys an essential unity, having as the principle of that unity an intellectual form, man is a person. But it is only through man's operation and activities, such as knowing and acting freely, that we come to be aware of this. Although man is free because he is intellectual, he is intellectual because he has the kind of soul(form) that he possesses. To possess a lower form, such as that organizing the plant or brute, would be to lack intellectuality and hence freedom. Consequently, it is I this that he enjoys rights (and duties) and can live the moral and human life. Hence, man, as Marcel puts it, is a being who can make promises-one in whom we can believe. The researcher personally say that man is indeed a great being of all beings because of the characteristics he has either in terms of physical or in spiritual aspects. He is far distinguishable to the other beings, plant and animal, since man possess something that even both of them could impossibly have or do. Thus, man has a dominion over them. He has the power in mind, in his intellect that make him a higher being because through this man is able to reach and discover the knowledge beyond. He can make his life better in any status in life, economically, socially, politically, etc. through that intellectual power. He is a being that is free to choose what is good or bad, but he is challenged to strive for good to achieve his true life. He is a being that can cultivate the world, where he lived in. The world that only man can manipulate to lead it into prosperity. Above all, man has bestowed with such many and special gifts for him to be able to walk and live the life that is already prepared for him by his Creator. Thus, with that all, man is blessed by God that make him as a highest of all being He created. Whereby, he is a being as great from the other beings.

Bibliography

Babor, Eddie R. (2007) The Human Person Not Real, But Existing. 1672 Quezon Avenue: C&E 	Publishing, Inc.

Church Magesterium. (1994) Catechism of the Catholic Church. Manila: World & Life Publications 	CBCP/ECCE Douglas, J.D. & Tenney, Merril C. (2000) NIV Compact Dictionary of the Bible. Manila, Philippines: 	OMP Literature, Inc.

Guralnik, David B. (1979) Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition: Williams 	Collins Publishers, Inc.

Kainz, Howard P. (1981) The Philosophy of Man: A New Introduction To Some Perennial Issues. The 	University of Alabana Press: United States of America.

Mann, Jesse A. (1966) Reflections on Man. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

Pope John Paul II. Redemptor Hominis. Pasay, Metro Manila:The Daughters of St. Paul 2650 F.B. 	Harrison

Royce, James S.J. E. (1961) Man and His Nature. Mc Graw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

philso man primary
Man As Great From Other Beings

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A Term Paper Presented to the Faculty of St. Francis Xavier College Seminary

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In Partial Fulfillment of th Requirements for Philosophy 7: Philosophy of Man

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By Jonathan E. Cutin March, 2010

Acknowledgment

The success of this term paper is nothing without the help from the person behind this work. That's why the writer is cordially offer his innermost gratitude and sincere thanksgiving to all of them especially to the almighty God, the true source of wisdom and knowledge, to Whom the writer seek His inspiration and spirit of enlightenment to make this term paper brought into completion. To Fr. Pepe Retorca by giving this requirement which is very helpful and prerequisite to the intellectual development of the writer, to Mrs. Socorro Palar, the XACOSE librarian, for allowing him to lend her books, which he used as his references, to the secretary and his companions in charges in the computer laboratory for opening the computer in siesta and recreation time in the afternoon, to his fellow classmates by the joy and fun they share as the source of his encouragement to pursue this study. J.E.C

Table of Contents

Title 											       Page Title Page												i Acknowledgment											ii Table of Contents											iii Chapter I	Introduction											1 Statement of a Problem									2

Chapter II The Review of the Related Literature I. Definition of Man											3 II. Man as a Unique Being III. Gifts only to Man										4 IV. Man: A being in the World									5 V. Pant, Animal, and Man										5-6 a. Plant and Man										6 b. Animal and Man										6-7 bi. Instinct in terms of learning								7-8 bii. Soul											8-9 Summary												10 Conclusion												10-11 Bibliography												12

termelgish
Chapter I Introduction Hero is a name attributed proper to the person who have done great things or good deeds not only to the particular one, but contributes for the benefits of the society, country, or nation. Often times, hero is look as merely the product of human imagination. We think of it as just merely fantasy. We may infer that hero is existed only in the movie, or film in the form of cartoons or true person to dramatize the characteristic and good virtuous of being a hero to other. But the question is, are the hero is true? Can they be existed in the real world? This question can be answered as we go on in this term paper. I, the researcher of this paper, would introduce you the example of hero that is existed truly in the world during the time of Romantic period. He had many good works not only on his literary career but also even go beyond. He extended his works for the people and country. That's why the researcher after reading his life, came to reflect him in the title as “A Hero in the Romantic Period”. The researcher indeed even before, was fun of watching movie about hero like Superman, Spiderman, Batman, etc. and because of that it is perhaps the reason why I chose this topic because the person I described in this paper possess the characteristic of being like a hero. Not in physical or spiritual power that we can determine him, but by his deeds and works for the people and nation. Thus, that's what we called a true hero. In the content of this tern paper, the reader will know the hero to which I introduce to you. In the body of this paper, I put down base on my research about the background of his life, his two famous work, his heroic character as a model. Lastly, I was also able to research about some points that truly convinced me to call him as hero, and that is all about his audacious involvement in war, in politics, etc. to pacify the problem in the people and country during his time. The researcher built up this term paper through finding ample sources or references he gathered from library and computer to complete this work. In other words, this paper was consummately written under the ideas of many famous authors in their books, who wrote about the person I described as a hero. I listed some relevant informations inside that hopefully will make the reader understand and convince on why I said he is a hero. Thus, we may say after all that he is indeed a hero.

Statement of the Problem These simple questions may at least help the reader to understand the informations inside as they are about to enter in this paper. 1.Who is that hero? 2.Why he became a model? 3.What are the hero's involvement?

Chapter II The Review of Related Literature I. Who Is that Hero? The only hero that the researcher is interested of is no other than George Gordon, Lord Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron. He was one of the most important figures of the romantic movement. Because of his works, active life, and physical beauty he came to be considered the personification of the romantic poet-hero. Furthermore, He was regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond. He was a British Romantic poet and satirist. He was described by Hippolyte Taine as, “the greatest and most English of his contemporaries; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest together.” (The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1975) Thus, with the kind of acknowledge of his fame we may gain at least an idea how great he is in his personality during his time.

a. Early Life Byron was born on Jan. 22, 1788 in a house on Holles Street in London. He was the son of Captain John 'Mad Jack' Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon, heiress of Gigth  in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. His father died in 1791, and Byron, born with a clubfoot, was brought to Aberdeen wherein he was indoctrinated with Calvinistic morality of Scottish Presbyterianism. He was subjected alternately to the excessive tenderness and violent temper of his mother. She was an ill educated but and almost pathological irascible woman, who nevertheless had an abiding love for his son; they fought violently when together, but corresponded affectionately enough when apart, until here death in 1811.(The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1975) Moreover, Byron's parents belong to the two Aristocratic family. His paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral The Hon. John 'Foul weather Jack' Byron and Sophia Trevanion. Vice Admiral John Byron had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th Baron Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord". At the age of 10 in the year of 1798, after years of poverty, Byron succeed to the title as 	6th Lord Byron after his uncle and took up residence at the family seat, Newstead Abbey. He subsequently attended Dulwich school and Harrow (1801-5) and then matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Although the academic atmosphere did nothing to lessen Byron's sensitivity about his lameness, he made several close friends while at school. (www.answer.com)

b. Two Famous Works These two works were the product of his travel after he received his M.A degree in 1809 from the school he graduated. And through these works also, Byron became notable, famous in his country. It serves as if his first step of his success for life. He expressed in this praise, as it is stated in the book entitled The Norton Anthology of English Literature, that “ awoke one of the morning and found my self famous.” Thus, with the help of these unsurpassable works,  he became known in his county in London bi. Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Modern critics generally consider it Byron's masterpiece. Byron completed 16 cantos, leaving an unfinished 17th canto before his death in 1824. Byron claimed he had no ideas in his mind as to what would happen in subsequent cantos as he wrote his work. When the first two cantos were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was criticized for its 'immoral content', though it was also immensely popular. But Byron still kept on, inspite of that persistent objection against the supposed immortality of the poem by the English public, by his publisher, john Murray, by his friends and well-wishers, and by his extremely decorousness mistress, the Countess Guiccioli-by almost everyone, in fact, except the idealist, Shelley, who though Juan incomparably better than anything he himself could write, and insisted that “ every word of it is pregnant with immortality.”(The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1975) bii. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem Byron had begun in 1809. It was published between1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe", the term of endearment he used for Charlotte Harley (the artist Francis Bacon's great-great-grandmother). The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands; in a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. (www.answer.com)

II. Hero as a model This model that the researcher referring to is about the characteristic of Byronic hero exemplified in Byron that which the influence had widely spread throughout the people and nation. And through this Byronic hero, Byron was being known throughout the history of Romantic Period that he was part of it as a Romantic poet. As it is stated in the book of Harrison (1959), in English literature, though he is always classified with the Romantic poets, he is Romantic only because the Byronic hero is a Romantic figure: as we have seen, he has little technically in common with other English Romantics. But on the continent Byron has been the arch-romantic of modern literature, and European nineteenth-century culture is an unthinkable without Byron as its history would be without Napoleon. Moreover, Byron was proper to call as an arch-romantic for he provided his age with what Taine called its “ruling personage; that is, the model that contemporaries invest with their admiration and sympathy.” This personage is his “Byronic Hero.” He occurs in many guises in Byron's romances and dramas, but his central attribute is that of a saturnine, passionate, moody, and remorse-torn but unrepentant sinner, who, in proud moral isolation, relies on his absolute self against all institutional and moral trammels. This figure, infusing the archrebel in a nonpolitical form with a strong erotic interest, gathered together and embodied the implicit yearnings of Byron's time, was imitated in life as well as in art, and helped shape the intellectual as well as the cultural history of the later 19th century. Thus, that's how Byron in his characters in Byronic hero became influential and being modeled and imitated by the people for their life and nation. (The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1975) What is Byronic hero? for clear information taken from www.answer.com that, it is an idealized but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron, characterized by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". The Byronic hero first appears in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem 'Childe Harold Pilgrimage' (1812-18). Moreover, Byronic hero was created by the great British poet Byron in the nineteenth century. His writing and hero have influenced many others to incorporate these characteristics into their characters. The Byronic Hero generally has these characteristics: Ø rebels against convention or society Ø has a low tolerance for societal norms and social institutions Ø is isolated or has chosen isolation from society Ø is not impressed with rank and/or privilege Ø has larger-than-life abilities and larger-than-life pride Ø suspected of committing a crime or has been cursed Ø suffers from grandiose passions Ø has a tendency to be self-destructive Byron created characters that have these characteristics. His two most famous, Manfred and Harold, are classic examples. Both had a low tolerance for social institutions and were isolated wanderers by choice: Manfred wandered the mountaintops – physically isolated – while his Childe Harold exiled himself to Europe and while still in society, wasn’t part of it. Both were not easily impressed, considered themselves cursed and tended to be self-destructive.(www.answer.com)

III. The Heroic Involvement of Byron The works of Byron does not only restricted in his literary career for he even go beyond that. He became active to pacify the problem of people and nation during his time. There were many problems that he engaged in just to help them to attain what is right and better not only for one individual but to all nation.

a. Hero's influence Byron has an immediate and yet certainly very great influence in his own country, and this was qualified in many ways such as, as it is stated in the book of Harrison (1959), by queasiness about his morality, by a refusal to separate him from his posing heroes, by a feeling that he lacked the sterner virtues and wrote with too much pleasure and too few pains.

b. Hero as a Defender In 1811, s a member of the House of the Lord, he had taken his seat inside the House as a 6th Lord Byron, the title he gained after his uncle. He frequently spoke for liberalism in politics, yet his personal social attitudes were conservative and aristocratic. He became active in whig circles. A strong advocate of social reform, he received particular praise as one of the few Parliamentary defenders of the Luddites: specifically, he was against a death penalty for Luddite "frame breakers" in  Nottinghamshire, who destroyed textile machines that were putting them out of work. He stood as their defender because that time of Romantic period, there were many people had suffered due to the changes of landscape from farm to industrialize country. The suffering was widely experienced by the poor because of that change especially the coming of machines that lessen the value of handwork. While the landed classes, the industrialist, and many of the merchants were enjoy in their prosperity. That kind of condition had forced them to ruin the said textile machine due to their fear that someday they cannot provide their own daily subsistence because of lack of work or unemployment. That's why Byron in his own effort, he indeed try to recover their condition through proposing social reform. Moreover, his first speech before the Lords was loaded with sarcastic references to the "benefits" of automation, which he saw as producing inferior material as well as putting people out of work. He said later that he "spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence", and thought he came across as "a bit theatrical". In another Parliamentary speech he expressed opposition to the established religion because it was unfair to people of other faiths. He supported a number of other liberal causes, including the relief of catholics in Ireland.(Harrison G.B., 1959)

c. Hero in the Greece The problem existed in the Greece that led them to call for help from Byron was that their desire to achieve liberty from the power under the Turkish rule. Byron was involves to what they called Greek war of independence, the Independence that the people in Greece long to experience from the suffering they had undergone from their oppressor. To have further knowledge with this problem, let us excavate what we mean by Greek war independence will clearly give to us from the answer.com as is stated, ' it was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between 1821 and 1829, with later assistance from several European powers, against the Ottoman Empire, who were assisted by their vassals, the Egytian Khedivate and partly the vilayet of Tunisia.' Their bloody battle was ended on May 1832, which was also the time when they ultimately attain their independence. But it was only possible through the help from Byron in his leadership, and through negotiating with other nations or know as the three great powers such as Russia, the united kingdom, and France. They came to interfere with the battle of Greeks against their enemies by sending them Navy. Because of the negotiation, the Greece was finally recognized as the independent nation. To more specific to the history of Byron in his involvement in that events, from Encyclopedia Americana(1994) stated that, in 1823, during the Greek war for independence from the turks, he accepted the invitation of the London Greek committee to act as their agent in Greece. He was perhaps drawn to his adventure by the hope of rehabilitating himself in the eyes of his countrymen through some noble action, and by fond memories of his youthful sojourn in Greece. Sailing in the middle of July 1823 and carry money and supplies for the revolutionaries, he settled at Metaxata on the Ionian Island of Cephalonia. He was wary of dissensions in the Greek camp but finally joined Prince Mavrocardatos at Missolonghi in January 1824. Byron gave  4,000 of his own money to activate the Greek fleet, paid the wages of some soldiers, and tried to encourage discipline and unity among the Greeks. Moreover, he lived a Spartan existence in that said place Missolonghi, undertaking to train troops whom he had himself subsidized and exhibiting great practical grasp and power of leadership amid an incredible confusion of factionalism, intrigue, and military ineptitude, and despite an unhappy passion for his Greek boy, Loukas. But, before an offensive could be organized against the Turks, Byron died of a fever on April 19, 1824, at Missolonghi. His body was sent home to England, but in Greece his name became a symbol of disinterested patriotism today. His statue stands in the center of the “Garden of the Heroes” of the revolution in Missolonghi. Thus, because of that good acts of Byron towards the Greek nation, he was called as their national hero. Chapter III Summary and Conclusion

In this final chapter, I, the researcher, put down in brief the summary of the main content of this term paper. After which, I stated my conclusion. You may notice that I did not put a separate paragraph for my personal analysis, it is because I, the researcher, already synchronized this in his conclusion with regards to the title. I went beyond and reflected upon about the said hero, which is Lord Byron. Thus, you may come to realize and understand his act of being a hero for the people and nation in his conclusion according to my, the researcher, personal and meditative reflection.

Summary Lord Byron is the hero that I described as a hero in the Romantic period. Because of his works, active life, and physical beauty he came to be considered the personification of the romantic poet-hero. His two great and influential works are Don Juan, and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which are the product of his long travel. He became influential in 18th and 19th century because of his characteristic in his Byronic hero that was imitated by the people. His great works was his involvement in the problems of the poor people and the nation of Greece, where he became a hero.

Conclusion With all my discovery in my research, I came to conclude that George Gordon, Lord Byron, 6th Baron Byron is indeed a truly hero in the Romantic period because of his works, the works that does not restricted only to his literary works, but went beyond. He was strongly advocated to what is right; he helped the poor people and stood as their defender; he helped the Greece to deliver them from their bondage towards the freedom of independence. That act for me is a heroic act, and therefore lord Byron is worthy to be called a hero, a hero that existed truly in the world, not as the hero that is the product of man's imagination. Byron is a good model for us to be a hero in our own country. If we try to see behind in Byron's enthusiastic work, whereby to know the root of doing his heroic act for the people and nation, we may recognize the virtue of the denial of self, which for me a very great and important one to be a hero, because it means a giving up of one self for the sake of other. That's what I've seen in the life of Byron. He denied himself to reach out for the needs of others like the poor people. He obstructed the death penalty that made against them, who were suffering of the unemployment due to the new invented textile machine. Moreover, another example of his denial of self was his involvement in the oppression of Greece in the hand of Turkish. He worked with them, then successful attain their independence. Through which, he was held as a national hero in Greece. Thus, those act were indeed a manifestation of his virtue, the denial of self. So, in us, if we learn to magnify the virtue of the denial of self, we may become like Byron in his heroic action. We may perhaps able to be a hero of our own nation if have that kind of unsurpassable virtue. We may know how to reach other's needs and for the nation. Moreover, this virtue is best to relate to what the Filipino affirmed “Ako Ang Simula” “I Am the Beginning”, for it is speak of being a hero in that manner. We are, in fact, the true hero of our country if we sincerely practice that words from ourselves even in single act. I am the beginning that means it is in my own hand that the future of the world rest. By putting that words in practice, we may also become a hero, because a heroic act must begin from ourselves. So it is remained a great challenge for us to reflect and put it into action for the sake of our future generation. Thus, Lord Byron is a good example of the denial of the self to be a hero for our country. But let us let us also be authentically aware of the words “Ako Ang Simula” because it is where the heroic act begins.

Bibliography

Book; ________. (1994) Encyclopedia Americana. U.S.A : Glorier Incorporated Abrahams, M.H., et.al (1975) The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York : W.W. 	Norton & 	Company, Inc Gordon, Edward J. (1964) English Literature. Massachusetts: Ginn and Company Harrison G.B. (1959) Major British Writers. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

Internet; http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=byronic+hero&gwp=13 http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=greek+war+of+inependence&gwp=13 http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=Lord+byron&gwp=13

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Chapter I Introduction Etymologically speaking, the term man is derived from Old English man, meaning “person”. Wherefore, man is a person, a human being as distinguished from a thing or lower animal; individual man, woman, or child.(New World Dictionary,1979) However, there are many philosophical meaning of man, but the real meaning of man can be defined by himself through the use of his rational power. Or he can know himself through his own effort. Besides that, our former Pope John Paul II said that, “the man who wish to understand himself thoroughly..., he must with his unrest... draw near to Christ” It is true in that way that in Christ the full meaning of man's existence is ultimately revealed. However, to have a systematic reflection of who man is in his ultimate being in this world, with the further reflection of above quotation, would lead to conclude in one phrase that man is ,indeed, a great being. This is the bases of the writer to compose his title. It is the product of his contemplative reflection as he pondered man in his existence and uniqueness. For him, man is the center of all. He is the unique being among any other beings in the sense that man has been blessed by God with the gifts of intellect and free will, capable of rationalizing, a highest thinking animal, possess the characteristics that are distinct from plant, or animal whether in soul or instinct. And above all, man is the only being that capable of building up a relationship with his Creator. Thus, for that reason, man is indeed a great being of beings. This term paper is not composed by one idea of a person, but it is made by the effort of the researcher in collecting the ideas of many authors and famous philosopher from their books, wherein their views of man is written. They have many ideas about man and his other fellow beings. Moreover the reader may found inside how we conclude that man become great being from the other beings in terms of his rational power, soul, dexterity, and etc. With that we can able to identify that truly man is great creature of God. Thus, in reading this simple term paper, you may at least acquire basic knowledge about man and is being.

Statement of a Problem This questions stated are just simple guidance to lead your mind for your easy understanding as you are about to get inside of this term paper.

1.What is man? 2.Man's uniqueness and gifts? 3.How man distinct from plant and animal?

Chapter II The Review of Related Literature I. Definition Of Man In defining man, there are many philosophers gave their descriptions of what man is in their different perspectives. However, let us define man first in its somehow general means as it is stated in the book of Howard (1981), man is the animal who is resigned to death, but also can conceive the possibility of transcending death; who is limited to the five senses, but also can go beyond them; who is the product of organic evolution, but at the same time has the audacity to want to control evolution; who is conscious of a duality, even a plurality, in his nature, but is nevertheless able to attain an experience of unity completely beyond the reach of other animals; who is controlled by every conceivable kind of external and internal necessity, but by his understanding of, and adaption to, or countercontrol of these necessities is able to attain a high degree of individual and social freedom. Moreover, in the philosophers view, Aristotle gave his definition of man as he said that man is a rational animal, an animal that is capable of rational thinking. He added also that man is a political animal, the only animal capable of organizing into complex communities, cities, states. He also stated his definition to man in less essential one, that man is the resistible animal (the animal with sense of humor); or man is a two-legged animal without feathers. Furthermore, 'man is the measure of all things, of these that they are, of those that they are not' is the best statement of Protagoras describing about man. He meant not the individual man, but man in the specific sense. He is saying that the community or group or the whole human species is the criterion and standard of truth. Moreover, Frederich Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Moral, taking an existential point of view, described man as the only being who can make promises for the future, i.e., one who can commit himself to a certain line of action and stick to it responsibly. Thus, the man is capable of uttering his words for promises and is responsible to act it as far as he is concern. This act is not done to any other being like animal since he is incapable of language and many other to engage in making promises. Lastly, another one, Ernst Cassirer defined man as the animal  who can make and use symbols, i.e., created meanings (as contrasted with the natural or instinctive signals that animal are capable of giving to one another and to man.) Though animal capable of making symbol, but the man's symbol has a certain pattern to point out what he is trying to express in communicating to other, whereas the animal is has no certain or somehow no fixed pattern to convey its expression.( The Philosophy of Man, 1981) II. Man Is A Unique Being Man's uniqueness can be traced back from the creation of God. In Genesis, God made the human species, first male and then the female, as a single species separated from the animal world. 'Man is separated from the animals in terms of his moral conscience, self-knowledge, and capacity for a spiritual communion with his Creator.'(NIV, 1989) Animal has not been gifted with such grace, but only man, who is the precious among God's creatures. Man is indeed blessed since in him that God's image is reflected, whereby as it is said in the book of Genesis(1:26-27) that God created man in his image and likeness of himself. 'God is love and in himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image..., God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.'(CCC,1994) For that reason, man is unique and the best being in the sense that man is the reflection of God's image, and the only being that capable of communion with His Creator. He can build an intimacy with the Lord. He can communicate with Him, can serve Him, can love Him, and can please Him through his good deeds. In the side of the Creator, He can communicate His grace and mercy to man, and can love man more than other beings. And whereby, man has become the subject of His redemption through Christ as the great manifestation of His unsurpassable love to man. Thus, all of these are possible only to man. He is a being which has a great relationship with the Lord. And therefore, man is proper to be called a unique being among the others. III. Gifts only To Man Man is an intelligent and free creature infused by God since the time of his birth. He is gifted with such human intellect and will. Only man possesses these gifts that which makes his superior to the other beings, which are moved by their instinct. Free will means man has a freedom to make a choice for his life by directing himself toward his true good. 'He finds perfection in seeking and living what is true and good'(CCC, 1994) On the other hand, by his reason, 'he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator'(CCC,1994) Intellect makes man capable to think and to rationalize through the use of his power to reason out. Indeed, Aristotle said in his philosophy that 'man is a rational animal.'(Babor, 2007) But his animality is higher than that of animal since animal don't have a rational thinking. Hence, man is the only being, having gifted with rational thinking, capable of having wide range of understanding of the world. Through his thinking, man is able to communicate with other the same being. And through thinking, man is able to search and explore beyond the meaning of his existence, the existence of other beings and the existence of the world. Moreover, it was made verify by Socrates in his view that 'man is a being who thinks and wills.'(Babor, 2007) Thus, with these all. Only man has these gifts, not animal has these, nor plants, nor any other beings, which stand as a great evidence of his being a great. So, man is the being with such intellect and will to live and to know the reality in this comprehensive world. IV. Man: A being in the World It is said from the book of Babor (2007) that, man is a being in the world; he is not a being in an environment. An environment is only true to animals, not to man. Man has a world, not an environment. Man is not bound to an environment; he is open to the world. So in that case it is clearly implies that man in his existence must be in the world and not in the world of brutes, which is the environment. It is simply because man has peculiar power like reason to cultivate the world, whereby to make the world better and better in every future generation. Whereas animal live a life that always seek satisfaction like food from their environment, and being contented what the environment give to them. Animal simply move for themselves without having any effort to contribute for the growth of their environment since they don't have rational power. Moreover, it is stated in the same book of Babor (2007) that, in truth, man makes the furture through his past and present. If the world unconceals itself to man so that it can mold and give man a broader horizon of possibilities so that he can rightly exercise his freedom, then, the world is waiting for man to be developed further. Thus, man's transformation of the world into a world of culture and civilized can still be improved further. There is a better world waiting to be built by man; there is a vast horizon of the future waiting to be made by man. In doing this, man can find his existence a more meaningful one. So man has a great function to make up his world to be good and better for the days to come. He is as if the one being that can transform the world. V. Plant, Animal, and Man These three distinct beings are the most important being that occupied in the world. Each is distinct and has its own capacity for their existence. But these three are indispensable to one another as it is stated in the book of Max Scheler (1961) “ the plant existed for the sake of the animals, the animal for the sake of man.” Thus, each being has its own purpose, whereby it contributes for the sake of one another. But, however, let us now dwell on the distinction between the beings, the plant, animal, from man. a. Plant and Man In plant, obviously it is the lowest form of being. It has no sensation and consciousness, nor soul. According to the findings of the Dutch Botanist Blaauw, 'we cannot ascribe to the plant any specific tropism, or sensation, not even the slightest semblance of a reflex arc,or associations and the conditioned reflex.' So int that case,we may infer the incapability of plant. It has no sensation ans no specific memory beyond the dependence of its condition upon the whole of its life history. It does not have the capacity for moving in space, if it does it is no longer called as plant since motion is onl attributes to animal and man. Thus, plant's capability only is to grow, production and death. The plant will germinate, and can produce other living plant in the process of its production, then later will be banish. That is the circular process of plant the same as the other beings. (Man's Place in Human Nature, 1961) On the other hand, comparing it to man,there would be similar to them but only in the case of production and death. That means, man can do the same as plant did, that man can produce it own siblings as substitutes to his existence after him. Moreover, obviously plant has a big difference in comparing to man since man is a rational, capable of anything that the plant can impossibly do. Man has the power of sensing, can move by his own self, can eat and enjoy life of anything he wants. Plant never possess that since it is rely only to its environment for its grow. Thus, man is obviously great from the the existence of plant for man's activity is deeply unreachable by plant for it can't perform any act beyond its capability. b. Animal and Man There should be a great discussion to be taken to contrast man and animal since both of them are capable of motion, sensation etc. both of them has a soul. To clarify our mind in their distinction let us try to differentiate them in my, the writer of this paper, research. In the view of G.W.F. Hegel,in his Philosophy of Right, he distinguished man from the lower animals on the basis of needs. Animals have needs that are limited in number, while man has an ineluctable tendency to multiply his needs infinitely, a tendency of which advertising men, in our culture, seem to be very much aware. Moreover, man, so lacking of instincts and built-in equipage (fur, special teeth, claws, especially acute sense of smell, etc.), certainly has a greater need for outside supports than other animals, and he has exhibited an extraordinary versatility in seeing and finding new ways to satisfy his needs and to enjoy himself. Thus, man has its own freedom for his wants and pleasure for life.( The Philosophy of Man, 1981) Another philosopher Schopenhauer sees the characteristic difference between animal and man in the animal's inability to perform the redeeming negation of the will to live which man, in his highest types, is capable of achieving. It is this negation which for Schopenhauer is the source of all higher forms of consciousness and knowledge in metaphysics, art and in the ethics of sympathy. There is, however, other one who conform to his view. He was known as his follower, and as a follower he supported his master's claim by asserting that the principle of humanity consists exclusively in man's being capable of releasing his organs from the struggle for survival as an individual or as a species in favor of developing tolls, language, and concepts. The latter are explained in terms of the principle of canceling sensory organs and functions or in terms of March's principle of achieving the highest possible economy respect to sensory contents. (Man's Place in Human Nature, 1961) bi. Instincts in Terms of Learning Like animals, man has also an instinct but his instinct is also different from that of the animals like in the aspect of learning. The anthropologist in their views said that the instinct in man would be paradoxical, insofar as it would be unlearned tendency to learn. They added that animals are also presumed to have an instinct to learn, but in man this instinct has become mush more complex, involving such things as recollection, abstraction, categorization, analysis and synthesis, syllogistic reasoning etc. By dint of these complex cognitive process, man is able to handle his environment without much dependence upon instincts. But humans don't have to be taught to learn, can't be taught to learn, and in fact must even learn (by themselves) to be taught before teaching can have any effect on them.(The Philosophy of Man, 1981) Thus, man's instinct in learning is indeed open to accommodate all learnings with sufficient understanding of them. In other words, they just not only learn something but also include their cognition of that thing. Whereas the animal is just learn without having knowledge of what thins is all about, or what it means to their daily subsistence. However, connection to this, that ability of animal is similar to what they called the estimative power, a kind of internal sense, defined as 'the power by which an animal recognizes, prior to learning and without understanding, suitable behavior regarding a sensed object.'(Man an His Nature, 1961) It is by that estimative power that animals able to initiate their action whether to eat, to build nest, to swim, and etc. They are operated by their instinct that is restricted only to level of learning without the collaboration of their intellectual understanding since brutes don't have it. On the other hand, man has also that power and it is called 'cogitative power', the discursive power, the comparative sense, or even particular reason. Such names attribute to man is used to emphasize that in man this sense power works every intimately with the intellect and to the extent differs from the sense powers of other animals. This power is so greater than the other in the sense that it has a connection with the intellect of man, which is capable of any intellectual activities such as knowing a thing, even its substantial form. Thus, man's instinct is so to say unlimited in terms of learning and understanding since he can go deeper beyond the perception of the things, whereas animal just know only without that prioress of understanding. bi. Soul To define soul means it is simply the substantial form of a living thing, or that by which we live. (James, 1961) Often we may confuse of the difference between the soul of man and soul of animal especially when we read the comment from the Answers. Com stated that 'there is no difference. Pure soul does not differentiate between an animal and man, only the body.' This is so because many cultures believe that the soul after its separation from the body through death, it unites again in th body of a different form, whether as another human, or an animal. So, therefore, the believers of this might conclude that there is no distinction in soul of man and animal, but both are the same soul. Only the in the form of body makes them distinct. This belief, however, is somehow resemblance to the view of Pythagoras that the soul is immortal and divine. It undergoes reincarnation for its purification to unite itself again to the divine. Thus, soul will unite in the body to absolve its impurity. And so by that, soul will come in any forms of bodies. Perhaps, it is where those many cultures come to their conclusion about their belief that the soul is the same in both man and animal for it unites again whether to animal or man. But, however, let us clarify our mind by excavating the other views from the ancient philosophers regarding the soul. In the view of Aristotle, he may clarify our mind by identifying the function and role of soul in any kind beings. He enumerated the three kinds of soul; the first one is the vegetative soul, the lowest type, which is proper only to all things like plants; the second one is the sensitive soul, which possesses in animal, and is described as the highest of that first mentioned. In this sensitive soul, St. Thomas maintained clearly that of itself it has no operation; its operation belongs as such to the composite. Since it is the composite that lives and senses, this activity bespeaks the activity of a material thing that has a limited degree of formal perfection, that is, life but not a self-subsistent.( Reflection On Man, 1966) And lastly the third one is the rational soul, which exists only in man. Aristotle considered this soul of man as the highest type because, besides capable of thinking and reasoning and judging, it has a power to unite itself to the lowest part, the vegetative and the sensitive.(Babor, 2007) Thus, upon pondering that we may see that there is such a distinction between the soul of man and animal, that the soul of man is not the same as the soul of animal. Man is moved by by his rational soul, capable to be dominant of the others. This distinction will be more clear to us as Plato said that ' it is the rational part of the soul that is the most important and the higher because for him, it is the rational part that specifically distinguishes man from the brutes.(Babor, 2007) Thus, with that we may infer the greatness of man a being distinct from the others in the aspect of soul.

Summary Man, in his general definition, is an animal who is resigned to death, but also can conceive the possibility of transcending death. Many philosopher view man in their different perspectives like Aristotle, who said that man is a rational animal, Frederich Nietzsche, Protagoras, and Ernst Cassirer. Moreover, man is viewed in his uniqueness in his relationship with his Creator; he is being infused the gift of intellect and free will, which make him also distinct from other beings. He lives in the world and not in the environment, which is only for the animal. He is the only being that the world's progress is dependent upon him. Moreover, the distinctions of these two beings, plant and animal, are clearly shown the greatness of man in terms of capacity, ability, characteristic, etc. Man is opposite to the ability of plant that plant can never do what man have. Animal is distinct from animal in terms of instinct; animal is moved by its sensitive power, whereas man by his rational power. In the soul, man has the highest soul, which termed as rational soul. Thus, with that all man is great and distinct from them. Conclusion From the book entitled Reflection on Man (1966), the researcher quoted as his conclusion as it is stated that, man Is not only an individual, but because he enjoys an essential unity, having as the principle of that unity an intellectual form, man is a person. But it is only through man's operation and activities, such as knowing and acting freely, that we come to be aware of this. Although man is free because he is intellectual, he is intellectual because he has the kind of soul(form) that he possesses. To possess a lower form, such as that organizing the plant or brute, would be to lack intellectuality and hence freedom. Consequently, it is in this that he enjoys rights (and duties) and can live the moral and human life. Hence, man, as Marcel puts it, is a being who can make promises-one in whom we can believe. The researcher personally say that man is indeed a great being of all beings because of the characteristics he has either in terms of physical or in spiritual aspects. He is far distinguishable to the other beings, plant and animal, since man possess something that even both of them could impossibly have or do. Thus, man has a dominion over them. He has the power in mind, in his intellect that make him a higher being because through this man is able to reach and discover the knowledge beyond. He can make his life better in any status in life, economically, socially, politically, etc. through that intellectual power. He is a being that is free to choose what is good or bad, but he is challenged to strive for good to achieve his true life. He is a being that can cultivate the world, where he lived in. The world that only man can manipulate to lead it into prosperity. Above all, man has bestowed with such many and special gifts for him to be able to walk and live the life that is already prepared for him by his Creator. Thus, with that all, man is blessed by God that make him as a highest of all being He created. Whereby, he is a being as great from the other beings.

Bibliography

Babor, Eddie R. (2007) The Human Person Not Real, But Existing. 1672 Quezon Avenue: C&E 	Publishing, Inc.

Church Magesterium. (1994) Catechism of the Catholic Church. Manila: World & Life Publications 	CBCP/ECCE Douglas, J.D. & Tenney, Merril C. (2000) NIV Compact Dictionary of the Bible. Manila, Philippines: 	OMP Literature, Inc.

Guralnik, David B. (1979) Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition: Williams 	Collins Publishers, Inc.

Kainz, Howard P. (1981) The Philosophy of Man: A New Introduction To Some Perennial Issues. The 	University of Alabana Press: United States of America.

Mann, Jesse A. (1966) Reflections on Man. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

Pope John Paul II. Redemptor Hominis. Pasay, Metro Manila:The Daughters of St. Paul 2650 F.B. 	Harrison

Royce, James S.J. E. (1961) Man and His Nature. Mc Graw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

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The Human Person Not Real, But Existing

C&E Publishing, Inc. 1672 Quezon City 2007

by Eddie R. Babor Table Of Contents Chapter 																Page

1. The Meaning/ Definition of Philosophy													3 2. The Meaning of Philosophy of Man 													17 3. The Problems in Philosophy of Man 													21

II. Man in the Context of His Nature												29 1. The Meaning of Human Nature 														33 2. Human Nature According to the Greek Philosophers 										43 3. Human Nature According to Augustine and Thomas											75 4. Human Mature According to Descartes and Marx											87 5. Human Mature According to Freud													119 6. Human Mature According to the Evolutionary									 	          133 7. Human Mature According to Eastern Thought											167

III. Man in the Context of His Condition										       179 1.The Meaning of Human Condition													181 2. Man: According to Existentialist													185 3. Man: A being-in-the-world											      		           225 4. Man: A person-who-always-exist-with-others-in-the-world									          235 5. Man: A Historical Being														          244 6. Man: A Body, His Body															251 7. Man: The Actor															          257 8. Man: A Sexual Being														          263 9. Man: The Lover 																275 10. Man: The Worker 														          284 11. Man: The Thinker 														          290

Jonathan Cutin 3rd yr. Epistemology Justification Of Induction By P.F. Strawson S u  m  m  a  r  y

The main content of the article of Sir Peter Frederic Strawson in his philosophy about Justification of Induction can be understood in this simple way that induction, which also know as the inductive support, is used as an essential means to justify any methods used to arrived at certain and absolute truth. That truth is analytical proposition for the conviction is proportional to the evidences available. > Induction is a reasonable or rational procedure,that we have good grounds for placing reliance         upon it. > Consider the uses of the phrases 'good grounds', justification', reasonable', etc. > Often we say such things as 'he has every justification for believing it', 'there are good grounds for the view that q', there is good evidence that r'. > That phrases are what he called the 'inductive support', inductive evidence', of a certain kind, for his belief. > That certain belief, which is grounded with inductive support, is also called an analytic proposition. >That means, it is reasonable to have a degree of belief in a statement which is proportional to the strength of the evidence in its favor. > Moreover, any methods used to certify a belief must necessarily be infused with inductive support. > Strawson give us an example regarding the method used by a meteorologist to forecast the weather. If his method always find a correct or right answer, then this method is justified by induction. > The frequent correct or right answer of this method is because of the inductive support that lives behind this method. > Any methods used at any subject that always find a good result, these methods are inductively justified. > The phrase 'non-inductive method of finding out about what lies deductively beyond the evidences was a description without meaning. > There is no as such 'non-inductive method that truly leads one to a certainty of thing. > Thus, for Strawson, every method or recipe for finding out about the unobserved must be one which has inductive support. > He emphasized that induction is not justify by its success in finding out about the unobserved. > For induction is as true as it is in itself; it should be present in all methods for the success towards the truth. > What Strawson trying to say is that any successful method of finding out unobserved is necessarily be justified by induction. > This is analytic proposition. > Having, or acquiring, inductive support is a necessary condition of the success of a method.

So that's all the main point of Strawson in his philosophy that truth of all things by any methods at any subjects only be possible through the presence of induction within the methods. In other words, in order to arrive at the good result or certainty, every method used must be grounded with inductive support.