Author Archives: Nicolae Sfetcu

Complementarity between analytical and synthetic methods The study and understanding of phenomena, for example biological, requires the use of different scientific methods of research and reflection. The two major scientific methods, complementary, are reductionist analysis and systemic transdisciplinary synthesis. Reductionist … Read More

Features Vote In a representative system, voting is a mode of designation and not a transfer of responsibility. Elected officials derive their legitimacy from the delegation of sovereignty to their electors since the latter then no longer have any means … Read More

The appeal to design or teleological argument postulates that there are ends in nature, which implies the existence of an intelligent principle, orderer of the world, that is to say of a Creator. This is the classic argument of natural … Read More

An original conception of philosophy For several reasons, pragmatism has long passed, especially in Europe, for a non-philosophy or for an “American redneck”. First of all, pragmatism is an active philosophy that does not seek truth through intellectualism alone. Its … Read More

Schelling and the “philosophy of identity” (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.) At the very end of the 18th century, Friedrich W. J. Schelling, a young German philosopher claiming to be first of Fichte, wrote a series of works which influenced … Read More

Ideas Aspect, form or structure that makes visible, shows the reality of a thing, represents for the Platonic philosophers an intelligible form, subtracted from becoming. Aristotle, who questions his ontological status, opposes the separate character of the idea that Plato … Read More

Wittgenstein and conceptual art (The Wittgenstein House (Haus Wittgenstein), Vienna, designed by Ludwig Wittgenstein himself and the architect Paul Engelmann, a pupil of Adolf Loos.) Ludwig Wittgenstein can be considered one of the founders of analytic aesthetics, his predecessors within … Read More

(According to its author, the Turing test authorized the attribution of a form of mind to certain artificial systems based on a principle of indiscernibility of responses.) The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle in a … Read More

The technical sphere At the production stage, many specialists (layout artists, compositors, graphic designers, proofreaders, printer, photoengraver, etc.) work successively, but also in collaboration, on the production of the work. The designer carries out the layout and integrates, if necessary, … Read More

Contexts of justification and discovery Hans Reichenbach, who was close to logical positivism, distinguished between context of justification and context of discovery. The discovery context relates to the process that leads to proposing a theoretical result, while the justification context … Read More

Arguments of the indigence of Creation The argument for the neediness of Creation arises from the following question: How could God, being perfect, have created an imperfect world? It takes the form of the following contraposition: If there is a … Read More

Philosophers and currents of thought linked to direct democracy Age of Enlightenment In the 18th century, Europe rediscovered the democratic ideal with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, theoretician of popular sovereignty, and the encyclopaedists who were the Enlightenment. The author of The Social … Read More