•  8
    The monograph tells a different story on the history of modern philosophy: the narrative is no longer centred on the question whether knowledge results from experience or reason, but whether experience and reason are in fact possible without language.
  •  15
    Diderot philosophe (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (4): 498-499. 2004.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Diderot philosopheTimo KaitaroColas Duflo. Diderot philosophe. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003. Pp. 543. Cloth, € 85,00.Diderot's thought has often been believed to be full of incoherencies and paradoxes, lacking the unity characteristic of philosophical systems. It is true that he preferred the form of a dialogue to that of a systematic treatise and that his ideas on a specific subject tend to be dispersed in a variety of p…Read more
  •  20
    Brain–mind identities in dualism and materialism: a historical perspective
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (4): 627-645. 2003.
    So-called identity theories that postulate the identity of mental phenomena with brain states are usually associated with materialistic ontology. However, the historical picture of the actual attempts at spelling out the mind–brain identities is more complex. In the eighteenth century such identities were most enthusiastically proposed by dualists, whereas non-reductionistic materialists such as Diderot tried to get along without them. In the nineteenth century physiologists such as Broca, Charc…Read more
  •  18
    L'épistémologue et la complexité du vivant
    Multitudes 2 (2): 79-84. 2004.
    The progresses and successes of molecular biology appear to confirm the views of those who hold that biology is reducible to the sciences of physical nature. François Duchesneau’s analysis of various models and attempts at reduction that have been put forth to eliminate the specificity of the phenomena of organic life, shows that things are far from being so simple. Teleological notions seem irreducible to subjacent causal mechanisms, and functional explanations are apparently indispensable in t…Read more
  •  48
    Brain–mind identities in dualism and materialism: a historical perspective
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (4): 627-645. 2004.
    So-called identity theories that postulate the identity of mental phenomena with brain states are usually associated with materialistic ontology. However, the historical picture of the actual attempts at spelling out the mind–brain identities is more complex. In the eighteenth century such identities were most enthusiastically proposed by dualists , whereas non-reductionistic materialists such as Diderot tried to get along without them. In the nineteenth century physiologists such as Broca, Char…Read more
  •  25
    ArgumentEighteenth-century Montpellerian vitalism and contemporaneous French “vitalist” materialism, exemplified by the medical and biological materialism of La Mettrie and Diderot, differ in some essential aspects from some later forms of vitalism that tended to postulate immaterial vital principles or forces. This article examines the arguments defending the existence of vital properties in living organisms presented in the context of eighteenth-century French materialism. These arguments had …Read more
  •  52
    Ideas in the brain: The localization of memory traces in the eighteenth century
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (2): 301-322. 1999.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ideas in the Brain: The Localization of Memory Traces in the Eighteenth CenturyTimo KaitaroPlato suggests in the Theaetetus that we imagine a piece of wax in our soul, a gift from the goddess of Memory. We are able to remember things when our perceptions or thoughts imprint a trace upon this piece of wax, in the same manner as a seal is stamped on wax. Plato uses this metaphor to explain the errors which arise when we mistake somethi…Read more
  •  55
    Eighteenth-century French materialism clockwise and anticlockwise
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (5): 1022-1034. 2016.
    ABSTRACTBecause of their reliance on mechanistic metaphors and analogies referring to machines, the eighteenth-century materialists La Mettrie and Diderot have sometimes been described as ‘mechanistic materialists’. However, if one pays close attention to the ways in which mechanical analogies and metaphors were used in eighteenth-century French materialism, one sees that the recourse to these metaphors and comparisons in no way implies mechanism in the sense of physicalist reductionism. Instead…Read more
  •  19
    Filosofin kuolema (edited book)
    Summa. 2004.
    Tyynen rauhallisesti, traagisen ennenaikaisesti, koomisen kommelluksen seurauksena, arkipäiväisen banaalisti... Filosofin kuolema sisältää neljäkymmentä tarinaa siitä, miten filosofi kohtaa kuoleman. Mitä Pythagoras ajatteli kuolemanjälkeisestä elämästä? Mikä oli Sokrateen itsemurhan tausta? Entä miten esimerkiksi Platon, Pyrrhon, Aristoteles, Plotinos, Avicenna, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Kaila ja Foucault suhtautuivat kuolemaan ja miten he kuolivat? Hei…Read more
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