Department of Philosophy

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Browsing Department of Philosophy by Author "Aranyosi, Istvan"

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    God and/as the Universe
    (De Gruyter, 2024-04-22) Aranyosi, Istvan; Szatkowski, M
    I address the issue of what the role of the particular theoretical physical model of the Universe we inhabit should be in one's pantheistic or panentheistic theology, as this question is scarcely addressed in the traditional pantheistic or panentheistic views. Pantheists and panentheists do consider the God-Universe relation as crucial, but they do not delve into the physical theory, that is, into cosmology. This might be due to their thinking that the particular cosmology is not important as long as we have the general picture of how God is supposed to be related to the Universe. In this essay, I argue that as compared to the Big Bang model of the Universe, the more recent Big Bounce model, based on quantum cosmology, is more congenial to a naturalistic version of panentheism.
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    Mental time travel and disjunctivism
    (Springer, 2020) Aranyosi, Istvan
    The paper discusses radical constructivism about episodic memory as developed by Kourken Michaelian under the name of “simulationism”, a view that equates episodic memory with mental time travel. An alternative, direct realist view is defended, which implies disjunctivism about the appearance of remembering. While admitting the importance of mental time travel as an underlying cognitive mechanism in episodic memory, as well as the prima facie reasonableness of the simulationist’s critique of disjunctivism, I formulate three arguments in defense of disjunctivism, which thus appears to be a feasible alternative to radical constructivism.
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    Preteriception: memory as past-perception
    (Springer, 2020) Aranyosi, Istvan
    The paper explicates and defends a direct realist view of episodic memory as pastperception, on the model of the more prominent direct realism about perception. First, a number of extant allegedly direct realist accounts are critically assessed, then the slogan that memory is past-perception is explained, defended against objections, and compared to extant rival views. Consequently, it is argued that direct realism about memory is a coherent and defensible view, and an attractive alternative to both the mainstream causal theories and the post-causal and constructivist views.
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    Silencing the argument from hallucination
    (MIT Press, 2013) Aranyosi, Istvan; Macpherson, F.; Platchias, D.
    Ordinary people tend to be realists regarding perceptual experience, that is, they take perceiving the environment as a direct, unmediated, straightforward access to a mindindependent reality. Not so for (ordinary) philosophers. The empiricist influence on the philosophy of perception, in analytic philosophy at least, made the problem of perception synonymous with the view that realism is untenable. Admitting the problem (and trying to offer a view on it) is tantamount to rejecting ordinary people’s implicit realist assumptions as naive. So what exactly is the problem? We can approach it via one of the central arguments against realism – the argument from hallucination. The argument is intended as a proof that in ordinary, veridical cases of perception, perceivers do not have an unmediated perceptual access to the world. There are many versions of it; I propose the following1: 1. Hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptions are possible. 2. If two subjective states are indistinguishable, then they have a common nature. 3. The contents of hallucinations are mental images, not concrete external objects. 4. Therefore, the contents of veridical perceptions are mental images rather than concrete external objects. The key move is, I believe, from the fact that hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from cases of veridical perception are possible to an alleged common element, factor, or nature, in the form of a mental state, in the two cases – that is, premise 2. Disjunctivism, at its core, can be taken as simply denying this move, and arguing that all that follows from the premise stating the possibility of hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from cases veridical perception is that there is a broader category, that of “experience as of...”, which encompasses both cases..