Currently Reading
  • C.G. Jung • Memories, Dreams, Reflections

    C.G. Jung • Memories, Dreams, Reflections

  • C.G. Jung • The Red Book

    C.G. Jung • The Red Book

  • F.Incekara • Hay en zijn dierenvrienden

    F.Incekara • Hay en zijn dierenvrienden

  • May 24, 2022
    By FI

    Cartesian AI

    Although René Descartes is primarily known for his mind-body dualism as a metaphysician, Descartes was more of an anatomist, mathematician, a scientist. Descartes broke with the Scholastic tradition by assigning the lower parts of the Aristotelian tripartite soul to the body itself. He provided detailed neurophysiology including nerves, muscles, and fluids in his Passion that had not only implications for moral philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and religion, but also for the ‘New Sciences’....

    By FI
  • May 24, 2022
    By FI

    Freudian analysis of Hayy Ibn Yakzan

    The story of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a philosophical novel written in the early 12th century by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufayl, Latinized as Abubacer.1 The story briefly goes as follows. ...

    By FI
  • July 27, 2020
    By FI

    Cartesian Consciousness, an interpretation beyond mind-body dualism

    René Descartes is primarily known as the philosopher of mind-body dualism. Descartes as a scientist broke down with the scholastic tradition by dismantling the metaphysical Aristotelean soul. For him, the only immaterial entity was the mind, or Cogito, and the Aristotelean vegetative and sensitive souls were functions of the material body. Descartes defined the mind in terms of consciousness with a detailed neurophysiology. His main project, however, was eclipsed by the metaphysical 17th -century mind-body discussion. Despite this, Cartesian consciousness did influence modern neuroscientific and philosophical theories of consciousness and provides new insights to challenges proposed in our current technological era....

    By FI
  • July 27, 2020
    By FI

    Fair allocation of scarce COVID-19 vaccines: who should get them first?

    In a hypothetical, but realistic scenario, the COVID-19 vaccines need to be distributed in phases following a certain strategy. Somehow, this strategy needs a transparent, moral justification. Therefore, already before the vaccines are developed the following moral question needs to be addressed: who should get the scarce COVID-19 vaccines first?...

    By FI
  • March 4, 2020
    By FI

    On Theodicy

      On Theodicy The Problem of Evil Evil traditionally has been divided into moral and natural evil. Moral evil is caused by (in)action of a moral agent (e.g. a person killing another person). In natural evil by contrast, no moral agent is involved in the cause of evil, such as in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake with thousands of deaths. This natural disaster started a debate among enlightenment philosophers including Leibniz and Voltaire on the paradox of how a good God could permit evil. Although this was debated already in ancient Greece (Epicurean paradox), it was Leibniz who first introduced the......

    By FI
  • January 24, 2020
    By FI

    Hayy Ibn Yaqzan – A Philosophical Novel

      As a child somewhere between the ages of 5-8 years, I remember watching a cartoon dozens of times, so many times in fact that I probably knew every part of it. It was about a boy named Hayy who grew up on a deserted island. Hay was raised by deers and as he grew up, he explored the island, imitated and learned from different animals, developed own tools and eventually gained knowledge in natural sciences such as astrology and anatomy (he dissected his mother-deer’s heart after her death, to find and fix what was broken, to bring her back).......

    By FI
  • December 3, 2019
    By FI

    Science, the new Delphic Oracle

    Throughout time, science did not develop as a monolithic system and consequently acquired a diversity of aims.1 These aims are broadly distinguished into epistemic aims, as an end in itself -Aristotelian aims, e.g. to gather knowledge- and practical aims as a mean to an end -Baconian aims, e.g. to increase quality of human life-. In this essay, I will first argue that institutionalized science in the 21th century has become the new Delphic Oracle. Secondly, I will argue that science ought to have both epistemic and practical aims -Aristo-Baconian parallelism- and that moral progression ought to be the pinnacle of practical scientific aims. ...

    By FI
  • June 12, 2019
    By FI

    Spinoza’s Panendeism

    In this essay, I will mainly argue how Spinoza’s view on nature and God corresponds with not a pantheistic, but rather a Panentheistic worldview infused with deistic elements, or simply Panendeism. To do this, I will first discuss what Spinoza exactly meant with Deus sive Natura. Then, I will argue how this worldview corresponds with panentheism and how it contains elements of deism, instead of theism. Finally, I will briefly touch upon how Spinoza’s rather complex perspective on nature and God resulted in a broad spectrum of interpretations and how this influenced the age of Enlightenment and the rise of German Idealism....

    By FI
  • October 3, 2018
    By FI

    On the Future of Neurosurgery

      I want to take you to the operating room of the future. In the OR, the surgeon makes many decisions every second, and these decisions are primarily based on 3d anatomical knowledge,  experience and surgical intuition. The surgeon has some options to support decisions with image guidance. To do this, he or she often has to remove the microscope, pull out all his instruments and look at a screen the so called neuronavigation system, which was introduced back in the 1990, 30 years ago. He or she has to translate the 2D data on the screen to the real......

    By FI
  • March 24, 2018
    By FI

    On moral revival

      We are living in an era where institutions are able to act immoral pretty freely, long lasting and without consequences. This is not only true for companies, but also for social, political and religious institutions. Together with the up rise of social media, press – if still not oppressed, yes they are still some out there – manages to expose dirty laundry of corrupted institutions. What mostly concerns me in this issue, is the fact that these intuitions forcibly condemn their actions only after being heavily scrutinized and consequently being busted. When we take a look at news headlines......

    By FI