Projects
pREservIng fuNdamental rIghTs In the use of digitAl technoLogIes for e-health ServicEs KU Leuven
REINITIALISE aims to strengthen scientific excellence and innovation capacity at UMCS (PL) in the field of preservation of fundamental rights in the design and use of digital technologies and digital communication for e-health services, with a specific focus on a) health-oriented technologies for active ageing, and b) prevention care in the sectors of nutrition and dietetics. Within this overall objective, REINITIALISE also aims to increase ...
Responses to Mozi's Ears and Eyes: The Epistemic Role of Perception in Chinese Thought KU Leuven
Discourses on the epistemic role of sense perception in Chinese thought can be traced to the Warring States period. Mozi’s (ca. 470-391 BCE) simple idea of perceiving is believing as a criterion of reliable knowledge may have initiated an intellectual tradition consisting of many different strands of thought regarding perceptual knowledge. Some of these discourses are about what a contemporary philosopher may call “the Problem of Perception” ...
Schelling's Philosophical Theology. Tracing the Idea of the Absolute KU Leuven
Schelling’s philosophy has attracted an increasing scholarly interest recently. What previous genera-tions of philosophers found irritating, i.e., that this philosophy cannot easily be categorized as a vari-ety of German Idealism, is precisely what many contemporary scholars find attractive. For them, Schelling is important not only as a sharp critic of German Idealism but also a precursor of much later philosophical paradigms such as ...
Kant's Theory of Time and Inner Sense: Its Origins and Development KU Leuven
The aim of the thesis is to determine the origins and the development of Kant’s theory of time and inner sense from his first writings to the Critique of Pure Reason. I interpret this theory as the upshot of Kant’s long-lasting engagement with the metaphysical tradition. Kant engaged with this tradition both in the sense that, at the very beginning of his career, he developed a metaphysics which draws heavily on Leibnizian and post-Leibnizian ...
Second-person Experience, Testimony, and Healing: An Investigation with Aquinas into the Problem of Human Suffering KU Leuven
This dissertation focuses on one of the healing methods of human suffering: second-person relationship between survivors and sufferers (S-S relation). I argue that (1) this relationship provides an emotional-convincing healing of which medications or psychological treatments lack; (2) this relationship can be successfully interpreted in accordance to Aquinas’s conception of testimony; and (3) this complex relationship is effective in ...
The Creation of Yang Zhu as A Philisopher in The Republican Era KU Leuven
The fame of Yangism was, in ancient times, as great as Confucianism and Mohism. As a matter of fact, Mohism and Confucianism were considered as equals during the Warring States period and the Han Dynasty, while Yangism being the third greatest school among the Hundred Schools of Thought. It is not until later times that Yangism and Mohism were deemed less than Confucianism. And after the Book Burning and Burial of the Scholars in the Qin ...
Talking about Human Kinds: The Normative Implications of Generic Stereotypes KU Leuven
Stereotypes are the pictures that come to mind when thinking about a category of people. While most of these generalizations are quite innocent, some of them are so bad that it seems wrong just to believe in them. According to the traditional view, stereotypes are epistemically and morally problematic because they are negative and false universalizations that only prejudiced people would hold. This traditional view is still very influential, ...
Beatitudo Imperfecta: An Anthology of the Concept in Aquinas and Renaissance Thomism (c. 1550 – c. 1650) KU Leuven
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) famously distinguishes between perfect and imperfect happiness. Both types of happiness lie in the perfection of human nature, but perfect happiness is possible only in the afterlife through the vision of God’s essence, whereas imperfect happiness is possible even in this life, be it through intellectual virtue and the contemplative life or moral virtue and the active life. This life’s imperfect happiness is the ...
When To Trust Authoritative Testimony: Generation And Transmission Of Knowledge In Saadya Gaon, Al-Ghazālī, And Thomas Aquinas KU Leuven
People have become suspicious of authority, including epistemic authorities, i.e., knowledge experts, even on matters individuals are unqualified to adjudicate (e.g., climate change, vaccines, or the shape and age of the earth). This is problematic since most of our knowledge comes from trusting a speaker—whether scholars reading experts, students listening to teachers, children obeying their parents, or pedestrians inquiring of ...