in descartes theological writing, he promotes two jointly puzzling theses: t1) god freely creates the eternal truths (i.e. the creation doctrine) and t2) the eternal truths are necessarily true. according to t1 god freely chooses which propositions to make necessary, contingent and possible. however the creation doctrine makes the acceptance of t2 tenuous for the creation doctrine implies that ...

In 1913 Stanisław Leśniewski published his article on the sempiternity of truth, ‘Is Truth only Eternal or is it both Eternal and Sempiternal?’ (1913). The paper, directed against Kotarbiński’s ‘The Problem of the Existence of the Future’ (1913), made an important contribution to the debate on the excluded middle current in the Lvov circle in those years. The discussion involved at the same tim...

The paper explores the existential import of universal affirmative in Descartes, Arnauld and Malebranche. Descartes holds, inconsistently, that eternal truths are true even if the subject term is empty but that a proposition with a false idea as subject is false. Malebranche extends Descartes’ truthconditions for eternal truths, which lack existential import, to all knowledge, allowing only for...

This article elaborates a claim, first introduced by Wilhelm Dilthey, that metaphysics represents an illusory flight from the tragedy of human finitude. Metaphysics, of which psychoanalytic metapsychologies are a form, transforms the unbearable fragility and transience of all things human into an enduring, permanent, changeless reality, an illusory world of eternal truths. Three "clinical cases...

Mathematics is often seen as the uncovering of eternal truths that exist independently of the human mind. However, even if this epistemological view is correct, the mathematics that humans can know can only be the result of cognitive processes. We investigate this ability of the human mind to make mathematical discoveries. More precisely, we present a cognitive model of how the ability to use m...

Biologists view life as transient while theologians see it as eternal. An unbiased definition for life would respect both views until one or both were eliminated by evidence. This paper identifies pre-requisites for such a definition. First among these is that all assumptions be made explicit. Currently "life" is surrounded by implicit assumptions, e.g., that it is what organisms lose at death ...

I recommend the rule “if in doubt use the present tense”. Higham (1998), [1], §4.29 The present tense works well for scientific writing. The eternal truths we present in an article should all be in the present tense: instead of “experiments have shown that”, prefer “experiments show that”. The present tense helps make more active writing. Write derivations in the present tense: not the past ten...