This paper examines the conceptual matrix of philosophical counseling, and philosophical practice generally, which distinguishes philosophical practice from mainstream theoretical philosophy. I argue that the essence of philosophical practice is the realization and radicalization of Pierre Hadot’s paradigmshifting view of ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’ through the projection of philosophical concepts and methods to the goal of attainment of the good life by moral education and character-building. The base-line concept of the good life that the paper works with is (...) the relatively uncontroversial concept of a life based on sustained reflected pleasures that are both socially desirable and individually fulfilling. I argue that this type of concept of the good life as qualified pleasure is inherent in any doctrinal account of what it is to lead a good life, including the ones that emphasise asceticism, such as Christian philosophy of life and ethics. Finally the paper concludes that projections of the good life by philosophical counselors are reflective on philosophical counselor themselves: philosophical counseling is a way of ‘the good life’ that aims to use the resources of philosophy as a whole to help others build the moral qualities and character required to reach their own good lives. By projecting philosophical concepts and methods to the applied conceptual matrix of moral education and the good life, philosophical counseling emancipates philosophy as a whole from its current remoteness and isolation into an active, and reflective, role in the real lives of ordinary people. This heralds a paradigm shift in philosophy, from the pseudo-science that much of mainstream philosophy painstakingly pretends to be to an intellectual powerhouse for the enhancement of the quality, clarity and integrity of life, which was the reason philosophy initially emerged for, both in the Western and in the Eastern philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Permissibility of contraception as a method of birth control is closely connected with issues of moral justification of reproductive autonomy, namely the question whether or not individuals should be allowed to autonomously and freely decide if they are going to have children, when and how many. The development of medical and scientific technologies led to the usage of artificial methods of contraception that can prevent conception with the goal of postponing and planning the birth of a child. In the first (...) part I analyse the bioethical arguments that appear in debates about reproductive autonomy and which can be mobilized against the permissibility of contraception. In the second part I have compared the bioethical arguments to those used against the artificial contraception in the literature about the philosophy of sexuality. In the third and final part, I have argued against the stance of G.E.M. Anscombe and J. Finnis that there is morally relevant distinction between artificial and natural methods of birth control. (shrink)

This paper considers epistemological implications of the concept of performative, starting from the elaborate conception provided by Judith Butler’s theories. The primary postulate of this work is that various interpretations of the performative, with their semiotic shifting from the notions of truth-evaluability and the descriptive nature of meaning, form a line of abandoning traditional epistemological distinction between subject and object. Through other semiotic concepts which will be presented and analysed, this line reveals the key epistemological issues in the light of (...) semiology, while Judith Butler’s concept of performativity is viewed as a possible outcome of this course of semiology of knowledge, resulting in final transcending of the category of subject. (shrink)

I reconsider a type of counterfactual argument often used in historical sciences on a recent widely discussed example of the so-called “rare Earth” hypothesis in planetary sciences and astrobiology. The argument is based on the alleged “rarity” of some crucial ingredient for the planetary habitability, which is, in Earth’s case, provided by contingent evolutionary development. For instance, the claim that a contingent fact of history which has created planet Jupiter enables shielding of Earth from most dangerous impact catastrophes, thus increasing (...) Earth’s habitability, leads often to the conclusion that such state-of-affairs must be rare in the Galaxy. I argue that this reasoning is deeply flawed, for several closely related reasons. In addition, the relevance of the philosophical problem of transworld identity for this kind of historical reasoning in science is put forward. This highlights many explanatory problems one faces when using historical counterfactuals in study of complex, nonlinear dynamical systems – and bolsters the relevance of philosophy for evaluation of scientific explanatory claims. (shrink)

This paper examines the standard criticism of the neoclassical economic theory that takes mathematical formalism and the practice of modelling as the most problematic aspect of orthodox economics. The aim of the paper is to explore the epistemic properties of models in science (particularly in economics), and to incorporate the insights from the recent debates in the philosophy of science into the framework of historical epistemology of economics. The main claim of this paper is that history is important for understanding (...) how economic models operate and why have they been accepted as legitimate instruments of inquiry in economic theory. However, since modelling practice clearly is not limited to neoclassical economic theory, the difference between economic orthodoxy and heterodoxy has to be explained in a different way. The paper argues that the theory of fiction can provide an important clue inasmuch as the epistemological and political commitments are a part of the story that underpins the modelling practice in economics. (shrink)

Today’s discussions on education policy mostly consist of uncritical shuffling of allegedly neutral and merely technical or practical notions such as life-long learning, learning to learn or problem-solving and are based on similarly uncritical acceptance of socio-economic theories of the knowledge society, which is supposed to present an objective framework of education reforms. The aim of this article is to sketch the history of mentioned notions and to present a critique of theories of the knowledge society through an analysis of (...) its tacit political content. To this aim, we took upon early neoliberal epistemology (Hayek and Polanyi) as well as its transition towards theories of human capital (Drucker and Machlup). (shrink)