How should we use intellectual history to inform our thinking about freedom in the advent of digital technologies? Quentin Skinner argues that prevalent liberal idiom is unable to address the political challenges in the world of big tech. While liberals consider these challenges in terms of invasion of individual privacy, in Skinner's neo-Roman – and once widely accepted – perspective, the growing datafication of contemporary societies should be considered an affront to liberty. By invoking the figure of ‘paths not taken’, (...) the author of Liberty before liberalism shows, how we may learn from the past without abandoning commitments to contextual accuracy of historical investigation. The interview will be published in Polish in ‘Przegląd Polityczny’ [Political Review]. (shrink)

In the present thesis the characteristics of current consumer society are presented in the context of female-male relationships and any inter-human relationships. It has been shown that the ideology of consumption may have an impact on the changeability of female-male relationships, as well as on the stereotypical division of roles in a relationship. The importance of consumer ethics has here been emphasised. For this purpose, the model of erotic ethos, based on sexual aesthetics, has been discussed in this article. This (...) model is connected with the contemporary consumption model, in which one can compare material product consumption with relationship consumption. It seems that consumer ethics concerning relationships not only should consider current changes, but also, in the context of a relationship, bear in mind life ethos and sexual aesthetics. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the widespread assumption that the conditions for singular reference are more or less the same as the conditions for singular thought. I claim that we refer singularly to things without thinking singularly about them more often than it is usually believed. I first argue that we should take the idea that singular thought is non-descriptive thought very seriously. If we do that, it seems that we cannot be so liberal about what counts as acquaintance; only (...) perception will do. I also briefly discuss and reject semantic instrumentalism. Finally, I argue that while singular reference is cheap, singular thought comes only at a price. (shrink)

I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast (...) to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society. (shrink)

In this brief discussion piece I try to offer some considerations in favor of the so-called Simple Intention Theory of demonstratives, which is rejected by Gómez-Torrente. I try to show that the main argument offered against the Simple Intention Theory appears to be based on false data.

In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on (...) the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel. (shrink)

An article that reflects on the adaptation of a phenomenologically inspired approach within sociological epistemology. Using two sociological as examples perspectives – interpretivism and critical theory – we point at the normative assumptions common to both approaches. We suggest these are responsible for the impossibility of transgressing dichotomization and mediation – two features continuously reproduced within social sciences. With the use of phenomenologically inspired non-dichotomous epistemology we offer a way to work around these limitations. It is possible, we argue, thanks (...) to the application of the categories of intentionality and responsiveness, to ground sociology in a non-dichotomous, and hence expanded, paradigm. (shrink)

Because philosophical reflections on touch usually start from our ability to perceive properties of objects, they tend to overlook features of touch that are crucial to correct understanding of tactual perception. This paper brings out these features and uses them to develop a general reconception of the sense of touch. I start by taking a fresh look at our ability to feel, in order to reveal its vital role. This sheds a different light on the skin's perceptual potential. While it (...) is commonly observed that tactile experiences have two intentional objects, an external object and one's own body, I will advance a more accurate alternative: in tactile experiences, one becomes aware of what one's body undergoes. This alternative not only fits better with tactility's vital role; it is also key to explaining how active touching provides for a unique contribution to our perceptual relation to material objects. By thus connecting tactility's vital role to the way we rely on touch while manipulating objects, this essay offers a cross-sectional survey of our tactile powers that reveals the interplay between sensing and touching. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the links between Jakob von Uexküll’s theoretical biology and Adolf Portmann’s conception of organic life. Its main purpose is to show that Uexküll and Portmann not only share a view of the living being as an autonomous and holistically organized entity, but also base this view on the seminal idea of the subjectivity of the organism. In other words, the respective holistic principles securing the autonomy of the living being—the Bauplan, for Uexküll; the Innerlichkeit, for Portmann—share (...) an essentially subjective character. Such principles, indeed, express themselves in a centrally directed and formative way; moreover, in organisms endowed with a central nervous system, they also extend their influence on the overt behavioral sphere and on the organism’s capacity to give meaning to the surrounding reality. The conclusion of the article will show how, though starting from this common background, the two authors develop divergent positions on the issue of the anthropological difference. If Portmann emphasizes the special status of the relationship between the human animal and the world, Uexküll tends to see a substantial continuity in the biosemiotic processes through which human and non-human animals constitute their species-specific worlds of experience. (shrink)

I argue that the adjective δαιμόνιος (‘daemonic’) and the substantivized adjective τὸ δαιμόνιον (‘the daemonic’) that occur in Aristotle’s dream treatises basically mean ‘divine-like,’ denoting an illusory appearance of divine intervention, typically in the form of an alleged god-sent prophetic dream. Yet the appearances to which the terms refer are, in fact, neither divine nor supernatural at all, but involve merely coincidental correlations between the dream and the fulfilling event. It is shown that Aristotle’s use of ‘daemonic’ is traditional and (...) reflects the endoxon that prophetic dreams are closely related to the divine. The paper also examines a set of earlier readings of the daemonic in De divinatione in relation to the proposed interpretation. (shrink)

Les termes d’espèce naturelle font débat : s’agit-il de termes descriptifs qui exprimeraient des caractéristiques des objets tombant dans leur extension, ou fonctionnent-ils plutôt comme des noms qui désigneraient directement leur espèce, sans l’intermédiaire d’une description? Selon la théorie causale de la référence (TCR), un terme comme « Tigre » nomme directement l’espèce du Tigre grâce à l’ostension d’un échantillon de tigres individuels qui constitue l’étalon de référence pour les usages ultérieurs du terme. Je me propose ici de confronter la (...) TCR à la pratique des noms de taxons telle qu’elle est réglée par le Code International de Nomenclature Zoologique. Je tâcherai de montrer qu’en dépit de contre-exemples avancés récemment, les prédictions de la TCR sont vérifiées par les noms scientifiques d’espèces et de sous-espèces. (shrink)

This paper briefly presents an account, partially based upon Ryle’s approach, of the functions of intentional psychological terms as they are used in ordinary language. According to this account, intentional psychological terms describe known patterns of behavior that are determined by selective mechanisms of causation. That is, these terms describe relations between certain responses, selected on the basis of the consequences they produce in the environment, and contexts of their occurrence, to which they become associated. Intentional psychological terms do not (...) point to inner causes of a given behavior, but can explain it only in the sense of stating that it could be expected to occur, if we can identify its behavior pattern and the context in which it occurs. We proceed then to examine three main objections that have been raised against Ryle’s position, namely: (a) Davidson’s challenge to the non-causal accounts of reason-explanations; (b) Armstrong’s worries about “leaving the counterfactuals hanging in the air”; and (c) the holistic objection to the (wrongly) presumed Ryle’s atomism. We aim at showing that none of these objections pose serious problems to the proposed account. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science, and neuroscience. Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes. In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime stimuli. This was (...) true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)

In Liberating Oedipus?: Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory, Dr. Filip Kovacevic demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory can join political theory in designing alternative political norms and values. Kovacevic proves that political practice without an emancipatory psychology to guide it is potentially dangerous.

Mon but ici est de réconcilier deux conceptions relativement populaires dans leurs domaines respectifs : d’une part, la théorie des contreparties de David Lewis, en métaphysique modale, d’autre part, la thèse de la rigidité mise en avant par Saul Kripke en sémantique. De prime abord, le concept de rigidité ne semble pas pouvoir s’appliquer dans TC : un terme rigide est censé désigner le même objet au travers des mondes possibles, tandis que TC formule les conditions de vérité des énoncés (...) modaux de re en termes non pas d’identité transmonde mais de similarité comparative. Je soutiens néanmoins qu’il peut y avoir de la rigidité au travers des ressemblances. Partant d’une suggestion de Lewis, je montre qu’on peut définir un concept de rigidité, la rigidité lewisienne, qui est adapté à TC. Malheureusement, la thèse de la rigiditéL ainsi reformulée bute sur un obstacle de taille : l’extrême prodigalité de la relation de ressemblance qui prévaut dans TC entraîne une prolifération des relations de contrepartie, ce qui a pour effet de trivialiser la thèse de la rigiditéL, en faisant de tous les termes singuliers, sans discrimination, noms propres aussi bien que descriptions définies, des désignateurs rigidesL. Suivant une piste d’Allan Gibbard et de Lewis, je propose alors de relativiser la rigiditéL à un aspect de similarité variable selon le contexte conversationnel. De là, je forge un concept plus contraignant, celui d’hyper-rigiditéL, à l’aune duquel le contrepartiste peut enfin capturer la différence entre noms propres et descriptions définies. (shrink)

This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader can therefore observe (...) how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion. (shrink)

Tekst ten stanowi krytyczne omówienie książki „Dwa ciała” Didiera Francka. Zdaniem Filipa Gołaszewskiego, książka ta stara się realizować jedną z jej najpierwotniejszych funkcji, którą jest dialog. Autor udziela własnej odpowiedzi na pytanie, z jakim skutkiem Franck wywiązuje się z tego zadania.

In this paper I take a closer look at Sextus Empiricus’ arguments in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.25-30 and try to make sense of his account of Skepticism as a goal-directed philosophy. I argue that Sextus fails to mount a convincing case for the view that tranquility, rather than suspension of judgment, is the ultimate goal of his inquiries.

Ordinary psychological predicates, and the phenomena we report to by means of them, can be grouped together into different categories. For instance, it is usual to group together phenomena such as belief and expectancy in a category of ‘propositional attitudes’, whereas sensations, like pain and itch, in a distinct one. Which taxonomy of the mental would be plausible to be adopted in contexts such as those of introductory books to the philosophy of mind, i.e., when we need to set out (...) only from minimal assumptions regarding these predicates and phenomena? This article suggests some desiderata and principles for such a taxonomy; exposes and critically assesses some taxonomies presented in introductory books to the philosophy of mind; and proposes the sketch of an alternative one. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science , and neuroscience . Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes . In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime (...) stimuli. This was true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo principal apresentar uma reconstruçáo lógico-conceitual e avaliaçáo de três argumentos de Skinner para a tese de que os termos psicológicos comuns sáo, em geral, inadmissíveis em análise do comportamento (a tese da inadmissibilidade). Começamos fazendo uma revisáo da abordagem de tais termos sustentada por Skinner, particularmente sua abordagem das categoriais de termos psicológicos disposicionais. Muito dela é aqui aceito, mas adotamos, como hipótese de trabalho, um desacordo com a premissa de Skinner de que eles sejam (...) irremediavelmente mentalistas. Nossa análise mostra que, se esta hipótese estiver correta, entáo os argumentos analisados náo resultam ser inteiramente plausíveis; e, embora a opçáo do autor seja plenamente aceitável, também o é uma (em princípio) opçáo alternativa, que explore os valores heurísticos de tais termos (sem incorporá-los ao vocabulário de base) para a descoberta de padrões comportamentais e seus contextos, em ambientes abertos de pesquisa. Um objetivo colateral deste artigo é mostrar o equívoco de duas suposições muitas vezes assumidas em filosofia da mente sobre o behaviorismo radical: a de que ele náo tem uma abordagem relevante sobre o funcionamento dos termos em questáo e a de que sua tese da inadmissibilidade se baseia em premissas verificacionistas. (shrink)

The paper offers a conceptual and phenomenological analysis of the language of depersonalization. The depersonalization syndrome or disorder has no known common pathogenesis and shows no characteristic behavioral manifestations. A conceptual analysis of the key terms in the subjective complaints would therefore have consequences for clinical research into the phenomenon of depersonalization.

Contemporary theories of institutions as clusters of stable solutions to recurrent coordination problems can illuminate and explain some unresolved difficulties and problems adhering to institutional definitions of art initiated by George Dickie and Arthur Danto. Their account of what confers upon objects their institutional character does not fit well with current work on institutions and social ontology. The claim that “the artworld” confers the status of “art” onto objects remains utterly mysterious. The “artworld” is a generic notion that designates a (...) sphere of human activity that involves practices that create goals that have led to the emergence of formal and informal institutions. But those institutions, rather than magically “creating” objects subjected to esthetic appreciation, merely solve familiar and ubiquitous coordination problems created by artistic activity in ways other institutions in other areas solve similar and/or analogous coordination problems. (shrink)