Liberalism was not only the first modern ideology, it was also the first secular movement to have an international presence. The scholarly articles in this collection, skillfully edited by Iván Zoltán Dénes, examine liberal ideas and movements from Scotland to the Ottoman Empire. The volume seeks to uncover and analyze various relationships between liberalisms and nationalisms, national identities and modernity concepts, nations and empires, nation-states and nationalities, traditions and modernities, images of the self and the others, modernization (...) strategies and identity creations. This volume provides an important historical analysis that is essential toward understanding the questions and motivations of liberalism in the European Union today. This is, therefore, a timely contribution to both historiography and contemporary politics. (shrink)

By freedom, classical liberals meant non-interference, independence from the state, the personal and proprietary liberty of the governed. It is negative freedom as the antithesis both to absolutism and anarchy. In the republican interpretations, the freedom of a free political community is made possible and guaranteed by the institutionalization of the liberty of the political community. Political liberty is the medium, stage and precondition for the freedom of its members. That, in turn, is conditional upon the readiness of its members (...) to protect the liberty of their community and themselves, i.e. upon the virtue of the free citizen. In this article I engage with four different interpretations of both kinds of liberty concepts in different discourses of the 20th-century UK and US and 20th—21st-century Hungary. (shrink)

…entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..

Combining up-to-date scholarship with clear and accessible language and helpful exercises, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction is an invaluable resource for all readers interested in metaphor. This second edition includes two new chapters--on 'metaphors in discourse' and 'metaphor and emotion' --along with new exercises, responses to criticism and recent developments in the field, and revised student exercises, tables, and figures.

This chapter explores the relational critique of distributive conceptions of justice, according to which the proper focus of egalitarian justice is the egalitarian nature of social relations rather than the equal distribution of certain goods. It maintains that the relational critique constitutes a fundamental challenge to distributive egalitarianism only if it rejects the “core distributive thesis” that holds that the distribution of some nonrelational goods has relation-independent significance for justice. It argues that several relational proposals are compatible with that thesis, (...) and therefore constitute extensions or revisions of the distributive conception rather than alternatives to it, and that those relational views that reject the core distributive thesis are the least plausible ones. Finally, the chapter shows that relational views are often ambiguous regarding the nature of the significance of egalitarian relations, i.e. whether it consists in their contribution to well-being, or in being the fitting response to equal moral status. (shrink)

An assertion is existentially known if and only if: (i) the speaker knows that the sentence she uses to make the assertion expresses a true proposition; (ii) she makes the assertion based on that knowledge; and (iii) she does not believe, have justification for, or know the proposition asserted. Accordingly, if existentially known assertions could be made correctly—as argued by Charlie Pelling in his ‘Assertion and the Provision of Knowledge’—this would show that the norm of assertion cannot be the speaker's (...) belief in, justification for or knowledge of the proposition. In this paper, I try to show that Pelling's argument is inconclusive, as it rests on two assumptions which can be resisted. In turn, I offer a pair of alternative strategies to explain how we can deal with existentially known assertions under the assumption that the speaker's knowledge is the norm of assertion. (shrink)

Knowledge ascriptions seem context sensitive. Yet it is widely thought that epistemic contextualism does not have a plausible semantic implementation. We aim to overcome this concern by articulating and defending an explicit contextualist semantics for ‘know,’ which integrates a fairly orthodox contextualist conception of knowledge as the elimination of the relevant alternatives, with a fairly orthodox “Amherst” semantics for A-quantification over a contextually variable domain of situations. Whatever problems epistemic contextualism might face, lack of an orthodox semantic implementation is not (...) among them. (shrink)

By the integrative value-like approach to the idea of God and to the function of religion, A. Adler’s individual psychology provides religious studies with considerable axiological and praxiological footings. Filling individual and societal needs within the contemporary world, religion is constituted as an essential factor in the growth and development of the sense of community as a foundation of democratic cohabitation. Adlerian psychology puts forward a holistic-integrative approach to the human being that can be applied to the area of religious (...) studies. The re-shaping of the table of values and of the socialization and education systems is necessary in the context of the crisis of values and discouraging influences specific to the globalized world. Feelings of inferiority are unavoidable realities of this world and, by avoiding becoming their victim and making use of a positive compensating effort, humas can convert them into facts of culture. We have a general responsibility to develop the innate potentiality of the community feeling, and to encourage it to manifest itself into desirable social behaviors. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the political and educational relevance of Hannah Arendt’s account of friendship. Drawing from Arendt’s central works on friendship, we offer a novel interpretation of the concept by connecting the notion with the idea of educational ‘love for the world’, amor mundi. With this interpretation, we seek to demonstrate that the concept of friendship has both direct educational and indirect political significance. Thereby, we distinguish our interpretation from two previous understandings of the educational relevance of the (...) Arendtian notion of friendship—those by (1) Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy, and (2) Morten T. Korsgaard—in which friendship is either assigned a specifically political role (as in (1)) or its significance to education is narrowly understood (as in (2)). We argue our interpretation of friendship offers both a new contribution to the understanding of the relationship between education and politics in the context of Arendt scholarship, and a novel way of thinking about the educational significance of friendship in the context of contemporary democratic politics, especially the prevailing political polarization. (shrink)

This article invites the view that the Europeanization of an antitotalitarian “collective memory” of communism reveals the emergence of a field of anticommunism. This transnational field is inextricably tied to the proliferation of state-sponsored and anticommunist memory institutes across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), but cannot be treated as epiphenomenal to their propagation. The diffusion of bodies tasked with establishing the “true” history of communism reflects, first and foremost, a shift in the region’s approach to its past, one driven by (...) the right’s frustration over an allegedly pervasive influence of former communist cliques. Memory institutes spread as the CEE right progressively perceives their emphasis on research and public education as a safer alternative to botched lustration processes. However, the field of anticommunism extends beyond diffusion by seeking to leverage the European Union institutional apparatus to generate previously unavailable forms of symbolic capital for anticommunist narratives. This results in an entirely different challenge, which requires reconciling of disparate ideological and national interests. In this article, I illustrate some of these nationally diverse, but internationally converging, trajectories of communist extrication from the vantage point of its main exponents: theanticommunist memory entrepreneurs, who are invariably found at the helm of memory institutes.Inhabiting the space around the political, historiographic, and Eurocratic fields, anticommunist entrepreneurs weave a complex web of alliances that ultimately help produce an autonomous field of anticommunism. (shrink)

An accessible and illuminating exploration of the conceptual basisof scientific and statistical inference and the practical impact this has on conducting psychological research. The book encourages a critical discussion of the different approaches and looks at some of the most important thinkers and their influence.

An interdisciplinary examination of the evolutionary breakthroughs that rendered the brain accessible to itself.

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities . Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C. Under the guise of an unrelated study, 180 of these participants also completed: a version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale that is normally distributed in non-clinical populations; a latent inhibition (...) task, a spatial negative priming task, and a memory task designed to measure negative priming. The data ruled out even moderate correlations between hypnotic suggestibility and all the measures of dissociation and cognitive inhibition overall, though they also indicated gender differences. The results are a challenge for existing theories of hypnosis. (shrink)

According to the contemporary consensus, when reaching in the lexicon grammar looks for items like nouns, verbs, and prepositions while logic sees items like predicates, connectives, and quantifiers. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a single lexical category contemporary grammar and logic both make use of. I hope to show that while a perfect match between the lexical categories of grammar and logic is impossible there can be a substantial overlap. I propose semantic definitions for all the major parts (...) of speech . I argue that the differences among these categories can be captured in terms of distinctions recognized in logic. (shrink)

The spillovers in knowledge among largely college-educated workers were among the key reasons for the impressive degree of economic growth and spread of entrepreneurship in the United States during the 1990s. Prior 'industrial policies' in the 1970s and 1980s did not advance growth because these were based on outmoded large manufacturing models. Zoltan Acs and Catherine Armington use a knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to explain new firm formation rates in regional economies during the 1990s period and beyond. The fastest-growing (...) regions are those that have the highest rates of new firm formation, and which are not dominated by large businesses. The authors of this text also find support for the thesis that knowledge spillovers move across industries and are not confined within a single industry. As a result, they suggest, regional policies to encourage and sustain growth should focus on entrepreneurship among other factors. (shrink)

In this paper we motivate and develop the analytic theory of measurement, in which autonomously specified algebras of quantities (together with the resources of mathematical analysis) are used as a unified mathematical framework for modeling (a) the time-dependent behavior of natural systems, (b) interactions between natural systems and measuring instruments, (c) error and uncertainty in measurement, and (d) the formal propositional language for describing and reasoning about measurement results. We also discuss how a celebrated theorem in analysis, known as Gelfand (...) representation, guarantees that autonomously specified algebras of quantities can be interpreted as algebras of observables on a suitable state space. Such an interpretation is then used to support (i) a realist conception of quantities as objective characteristics of natural systems, and (ii) a realist conception of measurement results (evaluations of quantities) as determined by and descriptive of the states of a target natural system. As a way of motivating the analytic approach to measurement, we begin with a discussion of some serious philosophical and theoretical problems facing the well-known representational theory of measurement. We then explain why we consider the analytic approach, which avoids all these problems, to be far more attractive on both philosophical and theoretical grounds. (shrink)

This article focuses on the perception of the importance of business ethics among Czech and Slovak entrepreneurs (this includes business owners and managers) within the SME sector. The comparison is based on an analysis of the approach to business ethics according to a set of parameters, namely company size, years in business, and the gender and education of the entrepreneurs. Empirical research was conducted in 2020 on a sample set consisting of 454 respondents in the Czech Republic and 368 respondents (...) in Slovakia. The most important outcome of the research was the finding that business ethics is considered extremely important in both countries. The research results not only revealed that just over 90% of Czech entrepreneurs and 88% of Slovak entrepreneurs within the SME sector agreed that they should take into account the moral and ethical consequences of their decisions, but that the structure of their answers was very similar. Also, of interest were the findings that women were more aware of business ethics than their male counterparts, as were those entrepreneurs who possessed a higher education over those with a secondary education. (shrink)

This paper considers two subjective measures of the existence of unconscious mental states - the guessing criterion, and the zero correlation criterion - and considers the assumptions underlying their application in experimental paradigms. Using higher order thought theory the impact of different types of biases on the zero correlation and guessing criteria are considered. It is argued that subjective measures of consciousness can be biased in various specified ways, some of which involve the relation between first order states and second (...) order thoughts, and hence are not errors in measurement of the conscious status of mental states; but other sorts of biases are measurement errors, involving the relation between higher order thoughts and their expression. Nonetheless, it is argued this type of bias does not preclude subjective measures - both the guessing criterion and the zero correlation criterion - as being amongst the most appropriate and useful tools for measuring the conscious status of mental states. (shrink)

A central puzzle of contemporary moral and political philosophy is that while most of us believe that all or almost all human beings enjoy the same moral status, human beings possess the capacities that supposedly ground moral status to very unequal levels. This paper aims to develop a novel strategy to vindicate the idea of moral equality against this challenge. Its central argument is that the puzzle emerges only if one accepts a usually unstated theoretical premise about value and the (...) proper response to value. The premise holds that if the presence of a valuable property warrants a certain kind of response towards its bearers, then every variation in the degree to which the property is present necessarily constitutes a reason for a corresponding variation in the response that is warranted towards its bearers. It argues that despite its intuitive appeal, the premise is not plausible as a general view about the proper way of responding to value, and as a view about responding to the value of rational beings in particular. It proposes an account of the proper manner of valuing rational beings that supports a distinctive version of the so-called threshold approach to justifying equal moral status. (shrink)

How do we make sense of our experience? In order to understand how we construct meaning, the varied and complex relationships among language, mind, and culture need to be understood. While cognitive linguists typically study the cognitive aspects of language, and linguistic anthropologists typically study language and culture, Language, Mind, and Culture is the first book to combine all three and provide an account of meaning-making in language and culture by examining the many cognitive operations in this process. In addition (...) to providing a comprehensive theory of how we can account for meaning making, Language, Mind, and Culture is a textbook for anyone interested in the fascinating issues surrounding the relationship between language, mind, and culture. Further, the book is also a "practical" introduction: most of the chapters include exercises that help the student understand the theoretical issues. No prior knowledge of linguistics is assumed, and the material is accessible and useful to students in a variety of other disciplines, such as anthropology, English, sociology, philosophy, psychology, communication, rhetoric, and others. Language, Mind, and Culture helps us make sense of not only linguistic meaning but also of some of the important personal and social issues we encounter in our lives as members of particular cultures and as human beings. (shrink)

Dene Bebbbington explains, and criticises, the intelligent design creationism of William Dembski.

People prefer certainty. There's a psychological need to explain events or phenomena rather than accept one's ignorance, to say ???I don't know??? when faced with insufficient evidence.

A man fires a gun several times at the side of a barn and then draws a circle around a cluster of most of the bullet holes. Drawing a target retrospectively like this doesn't prove the shooting skills of the gunman ??? no one would consider him a sharpshooter if they knew what he'd done. When the equivalent of this happens in other circumstances we call it the Texas sharpshooter fallacy . As with many fallacies, it may not appear fallacious (...) at first inspection. (shrink)

Background to the brain: the identity of consciousness -- Neoteny: the breaking of the hominid impasse -- Nuts and bolts to build a language -- Cognitive bootstrapping: the epigenesis of language -- A device to move mountains: dual output, single focus -- Language: the Trojan horse of negative entropy -- What is this thing called mind? -- The alchemy of self-deception: introspection at work -- Functional autonomy: the triumph of evolutionary bootstrapping -- About the self: fiction and fact -- Unfinished (...) business: skeletons in the cupboard -- At the edge of comprehension. (shrink)

We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? Philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal concept strategy" to defend materialism. In Consciousness Revisited, philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the approach, argues that the phenomenal concept strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy (...) for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles--solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

In this article Zoltán Somhegyi investigates the aesthetic qualities of Northern landscape representations, with a special focus on how contemporary examples are connected to classical ones. First he examines the history of the aesthetic appreciation of these sites, starting from their early modern reception and from the differentiation of “Northern” and “Mediterranean” landscapes: while the Mediterranean ones were highly valued already from the 15th–16th centuries on, the “wilder” Northern landscapes were admired mainly from Romanticism onwards. This has, among others, (...) an aesthetichistorical reason, namely the birth of the category of the sublime; and in this case the harmonious Mediterranean landscapes and the irregular yet impressive Northern ones relate to each other as the category of beautiful does to the sublime. This is why from Romanticism on Northern landscapes became not only aesthetically valuable, but even more capable than the Southern ones to move the spectator. This is especially because, from a gnoseological point of view, the landscape might be a place – and the landscape representation a means – of self-interpretation. The historical overview is then used to better understand some of the most important characteristics of contemporary Northern landscape interpretations and representations from leading artists of the region, which are analysed in the second part of the article. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the concepts of social position and social status, the types of social position, as well as the determinedness of social statuses by the given positions in a new approach. In the first, introductory part of the article, I emphasize that the institutional sociological conception of social position in my approach is relatively closest to the structuralist position conception. In the second part, I introduce two different concepts, labelled social position and social status, and briefly review (...) the social determinedness of social status. In the third part, social positions are typified from the point of view of the two components of social position: on the one hand, from that of social power relations and on the other from that of interest relations. I point out that the different social positions promote the realization of interests to different degrees, that is, they make it possible to attain different social statuses. In a related article, I illustrate the concepts and connections in question with a case study carried out on an industrial shop floor. (shrink)