Although in his earlier ethical writings Kant explains the concept of moral feeling, inherited from the British sentimentalists, as a peculiar feeling of respect for the moral law that functions as an incentive for moral actions, the Doctrine of Virtue seems to add complexity to the issue. There, Kant discusses two similar aesthetic predispositions, moral feeling and respect, whose relationship to the feeling of respect is far from clear. This article offers a much needed elucidation of the relationship between these (...) three concepts. In the first part, I show that Kant, in the writings before the Doctrine of Virtue, transforms the British sentimentalists’ construal of moral feeling into that of the feeling of respect as the sole moral incentive. In the second part, I argue that, although in the Doctrine of Virtue Kant distinguishes, for a specific reason, between the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling and that of respect, they are both ultimately identical to the feeling of respect. The conclusion is that nothing of substance changes between Kant’s earlier thinking and his views in the Doctrine of Virtue; for Kant there is just one feeling that properly deserves the name of moral feeling, the feeling of respect. (shrink)

When reusing existing ontologies for publishing a dataset in RDF (or developing a new ontology), preference may be given to those providing extensive subcategorization for important classes (denoted as focus classes). The subcategories may consist not only of named classes but also of compound class expressions. We define the notion of focused categorization power of a given ontology, with respect to a focus class and a concept expression language, as the (estimated) weighted count of the categories that can be built (...) from the ontology’s signature, conform to the language, and are subsumed by the focus class. For the sake of tractable initial experiments we then formulate a restricted concept expression language based on existential restrictions, and heuristically map it to syntactic patterns over ontology axioms (so-called FCE patterns). The characteristics of the chosen concept expression language and associated FCE patterns are investigated using three different empirical sources derived from ontology collections: first, the concept expression pattern frequency in class definitions; second, the occurrence of FCE patterns in the Tbox of ontologies; and last, for class expressions generated from the Tbox of ontologies (through the FCE patterns); their ‘meaningfulness’ was assessed by different groups of users, yielding a ‘quality ordering’ of the concept expression patterns. The complementary analyses are then compared and summarized. To allow for further experimentation, a web-based prototype was also implemented, which covers the whole process of ontology reuse from keyword-based ontology search through the FCP computation to the selection of ontologies and their enrichment with new concepts built from compound expressions. (shrink)

Book review:Galilei, Galileo. Prubíř. Translation by Markéta Ledvoňová and Jana Malá. Edited and commented by Markéta Ledvoňová, Daniel Špelda, and Vladimír Štefl. Praha: Togga, 2020. 354 pages.

This paper aims to shed light on the broader significance of Frege’s logicism against the background of discussing and comparing Wittgenstein’s ‘showing/saying’-distinction with Brandom’s idiom of logic as the enterprise of making the implicit rules of our linguistic practices explicit. The main thesis of this paper is that the problem of Frege’s logicism lies deeper than in its inconsistency : it lies in the basic idea that in arithmetic one can, and should, express everything that is implicitly presupposed so that (...) nothing is left unsaid. This, in fact, is the target of Wittgenstein’s critique. Rather than the Tractatus, with its claim that logicism attempts to say something that can only be shown, it is the Philosophical Investigations, with its argument by regress against the thesis that every rule which one can follow must be of an explicit nature, that is of real significance here. (shrink)

The paper aims to explain different cases of disobedient institutional behavior using the attitude-based model. The issue of how to analyze and capture the faces of disobedience in a simple model is approached in three steps: first, misbehavior is defined as a certain lack in normative attitudes; second, these attitudes are distinguished in terms of normative acceptance and normative guidance; and third, combinations of these attitudes represent basic types of disobedience: opposing, transgressing and conforming. These three categories constitute an analytical (...) typology of disobedient agents compatible with the theory of social institutions. (shrink)

This article introduces an agent-based and a system-dynamics model investigating the cultural transmission of frequent collective rituals. It focuses on social function and cognitive attraction as independently affecting transmission. The models focus on the historical context of early Christian meals, where various theoretically inspiring trends in cultural transmission of rituals can be observed. The primary purpose of the article is to contribute to theorizing about cultural transmission of rituals by suggesting a clear operationalization of their social function and cognitive attraction. (...) Furthermore, the article challenges recent trends in the field by providing a theoretically feasible model for how, under certain conditions, cognitive attraction can influence the transmission to a relatively greater extent than social function. In the system dynamics model we reproduce the results of our agent-based model while putting some of our basic operational assumptions under scrutiny. We consider approaching social function and cognitive attraction in isolation as a preliminary but necessary step in the process of creating more complex models of the cultural selection of rituals, where the two aspects will be combined to produce ritual forms with greater correspondence to real-world religious rituals. (shrink)

Schon als Schüler erlernte Ignaz von Döllinger so hervorragend die englische Sprache, dass ihn später viele seiner britischen Korrespondenzpartner und Freunde für einen native speaker hielten. Seine ausgezeichneten Englisch-Kenntnisse ermöglichten dem Münchner Kirchenhistoriker und Präsidenten der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften nicht nur eine intensive Wahrnehmung und Lektüre englischsprachiger Publikationen, darunter auch politischer Zeitungen und Zeitschriften, sondern auch eine sehr genaue Beobachtungen der kirchenpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen in der Church of England, die er als die faszinierendste aller nachreformatorischen Kirchenbildungen hoch schätzte. Der Beitrag (...) macht zunächst an Döllingers The Church and the Churches aus dem Jahre 1861, sodann an den kurz nach der deutschen Reichsgründung, 1872 gehaltenen Lectures on the Reunion of the Churches, weiterhin an den von Döllinger initiierten Bonner Unionskonferenzen 1874/75 und kurz auch an The History of Religious Freedom die wachsende Sympathie Döllingers für den anglikanischen Kirchentypus deutlich. Zwar litter stark unter Edward B. Puseys Ablehnung der Bonner Konsensgespräche. Aber langfristig bereitete Döllinger mit seinen zahlreichen ökumenischen Initiativen den Weg für die 1931 vereinbarte Abendmahlsgemeinschaft zwischen Anglikanern und Altkatholiken. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of compatibility of social institution and convention. At first, it introduces the modest account of conventionality building on five distinctive features – interdependence, arbitrariness, mind-independence, spontaneity, and normative-neutrality – which constitute conventional behaviour, then it presents the two major theories of social institutions that explain them in terms of rules, or equilibria. The argument is that conventions cover a wide-ranging area and cannot be identified with the category of institutions because it would be too (...) restrictive and contradictory to the initial modest account. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel view of social norms that reflects the importance of different agent types, their specific motivations and roles. How one identifies with a role and behavioral options available to the agent is crucial for the sustainability of the social norms. The analysis of a simple case of social norm is suggested as a default model for analysis, and then the classification of subjects, enforcers, and audience is introduced. This triangular typology of agents is extended by introducing (...) a network of interlocking patterns underlying social behavior. Lastly, the paper describes two categories of transgressions based on misidentification. (shrink)

This paper aims to assess current theoretical findings on the origin of coordination by salience and suggests a way to clarify the existing framework. The main concern is to reveal how different coordination mechanisms rely on specific epistemic aspects of reasoning. The paper highlights the fact that basic epistemic assumptions of theories diverge in a way that makes them essentially distinctive. Consequently, recommendations and predictions of the traditional views of coordination by salience are, in principle, based on the processes related (...) to the agent’s presumptions regarding the cognitive abilities of a co-player. This finding implies that we should consider these theories as complementary, and not competitive, explanations of the same phenomenon. -/- . (shrink)

The study proposes a new approach towards a social phenomenon called convention and submits a minimalistic definition of convention, which provides a promising basis for future analysis unburdened by contra-Lewisian objections. The definition itself, based on the insights of Ruth Millikan in the study Language Conventions Made Simple, represents a simple and efficient means of delimiting essential components of conventional behaviour (stripped of most of the controversial issues from previous debates on Lewis’s notion) solely by means of the role of (...) precedent and its ability to reproduce. Yet, it is argued that a few additional conditions are required for a valid and distinct notion of conventionality: namely, the inclusion of a coordination aspect and an extension of the concept of precedent. The final version of the definition, thereafter, meets intuitive requirements of conventionality (e.g., arbitrariness) and has the generality to embrace different types of conventions. (shrink)

Článek pojednává o filosofickém pozadí, charakteristických rysech a aktuálních podnětech etiky techniky židovského filosofa Hanse Jonase (1903-1993). Cílem autora je pokusit se téma představit a kriticky reflektovat v širším kontextu relevantních německých zdrojů. V první kapitole jsou představena filosofická východiska jonasovské etiky techniky, především epistemologicko-ontologický a antropologický předpoklad moderní techniky, jonasovská interpretace geneze moderní techniky a jejího vztahu k moderní koncepci vědy. Ve druhé kapitole najdeme jonasovskou analýzu technické praxe v podobě jejích pěti specifických vlastností: ambivalence účinků, nutnost použití, globální (...) rozsah a dosah v prostoru a čase, prolomení antropocentrismu a vzbuzování metafyzických otázek. Na začátku třetí kapitoly autor velmi stručně srovnává jonasovský přístup s přístupem španělského filosofa Ortegy y Gasseta, a také s přístupem Günthera Anderse, Martina Heidegerra a Karla Jasperse, tak, aby vynikly charakteristické rysy přístupu jonasovského. Dále autor některé vybrané charakteristické rysy kriticky reflektuje a zabývá se i otázkou aplikace principu předběžné opatrnosti. Třetí kapitolu uzavírá výčet možných aktuálních podnětů jonasovské etiky techniky a formulace etických maxim, které autor navrhuje, vycházeje přitom z pěti uvedených vlastností techniky, přidávaje šestou: utopické tendence. Závěr práce shrnuje dosažené poznatky a prohlubuje autorovu reflexi ze třetí kapitoly. Článek představuje sondu do tématu, které nebylo v českém myšlenkovém prostředí dosud podrobněji zpracováno. (shrink)

Text sleduje proměny reinkarnačních představ v počátcích řecké filosofie. Chce upozornit na několik méně známých a nesamozřejmých skutečností, které souvisejí se změnou pochopení převtělující se duše mezi presokratiky a Platónem.

The paper proposes an alternative approach to the ontology of social institutions by systematizing various normative institutional influences and identifying processes that distinguish between conforming and violating behaviour. The prevailing – cost-based model – suggests that an agent's conformity to a specific institutional rule can be represented by a single measure – cost. The model is limited in its explanatory potential since it accounts for varieties of institutional behaviour in terms of single parametrical changes in the agents' utilities. The central (...) argument shows that normative attitudes represent a distinctive normative structure capable of explaining crucial aspects of institutional behaviour. These attitudinal aspects provide the structure necessary for understanding institutional normativity and its violations. (shrink)

This study takes up the phenomenon of disappointment in today’s environmental movements. It analyses two distinct streams of environmental movements – neo-environmentalism and the Dark Mountain Project. On the basis of their published written statements, it describes these movements, analyses the opinions of their members regarding possible future developments and examines their ethical motivations. It examines the members’ motivations in terms of three categories – teleological, deontological and virtue ethics – and asserts that each of these contains various expectations, implying (...) varying potential for disappointment. The text’s conclusion compares and assesses the attitudes of the members of neo-environmentalism and the Dark Mountain Project, their optimism and pessimism, from the perspective of the philosophers Hans Jonas, Roger Scruton and Romano Guardini. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

:The aim of this article is to reopen the rather neglected issue of the nature and internal structure of the.

In an effort to inform the discussion surrounding existential risks from AI, we formulate Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law as “Virtually any goal specification, pursued to the extreme, will result in the extinction of humanity”, and we aim to understand which formal models are suitable for investigating this hypothesis. Note that we remain agnostic as to whether Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law holds or not. As our key contribution, we identify a set of conditions that are necessary for a model that aims to be (...) informative for evaluating specific arguments for Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law. Since each of the conditions seems to significantly contribute to the complexity of the resulting model, formally evaluating the hypothesis might be exceedingly difficult. This raises the possibility that whether the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence is real or not, the underlying dynamics might be invisible to current scientific methods. (shrink)

The main aim of the article is to show how panpsychism, that is, the idea the everything in the world is endowed with a soul, was varied even during the periods in the history of philosophy when it flourished. In the Renaissance, I focus on Francesco Patrizi: he coined the term, which originally meant that everything is ensouled. The article starts by an investigation of Patrizi’s attempt to trace panpsychism back to the most ancient thinkers. His conclusions are, in general, (...) in agreement with current scholarly assessment of early Greek philosophers, whose views I attempt to reconstruct in a kind of survey. A closer comparison, however, shows significant differences between Patrizi’s and today’s account of the most ancient conception of panpsychism. While Patrizi uses the concept to state that the world as a whole is ensouled, early Greek philosophers understood it to mean that every thing in the world possesses a particular soul. From a broader perspective, it is clear that, while Patrizi builds on the notion of all-embracing ancient philosophy, modern scholarship assumes a more historical account of ancient thought characterised by a gradual progress from simple, more empirically based concepts, to more complex and metaphysical ones. (shrink)

The research presented in this article is motivated by the increasing importance of complex human relations in linked data, either extracted from social networks, or found in existing databases. The FOAF vocabulary, targeted in our research, plays a central role in those data, and is a model for lightweight ontologies largely used in linked data, such as the DBpedia ontology and schema-org. We provide an overview of FOAF and other approaches for describing human relations, followed by a detailed analysis and (...) critique of the FOAF Relationship Vocabulary, the most important FOAF extension. We propose an explicit formal axiomatization of this vocabulary, and an ontological analysis concerning the properties used to describe human relationships. We analyze the distribution of human relations based on their epistemological status, and define an ontoepistemic meta-property as characteristic of some of these predicates. Our analysis is generalizable to semantic modeling of social networks. Additionally, the modeling patterns used in other relevant linked data vocabularies are analyzed for comparison. (shrink)