Obóz Kultury 2.0 Mirosław Filiciak, Alek Tarkowski, Agata Jałosińska, Andrzej Klimczuk, Maciej Rynarzewski, Jacek Seweryn, Stunża M., D. Grzegorz, Marcin Wilkowski & Anna Orlik .

Mental state reasoning or theory-of-mind has been the subject of a rich body of imaging research. Although such investigations routinely tap a common set of regions, the precise function of each area remains a contentious matter. With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we sought to determine which areas are involved when processing mental state or intentional metarepresentations by focusing on the relational aspect of such representations. Using non-intentional relational representations such as spatial relations between persons and between (...) objects as a contrast, the results ascertained the involvement of the precuneus, the temporal poles, and the medial prefrontal cortex in the processing of intentional representations. In contrast, the anterior superior temporal sulcus and the left temporo-parietal junction were implicated when processing representations that refer to the presence of persons in relational contexts in general. The right temporo-parietal junction, however, was specifically activated for persons entering spatial relations. The level of representational complexity, a previously unexplored factor, was also found to modulate the neural response in some brain regions, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction. These findings highlight the need to take into account the critical roles played by an extensive network of neural regions during mental state reasoning. (shrink)

This article is both an elaborated critique on the one-sided analysis of the misogynist nature of ballet as a cultural practice, and a contribution to a more embodied feminist theory. Based on empirical material, that was brought together by observing the body practices in ballet and listening to the life stories of dancers, the author explores the contradictions that the body in ballet provokes. In describing the embodied experiences ofprofessional ballet dancers she shows that ballet offers women the possibility to (...) transcend the discontinuity of body, mind and emotions. (shrink)

Autonomy is almost certainly the most important value “discovered” in bioethics after its birth in 1960s. It is sometimes said that autonomy is a specific kind of freedom – one that can be enjoyed only by rational beings; the most difficult problem connected with its definition is that we can easily define this notion in such a way that autonomy could not be treated as a kind of freedom at all. Among other possibilities, especially interesting definition of autonomy refers not (...) to the autonomous agent oneself but to its action: we can say that patient’s action is autonomous only when it is done: 1. intentionally, 2. with understanding and 3. without any controlling influences. (shrink)

There are some reasons to treat the principle of beneficence and the principle of nonmaleficence as separates. One of these reasons is, that they may sometimes stay in opposition. Then the question arises: to which of the two priority should be given. To resolve this in the area of medical ethics, a definition of the principle of nonmaleficence, considering its meaning and importance, seems to be necessary.

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A unique feature (...) of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

Do the new sciences of well-being provide knowledge that respects the nature of well-being? This book written from the perspective of philosophy of science articulates how this field can speak to well-being proper and can do so in a way that respects the demands of objectivity and measurement.

Julia Annas offers a new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. She argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of the kind we find in someone exercising an everyday practical skill, such as farming, building, or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing.

Meontology of Gorgias vs. Nihilism. The purpose of this paper is to challenge Gorgias’ image of a “nihilist existentialist”. The original thesis ouden estin, too frequently rendered as „nothing exists”, thus reducing the verb “to be” to denote “bare” existence, and ouden to denote “nothingness”. On close inspection, it turns out that, in Gorgias, neither do we have a negation of reality nor an affirmative treatment of the word “nothingness”.Therefore, ouden” should not be understood as a negation of all reality (...) or a kind of affirmative “nothingness”, whereas “estin” should not be reduced to “bare” existence. (When existence is negated what we obtain is annihilation). Such practices still affect the various translations of Gorgias’ treaty On the non-being or on Nature. Gorgias’ “sophist” thought is typically interpreted as a joke or a parody of dialectical thinking of the Eleatics. In fact, as it turns out, he made no parody of dialectic but applied the elenctic, apagogic method in Zeno’s masterly manner. He did so not for an artificial purpose but to prove the absurdity of the hypothesis of absolute, transcendent (hence incognizable) one Truth-Being, which eliminates the non-being of becoming as absolute non-being. Gorgias argued in earnest in favour of relative being as such, Becoming as the only reality, which from the point of view of absolute being is after all non-being, but not-this-being, or relative non-being but not non-relative non-being, as the Eleatics had claimed. Gorgias’ positions appears to be an apologia of non-being which is, that is of Becoming. We do not transform the “nothing” into a “no thing”. The main question of the treaty is: what is predicated by the word “nothing”? Gorgias’ position can be recapitulated as “nothing is sc. true, there is no criterion because, after all, everything is opinion. It is reinforced further by meontological, i.e. anti-eleatic Gorgias’ emphasis: “No thing is Being (substance)”, because everything is Becoming. Thus the title if Gorgias’ treaty can thus be treated as as an antithesis to that of Melissos’, which – in our opinion – is to emphasize the “non-beingness” of nature, the non-substantiality of things. Therefore, if Gorgias’ text was polemical, and it questioned (while at the same time maintaining the positivity of Becoming as non-being) only the immutability of things, and thus we cannot speak of the existence or the cognizability of natures or of essences of things. In sum, the reasoning of Zeno and Melissos was of a kind that is apt to cut both ways, and that is what Gorgias showed. The argument given as peculiar to himself was to this effect. “What is not” is not, so, it is just as much as “what is”. It is as if the onset of the issues that Plato will take up in The Sophist as the problem of non-being understood as difference. The axis of Gorgias’s anti-eleatic critique, in our view, is his polemic with Parmenides’ famous thesis B3 regarding the relationship of identity or equality between noein and einai. It is an additional and perhaps the most important point of his critique that aims at demonstrating that such relationship is impossible. In brief, things are not words just as thoughts are not words. (shrink)

Seweryn Blandzi Plato and the Protestant Principle of Autarchy of the Scripture (sola scriptura)The author gives reasons why the new holistic Tübingen-interpretation of Plato (H. Krämer, K. Gaiser, Th. A. Szlezák), which combines the Dialogues with his unwritten teaching is still difficult to accept (especially in Germany). The discovery (on the basis of indirect testimonies of Aristotle and his commentators) that there was a separate oral (“exoteric”) metaphysics of principles, which was parallel to dialogues but more valuable (timiotera) in (...) content, and which Plato did not popularize in his writings, has been an antithesis to the traditional romantic paradigm (particularly strong in Germany) of F. Schlegel-Schleiermacher, founded on the conviction of the primacy of autarchy of the written (“exoteric”) text in general. This conviction leads us to the Protestant postulate of Biblical exegesis treated as self-sufficient (sola scriptura), interpreted exclusively on its own basis (sui ipsius interpres), and Schleiermacher transposes this requirement onto Plato’s writings. On the other hand, F. Schlegel, who emphasizes the fragmentary and asystematic character of Plato’s thought in dialogues, sees Plato as a thinker who constantly moves toward infinity, unable ever to reach it. With respect to the dialogues, the reader finds himself in a similar situation as the limited individuality of finite being to infinity. For the romantics (inspired by the idealistic philosophy of subjectivity and identity), man’s greatness as a finite being manifests itself in creating works which reflect infinity. The infinity of the Absolute manifests itself in the absolute freedom and the power of creation, which man – so to speak – meets halfway, with his infinite reflection, creativity, invention, interpretation as an expression of spirit’s freedom. Hence the lasting attraction of this traditional approach, which is unlike the new paradigm that imposes great requirements and constraints on the reader (studying doxographic literature, finding in it testimonies of Plato’s disciples regarding the intra-academic teaching). When Plato’s literary dialogue is treated as a kind of an “open text,” it thus justifies all the possible “hermeneutic” attempts at free and creative interpretations. Keywords: Plato, Hans Krämer, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Friedrich Schlegel, romantic paradigm, sola scriptura, infinity of reflection, new paradigm, unwritten teaching, metaphysics of principles. (shrink)

Light and darkness were central motives in the Bible and in the Platonic tradition . First and foremost light was the essential element and the basic principle of existence and cognition in the philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius Aeropagite. His metaphysics of light contained imagery that inspired builders of French cathedrals and provided Christian thought with rich presuppositions and themes. Th e main purpose of the article is to highlight the Gnostic aspect of the refl ection on light in the writings of (...) Pseudo-Dionysius. Th e author of the Divine names speaks of light in a fi gurative sense and compares its physical properties to the process of transmission of knowledge. He uses the term “light” to describe the actualizing powers of God or God’s sovereignty over the world that he identifi es with goodness. Th is goodness is also described as “supersubstantial light” which as a transcendent Unity permits divine intellects to partake of the supreme knowledge about themselves. Th us light is shown as essential to the transmission of knowledge. It constitutes the process of enlightenment and supports the hierarchical process of transmissionof knowledge. Assuming that this is a correct reading of Pseudo-Dionysius Aeropagite theauthors conclude that contrary to the predominant interpretation his philosophy Pseudo-Dionysius did not describe emanations of beings but transmission of knowledge. Which in turn indicates that he developed his theory as a part of Christian philosophy rather than neoplatonic thought. (shrink)

American healthcare -- Bioterror and bioart -- State of emergency -- Licensed to torture -- Hunger strikes -- War -- Cancer -- Drug dealing -- Toxic tinkering -- Abortion -- Culture of death -- Patient safety -- Global health -- Statue of security -- Pandemic fear -- Bioidentifiers -- Genetic genocide.

According to Johansson (2009: 22) an infinite regress is vicious just in case “what comes first [in the regress-order] is for its definition dependent on what comes afterwards.” Given a few qualifications (to be spelled out below (section 3)), I agree. Again according to Johansson (ibid.), one of the consequences of accepting this way of distinguishing vicious from benign regresses is that the so-called Russellian Resemblance Regress (RRR), if generated in a one-category trope-theoretical framework, is vicious and that, therefore, the (...) existence of tropes only makes sense if trope-theory is understood (minimally) as a two-category theory which accepts, besides the existence of tropes, also the existence of at least one universal: resemblance.1 I disagree. But how can that be? How can Johansson and I agree about what distinguishes a vicious from a benign regress, yet disagree about which regresses are vicious and which are benign? In this paper I attempt to answer that question by first setting out and defending the sense of viciousness which both Johansson and I accept, only to then argue that to be able to determine if a particular regress is vicious in this sense, more than features intrinsic to the regress itself must be taken into account. This is why, although the RRR as originally set out by Russell is vicious, the seemingly identical resemblance regress which ensues in a one-category (standard) trope-theoretical context is not (provided, that is, that we accept certain views about how the nature of tropes relates to the resemblance between tropes, and given that we set our theory in a truthmaker theoretical framework – all of which are standard assumptions for proponents of (the standard-version of) the trope-theory).2. (shrink)