In 1597 Francisco Suárez published a comprehensive treatise on beings of reason (entia rationis) as part of his Disputationes metaphysicae. Subsequent scholastic philosophers vigorously debated various aspects of Suárez’s theory. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the most controversial points of these debates, as they developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. In particular, I focus on the intension and the extension of ‘ens rationis’, its division (into negations, privations and relations of reason) and (...) its causes. Additionally, I will discuss how Suárez’s views sparked a number of debates within the classical view, debates which ultimately led to the emergence of various alternative theories, especially among the Jesuits. These non-classical views radically revise the previous classical conception of beings of reason. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book, Daniel D. Novotny explores one of the most controversial topics of Suarez's philosophy: "beings of reason." Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle.

In this review study, I reflect on Richard Horton’s book and his thesis that Western countries failed in their response to the current epidemic in the first half of 2020, with a few exceptions. In the five sections of the paper, after an initial modification of Horton’s thesis (A), I discuss briefly: the suppression approach in China (B), the mitigation approach in the West (C), the SARS epidemic as the key global public health event (D), the causes of Western failure (...) (epistemic, political, ethical, cultural, etc.) (E), and final envoi (F). (shrink)

In 1632 Rodrigo de Arriaga, an important Baroque scholastic thinker, published a textbook in philosophy, of which the last revised and extended edition was published in 1669. Arriaga develops in it a peculiar theory of beings of reason, drawing on Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza, according to which beings of reason are that which is expressed by false judgments. It is a theory quite different from the classical theories held by Francisco Suárez, the Thomists and the majority of Scotists on the (...) one hand, and reductive theories held by Richard Lynch and a growing number of later Baroque authors on the other. In this paper I analyse Arriaga’s theory and deal with the topics of nature, existence, causes, and division of beings of reason. (shrink)

One of the most pressing points in the philosophy of sport is the question of a definition of sport. Approaches towards sport vary based on a paradigm and position of a particular author. This article attempts to analyse and critically evaluates a recent definition of sport presented by Jim Parry in the context of argument that e-sports are not sports. Despite some innovations, his conclusions are in many ways traditional and build on the previous positions. His research, rooted in the (...) conceptual analysis, starts with a stipulation that sport is paradigmatically Olympic sport. He defines it then as an ‘institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skill’ i.e., identifies six necessary elements of sport: human (not animals), physical (not chess), skill (not jogging), contest (not mountaineering), rule-governed (not ‘field sports’), institutionalized (not hula-hooping). Our claim is that this definition, despite its methodological clarity, is not accurate and does not sufficiently represent sport outside the Olympic context. First, to say for something to be a sport it is necessary to be a contest leads to a narrow concept of sport. Secondly, Parry’s account lacks the emphasis on game and play-like structures that are inherently present in sport (even in the Olympic sport), namely non-necessity, non-ordinariness, arbitrariness and gratuitousness. We try to direct the attention precisely on these structures and offer an alternative account of sport understood as a modern ‘hard core’ sport that nevertheless reaches important congruences with Parry’s definition. The originality of this contribution lies in presenting the essential qualities of modern ‘hard core’ sports, which, although sometimes hidden in the modern emphasis on high level performances, competition, and results, play an important role in the question how sport ought to be played and approached. (shrink)

This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suárez’s _Metaphysical Disputations_ published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians (...) to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics. (shrink)

Network theory is necessary for the realization of cognitive representations and resulting empirical observations of social groups. We propose that the triadic primitives denoting individual roles are multilayer, with positive and negative relations feeding into cost–benefit calculations. Through this, we advance a computational theory that generalizes to different scales and to contexts where conflict is not present.

One of the important questions discussed by philosophers of technology has to do with the moral significance of artefacts in human life. While many philosophers agree that artefacts do have moral significance attached to them, opinions vary as to how it is to be construed. In this paper we deal with the approach of the influential Dutch philosopher of technology Peter Paul Verbeek. He criticizes traditional ethical theories for assuming that whatever relevancy artefacts have for morality is entirely dependent on (...) human beings, since artefacts are mere passive instruments of human agency. In contrast, he develops a view of moral agency that includes artefacts and that ascribes moral agency to human-technology hybrids rather than to humans as such. The goal of this paper is to elucidate Verbeek’s account of moral agency and evaluate it. We also deal with his views on post phenomenology and mediation underlying this account. Although the general gist of our paper is expository, we point out to several problems for Verbeek’s account. (shrink)

Until recently Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) has been regarded as the “last medieval philosopher,” representing the end of the philosophically respectful scholastic tradition going back to the Early Middle Ages. In fact, however, Suárez stood at the beginning, rather than at the end, of a distinguished scholastic culture, which should best be labeled “Baroque scholasticism,” and which flourished throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In this paper I offer some ideas on why the study of this philosophical culture has been (...) so far neglected by the mainstream Anglo-American philosophical historiography and argue that more attention should be paid to it. (shrink)

The current paper addresses two methodological problems pertinent to the analysis of observer studies in nonverbal rapport and beyond. These problems concern: the production of standardized stimulus materials that allow for unbiased observer ratings and the objective measurement of nonverbal behaviors to identify the dyadic patterns underlying the observer impressions. We suggest motion capture and character animation as possible solutions to these problems and exemplarily apply the novel methodology to the study of gender and cultural differences in nonverbal rapport. We (...) compared a Western, individualistic culture with an egalitarian gender-role conception and a collectivistic culture with a more traditional gender role conceptions. Motion capture data were collected for five male and five female dyadic interactions in each culture. Character animations based on the motion capture data served as stimuli in the observation study. Female and male observers from both cultures rated the perceived rapport continuously while watching the 1 min sequences and guessed gender and cultural background of the dyads after each clip. Results show that masking of gender and culture in the stimuli was successful, as hit rates for both aspects remained at chance level. Further the results revealed high levels of agreement in the rapport ratings across gender and culture, pointing to universal judgment policies. A 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA for gender and culture of stimuli and observers showed that female dyads were rated significantly higher on rapport across the board and that the contrast between female and male dyads was more pronounced in the Arab sample as compared to the German sample. nonverbal parameters extracted from the motion capture protocols were submitted to a series of algorithms to identify dyadic activity levels and coordination patterns relevant to the perception of rapport. The results are critically discussed with regard to the role of nonverbal coordination as a constituent of rapport. (shrink)

The syllogistic mnemonic known by its first two words Barbara Celarent introduced a constellation of terminology still used today. This concatenation of nineteen words in four lines of verse made its stunning and almost unprecedented appearance around the beginning of the thirteenth century, before or during the lifetimes of the logicians William of Sherwood and Peter of Spain, both of whom owe it their lasting places of honor in the history of syllogistic. The mnemonic, including the theory or theories it (...) encoded, was prominent if not dominant in syllogistics for the next 700 years until a new paradigm was established in the 1950s by the great polymath Jan Łukasiewicz, a scholar equally at home in philosophy, classics, mathematics, and logic. Perhaps surprisingly, the then-prominent syllogistic mnemonic played no role in the Łukasiewicz work. His 1950 masterpiece does not even mention the mnemonic or its two earliest champions William and Peter. The syllogistic mnemonic is equally irrelevant to the post-Łukasiewicz paradigm established in the 1970s and 1980s by John Corcoran, Timothy Smiley, Robin Smith, and others. Robin Smith’s comprehensive 1989 treatment of syllogistic does not even quote the mnemonic’s four verses. Smith’s work devotes only 2 of its 262 pages to the mnemonic. The most recent translation of Prior Analytics by Gisela Striker in 2009 continues the post-Łukasiewicz paradigm and accordingly does not quote the mnemonic or even refer to the code—although it does use the terminology. Full mastery of modern understandings of syllogistic does not require and is not facilitated by ability to decode the mnemonic. Nevertheless, an understanding of the history of logic requires detailed mastery of the syllogistic mnemonic, of the logical theories it spawned, and of the conflicting interpretations of it that have been offered over the years by respected logicians such as De Morgan, Jevons, Keynes, and Peirce. More importantly, an understanding of the issues involved in decoding the mnemonic might lead to an enrichment of the current paradigm—an enrichment so profound as to constitute a new paradigm. After presenting useful expository, bibliographic, hermeneutic, historical, and logical background, this paper gives a critical exposition of Smith’s interpretation. (shrink)

The paper deals with the theory of universals of Sebastian Izquierdo (1601–1681), a Spanish Jesuit author working in Rome, as he formulated and defended it in Disputation 17 of his major philosophical work The Lighthouse of Sciences (Pharus scientiarum), published in Lyon in 1659. Izquierdo’s discussion centers around three questions: What is universality? Is there some intellect-independent universality? What is the nature of the intellect-dependent universality? Izquierdo’s approach may be seen as a search for the third way between the (moderate) (...) realism of the Thomists and the Scotists and the (conceptualist) nominalism of some Jesuits such as Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578–1641). (shrink)

As vehicles become more autonomous, the task of designing guiding systems that make morally acceptable decisions is getting more urgent. It is sometimes assumed that one solution will be acceptable across various cultures. In this paper we argue for the importance of intercultural perspectives; in particular, we explore possible insights derived from Buddhist philosophy, taking avail of the virtue of compassion (karuṇā). We suggest that autonomous vehicles should first learn in supervised situations so that they reach a level of decision-making (...) ability that human experts within a given culture deem morally good. How will they be evaluated? In some debates it is assumed that there is a one-fit-all answer to be found based on an agreed-upon moral theory. Apart from problems of ethical pluralism within a given culture, there are also problems due to different moral preferences and driving styles across cultures. One way the problem might be addressed is to introduce a machine-learning training curriculum that would provide autonomous vehicles with a process comparable to a novice human driver learning to drive and passing her own driving license test. (shrink)

The problem of non-being and intentionality has been among the topic subjects of Western philosophers from Parmenides to Quine. In medieval and post-medieval scholastics the issue was articulated mainly as ens rationis . The paper deals with the character and division of beings of reason in Francisco Suarez . An immanent critique of Suarez’s theory is given as well. The paper offers also a brief outline of the history of its later reception by Baroque authors.

I argue that Plantinga’s Proper Function and Evolutionary arguments fail against liberal naturalism defined in a broad sense as the view that „there aren’t any supernatural beings”. The former argument can be interpreted in at least three ways: deductively, inductively and theistically. None of these, however, is successful. The latter argument suffers from several deficiencies of which two major ones are: The unlikelihood of the reliability of our cognitive faculties, given naturalism and evolutionism, is not shown. Agnosticism with respect to (...) the likelihood of our cognitive reliability is insufficient to establish the self-defeating character of naturalistic evolutionism, unless it is also shown that the belief in this reliability lacks an independent warrant. The last condition has been neglected by Plantinga. (shrink)

The problem of non-being and intentionality has been among the topic subjects of Western philosophers from Parmenides to Quine. In medieval and post-medieval scholastics the issue was articulated mainly as ens rationis (a being of reason). The paper deals with the character and division of beings of reason in Francisco Suarez (1548-1617). An immanent critique of Suarez's theory is given as well. The paper offers also a brief outline of the history of its later reception by Baroque authors.

Two basic answers have been given to the question whether proper names have meaning, the negative by Mill and later developed by Kripke and the affirmative by Frege and later developed by Searle. My aim is to integrate the two apparently irreconcilable theories by distinguishing the two aspects of the issue. I claim that, roughly speaking, whereas Kripke’s No Sense View provides a good answer to the question, “How are proper names linked to their referents?”, Searle’s Sense View provides a (...) good account of the issue “What do we do when we use a proper name?”. Furthermore, I claim that the speakers attend to the referent of the proper name both in virtue of Kripkean chain of communication and in virtue of Searlian occasion-relative sense. Ordinarily, the chain of communication and the Searlian sense yield the same result, i.e. lead to the same referent. In cases of conflict, which are very rare, my intuition sides with the former against the latter. It would seem, therefore, that the only necessary and sufficient condition for a successful reference with a proper name is the existence of the Kripkean chain which links it with its referent. (shrink)

According to mentalism some existing things are endowed with (subjectively) conscious minds. According to physicalism all existing things consist entirely of physical particles in fields of force. Searle holds that mentalism and physicalism are compatible and true.

This paper is a report of 'Prague Conference on the 400th anniversary of the death of Maharal'.

One of the moral questions concerning autonomous vehicles (henceforth AVs) is the choice between types that differ in their built-in algorithms for dealing with rare situations of unavoidable lethal collision. It does not appear to be possible to avoid questions about how these algorithms should be designed. We present the results of our study of moral preferences (N = 2769) with respect to three types of AVs: (1) selfish, which protects the lives of passenger(s) over any number of bystanders; (2) (...) altruistic, which minimizes the number of casualties, even if this leads to death of passenger(s); and (3) conservative, which abstains from interfering in such situations. We differentiate between scenarios in which participants are to make their decisions privately or publicly, and for themselves or for their offspring. We aim to answer two research questions: (1) whether the public visibility of the choice of an AV type choice make this choice more altruistic and (2) which type of situation makes it more difficult to choose altruistically: when choosing for society as a whole, when choosing only for oneself, or when choosing only for one’s offspring. Our results show that respondents exhibit a preference for an altruistic strategy for AVs and that it is reinforced when signaled to others. The altruistic preference is strongest when applies to everybody else, weaker when it reflects a solely personal choice, and weakest when choosing for one’s own child. We conclude that a public choice is considerably more likely to pressure consumers into accepting a more socially beneficial solution. (shrink)

There are a number of existing classifications and staging schemes for carcinomas, one of the most frequently used being the TNM classification. Such classifications represent classes of entities which exist at various anatomical levels of granularity. We argue that in order to apply such representations to the Electronic Health Records one needs sound ontologies which take into consideration the diversity of the domains which are involved in clinical bioinformatics. Here we outline a formal theory for addressing these issues in a (...) way that the ontologies can be used to support inferences relating to entities which exist at different anatomical levels of granularity. Our case study is the colon carcinoma, one of the most common carcinomas prevalent within the European population. (shrink)

This paper is a Philosophical Interview with Prof. Stanislav Sousedík.

Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, both in the analytic and continental traditions, metaphysics was deemed to be passé. The last few decades, however, have witnessed a remarkable growth of interest among analytic philosophers in various traditional metaphysical topics, such as modality, truth, causality, etc. which resulted in the emergence of various forms of analytic metaphysics. The new forms of metaphysics differ from its traditional forms mostly in their methodology and in the range of proposed solutions to particular (...) problems. Besides these and other differences, however, there are also many similarities and there are even some who intentionally develop traditional metaphysical themes using the contemporary analytical methods. All these developments call for detailed exploration, which is the general goal of the present publication Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. The publication is the fruit of the conference which took place in Prague in 2010 and which had for its aim to bring together those willing to explore relations between the traditional and contemporary concerns, both from among the leading analytic philosophers working in metaphysics and the historians of philosophy devoted to the study of the metaphysical tradition. The specific focus of the conference was a re-examination of topics such as categories, metaphysical structure, substance and accident, existence, modalities, and predication. (shrink)

IntroductionThe present study investigates the association of lifetime interpersonal violence exposure, related posttraumatic stress disorder, and appraisal of the degree of threat posed by facial avatars.MethodsWe recorded self-rated responses and high-density electroencephalography among women, 16 of whom with lifetime IPV-PTSD and 14 with no PTSD, during a face-evaluation task that displayed male face avatars varying in their degree of threat as rated along dimensions of dominance and trustworthiness.ResultsThe study found a significant association between lifetime IPV exposure, under-estimation of dominance, and (...) over-estimation of trustworthiness. Characterization of EEG microstates supported that lifetime IPV-PTSD modulates emotional appraisal, specifically in encoding and decoding processing associated with N170 and LPP evoked potentials. EEG source localization demonstrated an overactivation of the limbic system, in particular the parahippocampal gyrus, in response to non-threatening avatars. Additionally, dysfunctional involvement of attention-related processing anterior prefrontal cortex was found in response to relatively trustworthy avatars in IPV-PTSD individuals compared with non-PTSD controls.DiscussionThis study showed that IPV exposure and related PTSD modulate individuals’ evaluation of facial characteristics suggesting threat. Atypical processing of these avatar characteristics was marked by group differences in brain regions linked to facial processing, emotion regulation, and memory. (shrink)

Benjamin. Hill & Hendrik Lagerlund (eds.): The Philosophy of Francisco Suárez / Daniel Schwartz (ed.), Interpreting Suárez. Critical Essays.

English summary: Until well into the 18th century, the concept of the soul played a major role in the scientific, religious, aesthetic and metaphysical discussion of humanity representing the highest level of existence. In modernity, this concept of the soul has lost its significance. It seems to have been replaced by terms such as subjectivity, personality and individuality. At the same time a symbolic added value which deifies clear description appears to have attached itself to the definition of the soul. (...) These developments and their interpretation are examined by the contributions in this collection. The volume includes contributions from Roderich Barth, Ulrich Barth, Jurgen Brunner, Brigitte Boothe, Jorg Dierken, Dirk Evers, Ferdinand Fellmann, Daniel Fulda, Johannes Hubner, Marco Ivaldo, Malte Dominik Kruger, Martin Kurthen, Rudolf Lang Thaler, Wolfgang Mack, Notger Slenzcka, Florian Steger and Anne Steinmeier. German description: Der Begriff der Seele hatte bis ins 18. Jahrhundert hinein eine prominente Stellung in naturwissenschaftlichen, religiosen, asthetischen und metaphysischen Erorterungen des Menschlichen als hochster Stufe des Lebendigen. Diese Stellung hat der Seelenbegriff in der Moderne eingebusst. Er scheint von Begriffen wie Subjektivitat, Personalitat und Individualitat abgelost worden zu sein. Gleichwohl scheint der Bezeichnung der Seele ein symbolischer Mehrwert anzuhaften, der sich allerdings einer klaren Fassung entzieht. Diesen Entwicklungen und ihren Deutungen gehen die Beitrage des Sammelbandes nach. Eine Leitfrage ist dabei: Steht die Rede von der Seele fur die prareflexive Selbstgegebenheit der Subjektivitat, wie sie sich vorrangig in der Leiberfahrung und (allenfalls?) nachrangig in der Wissenschaftsreflexion ausdruckt? (shrink)

Many have claimed that epistemic rationality sometimes requires us to have imprecise credal states (i.e. credal states representable only by sets of credence functions) rather than precise ones (i.e. credal states representable by single credence functions). Some writers have recently argued that this claim conflicts with accuracy-centered epistemology, i.e., the project of justifying epistemic norms by appealing solely to the overall accuracy of the doxastic states they recommend. But these arguments are far from decisive. In this essay, we prove some (...) new results, which show that there is little hope for reconciling the rationality of credal imprecision with accuracy-centered epistemology. (shrink)

This paper addresses the ongoing debate over the relation between belief and credence. A proposal is made to reverse the currently predominant order of analysis, by taking belief as conceptually basic and credence as the phenomenon to be clarified. In brief, the proposal is to explicate an agent’s credence in a proposition P as the agent’s tendency toward believing P. Platitudinous as this reduction may seem, it runs counter to all of the major positions in the debate, including the Threshold (...) View, the Certainty View as conventionally understood, Dualism, Eliminativism, as well as Credence Primitivism. Section 1 gives an overview on the current state of the debate. Section 2 considers unsuccessful predecessors of the proposed belief-first approach to credence. Section 3 motivates and lays out the basics of a conceptual framework for thinking about doxastic states that characterizes such states in terms of two formally independent dimensions, one pertaining to the agent’s tendency toward believing P, the other to the level of resilience with which the agent manifests that tendency. Against this backdrop, it is argued in Sect. 4 that the present reduction satisfies a set of standard, theoretically neutral criteria of adequacy for theories of credence, at least once they are purged of a quite common conflation of tendency and resilience. Section 5 argues against all of the above competing accounts. (shrink)

Student relativism is a widespread phenomenon in philosophy classes. While the exact nature of student relativism is controversially discussed, many authors agree on two points: First, it is widely agreed that SR is a rather problematic phenomenon, because it potentially undermines the very purpose of doing philosophy—if there is no objective truth, arguing seems to be pointless. Second, it is widely agreed that there will be some close connection between SR and a tolerant attitude towards conflicting opinions. In this paper, (...) I will argue that if these two assumptions are true, then discussing some basic philosophical insights about the concept of tolerance with students will be a promising new strategy of dealing with SR. (shrink)

Dass das Verständnis von und die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit argumentativen Zusammenhängen für den Philosophie- und Ethikunterricht von besonderer Bedeutung ist, ist unumstritten. Ebenso unumstritten ist es, dass es sich bei der schulischen Vermittlung von Argumentationskompetenzen um keinen Selbstzweck handelt, sondern dass Lernende vor dem Hintergrund der erworbenen Fähigkeiten und Kenntnisse zu einer fundierten Meinungsbildung befähigt werden sollen. In diesem Artikel argumentiere ich vor dem Hintergrund neuerer Ergebnisse der erkenntnistheoretischen Forschung dafür, dass das soeben skizzierte Bild jedoch einer grundlegenden Ergänzung bedarf, (...) da im spezifischen Kontext des Philosophie- und Ethikunterrichts nicht die Bildung, sondern vielmehr die Aufgabe eines eigenen Urteils das epistemisch wünschenswerte Ergebnis darstellt. (shrink)

This study illuminates how a cross-sector social partnership legitimizes itself toward multiple internal and external stakeholders. Within a single-case study design, we collected retrospective and real time data on the partnership between Deutsche Post DHL and The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Within this partnership, Deutsche Post DHL provides corporate volunteers that support disaster response after natural disasters on a pro bono basis. The main objects that needed legitimacy as well as the audiences from which legitimacy (...) was mainly sought changed over time. In addition, we identified legitimation work as occurring across objects, audiences, and time. Thus, we introduce legitimation work as the purposeful effort of the legitimacy seeker to avoid certain issues while ensuring other issues that are of importance to the conferrer of legitimacy. These findings contribute to micro-level considerations within institutional theory which view legitimacy as socially constructed between legitimacy seeker and conferrer. Hence, we add another perspective on legitimation to the previously existing conceptualizations of legitimacy as a deterministic consequence of institutionalization. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)