One of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Hilary Putnam's involvement in philosophy spans philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ontology and epistemology and logic. This specially commissioned collection discusses his contribution to the realist and pragmatist debate. Hilary Putnam comments on the issues raised in each article, making it invaluable for any scholar of his work.

Niklas Luhmann is widely recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the social sciences today. This major new work further develops the theories of the author by offering a challenging analysis of the relationship between society and the environment. Luhmann extends the concept of "ecology" to refer to any analysis that looks at connections between social systems and the surrounding environment. He traces the development of the notion of "environment" from the medieval idea--which encompasses both human and (...) natural systems--to our modern definition, which separates social systems from the external environment. In Luhmann's thought, human beings form part of the environment, while social systems consist only of communications. Utilizing this distinctive theoretical perspective, Luhmann presents a comprehensive catalog of society's reactions to environmental problems. He investigates the spheres of the economy, law, science, politics, religion, and education to show how these areas relate to environmental issues. Ecological Communication is an important work that critically examines claims central to our society--claims to modernity and rationality. It will be of great importance to scholars and students in sociology, political science, philosophy, anthropology, and law. (shrink)

Translator's Introduction Political Theory in the Welfare State [Politische Theorie im Wohl- fahrtsstaat] was originally published (Olzog, Munich) in. ...

In this paper I argue that it’s impossible for there to be a single universal theory of meaning for a language. First, I will consider some minimal expressiveness requirements a language must meet to be able to express semantic claims. Then I will argue that in order to have a single unified theory of meaning, these expressiveness requirements must be satisfied by a language which the semantic theory itself applies to. That is, we would need a language which can express (...) its own meaning. It has been well-known since Tarski that theories of meaning whose central notion is truth can’t be expressed in a language which they apply to. Here, I develop Quine’s formulation of the Liar Paradox in grammatical terms and use this to extend Tarski’s result to all theories of meaning. This general version of the paradox can be formalised as a special case of the Lawvere Fixed-Point Theorem applied to a categorial grammar. Taken together with the initial arguments, I infer that a universal theory of meaning is impossible and conclude the paper with a brief discussion on what alternatives are available. (shrink)

Language Lost and Found takes as its starting-point Iris Murdoch's claim that "we have suffered a general loss of concepts." By means of a thorough reading of Iris Murdoch's philosophy in the light of this difficulty, it offers a detailed examination of the problem of linguistic community and the roots of the thought that some philosophical problems arise due to our having lost the sense of our own language. But it is also a call for a radical reconsideration of how (...) philosophy and literature relate to each other on a general level and in Murdoch's authorship in particular. (shrink)

Germany's leading contemporary social theorist provides a definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual system which not only represents an important intellectual step in discussions of art but also an important advance in systems theory. Luhmann insists on the radical incommensurability between psychic systems (perception) and social systems (communication). Art is a special kind of communication that operates at the boundary between the social system and consciousness in ways that profoundly irritate communication while remaining strictly internal to the (...) social. Each chapter elaborates a particular aspect of the general problem of art's status as a social system. The book draws on a vast body of research in the social sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and information theory, combined with an intimate knowledge of art history, literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary theory. The book also engages virtually every major theorist of art and aesthetics from Baumgarten to Derrida. (shrink)

Grammar teaching has never belonged to mainstream ESP teaching/ learning practices. However, this apparent lack of concern with grammar in ESP materials runs counter to both subjective and objective needs of ESP learners. The first part of the paper presents students′ views on deficiencies of coursebooks for teaching English for Medical Purposes as well as author’s reflective thinking on the needs of medical undergraduates of vocational schools in Poland. It is suggested that some of the deficiencies of the materials might (...) be remedied and the students′ needs better taken care of if explicit teaching of formulaic language is introduced into ESP classroom environment. It is hypothesized that explicit teaching of formulaic language may stimulate grammar development in the long term and foster communicative competence of ESP learners in the short term. Therefore, the second part of the paper proposes pedagogically relavant classification of medical formulaic sequences motivated by the lexicogrammatical features of Medical English. The third part of the paper shows in what way the proposed classification of formulaic sequences might help teachers of medical English design tasks that are conducive to the development of formulaic competence of students of English for Medical Purposes. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has made enormous contributions to the philosophy of action, epistemology, semantics and philosophy of mind and today is recognized as one of the most important analytical philosophers of the late twentieth century. Davidson's philosophy is characterised not only by its rigour and intellectual integrity but also by its continued interest in dialogue and re-evaluation of its paradigms. In the spirit of this openness, this volume brings together essays on the major themes of Davidson's thought by leading academics, along (...) with individually penned responses by the philosopher himself. (shrink)

This chapter brings together Murdoch’s thoughts about language with other central aspects of her thought such as love, attention, perfectionism and morality. By making clear how Murdoch’s variety of linguistic philosophy differs from contemporary philosophy of language, this paper also shows that Murdoch’s philosophy contains the seeds for a fruitful form of philosophizing which brings the moral and aesthetic dimensions of language into view. “Taking the linguistic method seriously” means making clear the ways in which all concepts belong to a (...) fabric that is changing on a personal level as well as an historical one. One of the things that Murdoch can help us see is that one problem with contemporary philosophy of language, is that it does not take the linguistic method seriously enough. (shrink)

Decisions are taken by humans very often during professional as well as leisure activities. It is particularly evident during surfing the Internet: selecting web sites to explore, choosing needed information in search engine results or deciding which product to buy in an on-line store. Recommender systems are electronic applications, the aim of which is to support humans in this decision making process. They are widely used in many applications: adaptive WWW servers, e-learning, music and video preferences, internet stores etc. In (...) on-line solutions, such as e-shops or libraries, the aim of recommendations is to show customers the products which they are probably interested in. As input data the following are taken: shopping basket archives, ratings of the products or servers log files.The article presents a solution of recommender system which helps users to select an interesting product. The system analyses data from other customers' ratings of the products. It uses clustering methods to find similarities among the users and proposed techniques to identify users' profiles. The system was implemented in Apache Mahout environment and tested on a movie database. Selected similarity measures are based on: Euclidean distance, cosine as well as correlation coefficient and loglikehood function. (shrink)

This qualitative study presents an analysis of the experiences of a teacher who had recently left working in an England state funded primary school. Using reflective lifeworld methodology, this study explored the teacher’s struggle to be authentic in the context of state funded education. Three prominent themes were identified as: 1) enhancement of every learner; 2) systemic oppression; and 3) tensions in being a teacher. The study concludes that being authentic as a teacher was experienced as being incompatible with the (...) current educational system. (shrink)

The paper offers a new model of politics adequate for the Anthropocene epoch. It uses the concept of 'heterotopia' to argue for the environmental potential of Arendtian political philosophy. The adopted meaning of heterotopia combines its Foucauldian (as interpreted by L. De Cauter and M. Dehaene) and medical sources. It is argued that, thus understood, the concept can be applied to the Arendtian idea of judgment. In this capacity, the concept of heterotopia is both politically foundational and environmentally relevant. It (...) helps us maintain the idea of politics as humanely construed activity, while recognising that political actors are also natural beings, whose actions draw on and affect the non-human world. (shrink)

In this paper I construct a system of semantics for classical and intuitionistic propositional logic based on epistemic norms governing belief expansion. Working in the AGM-framework of belief change, I give a generalisation of Gärdenfors’ notion of belief systems which can be defined without reference to a logical consequence operator by using a version of the Ramsey Test. These belief expansion systems can then be used to define epistemic models which are sound and complete for either classical or intuitionistic propositional (...) logic depending on which of the two notions of epistemic validity, identified by Levi and Arló-Costa, is used. Finally, I offer a discussion on how these results can be understood as providing a model theory within the framework of logical expressivism. (shrink)

Richard III’s courtship of Lady Anne in William Shakespeare’s King Richard III is a blend of courtly speech and sexual extravaganza. His sexual energy and power of seduction were invented by Shakespeare to enhance the theatrical effect of this figure and, at the same time, to present Richard as a tragic character. Richard’s eroticism in Act 1 Scene 2 makes him a complicated individual. Playing a seducer is one of the guises he uses to achieve his political aims on the (...) one hand, and, on the other, the pose of a sexually attractive lover enables him to put his masculinity to the test. Throughout the scene Richard is haunted by his deformity that, together with his villainy, makes him a stranger to the world and an enemy to his family and the court. In order to overcome his self-image of a disproportional cripple he manifests his sexuality towards Anne to boost his self-esteem and to confirm that the lady will accept him despite his obvious physical shortcomings. This article uses Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism and erotic desire to characterize Richard as a tragic individual and to explain the reasons behind his unexpected sexual behaviour in the seduction scene. (shrink)

The main objective of this collection of papers is to explore ideas of generation and transformation in the context of postdependency discourse as it may be traced in women’s writing published in Bengali, Polish, Czech, Russian and English. As we believe, literature does not have merely a descriptive function or a purely visionary quality but serves also as a discursive medium, which is rhetorically sophisticated, imaginatively influential and stimulates cultural dynamics. It is an essential carrier of collective memory and a (...) significant indicator of group identity. Along with philosophy, literature explores the intellectual and emotional, aesthetic and ethical components of our lives, and, while focusing on a single feeling or unique event or phenomenon, aspires to capture the universal attributes of human experience. Hence, we intend to juxtapose interpretations of literature originating in very different cultural milieus, such as the Central East European and South Asian,with the literary treatment of the philosophical dilemmas that challenge authors of various nationalities in times of great political, economic and social upheaval and transformation following long periods of dependency and suppression, caused either by colonial and imperialist domination or by communist ideology. (shrink)

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) has often been regarded as a direct text in its dealings with a multi-dimensional conception of dualism, insecurity, anxiety and weakness. In the constrained moral atmosphere of Victorian England, where such issues were consciously or even intentionally avoided, the novel seemed to be articulating difficult themes about which society preferred to remain silent. A specific literary tradition, the history of Great Britain, scientific discoveries and lively, scientific debates (...) of the 19th-century are ones of the most significant factors which make The Strange Case so original and memorable.The study poses a number of questions: Why does the history of the double return? What is a meaning of a double in a given context? What is so significant about this concept that it has inspired many others successors (e.g. Stephen King’s The Dark Half, 1989)? Why this motif is so popular? The project of delivering the answers to these questions in a one paper is not straightforward. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is limited to presentation and analysis of a conditionof men in the face of emerging Modernism with a close reference to philosophical ideas of the turn of the century. On such basis, it investigates the foundations of Stevensonian philosophy of dualism. (shrink)

In the teaching of John Paul II’s the need of solidarity globalization is particularly stressed out as well as that of humanization of globalization processes. With the aim of doing it, one should be guided by unchanging social values: the truth, freedom, justice, solidarity, subsidiarity, love. The globalization has two faces: ▪ the benefits which it brings to the world, individual countries and its main beneficiaries, that is international corporations. ▪ negative effects which the developing countries and all people of (...) the world experience (climatic changes, emission of harmful substances, drug addiction, moral nihilism, gradual decrease of human importance). It happens that complex processes caused by economical globalization make their way towards changing a human being into an element of a market, a bartered good or a factor devoid of meaning for decisive choices. As a consequence, a person may feel annihilated by impersonal mechanisms on a world’s scale and may gradually lose his own identity and personal dignity. Key words. (shrink)

The assumption was verified that for patients suffering from cancer levels of anxiety and self-esteem differ compared to other patients before surgery. 120 patients of urology were assigned to subgroups according to diagnosis and the duration of hospitalization. Patients suffering from cancer declared higher anxiety than other patients. Longer hospitalization was connected to higher anxiety. A threat-congruent difference in explicit self-esteem was revealed only between two groups: 1. cancer and long hospitalization and 2. non-cancer and short hospitalization. For implicit self-esteem (...) the phenomenon of implicit compensation of self-esteem was predicted and confirmed: among cancer-sufferers the Name Letter Effect was greater than among other patients. Also, in the cancerpatients group, the result of Rudman et al. was replicated: increasing anxiety was connected with increasing implicit self-esteem. (shrink)

The requirement that theoretical and empirical research is to sustainably benefit not only the nominal researcher, but also the other research participants, is deeply embedded in the conceptual-analytical framework of Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject and its co-researcher principle. PSS research is thus to be of emancipatory relevance to those others the researcher comes to collaborate with. Meanwhile, the question of how this requirement can be prospectively integrated into the design of a research project remains subject to debate. (...) This question emerges as particularly difficult to tackle in research projects that engage in co-research with young children: How can a researcher ensure that the young children s-he works togethe with benefit from the research project? Based on the critical analysis of an earlier research project implemented by the author, the contribution at hand suggests that PSS’ foundational notion of emancipatory relevance needs to be revisited. It argues that if a research project is to sustainably benefit young co-researchers, the technical relevance of the expected mutual emancipation should as well be explicitly considered in the project design. A discussion of recent methodological developments in child-targeted Participatory Design and Human-Computer Interaction serve as inspiration for this conceptual specification. The contribution thereby invites co-research to further investigate how emancipatory relevance cannot only to be methodologically attained via dissemination of research results and conceptual developments, but also via the actual research process it attempts to engage the co-researchers in irrespective of their age. (shrink)

Genetic determinism can be described as the attribution of the formation of traits to genes, where genes are ascribed more causal power than what scientific consensus suggests. Belief in genetic determinism is an educational problem because it contradicts scientific knowledge, and is a societal problem because it has the potential to foster intolerant attitudes such as racism and prejudice against sexual orientation. In this article, we begin by investigating the very nature of belief in genetic determinism. Then, we investigate whether (...) knowledge of genetics and genomics is associated with beliefs in genetic determinism. Finally, we explore the extent to which social factors such as gender, education, and religiosity are associated with genetic determinism. Methodologically, we gathered and analyzed data on beliefs in genetic determinism, knowledge of genetics and genomics, and social variables using the “Public Understanding and Attitudes towards Genetics and Genomics” instrument. Our analyses of PUGGS responses from a sample of Brazilian university freshmen undergraduates indicated that belief in genetic determinism was best characterized as a construct built up by two dimensions or belief systems: beliefs concerning social traits and beliefs concerning biological traits; levels of belief in genetic determination of social traits were low, which contradicts prior work; associations between knowledge of genetics and genomics and levels of belief in genetic determinism were low; and social factors such as age and religiosity had stronger associations with beliefs in genetic determinism than knowledge. Although our study design precludes causal inferences, our results raise questions about whether enhancing genetic literacy will decrease or prevent beliefs in genetic determinism. (shrink)

Massimiliano Tomba’s Insurgent Universality traces a global history of revolutionary institution-building as ‘theory in action’, pushing radical democracy beyond an ontology of the political. This contribution aims to clarify the place of ‘insurgent institutions’ in Tomba’s work and suggests that an unresolved tension persists between insurgent universality as popular institutions on the one hand, and as a negative dis-ordering on the other. Exploring the promise and limitations of ‘insurgent institutions’ in light of their durability, its first part reads Insurgent Universality (...) alongside Santi Romano, the legal pluralist whose concept of the institution Tomba adopts. Secondly, the article turns to Hannah Arendt’s understanding of authority and Miguel Abensour’s discussion of ‘insurgent institutions’ as two potentially helpful accounts of democratic practice within durational time. Where Tomba remains focused on constellations between moments of rupture, Arendt and Abensour offer a politically generative understanding of durability specific to radical-democratic institutions. (shrink)

This book involves an in-depth analysis of the ethical, political and philosophical issues related to health-oriented screening programs.

This chapter discusses some concerns regarding the effects of enhancement technologies on autonomy and authenticity, insofar as authenticity relates to autonomy. As a preliminary, it describes how enhancement and autonomy should be understood in this context along with some examples of enhancement. The chapter moves on to explain why enhancement can promote autonomy. Three types of concerns regarding the effect of enhancement technologies on autonomy are raised: (i) that medical technologies should not be used to enhance autonomy, since this is (...) not the proper use of such technologies; (ii) that some enhancement technologies are inimical to our authenticity; and (iii) that the widespread use of some enhancement technologies have negative overall consequences on people's autonomy. Different kinds of enhancements typically arouse different kinds of concerns as regards autonomy. These include cognitive, mood, physical, and aesthetic enhancement. (shrink)

Das Buch untersucht die Relation der Ahnlichkeit in ihrer Bedeutung fur Asthetik und Epistemologie der Moderne. HAtte Michel Foucault in Die Ordnung der Dinge die These formuliert, dass die Ahnlichkeit ihre Rolle als strukturierende Form des Wissens im Laufe des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts verloren habe, so geht die vorliegende Untersuchung davon aus, dass das Ahnlichkeitsdenken auch in der Moderne von grundlegender Bedeutung ist. LEitend ist dabei die Annahme, dass die Ahnlichkeit ihre besondere Relevanz nun in einem Diskurs uber asthetische Erfahrung entfaltet, (...) wobei sich von dort aus wiederum fundamentale Fragestellungen der Erkenntnistheorie eroffnen. DEn Ausgangspunkt der Untersuchung bildet die Philosophie Immanuel Kants in ihrer maSSgeblichen Bedeutung fur asthetische Theorien der Moderne. ANhand detaillierter Lekturen von Texten von Walter Benjamin, Paul Valéry und Theodor W. ADorno wird die Argumentation weiter entfaltet, womit auch die in der Forschung bislang nicht berucksichtigte Konstellation Valéry - Benjamin - Adorno erstmals genauer in den Blick genommen ist. DIe Arbeit ist im Fach der Literaturwissenschaft angesiedelt, jedoch grundsatzlich interdisziplinar auf Fragen der Asthetik und Kunsttheorie ausgerichtet. (shrink)

What challenges must a principle of need for prioritisations in health care meet in order to be plausible and practically useful? Some progress in answering this question has recently been made by Hope, Østerdal and Hasman. This article continue their work by suggesting that the characteristic feature of principles of needs is that they are sufficientarian, saying that we have a right to a minimally acceptable or good life or health, but nothing more. Accordingly, principles of needs must answer two (...) distributive questions: when do we have sufficient and how should we prioritise among those who do not yet have a sufficiency? Furthermore, it is argued that Roger Crisp’s theory of need, which combines sufficientarianism with prioritarianism below the threshold of need, is better equipped than alternatives to answer these questions as well as meeting the challenges formulated by Hope, Østerdal and Hasman. However, Crisp’s theory faces two major challenges. First, it has to say something about the currency of distribution: a principle of need must be complemented either with a theory on the human good or a theory about the proper goals of health care. Second, it has to say something about where the threshold should be set. However, any attempt to set a threshold seems morally arbitrary in the light of the sufficientarian idea that those just above the threshold never should be given priority over those just below the threshold. (shrink)