I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast (...) to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society. (shrink)

In this article, I shall explore the social dimension of Friedrich Nietzsche's views on self-fashioning, focusing on the interpretation offered by Alexander Nehamas. First, I shall briefly present Nehamas's understanding of Nietzsche's views on self-fashioning and the overall significance of their social aspects. Then I shall investigate the necessity of the audience to assess one's attempt at self-fashioning. Furthermore, I shall explore how one's pursuit of self-fashioning is influenced by and influences other similar efforts. Finally, the article will reveal the (...) role of contest in the phenomenon of influence. (shrink)

The article proposes to analyse whether the current configuration of national migration legislation from Arendt's perspective on the universalization of human rights and Agamben's reflections on bare life and the state of exception demonstrates its capacity to protect the human rights of people undergoing forced migration. To this end, a literature review of a bibliographical nature was used, using the historical procedure method. In order to interpret the effectiveness of the current configuration of the human rights of this vulnerable group, (...) an analysis of international and national legislation on migration was carried out, focusing mainly on the case of the New Brazilian Migration Law. To this end, a theoretical discussion was built to understand how human rights are framed considering the situation of migration and statelessness in the face of an increasingly prevalent state of exception. It was noted that the constitutive fragility of forced migrants is a perennial situation, aggravated by the political inaction of nation states. It has also been noted that there is a need for states and international organizations to adopt new practices to promote the human dignity of forced migrants. (shrink)

The social cognition of domestic cats is a scarcely studied topic due to the reputation of the animal as individualistic. Nevertheless, cats are capable of cognitively demanding cooperative activities such as a communal nest-moving. The cognitive abilities of free-ranging cats are evaluated against the background of the shared intentionality hypothesis, proposed by a research group of Michael Tomasello. Although their comparative studies are carried out on chimpanzees, they are valuable as a source of conceptual work linking empirical cognitive studies with (...) the philosophical accounts of joint agency. We critically analyze theoretical cognitive concepts interpreting the triadic interactions of great apes and the collective hunting among chimpanzees. Contrary to the shared intentionality hypothesis, it is argued that cats have cognitive abilities to share attention, truly cooperate and constitute shared meanings. Finally, we introduce the concept of the natural interaction ritual by Randall Collins and outline its significance for our case study about cats as well as for a general biosemiotic theory of the development of symbols. (shrink)

Mysterianism has become a popular stance in philosophy of consciousness and other philosophical subdisciplines. The aim of this paper is to show that mysterianism is not justified, mainly because its inclination to epistemic defeatism and the misunderstanding of the division of epistemic labour. In the first part, I will present the history of mysterianism in the 19th and 20th century philosophy. Then, in the second part, I will point out how epistemic defeatism is founded in the unwarranted philosophical futurology. The (...) third part will deal with the division of labour in society, language and knowledge. Because of the division of epistemic labour, the understanding is distributed among numerous agents without possibility of individual comprehension. Finally, I will coin the term “ignorance illusion” that plays the central role in the mysterians’ worldview. (shrink)

In zijn jongste boek, Kritiek van de interpreterende rede, bekijkt Filip Buekens de centrale thema's in de taalfilosofie van Davidson. Vertrekkend vanuit de stelling dat spreken en verstaan een vorm van rationeel handelen is, wordt onderzocht hoe een theorie voor een taal (in de vorm van een Tarskiaanse waarheidstheorie) wordt geconstrueerd vanuit het standpunt van een 'radicale interpretator' die inzicht wil krijgen in het talig handelen van personen. In een uitgebreide vergelijking met de filosofie van Michael Dummett en W.V. (...) Quine worden de specifieke uitgangspunten van Davidson verhelderd. Daarbij gaat vooral aandacht naar de constitutieve principes die het verstaan van anderen en het begrijpelijk zijn voor anderen mogelijk maken. Davidson verbindt aan dit project belangrijke metafysische conclusies. Deze worden uitgebreid toegelicht. Zo bespreekt de auteur de anti-sceptische argumenten van Davidson, het probleem van de onbepaaldheid van de referentie-relatie en Davidson's afwijzing van het relativisme. In een laatste hoofdstuk wordt de filosofie van Davidson getoetst aan belangrijke taalfilosofische discussies die de jongste jaren gevoerd werden: essentialisme, het volgen van regels, het probleem van de lingu. (shrink)

In Ancient Greece, when philosophy began, it included all the theoretical knowledge. But later, in the time of Aristotle, specialized sciences started to emerge and the scope of philosophy grew smaller and smaller. The question is what to do when philosophy has lost its competence to deal with any relevant topic. The paper discusses three possible views of the relation between philosophy and science: anti-scientism, conceptual analysis and naturalism. All these approaches deal with various disadvantages. For anti-scientism it is mainly (...) the inability to explain the unprecedented success of modern science. Proponents of conceptual analysis are confronted with Quine’s attack on analytic statements and its consequences for a priori truths. Finally, naturalistic philosophers might be threatened by hegemony of science and its universal application of hypothetico-deductive method. The worst scenario for naturalistic philosophers is not as bad as some worry. Philosophers can solve their traditional problems using the knowledge of well-established special sciences, even though they might play the role of high-end science journalists. (shrink)

This paper analyses Bohr’s complementarity framework and applies it to biosemiotic studies by illustrating its application to three existing models of living systems: mechanistic biology, Barbieri’s version of biosemiotics in terms of his code biology and Markoš’s phenomenological version of hermeneutic biosemiotics. The contribution summarizes both Bohr’s philosophy of science crowned by his idea of complementarity and his conception of the phenomenon of the living. Bohr’s approach to the biological questions evolved – among other things – from the consequences of (...) an epistemological lesson of quantum theory and in light of complementarity of observer as a priori living creature and ex post scientific explanation of the living. In a manifestation of the phenomenon of the living, each model of living system and its description makes accessible – from its own presuppositions, contexts and concepts – some features which are not accessible from the others. Nevertheless, for a general understanding of that phenomenon, incompatible sophisticated approaches are equally necessary. Bohr’s epistemology of complementarity turns out to be a heuristic and methodical framework for testing the extent to which biosemiotics can become one of the special sciences or its potential as a cross-disciplinary branch of study. (shrink)

Finding the demarcation criterion for the identification of scientific knowledge is the most important task of normative epistemology. Pseudoscience is not a harmless leisure activity, it can pose a danger to the functioning of liberal democratic societies and the well-being of their citizens. First, there is an outline of how to define science instrumentally without slipping into the detrimental heritage of conceptual essentialism. The second part is dedicated to Popper’s falsification criterion and the objections of its opponents, which eventually led (...) to the abandonment of “naïve” falsificationism. Then I present two promising solutions to the problem, namely the ostensive definition of pseudoscience and the cognitive research of pseudoscientific thinking. In conclusion, I suggest to further extend the typology of alternatives to science to include parascience. (shrink)

Because philosophical reflections on touch usually start from our ability to perceive properties of objects, they tend to overlook features of touch that are crucial to correct understanding of tactual perception. This paper brings out these features and uses them to develop a general reconception of the sense of touch. I start by taking a fresh look at our ability to feel, in order to reveal its vital role. This sheds a different light on the skin's perceptual potential. While it (...) is commonly observed that tactile experiences have two intentional objects, an external object and one's own body, I will advance a more accurate alternative: in tactile experiences, one becomes aware of what one's body undergoes. This alternative not only fits better with tactility's vital role; it is also key to explaining how active touching provides for a unique contribution to our perceptual relation to material objects. By thus connecting tactility's vital role to the way we rely on touch while manipulating objects, this essay offers a cross-sectional survey of our tactile powers that reveals the interplay between sensing and touching. (shrink)

Until a decade ago, a comprehensive contestation of the so-called?transitional? paradigm was largely missing in the post-socialist era. This reality changed in the last ten years, especially in the region of former Yugoslavia. Some social movements in this region have started questioning the very essence of the economic and social misconceptions of the post-socialist condition. This paper first provides an elaboration of the very conceptual edifice of the ruling paradigm, as well as a theoretical and methodological framework. It goes on (...) to map out the epistemic discursive content of the respective social movements in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo, thereby assessing the conceptual content of their critique of the post-socialist transitional paradigm. Finally, given the similarities between Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the paper seeks to explain variations in the critique by how the structural and contextual features impact the perspective from which it is constructed. (shrink)

The Polish football fans community has been recently in the scope of several academic studies, concerning – mostly – numerous deviations presented by its members. What has been left underestimated is the formal and practical capacity the football fans community to influence both the public opinion, as well as local and national governments. Albeit controversial, the “fanatic” football fans characteristics are inherently inscribed in the personal identities of the group’s members; they exceed simple “friend-foe” distinctions, rather consisting of a complex (...) set of social and political views, rooted in communitarian and neo-conservative philosophies. In my lecture, I wish to discuss how the football fans community reacts to both theoretical projects of the post-modern society and its practical implementations. By stressing out the declared criticism of the changes taking place in modern society, I wish to evoke the neglected dimension of the football fans society – that of a conservative educator and political actor. (shrink)

How should we use intellectual history to inform our thinking about freedom in the advent of digital technologies? Quentin Skinner argues that prevalent liberal idiom is unable to address the political challenges in the world of big tech. While liberals consider these challenges in terms of invasion of individual privacy, in Skinner's neo-Roman – and once widely accepted – perspective, the growing datafication of contemporary societies should be considered an affront to liberty. By invoking the figure of ‘paths not taken’, (...) the author of Liberty before liberalism shows, how we may learn from the past without abandoning commitments to contextual accuracy of historical investigation. The interview will be published in Polish in ‘Przegląd Polityczny’ [Political Review]. (shrink)

W niniejszym artykule podejmuje się próbę przeanalizowania zaprezentowanych przez Edytę Stein w O zagadnieniu wczucia opisów relacji między uczuciami, osobą oraz wartościami. Pokaże się przede wszystkim, na czym polega postulowana przez Stein korelacja między osobą a wartościami. Istotne dla tego celu będzie zarysowanie Stein fenomenologii uczucia. W artykule wskazuje się na problematyczność niektórych ujęć proponowanych przez autorkę. Zwraca się uwagę przede wszystkim na niedostateczność analizy przedmiotowej strony uczuć oraz istoty wartości. Centralnym punktem krytyki jest jednak pogląd Stein, traktujący czucie wartości (...) oraz uczucia jako dwa kierunki jednego przeżycia. Pokazuje się, czym w ujęciu autorki jest osoba oraz w jaki sposób dochodzi do jej fenomenologicznej konstytucji. Stawia się również omawiane zagadnienia w kontekście intersubiektywności. Argumentuje się, że według Stein własne życie emocjonalne człowieka posiada istotne znaczenie dla rozumienia innych osób. Analizę O zagadnieniu wczucia pogłębia się przez wskazanie na pewne zmiany w ujęciu zagadnień aksjologicznych w późniejszych rozprawach Stein. (shrink)

Článek představuje teorii původu lidské morálky od Franse de Waala a zhodnocuje přínos filozofických komentářů od Christine M. Korsgaardové a Mary Midgleyové z hlediska oboru evoluční etiky. Základní struktura de Waalova přístupu je v souladu se sentimentalistickou teorií morálky, která určuje soucítění jako bazální morální cit. V interpretaci vlivné neodarwinistické genocentrické školy dále hraje zásadní roli altruismus. Stoupenci tohoto směru (R. Dawkins, G. C. Williams) nicméně obhajují rozdělení krutého světa přírody a etického světa lidské kultury; distinkce byla Fransem de Waalem (...) nazvána „teorií pozlátka“, neboť vyvolává obraz tenké vrstvy morálky nanesené na sobecké jádro lidské biologické přirozenosti. C. M. Korsgaardová využívá kantovskou etiku, aby ukázala, že zvířata nemohou být počítána za morální, neboť postrádají schopnost normativní autonomie. M. Midgleyová oponuje jak neodarwinistickému, tak kantovskému rozvrhu etiky a ukazuje, že soucítění patří k přirozenosti společensky žijících druhů a že reflektivní uvažování se vztahuje pouze k nejvyššímu patru evoluce morálky. Pozice M. Midgleyové je pro evoluční zkoumání morálky přínosnější než postup C. M. Korsgaardové. This article introduces Frans de Waal’s theory of the origins of human morality and evaluates the merits of the philosophical commentaries of Christine M. Korsgaard and Mary Midgley, and their application to the discipline of evolutionary ethics. The fundamental structure of de Wall’s approach is congruent with the sentimentalist theory of morality which determines sympathy as the most vital moral sentiment. A crucial role is also assigned to altruism in the view of morality in the influential genocentric neo-Darwinian school. However, proponents of this school (R. Dawkins, G. C. Williams) advocate the separation of the cruel world of nature and the ethical world of humane culture; this is dubbed “Veneer Theory” by F. de Waal, since it invokes an image of a thin layer of morality applied to a selfish core of biological human nature. C. M. Korsgaard applies Kantian ethics to argue that animals cannot count as moral because they are not capable of normative self-government. M. Midgley opposes both neo-Darwinism and the Kantian tradition in ethics in arguing that sympathy is a part of any social species’ nature, and that reflective reasoning refers only to the highest peak of moral evolution. It is argued that the position of M. Midgley is ultimately a more fruitful approach to the evolutionary examination of ethics than that proposed by C. M. Korsgaard. (shrink)

Filozofie ve 20. století ztratila velkou část svých kompetencí a pro svou údajnou neužitečnost se stala terčem kritiky ze strany přírodních vědců. Vztah mezi filozofií a vědou lze řešit pomocí tří stanovisek, kterými jsou antiscientismus, konceptuální analýza a naturalismus. Obsahem článku je charakteristika jednotlivých přístupů a identifikace problémů, s nimiž se musí jejich zastánci potýkat. Autorovi se jako nejslibnější jeví Quinem inspirovaný naturalismus, podle něhož má veškeré poznání povahu syntetických aposteriorních výroků, a filozofie je proto kontinuální s přírodní vědou. Není (...) třeba obávat se zániku filozofie jako samostatné disciplíny, naturalismus může naopak přispět k dořešení mnohých filozofických problémů pomocí metodologie a poznatků přírodních věd. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science, and neuroscience. Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes. In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime stimuli. This was (...) true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)

After contrasting obscurantism with bullshit, we explore some ways in which obscurantism is typically justified by investigating a notorious test-case: defences of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Obscurantism abuses the reader's natural sense of curiosity and interpretive charity with the promise of deep and profound insights about a designated subject matter that is often vague or elusive. When the attempt to understand what the speaker means requires excessive hermeneutic efforts, interpreters are reluctant to halt their quest for meaning. We diagnose this as a (...) case of psychological loss aversion, in particular, the aversion to acknowledging that there was no hidden meaning after all, or that whatever meaning found was projected onto the text by the reader herself. (shrink)

This article argues against Catton and Dunlap’s claims that the natural environment has been ignored or downplayed in American sociology before the emergence of environmental sociology in the 1970s. By reviewing a collection of 86 sociology textbooks between 1894 and 1980, the article provides quantitative evidence regarding the scope and types of references to the natural environment in mainstream sociology. The bulk of the article is based on an interpretive-historical analysis of the different representations of the environment in the textbook (...) literature. This analysis is carried out from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, whereby sociological ideas about nature are interpreted in terms of their intellectual milieu and social context. The main finding is that the ‘natural environment’ has been interpreted in different ways and has been put to a variety of epistemological and ideological uses — particularly positivism and functionalism — throughout the history of the discipline. (shrink)

Mon but ici est de réconcilier deux conceptions relativement populaires dans leurs domaines respectifs : d’une part, la théorie des contreparties de David Lewis, en métaphysique modale, d’autre part, la thèse de la rigidité mise en avant par Saul Kripke en sémantique. De prime abord, le concept de rigidité ne semble pas pouvoir s’appliquer dans TC : un terme rigide est censé désigner le même objet au travers des mondes possibles, tandis que TC formule les conditions de vérité des énoncés (...) modaux de re en termes non pas d’identité transmonde mais de similarité comparative. Je soutiens néanmoins qu’il peut y avoir de la rigidité au travers des ressemblances. Partant d’une suggestion de Lewis, je montre qu’on peut définir un concept de rigidité, la rigidité lewisienne, qui est adapté à TC. Malheureusement, la thèse de la rigiditéL ainsi reformulée bute sur un obstacle de taille : l’extrême prodigalité de la relation de ressemblance qui prévaut dans TC entraîne une prolifération des relations de contrepartie, ce qui a pour effet de trivialiser la thèse de la rigiditéL, en faisant de tous les termes singuliers, sans discrimination, noms propres aussi bien que descriptions définies, des désignateurs rigidesL. Suivant une piste d’Allan Gibbard et de Lewis, je propose alors de relativiser la rigiditéL à un aspect de similarité variable selon le contexte conversationnel. De là, je forge un concept plus contraignant, celui d’hyper-rigiditéL, à l’aune duquel le contrepartiste peut enfin capturer la différence entre noms propres et descriptions définies. (shrink)

Together with the emergence of strong executive presidencies and the frequency of coups d'Etat, the single party is one of the striking features of the political development in Africa South of the Sahara since 1960.More than half the countries of the continent are presently under one-party rule. This article attempts to analyse the origins, recent developments, and perspectives in the field of African single-party states. Sameelements favourable to the emergence of this phenomenon were the colonial heritage, the precolonial tradition, and (...) the aura of legitimacy of the national liberation movements. Several techniques were usedby African leaders to impose rule by one party; distinction is made between political, legal and institutional, and authoritarian means. African leaders have relied on several justifications to rationalise the introduction of such regimes : economie development, national unity and nation-building, the absence of class-differentiation, the unanimitarian tradition, and the need to give constitutional recognition to a de facto situation. A critical analysis shows that these arguments do not, in general, withstand closer examination. The conclusion is that the single-party «ideology» serves mainly to protect the hegemony of a small and privileged political class of rulers against challenge of its position. As far as perspectives are concerned, three possibilities seem to be developing simultaneously : the Party-State, the no-party state, and the multi-party state. It is argued in a conclusion that the single-party state need not be undemocratic ; some conditions for a democratic one-party system are set forth. (shrink)

Political and sociological research indicates that the use of consociational techniques has been a major means of ensuring peace and stability in a divided society like Belgium. This paper attempts to cast a first look at another component: what are the legal mechanisms of confiictmanagement in Belgium? This question is studied on the basis of the case of the school-confiict, which is one aspect of the ideological dividing line ; this was indeed the first to be institutionalised in Belgium. The (...) drafting of the 1831 Constitution was the first great exercise in consensus-seeking and the same approach prevailed over much of the 19th century. It was interrupted, however, during the first «School War» which was waged from 1879 to 1884. After the First World War a number of issues in the educational dispute were settled by way of package-deals, which were an attempt to replace zero-sum games by more-or-less choices. However a second School War erupted from 1950 to 1958. After the 1958 elections the balance of power was such that compromise showed necessary again : this situation led to the «School Pact» which tried to institutionalise consociational solution-seeking in this field. The Pact system was later applied in numerous other fields where mere majoritarian decision-making was discarded.White in the School issue these solutions were not as yet legalised, in later agreements they were.The paper argues that the main aim of these approaches is to avoid adjudication on these issues by third confiict-solvers, such as courts and tribunals. Instead allocation is arranged between the participants to the deal ; these partners are the political parties who claim to represent the whole range of public opinion. In this way «soft law» is created : this development represents a creeping undermining of the Rule of Law. (shrink)

I suggest here ecologies of the nascent state, posing the following general questions: what is this state and what is it to live, to fabricate modes of life, in its immanence? I believe populating this state is, by right, ‘ecological’, even if what I offer here is only a sketch or glimpse, playful as it is, of the possibility of such modes of life, of dwelling. As I develop it here, the nascent is in flight of being. It is populated (...) by lesser, minoritarian existences. If it is ‘ecological’, it is because these existences, or modes of becoming, are themselves, in their own right, ‘ecologies’, that is, modes of dwelling, of life, on the ‘other side of existence’, as Antonin Artaud put it once, in exile from Being. The power to return eternally to the nascent state is the power to live, to dwell, in the absolute forgetfulness of Being, in the interstice where philosophy supposedly ends, but where it nevertheless begins again, in oblivion itself, where being is never already the verticality of Being, its difference with beings, but always nascent, in the beginning, eternally so. (shrink)

Fibring is a meta-logical constructor that applied to two logics produces a new logic whose formulas allow the mixing of symbols. Homogeneous fibring assumes that the original logics are presented in the same way . Heterogeneous fibring, allowing the original logics to have different presentations , has been an open problem. Herein, consequence systems are shown to be a good solution for heterogeneous fibring when one of the logics is presented in a semantic way and the other by a calculus (...) and also a solution for the heterogeneous fibring of calculi. The new notion of abstract proof system is shown to provide a better solution to heterogeneous fibring of calculi namely because derivations in the fibring keep the constructive nature of derivations in the original logics. Preservation of compactness and semi-decidability is investigated. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science , and neuroscience . Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes . In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime (...) stimuli. This was true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)