The comparative study of Romanian and Hungarian Neopagan organizations with an ethnocentric or "Ethno-pagan" ideology is an exploratory research aimed at mapping the similarities and the differences between these religious minorities, with a highlight on their level of institutionalization, their core values and degree of political mobilization. Zalmoxian groups and organizations promote the revival of Romanian spirituality through a process of reconnection to its ancient, supposedly Dacian and Thracian roots; by the same token, Hungarian Shamanist movements are aimed at recovering (...) a supposedly lost spirituality, built-in into the deepest layers of Hungarian language and cultural practices. A web rhetoric analysis of these organizations is carried out in order to assess audience involvement, communication style and the use of multimedia tools to convey their messages. (shrink)

Morality is demanding; this is a platitude. It is thus no surprise when we find that moral theories too, when we look into what they require, turn out to be demanding. However, there is at least one moral theory – consequentialism – that is said to be beset by this demandingness problem. This calls for an explanation: Why only consequentialism? This then leads to related questions: What is the demandingness problematic about? What exactly does it claim? Finally, there is the (...) question of what we do if we accept that there is a demandingness problem for consequentialism: How can consequentialists respond? The present chapter sets out to answer these questions (or at least point to how they could be answered). (shrink)

Consequentialism is often criticised as being overly demanding, and this overdemandingness is seen as sufficient to reject it as a moral theory. This paper takes the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given. Our question, therefore, is how to respond to the Objection. We put forward a response that we think has not received sufficient attention in the literature: institutional consequentialism. On this view institutions take over the consequentialist burden, whereas individuals, special occasions (...) aside, are required to set up and maintain institutions. We first introduce the Objection, then explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and how it responds to the Objection. In the remainder of the paper, we defend the view against potential challenges. (shrink)

This chapter argues that mental fictionalism can only be a successful account of our ordinary folk-psychological practices if it can in some way preserve its original function, namely its explanatory aspect. A too strong commitment to the explanatory role moves fictionalism unacceptably close to the realist or eliminativist interpretation of folk psychology. To avoid this, fictionalists must degrade or dispense with this explanatory role. This motivation behind the fictionalist movement seems to be rather similar to that of Sellars when he (...) came up with the Myth of Jones, his proto-theory of mental concepts. He was faced with the problem of preserving the explanatory status of mental concepts without turning them into proper theoretical entities. By introducing the Sellarsian proto-theory of concepts related to the mental and outlining its main points, this chapter aims to provide a critique of the two versions of mental fictionalism that are arguably the strongest: Adam Toon’s prop-oriented pretence theory and Tamás Demeter’s expressive storyism. (shrink)

This chapter enters into a debate with the analytic theory of action, especially the version developed by Donald Davidson, who makes it clear that the upsurge of a desire to perform a specific action is a natural event that is causally responsible for the action in question. The narrative interpretation of selfhood was initiated by Hannah Arendt. Selfhood is certainly assured on a passive and affective plane. Edmund Husserl maintains that in the passive sphere, a self is constituted preceding active (...) reflection. As Paul Ricœur clearly determines, the complicity with reality entails a ‘decentred self’ that is strictly opposed to the self-centred, self-controlled, and self-assured ego of modern philosophy. Emmanuel Levinas never accepted Wittgenstein's constraint on philosophy to remain silent with regard to the ‘unsayable’. (shrink)

Many technological advancements do not readily lend themselves to incorporation into a philosophy curriculum, but Wikipedia is an exception. Courses can be designed around implementing or improving Wikipedia pages, which will help students both learn technological skills and engage with the world beyond the classroom. In the fall of 2012 I led such a class, in which we created the Wikipedia page for (appropriately) Collective Intentionality. This essay recounts my experience leading this class, examines its pedagogical and philosophical import, and (...) provides a template for future classes. (shrink)

BioShock Infinite is a piece of fiction that lets one peer into a world where this linearity seems overridden by a multiverse where all the possibilities exist. Stories are important for video games. Its story is one of the reasons BioShock Infinite resonates with audiences all around the world. The field of philosophy that deals with art is called aesthetics. If one think that it's even worth asking the question of whether BioShock Infinite is art or not, then one might (...) want to consider this: What is it we're asking about in this case? When we ask whether Infinite is art, we're asking about the experience of playing it. BioShock Infinite is still one of the greatest video game stories and worlds of all time. In this, it represents a big step towards artful video game design. BioShock succeeds in showing that the possibilities for artful storytelling are infinite. (shrink)

Authors believe we can reverse humanity's destructive environmental path, positing that a new worldview of a "quantum paradigm" is emerging in society, based on awareness that consciousness is a universal energy field from which we form our reality-and guide civilizations to find solutions combining Western medicine and Eastern wisdom traditions to create better lives for all.

In this paper, I offer a solution to the Capacity/Equality Puzzle. The puzzle holds that an account of the franchise may adequately capture at most two of the following: (1) a political equality-based account of the franchise, (2) a capacity-based account of disenfranchising children, and (3) universal adult enfranchisement. To resolve the puzzle, I provide a complex liberal egalitarian justification of a moral requirement to disenfranchise children. I show that disenfranchising children is permitted by both the proper political liberal and (...) the proper political egalitarian understandings of the relationship between cognitive capacity and the franchise. Further, I argue, disenfranchising children is required by a minimalistic, procedural principle of collective competence in political decision-making. At the same time, I show that political equality requires the enfranchisement of all adults, regardless of cognitive capacities, and that the collective competence principle does not ground adult disenfranchisement. This justifies the progressive legal trend that holds the capacity-based disenfranchisement of adults to be incompatible with liberal democratic principles. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the narrative aspect of Seneca’s idea of self-transformation. It compares Seneca’s viewpoint with some modern notions of the narrative self to highlight some parallels and significant differences between the ancient and modern conceptions and it establishes the reading of some parts of De Brev. Vit. in the context of other passages as concerned with the narrative self. The paper argues, amongst other points, that in Ep. 83.1–3, Seneca extends the practice of meditatio (ethically directed self-examination) by (...) incorporating the construction of a narrative self into this process, in dual roles, as examiner and examined. It concludes that Seneca expected us to avail ourselves of a similar self-assessment based on a dialogue with philosophical texts. (shrink)

(OPEN ACCESS) This paper offers a novel substantive justification for mandatory electoral quotas—e.g., gender or racial quotas—and a new methodological approach to their justification. Substantively, I argue for a political egalitarian account of electoral quotas. Methodologically, based on this account and a political egalitarian grounding of political participatory rights, I offer an alternative to the External Restriction Approach to the justification of electoral quotas. The External Restriction Approach sees electoral quotas as at best justified restrictions on political participatory rights. I (...) argue for the Internal Restriction Approach instead, which can justify electoral quotas by specifying the pro tanto scope of political participatory rights rather than by justifying restrictions on the pro tanto scope of these rights. On this approach, adequately set electoral quotas do not even conflict with and are not balanced against political participatory rights, while electoral quotas—when justified—are pro tanto required rather than merely permitted. (shrink)

This paper proposes a specific approach to understanding the nature of technology that encompasses the entire field of technological praxis, from the making of primitive tools to using the Internet. In that approach, technology is a specific form of human agency that yields to (an imperfect) realization of human control over a technological situation—that is, a situation not governed to an end by natural constraints but by specific human aims. The components of such technological situations are a given collection of (...) natural or artificial beings, humans, human aims, and situation-bound tools. By performing technological situation analysis, the essential form of tool making, the complex system of relationships between science and technology, technological practices with and without machines, the finiteness or imperfectness of any technology, and engineering (i.e., the possibility of the creation of technological situations) can be considered. For a better characterization of the approach to technology, the paper also presents a comparison of other philosophies of technology. Following Feenberg’s comparative analysis, the so-called fundamental question of the philosophy of technology is formulated, its two sides are identified, and it is applied for clarification of our position within philosophy of technology. In our approach, all human praxis can be considered to be technological; more precisely, every human activity has a technological aspect or dimension. (shrink)

Volume 48, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 1-7.

(OPEN ACCESS) In this article, I explore the implications of three moral grounds for the justification of supported voting – respect as opacity, respect as equal status, and respect as political care. For each ground, I ask whether it justifies surrogate voting for voters unable to either communicate or give effect to their electoral judgments, due to some cognitive or communicative disability. (Henceforth: incommunicability cases.) I argue that respect as opacity does not permit surrogate voting, and equal status does not (...) justify such support – although the latter account can make sense of the value loss involved in the persistent non-participation of individuals with cognitive and communicative disabilities. Finally, I argue that an account of supported voting based on the ethics of political care can accommodate a pro tanto moral permission to provide surrogate voting as a form of support in incommunicability cases, and it can account for the inclusive approach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to supported decision-making. However, I show that in incommunicability cases, what the political community and individual caretakers ultimately owe to adult fellow citizens as equal members of the political community is some adequate form of political care – but not necessarily surrogate voting. (shrink)

This essay introduces the volume in which it is found. It explains how the essays of the volume belong to a single vista, one that ranges from metaethics to political philosophy, from a discussion of Hegelian recognition to an analysis of the Rwandan genocide. It articulates this explanation in terms of a variety of pragmatisms. The taxonomy it develops draws on Robert Brandom's recent discussions of pragmatism.

Universal por estar no direito e particular por estar fora do direito, o “sujeito” de referência deste trabalho é o “autista”. Esta escolha garantiu a definição do sistema social, que foi concebido segundo o modo como os autistas se viam ou eram vistos. O sistema teórico foi delimitado segundo tradições intelectuais que problematizam o “sujeito” de acordo com questões formuladas pelos campos empíricos. O esquema metodológico visa a conhecer o “sujeito” por dentro dos sistemas e entre eles. O objetivo teórico (...) é pensar o “sujeito” considerando que o universal do direito não resulta da pluralidade do “sujeito”. (shrink)

Explores the truth of human existence and human consciousness, presenting a view of our lives as an infinite existence in spacetime and beyond spacetime to resolve the paradoxes of our commonly held scientific conceptions of the nature of the cosmos and show a way toward a sustainable global civilization.

Thought experiments are widely used in the informal explanation of Relativity Theories; however, they are not present explicitly in formalized versions of Relativity Theory. In this paper, we present an axiom system of Special Relativity which is able to grasp thought experiments formally and explicitly. Moreover, using these thought experiments, we can provide an explicit definition of relativistic mass based only on kinematical concepts and we can geometrically prove the Mass Increase Formula in a natural way, without postulates of conservation (...) of mass and momentum. (shrink)

This short article discusses the Chinese concept of harmonism as developed in a book by Zhihe Wang titled Process and Pluralism: Chinese Thought on the Harmony of Diversity. This book develops themes in Whitehead's philosophy as they illuminate the concept of harmonism and constructive postmodernism.

What is consciousness? Conventional thinking tells us it is the images, sensations, thoughts, and feelings produced by the brain. When the neurons in the brain stop firing, consciousness ceases to be. But does it?

Chemical structures are among the trademarks of our profession, as surely chemical as flasks, beakers and distillation columns. When someone sees one of us busily scribbling formulas or structures, he or she has no trouble identifying a chemist. Yet these familiar objects, which accompany our work from start to end, from the initial doodlings (Fig. I) to the final polished artwork in a publication (Fig. II), are deceptively simple. They raise interesting and difficult questions about representation. It is the intent (...) of this article to reflect upon molecular graphics. (shrink)

(OPEN ACCESS) In this paper, I criticize two views on how political equality is related to equally distributed political power, and I offer a novel, pluralist account of political equality to address their shortcomings—in particular, concerning their implications for affirmative action in the political domain, political representation, and the situation of permanent minorities. The Equal Power View holds that political equality requires equally distributed political power. It considers affirmative action—e.g., racial or gender electoral quotas—, representation, and more-than-equal power to permanent (...) minorities pro tanto objectionable. The Equal Status View, in contrast, holds that political equality concerns equal relations and status, and it is only contingently related to equally distributed power. I argue that while the Equal Status View is right that equal power can be insufficient for—or even objectionable from the viewpoint of—political equality, it is wrong to conclude that equal power has no independent significance in an account of political equality. My pluralist account shows that political equality entails not only status-based requirements but also independent egalitarian requirements to distribute political power equally. This account provides a finer-grained understanding of affirmative action in the political domain. It justifies affirmative action but holds that it should only be used to realize equal political status until thorough-going social reform allows us to maintain both equal political status and equally distributed political power at the same time. Similarly, representation should be amended with power-balancing institutions, and permanent minorities should enjoy equal status with minimal compromise to power equality. (shrink)

:In this paper, I examine the concept of.

(OPEN ACCESS) This paper establishes moral duties for intermediaries of political advertising in election campaigns. First, I argue for a collective duty to maintain the democratic quality of elections which entails a duty to contain some forms of political polarization. Second, I show that the focus of campaign ethics on candidates, parties and voters—ignoring the mediators of campaigns—yields mistaken conclusions about how the burdens of the latter collective duty should be distributed. Third, I show why it is fair to require (...) intermediaries to contribute to fulfilling this duty: they have an ultimate filtering position in the campaign communication process and typically benefit from political advertising and polarization. Finally, I argue that a transparency-based ethics of campaign advertising cannot properly accommodate a concern with objectionable polarization. By contrast, I outline the polarization-containing implications of my account, including a prohibition on online targeted advertising, and intermediaries’ duties to block hateful political advertising. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain what a protest is by using the resources of speech-act theory. First, we distinguish the object, redress, and means of a protest. This provided a way to think of atomic acts of protest as having dual communicative aspects, viz., a negative evaluation of the object and a connected prescription of redress. Second, we use Austin’s notion of a felicity condition to further characterize the dual communicative aspects of protest. This allows us to distinguish protest from (...) some other speech acts which also involve a negative evaluation of some object and a connected prescription of redress. Finally, we turn to Kukla and Lance’s idea of a normative functionalist analysis of speech acts to advance the view that protests are a complex speech act constituted by dual input normative statuses and dual output normative statuses. (shrink)

In this paper, we study on the ways the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change communicates scientific knowledge on climate change to policymakers in the Summary for Policymakers of the Fifth Assessment Report ; the most recent Assessment Report issued by the IPCC. We investigate implicit argumentation with a special focus on the ways the summary may direct the orientation of the discourse towards the evasion of climate action while appearing to be pro-action on the surface. The results of a systematic (...) analysis of polyphonic constructions in the language of the text indicate that implicit argumentation represents climate action inevitably subordinate to economic goals. In a number of constructions, the discourse reconstructs pro-economic-growth-based frames in contrast to prioritising environmental values when encouraging political action in the context of climate change. Through such language use, the discourses mediated by an institution of such high societal importance and authority as the IPCC arguably have a considerable impact in maintaining conservative climate policies and delaying, even hindering, a transition into a carbon-neutral society. Thus, we conclude that even the most authoritative climate-science-policy institutions should reconsider their use of linguistic representations in terms of implicit argumentation in their communication in order to encourage climate action in a more straightforward manner. As long as the most authoritative actors in science-policy discourse on climate change continue to reinforce cognitive frames evading urgent action to mitigate climate change, it is questionable whether we can expect the policymakers to have the courage to take ambitious action even if the figures in the natural-scientific evidence sections of the reports were demonstrating clear worsening trends. (shrink)

G. E. M. Anscombe’s Intention, meticulous in its detail and its structure, ends on a puzzling note. At its conclusion, Anscombe claims that when he denied Jesus, St. Peter intentionally did what he intended not to do. This essay will examine why Anscombe construes the case as she does and what it might teach us about the nature of practical rationality.

From a juridical standpoint, Kant ardently upholds the state's right to impose the death penalty in accordance with the law of retribution. At the same time, from an ethical standpoint, Kant maintains a strict proscription against suicide. The author proposes that this latter position is inconsistent with and undercuts the former. However, Kant's division between external (juridical) and internal (moral) lawgiving is an obstacle to any argument against Kant's endorsement of capital punishment based on his own disapprobation of suicide. Nevertheless, (...) Kant's basic conception of autonomy underlies both of these otherwise distinct forms of lawgiving, such that acts of suicide and capital punishment are rendered equally irrational within his overall framework. (shrink)

The relationship between humans and non-human animals has received considerable attention recently. Animal advocates insist that non-human animals must be included in the moral community. Consequently, eating meat is, at least in most cases, morally bad. In an article entitled “In Defense of Eating Meat”, Hsiao argued that for the membership in the moral community, the “root capacity for rational agency” is necessary. As non-human animals lack this capacity, so the argument runs, they do not belong to the moral community. (...) Consequently, harming non-human animals for human nutrition can be justified. In this short comment I would like to highlight some of the most important errors of the above argument, primarily from the perspective of a biologist. I conclude that assuming the existence of a mysterious “root capacity for rational agency” is a biological nonsense. It cannot be verified, and it only obscures reality. In my opinion, the greatest problem with Hsiao’s argument is that it tries to defend anthropocentrism, a view that has presumably been the very cause of the spoiled non-human–human relationships. Perhaps adopting a vegan lifestyle is a better solution than quieting one’s conscience. (shrink)

The worldwide development of the revolution in science and technology is still in its initial stage. However, the characteristics of a qualitatively higher stage are already becoming evident in the area of the development of the system of labor, and therefore systematic philosophical study on the basis of the available data is a pressing task. Theory plays a special role precisely in periods when a phenomenon is not yet evident in final form. It is especially then that an acute need (...) arises for scientifically foreseeing, in its major outlines, the course of its development in the future. Within the bounds of the present article we shall attempt to do this with respect to certain aspects of the process of interaction between man and nature. (shrink)