Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 72-74.

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey model implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some (...) time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere. (shrink)

During the winter of 1968–69, members of the so-called Budapest School formulated a scathing “review” of Georg Lukács’ late work, Ontology of Social Being. In the wake of the objections (but not in accordance with them), Lukács began to revise the text, but was unable to complete it: he died in June 1971. The disciples’ critique, published in English and German in 1976, played a major role in the reception history of Ontology—or rather in the fact that the 1500-page “philosophical (...) fiasco” still has no remarkable reception history. The main criticism of the disciples is that Lukács’ work mixes two incompatible ontologies and recalls the worst traditions of Soviet Marxism. In this paper, I will argue that the disciples’ “review” is misleading (nevertheless, the historical circumstances may provide a sufficient explanation for this) because there are no “two ontologies” in Lukács’ unfinished book. I will concentrate on the source of the misunderstanding, the Lukácsian thesis of the “post festum-rationality” of history, and in the light of this I will analyse how Lukács describes the open determination of individual and collective action in the process of the social reproduction of life. (shrink)

Dans la dernière partie des Aveux de la chair, Michel Foucault offre une analyse minutieuse de la théorie de la libido en tant que « stigmate de l’involontaire dans l’acte sexuel d’après la faute » selon saint Augustin ; le thème est intimement lié à l’exégèse patristique et augustinienne du livre de la Genèse 1:28 (« Croissez et multipliez »), plus spécialement à la question de l’existence possible des rapports sexuels au paradis. Le présent article se propose d’étudier à la (...) fois les textes concernés de saint Augustin, l’analyse qu’en offre Foucault et les interprétations philosophiques et théologiques ultérieures de la pensée de l’évêque d’Hippone et du philosophe français. Augustin (et Foucault lecteur de saint Augustin) a-t-il déclaré que nos aïeux faisaient l’amour au paradis? La théologie augustinienne du mariage et de la sexualité est-elle, comme le dit le dernier Foucault, le fondement de « la morale de l’Occident chrétien »? Au demeurant, peut-on parler de la théologie augustinienne ou encore du christianisme comme « fondement », tout en respectant la méthode « généalogique », telle que Foucault l’a développée? (shrink)

The ontological turn in anthropological methodology, at least in its conceptualization-oriented formulation, aims to turn away from the concepts and objects found within one’s own social setting in order to turn to indigenous conceptualization processes and take a look at “the things themselves.” This article aims to unpack what such constant reconceptualization amounts to, arguing that when modified to meet certain objections, the ontological turn could provide important ingredients for an alternative version of interpretive social science—one that wishes to understand (...) social phenomena as human kinds in the vein of Ian Hacking, Sally Haslanger and Ron Mallon. (shrink)

Noted Hungarian historian Karoly Szerencses provides brief, steam-of-consciousness essays to accompany each photo. Acting as the photographer's fictive guide, Szerencses introduces "Margaret" to each of her photos, providing her with an encapsulated historical background of the subject and in the process revealing the soul and conscience of the nation in 1938. As he says in farewell to Margaret at the end of their "tour": "... please remember us, our terrible fears; recite a prayer for us so that we may say, (...) for the very last time: they caught us by surprise, they meant to annihilate us, yet we managed to survive." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught between (...) scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine. (shrink)

Martin Paleček and Mark Risjord have recently put forward a critical evaluation of the ontological turn in anthropological theory. According to this philosophically informed theory of ethnographic practice, certain insights of twentieth-century analytic philosophy should play a part in the methodological debates concerning anthropological fieldwork: most importantly, the denial of representationalism and the acceptance of the extended mind thesis. In this paper, I will attempt to evaluate the advantages and potential drawbacks of ontological anthropology—arguing that to become a true alternative (...) to current social scientific thinking about methodology, it has to meet certain philosophical objections. (shrink)

Next SectionIn order to cope with the imperfective paradox, the assumption that the event in progress must get completed, if not in the actual world, then in a counterfactual world or worlds, has been a part of the standard modal approach to the progressive since Dowty (1977). This is generally coupled with the further assumption that some variant of normalcy should be used to single out the relevant counterfactual continuations. Recently, however, Bonomi (1999), Gendler Szabó (2004, 2008) and Wulf (2009) (...) have argued against these assumptions. The present paper suggests that the counter-arguments give compelling evidence that the truth-conditions of the progressive are weaker than is assumed by the standard approach, and that the normalcy requirement should be replaced by reference to the conditions necessary for the completion of the event. (shrink)

In my paper I examine the question of tolerance. In the first part of the discussion I follow up the process in the course of which the problem of tolerance appearing in connection to the practice of religious freedom in the 17th-18th centuries leaves the territory of religious morality and the relation of church and state, and is placed into the empirical sphere of a general human relation to the otherness of the other, and with it to the private sphere (...) of the individual. However, the intolerance continuously present in our life world still keeps the question in the forefront of theoretical interest. In the second part of the paper I examine the relationship of tolerance and intolerance, proving that the tolerance conceived as the experience of being tolerated induced intolerance. This situation can be exceeded by a change of attitude outlined by philosophical hermeneutics, the essence of which is the practical and behavioral application of the principle of “being thoughtful of the other”. (shrink)

The text develops the ideas of philosophical application, taking into account various philosophical traditions, the most significant ones being the hermeneutical and the postmodern tradition. Therefore, the author’s conclusion is that the hermeneutical practice of application has the chance of bringing philosophy closer to human condition in the most adequate form for present-day conditions, as applied philosophy.

Can people efficiently navigate the modern communication environment, and if yes, how? We hypothesize that in addition to psychological capacities of epistemic vigilance, which evaluate the epistemic value of communicated information, some social institutions have evolved for the same function. Certain newspapers for instance, implement processes, distributed among several experts and tools, whose function is to curate information. We analyze how information curation is done at the institutional level and what challenges it meets. We also investigate what factors favor the (...) cultural evolution of institutions of epistemic vigilance: these include people’s preference for accurate and reliable information and their ability to assess communicated information in view of the source’s epistemic authority; but also contingent historical factors that make it worth—or not—to contribute to the maintenance of institutions of epistemic vigilance. We conclude the paper by considering the challenges and vulnerabilities of these institutions in the Digital Age. (shrink)

It is hypothesised that threatening stimuli are detected better due to their salience or physical properties. However, these stimuli are typically embedded in a rich context, motivating the question whether threat detection is facilitated via learning of contexts in which threat stimuli appear. To address this question, we presented threatening face targets in new or old spatial configurations consisting of schematic faces and found that detection of threatening targets was faster in old configurations. This indicates that individuals are able to (...) learn regularities within visual contexts and use this contextual information to guide detection of threatening targets. Next, we presented threatening and non-threatening face targets embedded in new or old spatial configurations. Detection of threatening targets was facilitated in old configurations, and this effect was reversed for non-threatening targets. Present findings show that detection of threatening targets is driven not only by stimulus properties as theorised traditionally but also by learning of contexts in which threatening stimuli appear. Further, results show that context learning for threatening targets obstructs context learning for non-threatening targets. Overall, in addition to typically emphasised bottom-up factors, our findings highlight the importance of top-down factors such as context and learning in detection of salient, threatening stimuli. (shrink)

The literary relations between the Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude Movement have, we believe, been sufficiently documented. It has been demonstrated that Senghor, Damas and Césaire avidly perused the pages of Crisis, Opportunity and Garvey's Negro World—Journals in which Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay, Countee Cullen and Jean Tommer—the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, first had their poems published. It is equally literary history now, that some of the poems of the Afro-American writers were reprinted in such Parisian Black-oriented journals and (...) little magazines as Les Continents, La Dépêche Africaine, Le Cri des Nègres, La Revue du Monde Noir and Légitime Défense. In this dissemination of ideas across the Atlantic, Paulette Nardal, Edward A. Jones, Louis T. Achille and Mercer Cook played the important role of literary intermediaries through their translations. (shrink)

The subject of this study, the step forward—which the author felt to be ‘of evolutionary value’—was occasioned by a Delphi discussion. The debate was opened by Varga's contrastive exposition of diagnoses of present history with respect to Hungary's accession to the European Union, offered by some leading Hungarian sociologists, in which he tried to place the views of these authors in a value sociological system by Charles Morris and Geert Hofstede. In Morris’ case, this involved recourse to his combination of (...) two systems: one semiotic, the other axiological; in Hofstede's, to his system of ‘software of the mind’ embracing axiology and organizational psychology. This synthesis was opposed by Kreutz who offered a new ordering principle which he advanced as truer to life. The present confrontation between the value sociological synthesis advanced by Kreutz, on the one hand, and the trends hallmarked by the names of Morris and Hofstede, on the other hand, provided the author with an opportunity to find a resolution of the tension between desired and desirable, for which he has gained some side light from Robert K. Merton's theory of the different degrees of insulation of role–activities from observability by members of the role–set. (shrink)

The semantics of progressive sentences presents a challenge to linguists and philosophers alike. According to a widely accepted view, the truth-conditions of progressive sentences rely essentially on a notion of inertia. Dowty suggested inertia worlds to implement this “inertia idea” in a formal semantic theory of the progressive. The main thesis of the paper is that the notion of inertia went through a subtle, but crucial change when worlds were replaced by events in Landman and Portner :760–787, 1998), and that (...) this new, event-related concept of inertia results in a possibility-based theory of the progressive. An important case in point in the paper is a proof that, despite its surface structure, the theory presented in Portner does not implement the notion of inertia in Dowty ; rather, it belongs together with Dowty’s earlier, 1977 theory according to which the progressive is a possibility operator. (shrink)

Florea Lucaci: Avatarul ideii de absolut. De la Kant la filosofia limbajului. Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2008.

The author of this paper presents the main interpretative orientations regarding the concept on the minority being of the reformed Transylvanian bishop Makkai Sándor who lived in the inter-war period. The author tries to point out the philosophical, moral, and existential sides of this problem which has become deep-rooted and permanent in the consciousness of the Hungarian intellectuals from Transylvania, and which has been known as the problem of the minority existential paradox. To accomplish this, the author relies on the (...) theoretical and methodological possibilities provided by the philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn earlier work we showed that individuals learn the spatial regularities within contexts and use this knowledge to guide detection of threatening targets embedded in these contexts. While it is highly adaptive for humans to use contextual learning to detect threats, it is equally adaptive for individuals to flexibly readjust behaviour when contexts once associated with threatening stimuli begin to be associated with benign stimuli, and vice versa. Here, we presented face targets varying in salience in new or old spatial (...) configurations and changed the target salience halfway through the experiment to examine if contextual learning changes with the change in target salience. Detection of threatening targets was faster in old than new configurations and this learning persisted even after the target changed to non-threatening. However, the same pattern was not seen when the targets changed from non-threatening... (shrink)

Regulations affect every aspect of our lives. Compliance with the regulations impacts citizens and businesses similarly: they have to find their rights and obligations in the complex legal environment. The situation is more complex when languages and time versions of regulations should be considered. To propose a solution to these demands, we present a semantic enrichment approach which aims at (1) decreasing the ambiguousness of legal texts, (2) increasing the probability of finding the relevant legal materials, and (3) utilizing the (...) application of legal reasoners. Our approach is also implemented both as a service for citizens and businesses and as a modeling environment for legal drafters. To evaluate the usefulness of the approach, a case study was carried out in a large organization and applied to corporate regulations and Hungarian laws. The results suggest this approach can support the previous aims. (shrink)

In his highly influential book (The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, first published in 1958), Peter Winch introduces an alternative concept of interpretive social science, in which the focus is shifted from the actors’ subjective motives to the common elements found in every understandable action: language-games and rule-following. This Wittgensteinian, linguistic version of interpretive social science has had its vast array of critics throughout the years: according to some of them, it neglects the practical side (...) of sociology; while others claim that it fails properly to answer the questions raised by the translation from one language-game to another, or that it renders critical social theory impossible. In my article, I try to reflect critically upon these critiques themselves, showing that the Winchian theory does not overlook the practice in understanding the different forms of life; that with slight modifications it is able to cope with the problem of translation, and that it does not aspire to be the critical theory that many of its critics would like it to be. (shrink)

In ‘Reality and Its Shadow’, Levinas dismisses knowledge as a whole from art. This has deep implications for the ethical. The aesthetic event has nothing to do with the ethical event – art does not seem to hold a place for ethical knowledge. This situation is problematic with respect to the conflicting phenomenological evidence as well as with respect to Levinas himself, who occasionally relies on works of art in his ethical phenomenological analyses. My article aims to fill in the (...) blank spaces by finding a place for the ethical in Levinas’s model of ethical signification in art. To start with, I elaborate on the notion of ethical experience by way of László Tengelyi’s work on time-art and his conversation with Levinas. Next, I turn to Levinas’s portrayal of the insomnia of art, where the traces of such an experience can be located in the ebb and flow of consciousness, in the vicinity of the anonymous event, and on the way to the critical articulation of this event. In the second part of the article, I try to capitalize on this genetic model of ethical knowledge with reference to the faces of art. I attempt to show how in the in-depth experience provided by film faces come alive and signify. Rather than tying them in with the sublime, I argue for a limited yet undeniable presence of exteriority in the faces of the movie. (shrink)