The study examines the original work An Attempt to Get Lenin Back on His Feet (Berlin, 1974) by Rudi Dutschke, the well-known German political philosopher and leader of the youth movement in 1968, as well as the influence of the famous Hungarian philosopher György Lukács on the ideas of Dutschke. Dutschke revealed the reasons for the impossibility of socialist ideals being feasible in the 20th century, despite the heroic attempts of the Bolsheviks and Western radical socialists to realize them. The (...) revolution occurred in a country of semi-Asian stagnating capitalism and was not supported by the European anti-capitalist revolution. As a result, after the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia, the social system was revived with the dominance of the state bureaucracy (the fused party-state apparatus) over society. There were no universal forms of social movement (Verkehr), which led to the fact that socialism became local, up to the danger of its abolition. At the same time, according to Dutschke, it is precisely an equal alliance between the progressive intelligentsia and the working masses that can open up new ways for the transition from a society of necessity to a society of freedom, provided that the intelligentsia renounces leaderism (which was the mistake the Bolsheviks fell into). Therefore, the figure of György Lukács is most important for Dutschke since studying his creative path makes it possible to realize the basic principles of such an equal union. The study shows that the creative path of Lukács before he entered the Comintern as one of the leaders of the section of the Hungarian Communists is characterized by the desire to find a way to solve the fundamental dilemma of the revolutionary, as he believed: either, like the Bolsheviks, strive for an uncompromising victory and the implementation of their program at the cost of violence; or to make compromises with the social democratic and even bourgeois parties, at the same time being in danger of defeat and the impossibility of implementing their ideas, primarily because the socialist intellectuals fail to establish strong ties with the working masses, and the latter may not be thoroughly imbued with anti-capitalist consciousness. Thus, Lukács can survey a spokesperson for the views of the intelligentsia, and through the criticism of these views, it will be possible to comprehend how educated people can better understand the actual needs and interests of the working people in order to pursue policies that would be more in line with them and learn how to lead the masses indeed. (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)

I make three related proposals concerning the development of receptive communication in human infants. First, I propose that the presence of communicative intentions can be recognized in others' behaviour before the content of these intentions is accessed or inferred. Second, I claim that such recognition can be achieved by decoding specialized ostensive signals. Third, I argue on empirical bases that, by decoding ostensive signals, human infants are capable of recognizing communicative intentions addressed to them. Thus, learning about actual modes of (...) communication benefits from, and is guided by, infants' preparedness to detect infant-directed ostensive communication. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)

We review studies of an evolution operator ℒ for a discrete Langevin equation with a strongly hyperbolic classical dynamics and a Gaussian noise. The leading eigenvalue of ℒ yields a physically measurable property of the dynamical system, the escape rate from the repeller. The spectrum of the evolution operator ℒ in the weak noise limit can be computed in several ways. A method using a local matrix representation of the operator allows to push the corrections to the escape rate up (...) to order eight in the noise expansion parameter. These corrections then appear to form a divergent series. Actually, via a cumulant expansion, they relate to analogous divergent series for other quantities, the traces of the evolution operators ℒn. Using an integral representation of the evolution operator ℒ, we then investigate the high order corrections to the latter traces. Their asymptotic behavior is found to be controlled by sub-dominant saddle points previously neglected in the perturbative expansion, and to be ultimately described by a kind of trace formula. (shrink)

Many argued (Accardi and Fedullo, Pitowsky) that Kolmogorov's axioms of classical probability theory are incompatible with quantum probabilities, and that this is the reason for the violation of Bell's inequalities. Szabó showed that, in fact, these inequalities are not violated by the experimentally observed frequencies if we consider the real, “effective” frequencies. We prove in this work a theorem which generalizes this results: “effective” frequencies associated to quantum events always admit a Kolmogorovian representation, when these events are collected through different (...) experimental setups, the choice of which obeys a classical distribution. (shrink)

This essay presents an argument, which it calls the Bias Argument, with the dismaying conclusion that (almost) everyone should significantly reduce her confidence in (too many) philosophical beliefs. More precisely, the argument attempts to show that the most precious philosophical beliefs are biased, as the pervasive and permanent disagreement among the leading experts in philosophy cannot be explained by the differences between their evidence bases and competences. After a short introduction, the premises of the Bias Argument are spelled out in (...) the first part. The second part explains why the objections to the Bias Argument are not compelling. Even though the essay does not adopt the conclusion of the Bias Argument, partly because it seems to be self-defeating, the authors know no plausible way to refute its premises. Thus, the primary aim of the essay is to clarify why the aporetic situation of the Bias Argument arises. (shrink)

The evidential problem of evil involves a rarely discussed challenge, namely the challenge of defending theism against the hypothesis of a morally indifferent creator. Our argument uses a Bayesian framework and it starts by showing that if the only alternative to classical theism is naturalistic atheism, then fine-tuning can render theism virtually certain, even in the face of evil. But if the alternatives include the hypothesis of a morally indifferent creator, theism is defeated even if the fine-tuning premise is accepted. (...) The resulting version of the evidential problem is unsolvable using the tools that are currently deployed by theists against evil. (shrink)

The paper offers a realist account of political obligation. More precisely, it offers an account that belongs to the Williamsian liberal strain of contemporary realist theory (as opposed to a Geussian radical realist strain) and draws on and expands some ideas familiar from Bernard Williams’s oeuvre (thick/thin ethical concepts, political realism/moralism, a minimal normative threshold for distinctively political rule). Accordingly, the paper will claim that the fact of membership in a polity provides people with sufficient reason for complying with those (...) political authority claims whose source is that particular polity. The paper will explain that membership in a polity is constituted not by communitarian identification (Horton), nationhood (Tamir), joined commitment/plural subjectivity (Gilbert), but by the fact that people are stably exposed to political authority claims associated with a particular polity which they find making sense as passing the minimal normative threshold for a distinctively political form of rule (as opposed to the rule of terror or sheer coercion). This political-ethical phenomenon is widely known as political obligation but the paper will argue that the label is in fact a misnomer because it does not refer to a generic obligation. The implications of this account are manifold but two seem especially important: first, the notion of political obligation makes sense even beyond the realm of moralist political theory and, second, realist political theory should pay more attention to the problem of compliance than it used to do. (shrink)

The current study investigates the effects of green advertising and a corporation’s environmental performance on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. A 3 × 3 (firm’s environmental performance and its advertising efforts as independent variables) experiment using n = 302 subjects was conducted. Results indicate that the negative effect of a firm’s low performance on brand attitudes becomes stronger in the presence of green advertising compared to general corporate advertising and no advertising. Further, when the firm’s environmental performance is high, both (...) green and general corporate advertising result in more unfavorable brand attitudes than no advertising. The study’s counter-intuitive findings are explained by attribution theory. (shrink)

By means of the Rollback Argument, this paper argues that metaphysically robust probabilities are incompatible with a kind of control which can ensure that free actions are not a matter of chance. Our main objection to those (typically agent-causal) theories which both attribute a kind of control to agents that eliminates the role of chance concerning free actions and ascribe probabilities to options of decisions is that metaphysically robust probabilities should be posited only if they can have a metaphysical explanatory (...) role but probabilities can explain anything only if chance has a role. First, we reconstruct the Rollback Argument. Second, we criticize the standard ways of reconciling non-chancy control with metaphysically robust probabilities. Finally, we respond to those worries that are related to the thought experiment of the Rollback Argument. (shrink)

According to recent work in experimental philosophy, folk intuitions concerning various metaphysical issues are heavily teleological. The experiments in question, which belong to a broader research program in psychology about ‘promiscuous teleology’, have featured prominently in debates about the methodology of metaphysics, with some authors claiming that the folk’s teleological bias debunks everyday intuitions concerning composition, persistence, and organisms. The present paper argues for a possibility that is very rarely discussed in that debate, namely the idea that the folk’s intuitions (...) could be veridical. Our argument is based on an emerging naturalistic theory of biological functions called “the organismic view”. The gist of the organismic view is that biological systems are characterized by a special circular causal regime where each part of the system contributes to the boundary conditions of some other parts, as well as of the whole. We argue that teleological folk intuitions are veridical in the biological domain under such a view, and they are veridical in the social and artefactual domains under coherent extensions of the organismic view. (shrink)

It is an increasingly popular view among philosophers that moral responsibility can, in principle, be attributed to unconscious autonomous agents. This trend is already remarkable in itself, but it is even more interesting that most proponents of this view provide more or less the same argument to support their position. I argue that as it stands, the Extension Argument, as I call it, is not sufficient to establish the thesis that unconscious autonomous agents can be morally responsible. I attempt to (...) show that the Extension Argument should overcome especially strong ethical considerations; moreover, its epistemological grounds are not too solid, partly because the justifications of its premises are in conflict. (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 article examines whether realist theory should adopt a philosophical anarchist position concerning political obligation. The conclusions are mixed. Drawing on a distinction between strong and weak theories of political obligation (in the terminology of the paper, strong theories are committed to morality-based theorizing while weak theories depart from it), the article argues that philosophical anarchism and realist theory are natural allies against strong theories of political obligation but they must part company when it comes to weak theories because it (...) is exactly their departure from morality-based theorizing that can make weak theories especially appealing to realists. In addition, two further objections can be raised against philosophical anarchism on realist grounds: first, philosophical anarchists are drawn to undesirably sweeping conclusions about the non-existence of legitimate political authority or the extreme scarcity of genuine political relations by their Kantian or Lockean background assumptions and, second, Simmons seems to have an implicit weak theory of political obligation which could be, ironically, much more appealing to realists than his overall Lockean anarchism or his sweeping criticism of weak theories. All in all, can a realist be an anarchist? Probably, but definitely not on philosophical anarchist grounds. (shrink)

Each work of Kafka's is so rich in "interrelationships" that it is virtually impossible to engage in reasoning about them without analysis of notions "pertaining to content." Here an estheticist, even one who regards the immanent approach as obligatory, faces a dilemma that, as a general rule, confronts only someone just starting a career as critic: whether, upon having analyzed a work, to leave it to the reader himself to draw the conclusions in social philosophy, or whether to construct his (...) analysis directly on the basis of historical, sociological, philosophical, esthetic, and psychological reasoning. (shrink)

How are ownership relationships distributed in the geographical space? Is physical proximity a significant factor in investment decisions? What is the impact of the capital city? How can the structure of investment patterns characterize the attractiveness and development of economic regions? To explore these issues, we analyze the network of company ownership in Hungary and determine how are connections are distributed in geographical space. Based on the calculation of the internal and external linking probabilities, we propose several measures to evaluate (...) the attractiveness of towns and geographic regions. Community detection based on several null models indicates that modules of the network coincide with administrative regions, in which Budapest is the absolute centre, and where county centres function as hubs. Gravity model-based modularity analysis highlights that, besides the strong attraction of Budapest, geographical distance has a significant influence over the frequency of connections and the target nodes play the most significant role in link formation, which confirms that the analysis of the directed company-ownership network gives a good indication of regional attractiveness. (shrink)

The paper investigates and refines the proportionalist solution to the causal exclusion problem developed by Menzies and List. First and foremost, it explores the implications of their inter-level compatibility result. It is highlighted that in theory the inter-level causal compatibility of realizer and realized properties allows for scenarios where the higher-level property is multiply realized. By developing concrete illustrations, the paper proves this to be an empirically plausible option. Further non-trivial implications of the framework are unpacked to show that the (...) sensitivity of causal relations to background conditions is as important in deciding on the existence and the direction of exclusion as sensitivity to the realization of the cause. This insight also opens the way to further refinements: a richer reconceptualization of upwards exclusion and a plausible answer to a critic of the Menzies and List project. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a logic-based conceptual analysis of the twin paradox (TwP) theorem within a first-order logic framework. A geometrical characterization of TwP and its variants is given. It is shown that TwP is not logically equivalent to the assumption of the slowing down of moving clocks, and the lack of TwP is not logically equivalent to the Newtonian assumption of absolute time. The logical connection between TwP and a symmetry axiom of special relativity is (...) also studied. (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)

In a recent article “From Epistemology to Ontology,” Tihamer Margitay argues, in addition to other things, that the ontological arguments Polanyi provided for his ontological realism with respect to the levels of reality are insufficient. Although Margitay shows this correctly in the case of arguments from boundary conditions, his arguments are not that convincing against the unidentifyability thesis, the thesis that entity kinds on higher levels cannot be identified with descriptions given on lower levels. I argue that here Polányi relies (...) on a version of the multiple realizeability thesis and this argument can be reformulated in a stronger version against which the counterargument Margitay provides is insufficient. (shrink)

We show that the conceptual distance between any two theories of first-order logic is the same as the generator distance between their Lindenbaum–Tarski algebras of concepts. As a consequence of this, we show that, for any two arbitrary mathematical structures, the generator distance between their meaning algebras (also known as cylindric set algebras) is the same as the conceptual distance between their first-order logic theories. As applications, we give a complete description for the distances between meaning algebras corresponding to structures (...) having at most three elements and show that this small network represents all the possible conceptual distances between complete theories. As a corollary of this, we will see that there are only two non-trivial structures definable on three-element sets up to conceptual equivalence (i.e., up to elementary plus definitional equivalence). (shrink)

This review argues that Edward Hall’s outstanding new book on the political thought of three outstanding 20th-century thinkers – Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams – has three major substantial contributions to contemporary realism: it offers convincing realist interpretations of their oeuvres, extracts inspiring new ideas from their works for future theorizing and provides powerful arguments in defence of a liberal realist position. However, given Hall’s expertise in Williams’ thought, it might be surprising that the chapters about Hampshire seem (...) the most interesting and most convincing parts of the book because they address some of the most fundamental issues of realism in an especially concise and well-written form. (shrink)

The paper is organized around two major, but closely interconnected goals. First, the paper’s principal aim is to offer a normative theory of political obligations that is based on certain insights of philosophical anarchism, theories of associative obligations and political realism. Second, the paper aims to offer a normative theoretical framework to examine political obligations in contemporary non-democratic contexts that does not vindicate non-democratic regimes and that does not exclude political obligations from the terrain of moral normativity. The theory of (...) political obligations this paper proposes can be briefly summarized as follows: political obligations are duties of compliance with the political authority claims of those who exercise political power. Their primary ground is membership. The mere fact of membership has moral weight in its own right and it is also inseparably embedded into a rich context of moral reasons for action that includes general reasons; ad hoc reasons; regime-specific reasons applying to every subject; and regime-specific offices that attribute specific responsibilities to individuals and groups. This rich context of typical moral reasons plays an important role in deciding what needs to be done, all things considered, with respect to the political authority claims. This account attempts to describe compliance in terms of genuine political obligations and also claims to be a plausible and general account. It does not claim to be a theoretically coherent moral justification for political obligations, however, just a theoretically coherent account of the varied sources and limitations of political obligations. (shrink)

Smullyan wrote his famous book of puzzles before the boom in automated theorem proving and he solved the puzzles by hand. Hence it is interesting to investigate whether all the puzzles can be solved with one method or not. The paper shows how this can be done with analytic tableaux.

Barresi & Moore fail to provide a satisfactory account for the development of social understanding because of (1) their ambiguous characterization of the relationship between the intentional schema and shared intentional activities, (2) their underestimation of the representational capacities of infants, and (3) their overreliance on the simulationist assumption that understanding others is tantamount to sharing their experience.

Heyes's proposed study for testing whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind is too strong because it requires that the animals apply mental concepts to the interpretation of both their own experiences and the behaviours of others, and too weak because dispositional rather than representational understanding of “ seeing ” is sufficient to pass it.

In my paper, I spell out which types of libertarian theories can be refuted by Libet-style experiments and which cannot. I claim that, on the one hand, some forms of deliberative libertarianism and restrictive libertarianism cannot even in principle be denied on the basis of these experiments; and on the other hand, standard libertarianism, along with some versions of restrictive and deliberative libertarianism, can in principle be refuted by these experiments. However, any form of restrictive libertarianism can be refuted in (...) the future only if researchers perform new and “untraditional” Libet-style experiments. This is because “traditional” Libet-style experiments investigate decisions in Buridan-type situations. But these decisions are irrelevant with regard to free will, according to the restrictivists. -/- In the first section, I clarify some terminological issues in order to set the stage for a precise analysis. In the second, I attempt to show what the main reason is for thinking that Libet-style experiments seem to be problematic for libertarian theories. Although showing that actions are unconsciously initiated does not pose a real challenge for the elaborated philosophical theories of free will, Libet-style experiments may be problematic for most libertarian theories because, pace Roskies and Nahmias, libertarians have good reasons for saying that local determinism and free will are incompatible. In the third section, I argue that because some versions of deliberative libertarianism do not claim that decisions about actions are the center of freedom-relevant indeterminism, Libet-style experiments are unable to refute them after all. In the fourth, I attempt to show why standard centered libertarianism according to which there are no relevant metaphysical differences between different types of conscious decisions is in principle vulnerable to Libet-style experiments to a greater extent. Fifth, I point out the reasons why restrictivist centered libertarianism is less vulnerable to these experiments. Still, I argue that moderate-restrictivism can in principle be denied by Libet-style experiments if these experiments are modified in an important respect. However, proponents of hard-restrictivism should not worry about the possible results of these experiments because these theories restrict the set of free decisions to such a great extent that they cannot be subjected to a proper empirical test. (shrink)

This study offers an overview of ‘the nationalities question’ in the Habsburg Empire, with special focus on its treatment by the Austrian social democrat, Otto Bauer, and the Hungarian ‘radical’ or ‘liberal socialist’, Oszkár Jászi. Analysing and comparing the writings of these intellectuals published between 1907 and 1918, this article shows how the contrasting legal and political contexts in Austria (Cisleithenia) and in Hungary (Transleithenia) led these authors to create contrasting alternative solutions to the problems posed by the multi-ethnic composition (...) of the Habsburg Empire. It is argued that these thinkers’ positions were fundamentally defined by Austria’s status as a ‘nationalities state’, Hungary’s identity as a nation-state, and the authors’ own affiliations with the dominant nationalities within their respective states. The article underscores the important temporal component at work in their respective pre-1918 assessments of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and its effect on their stances on the reign of the Habsburgs. Whereas Bauer saw the Hungarian king and Austrian emperor Franz Joseph as a possible strong ally for the implementation of his ideas, Jászi viewed the acts of the Habsburg dynasty as alien to Hungarian interests and therefore as a source of potential danger. (shrink)

How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too (...) narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner. (shrink)