Lackey’s (2007) class of “selfless assertions” is controversial in at least two respects: it allows propositions that express Moorean absurdity to be asserted warrantedly, and it challenges the orthodox view that the speaker’s belief is a necessary condition for warranted assertibility. With regard to the former point, I critically examine Lackey’s broadly Gricean treatment of Moorean absurdity and McKinnon’s (2015) epistemic approach. With regard to the latter point, I defend the received view by supporting the knowledge account, on which knowledge (...) is the necessary condition for warranted assertion. After examining two defenses of KA, by Montminy and Turri, I propose two alternative approaches. Although I remain neutral between them, I develop in more detail the view which classifies “selfless assertions” as “presentations”, a type of assertives distinct from genuine assertions. This account is motivated further by allowing for the expansion of the normative approach to other assertives, a feature we may be interested in, in the light of a recent wave of normative accounts of speech acts. (shrink)

An assertion is existentially known if and only if: (i) the speaker knows that the sentence she uses to make the assertion expresses a true proposition; (ii) she makes the assertion based on that knowledge; and (iii) she does not believe, have justification for, or know the proposition asserted. Accordingly, if existentially known assertions could be made correctly—as argued by Charlie Pelling in his ‘Assertion and the Provision of Knowledge’—this would show that the norm of assertion cannot be the speaker's (...) belief in, justification for or knowledge of the proposition. In this paper, I try to show that Pelling's argument is inconclusive, as it rests on two assumptions which can be resisted. In turn, I offer a pair of alternative strategies to explain how we can deal with existentially known assertions under the assumption that the speaker's knowledge is the norm of assertion. (shrink)

In virtue of what does a linguistic act count as an insult? I discuss five main approaches to this question, according to which an insult is determined by (i) the semantic properties of the expression used; (ii) the insulter, her intention, or attitudes; (iii) the addressee and her personal standard; (iv) the features of the speech act performed; and (v) the standard of the relevant social group. I endorse the last, objectivist account, according to which an act x counts as (...) an insult if and only if x is assessed as demeaning when addressed at A by the standard of the relevant social group at t. (shrink)

The paper offers a semantic and pragmatic analysis of statements of the form ‘x is beautiful’ as involving a double speech act: first, a report that x is beautiful relative to the speaker’s aesthetic standard, along the lines of naive contextualism; second, the speaker’s recommendation that her audience comes to share her appraisal of x as beautiful. We suggest that attributions of beauty tend to convey such a recommendation due to the role that aesthetic practices play in fostering and enhancing (...) interpersonal coordination. Aesthetic practices are driven by a disposition towards the attunement of attitudes and aesthetic recommendations contribute to forwarding such attunement. Our view is motivated by an attempt to satisfy the following set of desiderata: to account for the experiential nature of aesthetic judgments, disagreements in aesthetic debates, and the normative aspirations of aesthetic discourse, as well as to avoid appealing to error theory and realist ontological commitments. (shrink)

According to an “orthodox” reading proposed by Dummett and more recently endorsed by Lugg and Price, the later Wittgenstein rejects the idea of grouping together certain utterances as a single class of assertions. We offer an alternative commentary on the Philosophical Investigations §§21–24, developing what we call a Wittgensteinian role‐based account of assertion. We then examine whether this role‐based account can solve the problem of on‐stage utterances. In the course of this, the merits of the account are shown and compared (...) to an alternative proposal offered by Searle. (shrink)

An agent A blames B hypocritically for violating a moral norm N if and only if: A is likewise blameworthy for violating N, and A is not disposed to blame herself for violating N. Normally, an assertion involving blame is retracted following the objection that and hold. I discuss two prima facie explanations for such a withdrawal: that the objection hampers the speaker’s assertoric authority, rendering and the necessary condition to assert, and that the joint condition is, instead, merely a (...) regulative rule. Having shown that the former option is too revisory as it requires reformulation of all normative accounts of assertion on the table, and the latter false, I proceed to argue that and do not target assertions to begin with. An assertion involving blame is, instead, a clear case of a double speech act: after arguing for this claim, I proceed to show that qua assertion, the act is correct given one’s preferred normative account, whereas it is incorrect qua blaming, as in order to perform such an act, the speaker needs to satisfy the conditions and. (shrink)

Hardly any other problem has been discussed more than that of the status of time in modem physics. This is only natural since there are not many other more important problems in philosophy of science and in philosophy in general. There are also few other areas where controversies as well as confusion were more frequent. This is true not only of popular and semi-popular expositions of the Minkowski concept of space-time but also of a number of its philosophical interpretations. Generally (...) we do not find anything of this kind in the writings of physicists, at least as long as they confine themselves to strictly mathematical and physical expositions; but when they sometimes venture beyond a strictly mathematical approach, they often do not escape certain unconscious or semi-conscious prejudices which are contrary not only to the spirit but sometimes even to the letter of relativity. The true significance of the relativistic fusion of space and time can be understood only when we contrast it with its classical counterpart, i.e., with what may be called the Newtonian space-time. Only on such a contrasting background will the revolutionary meaning of the new concept clearly stand out. (shrink)

Kant?s legal and political philosophy is essential for understanding and advancing international order. The article aims to posit arguments that confront the claims that Kant was just war theorist. Since that is the most opposed part of Kant?s political philosophy, mostly due to the misleading interpretation of his argumentation, the author presents Kant?s standpoint on the matters of just war and international order and discusses potential ambiguities between Kant?s and his critics? theories. Furthermore, the consequences of opponents? arguments considering states (...) of states, world republic and cosmopolitan democracy in contemporary political philosophy are debated. Finally, the possibility of consent between the three model solutions which are arising from the contemporary international order theory and Kant?s position are compared and analysed. (shrink)

It is true that there were some important dissenting voices among physicists as well as among philosophers. Paul Langevin was one of the first who protested against calling time "the fourth dimension of space. Einstein himself admitted that the asymmetry of time is preserved even in its relativistic fusion with space when he recognized that "we cannot send wire-messages into the past." When Meyerson in the session of the French Philosophical Society of April 6, 1922 insisted on the distinction of (...) space and time even in the theory of relativity, Einstein, who attended the session, explicitly agreed. Meyerson's argument was fully developed in his book, La Déduction Relativiste, and Einstein in his highly favorable comment about it again praised Meyerson's criticism of the spatialization of time. According to Einstein, the spatialization of time is a misinterpretation of the theory of relativity, a misinterpretation committed not only by popularizers, but even by many scientists, though it is often present in their minds only implicitly. Hermann Weyl, when he was in a less Kantian mood of thought, warned against a facile confusion of space and time when he claimed that it is more accurate to speak about the 3 + 1-dimensional continuum instead of the four-dimensional entity. In the same decade, Eddington among the physicists and Whitehead, Bergson and Reichenbach among the philosophers issued similar warnings. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that Kant's first Critique was merely a codification of the Newtonian physics. Kant not only had no doubt about the principles of classical mechanics, but he even tried to prove that no other principles of physics are possible. According to the principles of his epistemology, no matter how much the "material" of experience may increase, its form will remain forever the same, since it is determined by the fixed and static character of the perceiving subject. More (...) concretely: it is inconceivable that in some distant future facts will be discovered which would contradict the Euclidian character of space, the principle of the constancy of material substance, the principle of spatio-temporal continuity of all changes, or the principle of strict causality. Why this alleged impossibility? Kant's answer was simple: because the principles just mentioned are not empirical generalizations; they do not stem from experience at all. On the contrary, they precede experience because they make every experience possible; or, in Kant's jargon, they are transcendental conditions of experience. They belong to the innate structure of the epistemological subject, and it is due to their action that the structured and organized perception arises. It is true--and Reichenbach did not fail to notice it--that Kant hypothetically considered the possibility of beings endowed with a different cognitive apparatus. This, according to Reichenbach, would imply the possibility of some cognitive forms intermediate between such hypothetical beings and human beings. But this evolutionist interpretation of Kant is very questionable; the fact that this was done by Helmholtz should not blind us to the fact that it is completely foreign to the whole spirit of the Kantian philosophy. Evolution and change in general were regarded by Kant as legitimate concepts only within our sensory and introspective experience; from the transcendent realm of "things-in-themselves" they were completely excluded. This view was a natural and inevitable consequence of the Kantian claim that time is merely a form of our perception, whether external or internal; hence the timelessness of the transcendental Ego and the utter impossibility of any kind of evolution in our cognitive faculties. (shrink)

Our instinctive tendency is to believe that the relations of succession can be adequately symbolized by geometrical relations. The persistence of this belief has had disastrous influence through the centuries on philosophical and theological thought, and upon physical theories as well.

In seinem Beitrag versucht der Verfasser, im Rahmen der philosophischen Systematik Bonifac Badrovs, des langjährigen Philosophie-Professors an der Franziskanische Theologischen Fakultät in Sarajevo, sein scholastisch-neuscholastisches Wahrheitsverständnis als adaequatio intellectus et rei, das ihm als der Leitfaden für seine Konzeption „Wissenschaftsphilosophie“, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Auffassung der „Begriffsbildung“. Dabei wird den Vorgang der Begriffsbildung durch die Definitionen als Bedeutungsbeschreibungen geschildert. Dadurch verliert der Begriff seine Verankerung in der unimittelbaren menschlichen Existenz, d.h. er wird weder als das Ergebnis des complicatio und explicatio (...) Verhältnisses (N. Cusanus) noch als der Vollzug der Selbstgewinnung des Menschen in eigener Existenz verstanden (H.-G. Gadamer), weshalb die Frage nach dem „Sinn“ letztes Ende jede Bedeutung nicht nur für die Existenz des Menschen, sondern für den „Sinn“ des Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftsverfahrens verliert. (shrink)

In this thesis, I propose and defend a theory according to which committing oneself to knowing the proposition expressed counts as an assertion of that proposition. A consequence of this view is the knowledge account of assertion, according to which one asserts that p correctly only if one knows that p. In support of this approach, I offer a strategy of identifying an assertion’s “normative consequences”, types of act that normally take place as a result of one’s making an assertion (...) incorrectly. I outline two such phenomena: retraction and disavowal of knowledge. In continuation, I put the theory to test and critically examine four sets of objections against it, arguing that it can convincingly defuse them. Finally, I discuss two related issues: I maintain that by performing “aesthetic assertions” one also normally performs a non-assertoric speech act of recommendation, and argue for the possibility of “non-linguistic assertions”, whose content is expressed by gestures in appropriate contexts. (shrink)

This paper attempts to describe the present situation in the women's movement in Serbia and Montenegro and to tackle questions about its future, on the basis of a sociological study of newly formed women's groups. In the past, the women's movement in these societies has surged several times, only to be completely annulled, and its proponents falling to oblivion. Now, for the first time ever, the seeds of the movement originating from the long gone period of the socialist regime in (...) Yugoslavia have survived the turmoil of disintegration and wars, and are germinating as women's groups and networks spring up alongside are being formed. The crucial task for the future will be strengthening this fragile and diffused network structure and laying down solid foundations for a movement with proper institutional mechanisms on a nation/state level. This investigation examined the prerequisites for this: firstly by examining the visibility and distinguishing features of women's groups and their activities in their current local environment; and secondly, by assessing activists’ clear acceptance of feminist (and their groups’) self-determination, which confront existing social attitudes towards feminist identities. In both respects, considerable advances towards a broader and clearer recognition of the aims and essence of women's groups’ activities are identified, in spite of the ever-present traditional and ideological resistance to this type of women's engagement. (shrink)

The article surveys the development of james' views on the status of the psychological subject (self); the uncertainties and hesitations in james' views are pointed out. But, Contrary to the prevailing view, Upheld especially by john dewey and ralph b perry, James' article "does consciousness exist?" in 1904 does not represent the final stage of his thought. This can be found only in his last book "a pluralistic universe" six years later in which the existence of the "full self" is (...) reasserted. James reached this conclusion after the period of intense intellectual struggle which can be traced in the private notes and drafts published by r b perry. The idea of dynamic self was consonant with the process philosophy which james finally adopted. (shrink)

Cette étude de la paraphrase langagière offre une vue d'ensemble sur ce procédé dans la théorie sens-texte, traite de deux problèmes théoriques liés à sa modélisation, la notion de paraphrase comme telle et les règles sémantiques d'équivalence. Elle propose une série de nouvelles règles sémantiques et lexico-syntaxique de paraphrasage.

The cyclical theory f time, which is better known under the name of the 'theory of eternal recurrence,' is usually associated with certain ancient thinkers--in particular, Pythagoreans and Stoics. The most famous among those who have tried to revive the theory in the modern era is unquestionably Friedrich Nietzsche. It is less well known that the theory was defended also by C.S. Peirce and, as late as 1927, by the French historian of science, Abel Rey. The contemporary discussion of the (...) problem of the direction of time has a direct bearing on the problem of eternal recurrence. The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the theory itself and then to show how this critical analysis can be applied to Peirce's own version of this theory. (shrink)