The sequent system LDJ is formulated using the same connectives as Gentzen's intuitionistic sequent system LJ, but is dual in the following sense: (i) whereas LJ is singular in the consequent, LDJ is singular in the antecedent; (ii) whereas LJ has the same sentential counter-theorems as classical LK but not the same theorems, LDJ has the same sentential theorems as LK but not the same counter-theorems. In particular, LDJ does not reject all contradictions and is accordingly paraconsistent. To obtain a (...) more precise mapping, both LJ and LDJ are extended by adding a "pseudo-difference" operator which is the dual of intuitionistic implication. Cut-elimination and decidability are proved for the extended systems and , and a simply consistent but -inconsistent Set Theory with Unrestricted Comprehension Schema based on LDJ is sketched. (shrink)
This book gives the first complete, fully historicized account of Emerson's metaphysics of cause and effect and its foundational position in his philosophy as a whole. Joseph Urbas proposes an intellectual biography of Emerson the metaphysician but also the life-story of a concept synonymous, in the Transcendentalist period, with life itself—the story of the principle at the origin of all being and change.
This new study of Ralph Waldo Emerson deserves praise for its effort to place his writing within the tradition of philosophy as a way of life. Drawing on the work of Pierre Hadot, Reza Hosseini pro...
The concept of power shapes both the political philosophy and the general worldview of the modern age. For this reason, two areas of philosophy - ontology and political philosophy - which were hitherto treated separately, must be brought together. Freedom, Equality, Power brings out the ontological framework shared by the political philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. In the last chapter, the author uses the results of his earlier analyses as the stepping stone for developing some themes belonging to ontology (...) in general. (shrink)
The Mind and Heart of Ralph Waldo Emerson in World Perspective All serious readers of Emerson’s writings will gain insight from Joseph Urbas’s “historical reconstruction” of Emerson’s bottom-line philosophical commitments. By closely engaging an exceptionally wide breadth of primary material – one simply unseen in previous philosophical interpretations of Emerson – The Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson brings to bear the weight of his published and unpublished corpus on the topics of metaphys...
Two things have been missing from discussions of Emerson and skepticism. The first—and the most glaring omission, given his precise, unambiguous definition of skepticism as “unbelief in cause and effect” (“Worship”)—is Emerson’s causationism. The second is his view of skepticism as organically related to a wide array of other forms of anti-realism or “romance.” Only the first can explain the second and thereby give us a better sense of how Emerson’s specific response to skepticism as a philosophical problem fits into (...) his broader, resolutely realist vision of the conduct of life. (shrink)
Piotr Cyciura Human Freedom and MetaphysicsHuman freedom is in a sense the topic of metaphysics. Freedom is usually regarded as what is the most perfect in the reality. For man being perfect is the same as acting in the way which is proper for him only, viz., acting in a rational manner. However, what man desires is more perfect than what he is. The human existence is participated whereas what man aims at in the most rational manner is the (...) Existence itself. Therefore God (as loved and known) guarantees the human freedom. The value is everything that brings us closer to Him – everything save God and persons – provided we offer it to Him. It is our choice whether we make whatever is ours obey to God or not. However, what is eventually achieved is not what is ours but we ourselves – living in the Life itself. There are no borders for the human freedom in the physical world; whatever bears upon us, i.e. what is natural, could become an offering, whereas what is offered to Him in the way He cannot reject it is the only absolute value. Keywords: freedom, values, metaphysics, God. (shrink)
Emerson 's philosophical rehabilitation, begun in the late 1970s, has neglected an important branch of his thought: his metaphysics. Revisionist interpretations have generally followed Stanley Cavell's anti-metaphysical lead, privileging process and pluralism to the exclusion of any ultimate grounding principle. Russell Goodman's work takes Emerson scholarship in a new direction less hostile to metaphysics. His reading of Emerson 's "Nominalist and Realist" attempts to balance the principles of change and permanence, albeit in "unstable" alternation. What Goodman calls instability I call (...) synthesis or "bi-polarity," made possible by a metaphysical doctrine whose core principle is universal causation. Emerson 's "causationism" openly embraces both Nominalism and Realism as true to opposite poles of the same causal and ontological continuum—that of reality itself. (shrink)
Was Heidegger a 'realist' or an 'idealist'? The issue has been and continues to be hotly debated in Heidegger scholarship. Here it is argued that the much more desirable realistic interpretation of Heidegger can be sustained, provided his theory of moods is given its due. Moods, I argue, are not only 'equiprimordial' with Dasein's understanding of being, but are also irreducible to the latter. It is often held - correctly, as it seems to the author - that Heidegger's idealism is (...) all but inevitable if Dasein's awareness of entities is grounded only in Dasein's understanding of being. But in Being and Time Heidegger speaks also of how what there is is 'disclosed moodwise'. The essay closely analyzes this specifically moody mode of disclosure, and shows both its autonomy vis-à-vis the understanding of being and its function of securing, for Dasein, an access to a truly independent reality. (shrink)
This paper describes ways in which political speakers define and legitimize future policies by construing different policy options in terms of ‘privileged’ and ‘oppositional’ futures. Privileged and oppositional futures are conceptual projections of alternative policy visions occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of speech, revealing specific evidential, mood, and modality patterns. Privileged future involves the speaker’s preferred, or at least acknowledged vision and is articulated through absolute modality and evidential markers which derive from factual evidence, history, and reason. Oppositional future involves an (...) antagonistic and plainly threatening vision, expressed by probabilistic modality and (usually) the interrogative mood. Following the principle of psychological consistency in belief, oppositional future is normally communicated first, allowing for a swift and strong response from the privileged future expressed in the speaker-preferred vision. (shrink)
Piotr Kropotkin był najważniejszym przedstawicielem tzw. darwinizmu rosyjskiego oraz teorii pomocy wzajemnej, która podkreślała znaczenie współpracy wewnątrzgatunkowej w procesie doboru naturalnego oraz walki o byt. Na jej kanwie rosyjski badacz wysunął tezę o ewolucyjnych źródłach moralności, będącej problem badawczym w niniejszym artykule. Stanowi to jednocześnie powód dlaczego poza przedstawieniem wspomnianej tezy i jej założeń, w publikacji zilustrowana została także teoria pomocy wzajemnej. Zaproponowana przez Kropotkina wizja moralności suponowała, iż stanowi ona „przyrodzoną” właściwość ludzkiej natury. Podstawę dla niej stanowić ma (...) instynkt społeczny oraz jego przejawy, takie jak: równość, solidarność, sprawiedliwość, itd., a także pomoc wzajemna. Stawiało to propozycję rosyjskiego darwinisty w opozycji wobec dominujących trendów w myśleniu o ludzkiej moralności na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, zwłaszcza wobec tzw. darwinizmu społecznego i charakterystycznego dlań dualizmu moralnego. Ponadto zrywała z antropocentryzmem zakładając, iż poza gatunkiem ludzkim, także inne gatunki cechują się uczuciami moralnymi. (shrink)
This article examines Stanley Cavell's method of reading Emerson—and finds it wanting in rigor and fidelity to the original. Though Cavell declares himself to be among those who "care about the Emersonian text," who are "concerned to preserve the order of words of the Emersonian text," there is a substantial amount of evidence that this is not always the case. A close reading of Cavell's readings of Emerson reveals a pattern of misconstrual and misquotation whose effect is to strip away (...) the "otherness" of Emerson's words and further the project of refashioning him as a secular, skeptical, postmetaphysical thinker. (shrink)
Topic modeling—a text‐mining technique often used to uncover thematic structures in large collections of texts—has been increasingly frequently used in the context of the analysis of scholarly output. In this study, we construct a corpus of 19,488 texts published since 1971 in seven leading journals in the field of bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and we use a machine learning algorithm to identify almost 100 topics representing distinct themes of interest in the field. On the basis of intertopic correlations, we (...) group the content‐based topics into eight clusters, thus providing a novel, fine‐grained intellectual map of bioethics and philosophy of medicine. Moreover, we conduct a number of diachronic analyses, examining how the “prominence” of different topics has changed across time. In this way, we are able to observe the distinct patterns in which bioethics and philosophy of medicine have evolved and changed their focus over the past half a century. (shrink)
In this paper, we introduce Speedith which is an interactive diagrammatic theorem prover for the well-known language of spider diagrams. Speedith provides a way to input spider diagrams, transform them via the diagrammatic inference rules, and prove diagrammatic theorems. Speedith’s inference rules are sound and complete, extending previous research by including all the classical logic connectives. In addition to being a stand-alone proof system, Speedith is also designed as a program that plugs into existing general purpose theorem provers. This allows (...) for other systems to access diagrammatic reasoning via Speedith, as well as a formal verification of diagrammatic proof steps within standard sentential proof assistants. We describe the general structure of Speedith, the diagrammatic language, the automatic mechanism that draws the diagrams when inference rules are applied on them, and how formal diagrammatic proofs are constructed. (shrink)
Pragmatics, Micropragmatics, Macropragmatics The paper addresses the distinction between micropragmatics and macropragmatics. It is postulated that this differentiation, a consequence of a number of controversies surrounding the core field of pragmatics, does manifest a number of conceptual merits and methodological feasibility. The article also aims to elaborate on the four concepts central to the methodology of pragmatics, i.e. deixis, presupposition, implicature and speech acts, from an essentially ‘micropragmatic’ perspective, describing their contribution to the proposition of an utterance, its illocutionary force, (...) and a wide range of effects the utterance may produce. At the same time, however, three relativities-regularities are indicated and presented as prompts for an integrated study of intentionality at the macro level of discourse/text. (shrink)
The article presents the question of understanding divine causality and its analogical character in the context of Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on Divine Providence. Analyzing Aquinas’s texts concerning the relation of God’s action towards nature and its activities it is necessary to emphasize the proper understanding of mutual relations between secondary causes and the primary cause which are not on the same level. Influenced by the reflection of M. Dodds and I Silva, the author of the article refers to Aquinas’s biblical (...) commentaries which have not been discussed so far from the perspective of the character of God’s action. In the final part of the article, metaphors used by Thomas in reference to the relation of God towards the world will be presented. (shrink)
From the perspective of Aquinas’ Biblical commentaries, the article develops the reflection on pignus / arra haereditatis (Eph 1:5) seeing these essential elements of Thomas’ reflection on salvation in the terminological question of which one is better: pignus or arra, namely the pledge or the earnest/deposit. Thomas develops soteriology, which indicates that human salvation starts “now” and not “later,” through the participation in the Passion of Christ and in His merits. Analyzing Aquinas’ commentary on Ps 21, on the Letter to (...) the Ephesians and on the Letter to the Galatians together with the themes of Christ’s obedience and its soteriological significance as well as His wish of voluntary death for us, the article shows the Biblical roots of Thomas’ soteriology. The author devotes particular attention to the analysis of the logic of inchoatio and consummatio in Thomas’ soteriological grammar and his understanding of faith as the beginning of eternal life and the ensuing consequences. (shrink)
This theoretical paper is offered in the spirit of advancing the debate on the socioemotional wealth construct and its impact on how family firms conceptualize and practise corporate social responsibility. The study builds on Kellermanns et al.’s :1175–1182, 2012) claim that the SEW dimensions can be positively and negatively valenced as well as makes a distinction between the selective and instrumental approach to CSR and the holistic and normative one. Drawing on these considerations, it provides a theoretical underpinning in favour (...) of the view that SEW has ambivalent nature and therefore can produce detrimental outcomes for stakeholders of family companies. In this way, the study challenges the implicit assumption prevalent in the literature that SEW is “a prosocial and positive stimulus”. Crucially, it expands on the SEW construct by arguing that, given its ambivalent nature, SEW, as such, is at odds with the “strategic, whole-business view of responsibility”. Consequently, it posits that family firms—because of their concern with SEW—may be more likely to adopt the instrumental and selective rather than strategic and normative approach. Hence, it also makes the case for regarding the latter as a reference point to investigate the family company’s attitude towards social responsibility. It concludes by summarising the argument and offering future research avenues. (shrink)
Od metafizycznej neutralności do metafizyki problemów. Status metafizyki w filozofii Husserla Streszczenie Artykuł prezentuje przejście filozofii Husserla od psychologii fenomenologicznej do fenomenologii transcendentalnej jako zwrot metafizyczny. Husserlowska fenomenologia przedtranscendentalna jako deskryptywna analiza fenomenów mentalnych wyklucza wszelkie metafizyczne pytania dotyczące istnienia świata zewnętrznego, podczas gdy fenomenologia transcendentalna nie jest metafizycznie neutralna, ponieważ ma za zadanie odsłonięcie ostatecznego sensu świata w jego faktycznym istnieniu. Z jednej strony, zgodnie z pierwszeństwem ejdetycznych możliwości przed rzeczywistością, fenomenologia transcendentalna jako nauka ejdetyczna poprzedza metafizykę jako naukę (...) o rzeczywistości i umożliwia ją. Z tego punktu widzenia fenomenologia transcendentalna może być rozumiana w znaczeniu ostatecznego ugruntowania metafizyki jako uniwersalnej i absolutnej nauki o faktach, która jest zwieńczeniem naturalnych nauk o bycie. Z drugiej strony, zasada pierwszeństwa istoty przed faktem nie znajduje zastosowania do transcendentalnego faktu konstytucji świata i ten irracjonalny fakt prowadzi do metafizyki jako filozofii dotyczącej „najwyższych i ostatecznych zagadnień”, takich jak teleologiczne, teologiczne i etyczne zagadnienia. Zagadnienia te okazują się irracjonalną resztą (metafizycznym residuum) fenomenologii transcendentalnej i jej zwieńczeniem. Słowa kluczowe: ejdetyczne możliwości, fakt absolutny, fenomenologia transcendentalna, metafizyka krytyczna, metafizyka problemów, nauka o faktach. (shrink)
W artykule poddano badaniu pojęcie przesądu w teoriach Kanta i Husserla. Według Kanta, przesądy należy odróżnić od sądów tymczasowych, które można nazwać antycypacjami lub maksymami wszelkiego badania. Wydajemy sąd tymczasowy o jakiejś rzeczy, zanim poznamy ją za pomocą sądu określającego. Z kolei przesądy są sądami tymczasowymi błędnie uznanymi za sądy określające, to znaczy sądami, które przyjmujemy jako zasady bez badania warunków ich prawdziwości. Kanta pojęcie przesądu ma zatem konotacje negatywne a celem filozofii krytycznej jest przezwyciężeniewszelkich przesądów. W przeciwieństwie do Kanta, (...) Husserl rozróżnia przesądy pozytywne i negatywne: pozytywny przesąd jest rozumiany jako przed-sąd w formie presumpcyjnej przedwiedzy i odpowiada Kantowskiemu pojęciu antycypacji, która jest właściwa sądowi tymczasowemu, podczas gdy obiektywistyczna naiwność okazuje się przesądem negatywnym.Celem fenomenologii jest zawieszenie wszystkich przesądów i to zawieszenie umożliwia badanie ich źródeł. W artykule autor wykazuje, że Husserlowska koncepcja przesądu jako przed-sądu jest analogiczna do Gadamerowskiej rehabilitacji przesądów jako przed-rozumienia. Dlatego też można wskazać podobieństwa między Kanta pojęciem sądu tymczasowego, Husserla ideą przedwiedzy i G adamera koncepcją przed-rozumienia. (shrink)
