What are mental states? When we talk about people’s beliefs or desires, are we talking about what is happening inside their heads? If so, might cognitive science show that we are wrong? Might it turn out that mental states do not exist? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these longstanding questions about the mind. Its core idea is that mental states are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we are not formulating hypotheses about people’s inner machinery. Instead, (...) we simply talk "as if" people had certain inner states, such as beliefs or desires, in order to make sense of their behaviour. This is the first book dedicated to exploring mental fictionalism. Featuring contributions from established authors as well as up-and-coming scholars in this burgeoning field, the book reveals the exciting potential of a fictionalist approach to the mind, as well as the challenges it faces. In doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on foundational debates in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of mental states and folk psychology, as well as hot topics in the field, such as embodied cognition and mental representation. Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals alike. (shrink)

A piliscsabai Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem oktatója, Hankovszky Tamás (két kivételtől eltekintve) az utóbbi évtizedben megjelent publikációiból állította össze tanulmánykötetét. A filozófiai, teológiai és irodalmi ihletésű írásokat mindenekelőtt "az Istennel való találkozás" keresztény hite fűzi egybe, és persze a filozófiatörténész szerző preferenciái (Pilinszky, Camus, Mauriacimon Weil, Dosztojevszkij). "Minden találkozás olyan partnereket követel, akik szabadon megnyílnak egymásnak, de nem oldódnak fel egymásban, akik a másik közelségére vágynak, mégis megőrzik a köztük lévő távolságot, mert a dialógust keresik, és a dialógus lételeme a (...) különbözőség. Ám az ember csak azért különbözik a másik embertől és Istentől, hogy kapcsolatba léphessenek" - olvasható az ismertetőben. Mivel Hankovszky professzor a találkozásban és a párbeszédben látja az élet értelmét és végső célját, a kötet kívül áll azon a misztikát is felölelő monista hagyományon, amely az Istennel való minél teljesebb egyesülésre, Isten és ember egységére törekszik, és a vele való párbeszédet, a kölcsönös megszólítást pusztán a cél felé vezető út első lépésének tekinti. Azonban éppen azért áll kívül ezen az ősi és tiszteletreméltó hagyományon, hogy dialógust folytasson vele, és így teljesebben érthesse meg Isten és ember viszonyát, valamint megtalálja benne a földi lét, a művészet és a kultúra igazi helyét. A szakkönyvtárak anyagába ajánlható kötetet rövidítés- és irodalomjegyzék, valamint az esszék és tanulmányok első megjelenési helyeinek listája teszi teljessé. (shrink)

filozofiatortenet vallasfilozofia filozofiai antropologia Franciaorszag 17. szazad.

Gyorgy Tamas works in the philosophy of logic, that difficult interdisciplin ary region wherein the notion of categories is both basic and subtle. To understand ways of thinking, to understand patterns of whatever is real, to recognize what is possible and to reject the nonsensical and the impossible is to comprehend the categories. This was a in thought and in fact, recurring motive of European thought from the earliest self-aware beginnings, and Tamas knows that history well, as his critical respect (...) demonstrates. Ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers appear in this book, set forth in their own words; and likewise we see that Tamas has built upon the historians and commentators, upon the pioneering historical investigation of the categories by Trendelenburg a century ago and by Bochenski in our days. Tamas has two principal goals here: to investigate the logic, which is to say the structure and the relations, of the philosophical categories; and to set forth the logic of thought which may then be based upon the critically established system of categories obtained by that investigation. Ancillary but of striking value is his style of historical relevance which enables the reader to engage in a discussion that is both analytically sharp and developmentally insightful. Furthermore, Tamas draws upon his contem porary colleagues with similar critical respect: Lukasiewicz, Quine, Patzig, Menne, Tavanets and others. (shrink)

Conflicting Values of Inquiry explores how certain non-epistemic values had been turned into epistemic ones, how they had an effect on epistemic content, and how they became ideologies of knowledge playing various roles in inquiry and application throughout early modern Europe.

We study behind-the-scenes investor activism promoting environmental, social, and governance improvements by means of a proprietary dataset of a large international, socially responsible activist fund. We examine the activist’s target selection, forms of engagement, impact on ESG performance, drivers of success, and effects on the targets’ operations and value creation. Target firms are typically large and visible, perform well, and have high liquidity and low ESG performance. Engagement induces ESG rating adjustments: firms with poor ex ante ESG ratings experience a (...) ratings increase after complying with the activist’s demands, whereas firms with high ex ante ESG ratings experience a ratings decrease following the revelation of their ESG problems. Activism that is focused on environmental and social issues is more likely to succeed if targets are ESG-sensitive. Successful engagements boost targets’ sales. Risk-adjusted excess stock returns of successful engagements outperform those of unsuccessful engagements by 2.7%. Results are especially strong for firms with low ex ante ESG scores. Specifically, targeted firms in the lowest ex ante ESG quartile outperform matched peers by 7.5% in the year after the end of the engagement. Our results thus suggest that the activism regarding corporate social responsibility generally improves ESG practices and corporate sales and is profitable to the activist. Taken together, we provide direct evidence that ethical investing and strong financial performance, both from the activist’s and the targeted firm’s perspective, can go hand-in-hand together. (shrink)

Wish-fulfilment as a singular means of satisfying ineluctable desire is a pivotal concept in classical psychoanalysis. Freud argued that it was the thread that united dreams, daydreams, phantasy, omnipotent thinking, neurotic and some psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, art, myth, and religious illusions. The concept's theoretical exploration has been largely neglected within psychoanalysis since, but contemporary philosophers have recognised it as providing an explanatory model for much of the kind of irrational behaviour so problematic for psychiatry, social psychology (...) and the philosophy of mind. Although critically neglected in contemporary psychological and psychoanalytic thought, the concept remains clinically fundamental, under different labels: it encompasses the processes of omnipotent phantasy, symbolic or substitutive satisfaction, actualisation in transference and acting out, symptom formation and defenses such as projective identification. Wish-fulfilment can be shown to be a specifically psychoanalytic compartment of a common-sense psychological theory of action that illuminates not just clinical material but also the paradoxes of irrationality – such as weakness of will and self-deception – that preoccupy philosophers. The first half of this book develops a comprehensive and novel theory of wish-fulfilment, explores its radical implications for the structure of mind, and locates it against the backdrop of both contemporary psychoanalytic and philosophical thought. In the second half, the book applies the theory to illuminate important features of self-deception and delusion, religion, insanity defences, creative writing and the exclusion of mind and intention in the biological drift of modern psychiatry. The book will be essential to philosophers of mind, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, social theorists, and students in these disciplines; as well as readers interested in understanding how the mind works in mental illness, self-deception, religion, and creative writing. (shrink)

Fruit d'un colloque tenu en 2010 dans la ville de Budapest, cet ouvrage collectif introduit aux grands chapitres de l'oeuvre de l'académicien en même temps qu'elle lui adresse certaines questions permettant d'en mieux saisir les enjeux et d'en indiquer quelques prolongements possibles. Cartésianisme, phénoménologie et théologie : telles sont les trois voies thématiques empruntées afin d'interroger un travail qui a su se rendre indispensable à son époque.

The paper contrasts Robert Brandom’s account of rationality with that of Daniel Dennett. It argues that neither of them is tenable, and sketches an alternative outlook that avoids the problems. In spite of their fundamental differences, both Brandom and Dennett employ a robust, i.e. explanatory and predictive notion of rationality, and for different reasons they both fail to offer a plausible theory supporting it. The lesson offered here is that rationality should not be treated alongside other norms prescribing behaviour, as (...) it cannot be accounted for in the same terms. Instead of ascribing rationality a robust role in a philosophical understanding of behaviour, it should be assigned a more modest one: its function should be located not in the context of explaining and predicting behaviour, but in the context of narratives folk psychological interpretation offers. (shrink)

The Hungarian health care system is scheduled to undergo dramatic structural changes, emphasizing preventive medicine, health education, and competition among providers. Keywords: cost control, health care reform, health education, Hungary, market system, preventive medicine CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?