In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Richard J. Bernstein (1932–2022)Tara Mastrelli and Mark SandersRemembrance for Richard J. BernsteinMy name is Tara Mastrelli. I am a graduate student at the New School for Social Research.1 Dick Bernstein was my teacher and my friend. I was also the TA for his final seminar on American Pragmatism this past spring, an experience that I want to share with you today.In the months leading up to this (...) seminar, Dick said something shifted for him in the way he understood pragmatism—a sort of awakening on his part. He redesigned his syllabus into two parts—the first, working through the classical pragmatists, namely, Peirce, James, and Dewey, as he had done for sixty-eight years. And then the second half would—in Dewey's words—turn toward "the problems of men" (though Dick would always say human beings), engaging with themes and texts from Black and feminist thinkers. To be clear, for Dick, this was not an expansion of the canon or an exercise in who should or should not count as a pragmatist. Rather his aim was something different altogether—to see if we could begin to understand pragmatism not as a canon at all, but rather as a living, evolving movement.Now the point is not that this was the perfect syllabus—it wasn't. The point is what redesigning his syllabus can tell us about the type of person and teacher that Dick was. At almost 90 years old, teaching a subject he had taught for almost seventy years, he did not sit back and say that he knew everything. He wanted to learn more—from his colleagues, his students, the world around him—to experience more, to challenge his assumptions, to understand more. [End Page 103]Beyond the syllabus, another factor that made this seminar unique was Dick's health. His illness started at the beginning of the semester. He taught our first class from an emergency room in New York City during the Omicron wave of COVID-19. He was wearing a mask and breathing tubes. Machines were beeping all around him. Nurses came in from time to time to check on him. Nonetheless … his enthusiasm was not remotely diminished. Laying out his aims and ambitions for the course, he referred to it as "an exciting adventure"—for him and for us.The syllabus was not perfect, and Dick's health ebbed and flowed throughout, and yet—as the course itself progressed—it evolved into the very thing he was hoping for, which was pragmatism as a living, evolving movement. He read and added new work from a colleague examining Black feminist pragmatism and its relationship to the Movement for Black Lives, adding a full session dedicated to it. On certain days, when his breath was weak, he asked me to lead our discussions, which took on more of an almost jazz-like character—my classmates and I riffing off each other as we tried to wrestle with concepts such as DuBois's color line against the backdrop of gentrification in our own neighborhoods. When I decided to run a progressive stack for our discussions on feminism, Dick replied, "Good for you!" and enthusiastically used the hand-raising function, patiently waiting his turn.At the end of the semester, he seemed to be feeling better—his voice was strong and his eyes were bright during our final session. He conveyed his sense that, despite his recurring lament that we did not have more time (he had always envisioned the course as two semesters, or sometimes two full years), the seminar had achieved what he had wanted to achieve: "Philosophy has come alive." A return to philosophy, "not just as a discipline to master, but something to be caught up in; the excitement of dealing with life—a return to a genuine Socratic conception of philosophy."I am sure many of you may know that Dick wrote his dissertation on Dewey. What you may not know is that he originally wanted to write it on Plato. (Phaedrus was his favorite.) But once he sat down, he realized he did not want to write something about Plato that, as he said... (shrink)

This article examines a range of problems centring on the theorization of cultural identity and cultural property by reference to debates about the appropriation of the Maori `tattoo' or ta moko and the authenticity of contemporary Maori tattooing practices. Through a consideration of the relationship between cultural identity and tattooing, it addresses a problematic concerning the articulation of indigenous `property', `ownership' or `authority' in legal, anthropological and philosophical discourses. Theorizations of `tattoo' as `cultural property', for example, generally assume a certain (...) `proper' relationship between subject and object, precomprehended in terms of Western legal-philosophical concepts. Against the background of these issues, the use of ta moko as a form of signature or authorizing mark of identification is taken to highlight issues concerning the complex relationship between the attribution of certain cultural practices, characteristics or `properties' to a certain group and the notions of authorship and authority that underwrite such designations. (shrink)

Technology assessment (TA) is – for several reasons – not detachable from ethical questions. The development of institutions and concepts for TA, especially in the USA and Western Europe, has been marked by an increasing tendency to focus evaluative and normative questions. In the following paper, we point out, in as far as the common notions of TA are implicitly normative, why reflection upon conceptual options of TA inevitably leads to ethical questions, and that the key question of participation necessarily (...) comes up in the context of societal decisions made under conditions of risk or uncertainty. Arrangements of participatory and discoursive TA are referred to as possible applications of discourse ethics, but there are consequences to consider, which result from discourses in TA not being ideal discourses. Concepts and performance of TA arrangements on biotechnology and gene technology in different European countries are compared, analysing what similarities and differences can be found with respect to ethical clarification. Crucial questions of how to conceptualise participatory TA (pTA) and current topics in ethics of technology are shown to coincide. A proposal is presented of how these – theoretical normative and empirical descriptive – considerations can be used in a comprehensive conception for participatory and discoursive TA. (shrink)

What is the relationship between conceptual engineering and metasemantic externalism? Sally Haslanger has argued that metasemantic externalism justifies the seemingly counterintuitive consequences of her proposed conceptual revisions. But according to Herman Cappelen, metasemantic externalism makes conceptual engineering effectively impossible in practice. After raising objections to Haslanger’s and Cappelen’s views, I argue for a very different picture, on which metasemantic externalism bears very little on conceptual engineering. I argue that, while metasemantic externalism principally operates at the level of semantic-meaning, we should (...) understand conceptual engineering to operate largely at the level of speaker-meaning. This ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ has two key benefits. Firstly, it makes conceptual engineering often easy in practice. Secondly, it suggests a new, normative response to the well known objection that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. (shrink)

ObjectiveTest anxiety (TA) is a construct that has scarcely been studied based on Lang’s three-dimensional model of anxiety. The objective of this article is to investigate the repercussion of sociodemographic and academic variables on different responses for each component of anxiety and for the type of test in adolescent students.MethodA total of 1181 students from 12 to 18 years old (M= 14.7 and SD = 1.8) participated, of whom 569 were boys (48.2%) and 612 girls (51.8%). A sociodemographic questionnaire and (...) theCuestionario de Ansiedad ante los examenes-Adaptado (CAEX-A)[Test Anxiety Questionnaire-Adapted] an adaptation for Spanish secondary school levels (ESO) and Bachillerato were administered.ResultsGirls scored higher on the cognitive and physiological components of TA than boys, the intensity of the physiological response increasing with age. Bachillerato level students reported more physiological anxiety than those of ESO level. Students with better marks in the previous year presented more anxiety in the cognitive component, while those who obtained the lower mark presented higher anxiety values in the behavioral component. Participants reported that the types of tests that cause them more anxiety were oral tests in front of the class, oral presentation in front of a panel, and mathematics tests.ConclusionAdolescents show a differential response of TA based on the physiological, cognitive and motor components, mediated by the variables of gender, age, grade, academic performance and type of exam. These results serve to design specific intervention programs to manage anxiety in situations of academic assessment. (shrink)

Mark Jago presents an original philosophical account of meaningful thought: in particular, how it is meaningful to think about things that are impossible. We think about impossible things all the time. We can think about alchemists trying to turn base metal to gold, and about unfortunate mathematicians trying to square the circle. We may ponder whether God exists; and philosophers frequently debate whether properties, numbers, sets, moral and aesthetic qualities, and qualia exist. In many philosophical or mathematical debates, when (...) one side of the argument gets things wrong, it necessarily gets them wrong. As we consider both sides of one of these philosophical arguments, we will at some point think about something that’s impossible. Yet most philosophical accounts of meaning and content hold that we can’t meaningfully think or reason about the impossible. -/- In The Impossible, Jago argues that we often gain new information, new beliefs, and, sometimes, fresh knowledge through logic, mathematics, and philosophy. That is why logic, mathematics, and philosophy are useful. We therefore require accounts of knowledge and belief, of information and content, and of meaning which allow space for the impossible. Jago’s aim in this book is to provide such accounts. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops a theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds. Along the way, he provides a theory of what those worlds are and how they feature in our analysis of normative epistemic concepts: knowledge, belief, information, and content. (shrink)

Mark C. Murphy addresses the question of how God's ethics differs from human ethics. Murphy suggests that God is not subject to the moral norms to which we humans are subject. This has immediate implications for the argument from evil: we cannot assume that an absolutely perfect being is in any way bound to prevent the evils of this world.

Mark Eli Kalderon argues that morality is a fiction by means of which our emotional attitudes are conveyed. This is an improvement on the standard noncognitivist view, which denies that moral judgement is belief but claims instead that it is the expression of an emotional attitude. Noncognitivists tend to deny that moral sentences even purport to represent moral reality, and so they have developed non-standard semantics for moral discourse. Kalderon's fictionalism shows that noncognitivism can manage without such controversial semantics. (...) His book will be essential reading for anyone working in moral philosophy, and for many others working on meaning and knowledge. (shrink)

I develop and defend a truthmaker semantics for the relevant logic R. The approach begins with a simple philosophical idea and develops it in various directions, so as to build a technically adequate relevant semantics. The central philosophical idea is that truths are true in virtue of specific states. Developing the idea formally results in a semantics on which truthmakers are relevant to what they make true. A very natural notion of conditionality is added, giving us relevant implication. I then (...) investigate ways to add conjunction, disjunction, and negation; and I discuss how to justify contraposition and excluded middle within a truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

In the course of theorising, it can be appropriate to replace one concept—a folk concept, or one drawn from an earlier stage of theorising—with a more precise counterpart. The best-known account of concept replacement is Rudolf Carnap’s ‘explication’. P.F. Strawson famously critiqued explication as a method in philosophy. As the critique is standardly construed, it amounts to the objection that explication is ‘irrelevant’, fails to be ‘illuminating’, or simply ‘changes the subject’. In this paper, I argue that this is an (...) unfair characterisation of Strawson’s critique, spelling out the critique in more detail and showing that, fully understood, it is not undermined by extant responses. In light of both the critique and extant responses, I close by making some substantive comments about what explication can, and cannot, be used to do in philosophy. (shrink)

Each truth has a truthmaker: an entity in virtue of whose existence that truth is true. So say truthmaker maximalists. Arguments for maximalism are hard to find, whereas those against are legion. Most accept that maximalism comes at a significant cost, which many judge to be too high. The scales would seem to be balanced against maximalism. Yet, as I show here, maximalism can be derived from an acceptable premise which many will pre-theoretically accept.

Shepherd and Justus argue that experimental philosophy has an important role to play in the method of Carnapian explication, facilitating the preparatory stage during which the concept to be explicated is clarified. I raise concerns about their specific proposal, before sketching an alternative. In particular, I suggest that experimental philosophy can directly aid the construction of fruitful concepts. This provides a clear practical role for experimental philosophy, both within the sciences and theoretical inquiry more generally. In this respect, experimental philosophy (...) may rightly be construed as one aspect of applied philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 1-20 [Access article in PDF] Endoxa, Epistemological Optimism, and Aristotle's Rhetorical Project Ekaterina V. Haskins Communication Department Boston College Aristotle's crucial role in institutionalizing the art of rhetoric in the fourth century BCE is beyond dispute, but the significance of Aristotle's rhetorical project remains a point of lively controversy among philosophers and rhetoricians alike. There are many ways of reading and evaluating Aristotle's Rhetoric (...) that depend on the philosophical, theoretical, and pedagogical purposes of the scholar.1 Most philosophical and rhetorical exegeses of the Rhetoric, however, while focusing on the text's connections to Aristotle's corpus and to the rhetorical tradition before and after Aristotle, seem to lack a critical perspective on Aristotle's relationship with his cultural context. Yet, like other parts of Aristotle's encyclopedic intellectual endeavor, much of Rhetoric 's cultural content was provided by endoxa, "reputable or received opinions."Since G. E. L. Owen's essay "Tithenai ta phainomena" (1961) many scholars have accepted the claim that endoxa, rather than empirical observations, are the source of Aristotle's own philosophical principles. The "linguistic" turn within Aristotelian studies has drawn attention to the role of "facts" of language and ordinary experience within Aristotle's philosophical method. As a result, a view of Aristotle as a hard-core empiricist has given way to a picture of a humanist who is attuned to the nuances of his cultural milieu. Still, this new portrait fails to take into account that Aristotle's manner of selecting and categorizing his linguistic resources allows him to transform what we would consider cultural beliefs into natural, and hence, atemporal premises. This pattern can be explained by Aristotle's "epistemological optimism," in itself a blend of several cultural assumptions about perception in general and vision in particular, the function of language, and the cyclical nature of human history. Part of this essay's objective, then, will be an explanation of these components of Aristotle's epistemological optimism. By appreciating Aristotle's difference [End Page 1] on these issues from our modern assumptions, we will be in a better position to understand why Aristotle relies on endoxa on all three levels of philosophical discourse (theoretical science, moral philosophy, and productive arts of poetics and rhetoric). Aristotle remains consistent in his treatment of endoxa throughout; rhetoric, however, presents a major challenge to Aristotle's epistemological optimism and his conception of language. I shall argue that Aristotle recognized this challenge and that he answered it by isolating proofs and rhetorical genres from their linguistic medium (lexis ), and postulating linguistic transparency (sapheneia ) as a stylistic norm. I. Aristotle's openness to appearances (phainomena ) and opinions (endoxa ) was accorded prominence especially thanks to the work of G. E. L. Owen and Martha Nussbaum. Owen was first to defend a linguistic translation of Aristotle's phainomena as "ordinary beliefs" and "appearances" against the then-prevalent rendition "observed facts." In so doing he asserted the crucial impact of the philosopher's cultural context on the formation of speculative discourse. Owen (1961) nonetheless demanded that phainomena be understood as empirical observations in Aristotle' treatises on biology and meteorology (84-86), so as to preserve the methodological and epistemological distinctions between inquiries into the natural world, on the one hand, and the world inhabited by human agents, on the other. Nussbaum (1986) went much further than Owen in asserting the role of phainomena and endoxa in Aristotle's inquiry. Unlike Owen, Nussbaum sees no fundamental difference between "experiences" of a philosopher and linguistic expressions of cultural beliefs and interpretations—his discursive data—from which Aristotle constructs his philosophical accounts. Nussbaum's chief (and highly influential) claim is that Aristotle's method is marked by a deep concern for the experiential world of his fellow men and their language. Aristotle's philosophical insights into the human condition, on this reading, echo and amplify classical Greek tragedy, despite the austere diction of Aristotle's extant treatises.Owing to this openness to the world of ordinary beliefs, Aristotle seems to depart from the Eleatic and Platonic distrust of human... (shrink)

This essay engages critically with the recent emergence of "political realism" in political theory (centrally in the work of Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams). While sympathetic to and convinced of the importance of the core of the enterprise which it identifies, the essay is critical of some of the claims made about the independence of politics from morality and the historically contingent character of political values, and suggests that realism may itself succumb to illusion. The final section sketches an account (...) of the nature of evaluative judgment in the study of politics and, in conclusion, defends both the pluralist character of political theory and the pressing importance of the questions that realism raises and that are inadequately attended to by the bulk of post-war political theory. (shrink)

I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer to (...) essences; and that we can gain knowledge of them. We can know about which properties are, and which properties are not, essential to a given entity. This knowledge of essence offers a route to knowledge of the ways those entities must be or could be. (shrink)

This pioneering book delivers a systematic account of agonistic democracy, and a much-needed analysis of the core components of agonism: pluralism, tragedy, and the value of conflict. It also traces the history of these ideas, identifying the connections with republicanism and with Greek antiquity. Mark Wenman presents a critical appraisal of the leading contemporary proponents of agonism and, in a series of well-crafted and comprehensive discussions, brings these thinkers into debate with one another, as well as with the post-structuralist (...) and continental theorists who influence them. Wenman draws extensively on Hannah Arendt, and stresses the creative power of human action as augmentation and revolution. He also reworks Arendt's discussion of reflective judgement to present an alternative style of agonism, one where the democratic contest is linked to the emergence of a militant form of cosmopolitanism, and to prospects for historical change in the context of neoliberal globalisation. (shrink)

This paper looks at Vālmīki’s use and placement of his female characters as significant markers of religious identity. It argues that Vālmīki conceptualizes and creates specific types of female figures and carefully locates the episodes in which they appear to mark specific narrative transitions and real or imagined anxiety-inducing threats to the author’s idealized world. Moreover, Vālmīki provides his audience with potential resolutions to those threats. Thus, in addition to such major figures as Sītā, Kausalyā, and Kaikeyī, characters such (...) as Anasūyā, Śabarī, Svayaṃprabhā, and even the non-human characters Surasā and Nikumbhilā are demonstrated to have a specific and integrated function within the narrative and are argued to form part of a larger, gendered narrative frame in which the epic action occurs. Each of these characters, I contend, represents a particular level of the feminine intruding into the culture’s religious practices in an ever-increasing destabilization of the poet’s idealized vedic world or as the means for its reemergence as a stronger, more stable, and less corruptible one. Vālmīki’s creation and use of these intriguing figures provide further testament both to the author’s genius and the underlying unity of structure of his great epic. (shrink)

Philosophers have tended to construe friendship as an intimate relationship involving mutual love, and have focused their discussions on this ‘true’ form of friendship. However, everyone recognizes that we use the word ‘friend’ and its cognates to refer, non-ironically, to those with whom we share various relationships that are not terribly intimate or which do not involve mutual love. I argue that there exists no general reason to restrict our philosophical focus to ‘true’ friendships, and allege that we can gain (...) important insights if we broaden our perspective to include lesser friends. I contend that friendships, in the broad sense (encompassing both ‘true’ and lesser forms), are necessarily relationships that are the product of significant collaborative norm manipulation. And I argue that understanding friendship in this way helps explain important features, including the difference between friendships and familiar relations, the non-fungibility of friends, and why friendships are often in flux. (shrink)

In this book, Mark LeBar develops Virtue Eudaimonism, which brings the philosophy of the ancient Greeks to bear on contemporary problems in metaethics, especially the metaphysics of norms and the nature of practical rationality.

In (1991), Meinwald initiated a major change of direction in the study of Plato’s Parmenides and the Third Man Argument. On her conception of the Parmenides , Plato’s language systematically distinguishes two types or kinds of predication, namely, predications of the kind ‘x is F pros ta alla’ and ‘x is F pros heauto’. Intuitively speaking, the former is the common, everyday variety of predication, which holds when x is any object (perceptible object or Form) and F is a property (...) which x exemplifies or instantiates in the traditional sense. The latter is a special mode of predication which holds when x is a Form and F is a property which is, in some sense, part of the nature of that Form. Meinwald (1991, p. 75, footnote 18) traces the discovery of this distinction in Plato’s work to Frede (1967), who marks the distinction between pros allo and kath’ hauto predications by placing subscripts on the copula ‘is’. (shrink)

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

Ovaj je rad osmišljen kao analiza dijela mišljenja američkoga filozofa Fredrica Jamesona. Opus tog autora obuhvaća desetine naslova od kojih će u elaboraciji teme tri biti fragmentarno obrađena, odnosno u svakoj od njih ću posvetiti pozornost jednom poglavlju . Riječ je o sljedećim trima knjigama i pripadajućim poglavljima: The Signatures of the Visible , Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism i A Singular Modernity . Namjera je rada tekstove ovih poglavlja istaknuti kao momente jednog zamišljenog ekskursa o opsegu (...) i dubini pitanja o identitetu suvremenosti, odnosno njegovih suvremenih transfiguracija izraženih Jamesonovim tezama. Protežući se u daljnjim razradama onkraj čvrsto utvrđenih definicija i neprestanog preispitivanja metode istraživanja, ta pitanja nalaze svoju pozadinu u promišljanju koncepata i pojmova narativa i povijesnosti. Očito je da uvođenje koncepta i pojma narativa u relaciji prema povijesti evocira klasični pristup tom problemu, no ovdje je riječ upravo o njegovim suvremenim transfiguracijama koje su izražene u tim poglavljima.Namjera rada je, stoga, uz očigledne analitičke momente spomenutih tekstova, istaknuti i kritičku ulogu takve analize, s jedne strane. No, s druge strane, namjera je ukazati i na istraživanja čiji je smisao daljnje kritičko i analitičko propitivanje i utvrđivanje teorijskih polazišta koja ne ustrajavaju samo na spekulativnim postulatima vezanim uz spomenute probleme, koja ne teže tek jednoj novoj metadiskurzivnosti, već teže propitivanju mogućih istraživačkih putova koji se neizbježno pojavljuju u spomenutim transfiguracijama, kako teorije tako i neizbježnih praksa koje ih obilježavaju.This paper is generally conceived as an analysis of some fragmentary parts concerning the thought of American philosopher Fredric Jameson. The opus of this author includes tens of titles but only three of them will be elaborated here in some fragments . The books in question are the following: The Signatures of the Visible , Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and at the end there is A Singular Modernity . My intention in this paper is to propound texts from those chapters as moments of one imagined digression about scope and depth of question which is asked about identity of contemporaneity, or rather, its contemporary transfigurations expressed through Jameson’s theses. In further elaborations this issues spreads beyond firmly set definitions and continuous examination of the method of research, and finds its foundation in reflecting concepts and notions of narrative and historicity. It is obvious that introducing concepts and notion of the narrative in relation to history evokes classical approaches to this problem, but the point here is precisely its contemporary transfigurations which are couched in these chapters.The intention of this paper is therefore also, beside obvious analytical moments in mentioned texts, to point out critical role of such analysis, on the one hand. But, on the other hand, the intention that lies in it is to indicate research point of which is further critical and analytical questioning and ascertaining theoretical starting points that do not hold on only to speculative postulates related to mentioned problems, and which do not tend only to one new meta-discursiveness, but tend to question up possible research paths that unavoidably show up in mentioned transfigurations, concerning both theory and unavoidable practices that mark them as well. (shrink)

Tekst stanowi próbę rozwiązania dwóch problemów. Po pierwsze, jak istota przejawia się w indywiduum, w rzeczy konkretnej, nie dającej się zdefiniować? I po drugie, jak zweryfikować definicję? Jest to problem prawdy, wobec którego można zastosować metodę przyswajania abstrakcji - wznoszenia się od abstrakcji do konkretu. Metodę tę wykorzystywał K. Marks. W artykule dowodzi się, że metoda ta nie traci na swojej heurystycznej sile nawet wówczas, gdy zastosuje się ją do analizy współczesnego kapitalizmu symbolicznego. Nie stosując tej wyjaśniającej mocy abstrakcji, intelektualiści (...) stają się ideologami rozrywającymi jedność tego, co realne i tego, co idealne, waloryzującymi drugi element wspomnianej jedności. Swiat ich idei nijak się ma do aktualnej praktyki społecznej, dlatego dominuje w niej niezrozumiany symbol - fetysz. W społeczeństwie jest on tajemniczą podstawą problemów człowieka z samym sobą. Stąd jego zrozumienie i realne przywrócenie należnego mu w społeczeństwie miejsca umożliwi człowiekowi drogę powrotną do samego siebie. (shrink)

Real-world agents do not know all consequences of what they know. But we are reluctant to say that a rational agent can fail to know some trivial consequence of what she knows. Since every consequence of what she knows can be reached via chains of trivial cot be dismissed easily, as some have attempted to do. Rather, a solution must give adequate weight to the normative requirements on rational agents’ epistemic states, without treating those agents as mathematically ideal reasoners. I’ll (...) argue that agents can fail to know trivial consequences of what they know, but never determinately. Such cases are epistemic oversights on behalf of the agent in question, and the facts about epistemic oversights are always indeterminate facts. As a result, we are never in a position to assert that such-and-such constitutes an epistemic oversight for agent i (for we may rationally assert only determinate truths). I then develop formal epistemic models according to which epistemic accessibility relations are vague. Given these models, we can show that epistemic oversights always concern indeterminate cases of knowledge. (shrink)

According to Herman Cappelen’s Austerity Framework, conceptual engineering doesn’t involve concepts, and barely involves engineering. I begin by raising two objections to the Austerity Framework as it stands: the framework cannot account for important normative aspects of conceptual engineering; and it doesn’t give us an adequate response to Strawson-style objections that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. I then supplement the Austerity Framework with an account of semantic normativity, which builds on the speaker/semantic meaning distinction, and show that (...) so-supplemented the Austerity Framework successfully overcomes the two objections. I tentatively conclude that semantic normativity should play a key role in how we understand conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Bundle theories identify material objects with bundles of properties. On the traditional approach, these are the properties possessed by that material object. That view faces a deep problem: it seems to say that all of an object’s properties are essential to it. Essential bundle theory attempts to overcome this objection, by taking the bundle as a specification of the object’s essential properties only. In this paper, I show that essential bundle theory faces a variant of the objection. To avoid the (...) problem, the theory must accept the contingency of identity. I show how this can be achieved in a coherent and well-motivated way, a way that isn’t available to traditional bundle theories. (shrink)

Za pretpostaviti je da identitet, čak ukoliko ga se i provizorno fiksira, biva promatran kao nestabilna, socijalno uvjetovana kategorija, označena i prepoznata ovisno o preraspodijeljenosti moći i trenutnim diskurzivnim relacijama. Pretpostavka teksta jest da se problematika identiteta promišlja kroz konfliktan suodnos dominantno i marginalno pozicioniranih društvenih aktera. Kontekstualizirano unutar ovakve dualne distribucije moći, aplikativni dio teksta tematizira temu proučavanja problematike identiteta u dva različita društvena diskursa . Pritom, film se promatra kao medij popularne kulture, dok bitan segment znanstveno-teorijskog pristupa temi (...) koji omogućuje raspravu pripada domeni kulturne kritike.Inicijalno zadirući u sferu estetskog, tekst započinje primjerima iz teorije prakse. Tiče se inkorporiranosti filmskih sadržaja u osobne identifikacijske procese svakodnevnog života. Praktična pretpostavka jest: budući da se relevantnost kinematografije u velikoj mjeri očituje u dostupnosti plasiranih sadržaja, sam film se tako predstavlja kao privatni i kolektivni itinerar kulturnih znanja i putokaz življenom iskustvu.Teorijski se pak dio priče odnosi na prenošenje znanja specijaliziranim kodovima koje potvrđuje činjenicu disciplinarnog zatvaranja kao identifikacijskog procesa. Ukoliko pretpostavimo da je inicijalna tendencija prepoznavanja, uspostave i upisivanja identiteta u matricu svakodnevice oblik kritičkog djelovanja, utoliko se s pravom možemo pitati postoji li nešto što možemo zvati paradoksom uspostavljanja identiteta? I ukoliko postoji, sabotira li zapravo taj paradoks vlastitu inicijalnu tendenciju, a ta je, ponovimo to – djelovanje? Zaključak sugerira dijalektički i interdisciplinarni pristup problematici čiji su cilj etički i politički korektnije politike predstavljanja. Preciznije, umjesto danas razvidnih i dominirajućih perpetuiranih reprezentiranja manipuliranog znanja, ovaj rad nastoji otvoriti mogućnosti za samoartikulacije i samoprezentiranja različitih identifikacijskih pozicija.It is procurable to postulate that identity as such, even if tentatively fixed, is being beheld as an unstable, socially conditioned category, marked and recognized depending on the distribution of power and current discourse relations. The assumption of this text is the politics and the problematic of identity viewed through the conflict nature of the dominantly and marginally positioned relation of social actors. Contextualized throughout this binary distribution of power, the applicable part of this text introduces the subject of identity studies and the problematic it beholds within identity itself in two different social discourses . In this perspective, the film is seen as the media of popular culture, while the important part of scientifically-theoretical access to the subject which allows debate, is in the domain of cultural critique.Interfering initially in the domain of esthetics, the text begins with examples in theory of practice. It concerns embeddedness of the film epitome into personal identification processes of everyday life. The practical assumption is: given the fact the relevancy of cinematography is broadly shown in the availability of the placed substance, the film itself is presented as a private and a collective itinerary of cultural knowledge and a signpost for lived experience.The theoretical part of the story relates to the transfer of knowledge using specialized codes while confirming the fact of disciplinal closure as well as the identification process. If we were to assume that the initial tendency of recognition, establishment and inscription of identity into the matrix of everyday life is indeed a form of critical action, than it is right to ask if there is a thing that could be called the paradox of establishing identity. And, if there is indeed such a thing, is this paradox actually sabotaging its own initial tendency – that being – acting? Conclusion suggests dialectical and interdisciplinary approach to the problematic which aims to the more correct politics of representation, both in ethical and political sense. More precisely, this text tries to open the possibilities of self-articulation and self-representation of different identification positions instead of nowadays apparent and dominate representations of manipulated knowledge. (shrink)

A puzzle about the presentation of objects located at a distance is seen to animate Aristotle's account of transparency in De Anima and De Sensu.

ABSTRACTWhile extant replies to Jonathan Schaffer’s putative counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding have made significant strides against the charge of transitivity failure, the replies pay insufficient attention to the common structure of the counterexamples, overlooking a deeper structural feature that contributes to their prima facie plausibility. Putative counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding, I argue, trade on the distinction between what I call ‘rigid’ and ‘non-rigid’ grounding, and confusion over how rigid and non-rigid grounding react when combined pumps the (...) intuition that the counterexamples’ chained conclusions are false. The rigid/non-rigid grounding distinction also reveals plausible weakening inference rules that have been overlooked in treatments of the logic of grounding. (shrink)

In this paper, which will be conceived in two units, we try to depict the form and content of those texts which could be marked as philosophical in intention. As we will see, that intention, in the first period of publishing, was determined by a strong influence of German and French Enlightenment. This influence was only natural, given the need for education for the newly-liberated population of Nis. The second period can be discribed as having a more partial interpretation of (...) philosophical problems. At the end of the account, the article is focused on the investigation of cultural and social reasons which caused such a tendency. In this sense, the founding and development of the Faculty of Philosophy in Nis was the main reason behind the progress in philosophical publishing. U ovom radu, koncipiranom kroz dve celine, nastojacemo da ukazemo na formu i sadrzaj onih tekstova cija se usmerenost moze oznaciti filozofskom. Kako ce se videti, ta usmerenost, u prvom periodu izlazenja casopisa, odredjena je uticajima nemackog i francuskog prosvetiteljstva. U drugom periodu, s razloga kojih cemo se tokom rada dotaci, primeticemo sve izrazeniju tendenciju ka izlazenju tekstova koji se mogu oznaciti striktno filozofskim. Otuda cemo ovaj casopis sagledavati, s jedne strane, u kljucu njegovog prosvetiteljskog nastojanja za obrazovanjem tek oslobodjenog niskog stanovnistva, s druge, obzirom na kulturne i drustvene okolnosti u drugoj polovini XX veka. Kako cemo na kraju pokusati da obrazlozimo, tendencija ka sve vecoj prisutnosti filozofskih tekstova, kao i njihova sve izrazenija intencija ka parcijalnom sagledavanju problema, bazirana je na zastupljenosti filozofije unutar obrazovnih institucija. (shrink)

This issue of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (TA) encompasses eight articles by artists and scholars from around the globe who engage with methodologies of art practice within research that reflects on technological and ecological change, contributing to the discourse on the inclusion of subjective experience in research. The articles by authors Dulmini Perera, Kate Doyle, Nora S. Vaage, Merete Lie, Nikita Peresin Meden, Kristina Pranjić, Peter Purg, Nicolaas H. Jacobs, Marth Munro, Chris Broodryk, Semi Ryu, Rahul Mahata, (...) Doreswamy, Sana Altaf and Aqib Javid Parry form a collection that crosses disciplines and genres to engage in fundamental critique of existing modes of enquiry and conclusion. The texts situate art and design methodologies in particular cultural contexts and in relation to frameworks defined by research methodologies of the sciences and humanities to gain agency for critique and to counter a sense of inevitability that has come to mark the most recent crises. (shrink)

The concept and values of wilderness, along with the practice of wilderness preservation, have been under attack for the past several decades. In _Rethinking Wilderness_, Mark Woods responds to seven prominent anti-wilderness arguments. Woods offers a rethinking of the received concept of wilderness, developing a positive account of wilderness as a significant location for the other-than-human value-adding properties of naturalness, wildness, and freedom. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book combines environmental philosophy, environmental history, environmental social sciences, the science of ecology, (...) and the science of conservation biology. (shrink)