I begin by formulating the problem of the nature of fallacy in terms of the logic of the negative evaluation of argument, that is, in terms of a theory of logical criticism; here I discuss several features of my approach and several advantages vis-à-vis other approaches; a main feature of my approach is the concern to avoid both formalist and empiricist excesses. I then define six types of fallaciousness, labeled formal, explanatory, presuppositional, positive, semantical, and persuasive; they all (...) involve arguments whose conclusion may be said not to follow from the premises, that is, they involve the logical evaluation of relationships among propositions. I also provide a set of data consisting of four historical cases or nine specific instances of fallacious arguments; these all pertain to the Copernican controversy about the earth's motion in the seventeenth century. I end with a discussion of further problems and inquiries that deserve attention. (shrink)

Most athletes are subject to intense mental and physical pressure not only during competition but also during practice. An important variable which may influence athletes′ performance is coaching behavior. The aim of the present study is to investigate if coaching behavior and its antecedents differentiate athletes according to their gender, type of sport, competition experience and weekly practice-time. The sample consisted of 367 male and female athletes who participated in both individual and team sports. They completed the Greek version of (...) the “Coaching Behavior Questionnaire”. Results indicated that coaching behavior differentiated athletes of individual sports, and athletes of team sports and experienced women with experienced men. Furthermore, coaches’ behavior contributed to the differentiation on athletes who practice more than those who practice less. In conclusion, these results could help athletes, coaches and sport professionals become more familiar with psychological aspects that influence athletes′ behavior. (shrink)

This article consists of three parts, two introductory, in which the limits and the methods of analysis of dialogues are expounded, and the major part, in which the main features of a philosophical theory of disputation are outlined.It was an essential aim of the philosophical analysis of argumentative dialogues to develop tools of substantiation for cases in which logic doesn't help any more. In the first part of this paper I show that such tools can and will be developed only (...) by analyzing argumentations (“argumentation” in the sense of a monologue in which arguments for a thesis are brought forward), and that the analysis of argumentative dialogues doesn't contribute anything to the development of such tools.The systematically first task of the philosophical analysis of dialogues consists in understanding the general practical aims of philosophically interesting types of dialogue. Only subsequently the rules of the dialogue can be reconstructed as good means for reaching these aims. Dialogical games constructed without referring to such a purpose are externally senseless and useless.The third part is an outline of a philosophical theory of disputation (“disputation” here will mean: (learned) dialogue in which the participants cooperatively though perhaps controversially attempt to find out by means of arguments and mutual criticism whether a thesis is true or false). Disputations contain argumentations, and many functions of a disputation can also be fulfilled by argumentations alone. Certifying the truth of convictions is the specific aim of disputation. This is accomplished by eliminating errors of substantiation and foundation as effectively as possible, in revising false convictions and their foundations, thereby making the remaining convictions more certain. Based on this analysis of the aim of disputation, the basic rules of disputations will be critically reconstructed: possible moves, rules of sequence, and the internal aim and ends of disputations. (shrink)

This paper attempts to systematically characterize critical reactions in argumentative discourse, such as objections, critical questions, rebuttals, refutations, counterarguments, and fallacy charges, in order to contribute to the dialogical approach to argumentation. We shall make use of four parameters to characterize distinct types of critical reaction. First, a critical reaction has a focus, for example on the standpoint, or on another part of an argument. Second, critical reactions appeal to some kind of norm, argumentative or other. Third, they each (...) have a particular illocutionary force, which may include that of giving strategic advice to the other. Fourth, a critical reaction occurs at a particular level of dialogue (the ground level or some meta-level). The concepts here developed shall be applied to discussions of critical reactions by Aristotle and by some contemporary authors. (shrink)

Criticism on the work of John Kinsella is made particularly lively by the fact that Kinsella himself practices so much criticism, and self-criticism, in his poetry, fiction, and essays. This can ma...

The article attempts to compare personalist aspects in the works of Vasily Zenkovsky and Vladimir Lossky. It is shown that two types of philosophical personalism (metaphysical and existentialist) in the history of Russian thought set the framework for two types of theological personalism presented respectively by Zenkovsky and Lossky. The philosophy of Lev Lopatin was the important source for the principles of Zenkovsky’s personalist vision. The relevant philosophical background on Lossky’s personalism is provided by Nikolai Berdyaev’s works. The (...) article considers the deep criticism by the French theologian Jean-Claude Larchet, who seeks to demonstrate philosophical and existentialist sources of Lossky’s theological personalism, rather than patristical ones. It is noted that the criticism addressed to Lossky’s theory may slide to challenging the very possibility of an Orthodox theological personalism as a line of thought. It is shown that Zenkovsky’s works, presenting a nonexistentialist type of personalism, do not provoke such criticism. It’s concluded that whereas Lossky’s legacy in its personalistic aspect is challenged, Zenkovsky’s personalism enables another way of conceiving “Orthodox theological personalism.”. (shrink)

Tbis inquiry may be thought of as a sequel to The Concepts of Value and as an extension of the brief core-vocabulary of aesthetic concepts found in one of the appendices to it. In terms of sheer numbers, most of the value concepts of our language are to be found in the area of human relations and of the aesthetic. There are also other value vocabularies, shorter but equally important, for example, the cognitive and logical. These and other objects of (...) pbilosopbical study (for example, the question of "other minds") deserve the kind of empirical survey that has been made of moral and aesthetic notions, if only to test a priori approaches to them. In the present studyan even more determined empirical approach than that adopted for the first has been found necessary. Once the moral or human value vocabulary has been identified, sentential contexts for the use of the terms readily come to mind. In a study of the language of criticism, however, the vocabulary has first to be sought in the utterances of critics themselves and quoted in sufficient context to make their critical intentions clear. The outcome is that the present study is of great length, about half of it being quotations from critics. The rule adopted for arriving at tbis length go on collecting quotations as long as new types of appraisal came was to to light. (shrink)

In his theory of criticism, D. N. Walton presupposes that an opponent either critically questions an argument, without supplementing this questioning with any reasoning of her own, or that she puts forward a critical question and supplements it with a counterargument, that is, with reasoning in defense of an opposite position of her own. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of in-between critical option for the opponent that needs to be taken into account in any (...) classification of types of criticism, and that should not be overlooked in a system of dialogue norms, nor in a procedure for developing a strategically expedient critique. In this third option, an opponent questions and overtly doubts a statement of the proponent and supplements her doubts with a counterconsideration that explains and motivates her position of critical doubt, yet without supporting any opposite thesis, thereby assisting, as it were, the proponent in his attempt to develop a responsive argumentation, tailor-made to convince this particular opponent. First, I elaborate on the notion of an explanatory counterconsideration. Second, I discuss Walton’s distinction between premises that can be challenged by mere questioning and premises that must be challenged by incurring the obligation to offer counter-argumentation. I contend that the latter type of premises, that I would label “normality premises,” can be attacked without incurring a genuine burden of proof. Instead, it can be attacked by means of incurring a burden of criticism that amounts to the obligation to offer an explanatory counterconsideration, rather than a convincing ex concessis argument. Of course, providing the opponent with the right to discharge her burden of criticism with explanatory counterconsiderations brings a clear strategic ad- vantage to her. It is much less demanding to motivate one’s doubts regarding proposition P, than to convince the proponent of not-P. If we want to encourage opponents to act critically, and proponents to develop responsive arguments, the importance of the notions of an explanatory counterconsideration and of a motivated doubt should be emphasized in the theory of criticism. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the development of the political thought of Czech Marxist philosopher Egon Bondy. It examines his criticism of state socialism in the Eastern Block from a Marxist perspective, and it outlines the development of his analysis. The study covers the period from the late 1960s until the Velvet Revolution in 1989, a period during which Bondy explored the historical constitution and nature of a ‘new ruling class’ in the USSR, as well as deeper trends of convergence (...) between Eastern and Western politico-economical systems. In the 1980s Bondy analysed the reasons for the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though Bondy was, during most of the period of state socialism between 1948–89, a forbidden author, he was also one of the main critics of the political approach of Charta 77 and Václav Havel. This criticism is also outlined in the paper. (shrink)

In the first part ("Determination"), I consider different notions of determination, contrast and compare modal with non-modal accounts and then defend two a-modality theses concerning essence and supervenience. I argue, first, that essence is a a-modal notion, i.e. not usefully analysed in terms of metaphysical modality, and then, contra Kit Fine, that essential properties can be exemplified contingently. I argue, second, that supervenience is also an a-modal notion, and that it should be analysed in terms of constitution relations between properties. (...) In the second part ("A Theory of Truthmaking"), I first review the literature on ontological commitment, and argue that the notion of truthmaking is better suited to play its explanatory rôle. I then argue that we should take truthmaker theory seriously, and that we should provide actual truthmakers for all truths there are. In the last chapter of this part, I review Armstrong's truthmaker theories and argue that they are unsatisfactory. I generalise my criticism to an argument against truthmaker necessitarianism, the view that truthmakers necessarily make true the truths they are truthmakers of. In the third part ("Properties and their Kind(s)"), I discuss qualitative determination. I present and endorse the truthmaker argument for universals, and defend universalism against friends of tropes, states of affairs and facts. I then give a novel characterisation of the important class of intrinsic properties, building on Lewis' work. With a workable notion of intrinsicness at hand, I argue that relations are ontologically – but not "ideologically" – dispensable: qualitative determination in general is a matter of intrinsic structure. In the future, I plan to add two parts and to publish my thesis as a book: In the fourth part ("Exemplification"), I argue for the existence of an exemplification relation tying universals and particulars together. I derive theoretical benefits from this relation by providing adverbialist theories of modality and tense and identify exemplification with a type of parthood. In the fifth part ("Qua qua qua"), I investigate the curious and interesting ontological category of so-called "qua-objects" (Picasso-as-a-painter, for example) and argue that they exist, are not identical with transworld indidivuals or modal parts and that they provide (contingent) truthmakers for all true predications. (shrink)

It furthers the dialectic when the opponent is clear about what motivates and underlies her critical stance, even if she does not adopt an opposite standpoint, but merely doubts the proponent’s opinion. Thus, there is some kind of burden of criticism. In some situations, there should an obligation for the opponent to offer explanatory counterconsiderations, if requested, whereas in others, there is no real dialectical obligation, but a mere responsibility for the opponent to cooperate by providing her motivations for (...) being critical. In this paper, it will be shown how a set of dialogue rules may encourage an opponent, in this latter type of situation, to provide her counterconsiderations, and to do so at an appropriate level of specificity. Special attention will be paid to the desired level of specificity. For example, the critic may challenge a thesis by saying “Why? Says who?,” without conveying whether she could be convinced by an argument from expert opinion, or from position to know, or from popular opinion. What are fair dialogue rules for dealing with less than fully specific criticism? (shrink)

This paper investigates Wittgenstein's "notorious" criticism of Russell's theory of judgment. Instead of advancing a further new interpretation of it, though, I analyze and discuss some of the most promising readings of the Russell/Wittgenstein dispute put forward in the secondary literature; I aim to show that, despite their alleged reciprocal opposition, they cohere with each other because they are, at bottom, different ways of highlighting the same question. I then connect Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell to the account of (...) the nature of the proposition presented in the Tractatus, arguing that the latter can be seen as a natural development of the former. Finally, I make a quick connection between Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell and the conception of the world as the totality of facts, as presented in the Tractatus. (shrink)

This article aims at showing the potentiality of Transcendent Theosophy in the creation of peace and denial of religious violence. Belief in Necessary Being that is identical to beauty and perfection is one of the central issues in Islamic philosophy, particularly Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Theosophy. This belief has different stages, the highest one of which is a love-based sense of humbleness before God who is the source of beauty. Thus, faith in the thought of Mulla Sadra is one of the (...) aesthetic categories. Surrender to such a Being leads to love in him and his effects. Thus, in Transcendent Theosophy, love in God is followed by the love in people. This love is associated with the sense of responsibility and the effort for the realisation of people’s rights. In the final part of the article under the title ‘Mulla Sadra and Confrontation of Two Types of Religious Understanding’, through the analysis of Mulla Sadra’s dialogue with a religious radical, we have criticised the discourse of religious violence and concluded that Transcendent Theosophy is a defender of human rights and a pioneer of peace and a despiser of religious violence. The most important finding of this study is that according to Mulla Sadra, religious radical interpretations are the source of the emergence of religious violence, and the solution to this problem is the promotion of rational and conscious religiosity. The method used in this research is of descriptive-analytic type.Contribution: The article brought to fore the potentiality of Islamic philosophy for the realisation of peace and the denial of religious violence. The authors analytically studied Mulla Sadra’s pacifist foundations in order to ascertain its relation with non-violence towards humans. The main contribution of this article is that the teachings of Transcendent Theosophy are very useful for creating peaceful coexistence between human beings. (shrink)

The articles examines the teleofunctional solution to the problem of mental causation, presented by Dmitry Volkov in his recently published book Free Will. An Illusion or an Opportunity. D.B. Volkov proposes solutions to three big metaphysical problems – mental causation, personal identity, and free will. Solving the first problem, Volkov creatively combines the advantages of Dennett’s teleofunctional model and Vasilyev’s local interactionism. Volkov’s teleofunctional model of mental causation seeks to prove the causal relevance of mental properties as non-local higher order (...) properties. In my view, its substantiation is based on three points: (a) critics of the exclusion problem and Kim’s model of mental causation, (b) “Library of first editions” argument, (c) reduction of the causal trajectories argument (CTA 1) by Vasilyev to the counterpart argument (CTA 2) by Volkov. Each of these points faces objections. Kim’s criticism is based on an implicit confusion of two types of reduction – reduction from supervenience and from multiple realizability. The latter type does not threaten Kim’s ideas, but Volkov uses this very type in his criticism. The “Library of first editions” argument does not achieve its goal due to compositional features and because non-local relational properties are a type of external properties that cannot be causally relevant. The reduction of CTA 1 to CTA 2 is unsuccessful since, in the case of this reduction, important features of CTA 1 are lost – these are local mental properties, due to which the influence of non-local physical factors occurs. My main objection is that the concept of causally relevant non-local properties is incompatible with the very concept of cause. The set of causally relevant properties of cause can only be local. (shrink)

I defend the ethical fittingness theory (EFT), the thesis that whenever it is legitimate ethically to evaluate a representational artwork for the perspective it embodies, such evaluation systematically bears on the work's artistic value. EFT is a form of radical moralism, claiming that the systematic relationship between the selected type of ethical evaluation and artistic evaluation always obtains, for works of any kind. The argument for EFT spells out the implications of ethically judging an artwork for its perspective, where such (...) an ethical evaluation is understood as an assessment of how well the work's ethical perspective fits extra-fictional reality—how appropriate, correct, or true the perspective is. The argument shows that the ethical legitimacy of judging a work for its perspective ipso facto proves the judgment's art-critical relevance. Hence, the argument effectively amounts to a reductio ad absurdum of theories that admit the legitimacy of ethically judging artworks this way, but deny or qualify the judgment's relevance to artistic merit. Since EFT is stated conditionally, the argument need not indicate how often artworks are subject to this type of ethical evaluation. Nonetheless, I make a case for the relevance of EFT to actual art criticism and contemporary philosophical debate. (shrink)

The traditions about isrāʾīliyyāt that were seen almost in all the types of Islamic sciences appeared in the sources of tafsīr from early periods. These traditions that were generally used to explain the Qurʾān were seen problem and critisized by some exegetical specialists. Even though corresponding to a relative later period in the classical era, an approach was tried to put forward in view of the traditions about isrāʾīliyyāt. This methodological concern for isrāʾīliyyāt in classical period has increased and (...) been influential for many researchers from east and west to work on this issue in modern times. There has been reached to important results about the issues of the definition of isrāʾīliyyāt, the source of it, its spread in Islamic sciences, its aim of usage, the progress of these positive-negative attitudes against these traditions in historical process. But it is important to discuss some evaluations and analysis again that put forward in this process when different cases about the issue are taken into consideration. According to this, a series of problem, such as how the isrāʾīliyyāt can be defined in tafsīr, when the criticism of isrāʾīliyyāt started, whether Biqāʿī was the first exegete who made reference to Bible or not will be discussed considering relevant resources in this article.Summary: Since the early periods, isrā’īliyyāt narratives were used as a source of information in tafsīrs. These narratives, which are transmitted in various tafsīrs of the Qur’ān, one of the main sources of Islamic religion, have also taken the methodological interests of some exegete since the early periods. This interest continued in the modern period, and both Western and Eastern researchers made research on isrā’īliyyāt. Some of the findings, analyses, and claims available in researches on this subject will be reexamined in this article. The first of these is the problem of the definition of isrā’īliyyāt. In contemporary research, inclusive definitions are made for isrā’īliyyāt, seen in all sources. These definitions do not allow for a refined description of isrā’īliyyāt which is handled in terms of different intentions in the sources of each different field and which varies in terms of the issues it covers, leading to the underestimation of some of its aspects in relevant fields. In the definitions, it is stated that isrā’īliyyāt is mostly learned from the Ahl al-Kitāb, (the People of the Book) it became widespread along with Islām and it included narratives about caliphs, dynasties, and Mahdī, as well. Another issue is to be emphasized that they are fictive or mythological. In classical tafsīrs, isrā’īliyyāt is observed to be related mainly with the history of the Ahl al-Kitāb or with the subjects they know about. In the modern era, the narratives about the ancestors of the Arabs have been identified as isrā’īliyyāt. If some of the isrā’īliyyāt narratives are related to the history of Arabs, then their resource should be the historical-cultural memory of Arabs. However, as almost all Qur’ānic stories were somewhat known before the revelation period and relations with the Ahl al-Kitāb dated back to times long before the Islamic period, the claim that these narratives became widespread along with Islām should be revised. It is also problematic to emphasize the legendary nature of some of the isrā’īliyyāt and to make that as a reason to reject all. Such emphasis also leads to the underestimation of the functions of narratives in tafsīrs. In isrā’īliyyāt, tafsīr was used for i) interpreting the ambiguous words in the stories, ii) to bring evidence to the Ahl al-Kitāb, and ii) tarhīb-targhīb (encouragement-warning). These narratives can be used as a source in tafsīr unless they are explicitly falsified by the data of fields such as history, history of religions and archaeology as well as the Qur’ān and the true Sunnah. The first criticisms of isrā’īliyyāt are claimed to belong to exegete like Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 543/148) or Ibn ‘Aṭīyah (d. 541/1147). However, criticism of isrā’īliyyāt is also observed in the tafsīrs of earlier exegete, such as al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) or al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067). They do not necessarily have to use the term isrā’īliyyāt explicitly in their criticism like the later ones. If the narratives they criticize and the reasons for their criticism are the same as those of the later exegete, it will be necessary to date the criticism of isrā’īliyyāt back to the 4th Century of the Hegira. The understanding that "the expression in the story is sufficient, it is unnecessary to deal with the ambiguities; instead, it is necessary to deal with the lesson and wisdom in the story" is one of the criteria that Muḥammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905), who is deemed to be the pioneer of the strict criticism of isrā’īliyyāt in the modern period, took as basis in this criticism, is valid for the exegete of the classical period, as well. Although exegete, such as al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), al-Māturīdī, al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), and Abū Ḥayyān (d. 745/1344) who had this understanding, gave place to isrā’īliyyāt, these people recognized that "these narratives were not final, binding or necessary”, indeed. The understanding that such expression in the story is sufficient, which is one of the reasons for such awareness in the classical period, seems to have turned into a strict rejection in the modern period. Another issue is the claim that Biqā‘ī (d. 885/1480) was the first exegete to systematically benefit from the Bible in tafsīr in the classical period. However, al-Daylamī (d. 593/1197) before Biqā‘ī, is also observed to have used the Old Testament systematically in tafsīr. He cited the Tanakh in his period in two ways. He either directly quoted from the translation of Tanakh or the Hebrew text written in Arabic letters. Another exegete who used the Tanakh as a source in his tafsīr was al-Ṣafadī (d. 696/1296). He enriched his tafsīr with systematic quotations from the Tanakh. Therefore, the use of the Bible as a source of interpretation in the classical period should not be started with Biqā‘ī. The reason why the pioneer exegete of the classical period did not directly use the Bible is claimed to be the fact that they falsified it and deemed the isrā’īliyyāt narrated from the predecessors to be more reliable. However, it is known that a significant portion of the isrā’īliyyāt, which was orally transferred from the predecessors, is based on written sources, particularly including the apocryphal texts. So just like the Bible, isrā’īliyyāt, which was orally transferred from the predecessors, is problematic in terms of authenticity. This allows us to argue that classical exegete have an inconsistent attitude, indeed. On the other hand, when we take into account the fact that classical exegetes criticize these narratives from time to time and believe that they are not final or binding, the problem of potential inconsistency disappears. Accordingly, they did not deem chain transmission of these narratives from the predecessors by reliable transmitters to be a sufficient reason for their acceptance and adoption for good and all. (shrink)

Two types of criticism are frequently levelled at the history of ideas in general and the history of political theory in particular. The first is very much that of historians practising in other fields; that it is written as a saga in which all the great deeds are done by entities which could not, in principle, do anything. In it, Science is always wrestling with Theology, Empiricism with Rationalism, monism with dualism, evolution with the Great Chain of Being, (...) artifice with nature, Politik with political moralism. Its protagonists are never humans, but only reified abstractions—or, if humans by inadvertence, humans only as the loci of these abstractions. The other charge, one more frequently levelled by philosophers, is that it is insensitive to the distinctive features of ideas, unconcerned with, or more often ineffectual in its concern with, truth and falsehood, its products more like intellectual seed-catalogues than adequate studies of thought In short it is characterised by a persistent tension between the threats of falsity in its history and incompetence in its philosophy. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger devotes extensive discussion to medieval philosophers, particularly to their treatment of Truth and Being. On both these topics, Heidegger accuses them of forgetting the question of Being and of being responsible for subjugating truth to the modern crusade for certainty: ‘truth is denied its own mode of being’ and is subordinated ‘to an intellect that judges correctly’. Though there are some studies that discuss Heidegger’s debt to and criticism of medieval thought, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas, there (...) is no constructive reply to his assertions. As a result, Heidegger’s critique had an unprecedented effect on the credibility of medieval philosophy, whereby great portions of the philosophical community dismiss it altogether as an illegitimate Onto‐Theology. It is the aim of this study to offer a constructive reply that will fundamentally grapple with these allegations. By constructive reply we mean not only a reply that avoids the problems Heidegger raises regarding existence, essence and truth, but more importantly, one that uses Heidegger’s criticism in order to present a more insightful account of these notions. The present study is composed of two parts where the second serves as a sort of addendum. The first part, the core of this study, is an attempt to develop an understanding of the distinction between essence and existence that, on the one hand, accords with Heidegger’s criticism while on the other hand advances our understanding of how we think and understand reality. After presenting Heidegger’s depiction of Aquinas’s distinction between essence and existence (esse) as a real distinction, the study will present several views propounded by scholars of Aquinas regarding the status of this distinction. It will be argued that it is not clear whether the distinction is real, formal or conceptual, and that different types of distinction are applied in different places, particularly in regard to the phantasm that Aquinas considers essential to the human act of thinking. The second part diverges from the first part and focuses on Heidegger’s criticism of Aquinas’s conception of truth as adequation, i.e., what it is that grounds the possibility of truth as adequation. This divergence is necessary in order to present a full metaphysical response to Heidegger’s criticism. Since the aim of the present study is to argue that Aquinas’s philosophical system can contend with Heidegger’s criticism, a partial reply would greatly diminish its effectiveness. (shrink)

What exactly do we do when we try to make sense of other people e.g. by ascribing mental states like beliefs and desires to them? After a short criticism of Theory-Theory, Interaction Theory and the Narrative Theory of understanding others as well as an extended criticism of the Simulation Theory in Goldman's recent version (2006), we suggest an alternative approach: the Person Model Theory . Person models are the basis for our ability to register and evaluate persons having (...) mental as well as physical properties. We argue that there are two kinds of person models, nonconceptual person schemata and conceptual person images , and both types of models can be developed for individuals as well as for groups. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to uncover the role played by Wittgenstein's context principle in his criticism of Russell's theory of types. There is evidence in Wittgenstein's writings that a syntactical version of the context principle in connection with the theory of symbolism functions as a good reason for his dispensing with the theory of types.

Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world, often neglected in philosophy, has the potential to capture the interplay of identity and difference which shapes our action, interaction, and experience in everyday life. Compared to still dominant identity-based models such as that of Jürgen Habermas, who assumes a coordination of meaning built on the idealisation of stable rules, Schutz’s theory is an important step forward. However, his central notion of a “type” runs into a difficulty which requires constructive criticism. Against (...) the background of Schutz’s theory of meaning inspired by Bergson and Husserl, his idea of types “taken for granted until further notice” is shown to express a primacy of identity which, in the final analysis, leads into the implausible scenario of ‘ubiquitous tunnel vision’. This makes it necessary to go beyond Schutz and assume an inherently motivated tendency towards difference in meaning termed ‘spontaneity’. Where spontaneity and the opposed tendency towards identity of meaning work together in the application of types, they enable embodied subjects to interact with the world and with each other in the routine yet flexible and sometimes innovative ways which we all know. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that since artworks cannot take moral responsibility, it is impossible to establish any sort of ethical criticism towards them for their own sake. Ethical criticism of art is inevitably directed at the artist(s), who can take moral responsibility for creating or performing the art in certain ways. Therefore, we should distinguish between two types of criticism towards art: (1) the ethical criticism should be contextualized within the author-work framework, meaning that (...) the extent to which the author can take moral responsibility will significantly affect the ethical criticism of art, while artworks can serve as acts or evidence of acts (of the author) in ethical criticism; (2) ‘ethical’ criticism of art for the work’s own sake should be excluded from the ethical issue and instead reconstructed in the causal issue. (shrink)

Brentanians defend the view that there are distinct types of object, but that this does not entail the admission of different modes of being. The most general distinction among objects is the one between realia, which are causally efficacious, and irrealia, which are causally inert. As for being, which is equated with existence, it is understood in terms of “correct acknowledgeability.” This view was defended for some time by Brentano himself and then by his student Anton Marty. Their position (...) is opposed to Bolzanian, Husserlian, and Meinongian ontologies, in which a distinction in the (higher) types of object implies a distinction in their mode of being. These Austro-German discussions anticipate much of the contemporary debate between Quineans, who accept only differences in objects, and neo-Meinongians or other ontological pluralists, who accept different modes of being. My paper first presents the Brentanian view in detail and then evaluates its philosophical significance. (shrink)

Before it succumbed to political censorship in Croatia in 1974 and afterward, a movement known as praxis philosophy reached its pinnacle as a critical response to the conceptually and socially corrupted dialectical and historical materialism which dominated the former Yugoslavian region. Two of the most prominent philosophers of "praxis movement" – Milan Kangrga and Gajo Petrović – the Praxists – remained to be an inspirational source for junior and senior scholars to date. Recently, a debate was initiated regarding the value (...) of "praxis philosophy", and has notably produced a series of assessments that were atypical in comparison to virtually all previous reviews. The praxis movement was scorned by many commentators who concluded that Praxists were logically inconsistent and that their errors were covered up by too abstract, confusing concepts that lacked proper articulation. Among other things, it was significantly pointed out that their philosophical investigations neither had nor will have any useful application in our society. In this paper, I offer (1) a refutation of these conclusions by (2) describing the structure of praxis philosophy, thus far absent from praxis studies. My ultimate objective was to show that Praxists intentionally developed an alternative philosophical thought to subdue the type of thinking which is fundamental for sterile criticism, and thus I aimed to explain that Praxists self-consciously chose to oppose the approach they were accused of neglecting. Their central idea was to send a message opposite of what their recent criticists think they failed to do. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that Williamson’s arguments against luminosity and the KK principle do not work, at least in a scientific context. Both of these arguments are based on the presence of a so-called “buffer zone” between situations in which one is in a position to know p and situations in which one is in a position to know ¬p. In those positions belonging to the buffer zone ¬p holds, but one is not in a position to know ¬p. (...) The presence of this buffer zone triggers two types of sorites arguments. We show that this kind of argument does not hold in a scientific context, where the buffer zone is controlled by a quantitative measurement of the experimental error. (shrink)

In the Old Attic Comedy contemporary figures were criticized in the most outspoken manner. The legitimate stage seems to have departed from this practice in part with the advent of the Middle Comedy, and almost completely in the New. It might be tempting to imagine that direct criticism of contemporaries could still have been found on the impermanent stages of the travelling mimes. But there is no evidence to show that this was so. From the beginning the Greek mime (...) laid the emphasis on the portrayal of character, on the delineation of types rather than of individuals. In the information that we possess about the deikelistai and other forms of immature burlesque, about the comedy of Megara, and about the phlyakes of Tarentum, there is nothing to show that the little plays took any cognizance of contemporary events; the only individualized characters introduced are the gods and heroes of mythology. The fragments of Sophron and Epicharmus give no indication that they attacked men of their own times, while the extant mimes of Herodas, like the mimic imitations in Theocritus, are concerned solely with types of humanity, not with individuals. (shrink)

This paper discusses several types of relevance criticism within dialogue. Relevance criticism is a way one could or should criticize one's partner's contribution in a conversation as being deficient in respect of conversational coherence. The first section tries to narrow down the scope of the subject to manageable proportions. Attention is given to the distinction between criticism of alleged fallacies within dialogue and such criticism as pertains to argumentative texts. Within dialogue one may distigguish tenability (...) criticism, connection criticism, and narrow-type relevance criticism. Only the last of these three types of criticism constitutes a charge of fallacy and carries with it a burden of proof. In the second it is observed that a full study of narrow-type relevance criticism would require the construction of complicated, many-layered, dialogue systems. Such a study can, however, be profitably preceded by setting up profiles of dialogue that help us discuss the ins and outs of certain types of move. This is illustrated with an example. (shrink)

One of the chief difficulties we encounter as modern readers in perceiving the artistry of biblical narrative is precisely that we have lost most of the keys to the conventions out of which it was shaped. The professional Bible scholars have not offered much help in this regard, for their closest approximation to the study of convention is form criticism, which is set on finding recurrent regularities of pattern rather than the manifold variations upon a pattern that any system (...) of literary convention elicits; moreover, form criticism uses these patterns for excavative ends to support hypotheses about the social functions of the text, its historical evolution, and so forth. . . . The most crucial case in point is the perplexing fact that in biblical narrative more or less the same story often seems to be told two or three or more times about different characters, or sometimes even about the same character in different sets of circumstances. Three times a patriarch is driven by famine to a southern region where he pretends that his wife is his sister, narrowly avoids a violation of the conjugal bond by the local ruler, and is sent away with gifts. Twice Hagar flees into the wilderness from Sarah's hostility and discovers a miraculous well, and that story itself seems only a special variation of the recurrent story of bitter rivalry between a barren, favored wife and a fertile co-wife or concubine. That situation, in turn, suggests another oft-told tale in the Bible, of a woman long barren who is vouchsafed a divine promise of progeny, whether by God himself or through a divine messenger or oracle, and who then gives birth to a hero. Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of, among other works, Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre and Defenses of the Imagination. He has written a general literary study of biblical narrative, of which this essay forms a chapter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:REID' S CRITICISM OF HUME'S THEORY OF PERSONAL IDENTITY One of the most interesting philosophical controversies is that between Reid and Hume, considered as representatives of two different sorts of empiricism. Hume, for these purposes, represents 'radical' empiricism, and the attempt to base knowledge solely on experience and what can be validly inferred from it, regardless of how far this leads one from everyday notions and beliefs. Reid, (...) in contrast, represents 'common sense' empiricism, and the view that the. results of experience and deduction must conform to a number of 'first principles or intuitive judgments' (Essays on the intellectual powers of man, VI, 4), which aie unprovable, but which no one can avoid accepting. It is important to be clear about the status of Reid' s 'intuitive judgments', or 'principles of common sense'. They are not merely the general beliefs of a particular culture, which could be 'vulgar errors or preJUdICeS''. Nor are they merely beliefs generally held by people uncorrupted by philosophy. They are assumptions which have to be made if theoretical or practical activity is to be possible at all, principles which are always accepted in practice even by those who deny them in theory. For example, although the uniformity of nature is not a logically necessary truth, everybody always thinks and acts in ways that presuppose that it is true: 'Nature is governed by fixed laws, and if it were not so, there could be no such thing as prudence in human conduct.... the whole fabric of natural philosophy is built upon this principle.' (Essays, VI, 5) Again, everyone, even a theoretical determinist, makes moral judgments and deliberates what to do; and these activities presuppose a belief in human free will. (Essays, ibid.) Hume himself, as Reid was aware, accepted the validity of some principles of this sort, notably of the 42. uniformity of nature. But Reid was dissatisfied with Hume's account, partly because he thought Hume had rejected far too much, and partly because of the grounds Hume gives for accepting, for example, the validity of induction, and the existence of the external physical world. Hume regards these beliefs as non-rational, and deriving from our psychological make-up; it is nature and not reason which causes the belief in an ordered physical reality. In Hume's eyes this is a sufficient justification: if our nature compels us to believe something, this is as good a ground for believing it as any other. Reid, on the other hand, believed, first, that there were many more principles of this sort than Hume had acknowledged, and secondly, that the justification of them was rational, and not merely psychologically determined, since it was based on the impossibility of thinking and acting coherently without them. Hence, even though Hume builds up with one hand what he pulls 'down with the other, and destroys the rational basis for belief only to replace it by one based on human nature and psychology, Reid continues to treat him as the archsceptic. In constructing his list of first principles in Essays, VI, 5, Reid explicitly or implicitly attacks Hume's 'scepticism' on five points - the existence of the mind; the existence of the physical world and the reliability of our senses; the reliability of memory; the reliability of reason; and the uniformity of nature. Against this scepticism he deploys three types of argument. The first is the argument from the universal beliefs of mankind, particular!/ as displayed in the structural features supposedly common to all languages. The second is the argument that the position of the sceptic is, when its consequences are worked out, either self-contradictory or incoherent. And the third is the argument already mentioned, that this position is inconsistent with other beliefs which the sceptic inevitably holds, since he thinks and acts in ways which are 43. inconsistent with their falsity, and cannot avoid doing so. To assess the force of Reid' s attacks, we have to consider both the strength of arguments of this sort in general and whether they apply in all these five cases. In this article, I want to concentrate on the first issue of the five, that of personal identity. Apart from displaying Reid... (shrink)

Noël Carroll proposes a generalist theory of art criticism, which essentially involves evaluations of artworks on the basis of their success value, at the cost of rendering evaluations of reception value irrelevant to criticism. In this article, I argue for a hybrid account of art criticism, which incorporates Carroll's objective model but puts Carroll-type evaluations in the service of evaluations of reception value. I argue that this hybrid model is supported by Kant's theory of taste. Hence, I (...) not only present an alternative theory of metacriticism, which has the merit of reinstating the centrality of reception value in art critics’ evaluations, but also show that, contrary to a common conception, Kant's aesthetic theory can house a fruitful account of art criticism. The benefit of this hybrid account is that, despite being essentially particularist, it should be appealing even to generalists, including Carroll. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1199-1225, November 2022. In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative (...) methodology by bringing together philosophy and political science. This approach led to a series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism, evaluative, propositional and pluralist political criticism. (shrink)

In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by bringing together philosophy and political science. This approach led to a (...) series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism, evaluative, propositional and pluralist political criticism. (shrink)

Lukacs's post-1930 literary criticism reveals a problematic continuity with the theory of totality articulated in History and Class Consciousness (1923). No longer the self-knowledge of a militant proletariat, totality emerges as the contemplative vision of great bourgeois novelists. Shorn of its earlier messianic overtones, the later criticism promises a more labile political theory whose possibilities have already been explored by theorists such as liberation theologians and socialist feminists. This same change, however, coupled with Lukacs's failure to confront its (...) metatheoretical consequences, severs theory and practice and threatens to reduce revolutionary activity to a subjective and strident moralizing. (shrink)

As a result of the developments in science and technology, humanity began to experience a digital transformation after the 19th century. With this digital transformation, it is seen that a serious change has occurred in human beings biologically, socially, and, more specifically, religiously. One could say that different trends have emerged at many points where human relations, the relationship of the human with the environment and with God are also affected. Among the most comprehensive and prominent of these trends is (...) transhumanism because of its aims for humanity and the world. Transhumanism, which views technology as the main point of reference for the future of humanity, is also considered a cultural, social, and ideological human movement with its statements intended for society. It considers immortality as a goal, along with such claims as improving welfare, extending human life, and wiping out diseases by using technology in every aspect of human life. Transhumanists, who claim that they can achieve immortality thanks to technology, argue that this will happen in two ways. The first is biological immortality. It will be achieved by eliminating all kinds of biological factors that lead to humans aging and death. The second is digital or virtual immortality, which is achieved by transferring human consciousness from the biological body to computer interfaces and installing it in any desired entity. This perspective must be critically examined as it can be considered an attempt to challenge death, which is the basic doctrine of classical religions. In the present study, human immortality, considered the most important claim made by transhumanists, is criticized within kalām, Islamic theology. Of course, transhumanists’ account of human immortality is impossible, according to kalām. It can be said that transhumanists view of immortal human can be considered in the category of created beings, which is defined in kalām as "the being created later and needs another being in order to exist and to continue its existence". Given that transhumanists base the idea of the immortal being upon biological healing or digital transmission, it is clear that both types of beings need someone else. Therefore, one could say that it would be more reasonable to define transhumanists’ notion of immortality as the act of prolonging human life. It is because the life of immortal beings, accepted as biological or digital entities, is shaped by many factors. If these factors disappear, so does the being. On the other hand, the attribute of immortality, which belongs to the eternal being only, according to kalām, must come from itself without needing any other being. Therefore, the notion of immortal being suggested by the transhumanists must be reexamined within kalām and be redefined as the extension of life. The redefined immortality as the extension of life hardly poses kalāmī (or theological) problems. In fact, Islam encourages using all types of tools and equipment to enable humans to have a healthy and blissful life. (shrink)

Over a decade ago, Arthur Danto announced that art ended in the sixties. Ever since this declaration, he has been at the forefront of a radical critique of the nature of art in our time. After the End of Art presents Danto's first full-scale reformulation of his original insight, showing how, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art has deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. Moreover, he leads the way to a (...) new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol's Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery store. Here we are engaged in a series of insightful and entertaining conversations on the most relevant aesthetic and philosophical issues of art, conducted by an especially acute observer of the art scene today.Originally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts, these writings cover art history, pop art, "people's art," the future role of museums, and the critical contributions of Clement Greenberg--who helped make sense of modernism for viewers over two generations ago through an aesthetics-based criticism. Tracing art history from a mimetic tradition through the modern era of manifestos, Danto shows that it wasn't until the invention of Pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified. Even modernist art, which tried to break with the past by questioning the ways of producing art, hinged on a narrative.Traditional notions of aesthetics can no longer apply to contemporary art, argues Danto. Instead he focuses on a philosophy of art criticism that can deal with perhaps the most perplexing feature of contemporary art: that everything is possible. (shrink)

‘The Principles of the Pure Type Theory’ is a translation of Leon Chwistek's 1922 paper ‘Zasady czystej teorii typów’. It summarizes Chwistek's results from a series of studies of the logic of Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica which were published between 1912 and 1924. Chwistek's main argument involves a criticism of the axiom of reducibility. Moreover, ‘The Principles of the Pure Type Theory’ is a source for Chwistek's views on an issue in Whitehead and Russell's ‘no-class theory of classes’ (...) involving the notion of ‘scope’. (shrink)

Brentano dans son introduction des objets in-existants affirme qu’il s’est inspiré de thèses médiévaleset on considère généralement qu’il se réfère aux thèses scotistes. En fait l’intentio a été l’objet d’intenses débats du milieu du XIIIe au milieu du XIVe siècle. On se propose ici d’en donner une idée à partir de la critique la plus radicale de la notion d’esse intentionale par Guillaume d’Ockham. Pour cela on commence par rappeler les principales thèses qui font intervenir des intentiones avec un certain (...) type d’existence, des species dans les processus de perception et d’aperception, et l’objet de l’intellection avant de présenter leur réfutation par Ockham. On montre que si cette réfutation est tout de suite radicale pour les species, elle retient pour l’intellection certains aspects de la solution scotiste. Ockham est alors conduit, dans un premier temps, à considérer l’objet de l’intellection comme une entité, un fictum ayant un mode d’être propre, un esse objectivum. Mais comme il se met par là en contradiction avec l’argument d’économie qu’il invoque systématiquement par ailleurs, celui-ci est retourné contre lui par certains de ses adversaires. Si bien que dans un second temps il considère l’acte de l’intellection comme signe de la chose intelligée et refuse toute existence à quelqu’objet de l’intellection qui serait autre que la chose. (shrink)

Criticising someone’s conduct is a disaffiliative action that can attract recipient objections, particularly in the form of defensive detailing by which the recipient volunteers extenuating circumstances that undermine the criticism. In Therapeutic Community meetings for clients with drug addiction, support staff regularly criticise clients’ behaviours that violate therapeutic principles or norms of conduct. This study examines cases where, rather than criticising a client’s behaviour directly, TC staff members do so indirectly through an anecdote: a case illustrating the inappropriateness of (...) the type of conduct of which the client’s behaviour is an instantiation. TC staff members design the anecdote to convey a principle or norm of conduct which the client has putatively violated, and they systematically pursue endorsement of that principle by the client. By constructing the anecdote as an exemplary case, distanced from the individual client’s personal experience, TC staff members make it an empirically unverifiable, self-evident, and therefore hard to challenge, illustration of a norm. (shrink)

The charge that a particular critical remark is “irrelevant” to its object is one of the most frequently heard in discussion and debate among critics. Frequently heard because frequently true: there has never been a shortage of criticism which aimlessly relates the work to the artist’s biography, or invokes inappropriate artistic standards, or employs pointless historical speculation, or describes the critic’s own foggy reveries to misdirect our attention and obscure the essential significance of the object before us. But even (...) if we grant that there is no limit on ways to go wrong in criticism, the question remains whether it might be possible at least to isolate areas of traditional critical discourse or general kinds of critical remark which could be ruled out as ever having a proper place in the effort to enhance our understanding of works of art. This is part of the concern to find a correct method for doing criticism, a concern which, as the central issue in talk about talk about art, has generated more controversy than any single commentator might hope to gloss. Nevertheless there is a certain seldom noticed characteristic inherent in the very concept of a method which is necessarily shared by all attempts to formulate methods of criticism. Its recognition will enable us to discern important features intrinsic to both objects of art and critical discourse which serve to distinguish these from ordinary objects and other types of discourse. (shrink)

In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by bringing together philosophy (political theory) and political science. This approach led (...) to a series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance (as is often the case in philosophy) to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism (primary), evaluative, propositional (first or secondary order) and pluralist political criticism. (shrink)

Hume’s familiar sceptical argument against induction brands as irrational our practice of generalising from observed regularities because of its reliance on the assumption that nature is uniform, an assumption which is unjustifiable. The argument which I wish to consider focuses instead on the observed regularities that are required if we are legitimately to extrapolate from experience. According to Hume, the paradigm type of inductive reasoning involves a constant conjunction. But in fact we do not encounter such invariable uniformities: our experience (...) is, almost invariably, irregular. So setting aside Hume’s sceptical qualms about the very attempt to form expectations about the hitherto unobserved, how can we justify our ignoring such irregularities? My conclusion is that, even if the principle of uniformity can be justified, our practice is irrational by Hume’s lights. This is a new Humean critique of our “causal reasoning,” for, although Hume does not present it, the ingredients are all his. (shrink)

Floridi’s infosphere consisting of informational reality is estimated and delineated by introducing the new notion of Typ-Ken, an undifferentiated amalgam of type and token that can be expressed as either type or token dependent on contingent ontological commitment. First, we elaborate Floridi’s system, level of abstraction (LoA), model, and structure scheme, which is proposed to reconcile ontic with epistemic structural reality, and obtain the duality of type and token inherited in the relationship between LoA and model. While we focus on (...) the ontological commitment that can negotiate and emphasize the discrepancy between type and token, we show that most research focusing on different hierarchical layers (type and token) has converged onto the flattened perspective of type and token to clarify the role of ontological commitment. We propose the idea of Typ-Ken to avoid this flattening. In addition, we elaborate Taddeo and Floridi’s criticism of approaches to the symbol grounding problem and show that their criticism based on the zero semantical commitment condition is specific to the agents affected by the flattening. We then take bird flocks as a metaphor for the living infosphere as if it had one mind. The knowledge recently yielded by image analysis indicates that it is difficult for previous flock models based on agents equipped with the flattening of local (token) and global (type) to show the special feature of a flock of the scale-free proportion (SFP). We show here that agents based on the Typ-Ken can reveal the SFP, which is the essential characteristic of the living infosphere. In other words, Typ-Ken is an expression for informational reality (LoA and model with ontological commitment) that can reveal seamless local and global interactions in the functioning of a flock or infosphere. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se examinan los supuestos del liberalismo económico, a través de los cuales este divinizó el mercado y lo convirtió en una instancia totalizadora exenta de toda crítica. El neoliberalismo ha hecho del mercado un locus donde el ser y el deber ser se reconcilian en perfecta unidad. De esta manera, el mercado deviene en el único y verdadero sujeto del razonar: solo él piensa y todos sus movimientos son contenidos de lo racional. Al comparar la obra de Friedrich von (...) Hayek con la de Hegel y Leibniz, se ve que estos autores comparten una misma estructura de pensamiento que, en última instancia, nos remite al ámbito de la teodicea. ABSTRACT The article examines the assumptions that led economic liberalism to deify the market and transform it into a totality exempted from any type of criticism. Neoliberalism has turned the market into a locus in which is and ought are reconciled into a perfect unity. Thus, the market becomes the sole, true subject of reasoning: only it thinks and all of its movements are contents of the rational. The comparison of Friedrich von Hayek's work with that of Hegel and Leibniz shows that these authors share the same structure of thought, which ultimately leads us to the sphere of theodicy. (shrink)