In his article, Vsevolod Ladov poses an important question – might paradoxes admit of a uniform solution? As an answer, I propose looking at an approach in which it is argued that we must recognize the truth predicate as merely analogous to a vague predicate. The proponents of this approach (V. McGee, J. Tap- penden, H. Field, G. Priest and D. Hyde) insist that there is a structural relation between sorites paradoxes and self-reference paradoxes and that they should have a (...) unified solution. (shrink)

This article provides a critical analysis of Mark Walker’s type-token theory. This theory purports to describe, explain, and justify the mechanism by which moral and legal responsibility can be attributed to exact and complete duplicates of persons. However, Walker’s defence of the view of persons as abstract entities is met with several metaphysical objections. Alternatively, a new approach to moral and legal responsibility is developed based on principles of agency law, in which the conception of a guilty person does not (...) require identity with the person who committed the culpable act. (shrink)

The article presents a critique of aesthetic realism. The core of this theory contains three theses: (AR) aesthetic properties are the sources of aesthetic experience; (PA) perceptual acquaintance with the objects of aesthetic evaluation is a sine qua non condition for making an judgment; (DM) aesthetic properties are describable. Arguments of faultless disagreement, esse is percipi, and zombie art cast doubt on theses (AR) and (DM). Based on this critique, an alternative nominalist theory of aesthetic experience is proposed, in which (...) the perceptual properties of the object are considered as sufficient condition of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

The article examines the issue of a necessary connection between the phenomena of law and morality. According to legal positiv- ism, morality is not a criterion of the legitimacy for legal norms. The law can have any content including absolutely immoral (the so-called “separability thesis”). Law issues are not connected with discussing the moral merits of a possible judicial decision. They are only closely related to studying various purely legal phenomena like precedents, judicial discretion, legislatures, etc. The ascriptive legal statements (...) theory proposed by the Oxford School of Law (Herbert Hart, Joseph Raz, and others) serves as the core of contemporary legal positivism. This theory is based on the notion of defeasibility for legal responsibility without any moral reasoning. There, phenomena of law are interpreted as purely linguistic, not social constructions. Analysis of pure law language should provide all the needful tools to extract hidden meaning from any legal norm. This analysis does not require going beyond the legal language since it does not describe any real situations in the world, but merely expresses legal requirements, allowing to legally qualify some observed events. It completely eliminates any references to moral principles from the analysis of legal language. However the critical reconstruction theory of ascriptive legal statements shows limitations of the legal positivism’s analytical approach to the phenomena of law. The example of a fictitious legal collision offered demonstrates limitations of the legal positivism approach to the understand- ing of law phenomena. This collision is a complex conceptual mix of Frankfurt-style examples and imaginary situations in the Trolley Problem widely known in analytical ethics. It clearly demonstrates the possible paradox of a law judgment in situations where conditions for the recognition and cancellation of legal liability are the property of two different (not necessarily openly contradictory) legal norms. It can serve as a strong argument in favor of contemporary theories of natural law (Lon Fuller, John Finnis, Ronald Dworkin, and others), which questioned the possibility of creating a theory of pure law. They considered it senseless and impossible to draw any strict border between moral and legal norms. Immoral law cannot have the particular property of creating a moral obliga- tion to follow such like a law. Law cannot be built on legality only, and the answers to all significant legal questions should be found in moral theories. (shrink)

According to animalism we are identical with human animals. Our death coincides with the cessation of the functioning of an organism. Biological approach to personal identity seems to imply that the corpse causally connected to me (as an organism) is not me. In other words, there is no such an entity as a human animal that later becomes a corpse. It is so-called «the corpse problem». However, there are various views compatible with animalism, for instance the thesis that after death (...) we can survive as corpses or souls. The main task of the article provides a critical analysis of these views. (shrink)

The article presents criticism of Katz’s proto-theory. Based on the principles of semantic Platonism, he offers a new understanding of the relationship between sense and reference. However, his account faces three strong objections: against non-causal ways of accessing abstract Platonic entities (Benacerraf–Field–Cheyne), against intuition as the faculty to a priori knowledge of grammar facts (Horwich–Cheyne–Oliver), and against the medial status of finite intensionals in matters for fixing the reference of linguistic expressions (Kripke–Boghossian–Kush). Without convincing answers to these objections, Katz’s proto-theory (...) cannot be considered as a fit competitor to naturalistic theories of language. (shrink)

The article contains a reconstruction of the rapid psychological change argument by Scott Campbell. According to the standard psychological approach, the identity of a person is tied to persistence one’s memories, beliefs, wants and intentions. A person stays the same person if one holds strongly psychologically connected and continuous over time. the structure of rapid psychological change argument is compared with the argument of incredibly long-lasting psychological change by David lewis. It is concluded that the main goals of critical attacks (...) of these arguments are the temporal mismatch of psychological connectedness and continuity as well as the reductionist claim that all the facts what matters for survival can be described in an impersonal way. (shrink)

The article contains a critical analysis of Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism. According to an influential interpretation, Wittgenstein presented in the Tractatus a new method of solving paradoxes. This method seems a simple and effective alternative to Russell’s type theory. Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism is based on the requirement of clear notation and the context principle: the type of a symbol only “shows” itself in the way we use the signs of our language. The function sign φ(φx) does not (...) express any paradox, because the syntactic rules for its use, written in clear notation, should “show” us that φ(φx) = ψ(φx). Many researchers (Davant, Ishiguro, Mounce, Ruffino, Friedlander, Jolley, Livingston, Ladov, et al.) follow this interpretation. However, the difficulty of such a view on Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism is that there hides the fallacy of petitio principii. Indeed, in examples of a functional sign of the form φ(φx), we are interested not only in the question of whether the functions φ are different symbols, but also in how this functional sign φ(φx) itself excludes the symbolization of the same object by different ways. This interpretation is contrasted with the idea that Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism is in fact a modified analogue of Russell’s simple theory of types. The reciprocality principle becomes the core of Wittgenstein’s theory: the combinatorial potential of the “prototype” of a functional sign is identical to the combinatorial potential of the “prototype” of an argument. According to Wittgenstein, only describing the combinatorial potential of linguistic expressions (symbols) can vanish the illusion of paradoxes. The function cannot be its argument, because the function sign φ(φx) already contains the “prototype” of its argument, “showing” us that φ(φx) = φx. The correctness of this interpretation does not exclude the possibility that the differences between Russell and Wittgenstein are in fact nothing more than façon de parler. (shrink)

The article presents a critical analysis of views on the problem of personal identity which are proposed by two great English philosophers — John Locke and Derek Parfit. Lockean personality is considered as a basic metaphysical structure, subject to moral responsibility for all actions performed on its behalf. Parfitian personality, in contrast, denies any identical essence through time as an extremely improbable metaphysical structure, instead assuming an existential chain of one life’s stages with psychological continuity. As an alternative to these (...) views, a several of additional arguments are considered to support the physicist view of human nature. (shrink)