Fictional names pose a difficult puzzle for semantics. We can truthfully maintain that Frodo is a hobbit, while at the same time admitting that Frodo does not exist. To reconcile this paradox I propose a way to formalize the interpretation of fiction as ‘prescriptions to imagine’ (Walton 1990) within an asymmetric semantic framework in the style of Kamp (1990). In my proposal, fictional statements are analyzed as dynamic updates on an imagination component of the interpreter’s mental state, while plain assertions (...) are updates on a belief component. Proper names – regular, empty, or fictional – are uniformly analyzed as presupposition triggers. The possibility of different attitude components referentially depending on each other is what ultimately allows us to account for the central paradox mentioned above. (shrink)

A fictional text is commonly viewed as constituting an invitation to play a certain game of make-believe, with the individual sentences written by the author providing the propositions we are to imagine and/or accept as true within the fiction. However, we can’t always take the text at face value. What narratologists call ‘unreliable narrators’ may present a confused or misleading picture of the fictional world. Meanwhile there has been a debate in philosophy about so-called ‘imaginative resistance’ in which we are (...) inclined to resist imagining (or even accepting as true in the fiction) what’s explicitly stated in the text. But if we can’t take the text’s word for it, how do we determine what’s true in a fiction? We propose an account of fiction interpretation in a dynamic setting (a version of DRT with a mechanism for opening, updating, and closing temporary ‘workspaces’) and combine this framework with belief revision logic. With these tools in hand we turn to modelling imaginative resistance and unreliable narrators. (shrink)

We propose to characterize imaginative resistance as the failure or unwillingness of the reader to take a fictional description of a deviant reality at face value. The goal of the paper is to explore how readers deal with such a breakdown of the default Face Value interpretation strategy. We posit two distinct interpretative ‘coping’ strategies which help the reader engage with the resistance-inducing fiction by attributing the offending content to one of the fictional characters. We present novel empirical evidence that (...) shows that actual readers use these strategies and we flesh out the exact workings of these strategies by integrating them into a general formal semantic framework for interpreting fiction. (shrink)

Karttunen observes that a presupposition triggered inside an attitude ascription, can be filtered out by a seemingly inaccessible antecedent under the scope of a preceding belief ascription. This poses a major challenge for presupposition theory and the semantics of attitude ascriptions. I solve the problem by enriching the semantics of attitude ascriptions with some independently argued assumptions on the structure and interpretation of mental states. In particular, I propose a DRT-based representation of mental states with a global belief-layer and a (...) variety of labeled attitude compartments embedded within it. Hence, desires and other non-doxastic attitudes are asymmetrically dependent on beliefs. I integrate these mental state representations into a general semantic account of attitude ascriptions which relies on the parasitic nature of non-doxastic attitudes to solve Karttunen’s puzzle. (shrink)

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, Stalnaker, (...) Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt). (shrink)

Dreams are not real, so when we recount them we prefix an intensional operator like “I dreamed that…”. Linguists will analyze this construction in terms of clausal complementation syntax and possible worlds semantics. But talking about a dream is often more like telling a story, with a potentially complex discourse structure (involving propositional discourse units connected by coherence relations like NARRATION, BACKGROUND, and EXPLANATION) that is hard to fit inside a single syntactically embedded that-clause (or a sequence of independently embedded (...) clauses). I show how we can analyze actual, complex dream report stories using a formal discourse semantics framework. I then explore how to extend this discourse framework to visual dream reporting, like in movies and comics, where it’s not immediately clear that we even have any intensional operators or embeddings to begin with. (shrink)

I argue that emojis are essentially little pictures, rather than words, gestures, expressives, or diagrams. ???? means that the world looks like that, from some viewpoint. I flesh out a pictorial semantics in terms of geometric projection with abstraction and stylization. Since such a semantics delivers only very minimal contents I add an account of pragmatic enrichment, driven by coherence and nonliteral interpretation. The apparent semantic distinction between emojis depicting entities (like ????) and those depicting facial expressions (like ????) I (...) analyze as a difference between truth-conditional and use-conditional pictorial content: ???? depicts what the world of evaluation looks like, while ???? depicts what the utterance context looks like. (shrink)

I argue that free indirect discourse should be analyzed as a species of direct discourse rather than indirect discourse. More specifically, I argue against the emerging consensus among semanticists, who analyze it in terms of context shifting. Instead, I apply the semantic mechanisms of mixed quotation and unquotation to offer an alternative analysis where free indirect discourse is essentially a quotation of an utterance or thought, but with unquoted tenses and pronouns.

The communication of de se attitudes poses a problem for “participant- neutral” analyses of communication in terms of propositions expressed or proposed updates to the common ground: when you tell me “I am an idiot”, you express a first person de se attitude, but as a result I form a different, second person attitude, viz. that you are an idiot. I argue that when we take seriously the asymmetry between speaker and hearer in semantics this problem disappears. To prove this (...) I propose a concrete model of communication as the transmission of information from the speaker’s mental state to the hearer’s. My analysis is couched in Discourse Representation Theory, a formal semantic framework that linguists use for modeling conversational common ground updates, but that can also be applied to describe the individual speech participants’ dynamically changing mental states. (shrink)

Semantics traditionally focuses on linguistic meaning. In recent years, the Super Linguistics movement has tried to broaden the scope of inquiry in various directions, including an extension of semantics to talk about the meaning of pictures. There are close similarities between the interpretation of language and of pictures. Most fundamentally, pictures, like utterances, can be either true or false of a given state of affairs, and hence both express propositions (Zimmermann, 2016; Greenberg, 2013; Abusch, 2015). Moreover, sequences of pictures, like (...) sequences of utterances, can be used to tell stories. Wordless picture books, comics, and film are cases in point. In this paper I pick up the project of providing a dynamic semantic account of pictorial story-telling, started by Abusch (2012) and continued by Abusch & Rooth (2017); Maier & Bimpikou (2019); Fernando (2020). More specifically, I propose here a semantics of speech and thought bubbles by adding event reference to PicDRT. To get there I first review the projection-based semantics for pictures (section 1), noting the fundamental distinction between symbolic and iconic meaning that makes speech bubbles especially interesting (section 2). I then review the dynamic PicDRT framework for pictorial narratives (section 3), add events (section 4), and propose an account of speech bubbles as quotational event modification (section 5). I end with a brief look at other conventional, symbolic enrichments in comics (section 6). (shrink)

We propose an extension of Discourse Respresentation Theory (DRT) for analyzing pictorial narratives. We test drive our PicDRT framework by analyzing the way authors represent characters’ mental states and perception in comics. Our investigation goes beyond Abusch and Rooth (2017) in handling not just free perception sequences, but also a form of apparent perspective blending somewhat reminiscent of free indirect discourse.

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. In this chapter I discuss the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. I argue that there’s little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to (...) a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, I will first explore how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e. as proposals to update the common ground. (shrink)

Novels like Fight Club or American Psycho are said to be instances of unreliable narration: the first person narrator presents an evidently distorted picture of the fictional world. The film adaptations of these novels are likewise said to involve unreliable narration. I resist this extension of the term ‘unreliable narration’ to film. My argument for this rests on the observation that unreliable narration requires a personal narrator while film typically involves an impersonal narrator. The kind of ambiguous story-telling that we (...) find in literary fiction with unreliable narrators, where for certain descriptions it is unclear whether what we’re told is an accurate account of what’s happening in the story world or not, can instead be achieved by conventionalized filmmaking techniques for reporting the contents of mental states, like the point of view shot, but especially the more ambiguous blended perspective shot. (shrink)

The concept of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is ubiquitous in the public and semi-technical domain, yet rarely defined precisely. We clarify main concepts that are usually discussed in connection to GenAI and argue that one ought to distinguish between the technical and the public discourse. In order to show its complex development and associated conceptual ambiguities, we offer a historical-systematic reconstruction of GenAI and explicitly discuss two exemplary cases: the generative status of the Large Language Model BERT and the differences (...) between protein structure predictions from AlphaFold 2 and 3. Our analysis shows that there is no unique and unambiguous definition of GenAI based on a purely technical account of the term. Following this conclusion, we argue that the public discourse is not simply a less complex way of speaking, but instead transcends its technical basis. As a means to structure this newly emerging discussion landscape we introduce a non-exhaustive list of four central aspects of GenAI: (multi-)modality, interaction, flexibility, and productivity. These dimensions constitute a first step towards defining GenAI beyond its technical basis. (shrink)

The quotational theory of free indirect discourse postulates that pronouns and tenses are systematically unquoted. But where does this unquotation come from? Based on cases of apparent unquotation in direct discourse constructions (including data from Kwaza speakers, Catalan signers, and Dutch children), I suggest a general pragmatic answer: unquotation is essentially a way to resolve a conflict that arises between two opposing constraints. On the one hand, the reporter wants to use indexicals that refer directly to the most salient speech (...) act participants and their surroundings (Attraction). On the other hand, the semantics of direct discourse (formalized here in terms of event modification) entails the reproduction of referring expressions from the original utterance being reported (Verbatim). Unquotation (formalized here also in terms of event modification), allows the reporter to avoid potential conflicts between these constraints. Unquotation in free indirect discourse then comes out as a special case, where the salient source of attraction is the story protagonist and her actions, rather than the reporting narrator and his here and now. (shrink)

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. In this chapter I discuss the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. I argue that there’s little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to (...) a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, I will first explore how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e. as proposals to update the common ground. (shrink)

In ancient Greek the line between direct and indirect discourse appears blurred. In this essay I examine the tendency of Greek writers to slip from indirect into direct speech. I explain the apparent difference between modern English and ancient Greek speech reporting in terms of a development from orality to literacy.

In this article I try to elucidate the concept of human dignity by taking a closer look at the features of a paradigmatic torture situation. After identifying the salient aspects of torture, I discuss various accounts for the moral wrongness of such acts and argue that what makes torture a violation of human dignity is the perverted moral relationship between torturer and victim. This idea is subsequently being substantiated and defended against important objections. In the final part of the chapter (...) I give a (qualified) defense of the methodology employed in the previous sections. (shrink)

An examination of the idea of Unlimited Liability found in the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) ethos as a reason for the acceptance of lethal risk tasking faced by members of the CAF. This paper argues that the idea of unlimited liability is at best unhelpful as a concept and needs to be replaced with the concept of ‘ultimate integrity.’ This new concept links directly to the CAF’s first ethical principle – respect the dignity of all persons. This new concept also (...) corresponds better with our beliefs about the nobility of military sacrifice. (shrink)

Plato’s partition argument infers that the soul has parts from the fact that the soul experiences mental conflict. We consider an ambiguity in the concept of mental conflict. According to the first sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires whose satisfaction is logically incompatible. According to the second sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires which are logically incompatible even when they are unsatisfied. This raises a dilemma: if the mental (...) conflict is supposed to be the latter kind of conflict, then the partition argument is valid but is likely unsound; if it’s supposed to be the former kind, then the partition argument has true premises but is invalid. We explain this dilemma in detail and defend a dispositionalist solution to it. (shrink)

El artículo ofrece un panorama del precedente en el Civil Law con el objetivo de distinguir los problemas que pueden presentarse en los sistemas jurídicos que tienen una práctica formal o institucionalizada de precedente, de aquellos en los que no la hay. Se identificó que se introdujo el precedente como una forma de responder a las crecientes demandas de administración de justicia en la materia y delimitar la discrecionalidad del operador jurídico. Por tanto, la tesis de fondo de este trabajo (...) es que, en la operación regular de los sistemas jurídicos del Civil Law, tanto los tribunales constitucionales y la jurisdicción en general identificaron la necesidad práctica de dotar de contornos a los derechos humanos —en tanto disposiciones jurídicas a concretar jurisdiccionalmente—. (shrink)

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my approach to (...) this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work On the Problem of Empathy, to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

I will discuss Stein’s first major philosophical work, On the Problem of Empathy. I’ll first present some of the background context to the composition of this work and then discuss some of the themes of the work that I find intriguing.

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my approach to (...) this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work 'On the Problem of Empathy', to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

Edith Stein is considered a leading figure in the early phenomenological movement and the disciple who performed in the best way the phenomenological method proposed by Husserl, and yet her relationship to phenomenology remains unclear in the literature. This article seeks to add clarity to her relationship to phenomenology while considering three inescapably related questions. (1) What did Stein conceive phenomenology to be? (2) How should we understand Husserl’s influence on Stein? (3) Was Stein an original phenomenological thinker? I (...) argue that Stein conceives of phenomenology as an epistemological critique that aims to clarify the essential foundations of knowledge. It involves intentional analysis that proceeds by way of essential-seeing (Wesensschau), which can be brought about through the method of free imaginative variation, and its intentional analysis involves close attention to the relationship between meaning-intention and meaning-fulfillment. I argue that the primary influence Husserl exerts on Stein is in the development of phenomenology as conceived in his Logical Investigations. Finally, I offer an understanding of how Stein conceived of her differences with Husserl on the issue of idealism in order to argue that Stein’s phenomenological writings in On the Problem of Empathy and “Sentient Causality” offer us a novel phenomenological account of the human being that begins with the ego but escapes being a mere egology. (shrink)

In the predominant pedagogical frameworks of our days, rationalist, voluntarist or sentimentalist reductionisms are seen, from which it is about educating people regardless of their Origin and the singular and unrepeatable originality with which they have been given to existence. Faced with this anthropocentric confinement, Sensitive Education arises so that every person, regardless of their culture and creed, remains sensitive to their Origin and captures their own originality, which in the end is what they must accept and try to manifest (...) with education. When educational systems are not sensitive to the original, they develop falsehood. With the aim of consolidating the validity of the pedagogical-anthropological foundation of Sensitive Education, this study seeks to show how Edith Stein’s argument explains Sensitive Education, although Stein, after her conversion, uses explicitly Christian terminology. Stein’s direct terms serve to describe Education Sensitive to the Holy Spirit, but for those who do not start from a Christian worldview, Education Sensitive to Origin can be a more non-denominational way of approaching the Original. To achieve this objective, an analytical-synthetic methodology has been followed in which essential features of Sensitive Education are proposed and in a hermeneutic manner, arguments are extracted from the writings of Edith Stein that offer support for these essential features. In conclusion, it is sufficiently shown that Edith Stein’s thought provides a pedagogical foundation to Sensitive Education. (shrink)

Vivian Maier’s street photography shows us a sudden transfiguration of reality, by which persons, scenes and things become faerical (neologism that also receives one of the senses of the French féerie , a play where supernatural, or, in this case, also infranatural creatures appear). We propose that this transfiguration is an apparition – a faerical epiphany (always earthy and fleshy) that follows two ways, one sunny and luminous, the other obscure and subterranean. We will examine Maier’s body, reflected (...) in her self-portraits in order to propose that her sight (therefore her photography) is a daemonic one, an intermediary between our and other worlds. -/- La fotografía callejera de Vivian Maier nos hace ver una súbita transfiguración de la realidad por la cual las personas, las escenas y las cosas devienen féricas , neologismo que nos permitimos para recoger del inglés el universo de las faeries y traducir a la vez uno de los sentidos del francés féerie , pieza de teatro en la que aparecen seres sobrenaturales (o, en este caso, infranaturales). Esa transfiguración, proponemos, es en rigor una verdadera aparición: una epifanía feérica (siempre carnal) que se despliega en dos direcciones, solar y subterránea. Nos detendremos en el cuerpo de Maier, reflejado en sus autorretratos, para proponer, finalmente, que su mirada es un daimon, intermediaria entre éste y otros mundos. (shrink)

este trabajo aborda tres aspectos fundamentales del método filosófico de Edith Stein. En primer lugar, se alude a las cosas mismas como el punto de partida del filosofar de esta autora. En segundo lugar, se considera el aspecto que constituye uno de los aportes fundamentales del método fenomenológico y que es claramente reconocible en nuestra autora, a saber, el haber puesto de manifiesto la imposibilidad de hacer filosofía primera sin tomar en cuenta la vida consciente ante la que todas (...) las cosas se abren. En tercer lugar, se remite a la individualidad de la persona como un aspecto de la antropología de Stein especialmente relevante. Al final del análisis de cada uno de estos tres aspectos metodológicos se intenta mostrar en qué sentido éstos pueden ser de relevancia para emprender el camino hacia la pregunta por la mujer. (shrink)

This paper discusses the thesis defended by Edith Stein that certain acts can be attributed to the State. According to Stein, the State is a social structure characterized by sovereignty. As such, it is responsible for the production, interpretation, and application of law. These tasks require the performance of acts, most of which are what Stein calls “social acts” like enactments and orders. For Stein, the acts in question are made by the organs of the State, but in the (...) name of the State, and are thus attributed to the State via a relation of representation. In the first section, the paper presents Stein’s thesis that the sovereignty of the State entails a series of legal prerogatives, which in turn result in various social acts being ascribed to the State through its representatives. In the second section, the paper critically discusses Stein’s views, notably her theory of representation, and her account of the nature of the State, while emphasizing its most interesting aspects, namely, its fine-grained analyses of the various acts that are attributed to the State. (shrink)

This 'Letter to the Editor' briefly touches on how we can respond to the threats posed by AI. By we, it is meant, the faith community of Roman Catholics and Hindus. The Herald is the mouthpiece of the Archdiocese of Calcutta and has been in continuous publication from 1842. It is indexed by the Vatican. In this letter, silence as empathy is shown through Edith Stein. This letter is brief for want of space since The Herald is an offline (...) publication. Further, the original letter did not have the error 'Pharoah'...it is 'Pharaoh". (shrink)

These are the working notes/handouts given to the resident philosophers and scholars for the de Nobili Endowment Lecture held at Chennai, on 27th October, 2022. These have been printed and circulated among the attendees before the lecture. The lecture itself will be published in a book form. The de Nobili Endowment Lecture was given by the author at Satya Nilayam International Jesuit Centre for Philosophical Excellence affiliated to the University of Madras and which is part of Loyola (Autonomous) College, Chennai (...) on 27th October, 2022 at 6.20 pm in an offline event. The main contention of the paper is that Dr. Edith Stein through her work on Empathy resolves problems of Empathy encountered in Advaita Vedanta. (shrink)

ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH OF EDITH STEIN (translated by Inna Savynska)The main Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden in his lecture presents a cross-section of Edith Stein writings and demonstrates the shot timeliness of her ideas. Roman Ingarden was a Stein’s friend from the time of her studies in Göttingen;he knew her ideas and conceptions. He wrote that hers was a search for ananswer to the main question: «What is the structure of man?» That is why she proposed a phenomenological (...) analysis by «Empathy». Stein’s theses «On the Problem of Empathy» is the central object in this lecture. In that work, Stein first focuses on such phenomena as the human body, soul, spirit, experience, consciousness. While discussing Stein’s concepts, Ingarden presents also the evolution of her ideas from realistic phenomenology to mystical theology of Saint John of the Cross’ and Saint Theresa of Avila’s. Roman Ingarden did not enter as firmly as Stein into the mystical range, but he opened a path into the transcendence by creating an idea of metaphysical qualities. In her dissertation, Stein first focuses on the phenomenon of the human body and soul. Ingarden considers pairs of phenomenological notions «Leib- Körper», «Seele-Geist». Their relationships form an ontology of a Person. The anthropological questions, which Edith Stein raised in her academic research, bring about a constitutive element of man – Geist. Empathy is an instrument that help to recognize Geist and Personal experience – truth about man. (shrink)

In everyday language, we readily attribute experiences to groups. For example, 1 might say, “Spain celebrated winning the European Cup” or “The uncovering of corruption caused the union to think long and hard about its internal structure.” In each case, the attribution makes sense. However, it is quite difficult to give a nonreductive account of precisely what these statements mean because in each case a mental state is ascribed to a group, and it is not obvious that groups can have (...) mental states. In this article, I do not offer an explicit theory of collective experience. Instead, I draw on phenomenological analyses and empirical data in order to provide general conditions that a more specific theory of collective experience must meet in order to be coherent. (shrink)

Die Frage nach der Individualität der menschlichen Person gehört zu den Schlüsselfragen jeder Anthropologie. Edith Stein kennt nicht nur eine einmalige Konstellation von äußeren Entwicklungsfaktoren der Person, sondern denkt eine wesentliche Individualität, die für jegliche Entwicklung Voraussetzung ist und sich in einem authentischen Leben als „persönliche Note“ manifestiert. In theologischer Perspektive darf jeder Mensch sich rühmen, „unmittelbar ein Gotteskind zu sein und ein eigenes unwiederholbares Gottessiegel in seiner Seele zu tragen“. Diese Aussage in ihrem Hauptwerk Endliches und ewiges Sein (...) führt Edith Stein zu Überlegungen im Bereich der imago Dei-Lehre, der Leib-Christi-Theologie und der christlichen Mystik. Der Autor verfolgt die Frage in philosophischer und theologischer Perspektive erstmals im ganzen Werk Edith Steins und zeigt dabei die Entwicklung ihres Verständnisses der wesentlichen Individualität jeder Person auf. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of the phenomenology of affectivity underlying the work of Edith Stein. Taking as point of departure two of her works, The problem of Empathy (1917) and Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (1922), the paper focuses on the idea that emotions fulfil a cognitive function: they make us accessible the realm of values. The argument of the paper is developed in two sections. The first section offers an overview of Stein’s main theses about emotions, (...) feelings, moods and sentiments and places them within the larger framework of the early phenomenological accounts on affectivity. The second section examines the claim that emotions are responsible for grasping values concentrating on two facets of this thesis: the first regards the epistemological question according to which values are grasped by affective phenomena, while the second regards the ontological question about the nature of these grasped values. (shrink)

El libro “La Iglesia doliente. Un largo invierno en Cracovia”, escrito por la Dra. Miriam Dolly Arancibia, narra el martirio de la filósofa y religiosa Edith Stein y del sacerdote Jerzy Popiełuszko. Ambos fueron víctimas de la persecución a la Iglesia Católica en Polonia, ella lo fue del nazismo, él lo fue del comunismo estalinista. Ambos sufrieron la intolerancia religiosa y racial llevada a su máxima expresión. La ciudad de Cracovia, donde el Beato Juan Pablo II residió durante cuarenta (...) años, es el escenario desde el cual fluye el relato de los acontecimientos. La misma ciudad que será sede de la Jornada Mundial de la Juventud en el año 2016 -/- The book "The suffered Church. A long winter in Krakow", written by Dr. Miriam Dolly Arancibia, recounts the martyrdom of Edith Stein and Jerzy Popiełuszko. Both were victims of persecution by the Catholic Church in Poland, she was under Nazism and he was under Stalinist communism. Both suffered religious and racial intolerance led to its maximum expression. The city of Krakow, where Blessed John Paul II lived for forty years, is the stage from which flows the account of the events and the same city that will host the world youth day in 2016. (shrink)

The paper discusses kinaesthetic empathy based on the German philosopher Edith Stein’s theory of empathy. Applying Stein’s study of empathy, this paper examines empathy as a particular form of the act of knowing. Instead of a mere emotion, empathy entails a re-living or a placing ourselves ‘inside’ another’s experience. We may grasp another’s living, moving body as another centre orientation of the world through our own kinaesthetic sense and body topography. Kinaesthetic empathy seems to have a partial capacity to (...) make sense of others’ experiential movements and reciprocally our own bodily movements. It makes possible to understand the non-verbal kinetic experiences through which we may acquire knowledge of the other’s bodily movements on the basis of our own body topography. There is recognition that we never reach the other’s primordial movement experience. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive critique of the Heidegger problem and while putting forward a critique of Heidegger; it establishes the sanctity of Levinas. In the process of doing so; the reviewer touches on the problems of not considering Edith Stein in a book of this sort. When I got my tenure in India, one wisecrack on the board of interviewers asked me how Kit Marole influenced Shakespeare. I knew that he was just quoting Wayne C Booth's stuff on Macbeth. (...) John E Drabinski and Eric S Nelson are not those wisecrack sorts. They are serious scholars and this review gives them their due. They have shown the Janus nature of the Nazi, Heidegger who was instrumental in gassing Edith Stein, who needs to be known more throughout the academy, which COVID 19 has successfully destroyed. And we need Levinas and Stein to rebuild a world which will be mediated soon by drones and inane webinars and contactless nonsense. This reviewer suggests that we read this book with great care. And not participate in meaningless online events. (shrink)

This book explores a key concept for human life: friendship. German and Spanish scholars approach friendship from different points of view, integrating philosophical and theological reflections as well as perspectives from other human sciences. In addition to researching biblical texts such as Ecclesiasticus and the Gospel of John, they present the ideas of Christian thinkers such as Alfred of Rieval, St. Thomas Aquinas, John H. Newman, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Edith Stein, Maritain and Benedict XVI. These contributions are read in (...) continuity with ancient philosophy, with particular reference to Aristotle's pages on friendship, which open up this human relationship to a wider context, even linking it to politics. (shrink)

John Maier’s Options and Agency is an excellent book. It is brimming with insights and original ideas; in just about 160 pages of text, it provides the reader with an entirely novel perspective on...

"Kierkegaard’s output is vast and earlier, was not available in English. Had they been available then certainly [Edith] Stein, [Simone] Weil, [Hannah] Arendt, and [Susan] Neiman would have constructed their theodicies around Kierkegaard more fully, abandoning the charlatanism of Martin Heidegger’s Nazi histrionics. These Princeton hardbacks, handsomely bound, with appealing fonts and meticulous notes will help disseminate Kierkegaard’s writings to a broader audience." This is how this review focussed on Kierkegaard's theodicy sees the volume under review. The reviewer thanks (...) the Ramakrishna Mission for getting the hardcopy of this book to this reviewer who is a recluse in a non-glamorous backwater within Kolkata; India. If the Ramakrishna Mission weren't generous enough; then this reviewer would not have been able to get his hardcover copy. The review thanks the Ramakrishna Mission for getting the hardcopy of this book to this reviewer who is a recluse in a non-glamorous backwater within Kolkata; India. Indian lives too matter! First world scholars do not read what people like I write. They in their white hot rage take it as a given that our writings don't matter. But the Ramakrishna Mission will outlast this reviewer and hundred others who will come by. In this sense; this review matters and those named in this review which, at the cost of reiterating, will be remembered two hundred years hence. Even IVY League Presses do not have the resources to archive everything, come the looming COVID 19 recession. & as Dr Anthony Fauci honestly says over and over, COVID 19 is going nowhere. And Ebola is out of the Congo. So, there we go...Indian writers on European thinkers do matter and will matter. All said and done, it was great fun reviewing these volumes. Kierkegaard gets it dot on mark that Christianity, or for that matter, any religion is all about the mystery of suffering. (shrink)

Recently, John Maier has developed a unified account of various agentive modalities. According to him, however, adopting the account provides an alternative framework for thinking about free will and moral responsibility, one that reveals an unacceptable instability in semicompatibilism. In this paper, I argue that Maier is mistaken about the implications of his account and sketch a semicompatibilist proposal that can, without countenancing any instability, accept Maier’s unified account of the agentive modalities.

In order to handle presuppositions in the scope of attitude verbs, the binding theory allows presuppositions triggered in a subject's beliefs to be bound at the matrix level; and it allows presuppositions triggered in non-doxastic attitudes to be bound in the subject's beliefs (Geurts, 1999; Maier, 2015). However, we argue that this leads to serious overgeneration, for example it predicts that the unacceptable `Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that she won't and that only Sue (...) will come to the party' should be equivalent to the acceptable `Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that nobody will come to the party'. This is because the presupposition triggered by `only Sue will come to the party' should be able to be bound at the matrix level. We discuss some responses to this problem, but argue that they all have shortcomings. (shrink)