The paper discusses the answering machine puzzle and cases of non-standard uses of ‘I’. It offers an analysis of the phenomena that is conservative with respect to the Kaplanian account of indexicality. The point of departure of the paper is the observation that some proper indexicals have demonstrative uses. It is argued that treating some occurrences of ‘now’ as cases of such uses results in an intuitive and simple solution to the answering machine puzzle. At the same time, treating some (...) occurrences of ‘I’ in an analogous manner explains away the impression that some non-standard uses of ‘I’ enforce a modification of the standard semantics of the first-person pronoun. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss theories that attempt to single out the class of intentional states by appealing to factors that are supposedly criterial for intentional sentences. The papers starts with distinguishing two issues that arise when one thinks about intentional expressions: the Taxonomy Problem and the Fundamental Demarcation Problem. The former concerns the relation between the classes of distinct intentional verbs and distinct intentional states. The latter concerns the question about how to distinguish intentional states and (...) acts from the non-intentional ones. Next, the general desiderata for theories providing criteria for singling out the class of intentional sentences are introduced. Finally, distinct proposals for providing such criteria are analyzed. Author argues that neither is satisfactory. (shrink)

Leon Koj napisał w zakończeniu do Problemów semiotyki logicznej, że nie sposób sobie wyobrazić semiotyki w Polsce bez Jerzego Pelca. Można opinię tę rozumieć tak, że Jerzy Pelc wywarł na semiotykę polską wpływ, bez którego to, co w niej najlepsze, nie przybrałoby nigdy formy rozwiniętej, nie ujrzałoby światła dziennego oraz nie znalazłoby odbicia w dydaktyce uniwersyteckiej. Jest to opinia trafna, a rozprawy zawarte w niniejszym – poświęconym Jerzemu Pelcowi – tomie Studiów Semiotycznych są oznakami tego wpływu.

As it is broadly accepted, typical uses of demonstratives are accompanied by demonstrations. The concept of demonstration, however, manifests the action–product ambiguity analogous to that visible in the opposition between jumping and the resulting jump, talking and the resulting talk or crying and the resulting cry. It is also a heterogeneous concept that enables demonstrations to vary significantly. The present paper discusses action–product ambiguity as applied to demonstrations as well as the heterogeneity of the latter. An account that acknowledges ambiguity (...) and heterogeneity of demonstrations is sketched in the paper. It is argued that it has a rich explanatory and descriptive potential. (shrink)

The paper aims to add contextual dependence to the new directival theory of meaning, a functional role semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s directival theory of meaning. We show that the original formulation of the theory does not have a straight answer on how the meaning of indexicals and demonstratives is established. We illustrate it in the example of some problematic axiomatic and inferential directives containing indexicals. We show that the main reason why developing the new directival theory of meaning in (...) this direction is difficult is that the theory focuses on the notion of a sentence (and not the notion of an utterance). To add the latter notion to the theory, we introduce the idea of admissible contextual distribution being an interpretation of the hybrid expression view on indexicals and demonstratives. We argue that this idea introduces a small but important modification to the concept of language matrix and gives way to define two distinct concepts of meaning: for an expression type and for a use of an expression type. (shrink)

We overview logical and computational explanations of the notion of tractability as applied in cognitive science. We start by introducing the basics of mathematical theories of complexity: computability theory, computational complexity theory, and descriptive complexity theory. Computational philosophy of mind often identifies mental algorithms with computable functions. However, with the development of programming practice it has become apparent that for some computable problems finding effective algorithms is hardly possible. Some problems need too much computational resource, e.g., time or memory, to (...) be practically computable. Computational complexity theory is concerned with the amount of resources required for the execution of algorithms and, hence, the inherent difficulty of computational problems. An important goal of computational complexity theory is to categorize computational problems via complexity classes, and in particular, to identify efficiently solvable problems and draw a line between tractability and intractability. -/- We survey how complexity can be used to study computational plausibility of cognitive theories. We especially emphasize methodological and mathematical assumptions behind applying complexity theory in cognitive science. We pay special attention to the examples of applying logical and computational complexity toolbox in different domains of cognitive science. We focus mostly on theoretical and experimental research in psycholinguistics and social cognition. (shrink)

Review of the book: Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz, Anerkennung als Verpflichtung. Klassische Konzepte der Anerkennung und ihre Bedeutungfür die aktuelle Debate, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2015.

The article presents the first comprehensive interpretation of the ergon argument in Aristotle’s Protrepticus. It further argues that Aristotle in this argument distinguishes the ergon of an entity from the ergon of its virtue thus presenting a complicated argumentative structure which is explicitly simplified in the Eudemian Ethics. Based on the latest attempts to reconstruct the Protrepticus, the article shows the relation of the ergon argument to its other versions in both Ethics. This account not only clarifies the relation of (...) the Protrepticus to Aristotle’s other ethical writings, it shows that Aristotle intends the argument as a transition between describing what human being does and what a good human being does well, namely a natural transition from the descriptive to the normative. (shrink)

According to panqualityism, a form of Russellian monism defended by Sam Coleman and others, consciousness is grounded in fundamental qualities, i.e. unexperienced qualia. Despite panqualityism’s significant promise, according to David Chalmers panqualityism fails as a theory of consciousness since the reductive approach to awareness of qualities it proposes fails to account for the specific phenomenology associated with awareness. I investigate Coleman’s reasoning against this kind of phenomenology and conclude that he successfully shows that its existence is controversial, and so Chalmers’s (...) critique is inconclusive. I then present a critique of panqualityism that avoids this controversial posit, arguing that the panqualityist treatment of awareness faces an explanatory gap, failing to account for the intimate cognitive access to qualities which we are afforded, i.e. for our ‘strong awareness’ of qualities. The real worry for panqualityists is thus not the contested phenomenology of awareness, which Chalmers relies on, but rather the special way in which we are aware of qualities. (shrink)

When does art history begin? Art historiographers typically point to the Renaissance (Vasari) or, alternatively, to Hellenism (Pliny the Elder). But such origin stories become increasingly disconnected from contemporary disciplinary practices, especially as the latter try to rise to the challenge of conducting art history in a more diversified and global way. This essay provides an alternative account of art history’s origin, one that does not try to alleviate the sense of disconnect, but rather develops a global, non-Eurocentric account. The (...) account focuses less on genealogy and more on what necessitates something like an art-historical awareness or attention in the first place. Relying on examples from ancient Mesopotamia, it argues that art-historical thought can be identified whenever and wherever material objects are attended to or produced for their potential to manifest visibly and over time their meaning. (shrink)

The article shows a difference in Aristotle’s ethical theory between the Protrepticus and Eudemian Ethics on the one hand and the Nicomachean Ethics on the other. The difference is explicated by means of the interpretation of the concept of ὅρος (standard) in these writings. The Protrepticus and Eudemian Ethics present ethical theory as an expertise which – together with other sciences – has a standard for decisions and actions taken from nature and the divine. The ethical theory presented in the (...) Nicomachean Ethics does not entail such a strong concept of ὅρος and it treats ethics in contrast to other, more exact, sciences. Finally, the article presents a tentative suggestion as to why it seems that the Nicomachean Ethics VI,1 raises hopes that it will provide a detailed account of ὅρος when in fact there is no discussion of it. (shrink)

The topic of exemplarity has attracted considerable interest in philosophy, legal theory, literary studies and art recently. There is broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and general concepts or norms. The aim of this article is to provide an additional perspective on the logic of exemplarity. First, inspired by Jacques Derrida’s discussion of exemplarity, I shall argue that there is a kind of différance between (singular) examples and (general) exemplars. What an example exemplifies, the exemplarity of the (...) example, eludes any fixed identity and follows a logic of supplement. Second, I shall present the so-called logic of exemplarity. The received paraconsistent view has it that the exemplar of X is an X and, at the same time, is not an X. Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s discussion of the standard metre, I would like to present an alternative paracomplete view whereby we can say of an exemplar of X neither that it is an X nor that it is not an X. (shrink)

The Operator Argument against eternalism holds that having non-vacuous tense operators in the language is incompatible with the claim that every proposition has its truth-value eternally. Assuming that (1) there are non-vacuous tense operators, (2) tense operators operate on propositions and (3) tense operators which operate on eternal entities are vacuous, it may be argued that eternalism is false. In this paper, I examine the Operator Argument. The goal is threefold. First, I want to present some aspects of the debate (...) in a more elaborate way, especially those concerning formal matters. Secondly, I will argue that eternalism can escape the Operator Argument. There are two main strategies for handling the Operator Argument. The first one is based on replacing temporal operators with object-language quantifiers. The second rejects the identification of compositional semantic value with assertoric content. My third goal is to show that none of them is as good as the strategy that adopts Timestamp Semantics (Fritz in Philosl Stud 176:2933–2959, 2019). I am going to argue that the quantificational treatment of tenses is compatible with temporalism and that the arguments for rejecting the identification of compositional semantic value with assertoric content provide, in fact, a motivation for the temporalist position. At the end, I will develop Timestamp Semantics by providing a novel formalization of it, and defend it against three potential counter-arguments. (shrink)

This text maps the history of debate on the authenticity of Plato's or pseudo-Plato's Alcibiades I.

Within theoretical and empirical enquiries, many different meanings associated with consciousness have appeared, leaving the term itself quite vague. This makes formulating an abstract and unifying version of the concept of consciousness – the main aim of this article –into an urgent theoretical imperative. It is argued that consciousness, characterized as dually accessible (cognized from the inside and the outside), hierarchically referential (semantically ordered), bodily determined (embedded in the working structures of an organism or conscious system), and useful in action (...) (pragmatically functional), is a graded rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. A gradational approach, however, despite its explanatory advantages, can lead to some counterintuitive consequences and theoretical problems. In most such conceptions consciousness is extended globally (attached to primitive organisms or artificial systems), but also locally (connected to certain lower-level neuronal and bodily processes). For example, according to information integration theory (as introduced recently by Tononi and Koch, 2014), even such simple artificial systems as photodiodes possess miniscule amounts of consciousness. The major challenge for this article, then, is to establish reasonable, empirically justified constraints on how extended the range of a graded consciousness could be. It is argued that conscious systems are limited globally by the ability to individuate information (where individuated information is understood as evolutionarily embedded, socially altered, and private), whereas local limitations should be determined on the basis of a hypothesis about the action-oriented nature of the processes that select states of consciousness. Using these constraints, an abstract concept of consciousness is arrived at, hopefully contributing to a more unified state of play within consciousness studies itself. (shrink)

The British philosopher Michael Dummett (1925–2011) not only had a massive influence on the development of analytical philosophy within the philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics, but also contributed significantly to historical and metaphilosophical debates about the nature of this philosophical movement and its proper account. He proposed to define analytical philosophy as philosophy whose aim is the analysis of the structure of thought by way of the analysis of language. Hence, it is philosophy the gist of which (...) is the linguistic turn. A number of critics of this proposal (including Barry Smith, Peter Hylton, and Hans-Johann Glock) emphasised that Dummett’s proposal captures merely some features of this diversified and multifaceted philosophical tradition, and is far from being historically adequate. (shrink)

The article presents a perspective on the scientific explanation of the subjectivity of conscious experience. It proposes plausible answers for two empirically valid questions: the ‘how’ question concerning the developmental mechanisms of subjectivity, and the ‘why’ question concerning its function. Biological individuation, which is acquired in several different stages, serves as a provisional description of how subjective perspectives may have evolved. To the extent that an individuated informational space seems the most efficient way for a given organism to select biologically (...) valuable information, subjectivity is deemed to constitute an adaptive response to informational overflow. One of the possible consequences of this view is that subjectivity might be (at least functionally) dissociated from consciousness, insofar as the former primarily facilitates selection, the latter action. (shrink)

Both Hegel and the later Wittgenstein were concerned with the problem of how to begin speculation, or the problem of beginning. I argue that despite many differences, there are surprising similarities between their thinking about the beginning. They both consider different kinds of beginnings and combine them into complex analogies. The beginning has a subjective and an objective moment. The philosophizing subject has to begin with something, with an object. For Hegel, the objective moment is pure being. For Wittgenstein, the (...) objective moment is something that cannot be doubted. As regards the subjective moment, the philosophizing subject has to decide, without any reason, to conclude her quest for the presuppositionless beginning and finally begin at the beginning. The arational moment of this decision is echoed throughout any rational thought. Any application of a (rational) rule is, ultimately, a blind decision to apply this rule. (shrink)

Aristotle’s subtle distinction between the forms of friendship and his concept of loving friend as one’s other self propose a solution to the fundamental objection to any eudaimonian theory of friendship, namely that friendship – as basically non-moral phenomenon – is but an egoistic device of one’s happy life. Aristotelian theorems are based on his concept of analogy and on a philosophically specific notion of “self”. Since both of these are rooted in Platonism, Aristotle has to evolve them dialectically in (...) a critical distance to Plato. Still, his dialectical theory of friendship needs to be rooted not in metaphysics but in political theory after all. Political friendship as a utopian perspective taken by each of the citizens in their pursuit of a close relationship with any other indicates a notion of “infinity as perfection” which presents the decisive step beyond Plato and toward the later course of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In their Anachronic Renaissance, Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood identify two principles upon which, in fifteenth-century Europe, a work of art might establish its validity or authority: substitution and performance. It has become established wisdom that the dual schema of substitution and performance follows Hans Belting's dualism of the medieval cult of the image and the modern aesthetic system of art. This, I submit, is not just a mistake, but also prevents from evaluating one of the book's most ambitious contributions (...) to art-historical theory on its own merits. An analysis of the structure of the claims made by Nagel and Wood brings to light that the two concepts—substitution and performance—do not play the same role as the conceptual pair of Bild and Kunst in Belting's influential work. (shrink)

This is the first chapter of my Objects of Authority: A Postformalist Aesthetics (Routledge, 2023), made freely available online thanks to the funding received from the DFG (German Research Foundation) via Freie Universität Berlin. -/- The chapter introduces the idea of a postformalist aesthetic theory of reconstructing remote artefacts aesthetic statuses. The case is immune to the misgivings about aesthetic enquiry prevalent in the humanities and social sciences, since it does not assume that recovering such statuses involves experiencing the artefacts' (...) potential to provide an intrinsically rewarding gratification of the senses, of the intellect, or of both together. Postformalist aesthetics sees itself as part of a broad investigation into the nature of evaluative attitudes towards visually conspicuous artefacts. Such a broad investigation represents a necessary step towards establishing whether an object was meant to merit aesthetic attention. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel and Wittgenstein, each in their own specific way, used the idea of God at the beginning of creation as a complex analogy for other kinds of beginning, most notably the beginning of philosophical thought. Hegel’s Logic describes God’s mind before the creation of the world, i.e. God’s pure thinking. For a philosopher, beginning afresh means resolving to consider this kind of abstraction from the existence of the world. Wittgenstein, by contrast, says that the idea of a (...) creator of the world does not explain anything. It marks the terminus ad quem of asking for explanations; we must not ask further who created the creator of the world. Wittgenstein generalizes this for any kind of reasoning: “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” (Philosophical Investigations: §1) Any sort of explanation must eventually arrive at its terminus ad quem, which means only that any kind of reasoning must have its logical beginning. (shrink)

Robert Saudek, a Czech graphologist, journalist, diplomat, playwright, and novelist, was heavily influenced in his youth by Fritz Mauthner’s critique of language. Saudek later became a pioneer in the field of psychological graphology. In this article, I examine the impact of Mauthner’s critique on Saudek’s work and evaluate whether Saudek’s approach to graphology aligns with Mauthner’s ideas. I argue that, although Saudek’s graphology is rooted in Mauthner’s critique of experimental psychology, there remains room for further development in the field of (...) psychological graphology, centering on the analysis of language. With this in mind, I compare Saudek’s method and contemporary conceptual metaphor theory. I further suggest that Saudek’s extensive use of the autographs of well-known figures follows a method of working from examples, or specimens, which is not uncommon in the philosophy of science. Based on these findings, I propose a way of understanding Saudek’s graphology that challenges its characterization as a pseudoscience. (shrink)

The article’s aim is to clear the ground for the idea of aesthetic archaeology as an aesthetic analysis of remote artifacts divorced from aesthetic criticism. On the example of controversies surrounding the early Cycladic figures, it discusses an anxiety motivating the rejection of aesthetic inquiry in archaeology, namely, the anxiety about the heuristic reliability of one’s aesthetic instincts vis-à-vis remote artifacts. It introduces the claim that establishing an aesthetic mandate of a remote artifact should in the first place be part (...) of a quest after the norms of engagement an artifact’s kind signaled to the intended audience by its appearance. Rather than advocating for a new subdiscipline, the concept of aesthetic archaeology serves to bring into theoretical focus an aesthetic engagement with an artifact’s appearance under circumstances that rule out any acquired competence in distinguishing its aesthetic mandate perceptually—and thus rule out any aesthetic expertise. (shrink)

This essay explores the notion of moral exemplarity, positing that our morality is underpinned by moral exemplars – paradigmatic examples of virtuous individuals or actions. Theoretical precepts of moral exemplarity are explored across historical and contemporary contexts, including the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Stoic and Christian ethics, and recent works of Alexandro Ferrara and Linda Zagzebski. This essay debates the necessity of moral exemplars, the intrinsic moral and epistemic exemplarity, and the distinction between categorical and hypothetical exemplarity, as well as (...) referencing the paradoxical Kantian dismissals of moral exemplarity. It critiques current accounts of moral exemplarity and proposes a transcendental explanation, culminating in an examination of the “exemplarist categorical imperative.”. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest pokazanie konsekwencji przyjęcia longtermizmu w wersji skrajnej dla postrzegania obowiązku likwidacji skrajnej biedy w świetle zasady równego rozważania interesów. W artykule argumentuję na rzecz hipotezy, że konsekwentny zwolennik myśli etycznej Petera Singera skorygowanej o postulaty long- termizmu musi przyjąć, iż obowiązki wobec przyszłych ludzi uchylają obowiązki wobec obecnie żyjących ludzi, nawet znajdujących się w tak niekorzystnym położeniu jak skrajna bieda. W pierwszej części artykułu szkicuję argumenty Singera na rzecz moralnego obowiązku likwidacji skrajnej biedy za pomocą efektywnych metod (...) aż do znacznego obniżenia własnego poziomu życia. Przybliżenie tych szeroko znanych poglądów stanowi ramy argumentacji na rzecz hipotezy badawczej. Następnie krótko charakteryzuję efektywny altruizm, na gruncie któ- rego wyrosło nowe podejście w ramach konsekwencjalizmu: longtermizm. Postulaty i założenia longtermizmu w ujęciu W. MacAskilla i T. Orda zestawiam z myślą Singera, aby doprowadzić ich argumentację do logicznych wniosków, które wspierają hipotezę badawczą artykułu -/- Moral duties towards the poor and longtermism The aim of the article is to show the consequences of adopting strong longtermism for the perception of the obligation to eliminate extreme poverty in the light of the principle of equal consideration of interests. In the article, I argue in favor of the hypothesis that a consistent supporter of Peter Singer’s ethical thought adjusted to the postulates of longtermism must assume that obligations towards future people abrogate duties towards current people, even those in such an unfavorable situation as extreme poverty. In the first part of the article, I sketch Singer’s arguments for the moral obligation to eliminate extreme poverty using effective methods, up to significant decrease in one’s level of life. An outline of these widely known views constitutes the framework of arguments in favor of the research hypothesis. Then I briefly characterize effective altruism, which is the basis for a new approach within consequentialism: longtermism. I compare the postulates and assumptions of longtermism as presented by W. MacAskill and T. Ord with Singer’s thought in order to bring their argumen- tation to logical conclusions that support the research hypothesis of this article. (shrink)

Stanisław Lem, a philosopher and futurologist, in his many works devoted much attention to the condition of human and the relation between human and technology. He coined the term ‘autoevolution’ in the course of forecasting unlimited technological augmentation of human abilities. Nowadays, the term may be associated with the conceptions presented by transhumanism, a 20th-century-born philosophical movement which advocates radical transformation of Homo sapiens by means of the achievements of scientific and technological progress. Lem’s attitude towards such a transformation of (...) human is complicated yet ultimately critical due to the fact that it poses a threat to human culture as such. The phenomenon of autoevolution undermines existing values and raises a question of authenticity of a future posthuman. We examine dependence between technology and culture, present Lem’s conception of autoevolution and his philosophy of culture, then we sketch a post-metaphysical dispute about authenticity, and finally show that Lem’s thought belongs to one of the arguing sides. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Gegenstand der Arbeit ist das Konzept der metaphorischen Be-deutung, soweit dessen Ursprung in der analytischen Philosophie zu finden ist. In der Ein-leitung der Untersuchung werden jedoch auch ältere Theorien der Metapher vorgestellt, die aus der Perspektive der metaphorischen Bedeutung relevant sind oder als relevant be-trachtet werden können. Allen diesen Theorien liegt die Definition zugrunde, dass in der Metapher etwas als etwas anderes gesehen wird. Daher kann von einer Wahrnehmungs-metaphorik die Rede sein. Das erste Kapitel meiner Arbeit behandelt die Frage, (...) wie Metaphern in der Sprache zu erkennen sind. Es wird die Schlussfolgerung gezogen, dass eine Metapher, anstatt erkannt zu werden, vielmehr als solche akzeptiert werden muss. Im zweiten Kapitel werden zwei der bedeutsamsten zeitgenössischen Theorien der Metapher, nämlich von Max Black und Donald Davidson, erörtert und kritisch ausgewertet. Der Argumentation Davidsons zufolge muss die metaphorische Bedeutung als etwas All-gemeines verstanden werden, das nicht einer bestimmten Metapher, sondern der Metapher überhaupt zukommt. Dabei bleibt Davidson aber der Wahrnehmungs-metaphorik verhaftet, die bei ihm wie bei Black keine Erläuterung findet. Gegen Ende des zweiten Kapitels und hauptsächlich im dritten Kapitel werden drei Arten des Herangehens an die Wahrnehmungsmetaphorik vorgeschlagen: Sie kann entweder verworfen oder interpretiert oder aufgehoben werden. Die zwei letztgenannten Zugänge werden anhand der Schriften von Ludwig Wittgenstein, José Ortega y Gasset und Wallace Stevens weiter ausgearbeitet. -/- Abstract: This thesis investigates the concept of the metaphorical meaning originating in analytical philosophy. Also, in the Introduction are considered older theories of the meta-phor, which can be seen from the perspective of the metaphorical meaning. All these ac-counts are based on a definition that in the metaphor is something seen as something else. Therefore, all our understanding of the metaphor issues from a visual perception. But that’s a metaphor, too. Chapter I. examines the question, how to detect metaphors in lan-guage. It is concluded that metaphors must be accepted instead of detected. The chapter II. aims at introducing and criticizing the two nowadays prominent analytical theories of metaphor given by Max Black and Donald Davidson. The consequence of the argumenta-tion by Davidson is that the concept of the metaphorical meaning has to be applied to the metaphor as such, not to any particular one. In their theories, Davidson and Black are still likening the metaphor to the visual perception but this simile or rather metaphor remains unexplained. The final chapter III. presents three approaches how to deal with the visual perception metaphor in explanations of the metaphor: it can be rejected, interpreted or sublated. The last approaches are elaborated on the basis of writings by Ludwig Wittgen-stein, José Ortega y Gasset and Wallace Stevens. (shrink)

The following article is a contribution to the rich debate concerning happiness or fulfilment (eudaimonia) in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It argues that eudaimonia is theōria in accordance with what Aristotle repeatedly says in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics. However, happy life (eudaimōn bios) is a complex way of life which includes not only theoretical activity but also the exercising of other virtues including the so-called moral or social ones. The article shows that Aristotle differentiates between eudaimonia on the one (...) hand and the happy or fulfilled life (eudaimōn bios) on the other, and shows how this distinction clarifies Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia. (shrink)

This paper is my last word, in the present journal, in the debate I have been having with Walter Block on the subject of evictionism as an alleged libertarian “third way,” capable of transcending the familiar “pro-life” and “pro-choice” dichotomy. In this debate, I myself defended what might be regarded as a qualified “pro-life” position, while Block consistently argued that the mother is morally allowed to expel the fetus from her womb provided that no non-lethal methods of its eviction are (...) available. While my position articulated in this paper contains an element of what Block might consider a concession on my part—i.e., an explicit declaration that abstaining from lethal evictions of fetuses conceived as a result of rape is a libertarian duty, but only an imperfect one—I continue to regard the unqualified support of evictionism as indefensible on libertarian grounds. (shrink)

The following article reconstructs Plato’s argument for the existence of god in Laws X. The article starts with interpreting the argument for the priority of soul and continues with a discussion of the argumentation for rationality of the soul in charge of heavens . The view defended here is that Plato first defines the essential characteristics of the divine, namely self-motion and rationality, and then shows that there are entities which possess these characteristics and therefore deserve to be called gods (...) or divine. The article further shows that several sub-arguments mirror the structure of the overall proof. (shrink)

Conceptual Metaphor Theory makes some strong claims against so-called Classical Theory which spans the accounts of metaphors from Aristotle to Davidson. Most of these theories, because of their traditional literal-metaphorical distinction, fail to take into account the phenomenon of conceptual metaphor. I argue that the underlying mechanism for explaining metaphor bears some striking resemblances among all of these theories. A mapping between two structures is always expressed. Conceptual Metaphor Theory insists, however, that the literal-metaphorical distinction of Classical Theories is empirically (...) wrong. I claim that this criticism is based rather on terminological decisions than on empirical issues. Conceptual Metaphor Theory focusses primarily on conventional metaphors and struggles to extend its mechanism to novel metaphors, whereas Classical Theories focus on novel metaphors and struggle to extend their mechanisms to conventional metaphors. Since all of these theories study metaphors from the synchronic point of view, they are unable to take into account any semantic change. A diachronic perspective is what we need here, one which would allow us to explain the role of metaphor in semantic change and the development of language in general. (shrink)

Self-consciousness relates to important themes, such as sentience and personhood, and is often the cornerstone of moral theories (Warren, 1997). However, not much attention is given to future moral creatures of the earth: robots. This may be due to the unsettled status of their experience, which is why I have chosen to find the necessary features of self-consciousness in them. Philosophy of mind is also my interest which I have developed since I rejected the idea of souls and could not (...) account for my own phenomenal experiences. Among the current answers to the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995) one stood out to me – Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts model of consciousness presented in “Consciousness Explained” (Dennett, 1991) and his other works. Daniel Dennett is a self-described illusionist (Dennett, 2016) and a functionalist. His position is synonymous to holding self-conscious experiences, such as deliberating over one’s pain or reflecting over one’s actions insufficient to postulate existence of a metaphysical self. He believes instead that experiences are functional realizations which do not require any self, and the feeling of being conscious or self-conscious is actually a ”user-illusion” (Dennett, 1991), a term describing the unjustified belief of being in control of one’s actions. In his views, a selfhood as it is popularly conceived is contradictory. Therefore, he rejects realism about mental events, a position also called naïve realism (Siegel, 2011), on the basis that it is unverifiable and there are insufficient grounds to accept mental events (Dennett, 1988). He adopts a similar scepticism towards other theories of minds, hence nearing eliminative materialism in self-consciousness and related theme of pain (Dennett, 1978). His multiple drafts model of consciousness seeks to ground our beliefs about self-consciousness in the specific architecture of mind, which is particular to every species and kind of being. As such it is a particularly flexible theory that examines experiences of non-humans without falling into binary thinking – believing that a being has as rich inner life as humans do or none. This is why it is a great starting point for establishing necessary conditions for consciousness in robots. In this essay, I will often use words computer, programme, robot interchangeably for the purpose of clarity and take as the working definition “autonomous machines capable of sensing their environment, making decision and performing tasks similar to human actions”. I chose to explore self-consciousness instead of committing to the issue of consciousness, because consciousness can be defined in a weak sense, in which even a thermostat is “conscious” of the temperature, and consciousness in a strong sense, which invokes the internalism and externalism debate that is less connected to the nature of experiences than self-consciousness. My exploration pertains first and foremost to the philosophy of mind, of which I will examine the most relevant positions and decide to commit to functionalism (Block, 1980). Then I will advocate for explaining away of some of phenomena of self-consciousness and believing self-consciousness to be a sort of illusion. From there I will conclude that robots could fall for the same illusion of self-consciousness and therefore become self-conscious. I will argue, that self-consciousness can be established using a modified Turing Test, which would determine if a robot believed in a meaningful narrative about itself (Ricoeur, 1991) and hence be self-conscious. This will lead to answering the question of this essay: what are the features necessary for a self-conscious robot in the light of “Consciousness Explained” by Daniel Dennett? (shrink)

The chapter relates Alcibiades's speech in the Symposium to the dialogue Alcibiades I. I believe, the encomium on Socrates in the Symposium should be interpreted together with the Alcibiades I. There, Plato offers a fuller picture of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, one that gives a possible explanation of Alcibiades' failure and moral collapse, while keeping Socrates' position as a moral teacher intact. This approach presupposes that Plato wrote some of the dialogues in a deliberate order of the fictional (...) chronology. Interpreting the Symposium together with the Alcibiades I allows me then to make a broader claim concerning Plato's conception of the personal self. (shrink)

We cannot but begin this volume with Wittgenstein’s famous remark that “Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different.” (MDC: p.157) This is, however, a casual remark, and it seems that we should not put too much emphasis on it. (For a discussion of how the remark should properly be understood, see Chapter 20.) In (...) compiling this collection of essays we adopted from this remark the idea that the problem of difference in identity is the common topic between Hegel and Wittgenstein. The remark presents a certain interplay (or, one might say, dialectics) of identity and difference. And it is questions of identity and difference between Hegel and Wittgenstein (with respect to certain aspects of their works, under certain interpretations, etc.) that are addressed by the essays in this volume. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to defend the proposition that bewilderment can contribute to the interest we take in artworks. Taking inspiration from Alois Riegl’s underdeveloped explanation of why his contemporaries valued some historically distant artworks higher than recent art, I interpret the historical case of the European audiences’ fascination with the Fayum mummy portraits as involving such a bewilderment. I distinguish the claim about effective bewilderment from the thesis that aesthetic meaning resists discursive understanding and seek to establish that (...) bewilderment can figure positively in art appreciation, drawing on Richard Wollheim’s argument—developed in engaging Sigmund Freud’s essays on art—that posing obstacles to our understanding can actually contribute considerably to art’s effect: it prolongs and intensifies our engagement with the work. Riegl’s observation that some historically distant artworks have an especially strong effect is thus explained in terms of their anachronism: the effect is caused by the difficulties experienced in making sense of their contemporary look and their distant origin. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to formulate a universal characterization of consciousness, despite the conceptual vagueness of that term. The fundamental aspects of this phenomenon as studied by science consist of four features: its being accessible from the inside and the outside (subjectively and objectively), its being about something (referential), its being bodily determined, and its possessing a certain function (being useful). Approached in this way and in broad terms, consciousness seems to be a graded rather than all-or-none phenomenon. (...) However, it is argued that the main problem for the gradational approach is to establish reasonable, empirically justified limits on how extended (locally and globally) the range of a graded consciousness could be. Such constraints should then help to avoid the counterintuitive consequences of IIT (Integrated Information Theory), which ascribes consciousness even to such simple artificial systems as photodiodes. The article introduces global limits for conscious systems by pointing to the ability to individuate information as a necessary developmental condition of subjective perspectives. Local limits, meanwhile, are determined on the basis of a hypothesis about the action-oriented nature of the processes that select states of consciousness. Ultimately, the limits put forward imply that consciousness is to be characterized as individuated information in action. (shrink)

While for Brentano it is a mark of the mental that any mental state is an object of inner awareness, this suggestion is notably rejected by the Higher-Order Thought Theory (HOTT) of consciousness that posits non-conscious inner awareness, which isn’t an object of inner awareness, and yet is mental. I examine an objection against the HOTT, according to which inner awareness is phenomenally present in ordinary consciousness. To assess the objection, I investigate arguments of Chalmers and Montague in favor of (...) this phenomenal presence. I argue that while these arguments may show that experience is not transparent, they crucially fail to demonstrate that ‘inner transparency’ must be false too, i.e. that inner awareness is phenomenally present. I conclude that non-conscious inner awareness is an open possibility and Brentano’s posit of inner awareness as a mark of the mental thus looks unpromising. (shrink)

A commentary on Whitney Davis's essay 'Visuality and Vision: Questions for a Post-culturalist Art History' published in the same issue of Estetika.

I provide a distinctively Wittgensteinian interpretation of Hegel’s Subjective Logic, including the parts on the concept, the judgement and the syllogism. I argue that Wittgenstein implicitly recognised the moments of universality, particularity and individuality; moreover, he was sensitive to Hegel’s crucial distinction between abstract and concrete universals. More specifically, for Wittgenstein the moment of particularity has the status of a paradigmatic sample which mediates between a universal concept and its individual instances. Thus, a concrete universal is a universal that includes (...) every individual via its paradigmatic sample. Next, I provide a generic account of the emergence of concrete universals through a series of negations that follows the basic structure of Hegel’s judgement—“the individual is the universal”—and the syllogism—“the individual is the universal mediated by the particular”. This development is illustrated with examples from Hegel (a plant, Socrates, Caesar, a Stoic sage, Jesus) as well as from Wittgenstein (colour samples, the standard metre, works of art). I take Wittgenstein’s argument against private language as implying that we cannot do without paradigms in our epistemic practices. If the conclusion of the section “Subjectivity” in Hegel’s Science of Logic is that the moment of particularity cannot be ignored or dispensed with, then it would mean that we cannot do without paradigms in our epistemic practices: that is, that private rules are impossible. (shrink)

In the sense-certainty chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, we find one of Hegel’s famous puns, which utilizes homophonic affinities and differences between the verb beiherspielen and the noun Beispiel. I argue that the effect of this pun is that the word Beispiel acquires, beyond its usual meaning of ‘example’ or ‘instance’, the meaning of a play of something inessential, a play in passing. After reviewing all available translations into English, I suggest that, in order to preserve this wordplay, one (...) can translate Beispiel as ‘by-play’. Furthermore, I analyse other occurrences of the word beiherspielen in the Phenomenology and elsewhere in Hegel’s texts. Next, I focus on the crucial importance of this pun for Derrida’s interpretation and critique of Hegel’s dialectic. Only for a certain loose translation of beiherspielen does Derrida’s reasoning appear plausible. I conclude with a discussion of the ideal of terminological uniformity in translating Hegel’s texts. In preserving the wordplay by translating Beispiel as ‘by-play’, one is forced to sacrifice the uniformity of translation. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether a general method is capable of accommodating the vast array of contexts in which art objects are studied. I propose a framework for such a general method, which is, however, limited to a specific research task: reconstructing the circumstances under which a culturally and/or temporally distant or “exotic” art object becomes interesting (or menacing) to look at. The proposed framework is applied to evaluate Anthony Forge’s essays on the visual art of the Abelam. (...) The essays played a central role in the rekindling of anthropological interest in visual art, but they have also been subject to criticism for forcing on Abelam art Western categories that distort the role art objects play in the Abelam world. Assessing the corpus in terms of the proposed framework allows me to exemplify the main differences between a pragmatic and a semantic approach to gaining access to the efficacy of culturally or temporally distant art. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a plausible conceptual model of a specific use of images described as substitution in recent art-historical literature. I bring to light the largely implicit shared commitments of the art historians’ discussion of substitution, each working as they do in a different idiom, and I draw consequences from these commitments for the concept of substitution by image—the major being the distinction between nonportraying substitution and substitution by portrayal. I then develop an argument that (...) substitution by image in the desired, nonportraying sense needs to be thought of in terms of a figurative representation of an image’s subject as a generic object, what I will call its figurative instantiation. (shrink)

Recent theories of art that subscribe to the view that art objects are agents enchanting their target audience, have tended to explain the operation of art objects as an agent–patient dynamic, a causal nexus of agency. They face a challenge, however, when they also aspire to embrace the idea – dominant in modernist and contemporary art theory – that the function of art is to unsettle its spectators’ habitual ways of perceiving and understanding, that is, to disenchant them: If artworks (...) are to be understood as agents enchanting their recipients, how can they be forces of disenchantment at the same time? I argue that the shift in perspective from perceiving art objects as enchanting agents to approaching them as possible means of gaining cognitive distance is inadequately addressed by these theories. (shrink)

The chapter, while exploring the interconnections between Plato’s Republic and Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae, postulates the existence of a third common source, which was presumably Hippodamus’ project of the best constitution. Hippodamus embraced the Pythagorean idea that the leading role in the polis should pertain to a group of morally and intellectually perfect philosophers who live on a communist basis; on this background, he proposed a tripartite functional division of the city. Aristophanes had adopted this model and reformulated it comically by identifying (...) the ruling group with women. This comical travesty then successfully manifested the fundamental connection between nourishing, sexuality and ruling. In the Republic, Plato integrates all these impulses into the dialectical context and develops a theory of naturalness of the political community. (shrink)

Je otrok podle Aristotela vykořisťovaným nástrojem výroby stojícím na úrovni zvířete, nebo méně nadaným jedincem, jenž může svoje omezené možnosti naplnit pouze jako podřízený člen domácnosti? Aristotelští badatelé zdůrazňují jednu z možností podle toho, nakolik jsou sami liberálně, či komunitaristicky orientováni: buď je Aristotelova teorie panství vykládána jako nelidská a ideologická, nebo jako realistická a solidární. Spor se však netýká pouze „liberalismu“ a „komunitarismu“ v Aristotelovi, nýbrž – jelikož je otrok v obou výkladech chápán jako nástroj pána – také dvou (...) základních pojetí techniky a v důsledku moderní civilizace obecně, jež jsou zastoupeny na jedné straně Lévinasovým Gagarinem a na druhé straně Heideggerem. Aristotelés naznačuje – a to pomocí technicky přesného důkazu – možnost techniky, která osvobozuje od nutnosti, přitom si je však vědom podmíněnosti každého takového osvobození. Výdobytkem Aristotelovy teorie panství je to, že se v ní hledisko rovnosti a svobody a hledisko podřízení a nutnosti nikoli vylučují, nýbrž vzájemně doplňují. (shrink)

This book offers an original philosophical perspective on exemplarity. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s later work and Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, it argues that examples are not static entities but rather oscillate between singular and universal moments. There is a broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and universal concepts or norms. In the first part of the book, Mácha contends that there is a kind of différance between singular examples and general exemplars or paradigms. Every example is, in part, (...) also an exemplar, and vice versa. Furthermore, he develops a paracomplete approach to the logic of exemplarity, which allows us to say of an exemplar of X neither that it is an X nor that it is not an X. This paradox is structurally isomorphic to Russell’s paradox and can be addressed in similar ways. In the second part of the book, Mácha presents four historical studies that exemplify the ideas developed in the first part. This part begins with Plato’s Forms, understood as standards/paradigms, before considering Kant’s theory of reflective judgment as a general epistemological account of exemplarity. This is then followed by analyses of Hegel’s conceptual moment of particularity and Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. The book concludes by discussing the speculative hypothesis that all our knowledge is based on paradigms, which, following the logic of exemplarity, are neither true nor false. (shrink)

This article surveys theories of metaphor in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. In particular, it focuses on contemporary semantic, pragmatic and non-cognitivist theories of linguistic metaphor and on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory advanced by George Lakoff and his school. Special attention is given to the mechanisms that are shared by nearly all these approaches, i.e. mechanisms of interaction and mapping between conceptual domains. Finally, the article discusses several recent attempts to combine these theories of linguistic and conceptual metaphor into a (...) unitary account. (shrink)