Second scholasticism, ​analytical metaphysics, and Christian apologetics are the three topics characteristic of the lifelong efforts of the eminent Czech philosopher Stanislav Sousedík, who celebrated his 90th birthday in 2021. To honour this anniversary, a conference named accordingly was organized in Prague. The papers presented at this event — further elaborated by their authors and supplemented with Sousedík’s remarkable “Brief Autobiography” — constitute the gist of this book: a collective homage to Professor Sousedík and an attempt to promote and develop (...) his intellectual legacy. (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

This volume aimed to highlight narrative identities of European cities or city neighbourhoods that have been overlooked, such as mid-sized cities. These cities are neither small towns nor metropolises, cities that are now unveiling their appeal or specificity. The present special issue thus covers a range of representations of cities. The articles investigate more systematically how different texts deal with various cities from different experiential and fictional perspectives. The issue covers the geographical scope across Europe, from east to west or (...) vice versa, as well as a range of different works of national literature(s), but with a clear emphasis on mid-sized European cities that have until now been deemed as lesser-known, secondary, peripheral, ‘other’ cities that are in the focus of the research of the COST project Writing Urban Places. New Narratives of the European City, within which this journal issue is being published. (shrink)

Higher‐order metaphysicians take facts to be higher‐order beings, i.e., entities in the range of irreducibly higher‐order quantifiers. In this paper, I investigate the impact of this conception of facts on the debate about the reality of tense. I identify two major repercussions. The first concerns the logical space of tense realism: on a higher‐order conception of facts, a prominent version of tense realism, dynamic absolutism, turns out to conflict with the laws of (higher‐order tense) logic. The second concerns our understanding (...) of the positions occupying this logical space: on a higher‐order conception of facts, an attractive interpretation of the central tense realist notion of ‘facts constituting reality’ becomes unavailable. I discuss these results in the context of the more general project of higher‐order metaphysics and the (meta)metaphysics of time, drawing out their implications for the nature of the disputes both between realists and anti‐realists about tense and between different tense realist factions. (shrink)

Machine intelligence already helps medical staff with a number of tasks. Ethical decision-making, however, has not been handed over to computers. In this proof-of-concept study, we show how an algorithm based on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles could be employed to advise on a range of moral dilemma situations that occur in medical institutions. We explain why we chose fuzzy cognitive maps to set up the advisory system and how we utilized machine learning to train it. We report on the (...) difficult task of operationalizing the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy, and describe how we selected suitable input parameters that we extracted from a training dataset of clinical cases. The first performance results are promising, but an algorithmic approach to ethics also comes with several weaknesses and limitations. Should one really entrust the sensitive domain of clinical ethics to machine intelligence? (shrink)

Subverting a once widely held Quinean paradigm, there is a growing consensus among philosophers of logic that higher-order quantifiers (which bind variables in the syntactic position of predicates and sentences) are a perfectly legitimate and useful instrument in the logico-philosophical toolbox, while neither being reducible to nor fully explicable in terms of first-order quantifiers (which bind variables in singular term position). This article discusses the impact of this quantificational paradigm shift on metaphysics, focussing on theories of properties, propositions, and identity, (...) as well as on the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

Scholars of international law have been increasingly troubled by states’ vast powers and practices of migrant exclusion. There is no doubt that much of this uneasiness is catalyzed by a keen sense of the demands of a basic liberalism at the international legal order's core. Indeed, the increased construction of border walls,1 the continuously widespread use of deportation as a migration control tool,2 and new digital bordering technologies3 have all come under scrutiny precisely because of the challenges they pose to (...) the notion of supposedly universal entitlements, both substantive and procedural, that often appear disabled or overridden when it comes to the treatment of different sorts of migrants. My goal in this contribution is not to add to such legal critiques, but rather to provide the contours of a broader normative argument to rebuke—or at least complicate—what is often called the state's “right to exclude” all or most would-be immigrants. This right is not just standardly assumed in legal and political practice—indeed, standardly viewed as the linchpin of sovereignty—but has also enjoyed sophisticated defense by liberal political theorists.4 The main goal of my argument is to suggest that anyone with basic liberal inclinations—including political theorists, lawyers, and practitioners of politics—should be able to agree that, under current circumstances, granting states a potent “right to exclude” entails deep tensions with basic moral standards of legitimate authority. This is because the deeply entrenched characteristics and historical background conditions of immigration control today tend structurally to push states to violate the appropriate moral conditions of their legitimate authority to enforce immigration restrictions.5 While moving above and beyond legal argumentation, my hope is that the argument may underscore and give further analytical expression to some of the animating concerns of contemporary legal contestations of states’ exclusive powers and practices. (shrink)

Rosi Braidotti has recently argued that the emerging scholarship on posthumanism should employ what she calls nomadic thinking. Braidotti identifies Gilles Deleuze’s work on Spinoza as the genesis of posthumanist ontology, yet Deleuze’s claims about nomadic thinking or nomadology come from his work on Leibniz. I argue that for posthumanist thought to theorize subjectivity beyond the human, it must use nomadology to overcome ontology itself. To make my argument, I demonstrate that while Braidotti is correct about Spinoza’s influence on Deleuze, (...) his work on Leibniz is necessary to adequately conceptualize nomadology. I employ Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of the Thought-brain as a model for conceptualizing posthumanist subjectivity that they claim goes beyond the subject itself. (shrink)

Higher-order realists about properties express their view that there are properties with the help of higher-order rather than first-order quantifiers. They claim two types of advantages for this way of formulating property realism. First, certain gridlocked debates about the nature of properties, such as the immanentism versus transcendentalism dispute, are taken to be dissolved. Second, a further such debate, the tropes versus universals dispute, is taken to be resolved. In this paper I first argue that higher-order realism does not in (...) fact resolve the tropes versus universals dispute. In a constructive spirit, I then develop higher-order realism in a way that leads to a dissolution, rather than a resolution, of this dispute too. (shrink)

The internet has become an ubiquitous epistemic source. However, it comes with several drawbacks. For instance, the world wide web seems to foster filter bubbles and echo chambers and includes search results that promote bias and spread misinformation. Richard Heersmink suggests online intellectual virtues to combat these epistemically detrimental effects . These are general epistemic virtues applied to the online environment based on our background knowledge of this online environment. I argue that these online intellectual virtues also demand a particular (...) view of cognitive integration. Online intellectual virtues are incompatible with a popular conception of extended minds proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers . I suggest that if we want to hold on to both a conception of online intellectual virtues and some conception of the extended mind, we have to accept a more gradual theory of cognitive integration along the lines of second-wave theories of the extended mind. (shrink)

Hybrid contingentism combines first-order contingentism, the view that it is contingent what individuals there are, with higher-order necessitism, the view that it is non-contingent what properties and propositions there are (where these are conceived as entities in the range of appropriate higher-order quantifiers). This combination of views avoids the most delicate problems afflicting alternative contingentist positions while preserving the central contingentist claim that ordinary, concrete entities exist contingently. Despite these attractive features, hybrid contingentism is usually faced with rejection. The main (...) reason for this is an objection that crucially involves haecceitistic properties, properties such as being identical to Plato or being identical to Aristotle. The objection alleges that by accepting the necessary existence of such haecceities, hybrid contingentists incur an explanatory commitment that they are unable to discharge, namely that of explaining how it is that certain haecceities ‘lock onto’ their target individuals even when those individuals are absent. To defend hybrid contingentism against this charge, I first clarify the haecceities objection in several respects and consider, in particular, what notion of explanation the objection is operating with. After arguing that it can be fruitfully understood as a challenge to provide metaphysical grounds for certain haecceity facts, I develop a contingentist response to the objection that draws on recent work on the connection between ground and essence. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a new approach to we-mode agency drawing on the concept of layered agency. I argue that agents can shut out their personal attitudes in favour of a perspective jointly established with other people. I can act as a member of the philosophy department aiming for what the department agreed on, even if that might conflict with my personal beliefs. I can shut out these personal beliefs for a moment and reason from the group’s standpoint. While (...) this observation itself is not novel, I provide an original account for this phenomenon building on C. Thi Nguyen’s proposal of layered agency. I then use this new account of the we-mode as a basic building block for conceptualising social groups and group attitudes. I end by showing how the proposal deals with common cases from the literature. (shrink)

Fenomenologie není pouze specifická metoda filosofického zkoumání, ale též svébytná filosofická pozice. Husserl je znám a diskutován spíše jako autor právě zmíněné metody, ovšem ta přeci měla sloužit jakožto organon pro vytvoření samostatné filosofické nauky. Proto se bude v příspěvku věnovat pozornost Husserlovu chápání toho, co je to filosofie, a to v kontrastu proti dobově populárním filosofickým pozicím, jimiž byly naturalismus a filosofie světového názoru s jeho nejodpudivější podobou nazývanou Husserlem pejorativně „Tiefsinn“: důvtipná duchaplnost. Husserl zamýšlí odstranit oba zmíněné typy (...) filosofie skutečně přísně vědeckou filosofií, jež bude filosofií fenomenologickou. (shrink)

Comic immoralism is the view that sometimes funny things are funny due to their having immoral properties of some sort. Immoralism has many proponents and detractors. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I clarify the scope and content of comic immoralism as a general thesis in the philosophy of humor. I will argue that the debate about immoralism has unduly excluded certain categories of humor from inclusion, and that the language which immoralists sometimes use can be misleading. Second, (...) I argue for my own version of immoralism, which I call ridicule immoralism. Ridicule immoralism holds that sometimes things are funny due to their being ridiculous, and that things are often ridiculous due to being morally flawed. It follows from this that a version of comic immoralism is true. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been overwhelming public health-care systems around the world. With demand exceeding the availability of medical resources in several regions, hospitals have been forced to invoke triage. To ensure that this difficult task proceeds in a fair and organised manner, governments scrambled experts to draft triage guidelines under enormous time pressure. Although there are similarities between the documents, they vary considerably in how much weight their respective authors place on the different criteria that they propose. Since most (...) of the recommendations do not come with ethical justifications, analysing them requires that one traces back these criteria to their underlying theories of distributive justice. In the literature, COVID-19 triage has been portrayed as a value conflict solely between utilitarian and egalitarian elements. While these two accounts are indeed the main antipodes, I shall show that in fact all four classic theories of distributive justice are involved: utilitarianism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, and communitarianism. Detecting these in the documents and classifying the suggested criteria accordingly enables one to understand the balancing between the different approaches to distributive justice—which is crucial for both managing the current pandemic and in preparation for the next global health crisis. (shrink)

Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

This chapter discusses a problematic relation between user-friendly design and manipulation. Some specific features of the design of a website can make it a more or less potent tool for manipulation. In particular, features that can be summed up as creating a user-friendly experience are also manipulation-friendly. The ease of using a website also makes it easier to be manipulated via the website. The chapter provides an argument that this can be explained as a less intellectually virtuous engagement with websites (...) that are more user-friendly. It is simply more difficult to mobilize suitable intellectual virtues when the website is quick and easy to use. For instance, when Google Search presents search results quickly and easily users become less intellectually cautious and independent than they ought to be. The chapter discusses a mechanism that links user-friendly design to an overly trusting attitude towards a website that leads to this intellectually careless behaviour. This link is support with empirical evidence based on processing fluency effects. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, democracy and oligarchy are empirically the most widespread and analytically fundamental ‘constitutions’. I analyse how in different places in his Politics Aristotle ‘positively’ defines and differentiates between democracy and oligarchy. At the same time, I substantiate in detail a new interpretation of Aristotle’s view that significantly differs from the current interpretation. ‘Combining’ the elements, procedures, and principles of democracy and oligarchy gives rise to mixed ‘constitutions’, a special place among which is occupied by the polity or republic, (...) which is the best regime ‘for most states and for most people’. I show the ways in which, according to Aristotle, it is possible to form such a regime. Carl Schmitt and, later somewhat differently, Bernard Manin draw a link between Aristotle’s mixed regime and the representative democracies of today. (shrink)

This paper investigates the connection between two recent trends in philosophy: higher-orderism and conceptual engineering. Higher-orderists use higher-order quantifiers (in particular quantifiers binding variables that occupy the syntactic positions of predicates) to express certain key metaphysical doctrines, such as the claim that there are properties. I argue that, on a natural construal, the higher-orderist approach involves an engineering project concerning, among others, the concept of existence. I distinguish between a modest construal of this project, on which it aims at engineering (...) higher-order analogues of the familiar notion of first-order existence, and an ambitious construal, on which it additionally aims at engineering a broadened notion of existence that subsumes first-order and higher-order existence. After identifying a substantial problem for the ambitious project, I investigate a possible response which is based on adopting a cumulative type theory as the background higher-order logic. While effective against the problem at hand, this strategy turns out to undermine a major reason to embrace higher-orderism in the first place, namely the idea that higher-orderism dissolves a range of otherwise intractable debates in metaphysics. Higher-orderists are therefore best advised to pursue their engineering project on the modest variant and against the background of standard type theory. (shrink)

Groups can be epistemically vicious just like individuals. And just like individuals, groups sometimes want to do something about their vices. They want to change. However, intentionally combating one’s own vices seems impossible without detecting those vices first. Self-knowledge seems to provide a first step towards changing one’s own epistemic vices. I argue that groups can acquire self-knowledge about their epistemic vices and I propose an account of such collective self-knowledge. I suggest that collective self-knowledge of vices is partially based (...) on evidence that a group can generate by performing internal promptings. Whereas these promptings are done mentally in individual self-knowledge, these promptings are done by interactions of group members in the collective case. The group can then acquire inferential self-knowledge of their vices based on the evidence generated by the interactions within the group. Groups thereby bring themselves into a position from which they can combat and change those vices intentionally. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl obdržel v roce 1927 nabídku od Jamese Louise Garvina, britského editora Encyclopædia Britannica, ať napíše pro novou, tehdy čtrnáctou edici článek „Fenomenologie“. Garvin stanovil rozsah článku na 4000 slov a termín vydání na září roku 1929. Husserl pracoval na článku v časovém rozmezí mezi zářím a prosincem roku 1927, během kterého vyhotovil celkem čtyři verze. Husserl požádal o spolupráci na prvních třech verzích svého žáka Martina Heideggera, který toho času zastával profesorský stolec na univerzitě v Marburku. Heidegger strávil (...) v říjnu 1927 u Husserla několik dní, během kterých intenzivně pracovali na řečeném článku. Nicméně jejich spolupráce vedla ke vzájemnému profesnímu odcizení, protože práce na formulování článku dala vytanout nepřekonatelným obsahovým diferencím mezi oběma filosofy. Na základě Heideggerových nepřijatelných návrhů a připomínek Husserl nakonec sepsal finální, čtvrtou verzi článku již sám. Tuto poslední verzi čítající 7000 slov pak Husserl předal oxfordskému učenci Christopheru V. Salmonovi, který ji měl zkrátit a přeložit do angličtiny. Salmon sice v únoru roku 1928 opravdu dodal do redakce EB text čítající 3844 slov bez bibliografie, ovšem nejednalo se vpravdě o překlad, nýbrž dost svévolnou parafrázi. Tato podoba Husserlova článku se pak objevovala ve čtrnácté edici EB, jež se vydávala až do roku 1974, jen do roku 1956, kdy byla nahrazena článkem napsaným Johnem N. Findlayem. Původní podoba Husserlova článku byla poprvé zveřejněna až roku 1962 v rámci jeho sebraných spisů známých pod označením Husserliana, podle jejichž IX. svazku jsme vyhotovili předložený překlad z německého jazyka. Podle této edice rovněž uvádíme paginaci, která je uvedena v hranatých závorkách, přičemž stránkový přechod indikuje v textu umístěná značka |.U příležitosti 80. výročí Husserlova skonu, který připadl na rok 2018, bylo naším záměrem připomenout přínos a odkaz tohoto našeho krajana tím, že napravíme absenci překladu jeho patrně nejvíce instruktivního, přehledného a programového textu, který byť ve zkomolené podobě anglického „překladu“, po dlouhou dobu seznamoval učenou veřejnost s tím, co je to fenomenologie. (shrink)

Fictionalists maintain that possible worlds, numbers or composite objects exist only according to theories which are useful but false. Hale, Divers and Woodward have provided arguments which threaten to show that fictionalists must be prepared to regard the theories in question as contingently, rather than necessarily, false. If warranted, this conclusion would significantly limit the appeal of the fictionalist strategy rendering it unavailable to anyone antecedently convinced that mathematics and metaphysics concern non-contingent matters. I try to show that their arguments (...) can be resisted by developing and defending a strategy suggested by Rosen, Nolan and Dorr, according to which the fiction-operator is to be analysed in terms of a counterfactual that admits of non-trival truth-values even when the antecedent is impossible. (shrink)

States cannot legitimately enforce their borders against migrants if dominant conceptions of sovereignty inform enforcement because these conceptions undermine sufficient respect for migrants’ basic human rights. Instead, such conceptions lead states to assert total control over outsiders’ potential cross-border movements to support their in-group’s self-rule. Thus, although legitimacy requires states to prioritize universal respect for basic human rights, sovereign states today generally fail to do so when it comes to border enforcement. I contend that this enforcement could only be rendered (...) legitimate if it was predicated on more desirable conceptions of sovereignty that supported the universal prioritization of basic human rights. Specifically, desirable conceptions would not establish and require absolute state sovereignty over borders as a necessary precondition for true popular self-governance. (shrink)

In the mid 30s of the 20th century Martin Heidegger attempted to explain the “history of Being” leading to what he called “the oblivion of Being”. In this he focused on the impact of the modern science, which he grants to be a sort of metaphysics. According to Heidegger, the main feature of the modern science consists in what he calls the mathéma-character. The Greek word “to mathéma” means “it what can be learned” and “what must be know beforehand”. It (...) is Heidegger’s intention to show that the mathéma-character of the modern science is deciding about the general understanding of the meaning of “being” and that modern science is replacing the metaphysics, which is the origin of the modern science. (shrink)

Gibt es überzeugende Überforderungseinwände gegen anspruchsvolle moralische Auffassungen? In diesem Buch werden Überforderungseinwände präzise charakterisiert, systematisch eingeordnet und argumentativ verteidigt. Unter Berücksichtigung der wichtigsten philosophischen Beiträge zum Thema wird gezeigt, weshalb gewisse Moraltheorien und -prinzipien dafür kritisiert werden können, dass sie zu viel von einzelnen Personen verlangen.

There are two common reactions to Frege’s claim that some senses and thoughts are private. Privatists accept both private senses and thoughts, while intersubjectivists don’t accept either. Both sides agree on a pair of tacit assumptions: first, that private senses automatically give rise to private thoughts; and second, that private senses and thoughts are the most problematic entities to which Frege’s remarks on privacy give rise. The aim of this paper is to show that both assumptions are mistaken. This will (...) motivate a so far neglected, reconciliatory position between privatism and intersubjectivism according to which all thoughts are public while some senses are private. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger svým poukázáním na mathématický charakter novověké vědy vyostřil rozbor její bytnosti prostřednictvím výkladu klíčové části její metody, jež podle něj spočívá v „souvislosti hypotéza-experiment“. V Heideggerově výkladu experimentální charakter novověké vědy znamená předchůdný metafyzický akt logického stanovení obecného porozumění významu „jsoucna“. Heidegger tedy analyzuje čtyři stupně konceptu „zakoušení“, jenž rozlišuje moderní vědu ode všech starších pojetí „vědy“. Ovšem vše, čeho chce Heidegger dosáhnout, je jasné nahlédnutí do podstaty časového charakteru „existence“.

When does a group justifiedly believe that p? One answer to this question has been developed first by Schmitt and then by Hakli: when the group members jointly accept a reason for the belief. Call this the joint acceptance account of group justification. Their answer has great explanatory power, providing us with a way to account for cases in which the group's justification can diverge from the justification individual members have. Unfortunately, Jennifer Lackey developed a powerful argument against joint acceptance (...) accounts. She argues that these accounts lead to epistemically arbitrary reasons and therefore justification at will. Group justification loses the necessary connection to the world to be truth-conducive. In this paper I develop a new form of a joint acceptance account that can deal with Lackey's examples: the anchored joint acceptance account of group justification. I argue that properly understanding the role of epistemic expectations can help us form the best version of a joint acceptance account. While justification is only generated by joint acceptance of evidence, the evidential expectations towards a group are anchored in the group members. This anchoring guarantees that groups cannot manipulate their ultima facie justification illegitimately. (shrink)

This paper discusses the nature of, problems for, and benefits delivered by fictionalist strategies in metaphysics.

The aim of this dissertation is to develop an account of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project as a departure from ontology and ontological thinking. Ontology can be broadly understood as the study of being or the study of the meaning of being. Traditional ontology examines the nature of being while more contemporary philosophy often understands being itself as becoming or a process. In this respect, Deleuze has often been interpreted as a process or differential ontologist. This project departs from that interpretation (...) by arguing for a non-ontological Deleuze. The dissertation is broken into three papers where each presents a different account of what I call the non-ontological Deleuze through his work on the major pre-Kantian modern philosophers: David Hume, Benedict Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. Each paper then uses the non-ontological Deleuze to engage with a related movement in post-Deleuzian Continental Philosophy. The first paper focuses on Deleuze’s early work on Hume to argue for a re-reading of the history of modern philosophy with a basis in transcendental empiricism rather than Kantian transcendental idealism. This paper uses Deleuze’s reading of Hume to respond to and critique the Speculative Realist movement’s charge that post-Kantian philosophy suffers from what they call correlationism. The second paper uses Deleuze’s work on Spinoza to argue for what the former calls ethology as a replacement for ontology. The claim here is that we should think of things in terms of what they do rather than what they are: in terms of their motion and affects rather than their being. There I contrast my reading of Deleuze’s Spinoza with those thinkers who have recently used that work to develop what is often referred to as New Materialism. The final paper argues that understanding things in terms of what they can do requires a nomadology, which is Deleuze’s play on Leibniz’s monadology. This paper uses Deleuze’s nomadology to create a dialogue with the emerging literature on Critical Posthumanism and subjectivity that has been influenced by Deleuze to suggest that posthumanist subjectivity should be understood in non-ontological terms. (shrink)

This article discusses the theory of perception of Peter Auriol. Arguing for the active nature of the senses in perception, Auriol applies the Scotistic doctrine of objective being to the theory of perception. Nevertheless, he still accepts some parts of the theory of species. The paper introduces Auriol's view on the mechanism of perception and his account of illusions. I argue for a direct realist reading of Auriol's theory of perception and propose that his position becomes clearer if we use (...) the distinction between the first- and third-person perspectives which he seems to presuppose. (shrink)

This paper suggests that virtue epistemology can help decide how to respond to conflicts between different epistemic goals for social media. It is a contribution to critical epistemology of social media insofar as it supplements system-level consideration with insights from individualist epistemology. In particular, whereas the proposal of critical social epistemology of social media by Joshua Habgood-Coote suggests that conflicts between epistemic goals of social media have to be solved by ethical consideration, I suggest that virtue epistemology can also solve (...) at least some of these conflicts fully within the epistemic realm. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers propose that the mind extends further than skin and skull. If they are right, then we should expect this to have some effect on our way of knowing our own mental states. If the content of my notebook can be part of my belief system, then looking at the notebook seems to be a way to get to know my own beliefs. However, it is at least not obvious whether self-ascribing a belief by looking at my notebook (...) is a case of introspection the same way that knowing my non-extended beliefs is. Traditionally this sort of introspection is thought to be privileged and special in ways that the extended introspection case seems not to be. There is nothing privileged about looking at my notebook. Anyone could do it. The aim of the paper is to find out how to understand extended introspection and whether there is something privileged and special about knowing one’s own extended beliefs. Moreover, the notebook case has close analogs using twenty-first century technology. It seems possible to know our beliefs that are extended to smartphones, wearable technology or a cloud-based data store. First, I present the case of extended introspection. I then discuss whether it should be understood as ordinary introspection or as mind-reading. Both seem to be bad fits, which finally prompts an original account for extended introspection based on epistemic rules. (shrink)

Transparency accounts have become one of the main contenders for an adequate theory of self-knowledge. However, for the most part, work on transparent self-knowledge has solely focused on individual agents. In this paper, it is argued that transparency accounts have distinct advantages when we apply them beyond individual agents to social groups. It is shown that transparency accounts of self-knowledge are well-suited to apply to group agents by providing three arguments: the first argument shows that transparency accounts of group self-knowledge (...) can capture the relevant phenomenology well; the second argument suggests that transparency accounts of group self-knowledge are particularly economical. They do not need to posit any new capacities, or new properties of group mental states and therefore avoid commitment to dubious ontological features for social groups, such as distinct introspective faculties in groups. Finally, the third argument shows that transparency accounts are positioned well to explain the privilege and peculiarity of group self-knowledge. No single one of these arguments is decisive in favour of transparent group self-knowledge, but together they show that transparency accounts provide a promising route to understanding group self-knowledge. (shrink)

What does it mean to disagree with people with whom you usually agree? How should political actors concerned with emancipation approach internal disagreement? In short, how should we go about critiquing not our enemies or adversaries but those with whom we share emancipatory visions? I outline the notion of comradely critique as a solution to these questions. I go through a series of examples of how and when critique should differ depending on its addressee, drawing on Jodi Dean’s figure of (...) the comrade. I develop a contrast with its neighbours the ally and the partisan, thus identifying key elements of comradely critique: good faith, equal humanity, equal standing, solidarity, collaboration, common purpose and dispelling fatalism. I then analyse Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse’s private correspondence on the 1960s German student movement as an illustration of (imperfect) comradely critique. I conclude by identifying a crucial tension about publicness and privateness. (shrink)

This paper closes a gap in joint acceptance accounts of the mental life of groups by presenting a theory of group self-knowledge in the joint acceptance framework. I start out by presenting desiderata for a theory of group self-knowledge. Any such theory has to explain the linguistic practice of group avowals, and how self-knowledge can play a role in practical and moral considerations. I develop an account of group self-knowledge in the joint acceptance framework that can explain these desiderata. I (...) argue that a group has self-knowledge of its own attitude A if and only if (i) the operative members jointly accept that the group has attitude A; and (ii) that joint acceptance is non-deviantly caused by the operative group members’ belief that the members jointly accepted attitude A; and (iii) the group has attitude A. Together (i) to (iii) give us conditions for a group having a justified, non-lucky, true belief about its own attitude. (shrink)

In the following paper I develop an account of Gilles Deleuze’s ethics through his work on Spinoza, which he contrasts with morality, to argue that an ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic should resist the moralizing of the New Normal and instead have an immanent focus on what is happening to us. In the first part of the paper I detail the novel approach to ethics as ethology that Deleuze works out most explicitly in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. In the second (...) part I show exactly how Deleuze contrasts ethics from morality and moral thinking before showing the relation of ethics to morality in relation to the New Normal and contrast the Deleuzian ethical perspective from other ethical philosophical accounts that I claim are indicative a moral approach to the New Normal. I conclude by arguing that the prevalence of the New Normal amidst COVID-19 represents a triumph of what Spinoza calls the sad passions and suggest Deleuze’s ethics might be a way to reject those sad passions. (shrink)

Pojem filosofie nabyl v průběhu historie řadu podob a významů. Kromě tradičního teoretického zaměření se lze setkat s přístupem, který vyzdvihuje praktický dopad filosofování na život člověka. Příspěvek představuje koncept filosofické praxe a reflektuje její současný stav na území České republiky. Autoři vymezují filosofickou praxi jako disciplínu filosofie, a načrtávají její možné dělení na dílčí oblasti. Nastíněny jsou její historické kořeny, které autoři identifikují v antickém Řecku. Dále se věnují systematickému představení doposud sepsaných materiálů k filosofické praxi a přehledu její (...) realizace na území České republiky. Detailní pozornost věnují autoři popisu tří jejích oblastí, mezi které patří filosofie pro děti, filosofický workshop a filosofická konzultace. Kromě teoretického vymezení reflektují rovněž své vlastní postupy v uvedených oblastech. Článek čerpá především ze zahraniční odborné literatury, konkrétně z textů a dalších materiálů filosofických praktikantů. Jeho cílem je představit českému čtenáři doposud podrobněji neřešený koncept filosofické praxe a připravit tak pole pro možnou debatu na akademické rovině. -------- The concept of philosophy has had several forms and meanings throughout the history. Besides the traditional theoretical focus, we may also encounter the approach that highlights a practical impact of philosophizing on one’s life. This text introduces the concept of philosophical practice and reflects its current situation in the Czech Republic. Authors characterize philosophical practice as a discipline of philosophy and present its possible division into subsections. They also present its historical roots, which can be found in ancient Greece. Moreover, authors introduce available sources dealing with the philosophical practice and describe how this discipline is actually practiced in the Czech Republic. Detailed attention is given to three of its sections, namely philosophy for children (P4C), philosophical workshop, and philosophical consultation. Authors present theoretical background and also reflect their own methods in these sections. The text draws primarily from scholarly literature from abroad, particularly from the manuscripts and other sources produced by philosophical practitioners. The aim of this text is to introduce the concept of philosophical practice to the Czech reader and prepare the field for further academic discussion. (shrink)

Abstract“Freedom” is a fundamental political concept: contestations or endorsements of freedom-conceptions concern the fundamental normative orientation of sociopolitical orders. Focusing on “freedom,” this article argues that the project of bringing about emancipatory sociopolitical orders is both aided by efforts at engineering fundamental political concepts as well as required by such ameliorative ambitions. I first argue that since the absence of ideology is a constituent feature of emancipatory orders, any attempt at bringing about emancipation should leverage genealogical approaches in order to (...) debunk existing ideological freedom-concepts, which can occur only by exposing the discursive functions these have come to serve for the (re-)production of dominant power relations. I then suggest that establishing and sustaining an alternative, ideology-free conception of “freedom” is a steeper task. Ensuring widespread uptake of any ameliorated concept is contingent on effective change in the relevant social environment. Where fundamental political concepts such as “freedom” are concerned, effective intervention in the relevant social environment requires radical sociopolitical change. But if such change can be brought about and enables the widespread uptake of an “improved” freedom-concept, the concept's content comes to reflect changed social facts, thereby stabilizing the particular emancipatory sociopolitical order which has newly arisen. (shrink)

Joint acceptance accounts of group belief hold that groups can form a belief in virtue of the group members jointly accepting a proposition. Recently, Jennifer Lackey (2020, 2021) proposed a challenge to these accounts. If group beliefs can be based on joint acceptance, then it seems difficult to account for all instances of a group telling a lie. Given that groups can and do lie, our accounts of group belief better not result in us misidentifying some group lies as normal (...) assertions. I argue that Lackey’s argument is not decisive. The cases she proposes as challenges for joint acceptance accounts can be dealt with in the joint acceptance framework. I present two different readings of Lackey’s central case, showing that in both readings Lackey’s example of a problematic group lie should not be identified as a lie, but rather as an epistemic mistake by the group. What kind of mistake the group makes depends on the exact reading of Lackey’s case, but either way the group is not telling a lie. (shrink)

Epistemic bystanding occurs when an agent has all the competences, knowledge and opportunity to prevent another person from forming a false or risky belief, but does not prevent the belief formation. I provide a definition of an epistemic bystander and explain the mechanism that makes someone an epistemic bystander. I argue that the phenomenon is genuinely epistemic and not merely linguistic. Moreover, I propose an account of the mechanism of epistemic bystanding building on Ishani Maitra’s notion of licensing. An epistemic (...) bystander licenses a risky belief-forming process in another person and thereby performs a blameworthy epistemic action. This form of licensing explains the distinctive wrong of being an epistemic bystander. (shrink)

[What is the Human Being? Peter Auriol and the Role of Cognitive Psychology in the Medieval Definition of the Human Being: ] This paper explores how medieval philosophers used cognitive psychology in defining what the human being is, paying special attention to the Franciscan thinker Peter Auriol (c. 1280 – 1322). First, I examine the motivations of Auriol’s claim that the property of being alive is bound to the property of being cognitive (i. e. being capable of cognition). Then, the (...) foundations of medieval faculty psychology and Auriol’s conception of cognition are introduced. I also argue that the emphasis which Auriol puts on the activity of soul’s faculties leads him to the conclusion (unusual in his days) that the distinction among these faculties is established from the first person perspective. Finally, Auriol’s cognitive definition of the human being is introduced – human beings are human beings precisely because their cognitive experience differs from the way the cognition works in animals on the one hand and in God on the other hand. Whereas animals have only sensory soul’s faculties, humans have the intellect in addition and, therefore, they are capable of universal cognition. Moreover, since humans have not only intellect but also the inner senses (particularly, the phantasy), the universals appear to the human intellect only as blended with the individual that the universal was abstracted from, and the human intellect is not capable of paying attention to no more than just one object at the same moment. Since God and angels have only intellect, these distinctively human features are absent from their cognitive experience. (shrink)

Traditionally, the investigation of truth has been anchored in a priori reasoning. Cognitive science deviates from this tradition by adding empirical data on how people understand and use concepts. Building on psychophysics and machine learning methods, we introduce conceptual scaling, an approach to map people's understanding of abstract concepts. This approach, allows computing participant-specific conceptual maps from obtained ordinal comparison data, thereby quantifying perceived similarities among abstract concepts. Using this approach, we investigated individual's alignment with philosophical theories on truth and (...) the predictive capacity of conceptual maps. The obtained results indicated that, while people's understanding of truth is multifaceted and encapsulates notions of coherence and authenticity, alignment is best for the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, conceptual maps allowed predicting individual outcomes with an accuracy of roughly 70%. This research demonstrates that conceptual scaling offers accurate descriptions of individual's understanding of abstract concepts, behavioral predictions, and quantification of alignment with theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

Residence of unauthorized immigrants is a stable feature of the Global North’s liberal democracies. This article asks how liberal-democratic policymakers should respond to this phenomenon, assuming both that states have incontrovertible rights and interests to assert control over immigration and that unauthorized residence is nevertheless an entrenched fact. It argues that a set of liberal-democratic commitments gives policymakers strong reason to implement both so-called ‘firewall’ and ‘regularization’ policies, thereby protecting unauthorized immigrants’ basic needs and interests and officially incorporating many of (...) them in society. It then explains that the background imperative of immigration control creates a dilemmatic tension between these policies, as regularization is envisaged alongside the removal of the ineligible, which is in turn hindered by the implementation of firewalls. This creates a dilemma between the pursuit of two policy goals that are both underwritten by the same value commitments. Though it cannot be entirely dissolved, I argue that the best way to mitigate this dilemma is to design regularization policy in a way that leaves only a small number of unauthorized immigrants subject to removal. (shrink)

Centre and Periphery in the Historiography of Philosophy: Peter Olivi and Medieval Psychology The paper inquiries into the (historiographical) question what does it mean to be a “marginal thinker” in the context of the medieval philosophy. The question is investigated on the example of Franciscan philosopher and theologian Peter Olivi (1248/49–1298) and his philosophical psychology. First, a preliminary option is introduced: for a thinker, being “marginal” depends on his relation to who is considered to be canonical. Since the most famous (...) thinker of the Middle Ages is Thomas Aquinas (at least according to the traditional canon of medieval philosophy), Olivi’s positions in psychology are compared with these of Aquinas. It is revealed that Olivi’s psychology is very different from the Aquinas’ one. (E.g. Olivi stresses the activity of perception, proprioceptual nature of the sense of touch, and direct access of the intellect to its own acts.) Moreover, Olivi is very critical towards the Aristotelian philosophy as is done by some thinkers of his time. Nevertheless, it does not follow that Olivi is a marginal thinker only because of his dissimilarity from the more Aristotelian-minded ones. It is argued that “centre” and “periphery” in the history of medieval philosophy depends not on the canon (which is rather a historians’ construct and instrument), but rather on the tradition. Hence, although Olivi can be considered as a marginal thinker if we take into the account the Aristotelian tradition of medieval philosophy, he is definitely a central and important thinker, if considered as a member of the Augustinian tradition. (shrink)

There is lively debate on the question if states have legitimate authority to enforce the exclusion of (would-be) immigrants. Against common belief, I argue that even non- cosmopolitan liberals have strong reason to be sceptical of much contemporary border authority. To do so, I first establish that for liberals, broadly defined, a state can only hold legitimate authority over persons whose moral equality it is not engaged in undermining. I then reconstruct empirical cases from the sphere of international relations in (...) which what I call ‘colonial norms’ continue to play significant structuring roles. I argue that it is sometimes only by unveiling these colonial norms and the roles they play that we can understand how some states today culpably contribute to undermining the moral equality of persons over whom they will come to claim immigration-related authority. I thus contend that paying attention to colonial norms distinctly enables us to reveal a set of instances in which all liberals should agree that states forfeit legitimate authority over would-be immigrants. (shrink)

I discuss how virtual reality can be used to acquire self-knowledge. Lawlor (Philos Phenomenol Res 79(1):47–75, 2009) and Cassam (Vices of the mind: from the intellectual to the political. OUP, Oxford, 2014) develop inferential accounts of self-knowledge in which one can use imagination to acquire self-knowledge. This is done by actively prompting imaginary scenarios and observing one’s reactions to those scenarios. These reactions are then used as the inferential basis for acquiring self-knowledge. I suggest that the imaginary scenarios can be (...) in principle replaced with scenarios in virtual reality in a way that still provides an inferential basis for self-knowledge. Instead of internal prompting in imagination, I call this external prompting in virtual reality. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of external prompting. On one hand, external prompting avoids some of the common biases that can intervene with internal prompting in imagination. On the other hand, external prompting comes with some challenges of its own. External prompting might be more time-consuming and might be open to a game-like approach of the agent leading to a different sort of distortion that gets in the way of self-knowledge. I suggest that these are practical challenges, but nevertheless, external prompting seems worthwhile for self-knowledge that is otherwise especially difficult to acquire. (shrink)