To what extent do I have a sense of agency over my thoughts while I dream? The sense of agency in dreams can alter in a variety of interesting ways distinct from normal, waking experience. In fact, dreams show many similarities to the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia. In this paper I analyze these alterations with a focus on distinguishing between reduced sense of agency and other cognitive features such as metacognition, confabulation and attention. I argue that some dream reports (...) demonstrate two interesting commonalities with schizophrenia: thought insertion (TI) and auditory hallucination (AH). This line of research has the potential to further our understanding of TI and AH in schizophrenia through the analysis of similar experience in a different conscious state. Through the analysis of dream reports, I found that although TI and AH both occur in dreams, TI is very rare. This is an interesting result since TI is common in patients with schizophrenia. I propose two speculative lines of explanation for the rarity of TI in dreams: first, the cognitive differences between the symptoms of schizophrenia and dreams, and second, the problem of dream reporting conditions. Dream reporting conditions are particularly important, as without controls, reports can be vague. Analysis of dream reports reveals that it is often unclear whether 'hearing voices' indicates sound phenomenology or thought phenomenology. I propose that dream reports could be disambiguated given the right experimental conditions and I suggest how this could be achieved in future experimental research. (shrink)

I propose a narrative fabrication thesis of dream reports, according to which dream reports are often not accurate representations of experiences that occur during sleep. I begin with an overview of anti-experience theses of Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett who reject the received view of dreams, that dreams are experiences we have during sleep which are reported upon waking. Although rejection of the first claim of the received view, that dreams are experiences that occur during sleep, is implausible, I evaluate (...) in more detail the second assumption of the received view, that dream reports are generally accurate. I then propose a “narrative fabrication” view of dreams as an alternative to the received view. Dream reports are often confabulated or fabricated because of poor memory, bizarre dream content, and cognitive deficits. It is well documented that narratives can be altered between initial rapid eye movement sleep awakenings and subsequent reports. I argue that we have reason to suspect that initial reports are prone to inaccuracy. Experiments demonstrate that subjects rationalize strange elements in narratives, leaving out supernatural or bizarre components when reporting waking memories of stories. Inaccuracies in dream reports are exacerbated by rapid memory loss and bizarre dream content. Waking memory is a process of reconstruction and blending of elements, but unlike waking memory, we cannot reality-test for dream memories. Dream experiences involve imaginative elements, and dream content cannot be verified with external evidence. Some dreams may involve wake-like higher cognitive functions, such as lucid dreams. Such dreams are more likely to elicit accurate reports than cognitively deficient dreams. However, dream reports are generally less accurate than waking reports. I then propose methods which could verify the narrative fabrication view, and argue that although the theory cannot be tested with current methods, new techniques and technologies may be able to do so in the future. -/- . (shrink)

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self-representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self-representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, we examine two (...) key forms of polymorphism of self-representation: dreams in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or 'observer' perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases 'vicarious dreams' and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self-representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self-representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming. (shrink)

This article offers an argument of genocide denial as an injustice perpetrated not only against direct victims and survivors of genocide, but also against future members of the victim group. In particular, I argue that in cases of persistent and systematic denial, i.e. denialism, it perpetrates an epistemic injustice against them: testimonial oppression. First, I offer an account of testimonial oppression and introduce Kristie Dotson’s notion of testimonial smothering as one form of testimonial oppression, a mechanism of coerced silencing particularly (...) pertinent to genocide denialism. Secondly, I turn to the epistemology of genocide denialism and, using the example of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, show how it presents what Linda Martín Alcoff calls a substantive practice of ignorance. Thirdly, I apply these considerations to individual practices of genocide denial and analyse the particular characteristics of testimony on genocide, the speaker vulnerabilities involved and the conditions under which hearers will reliably fail to meet the dependencies of a speaker testifying to genocide. Finally, I explore the harms that testimonial oppression perpetrates on members of the victim group, insofar as it systematically deprives them of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

Genocide remembrance is a complex epistemological/ethical achievement, whereby survivors and descendants give meaning to the past in the quest for both personal-historical and social-historical truth. This paper offers an argument of epistemic injustice specifically as it occurs in relation to practices of (individual and collective) genocide remembrance. In particular, I argue that under conditions of genocide denialism, understood as collective genocide misremembrance and memory distortion, genocide survivors and descendants are confronted with hermeneutical oppression. Drawing on Sue Campbell’s relational, reconstructive account (...) of remembering, I argue that genocide denialism involves disrespectful challenges to memory, which systematically misrecognize rememberers. Adopting the case of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, I discuss two interrelated mechanisms through which this can happen: i) through the systematic portrayal of survivors and descendants as vicious rememberers, and ii) through distortions of the very concept of ‘genocide’. Based on this, I show how hermeneutical and testimonial injustice are crucially interrelated when it comes to “contested” memories of historical injustice and the biographical testimony it gives rise to. (shrink)

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Epistemic Injustice and Collective Wrongdoing,’ we show how the eight contributions examine the collective dimensions of epistemic injustice. First, we contextualize the articles within theories of epistemic injustice. Second, we provide an overview of the eight articles by highlighting three central topics addressed by them: i) the effects of epistemic injustice and collective wrongdoing, ii) the underlying epistemic structures in collective wrongdoing, unjust relations and unjust societies, and iii) the remedies and strategies of (...) resistance to epistemic injustice. We close by pointing to connections and issues that may motivate further research. (shrink)

Hvad der sker i vores sovende hjerner, kan være et mareridt at tyde for en drømmeforsker. Og vi er desværre elendige til at huske det, når vi vågner. Heldigvis kan teknologien hjælpe med at løfte sløret for, hvad der foregår, mens vi ligger og trækker torsk i land. Nogle drømme er dybt bizarre. Andre fører til Nobelpriser. Og så er der dem, som bare er pinlige. De sidste vil vi nødig sende i en hjernescanner. Ifølge Melanie Gillespie Rosen, lysvågen (...) filosof ved Aarhus Universitet, handler de fleste drømme om noget så søvndyssende som arbejde. (shrink)

According to the standard account of forgiveness, you forgive your wrongdoer by overcoming your resentment towards them. But how exactly must you do so? And when is such overcoming fitting? The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel version of the standard account to answer these questions. Its core idea is that the reactive attitudes are a fitting response not just to someone’s blameworthiness, but to their blameworthiness being significant for you, or worthy of your caring, in virtue (...) of your relationship to it. Someone’s blameworthiness is significant for you to the extent you’re bound up with what grounds it––e.g. with the wrongdoer’s being a participant in human relationships, with their attitudes, or with the victim’s being a source of demands. So you may fittingly not care about someone’s blameworthiness if it’s sufficiently insignificant for you in this manner––e.g. if their wrong happened far off in place and time. And forgiveness revolves around this. You forgive your wrongdoer if and only if, partly out of goodwill towards them, you cease to care about their blameworthiness––a bit as if their wrong had happened far off. If I’m right, this agent-relativity-based account can resolve the apparent ‘paradoxy of forgiveness’, satisfies a number of desiderata, and is plausible on an intuitive level. (shrink)

This introduction to the edited volume on "Testimonial Injustice and Trust" provides (a) a brief overview of the philosophical debate on the notion of ‘testimonial injustice’ and (b) a summary of the 18 chapters constituting this volume. The contributions are divided into four thematic sections. These are (I) Rethinking Testimonial Injustice, (II) Testimonial Injustice and the Question of Trust, (III) The Public Spheres of Testimonial Injustice, and (IV) Testimonial Injustice and Public Health. The contributions criticize, complement, or expand on Fricker’s (...) central case of testimonial injustice and the proposed virtue of testimonial justice, thereby contributing to its better understanding and extending its scope. Moreover, through the application of theories of epistemic injustice, and testimonial injustice in particular, to new real-world cases and contexts, they seek to render our theories and concepts more robust and valuable. (shrink)

Ștefan Bolea ABSTRACT: In the present paper I analyze the theme of death in Gothic Metal songs such as Forever Failure by Paradise Lost, Everything Dies by Type O Negative, The Hanged Man by Moonspell or Gone with The Sin by HIM. The subthemes I am mostly interested in are the...

The topic of this thesis is axiological uncertainty – the question of how you should evaluate your options if you are uncertain about which axiology is true. As an answer, I defend Expected Value Maximisation (EVM), the view that one option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. More precisely, I explore the axiomatic foundations of this view. I employ results from state-dependent utility theory, extend them in various ways and interpret (...) them accordingly, and thus provide axiomatisations of EVM as a theory of axiological uncertainty. (shrink)

Equal Justice explores the role of the idea of equality in liberal theories of justice. The title indicates the book’s two-part thesis: first, I claim that justice is the central moral category in the socio-political domain; second, I argue for a specific conceptual and normative connection between the ideas of justice and equality. This pertains to the age-old question concerning the normative significance of equality in a theory of justice. The book develops an independent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of equality (...) and egalitarianism. The principal question is about the importance of equality in a theory of justice. More precisely, we should pose questions in four contracting circles: 1. Is justice the supreme value guiding our setup of the basic structure of society, or are there other, equally important values, such as recognition, care, communal belonging? 2. If justice is the highest guiding principle, which competing ideals—especially equality and freedom—ought to have precedence in a policy oriented toward justice? What status does the ideal of equality have in that framework? 3. If equality is a basic ideal of just policy, how should it be practically realized? What sort of equality (equal opportunity, equality of welfare, resource equality) should be demanded? 4. What patterned distribution of which specific goods does the ideal of equality demand? Which principles of distribution can be justified according to our justice ideal? To conclude and summarize: 5. What is the essential core of an egalitarian theory of justice, as opposed to an inegalitarian theory? These five questions structure the work’s order of argumentation. Part A elaborates the conceptual foundations and basic moral principles of justice and equality. Chapter I sets out to install justice as the central moral category in the socio-political domain. At the beginning of the first chapter, the conceptual foundations of justice are clarified. While not eliminating the classical distinctions between different forms of justice, I argue that the distributive paradigm is of primary importance. The primacy of justice in the socio-political domain is developed out of a confrontation with alternative positions, those which maintain either that justice generally, or distributive justice in particular, are subsidiary virtues. At the end of Chapter I, the first of the questions mentioned above is answered in a way that establishes justice as the guiding normative concept for the foundation and evaluation of any social order. To clarify the role of equality in a theory of justice, Chapter II separates the idea of equality into four different principles. They are organized in a way that begins with the most general and uncontroversial principle of equality, and progresses towards increasingly detailed and contested principles. There are two theses that articulate and defend the significance of equality for justice: First there is a conceptual connection between justice and equality, in that principles of formal and proportional equality are necessary in order to explicate the concept of justice. These two principles establish an unbreakable bond between justice and equality. Justice can only be explained—or so I argue—by reference to these and other (normative) principles of equality. The second thesis posits a normative relationship between justice and equality, which is disclosed by three substantive principles of equality: moral equality, the presumption of equality, and the principle of responsibility. I argue that the normative core of an egalitarian theory of justice is expressed by the latter two principles, which are themselves based on the first principle, that of moral equality. When we view one another as persons, what form of equality or equal treatment is normatively demanded? I argue that the answer to this question is given by the procedural principle of the presumption of equality: regardless of their apparent differences, all persons deserve strictly equal treatment, unless certain kinds of differences have whatever particular relevance would justify, on generally acceptable grounds, unequal treatment or unequal distribution. The justification of the presumption of equality is central to this work and has considerable importance. If the presumption principle’s validity can be justified by enlisting the principle of general justification, then the primacy of equality, and the essential argument for an egalitarian theory of justice, is established. This would likewise provide a procedure for the construction of a material theory of justice. The second question is answered thereby at the end of Chapter II: Equality should have primacy over competing ideals within a justice-oriented policy. The presumption of equality establishes this primacy and, at the same time, offers an appropriate metric and guideline for the construction of a material theory of distributive justice. The presumption of equality in Part B offers an elegant procedure for the development of a theory of distributive justice. Chapter III clearly sets out the necessary prerequisites that a theory of distribution must satisfy in order to determine a liberal-egalitarian distributional framework. We need to specify in which situation the distribution takes place; which goods are and are not to be distributed; in which respect the presumptive equality is to be produced; and by and to whom, and for what period, the relevant goods are to be distributed. The distribution is based on resources understood as general-purpose means. It is necessary to divide goods into different categories, since the justification for unequal treatment in one domain will not carry over into another. This makes presumptive equality necessarily complex. To that end, four spheres of justice are distinguished: (1) the political sphere, which involves allocating rights through the distribution of civil liberties; (2) the democratic sphere, in which political power and the rights of political participation are regulated; (3) the economic sphere, in which income and property are distributed; (4) the social sphere, in which social positions and opportunities are distributed. This framework of distributive justice answers the third of our guiding questions, about the nature of equality, in terms of equality of resources. Chapters IV and V set out the egalitarian distributive criteria for each sphere. I argue that the generally accepted, fundamental rights of classical liberalism are more effectively reconstructed by reference to the equal resource distribution presumptively required in those spheres. Chapter IV shows that when it comes to the first two spheres, those involving basic rights and freedoms and entitlement political participation, there can be no justified exceptions to the equal distribution of the relevant goods. That section argues, contrary to what we commonly find in theories of freedom or popular sovereignty, that the value of freedom and self-determination as the political basis of autonomy is best realized through the presumption of equal distribution. Chapter V deals with the other two spheres, those of economic goods and social positions, and argues for justified exceptions to equal distribution. In the economic sphere we find one principal reason favouring unequal distribution of resources, and three restrictions and compensations limiting that inequality. The basic exception to equal economic distribution arises from the unequal consequences of personal responsibility. From a suitably egalitarian standpoint, the principle of responsibility is the normative principle that determines which reasons justify economic inequality. Here the basic idea is that unequal shares of social goods are fair if they result from the choices and deliberate actions of the relevant parties. That individuals have to bear the costs of their own choices is a condition of autonomy. However, benefits or disadvantages arising from arbitrary and unmerited differences in social circumstances or natural endowments is unfair. The unequal consequences of independent decision-making and action must therefore be limited by compensating first for preferences, secondly for disadvantages, and thirdly by redistributing wealth in aid of the worse-off. I situations of emergency, compensating for disadvantages has priority over all other claims, owing to the urgency of the situation. Social inequalities go beyond the permissible limit if it is possible to improve the long-term social or economic situation of the worse-off by redistributing wealth to them. These exceptions lead to a complex system of free economic action within a framework of compensatory tax and transfer mechanisms. Finally, in the social sphere, the distribution of social positions, offices and opportunities must be structured to ensure that equally talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal chances of obtaining those offices or positions, irrespective of their economic or social class backgrounds. This compromise is permissible for reasons of freedom and prudence, and it makes a certain measure of inequality acceptable. The fourth of our guiding questions is answered accordingly. There are five principles of justice for the basic structure of society, and five legal principles that govern the special distribution of goods in the respective spheres—all are ranked according to their most defensible grounds of priority, ensuring that everyone is accorded equal justice. Chapter VI recapitulates the initial question of equality’s value. The conception of equal justice developed in this work postulates five principles of equality and five principles of law; these constitute an egalitarian framework because they support and promote social justice. Equality has value with respect to them, but is not given any independent, intrinsic value. That is why I call the account developed here a form of constitutive egalitarianism: justice is realized through the realization of equality, itself accomplished by applying the five postulates of equality and five distributive principles of law. This is an egalitarianism on two levels. The first level is involves the claim that morality or justice is conceptually connected with equality. The second level gives equality a substantial weight in what is conceptually validated at the first level, namely the presumption of equality, and constructs an appropriate interpretation and conception of distributive justice through principles of distribution for the individual spheres. The weight and importance of equality is shown by the distributive criteria applied to those spheres. This answers our final guiding question about the nature of an egalitarian theory. (shrink)

„Ruch Filozoficzny” and the freedom of scientific research in Poland (in 1947-1957 years). Presented article refers to the situation in the Polish philosophy, which took place between 40-50 of the twentieth century. Author’s reflections are carried on the example of attempts to reactivate in the realities of war, the polish philosophical journal “Ruch Filozoficzny” founded in 1911 by Kazimierz Twardowski. Political conditions have made the magazine was renewed twice, at each time was the greatest merit of Tadeusz Czeżowski. He was (...) assisted by the other representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School, who worked in various academic centers in Poland. The reconstruction of the history of the magazine in the postwar years, will be based on previously unpublished archival material. In its conclusions, the author tries to point out of great importance of independent from the political authorities publishers on development of Polish philosophy. (shrink)

This article develops an objection to Kant’s proof of freedom from the Critique of Practical Reason. In his proof — the fact of reason argument — Kant deduces the reality of freedom, understood as the ability to act independently of all inclinations, from our consciousness of the unconditional validity of morality. He calls this consciousness the "fact of reason". After a systematic reconstruction of the argument, I develop an objection that relies on three points: (i) the cultural embeddedness of human (...) beings ("fact of culture"), (ii) an "external" perspective on human deliberative processes, and (iii) an alternative interpretation of the unconditional validity of morality that appears in practical deliberation. Contrary to Kant’s claims, I argue that the reality of freedom cannot be deductively derived from the fact of reason. I then discuss two objections to my argument. The first objection claims that my considerations regarding the "external" perspective misunderstand Kant's methodology. The second objection states that, based on my considerations, the fact of reason ultimately turns out to be an illusion. I discuss both objections and refute them. My ultimate conclusion is that Kant's fact of reason argument is not convincing. (shrink)

“Existential risks” are risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential: risks of nuclear wars, pandemics, supervolcano eruptions, and so on. On standard utilitarianism, it seems, the reduction of such risks should be a key global priority today. Many effective altruists agree with this verdict. But how should the importance of these risks be assessed on a Christian moral theory? In this paper, I begin to answer this question – taking Thomas Aquinas as a reference, and the risks of (...) anthropogenic extinction as an example. I’ll suggest that on a Thomist framework, driving ourselves extinct would constitute a complete failure to fulfil our God-given nature, a radical form of hubris, and a loss of cosmological significance. So the reduction of such risks seems vital for Thomists, or Christians more broadly. Indeed, I end with the thought that these considerations are not parochially Christian, or indeed specifically religious: everyone with a similar view of mankind – as immensely valuable yet fallen and fragile – should agree that existential risks are a pressing moral concern. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s texts contain a puzzle about the role of vulnerability in the creation of intimacy and its function on behalf of human flourishing. I describe the interpretive puzzle and its prima facie paradoxical aspects. On the one hand, there are texts in which Nietzsche expresses a longing for intimacy and other texts where he furnishes details about the possibility of intimacy between equals. On the other hand, Nietzsche is severely critical of certain types of intimacy and advocates for a pathos (...) of distance in human relationships. I claim that Nietzschean intimacy is not an inherently paradoxical concept. A proper understanding of Nietzsche’s anti-humanism provides the resources to resolve the paradox and to use the solution of the puzzle to illuminate Nietzsche’s insights about human psychology. (shrink)

Neo-Russellians like Salmon and Braun hold that: the semantic contents of sentences are structured propositions whose basic components are objects and properties, names are directly referential terms, and a sentence of the form ‘n believes that S’ is true in a context c iff the referent of the name n in c believes the proposition expressed by S in c. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the Naive Russellian theory’. In this talk, I will discuss the Naive Russellian theory primarily (...) in connection with a problem known as Schiffer’s puzzle. Schiffer first presented the puzzle as an argument against the Naive Russellian theory. Schiffer’s argument proceeds in two steps. In step one, Schiffer argues that the Naive Russellian theory is committed to two principles regarding de re belief; the special-case consequence and Frege’s constraint. Then, in step two, Schiffer argues that the special-case consequence is not consistent with Frege’s constraint. Salmon and Braun reply to Schiffer’s argument that although the Naive Russellian theory is committed to Frege’s constraint, it is not committed to the special-case consequence. However, in this paper, I will argue with a new Schiffer-case that even if the Naive Russellian theory is not committed to the special-case consequence, it is still not consistent with Frege’s constraint. Concluding, I will discuss the possibility to reject Frege’s constraint within the Naive Russellian theory. (shrink)

When beliefs are quantified as credences, they are related to each other in terms of closeness and accuracy. The “accuracy first” approach in formal epistemology wants to establish a normative account for credences based entirely on the alethic properties of the credence: how close it is to the truth. To pull off this project, there is a need for a scoring rule. There is widespread agreement about some constraints on this scoring rule, but not whether a unique scoring rule stands (...) above the rest. The Brier score equips credences with a structure similar to metric space and induces a “geometry of reason.” It enjoys great popularity in the current debate. I point out many of its weaknesses in this article. An alternative approach is to reject the geometry of reason and accept information theory in its stead. Information theory comes fully equipped with an axiomatic approach which covers probabilism, standard conditioning, and Jeffrey conditioning. It is not based on an underlying topology of a metric space, but uses a non-commutative divergence instead of a symmetric distance measure. I show that information theory, despite initial promise, also fails to accommodate basic epistemic intuitions; and speculate on its remediation. (shrink)

After 1945, when the Philosophical Investigations were largely finished, Wittgenstein spent his final years undertaking an intensive study of the grammar of our psychological concepts and the philosophical misinterpretations we often assign to them. In the article at hand I do not claim to fathom the full range of Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the philosophy of psychology even in the most general way. Rather it is my intention to shed some light on a diagnosis which he made for the psychology of (...) his time. In Section 2 of this paper I would like to provide a brief sketch of what Wittgenstein considered to be the conceptual confusion prevalent in psychology and to suggest why he did not expect the methods of an experimental science to be successful in solving the problems that concern us in psychology. In Section 3 I’ll attempt to analyze how psychological concepts, according to Wittgenstein, might be construed in order to avoid any type of conceptual confusion. (shrink)

In analytic philosophy, the concept of trust is often considered primarily to be a three-place relation between trustor, trustee, and the domain of trust. The analysis of trust is unsatisfactory, however, if such a relationship is derivative of other forms of trust, and consequently the analysis has only succeeded in explaining a particular branch of trust rather than explaining the root. Annette Baier considers a climate of trust, with all the moral perils of intimacy, explanatorily superior to contract-based, rational trust (...) between non-intimate equals in modern Western philosophy and thus provides an example of how the traditional analytic model is problematic. In this paper, I propose another account on which the conventional three-place trust relationship investigated in analytic philosophy is derivative. Based on Heidegger's fundamental ontology, humans are constitutively hermeneutic. If Heidegger's fundamental ontology or a similar hermeneutic anthropology is accepted, then trust relationships between humans are explanatorily subordinated to trust relationships between readers and texts rather than the other way around, as traditional accounts suggest. This reversal has a significant impact not only on our analysis of trust, but also on moral theory, personal identity, and scientific method. My paper details both the reversal in explanatory primacy and the implications for these philosophical disciplines. (shrink)

Artykuł przedstawia historię sporów i polemik naukowych na temat teorii ewolucji oraz publikacji Karola Darwina, jakie miały miejsce w w Polsce w drugiej połowie XIX wieku.

In this paper, I propose a solution to a challenge formulated by Judith Jarvis Thomson: We have to explain why the moral asymmetry between doing and allowing harm is a deep feature of our moral thinking. In a nutshell, my solution is this: It could not be otherwise. Accepting the asymmetry is indispensable for the construction and maintenance of stable moral communities. -/- My argument centrally involves mental resource management. Moral communities depend on their members’ commitment to moral norms. And, (...) I argue, community members can only be committed to these norms in the required ways without overextending their mental resources if morality contains the doing/allowing asymmetry. -/- This has two noteworthy implications. Firstly, we can and should stop discussing the asymmetry in normative ethics and, instead, regard it as “moral axiom” we cannot but accept. Secondly, even consequentialists have to accept the asymmetry but, by doing so, their view loses part of its intuitive appeal. Lastly, I turn to an objection. One might think that my indispensability argument confuses issues in moral psychology with issues in normative ethics. I reject the objection on broadly pragmatist grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the question of the scope of justice, in a not unusual distributive, egalitarian, and universalistic framework. Part I outlines some central features of the egalitarian theory of justice I am proposing. According to such a conception, justice is – at least prima facie – immediately universal, and therefore global. It does not morally recognize any judicial boundaries or limits. Part II examines whether, even from a universalistic perspective, there are moral or pragmatic grounds for rejecting (...) or limiting the global scope of justice. In particular, I scrutinize five universalistic objections: (1) the principle of “moral division of labor”; (2) the connection between cooperation and distributive justice; (3) the primacy of democracy; (4) the dangers of a world state; and (5) political‐pragmatic reasons. I intend to show that these objections cannot undermine the strong normative claims of global justice. At the most, political‐pragmatic reasons speak in favor of initially striving for somewhat less, in order to receive more general backing. (shrink)

In order to at least begin addressing the extensive the problem of moral clarity in aiding the deprived to some degree, I first argue that the duty to aid the deprived is not merely a charitable one, dependent on the discretion, or the arbitrary will, of the giver (1). Then, before further analysing the individual duty to aid, I critically examine whether deprivation is better alleviated or remedied through the duties of corrective justice. I argue that the perspective of corrective (...) justice is important, but not sufficient when it comes to dealing with deprivation (2). I then argue that non-domination cannot serve as a first-order principle of justice. It is too minimalistic, since it would not require duties of justice where deprivation exists, but dominating relations and institutions do not. (3). Going back to the individual duty to help, I argue that the duties to aid the needy must be assessed according to the situation at hand (4). In order to avoid meaninglessness and morality’s excessive demands, one should be able to identify the responsible agents by constructing a shared and, in the last resort, institution-based duty to help (5). The institutional approach in this paper argues that we should create and reform institutions in order to realize the pre-existing requirement to alleviate global deprivation. This is a form of “global political justice” that does not start with politics, but ends with global political institutions. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize the most prevalent positive argument for ethical nonnaturalism, the argument from ethical phenomenology. According to it, nonnatural entities are part of the best explanation of the phenomenology of ethical deliberation; therefore, nonnaturalism is true. -/- The argument from ethical phenomenology blinds out the external, empirically informed perspective on ethical deliberation. I argue that this is unwarranted for general methodological reasons: When starting to investigate any mental process — such as ethical deliberation — it is reasonable (...) to take into account, and try to reconcile, both the internal and the external perspective on the process. This renders the argument from ethical phenomenology methodologically flawed. The problem could be avoided if we already knew, somehow, that external evidence is irrelevant for the nature of ethical entities. Many nonnaturalists believe in this irrelevance because they take ethics to be "autonomous", "just too different", or the like. But the autonomy of ethics must itself be justified in a way that does not solely rely on internal insights — or else we are going in circles. I conclude that solely phenomenology-based arguments for nonnaturalism fail for methodological reasons. Consequently, nonnaturalists need to change their strategies and actively embrace the external perspective. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Nate Sharadin and Rob van Someren Greve pull into doubt a seemingly platitudinous idea: deontic evaluation is capable of guiding action (“Capable”). After discussing several arguments for it, the authors conclude that, to the extent to which Capable can be defended, it cannot produce interesting results about the nature of the deontic. My goal is to argue that the authors’ skeptical endeavors are unconvincing. I aim to show that they rely on an implausibly broad understanding of (...) “actual guidance”. I propose an alternative understanding and show that, with it, “functionalist” arguments of the above kind can produce interesting results. If I am right, Sharadin’s and van Someren Greve’s considerations do not get off the ground. Instead, optimism seems warranted: We can learn something interesting about the nature of the deontic by assuming that actual guidance is the function of deontic evaluation. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to suggest that we should distinguish between three levels of education in schools: basic education for all, the cultivation of individual talents and capacities; and the selection for higher education and the job market. On each level egalitarians should in my view demand a different kind of equality and a different kind of metric. Since for the selection for higher education and the job market equality of opportunity seems the approriate metric of justice in (...) education, I turn to an analysis of four different conceptions of equality of opportunity. (shrink)

In the 89th letter to Lucilius Seneca divides philosophy into three parts, namely ethics, physics, and logic. As philosophy in general he also divides its ethical parts into three parts: the first one has to do with value judgments, the second with impulses, and the third with actions. But instead of characterizing each of these parts and giving an overview of their contents he rather describes an ideal action: first, one makes a correct value judgment, then, one initiates a regulated (...) and ordered impulse, and finally, one brings this impulse into harmony with one’s external action by paying attention to the circumstances under which one intends to act. If each of these action moments has the mentioned character, one is consistent with oneself—an important step towards reaching full self-consistency, i.e., virtue. If those moments do not have the mentioned character, as for example in a passion, one cannot be consistent with oneself. As a result, one diverges from the goal of full self-consistency and thus from virtue. The thesis of my book takes up the parallel Seneca is drawing between ethics and its parts on the one hand and an action and its moments on the other hand. I argue that his ethics is based on an action theory that has as its main moments a judgment, an impulse and an external action. Within this theoretical framework, Seneca gives an answer to the question of what one should do in order to reach full self-consistency, i.e., virtue, which for a Stoic like him is a necessary and sufficient condition for happiness. My book, correspondingly, has two major parts: first, I am working out Seneca’s action theory and its philosophical origins, then, I am concerned with his ethics. In the first main chapter, I further argue that his action theory stems for the most part from the early Stoics, but that unlike them he has a concept of will. This concept, as I want to show in the second part, plays an important role in his ethics, too. (shrink)

The standard argument for longtermism assumes that we should care as much about far future people as about our contemporaries. I challenge this assumption. I first consider existing interpretations of ‘temporal discounting’, and argue that such discounting seems either unwarranted or insufficient to block the argument. I then offer two alternative reasons to care less about far future people: caring as much about them as about our contemporaries would make our lives less authentic and less meaningful. If I’m right, this (...) undermines at least the strongest versions of longtermism. Plausibly, we should do much more for the far future than we’re currently doing. Still, we often ought to act for contemporaries’ sakes, even if longtermist actions would expectably do more good. (shrink)

In this paper we give an analytic tableau calculus P L 1 6 for a functionally complete extension of Shramko and Wansing’s logic. The calculus is based on signed formulas and a single set of tableau rules is involved in axiomatising each of the four entailment relations ⊧ t, ⊧ f, ⊧ i, and ⊧ under consideration—the differences only residing in initial assignments of signs to formulas. Proving that two sets of formulas are in one of the first three entailment (...) relations will in general require developing four tableaux, while proving that they are in the ⊧ relation may require six. (shrink)

In my paper, I comment on Rainer Forst's paper in this issue. I raise doubts as to whether the justification of democracy emerges from a fundamental moral right to reciprocal and general justification, as Forst claims. His basic argument appears questionable because democracy is different from a “hypothetical‐consent‐conception” of moral legitimacy, which limits as well as enables democratic legitimacy. The former cannot, however, justify the latter through an argument centered on self‐government: Such an argument relies heavily on the possibility of (...) consensus, thus neglecting the crucial phenomenon of disagreement or dissent. As a result of not adequately dealing with this phenomenon, the argument is unable to account for the basic democratic principle of majority rule as the remedy at hand. (shrink)

The mind's basic task is to organize adaptive behaviour. I argue that necessary conditions to achieve this are acquiring a 'body-self', a differentiated perception, motor intuition, and motor control. The latter three can be learnied implicitly by crosswise comparing the perceived actual situation, the desired situation, the perceived result and the anticipated result.

Propomos uma tipologia dos artefatos de representação para as áreas de saúde e ciências biológicas, e a associação dessa tipologia com diferentes tipos de ontologia formal e lógica, chegando a conclusões quanto aos pontos fortes e limitações da ontologia de diferentes tipos de recursos lógicos, enquanto mantemos o foco na lógica descritiva. Consideramos quatro tipos de representação de área: (i) representação léxico-semântica, (ii) representação de tipos de entidades, (iii) representação de conhecimento prévio, e (iv) representação de indivíduos. Defendemos uma clara (...) distinção entre os quatro tipos de representação, de forma a oferecer uma base mais racional para o uso das ontologias e artefatos relacionados no avanço da integração de dados e interoperabilidade de sistemas de raciocínio associados. Destacamos que apenas uma pequena porção de fatos cientificamente relevantes em áreas como a biomedicina pode ser adequadamente representada por ontologias formais, quando estas últimas são concebidas como representações de tipos de entidades. Particularmente, a tentativa de codificar conhecimento padrão ou probabilístico pela utilização de ontologias assim concebidas é fadada à produção de modelos não intencionais e errôneos. (shrink)

In this essay, I shall briefly present Epistemic Contextualism (EC), Invariantism and Interest- Relative Invariantism (IRI) (section 2). Then I will discuss three theses of Jason Stanley’s Knowledge and Practical Interests (Oxford 2005). I argue that Stanley’s case against Contextualism is based on a misconception of its semantic nature, that there is a disadvantage for Interest-Relative Invariantism in terms of the sceptical paradox and that Stanley’s explanation of intuitions can be interpreted in favour of Contextualism (sections 3.1. - 3.3.).

According to Roman Ingarden, transcendental idealism prevented Kant from "even undertaking an attempt" at elucidating freedom "in terms of the causal structure of the world." I show that this claim requires qualification. In a remarkable series of Critical-period Reflexionen (5611-4, 5616-9), Kant sketches a defense of the possibility of freedom that differs radically from his published ones by incorporating an indeterministic account of the phenomena. Anticipating Łukasiewicz, he argues that universal causal determination is consistent with an open future: if an (...) action is contingent, there is an infinite regress of determining causes, yet there is a prior time at which this infinite series of causes has not yet commenced. However, he concedes that on this account the unity of experience "cannot fully obtain in the case of free beings." The fact that Kant even contemplated the indeterministic theory may carry implications for interpreting the argument of the Second Analogy. (shrink)

The desideratum of semantic interoperability has been intensively discussed in medical informatics circles in recent years. Originally, experts assumed that this issue could be sufficiently addressed by insisting simply on the application of shared clinical terminologies or clinical information models. However, the use of the term ‘ontology’ has been steadily increasing more recently. We discuss criteria for distinguishing clinical ontologies from clinical terminologies and information models. Then, we briefly present the role clinical ontologies play in two multicentric research projects. Finally, (...) we discuss the interactions between these different kinds of knowledge representation artifacts and the stakeholders involved in developing interoperational real-world clinical applications. We provide ontology engineering examples from two EU-funded projects. (shrink)

In the following paper I will argue that there are interesting connections between the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, and the school of existentialism. Analytical psychology and existentialism share almost the same Zeitgeist (becoming influential between the 1930’s and 1960’s) and are both interested in the concept of individuality. I would like to follow the liaison between Jung and existentialism regarding authenticity and death. First of all, the concept of authenticity deserves extensive treatment. Heidegger’s das Man and Sartre’s (...) mauvaise foi have an interesting companion in Jung’s notion of the persona, the psychological concept of “the mask”. Second of all, existentialist authenticity can be compared to the Jungian integration of the shadow. Moreover, the concept of death (Heidegger’s Sein-zum-Tode) can be compared with Jung’s understanding of death from The Red Book. (shrink)

A new philosophical and psychological concept is needed for the alienated and radically different human being according to the nihilist Romanian-French philosopher E.M. Cioran. This concept of the not-man describes a post-anthropological subject, which is “inhumanˮ from a psychological point of view, emphasizing estrangement and otherness in the definition of humanity. I have compared Cioran's provocative and unusual term with Nietzsche's analysis of the overman – the difference between the two conepts proceeding from two conflicting nihilist perspectives – and I (...) also have identified the not-man in the novel of the Japanese writer Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human. (shrink)

The following paper is concerned with the description of “agony” at Kierkegaard and Cioran. Taking into consideration that both authors have common traits as marginal philosophers and advocates of a mixture of existentialism and nihilism, I have compared Kierkegaard’s notion of “sickness unto death” (a powerful term, that combines the prestige of several other keywords such as “torture”, “death”, “anxiety” and so on) with Cioran’s description of “agony” from his first Romanian work, On The Heights of Despair. Both Kierkegaard and (...) Cioran, with their emphasis on existential death seem to make a powerful case against Schopenhauer’s equation that pain and death are opposed, therefore imagining damnation to an immanent hell for the modern subject. -/- . (shrink)

Maupassant’s short horror story Horla (1887) contains a treatment of anxiety that can be analyzed in the context of Existentialist philosophy: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Levinas or Cioran all observed the anticipatory trait of this affect. From a psychological point of view, anxiety leads to neurosis and/or psychosis, to the splitting of the principle of identity. This inner duality is famously expressed in the short story’s scene of the “empty mirror”, where the main character fails to see his own reflection. The descent (...) into madness of Horla’s diarist makes us think that he experiences the possession of the monster in terms of radical alterity, something that Cioran has called the not-man. I argue that through the lenses of this category of (psychological and theological) inhumanity we can understand Horla as a Nietzschean evolutionary tale that cautions against the end of mankind as we know it. (shrink)

Starting from a new definition of existential paranoia, conceived philosophically as an altered form of solipsism or theologically as the revelation of an immanent inferno, we go on to explore the dissociative constitution of Dostoevsky’s novella, The Double. Influenced by the Shakespearean “I am not what I am”, Yakov Petrovich Goliadkin, the main character, builds an intriguing attack on the Jungian category of the persona, which we read as a symptom of indifferentiation. We will also analyze hero’s nightmare, where the (...) conflict between the Ego and the Doppelganger receives a tragic dimension, attempting to evaluate Goliadkin 1 and Goliadkin 2 through Jungian typology. Insights from Philip K. Dick, Emil Cioran, Rainer Maria Rilke or Mihai Eminescu will help us scrutinize the ambiguous and intricate “paranoid feeling of being”. (shrink)

This is the translation of the Quaestio I "De sacra doctrina, qualis sit, et ad quae se extendat"" of Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologiae".

In a recent paper we have defined an analytic tableau calculus PL_16 for a functionally complete extension of Shramko and Wansing's logic based on the trilattice SIXTEEN_3. This calculus makes it possible to define syntactic entailment relations that capture central semantic relations of the logic---such as the relations |=_t, |=_f, and |=_i that each correspond to a lattice order in SIXTEEN_3; and |=, the intersection of |=_t and |=_f,. -/- It turns out that our method of characterising these semantic relations---as (...) intersections of auxiliary relations that can be captured with the help of a single calculus---lends itself well to proving interpolation. All entailment relations just mentioned have the interpolation property, not only when they are defined with respect to a functionally complete language, but also in a range of cases where less expressive languages are considered. For example, we will show that |=, when restricted to L_{tf}, the language originally considered by Shramko and Wansing, enjoys interpolation. This answers a question that was recently posed by M. Takano. (shrink)

I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.

I review Stefan Roski's "Bolzano's Conception of Grounding".

This paper explores some connections between depictions of mortality in portrait-painting and philosophical (and psychoanalytic) treatments of our need to be recognized by others. I begin by examining the connection that Georg Simmel makes in his philosophical study of Rembrandt between that artist’s capacity for depicting his portrait subjects as non-repeatable individuals and his depicting them as mortal, or such as to die. After noting that none of Simmel’s explanations of the tragic character of Rembrandt’s portrait subjects seems fully satisfactory, (...) I then turn to Rousseau’s writing on our need for the recognition of others in order to argue that (1) it is at least as sources for the satisfaction of this need that other persons figure for us as irreplaceable (in a way that contrasts with the kinds of satisfaction that intersubstitutable things afford us); and that (2) it is exactly this kind of irreplaceability that Simmel is gesturing at in connecting the concepts of individuality and mortality in his writing on Rembrandt’s portraits. For the remainder of the paper I argue that the foregoing ideas are in fact central to the psychoanalytic writing of Melanie Klein, and in particular (a) Klein’s understanding the infant’s apprehension of other persons as internally related to their anxieties about the possibility of those persons’ irretrievable loss; (b) her understanding that it is as sources of recognition that others’ personhood is made salient to us; and (c) her treatment of portrait-painting as an activity for working through those aforementioned anxieties. (shrink)

In We Have Always Been Cyborgs (2021), Stefan L. Sorgner argues that, given the growing economic burden of desirable welfare programs, in order for Western democratic societies to continue to flourish it will be necessary that they establish some form of algocracy (i.e., governance by algorithm). This is argued to be necessary both in order to maintain the sustainability and efficiency of these programs, but also due to the fact that further integration of humans into technical systems provides the (...) only effective means to bridge gaps in functionality and governance. However, Sorgner’s position is entirely insensitive to the design turn in applied ethics, which argues against the neutrality of technology, instead maintaining that technology and society co-construct each other with persistent feedback loops. This, I argue, is a problem for his account inasmuch as technologies, as they become more ubiquitous, likewise become pervasive and inextricable from our sociotechnical infrastructures. As such, less-than-beneficent forces, as current trends illustrate, can appropriate these seemingly banal infrastructures to gear them towards oppressive ends, thereby ultimately threatening the social democracies that Sorgner’s position aims to buttress. (shrink)

Science and valuation — remarks about the condition of philosophical re ection on science this text is an attempt at a more general look at twentieth‐century philosophical re ection on science conceived as persistent trials to eliminate the non‐eliminateable, i.e. valuations. In this article, I recall the most important concepts of knowledge developed in the twentieth‐century philosophy of science by exposing assumed axiology in, among other things: the Vienna Circle, Karl raimund Popper’s falsi cationism, the historical and social approach of (...) thomas S. Kuhn’s paradigm, and the concept of the ideals of knowledge by Stefan Amsterdamski. I argue that the axiology, and more broadly philosophy is an indelible com‐ ponent of each accepted concept of scienti c knowledge. each concept of knowledge assumes a form of its valuation. (shrink)

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and Franciszka and Stefan Themerson constitute a rare constellation of outstanding artists of the 20th century avant-garde. Their best known contributions were a concept of Pure Form and an idea of Semantic Poetry respectively. They all shared multiplicity and diversity of interests and areas of not only artistic activities. Philosophy and science influenced to large extent form and content of their works. Despite their mutual interest in each other’s work they had never met personally and no (...) correspondence between them was found. However similarities in attitudes resulted then in intertwining of their paths of artistic development. One of early Stefan Themerson’s novels featured strong influence of Witkacy works but all his later writings were fully original and individual. However the author believes one can still find some flavours, tones and traces leading to the oeuvre of the author of Insatiability. After leaving Poland in 1938 Themersons had still maintained their interest in Witkiewicz works what finally led to translation and preparation for publishing by Gaberbocchus Press of his two plays – Gyubal Wahazar and Mother featuring Franciszka’s drawings. A brief review of Gaberbocchus Press achievements and resources of the Themersons Archive, established by Jasia Reichardt after their death, constitute a background for an analysis of relationships between Witkacy and Themersons. The fact National Library in Warsaw acquired Themersons heritage alleviated very much access to many very interesting source documents. The author focused on a part of the Archive related to the all aspects of Witkacy’s works. Typescripts of publication ready translated and adapted plays, Vahazar and Mother, which finally remained not published by the Gaberbocchus Press triggered an idea to take up the challenge of publishing a “bestlooker” today. A draft of a bibliophilic bilingual edition of the Gyubal Wahazar drama illustrated with Franciszka Themerson’s drawings (samples are included in the paper) is proposed as a final thought. (shrink)

Recently, Stefan Wintein published an article in which he presents four objections to my modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God. His first objection is an alleged counterexample to the argument’s first premise, and the second objection is an alleged counterexample to the argument’s second premise. Wintein’s third objection attempts to show that the modal-epistemic argument is circular. Finally, the fourth objection is a parody objection. In this paper, I show that Wintein’s four objections all fail.