There are obvious flaws in REM sleep suppression paradigms that do not allow any conclusion to be drawn either pro or contra the REM sleep-memory hypothesis. However, less intrusive investigations of REM sleep suggest that this sleep stage or its adjunct neuroendocrine characteristics exert a facilitating influence on certain aspects of ongoing memory formation during sleep. [Nielsen; Vertes & Eastman].

Sleep strengthens memories by repeatedly reactivating associated neuron ensembles. Our studies show that although long-term memory for a medium number of word-pairs benefits from sleep, a large number does not. This suggests an upper limit to the amount of information that has access to sleep-dependent declarative memory consolidation, which is possibly linked to the availability of reactivation opportunities. Due to competing processes of global forgetting that are active during sleep, we hypothesized that even larger amounts of information would enhance the (...) proportion of information that is actively forgotten during sleep. In the present study, we aimed to induce such forgetting by challenging the sleeping brain with vast amounts of to be remembered information. For this, 78 participants learned a very large number of 640 word-pairs interspersed with periods of quiet awake rest over the course of an entire day and then either slept or stayed awake during the night. Recall was tested after another night of regular sleep. Results revealed comparable retention rates between the sleep and wake groups. Although this null-effect can be reconciled with the concept of limited capacities available for sleep-dependent consolidation, it contradicts our hypothesis that sleep would increase forgetting compared to the wake group. Additional exploratory analyses relying on equivalence testing and Bayesian statistics reveal that there is evidence against sleep having a detrimental effect on the retention of declarative memory at high information loads. We argue that forgetting occurs in both wake and sleep states through different mechanisms, i.e., through increased interference and through global synaptic downscaling, respectively. Both of these processes might scale similarly with information load. (shrink)

Matthew Walker's model overcomes the unrefined classical concept of consolidation as a unitary process. Presently still confined in its scope to selective data mainly referring to procedural motor learning, the model nonetheless provides a valuable starting point for further refinements, which would be required for a more comprehensive account of different types and aspects of human memory consolidation.

Jan Salamucha was born on the 10th of June 1903 in Warsaw and murdered on the 11th of August 1944 in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising very early on in his scholarly career. He is the most original representative of the branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School known as the Cracow Circle. The Circle was a grouping of scholars who were interested in reconstructing scholasticism and Christian philosophy in general by means of mathematical logic. As Jan Lukasiewicz’s successor in the (...) area of logic and Konstanty Michalski’s student in the area of the history of medieval thought, Salamucha had an excellent preparation for this task. His main achievements include a masterful logical analysis of the proof _ex motu _for the existence of God, a modern interpretation of analogical notions and a comprehensive approach to the problem of essence. He also contributed several historical studies: he examined Aristotle’s theory of deduction, he reconstructed William Ockham’s propositional logic and established the authenticity of his treatise on _insolubilia,_ and he identified the historical sources of the antinomies in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He did not shy away from popularizing philosophy, and in that work he was able to elucidate rather than oversimplify the complexities of philosophy. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano was born in Prague in 1781 and died in 1848 in the same city1. His major work Wissenschaftslehre was published in 1837 in Sulzbach, Germany.Since the publication of Jan Berg’s Bolza...

Hilbert's axiomatization program of physical theories met an interesting challenge when it confronted the rise of quantum mechanics in the mid-twenties. The novelty of the mathematical apparatus of the then newly born theory was to be matched only by its substantial lack of any definite physical interpretation. The early attempts at axiomatization, which are described here, reflect all the difficulty of the task faced by Jordan, Hilbert, von Neumann and others. The role of von Neumann is examined in considerable (...) detail as he can be viewed here as the most outstanding of Hilbert's heirs. Von Neumann, especially in his work devoted to the proof of the impossibility of hidden variables, not only continued Hilbert's program but pushed it to its very limits, blending axiomatic rigor and interpretative commitment. (shrink)

The brain adapts to changes that take place in the body. Deprivation of input results in size reduction of cortical representations, whereas an increase in input results in an increase of representational space. Amputation forms one of the most dramatic disturbances of the integrity of the body. The brain adapts in many ways to this breakdown of the afferent–efferent equilibrium. However, almost all studies focus on the sensorimotor consequences. It is not known whether adaptation takes place also at other “levels” (...) in the system. The present study addresses the question whether amputees dream about their intact body, as before the amputation, or about the body after the amputation and whether the dream content was a function of time since the amputation and type of amputation. The results show that the majority of the dreamers reported dreams about their intact body although the mean time that elapsed since the amputation was twelve years. There is no clear relation with the type of amputation. The results give modest evidence for the existence of a basic neural representation of the body that is, at least, partly genetically determined and by this relatively insensitive for changes in the sensory input. (shrink)

A review essay: Søren Harnow Klausen’s Reality Lost and Found.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Breakthrough of the Refrigerant System CO2 Makes a Brief Appearance The New Wonder Refrigerants The Area of the HFC Gases A New Technology Is Born – in Norway The SHECCO Transcritical CO2 Circuit The CO2 Paradox.

The nineteenth century is a very important period from our contemporary point of view. It is then that many socio-political ideas were born and have affected our social and individual life until now. It is in the nineteenth century that humankind sought to reflect on freedom, individualism and progress, and often paid dearly for any utopian misinterpretations in this area. Last but not least, in the nineteenth century the modern philosophical perception clashed with Christianity. The paper sought to show (...) this intellectual turmoil by focussing on the main adherents of reconciling new ideas with religion. This reconciliation could be effected with an integral view of the human being in mind. The integral human being, advocated by Newman and Acton, can manage to abide by timehonoured traditions and assimilate whatever there is of positive value in civilization.Le 19ème siècle est une période riche en enseignements pour notre réflexion contemporaine. C'est durant ce siècle que nombre d'idées sociopolitiques ayant influé jusqu'à présent sur notre vie individuelle et sociale sont nées. C'est au 19ème siècle que l'humanité chercha à réfléchir sur la liberté, l'individualisme et le progrès, et elle paya au prix fort les erreurs d'interprétation utopiste commises dans ces domaines. Aussi, et non des moindres, c'est au 19ème siècle que la perception philosophique moderne entra en conflit avec le christianisme. L'article vise à dépeindre cette agitation intellectuelle en mettant l'accent sur les principaux tenants de la réconciliation des nouvelles idées avec la religion. Cette réconciliation peut se faire si on a à l'esprit une vision complète de l'être humain. Cet être humain complet, tel que défendu par Newman et Acton, possède les qualités suffisantes pour respecter les traditions ancestrales et assimiler ce qu'il y a de valeureux dans la civilisation. (shrink)

Gerold Tietz was born in 1941 in Horka (north Bohemia) in a family of Sudeten Germans. Germans lived in this village together with Czechs, Roma people and Jews. The family also involved Czech relatives and many of German relatives spoke good Czech and kept relations with Czech cultural groups. After the war Gerold Tietz and his family were expelled to Swabia. He studied history, French and political science. From 1969 the graduated historian lived in Esslingen where he taught in (...) the grammar school for thirty years. In the autobiographically oriented novels _Böhmische Fuge _(1997), _Böhmisches Richtfest _(2007) and in _Böhmische Grätschen _(2009) Tietz tried to depict official social-political events connected with famous political and cultural figures as well as the stories of ordinary days of “small people” who had to face the consequences of historic changes which influenced their lives. The paper analyses the conditions of Czech and German coexistence and confronts the authentic historic context. Nevertheless, negative features of these ethnic groups are not overlooked and the positive ones are presented as a positive contribution to the current European multiculturalism. (shrink)

"""This book neither wants to make an accusation, nor impose things that are impossible to carry out. It merely wants to make the Balinese and tourists aware of what is happening in this paradise on earth and about the positive infl uence they can have in preserving the culture of the beautiful island of Bali. Tri Hita Karana, the spirit of Bali originated from the rich Balinese-Hindu philosophy. Tri Hita Karana means three causes of happiness: balanced and harmonious relationships of (...) humans with God; of humans with fellow human beings; and of humans with the surrounding nature. Respect and togetherness are essential values in this philosophy. The Hindu doctrine of tat tvam asi, “I am you and you are me”, teaches us that all things are connected. Humans who do not respect God, fellow humans and nature are not respecting themselves, and this will eventually lead to self-destruction. Respect and togetherness will lead to harmony and happiness. Since the Balinese are already living according to the age-old philosophy of Tri Hita Karana, they can contribute to a sustainable environment for their children. The past and the present cannot be separated from each other; the present is born out of the past. Our actions to create a sustainable environment today matter, or in Gandhi’s words: the future depends on what we do today. The authors, Jan Hendrik Peters, a former professor of service studies and Wisnu Wardana, chief-editor of Bali Travel Newspaper, are deeply concerned about the negative infl uences of mass tourism and want to plead for a sustainable future for Bali, by writing this book. “We really do need this book on Bali to make the Balinese people and the international tourists familiar with the essence of Hinduism. If the Balinese follow the philosophy of Tri Hita Karana as a guide in their personal life and business, it means that Bali will be the Island of the Gods forever.” - Ida Pedanda Subali Tianyar, Hindu high priest, Chairman of the Council of Hindu Priests in Indonesia.""". (shrink)

I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose rights are violated. Hence the “liberal” view of abortion: women (especially) may decide whether to bear the children they have conceived. Birth is a good (...) dividing line between the freedom to abort and the point at which society is permitted to take an interest. Once born, children detach from their mothers; no invasion of their bodies is necessary to separate them. Yet some ways of bringing them up can have a negative impact on society. There is a thus legitimate interest in protecting ourselves from the results of truly bad parenting. (shrink)

In 2023, Margrit Pernau stepped down as editor of Contributions to the History of Concepts. She first took up the position as editor in 2009, and, with her fifteen years on the editorial team, she has been by far our longest serving editor. Over the years, Margrit Pernau has played an invaluable role for the journal and for international conceptual history. I guess it would be correct to say that she was born international. She followed her family when her (...) father got a job in New Delhi and lived in the city for part of her childhood. Her international journey continued to Paris where she spent almost ten years of her youth. After longer detours around Erfurt and Heidelberg where she did her PhD in 1991, she stayed another six years in New Delhi with her spouse and children. After defending her habilitation in Bielefeld in 2007, she took up the position of Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin in 2008. Many of us who have been involved in her several projects through the years know the renowned expressionist style building at Lentzeallee. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Militant democracy calls for pre-emptive measures against political actors who use democratic institutions to undermine or outright abolish a democratic political system. Born in the context of interwar fascism, militant democracy has recently been revived by political and legal theorists concerned about the rise of authoritarian right-wing populists. A long-standing charge against militant democracy—also articulated with renewed force in our era—is that, as a top-down way to deal with the intolerant, militant democracy is inherently elitist and bears uncomfortable (...) similarities with technocracy. But while it is true that militant democracy relies on state institutions to preserve democracy, it by no means excludes citizen engagement: “courts or the people” is a false choice. On the other hand, citizens engaged in militant democracy must take on the difficult task of distinguishing very clearly between democratic essentials under threat and political questions about which citizens might reasonably disagree. While citizen assemblies are not the answer to all of contemporary democracies’ travails, they might be very helpful in clarifying such distinctions for wide audiences. (shrink)

This paper urges that if we wish to give social intelligence to our agents, it pays to look at how we acquired our social intelligence ourselves. We are born with drives and motives that are innate and deeply social. Next, as children we are socialized to acquire norms and values and to understand rituals large and small. These social elements are the core of our being. We capture them in the acronym GRASP: Groups, Rituals, Affiliation, Status, Power. As a (...) consequence, economic rationality or logical reasoning do not suffice when it comes to social intelligence. Basic features of our social behaviour, of the kind that one sees early in the lives of children, need to be prominent. These include fear, love, and aggression. They extend to the combination of these drives with basic social clues from the environment such as big and small, good and bad, as well as culture-specific specializations of these. This will make agents respond differentially to inferred attributes such as gender, age, group membership. This level of universality in social intelligence should receive our full attention. The general insights gained can then be re-used in myriad implementations to specific modelling issues. (shrink)

The growth and sustainability of the nursing profession depends on the ability to recruit and retain the upcoming generation of professionals. Understanding the career choice experiences and professional expectations of Millennial nurses (born 1980 or after) is a critical component of recruitment and retention strategies. This study utilized Polkinghorne's interpretive, narrative approach to understand how Millennial nurses explain, account for and make sense of their choice of nursing as a career. The positioning of nursing as a virtuous choice was (...) both temporally and contextually influenced. The decision to enter the profession was initially emplotted around a traditional understanding of nursing as a virtuous profession: altruistic, noble, caring and compassionate. The centricity of virtues depicts one‐dimensional understanding of the nursing profession that alone could prove dissatisfying to a generation of professionals who have many career choices available to them. The narratives reveal how participants' perceptions and expectations remain influenced by a stereotypical understanding of nursing, an image that remains prevalent in society and which holds implications for the future recruitment, socialization and retention strategies for upcoming and future generations of nurses. (shrink)

Asking pregnant women to (co)pay for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) out of pocket leads to unequal access across socioeconomic strata. To avoid these social justice issues, first-trimester prenatal screening should be publicly funded in countries such as the Netherlands, with universal coverage healthcare systems that offer all other antenatal care services and screening programmes free of charge. In this reply, we offer three additional reasons for public funding of NIPT. First, NIPT may not primarily have medical utility for women and (...) children, but rather offers relevant information and reproductive options, and thus serves important autonomy interests of women. Second, public funding of NIPT can be justified because it results in a reduction of collectively borne costs associated with care and support for children with chromosomal abnormalities. It is important to note that this isnotan argument for individual women to take part in screening or to terminate an affected pregnancy. However, itisa legitimate argument in policy making regarding funding arrangements for screening programmes. Finally, public funding would help to amend current misunderstandings among pregnant women (eg, that they are not at risk), and thus to support informed consent for first-trimester prenatal screening. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Jan Van Bragt (1928–2007)James W. HeisigEarly on the morning of Easter Thursday, April 12, 2007, Jan Van Bragt passed away quietly at the age of seventy-eight.1 During the previous year his health had begun to deteriorate, until in the final days of 2006 he was obliged to leave Kyoto and take up residence with his religious congregation in Himeji. On February 21, he was hospitalized with lung (...) cancer and was operated on some weeks later. After a brief period in a semi-comatose state, he regained consciousness but was never to speak again.Jan was born in Flemish Belgium and entered the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at age eighteen. Six years later, he was ordained a priest. After receiving his master’s degree in philosophy, he entered the doctoral program and at the same time lectured at the congregation’s seminary. Five years later he received his doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Leuven with a thesis on Hegel and immediately set sail for Japan, landing in December 1961.Jan undertook eighteen months of training in the language and then spent another eighteen months working as an assistant pastor at the Sakai Catholic Church near Osaka. In 1965, he was accepted as a research student at Kyoto University, where he spent the next six years studying with Takeuchi Yoshinori and Nishitani Keiji. In 1971, he was named provincial superior of the congregation in Japan, a post he held for five years until he was unexpectedly requested to serve as the first acting director of the newly established Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.For the next fifteen years Jan brought the fledgling institute to maturity, galvanizing the young and inexperienced staff into a community of scholars devoted to exploring the largely unknown and uncharted waters of interreligious dialogue in Japan. Among his first projects was the intermonastic exchange that brought leading Buddhist monks and nuns from Japan to European monasteries and vice versa. At a concluding symposium in Japan he served as chair, juggling Japanese, Flemish, German, French, and English with the skill and poise for which we all remember him. After a flurry of publications on the project, he left the project to others to carry on—as it has to this day, having reached a second generation, most of whom no longer know the inaugural role that he played.Jan was also a key figure in the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, founded in 1982. In addition to bringing the central office of the society to the [End Page 141] Nanzan Institute, he served as president from 1989 to 1997. During his years at the Nanzan Institute, he was in demand around Japan as a lecturer or partner in dialogue. For many years he traveled around the world in the same capacity and was invited to teach in Canada, Belgium, the United States, and the Philippines. From 1985 to 1990, he served as a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In his thinking and writing, his study and reading, as well as in his moral concerns, Jan straddled any number of civilizations, histories, literatures, and cultures. In the end, however, it was in Japan that he felt most at home, where he found a loom on which to weave the things of life into a single view of the world.At his funeral, Jan Swyngedouw, a fellow Flemish missionary and longtime colleague at the Nanzan Institute, delivered a thoughtful and touching tribute to a man who had always shied away from honors and recognition, preferring to let others stand on his shoulders and even accept the credit that was rightly his. Swyngedouw told of going through Jan’s library (the philosophical portion of which he graciously donated to the Centro Studi Asiatico in Osaka) and being struck by the number of volumes on mysticism. Like all of us, he knew of Jan’s academic interest in the Christian mystics as a bridge between religions, but as he read through comments in the margins he came to realize what most of us had never noticed: how deeply Jan’s own spirituality was rooted in... (shrink)

Scholars from all the continents have written articles to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Jan Srzednicki, a thinker still at the height of his powers. Born in Warsaw on 24 April 1993, Jan Srzednicki divided his energies between his philosophical studies at the University of Warsaw and his service in the underground army. In 1944 he was caught up in the dramatic attempt to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis. Srzednicki's scientific work alternates between problems of Austrian and German philosophy (...) and questions of political philosophy. The papers published in this volume discuss topics of general philosophy, in the clear and deep style both of Srzednicki's own philosophical work and of the Authors investigated in his writings. The topics developed pertain to the fields of epistemology and of logic and philosophy of logic. (shrink)

The Europe that was born from Plato's "care for the soul" can today no longer be recognized; it has been replaced by the self-management of the economic EU. How can we now come back to a Europe concerned about its soul, the others, and the world, reinventing itself as a new nation? Jan Patočka's thoughts on post-Europe can show us the way. Starting from some clarifications on the definitely European initial meaning that Patočka detects in Socrates' "care for the (...) soul", the purpose of this article is to examine what in this European spirit can be saved in the post-European age, and to what extent a "European nation" can still make sense. This analysis leads us, building on the visionary texts written in the seventies by Patočka, to rethink the possibilities of a reformation of European reason, and a métanoïa of Post-Europe. (shrink)

Jan Srzednicki’s metaphysical conception of epistemology lies in radical opposition to the whole epistemological tradition. The main problem of his new epistemology is to find a non-linguistic (non-cognitive) idea of reference to an ontological presence.Srzednicki finds the prototype of such a completely new, non-linguistic perspective in Brentano’s Doppelurteile. Brentano’s idea cannot be mechanically adopted, however, because on the whole it still remains within the traditional theory. To avoid the problemsrevealed by Wittgenstein we need a more sophisticated strategy. Srzednicki achieves this (...) goal by scripting the epistemological scenario for two dimensions: theoretical and pre-theoretical. The first one represents the logical space of observer, the second one, the theoretically discernible logical requirements of cognition (called cognitive potential, pre-Ego or arche of the possibility of cognition).Srzednicki’s idea was born in the space of three theoretical challenges: Brentano’s, Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s. He begins where each of these three theorists broke off, which is to say, entangling his endeavors at he end in dilemmas which cannot be resolved by means available from his perspectives. (shrink)

This paper argues that Jan Patočka and Paul Ricoeur endured their own cognitive-spiritual crisis, particularly during the development and outbreak of war in the 1930s. Their philosophies of history are thus, on the one hand, born of a rethinking of modern philosophy from the time of Galileo and Descartes, and on the other, a suffering of crisis that Europe itself was suffering. Stemming from the historical and philosophical context of Husserl’s epistemology in the Krisis, both Ricoeur and Patočka had (...) to confront history and the decadence of European sciences, as it concerns the difficulty of remembering the past and describing events in history. These responses to the problem of modern philosophy and science in Europe point to the symptom of spiritual crisis due to ‘modern man’ having no unified worldview. By means of care of the soul and the challenging of the state in action, a hermeneutics of peace emerges from their spiritual crises. (shrink)

Interpretation in science has gained little attention in the past because philosophers of science believed that interpretation belongs to the context of discovery or must be associated with meaning. But scientists often speak about interpretation when they report their findings. Elsewhere I have argue in favour of a pragmatic-rhetorical theory of explanation, and it is in light of this theory that I suggest we can understand interpretation in the natural sciences.

Modern societies are characterized by a division of epistemic labor between laypeople and epistemic authorities. Authorities are often far more competent than laypeople and can thus, ideally, inform their beliefs. But how should laypeople rationally respond to an authority’s beliefs if they already have beliefs and reasons of their own concerning some subject matter? According to the standard view, the beliefs of epistemic authorities are just further, albeit weighty, pieces of evidence. In contrast, the Preemption View claims that, when one (...) discovers what an authority believes, it is not permissible to rely on any of one’s own reasons concerning the subject matter. The original version of this view, as proposed by Linda Zagzebski, has recently been severely criticized for recommending blind trust and for abandoning even minimal standards for critical thinking. In our paper, we defend a new version of the Preemption View—Defeatist Preemptionism—in a way that differs radically from Zagzebski’s. We argue that our view can be derived from certain widely accepted general epistemic principles. In particular, we claim that preemption can be identified as a special case of source sensitive defeat. Moreover, we argue that Defeatist Preemptionism does not lead to the undesirable consequences that critics ascribe to the Preemption View. The paper thus articulates the foundations and refinements of the Preemption View, such that it adequately captures the phenomenon of epistemic authority and the rational requirements related to it. (shrink)

New computer systems of discovery create a research program for logic and philosophy of science. These systems consist of inference rules and control knowledge that guide the discovery process. Their paths of discovery are influenced by the available data and the discovery steps coincide with the justification of results. The discovery process can be described in terms of fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence such as heuristic search, and can also be interpreted in terms of logic. The traditional distinction that places (...) studies of scientific discovery outside the philosophy of science, in psychology, sociology, or history, is no longer valid in view of the existence of computer systems of discovery. It becomes both reasonable and attractive to study the schemes of discovery in the same way as the criteria of justification were studied: empirically as facts, and logically as norms. (shrink)

Is knowledge-how, or “practical” knowledge, a species of knowledge-that, or “theoretical” knowledge? There is no comfortable position to take in the debate around this question. On the one hand, there are counterexamples against the anti-intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge is best analysed as an ability. They show that having an ability to ϕ is not necessary for knowing how to ϕ. On the other hand, the intellectualist analysis of practical knowledge as a subspecies of theoretical knowledge is threatened by its (...) own set of counterexamples, which convincingly establish that practical knowledge lacks many of the typical characteristics of theoretical knowledge. Most strikingly it does not even appear to require a belief. In this paper, I develop an account of practical knowledge that avoids these counterexamples. It also manages to preserve both the status of such knowledge as a cognitive achievement and its apparently close conceptual relation to abilities. I start with the counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge and show that they fail because they underestimate the cognitive demands of attempts. I then make use of the logic of dispositions to bridge the gap that counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge open. It is argued that, instead of the ability to ϕ, it is a specific disposition to have the ability to ϕ that constitutes practical knowledge about ϕ. The resulting theory is an anti-intellectualist position that preserves essential intellectualist motivations and thus should be satisfactory for proponents of both views. (shrink)

The ongoing legal and bioethics debates on consent requirements for collecting, storing, and utilizing human biological material for purposes of basic and applied research—that is, genomic research biobanking—have already managed to pass through three ostensibly dissimilar stages.

The paper discusses the regularity account of causation but finds it insufficient as a complete account of our notion of causality. The attractiveness of the regularity account is its attempt to understand causation in terms of empirically accessible features of the world. However, this account does not match our intuition that singular causality is prior in normal epistemic situations and that there is more to causation than mere succession. Apart from succession and regularity, the concept of causality also contains a (...) modal feature which allows us to engage in counterfactual discourses about singular causal events and to claim that a particular cause is both sufficient and necessary for its effect in the circumstances. However, we may directly observe singular causes, but the modal element is not something we can possibly observe. Rather, this element is something we add to our perception of succession. Thus, the paper suggests that the modal feature of causality is a mental construction which was originally formed by our knowledge of certain structural features of similar events in other situations. It stems not from what we actually observe but from what we have observed or may observe under different but relevant circumstances. So the concept of causation has partly an empirical content and partly a constructed one. (shrink)

Despite its prominent role in cognitive psychology, its relevance for the research of consciousness, and some helpful clarification (e.g., Revonsuo 1999), the binding problem is still surrounded by considerable confusion. In this paper, I first give an informal but systematic overview on the diversity of forms the binding problem can assume, and then attempt to extract, on the basis of "working definitions" of various much-discussed types of binding, a common denominator. I propose that at the heart of the binding problem (...) lies the notion of representing an entity as having a certain property, and discuss several objections that could be raised against the proposed analysis, as well its usefulness and implications. (shrink)

The concept of an ontological category is central to metaphysics. Metaphysicians argue about which category of existence an object should be assigned to, whether one category can be reduced to another one, or whether there might be different equally adequate systems of categorization. Answers to these questions presuppose a clear understanding of what precisely an ontological category is, and Jan Westerhoff now provides the first in-depth analysis. After examining a variety of attempted definitions, he proceeds to argue for a new (...) understanding of ontological categories, according to which they are systematizations of our knowledge of the world rather than essential characteristics of the world itself. Metaphysicians will find his work highly stimulating. (shrink)

According to a common opinion, the word ‘semantics’ , derived from the Greek word semantikos , appeared for the first time, at least in modern times, in the book Essai de semantique, science de significations by M. J. A. Bréal . However, Quine says in his lectures on Carnap:As used by C. S. Peirce, “semantic” is the study of the modes of denotation of signs: whether a sign denotes its object through causal or symptomatic connection, or through imagery, or through (...) arbitrary convention and so on. This sense of semantic, namely a theory of meaning, is used also in empirical philology: empirical semantic is the study of historical changes of meanings of words.1For Bréal, semantics was a branch of general linguistics. In particular, semantics was occupied with so-called lexical meaning and its changes through time. Thus, semantics in this sense belonged to what was called “the diachronic treatment of language”. This tradition is fairly alive in contemporary linguistic theory. Quine’s description of the word ‘semantic’ in Peirce corresponds, which Quine explicitly states, to its use in philology. However, some linguists ascribe a more theoretical role to lingustic semantics. Karl Bühler is an example. In his Sprachtheorie he says that a theory of semantic functions of language is a part of theory of language.2 This account is to be found also among philosophers. It is also rather obvious that Peirce did not limit his semantic only to empirical studies. Linguists also use the word ‘semasiology’ instead of ‘semantics’; Bühler proposed the term ‘sematology’ for a general theory of symbols. (shrink)

Western civilization is over. So begins Jan Zwicky’s trenchant exploration of the root of global cultural and ecological collapse: a way of thinking that is also linked to some of the West’s most noted achievements. The Renaissance merged imperial enterprise with Islamic algebra and recently recovered Greek mathematics to precipitate mechanized industry and resource extraction; these in turn made possible the growth of capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and Big Technology. Despite its self-image as objective, Zwicky argues, the West’s style of (...) thought is not politically neutral, but intensely anthropocentric. It has led those who adopt it to regard the more-than-human world as nothing more than timber licences and drilling sites, where value is not recognized unless it is monetized. Oblivious to context and blind to big-picture thinking, it analyzes, mechanizes, digitizes, and systematizes, while rejecting empathy and compassion as distorting influences. Lyric comprehension, in Zwicky’s view, offers an alternative to this way of thinking, and she provides a wide range of examples. Once upon a Time in the West documents how a narrow epistemological style has left Western thought blind to critical features of reality, and how the terrifying consequences of that blinkered vision are now beginning to unfold. (shrink)

The aim of this book is a recovery of interest in the experience of meaning. Jan Zwicky defends the claim that we experience meaning in the apprehension of wholes and their internal structural relations, providing examples of such insight in mathematics and physics, literature, music, and Plato's ancient theory of forms. Taken together, these essays constitute a powerful indictment of the aggressive reductionism and the reliance on calculative modes of thought that dominate our present conception of understanding. The Experience of (...) Meaning proposes a more just epistemology, arguing for a new grammar of thought, a new way of understanding the relationship of human intelligence to the world. Engaging with philosophy, psychology, literature, fine arts, music, and environmental studies in a profound way, The Experience of Meaning will interest any reader who ponders the question of meaning and its relation to true human expression. (shrink)

In this text, I discuss the role that a range of habits in affluent societies play in upholding as well as masking an unsustainable status quo. I show that enactivism, as a philosophical approach to the embodied and embedded mind, offers resources for bringing into focus and critically interrogating suchhabits of affluenceand the environments enabling them. I do this in the context of a critical theory ofthe unfelt in society: the systematic production of lacunae of emotive concern in social collectives. (...) The lack of proportionate affective and practical responses to the ecological crisis epitomizes this. The article starts with considerations on societal unfeeling, then reviews key elements of enactive approaches to habit, before a fuller picture of habits of affluence is developed, informed by Brand’s and Wissen’s concept of theimperial mode of living. Finally, two dimensions of habits of affluence are discussed in some detail, which will help flesh out a thematically expanded, politically engaged version of enactivism. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a solution to the problem that the need to accommodate the phenomenon of epistemic defeat poses for reliabilism. Defeaters are supposed to remove justification for previously justified beliefs. According to standard process reliabilism, the justification of a belief depends on the reliability of a process that is already completed when a defeater for that belief is obtained. It is hard to see, then, how a defeater can affect reliabilist justification, if that justification, from the perspective (...) of the defeater, lies wholly in the past. What is more, undercutting defeaters plausibly defeat by generating incompatibilities with higher-order propositions :105–118, 2014; Melis in Philos Stud 170:433–442, 2014). This is hard to integrate with reliabilism which explicitly denies higher-order conditions for justification. I argue that both of these phenomena can be accommodated by it via what I call the “Replacement Principle”: when a defeater is obtained, it generates either a logical incompatibility or a doxastic incompatibility. The resulting tension is registered and initiates a reasoning process that compares the epistemic support for the defeater with that for the defeated belief. This process may replace the original reliable formation process as a doxastic base for the defeated belief. If the defeater is not given its due weight in the reasoning process, that process was unreliable and if the defeated belief is retained as a result, it will be unjustified. This is intuitively the right result. Since reasoning is reliable, only if it is rational, the account manages to capture the intuition that disregarding a defeater would be irrational without having to make rationality a condition for justification. Replacement is not only plausible on causal pictures of doxastic basing, but also required in order to allow for the possibility of belief reevaluation in general and is therefore not an ad hoc addition to reliabilism, but rather part of its inherent explanatory resources. (shrink)

A number of well-developed theories shed light on the question, under what circumstances our beliefs enjoy epistemic justification. Yet, comparatively little is known about epistemic defeat--when new information causes the loss of epistemic justification. This book proposes and defends a detailed account of epistemic defeaters. The main kinds of defeaters are analyzed in detail and integrated into a general framework that aims to explain how beliefs lose justification. It is argued that defeaters introduce incompatibilities into a noetic system and thereby (...) prompt a structured re-evaluation process that makes a justified reinstatement of the defeated belief impossible. The account is then applied to the topic of disagreement, where it is used in an argument for conciliationism, as well as a new explanation for higher-order defeat. Throughout the book, the notion of defeat is the center of attention, while a number of new issues are discussed at the intersections of defeat and justification. Specifically, new problems are raised for broadly internalist accounts of defeat, a fully descriptive reliabilist account of defeat is provided, and the case for normative defeat is revisited. (shrink)

This essay examines one aspect of the wide-ranging philosophical background of the intellectual and dissident movement for human rights in one-time communist Czechoslovakia. I shall meditate on Jan Patočka 's finite responsibility, Derrida's aporetic emphasis on the infinite dimension of responsibility, and Lévinasian-Dostoyevskyan ethico-existential variations on in/finite responsibility. Havel alludes to hyperbolic ethics in a parenthetical remark on the birth of "Charta 77", the Manifesto for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia. The question before us is this: which dimension of responsibility appears (...) at this birth or, to put it otherwise, what responsibility is born in care for the soul and polis? (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 9, September 2022.

The paper examines the interplays between logic and politics in the Polish School of Logic starting from 1914. The Polish School of Logic flourished between 1920 and 1939. Philosophically, it was influenced by Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938). For Twardowski logic is fundamental for every kind of human activity, professional and private and this means that every argument should be formulated and proceed by correct inferential rules. These rules involve semiotics, formal logic and methodology of science. The paper shows how this position (...) was shared by Twardowski’s students, including Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Tadeusz Kotrabiński, as well as by the next generation of logicians and philosophers and especially by Alfred Tarski. These authors considered logic, philosophy and science as completely neutral with respect to politics and ideology but they also considered logical skills as indispensable in political activities. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept derivative blameworthiness for ignorant conduct – the idea that the blameworthiness for one’s ignorance can ‘transfer’ to blameworthiness for one’s subsequent ignorant conduct. In this chapter we ask the question what it actually means that blameworthiness would transfer, and explore four distinct views and their merits. On views (I) and (II), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance and/or one’s subsequent conduct, and transfer only involves an increase in scope. On views (...) (III) and (IV), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance as well as one’s subsequent conduct, and transfer might not only entail an increase in scope, but also in degree. (shrink)

We define a first-order extension LK(CP) of the cutting planes proof system CP as the first-order sequent calculus LK whose atomic formulas are CP-inequalities ∑ i a i · x i ≥ b (x i 's variables, a i 's and b constants). We prove an interpolation theorem for LK(CP) yielding as a corollary a conditional lower bound for LK(CP)-proofs. For a subsystem R(CP) of LK(CP), essentially resolution working with clauses formed by CP- inequalities, we prove a monotone interpolation theorem (...) obtaining thus an unconditional lower bound (depending on the maximum size of coefficients in proofs and on the maximum number of CP-inequalities in clauses). We also give an interpolation theorem for polynomial calculus working with sparse polynomials. The proof relies on a universal interpolation theorem for semantic derivations [16, Theorem 5.1]. LK(CP) can be viewed as a two-sorted first-order theory of Z considered itself as a discretely ordered Z-module. One sort of variables are module elements, another sort are scalars. The quantification is allowed only over the former sort. We shall give a construction of a theory LK(M) for any discretely ordered module M (e.g., LK(Z) extends LK(CP)). The interpolation theorem generalizes to these theories obtained from discretely ordered Z-modules. We shall also discuss a connection to quantifier elimination for such theories. We formulate a communication complexity problem whose (suitable) solution would allow to improve the monotone interpolation theorem and the lower bound for R(CP). (shrink)