A Reader of Philosophy from its Ancient Beginnings to the 20th Century.

When a term is used in science, we tend to integrate its origins, functions, and history to see if the term is a scientific one or comes from other fields. The term «empathy» is an example to such a case. This article challenges the widespread view that empathy is the capability of a person to understand emotions and thoughts of others. We will deconstruct the concept of empathy as an academic one by focusing on its limits. We will discuss the (...) possibility of empathy for humans in critically reconstructing the meaning of the word and its meanings from its ancient origins to contemporary research. Our question is centered on cognitive actions that enable empathy as an emotional way of understanding others. Based on our findings, we argue that the concept of empathy is a recently established academic term. As a concept, it matches with some alternative concepts such as apathy and sympathy. In rhetoric, it is the pathos of the speech that affects the speaker by emotions since no specific receptive ability of the speaker is needed. Similarly, when we use the term empathy, we should use it as a category of the sender, not that of the receiver. This concept of logical empathy opposes to the classical view of empathy studies emphasizing that empathy is a receptive category of the receiver. So, empathy is nothing else but the ability to send emotional or intellectual content suitable to a capable receiver. Also, the comparative study in the concept of empathy in Buddhism gives us evidence that empathy is a spiritual or mental concept whose applications are in the area of pre-linguistic states and esoteric contexts. In rhetorical terms we could define it as a persuasive mood of pathos-driven speech. (shrink)

This is an anthology of writings about art, art history, esthetics, and art theory from the 18th to 20th century.

Theme of this article is the ancient Roman tradition of criticism based of the standard ">institutio oratoria« of the late Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintilianus and the reception of rhetorical and critical theory among German 18th century philologists. Just like Immanuel Kant's terminology of 'Kritik' the Latin terms critica and ars critica became in the 18th century basic terms for the research in the history of philology and the social importance of this scientific work. The researchers' documentations in the 18th (...) century demonstrate the ancient tradition between criticism and the liberal arts of the trivium which are studies in rethoric, dialectic and grammar. (shrink)

This article presents a model and a case study of the narrative structures that are present in the interactive media design of multimedia applications in the mass media. As basic categories for the history and structure of media, we employ the model of the modes of the physical, analog, and digital presentation/representation. In this case study of the online edition of the New York Times, we have the case of a newspaper that in the digital edition employs multi-media applications. Contrasting (...) the traditional concept of “narrativity” with the current status quo of the digital media outlets, we will examine the specific conditions of the multimedia applications in the mass media with this sample case of the New York Times. As narrative structure of interactive design in multimedia for mass communication, we analyze the types of narrative media and general narrativity in the New York Times with the background of its processes of interactivity and media convergence. (shrink)

Peirce's Law of Triviality: The Implementation of the Trivium of Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. Basic Categories for Linguistics and Literature Studies from a Universal Semiotic Theory This article focuses on the aspects that refer to linguistics in the works of Charles S. Peirce. His pragmatic philosophy implemented many other sciences and among them is the traditional trivium of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, which Peirce divided into different kinds of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. While the impact of the work of Peirce (...) on theses sciences is weak, the integration of the sciences in his philosophy is interesting as a step in the history of science and his work is an example for ecclecticism and historism of science in the 19th century and the universalism of science deducted from a philosophy that uses the sign as an unitarian principle. Triple constructions are a very common feature in the writings of Peirce, and the trivium is an example of an academic construction Peirce implemented. (shrink)

Why do we say that something is unspeakable, even though we know the issue well? We find in many cultural contexts the classification of something as ‘unspeakable'. Using semantics and semiotic theory separating between ‘concept', ‘sign', and ‘reference object of the sign' in several cases where the ‘unspeakable' is described, we will discuss the functions of ‘the unspeakable‘ as a cultural phenomenon. Philosophers use the term frequently with reference to their culture. In our article we will look at the socio-cultural (...) conditions of the concept of ‘the unspeakable'. While it seems that this concept is universal, functions and meanings of this concept vary depending on the cultural settings. We will examine in this article the functions of this concept comparing the use of it in different cultures with religious and mythological impact expressed in this concept. Furthermore, we will look at the linguistic settings that allow us a construction like ‘the unspeakable' to be used as a representation for something not spoken in speech, but existing in another cultural or transcendental sphere. We will show that the expression serves as a semiotic replacement for issues that could be articulated, but due to cultural limits like religion or myths as act of cultural censorship should not be articulated in speech. (shrink)

The name Charles Sanders Peirce is associated with the science of signs called semiotics, which studies the sign as the carrier of meaning that is placed in the center of his work. Peirce developed a system of concepts that describe how the sign as such is understood by the mind. For the conditions of its interpretations Peirce established various so-called interpretants for the explanation of signs associated with the utterer and interpreter and a shared process that enables the communication between (...) communicators. Further to the renovation of the theory of rhetoric and communication, we show that medium and communication must be understood within the framework of his theory in association to the sign and the object. Throughout his manuscripts the triads of his concepts are realized in the text in rhetorical tricola as terms of his philosophy. In comparison to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which employed the sign as a means for reasoning, we will show how Peirce developed techniques of reasoning based on Aristotle’s work and his model of mental understanding of the sign while foreshadowing a theory of communication that aims at describing the exchange of information in a model. (shrink)

This article is focused on the nature of directives. It draws on Curl and Drew’s analysis of entitlement and contingency in request types and applies this to a corpus of directives that occur in UK family mealtimes involving parents and young children. While requests are built as contingent to varying degrees on the recipient’s willingness or ability to comply, directives embody no orientation to the recipient’s ability or desire to perform the relevant activity. This lack of orientation to ability or (...) desire may be what makes them recognizable as directives. When examining directives in sequence the contingencies were successively reduced or managed during the delivery of the directive, thereby treating contingencies as a resource of the speaker rather than of the recipient. In a sense the entitlement claimed is ‘to tell’ rather than ‘to ask’. In sequences involving multiple/repeated directives, non-compliance led to upgraded directives. The difference in the entitlement claimed, the response options available and the trajectory of multiple requests/directives suggests that participants orient to requests and directives as different actions, rather than more or less forceful formulations of the same. (shrink)

Disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality for Latinx populations are a paradigmatic example of the now widely acknowledged structural racism in U.S. health care that predisposed minorities to...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the quarantine undergone by children in many countries is a stressful situation about which little is known to date. Children and adolescents' behaviors to cope with home confinement may be associated with their emotional welfare. The objectives of this study were: to examine the coping strategies used out by children and adolescents during the COVID-19 health crisis, to analyze the differences in these behaviors in three countries, and to examine the relationship between different coping modalities and (...) adaptation. Participants were 1,480 parents of children aged 3–18 years from three European countries. The children's mean age was 9.15 years. Parents completed an online survey providing information on symptoms and coping behaviors observed in their children. The most frequent coping strategies were accepting what is happening, collaborating with quarantine social activities, acting as if nothing is happening, highlighting the advantages of being at home, and not appearing to be worried about what is happening. Compared to Italian and Spanish children, Portuguese children used a sense of humor more frequently when their parents talked about the situation. Acting as if nothing was happening, collaborating with social activities, and seeking comfort from others were more likely in Spanish children than in children from the other countries. Compared to Portuguese and Spanish children, Italian children did not seem worried about what was happening. Overall, an emotional-oriented coping style was directly correlated with a greater presence of anxious symptoms, as well as to mood, sleep, behavioral, and cognitive alterations. Task-oriented and avoidance-oriented styles were related to better psychological adaptation. Results also show that unaffected children or children with a lower level of impact were more likely to use strategies based on a positive focus on the situation. This study provides interesting data on the strategies to be promoted by parents to cope with the COVID-19 health crisis in children. (shrink)

A complement clause is used instead of a noun phrase; for example one can say either I heard [the result] or I heard [that England beat France]. Languages differ in the grammatical properties of complement clauses, and the types of verbs which take them. Some languages lack a complement clause construction but instead employ other construction types to achieve similar ends; these are called complementation strategies. The book explores the variety of types of complementation found across the languages of the (...) world, their grammatical properties and meanings. Detailed studies of particular languages, including Akkadian, Israeli, Jarawara, and Pennsylvania German, are framed by R. M. W. Dixon's introduction, which sets out the range of issues, and his conclusion, which draws together the evidence and the arguments. This book will interest scholars of typology, language universals, syntax, information structure, and language contact in departments of linguistics and anthropology, as well as advanced and graduate students taking courses in these subjects. (shrink)

In this critical personal narrative Harris explores some of the gaps between conceptions of feminist thought and feminist practice. Harris focuses on an analysis of race, class, and desire divisions within feminist sexual politics. She suggests a queer black feminist theory and practice that calls into question naturalized identities and communities, and therefore what feminism and feminist practices might entail.

We investigate a construction schema for first-order logical systems, called “form logic”. Form logic allows us to overcome the dualistic commitment of predicate logic to individual constants and predicates. Dualism is replaced by a pluralism of terms of different “logical forms”. Individual form-logical systems are generated by the determination of a range of logical forms and of the formbased syntax rules for combining terms into formulas. We develop a generic syntax and semantics for such systems and provide a completeness proof (...) for them. To illustrate the idea of form logic, and the possibilities it facilitates, we discuss three particular systems, one of which is the form-logical reconstruction of standard first-order predicate logic. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is a possible Siberian link with the Na-Dene Languages, based on cognitive lexical semantics. Dene-Yeniseian is a proposed language family consisting of the Yeniseian languages of Central Siberia and the Na-Dene languages of North-Western North America. The paper connects semantic universals, Ket and Dene folklore, and also comparative historical linguistic research. In analyzing a group of cognates, the paper’s aim is to discuss the cultural, cognitive and pragmatic reasons that enabled these cognates to survive for (...) several thousand years. Our main point is that factors such as the relative importance of linguistic signs in a language community, lingual conservatism of semantic universals and the distinctiveness of its referents, probable frequency with which these words were used, and their cultural symbolism in relatively similar environments significantly contributed to their survival in ethnic groups belonging to the proposed language family. Our cross-disciplinary study helps us identify the essential place of eco-ethnic material in interpreting cross-continental similarities and emphasizes the integrative role of culture. It will be argued that the eco-ethnic lexicon reflected by the Dene-Yeniseian cognates reveals several thousand years of diachronic cognitive processes. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a rational being stands in what is called a “second-personal relation” to herself. According to philosophers like S. Darwall and Ch. Korsgaard, being a rational agent is to interact with oneself, to make demands on oneself. The thesis of the paper is that this view rests on a logical confusion. Transitive verbs like “asking”, “making a demand” or “obligating” can occur with the reflexive pronoun, but it is a mistake to assume that the reflexive and (...) the non-reflexive use exhibit the same logical grammar. The thesis that they do is in part motivated by the assumption that to show that my relation to you bears the same form as my practical self-relation is to show that, fundamentally, you are not an object for me to think about and act on, but a subject with whom to think and act together. I argue, to the contrary, that if my addressing you exhibited the same form as a relation I could literally be said to stand in to myself, then the nexus between us would be such that I am irretr.. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism suggests that the sense of normative terms like “ought” and “good” as they appear in ethical discourse is to be elucidated in terms of the relation in which a living individual stands to the life-form or “species” of which it is an exemplar—in our case: the human life-form. A theory of this form has to provide a story about questions such as: What enables us to distinguish the different kinds of life within the theory? What makes them, (...) despite those differences, all sorts of natural goodness? And where, in relation to those continuities and discontinuities, is the account of practical reason to be situated? In this paper, I investigate how a developed ethical naturalism has to conceive of the relation between the genus concept life and the concept of the specific kind of life characteristic of us: rational or practically self-conscious life. I argue that there is a deep ambiguity with respect to this question in the account Philippa Foot presents in Natural Goodness. An ambiguity that covers a dilemma. A properly developed ethical naturalism would have to develop the concept of reason out of the reflection on life. (shrink)

Der große jüdische Religionsphilosoph Martin Buber (1878-1965) war auch als Pädagoge und Andragoge eine bedeutende Persönlichkeit in der Geistesgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. 1924 war er Gast der damals von Wilhelm Flitner geleiteten Volkshochschule Jena. An seinen dortigen Begegnungen lässt sich exemplarisch das Selbstverständnis und die Methodik Bubers eindrucksvoll sichtbar machen. Von der Analyse der Jenaer Konstellation geht dieser Sammelband aus, führt aber darüber hinaus zu Bubers weitgespannten Wirkungsfeldern, wobei auch bisher unerschlossenes Archivmaterial ausgewertet wird. Vertieft werden neben pädagogisch-andragogischen auch religiöse, (...) sprachanalytische und politisch-ethische Aspekte, dargestellt u.a. auch über biographische Bezüge zu herausragenden Zeitgenossen wie Leo Boeck und Dag Hammarskjöld. Darüberhinaus enthält der Band auch Unveröffentlichtes aus Bubers Feder, so eine Auswahl aus seinem Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm Flitner sowie einen systematischen Grundlagenartikel zur Erwachsenenbildung. (shrink)

What are networked organizations? The focus of discussions of the networked organization has been on the boundary-spanning nature of these new organizational structures. Yet, the role of the group in these networked organizations has remained unclear. Furthermore, little is known about how computer-mediated communication is used to bridge group and organizational boundaries. In particular, the role of new media in the context of existing communication patterns has received little attention. We examine how employees at a high-tech company, referred to as (...) KME, communicate with members of the work group, other colleagues in the organization, and colleagues outside the organization to better understand their boundary-spanning communications. (shrink)

"L'idée de cet ouvrage prend sa source dans un texte du tout dernier Schelling, extrait de l'Exposé de la philosophie rationnelle pure, professé à Berlin dans les années 1847-1852 et publié ensuite par le fils de Schelling dans un ensemble plus vaste, l'Introduction à la Philosophie de la mythologie."--Prologue, p. [7].

Scientific disciplines are faced with the need to position themselves as part of both science and society. This article explores the foundations of such positioning on the basis of a sociological model of the division of disciplinary labor, interpreted as a general model of the social organization of disciplinary labor, as well as on the basis of models of science and of the science–society relationship. As models of the relationship between science and society, the republican American model and the model (...) of the scientific public sphere embody the normative ideals of autonomous and embedded science that are essential for the positioning of a scientific discipline. With cognition as the main goal of science, the (post-)positivist roots of the close connection between basic research and instrumental knowledge are explored. The transformation discourse testifies to the interest in solving complex problems in democratic science; and the concept of scientific knowledge as a common good links science and society by pointing to the possibility of a public interest in scientific knowledge. The article concludes that a scientific community needs axiological skills in addition to theoretical, methodological, and communicative skills. (shrink)