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 studies of scientific discovery outside the philosophy of science, in psychology, sociology, or history, is no longer valid in view of the existence of computer systems of discovery.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)

ABSTRACTBased on an overview of the ways in which politics and the political have been thought in critical discourse analysis, the author calls for a focus on the metapolitical dimension of discourse. The author develops his notion of metapolitics on the basis of post-foundational insights into politics, the political and processes of politicization. Metapolitics refers to projects and struggles where conflicting modes and models of politics clash. Metapolitical debates potentially reshape the structure of the public realm as well as the (...) entities, borders and processes that constitute it. The author differentiates his descriptive and analytic use of the term from the way this signifier has been used programmatically by the anti-democratic New Right and its heirs. He demonstrates that metapolitical projects can be democratic as well as anti-democratic. In order to facilitate discourse analyses of metapolitical projects, debates and struggles, the author suggests that the metapolitical dimension of contemporary debates can be explored further by integrating insights from governmentality studies, studies of political rationality and the discourse theoretical logics approach with CDA. Moreover, a further exploration of the linguistic and textual underpinnings of metapolitics constitutes a promising pathway for future investigation. The study of metapolitics should be part and parcel of the transdisciplinary domain of critical discourse studies so that our understanding of the linguistic and non-linguistic features of metapolitical projects can be developed in equal measure at multiple levels of abstraction. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue, via a revision of Freud's notions of primary and secondary process, that experiences of resonant form lie at the root of many serious ineffability claims. I suggest further that Western European culture's resistance to the perception of resonant form underlies some of its present crises.

The author of this book, Czech philosopher, former dissident, software developer and occasional politician, tries to carry over this experience into his university lectures.

Auf die im Jahre 1938 entwickelte allgemeine Gleichung derMendel Gesetze bezugnehmend, die die Vererbung als Ausdruck desNewtonschen Binoms hält, sucht der Verfasser dieselbe auf die Geschlechtsvererbung anzuwenden, indem er, sich des transformiertenPascal'schen arithmetischen Dreiecks bedienend, zum Schluss kommt, dass die ungeschlechtliche Vermehrung, vom rein biometrischen Standpunkt aus betrachtet, als Beispiel der Zero-Potenz in dem Kreuzungsrange angesehen werden könnte, d.h. eine komplette Konsolidierung und Homozygotie, bei alledem vielleicht sekundär aus der früher durchgemachten geschlechtlichen Vermehrung entstanden, darstellte.Die geschlechtliche Vermehrung müsste sodann etwa (...) für ein Beispiel des Binoms, wenn auch von nicht reiner, aber deformierter oder verkümmerter Form, von einer Kreuzungspotenzn=1 angesehen werden, und zwar vom Typus .Zudem wird ein weiterer Versuch gemacht, von demselben Standpunkt aus, auch einige kompliziertere Geschlechtserscheinungen zu analysieren, wie die des Geschlechtspolymorphismus , des Hermaphroditismus , so wie auch die oft in den natürlichen Populationen beobachtbaren Verschiebungen in der üblichen Zahlproportion 1 ∶ 1 der Geschlechter .In relation to the general equation of the laws ofMendel, given by the author in 1938, as forming the expression ofNewton's binomial, the author analyses the possibilities of application of this equation to the phenomena of sex inheritance and, while usingPascal's transformed arithmetical triangle, comes to the conclusion that the asexual propagation might be taken, from the purely biometrical point of view, as an instance of Zero-power of the crosses, which would mean a complete consolidation or homozygoty of germ material, acquired, it is true, as a secondary achievement from the previous sexual propagation.The latter, again, ought to be considered as an instance ofNewton's binomial of the cross power ofn=1 of a rather irregular, disfigured type of .Then, the author is making an attempt of analysing, from this point of view, a few more complicated cases from this field of inquiry, such as sexual polymorphism , hermaphroditism and finally the fluctuations in the number proportions of sexes, found in natural populations. (shrink)

Abstract“Show, don't tell” is a maxim basic to literary craft. It enjoins avoidance of abstract, cliché‐ridden summaries and use of rich, vividly rendered details. Anyone who has attended an introductory creative writing course will have encountered it. Practised literary writers know it is true. Why is showing so fundamental to good literature? Why is it more effective than telling? Showing constellates details, placing facets of a larger shape before the reader's mind, a shape that cannot be adequately encompassed by a (...) summary, whose power lies in the simultaneous integration of multiple, superficially discontinuous aspects. This sounds like the eureka effect, the “Aha!” of sudden discovery in mathematics and the sciences. I argue that grasping what is being shown in a literary context is indeed related to insight in theoretical fields. Telling the reader “what happened” makes the mind's eye glaze over in just the way that it glazes over when it is forced to memorize formulae that it does not understand. Showing is like offering an elegant proof; the mind reaches to understand what is going on. When it succeeds, it feels the satisfaction of having grasped meaning. (shrink)

The general thrust of Neil Levy's paper is that a certain amount of paternalism should be viewed as compatible with liberalism.1 I am not quite convinced that what he is defending is properly paternalism. In addition, I am not entirely sure what his proposal is. Here are a few comments about several points in the paper.1. A possibly small question is worth raising when Levy says, ‘That is, the state may not interfere with individuals’ actions, even to promote their own (...) conception of the good. This claim is typically justified on epistemic grounds: individuals are best placed to judge for themselves how to pursue their conception of the good.’But I don't think that this is quite the right picture, though admittedly, it has often been suggested by liberals. Still: if it's a matter of ‘epistemic’ grounds, then that implies that there is something out there to be known, so that the question is, how do we go about knowing it? But this way of putting it is misleading. For liberalism says that whenever anybody, B, other than the individual we are considering, say A, claims that what is good for A is something ‘out there’—something that can strongly contradict what A thinks for his own case—then that outsider has no authority to override A's preference. This isn't epistemic—it's a moral position.If we were to talk of ‘epistemic’ here, presumably what is known in this case is how the individual …. (shrink)

Our topic asks for a/the “normative outlook” on “the cultural edifice of the moral mind.” In this essay, I shall attempt to fix a fairly definite meaning for each of these notions, and then argue that our normative outlook insofar as this cultural edifice is moral is very strong approval. By the (or a) “cultural edifice,” I take it, we mean pretty much the whole of society insofar as it is a product of human effort, which in turn is affected, (...) no doubt, by luck – good and bad – and shot through, informed, and constrained by the moralities of the various societies that make it up. But in order to talk coherently of “the moral mind,” we need a clear and strong moral theory, one that presents a basic set of moral principles or ideas, ones which ought, therefore, to impose a coherent shape on the whole. This is vague, to be sure, and will be thought in a basic way to be implausible. I shall try at least briefly to affirm the idea and to insist that it is not after all so implausible. Is there, then, a supreme, overriding morality? Yes, I claim (in the wake, to be sure, of many others, including Aristotle, Kant, David Gauthier, and Nicholas Rescher). It has one supreme idea that nobody is to make their way in the world by imposing costs on other innocent people. (That formulation is a generalization of the ideas of Kant, Hobbes, Socrates, and perhaps that of mankind generally.) The cultural world as we know it includes the accomplishments of the original and the brilliant, plus even more the communal and cooperative efforts of innumerable people, including symphony orchestras and art museums on and on, down to a gathering of friends playing cricket. On the other hand, of course, it contains much violence and evil. What our world would look like in the absence of that evil is very hard to say – but, surely, it would be better. (shrink)

Plutarch was a brilliant Platonist, an erudite historian, a gifted author of highly polished literary dialogues, a priest of Apollo at Delphi, and a devoted politician in his hometown Chaeronea. He felt confident in the most technical and specialized discussions, yet was not afraid of rhetorical generalizations. In his voluminous oeuvre, he appears as a sharp polemicist and a loving father, an ardent pupil but also a kind, inspiring teacher, a sober historian and a teller of wondrous tales. In view (...) of all these different personae, erudite versatility is without any doubt a major characteristic of Plutarch’s works. A Versatile Gentleman is dedicated to Luc Van der Stockt, professor emeritus of Greek language and literature at KU Leuven and a truly versatile gentleman. The volume aims to do justice to his and Plutarch’s versatility by discussing the Chaeronean from many different angles. As such, it sheds new light on the coherence of, and the tensions in, Plutarch’s thinking and writing. (shrink)

Neuf études sur l'art et le temps - c'est-à-dire - l'art et l'histoire. Regard historique sur l'esthétique, analyse des conceptions du Beau dans la tradition philosophique, au travers d'exemples venant de la Grèce, de la Renaissance, du Romantisme, et d'auteurs comme Burckhardt ou Hegel - ces essais sont le prétexte à une exploration des grandes questions métaphysiques sur l'art et les hommes, analyses par un auteur dont l'engagement concret contre le régime totalitaire de son pays porte la marque de son (...) souci de l'homme et de sa dignité. (shrink)

In this contribution we shall characterize matrix consequence operation determined by a direct product and an ultraproduct of a family of logical matrices. As an application we shall describe finite consequence operations with the help of ultrapowers.

In this essay, part of a cluster of pieces on her concept of “lyric philosophy,” the author explores connections between imagination, understood as the capacity to think in images, and what Wittgenstein called “seeing-as.” In seeing-as, we focus on what Wittgenstein identifies as inner structural relations. This is a term that Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of gestalt philosophical psychology, used independently to describe how seeing-as involves seeing into a thing or situation. The present essay suggests that both seeing-as (...) and seeing-into depend on, and develop, sensitivity to ontological resonance, the attunement of things with one another, the deep analogies that constitute the underlying structure of the world. Imagination is thus fundamental to the good, or ethical, life. For its disciplined exercise relieves us of what Simone Weil calls the “Ring of Gyges”: the refusal to perceive significant analogies between ourselves and other beings, which is the root of injustice. (shrink)

Our ability to rapidly distinguish new from already stored information is important for behavior and decision making, but the underlying processes remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that contextual cues lead to a preselection of information and, therefore, faster recognition. Specifically, on the basis of previous modeling work, we hypothesized that recognition time depends on the amount of relevant content stored in long-term memory, i.e., set size, and we explored possible age-related changes of this relationship in older humans. In (...) our paradigm, subjects learned by heart four different word lists written in different colors. On the day of testing, a color cue indicated with a probability of 50% that a subsequent word might be from the corresponding list or from a list of new words. The old/new status of the word had to be distinguished via button press. As a main finding, we can show in a sample of n = 49 subjects, including 26 younger and 23 older humans, that response times increased linearly and logarithmically as a function of set size in both age groups. Conversely, corrected hit rates decreased as a function of set size with no statistically significant differences between both age groups. As such, our findings provide empirical evidence that contextual information can lead to a preselection of relevant information stored in long-term memory to promote efficient recognition, possibly by cyclical top-down and bottom-up processing. (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)

Logical theory codifies rules of correct inferences. On the other hand, logical reasoning is typically considered as one of the most fundamental cognitive activities. Thus, cognitive science is a natural meeting-point for investigations about the place of logic in human cognition. Investigations in this perspective strongly depend on a possible understanding of logic. This paper focuses on logic in the strict sense; that is, the theory of deductive inferences. Two problems are taken into account, namely: do humans apply logical rules (...) in ordinary reasoning?; the genesis of logic. The second issue is analyzed from the naturalistic point of view. (shrink)

Cílem předloženého příspěvku je přiblížit Whiteheadovo specifické pojetí původně platónského pojmu „schránka“ (hypodoché), který v souvislosti se svou procesuální koncepcí Whitehead chápe jako osobní jednotu vyjadřující svým strukturálním charakterem obecný princip, jímž se řídí složení celku naší skutečnosti. Autor nejprve ve stručnosti naznačuje Platónovo vlastní pojetí hypodoché. Whiteheadovo specifické pojetí tohoto pojmu, jež je v základních rysech přiblíženo v dalším kroku, autorovi pak následně dovoluje podstatně popsat jeho možné konotace s pojmem „nadčasové skutečnosti“ (eternal objects). V samém závěru příspěvku se (...) autor pokouší nalézt odpověď na neméně zásadní filosofickou otázku, tj. na to, co ve skutečnosti odpovídá onomu principiálnímu popisu Whiteheadova pojmu „nadčasové skutečnosti“, a pro případ potřeby sledování směru dalšího bádání předznačuje, že jedna možná odpověď se nabízí v systémové teorii Ludwiga von Bertalanffyho. (shrink)

In contemporary North American contexts, to say that a claim is oracular is seriously to undermine its philosophical credibility. My thesis is that this negative judgement of oracularity is unwarranted and that it is rooted in an excessively narrow notion of what constitutes ‘good’ philosophy. More specifically, I argue that oracular utterance is appropriate to the expression of views that regard the phenomena towards which they are directed as radically, non‐systematically integrated wholes. Importantly, such views are falsifiable—or at least as (...) falsifiable as scientific paradigms, which, in one important respect, they resemble. However, I argue further that there is good reason to think that such views cannot, without distortion, be expressed using the systematic‐analytic forms of argumentation that are frequently regarded as essential to the pursuit of philosophy. Yet the questions that they compass, concerning the way in which parts are related to the wholes that they constitute, fall squarely within the purview of traditional metaphysics. Thus, in proscribing oracular utterance we divest ourselves of the opportunity to contemplate world orders of potential philosophical interest that systematic‐analytic argument is incapable of conveying to us. (shrink)

In this entry, I provide an overview of determinism, the philosophical thesis that the state of a system at one time, together with the laws of nature, completely determines its state at any other time—most notably in the future. I begin by tracing the historical development of determinism from its origins in ancient Greek atomism to its resurgence in early modern science, particularly through figures like Galileo, Newton, and Laplace. I then outline key distinctions within determinism, differentiating it from fatalism (...) and highlighting various interpretations, such as causal, logical, and physical determinism. Finally, I discuss one of the most prominent debates concerning determinism: its relationship to free will. While some thinkers—such as Laplace and Holbach—have viewed determinism as incompatible with human freedom, others—such as Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant—have sought ways to reconcile the two. The entry concludes by considering contemporary perspectives on determinism, including Karl Popper’s critique and the impact of quantum mechanics on traditional deterministic views. -/- . (shrink)

This paper examines the Schlick-Feigl variant of the identity theory of mind and its relevance to contemporary debates in philosophy of mind and physicalism. While the standard identity theory, developed in the 1950s and 1960s by U.T. Place, J.J.C. Smart, and Herbert Feigl, posits that mental states are identical to neural states, different versions of the theory have emerged. I distinguish the Schlick-Feigl variant from the more commonly discussed Place-Smart variant and the eliminativist version associated with Feyerabend and Rorty. The (...) Schlick-Feigl variant, rooted in Moritz Schlick’s epistemology and refined by Herbert Feigl, asserts that mental states and neural processes share the same referent despite differing conceptual frameworks. I argue that this position is closely related to contemporary discussions on Russellian physicalism and the metaphysical interpretation of consciousness. By revisiting the Schlick-Feigl approach, I suggest that it offers a promising framework for addressing key objections to physicalist theories, particularly those concerning the explanatory gap and the nature of phenomenal properties. -/- . (shrink)

This book presents a synthetic view of the intellectual variants of negative theology at the dawn of modern times. It attempts to grasp the diversity of ideas in ontology, epistemology and semeiotics which evolved through readings of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

As the title of my article can indicate, the primary aim of this „brief introduction" is to present the concept of intentionality of one of the world's leading philosophers - John R. Searle. Searle is known for his severe criticism of the dominant traditions in the study of mind, both materialist and dualist, and we may also recall his familiar argument called „the Chinese Room" against theories of „artificial intelligence". The concept of intentionality was founded when philosophers attempted to describe (...) and solve the philosophical problem of specific „quasi-relations" between consciousness and objects and the direction of our mind or language to the real world. I am referring to situations in which we say for instance: „A thinks about p", "B maintains that g", „X asks question if y" and so on. (shrink)