Vehement resentment and indignation are rife in societies emerging from dictatorship or civil conflict. How should institutions deal with these emotions? Arguing for the need to recognize and constructively engage negative public emotions, Mihaela Mihai contributes theoretically to the growing field of transitional justice. Drawing on an extensive philosophical literature and case studies of democratic transitions in South Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe, her book rescues negative emotions from their bad reputation and highlights the obstacles and the opportunities (...) such emotions create for democracy. By valorizing negative emotions, either through the judicial review of transitional justice bills or the criminal trials of victimizers, institutions realize the value of respect and concern for all while contributing to a public culture hospitable to democracy. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 5, Page 1322-1341, October 2021.

Self-serving hegemonic visions of history are institutionalized by dominant memory entrepreneurs, simultaneously imposing an authoritative version of “what happened” and their right to articulate it. These visions and the hierarchies of honour they consecrate are cultivated trans-generationally, aiming to ensure the community’s political cohesion, as well as the emotional attachments that can ensure its reproduction over time. This paper has three objectives. First, it brings insights from social epistemology to bear on a conceptualization of political memory-making and proposes the concepts (...) of “hermeneutical dissidence” and “hermeneutical seduction” to capture the critical interrogation of such mythologies. It highlights the obstacles facing any attempt at subverting them, particularly given the resilience of cognitive and emotional investments in particular schemas of perception and understanding in relation to the boundaries of the community and its history. Second, I transplant the descriptive concept of “affair” formulated by pragmatic sociologists into debates about political memory, infusing it with a dose of normativity in order to shed critical light on various types of hermeneutical dissidence from dominant, emotionally anchored, exclusionary imaginaries. Third, to render the theoretical proposal concrete, I introduce two “memory affairs,” both triggered by debates over the meaning and gender of political resistance. (shrink)

With this nuanced and interdisciplinary work, political theorist Mihaela Mihai tackles several interrelated questions: How do societies remember histories of systemic violence? Who is excluded from such histories' cast of characters? And what are the political costs of selective remembering in the present? Building on insights from political theory, social epistemology, and feminist and critical race theory, Mihai argues that a double erasure often structures hegemonic narratives of complex violence: of widespread, heterogeneous complicity and of "impure" resistances, not (...) easily subsumed to exceptionalist heroic models. In dialogue with care ethicists and philosophers of art, she then suggests that such narrative reductionism can be disrupted aesthetically through practices of "mnemonic care," that is, through the hermeneutical labor that critical artists deliver—thematically and formally—within communities' space of meaning. Empirically, the book examines both consecrated and marginalized artists who tackled the memory of Vichy France, communist Romania, and apartheid South Africa. Despite their specificities, these contexts present us with an opportunity to analyze similar mnemonic dynamics and to recognize the political impact of dissenting artistic production. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, the book intervenes in debates over collective responsibility, historical injustice, and the aesthetics of violence within political theory, memory studies, social epistemology, and transitional justice. (shrink)

Introduction: Play, Power, and the Western Mentality Whereas play has always had an important, if sometimes unthemat- ized, role in Western literary ...

Relations between some theories of semigroups (also known as theories of strings or theories of concatenation) and arithmetic are surveyed. In particular Robinson's arithmetic Q is shown to be mutually interpretable with TC, a weak theory of concatenation introduced by Grzegorczyk. Furthermore, TC is shown to be interpretable in the theory F studied by Tarski and Szmielewa, thus confirming their claim that F is essentially undecidable.

We develop an abstract proof calculus for logics whose sentences are ‘Horn sentences’ of the form: $(\forall X)H \Rightarrow c$ and prove an institutional generalization of Birkhoff completeness theorem. This result is then applied to the particular cases of Horn clauses logic, the ‘Horn fragment’ of preorder algebras, order-sorted algebras and partial algebras and their infinitary variants.

Tracing the interrelationship among play, poetic imitation, and power to the Hellenic world, Mihai I. Spariosu provides a revisionist model of cultural change in Greek antiquity. Challenging the traditional and static distinction made between archaic and later Greek culture, Spariosu's perspective is grounded in a dialectical understanding of values whose dominance depends on cultural emphasis and which shifts through time. Building upon the scholarship of an earlier volume, Dionysus Reborn, Spariosu her continues to draw on Dionysus--the "God of many (...) names," of both poetic play and sacred power--as a mythical embodiment of the two sides of the classical Greek mentality. Combining philosophical reflection with close textual analysis, the author examines the divided nature of the Hellenic mentality in such primary canonic texts as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, Works and Days, the most well-known of the Presocratic fragments, Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' The Frogs, Plato's Republic and Laws, and Aristotle's Poetics and Politics. Spariosu's model illuminates the many of the most enduring questions in contemporary humanistic study and addresses modern questions about the nature of the interrelation of poetry, ethics, and politics. (shrink)

His philosophical thinking was influenced by his legal knowledge, but when reading carefully his articles and papers we can notice a detachment from the philosophical premises in the development of the concepts of law. Like Del Vecchio, Djuvara makes no difference between law and philosophy and therefore the legal philosophy looks like a completion of law, these two concepts being comprehended only by a general, epistemological and philosophical approach; the issues related to the philosophy of law are not only isolated (...) from the big philosophical issues but there are closely related to them so that the philosophy of lawintegrates completely in the general philosophy. (shrink)

It can be argued that only the equational theories of some sub-elementary function algebras are finitistic or intuitive according to a certain interpretation of Hilbert's conception of intuition. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation of those restricted forms of equational reasoning to classical quantifier logic in arithmetic. The conclusion reached is that Edward Nelson's ‘predicative arithmetic’ program, which makes essential use of classical quantifier logic, cannot be justified finitistically and thus requires a different philosophical foundation, possibly (...) as a restricted form of logicism. (shrink)

When referring to values as “general principles of desirability” or as “social cohesion binders”, one should bear in mind that such notions contribute decisively to the shaping and crystallization of social representations. It would be improper to believe that there may be in-depth studies upon people, ideas and events, as this approach disregards the fact that social representations have the capacity of being strongly anchored in the dynamics of relational processes, to the symbolic relationships specific to a given social field, (...) to the values that constitute the eloquent expression of this dynamics and this specific field of research. An eloquent example in this respect is the way in which the social representation of leaders appears; data show that there is harmony between the image of power the leaders have or could have and the axiological dimensions of the group participating in the elaboration of such an image. (shrink)

Classical results of additive number theory lead to the undecidability of the existence of solutions for diophantine equations in given special sets of integers. Those sets which are images of polynomials are covered by a more general result in the second section. In contrast, restricting diophantine equations to images of exponential functions with natural bases leads to decidable problems, as proved in the third section.

The theological aspect of the dispute between the modern philosopher René Descartes, and the Calvinist theologian, Gisbertus Voetius, remains a chapter insufficiently explored in Cartesian studies. This paper highlights a set of objections on natural theology addressed by Descartes and Voetius to each other. It shows and expands the common ground Descartes and Voetius held within natural theology. It argues that their contrasting views revolved mainly around the limits of natural theology. For Voetius, natural theology is extrinsically limited by the (...) revealed God, the external principle of faith. For Descartes, metaphysics or natural theology is intrinsically limited by the incomprehensible idea of the Infinite. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the main characteristics of the epistemology of modal rationalism by proceeding from the critical investigation of Peacocke’s theory of modality. I build on arguments by Crispin Wright and Sonia Roca-Royes, which are generalised and supplemented by further analysis, in order to show that principle-based accounts have little prospects of succeeding in their task of providing an integrated account of the metaphysics and the epistemology of modality. I argue that it is unlikely that we will able (...) to develop an exhaustive and accurate principle-based account that discriminates objectively between correct and deviant modal knowledge. Even if such an account can be formulated, a non-circular way of justifying its necessity also seems to be out of our reach. (shrink)

The objection from the insolvability of principle-based modal disagreements appears to support the claim that there are no objective modal facts, or at the very least modal facts cannot be accounted for by modal rationalist theories. An idea that resurfaced fairly recently in the literature is that the use of ordinary empirical statements presupposes some prior grasp of modal notions. If this is correct, then the idea that we may have a total agreement concerning empirical facts and disagree on modal (...) facts, which is the starting point of the objection from the insolvability of modal disagreement, is undercut. This paper examines the no-separation thesis and shows that some of the arguments against the classical (empiricist) distinction between empirical and modal statements fail to be conclusive if they are taken to defend a strong notion of metaphysical possibility. The no-separation thesis appears to work only in theoretical frameworks where metaphysical modalities are considered (broadly) conceptual. For these reasons, the no-separation thesis cannot save modal rationalism from the insolvability of modal disagreement. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to provide a critical discussion of some key issues concerning the possible-world analysis of fiction. After a review of the most important philosophical questions concerning truth, reference, names and identity, and their bearing on fiction, I outline the possible-world framework, as used by David Lewis (1978) in his analysis, and examine its most important problems. A special interest is granted to the limits of the Lewisian pretense interpretation of fiction that are highlighted by (...) works of cinema. I conclude with an appraisal of the puzzles generated by the attempts to draw borders between and within the worlds of fiction, and emphasize the need for a better mutual understanding of the two perspectives that are essential for a possible-world interpretation of fiction: literary theory and philosophy. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant remarks that the feeling of the dynamically sublime is actually conditioned and that its foundation is the moral feeling, which he addressed in the Critique of Practical Reason. In order to elucidate those transient yet significant remarks, this paper confronts the analytic of the dynamically sublime from the third Critique with the analytic of the moral feeling from the second Critique. By uncovering an architectonic, constitutive and structural kinship between the two (...) feelings, the paper contributes to the reconsideration of the relation between Kant’s aesthetics and his ethics. (shrink)

Over the last two centuries, the relationship between philosophy and science has completely broken down, so the question we are confronted with is: How can we develop a new philosophy, which will influence science decisively? The physicists of the last century rejected their contemporary philosophy. They considered that “philosophy today is dead” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010). However, we believe that the great scientific problems are always philosophical, and only philosophical problems. Therefore, these problems can be solved only by philosophers and (...) scientists who operate at the greatest level of thinking: that of the “paradigm of thinking”. In fact, these great scientific problems can usually be solved by changing the “paradigm of thinking” for scientists. This book furnished more applications of the “epistemologically different worlds” (that replaced the “world”/”universe” – in their previous books (2008, 2010, 2011, etc.), the authors indicated that the notion of the world/universe is wrong). Following Aristotle’s “Prime Mover” (or the “Unmoved Mover”), we stop the regress ad infinitum by discovering the first EW, the EW0 (the Hypernothing). Even if one EW does not exist for any EDW, the Hypernothing was the first EW and all other EDWs correspond to the EW0. Chapter 2 is about the “Hypernothing”. The other chapters continue our works of applying the EDWs to different concepts/areas of Physics: quantum mechanics, elementary particles, thermodynamics (with its main notion, “entropy”), etc. In the last chapter, knowing that Einstein’s special and general theory of relativity are very correct (but in a book 2016 we showed that “spacetime” cannot ontologically exist), we re-write both theories without “spacetime”. Content, Introduction and Chapter 1, FREE at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gabriel+vacariu&rh=i %3Aaps%2Ck%3Agabriel+vacariu . (shrink)

The powerful impact which Christianity has had on the distinct culture of the Occident can hardly be overstated. Indeed, its tremendous influence in virtually every single aspect of the European existence is ultimately recognisable in many secular quarters. In order to understand the link between the project of modernity and European Christendom and its state in the present, it is necessary to trace the development of several key features. Thus, the paper consists of two major parts dealing with: 1) the (...) Joachimist tertius status 2) aspects of the Löwith-Blumenberg debate and 3) depicting the connections – at times, the concordance – between eschatology, utopianism and totalism, and their role in the triumph, decline and transformation of European Christianity. (shrink)

In this article I argue for a pluralistic vision of interaction and social cognition in general: we should imagine the landscape of types of interactions as a line segment whose ends represent radical positions (purely inferentialist or purely simulationist theories on one end and radical embodied cognition on the other) on which different types of interactions fall. The closer to any extreme a particular type is, then the more likely it is to be better explained by the theory the extreme (...) point represents. In order to delineate the controversy that stems from different conceptualizations of the same phenomenon and to articulate my position, I criticize Gallagher’s radical claims of embodied cognition as constituting social interaction. The main point that I make regarding his theory is that, even though it provides a satisfactory explanation for types that correspond to motor-perceptual processes, it only manages to metaphorically describe cases of interaction that involve articulated language use and, generally, semantically charged actions. Given that a serious researcher should be interested in accurate predictions or descriptions, it follows that Gallagher’s account is not all-encompassing, and, given the many virtues of other theories, we should adopt a pluralistic point-of-view. (shrink)

The introduction of experimental techniques as a tool of philosophical investigation has created quite a stir in analytic philosophy in the last two decades. Experimental results have shed a new light on traditional debates in various fields and have led to a reappraisal of the use and merits of various methods and types of arguments in philosophy. This paper provides an overview of the central debate regarding Machery et al.’s results and conclusions about the interplay between theory and various methods (...) that are supposed to provide evidence for (a certain) theory. The debate is connected with the initial setting of the question of reference and, more generally, with the main staples of the philosophy of language. A large part of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the most important arguments and perspectives that have been developed or reformulated as a result of the debate on experimental philosophy. The final aim of the discussion is to provide a basic description of the contemporary landscape of philosophy of language and related epistemology, to inform future research designs and developments. (shrink)

The current assumptions of knowledge acquisition brought about the crisis in the reproducibility of experiments. A complementary perspective should account for the specific causality characteristic of life by integrating past, present, and future. A “second Cartesian revolution,” informed by and in awareness of anticipatory processes, should result in scientific methods that transcend the theology of determinism and reductionism. In our days, science, itself an expression of anticipatory activity, makes possible alternative understandings of reality and its dynamics. For this purpose, the (...) study advances G-complexity for defining and comparing decidable and undecidable knowledge. AI and related computational expressions of knowledge could benefit from the awareness of what distinguishes the dynamics of life from any other expressions of change. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to provide a critical discussion of the relation between realist epistemologies of modality and the imagination. Two prominent realist accounts of modal knowledge are examined: a Kripkean one and Williamson’s counterfactual account. I argue that the constraint that Kripke believes should be imposed on the imagination in order to obtain, but also defend metaphysically necessary truths is too strong. This either makes it ineffective, or leads to serious doubts about Kripke’s famous examples of (...) necessary a posteriori truths. The conceptual tension between a modal epistemology that follows Kripke’s suggestion and classicized Kripkean tenets in the philosophy of language is evinced in the analysis of Soames’ version of Kripkeanism. Williamson’s account follows the same line of imposing very strong constraints on the way we form or acquire knowledge of metaphysical necessity, which ultimately leads to similar doubts about its effectiveness. While this critique motivates some sceptical conclusions, it leaves the discussion about the force and extent of modal scepticism open. (shrink)

The fall of the Berlin Wall stood for a symbol of change and freedom across the socialist bloc and inspired the inhabitants in Eastern Europe to take action and revolt against dictatorial regimes. A long and often painful process of social, economic and political transformation began. Scholars grouped their research dealing with such transformations under the label of “Transitology” and the developing subfields of “transitional justice” and “memory studies” expanded and caught the academic interest. The present argument looks at the (...) emergence and evolvement of these fields in parallel with a growing and changing society. (shrink)

A predicate of personal taste occurring in a sentence in which the perspectival information is not linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase may have two different readings. In case the speaker of a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste uses the subjective predicate encoding perspectival information in one way and the hearer interprets it in another way, the agents’ acts are not coordinated. In this paper I offer an answer to the question of how a hearer can (...) strategically interact with a speaker on the intended perspectival information so that both agents can optimally solve their coordination problem. In this sense, I offer a game-theoretical account of the strategic communication with expressions referring to agents’ perspectives, communication which involves the interaction between a speaker who intends to convey some perspectival information and who chooses to utter a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste, instead of a sentence in which the perspectival information is linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase, and a hearer who has to choose between interpreting the uttered sentence in conformity with the speaker’s autocentric use of the predicate of personal taste or in conformity with the speaker’s exocentric use. (shrink)

The paper brings a challenge to Cartesian dualism, while introducing some under-explored manuscript remarks from Wittgenstein’s middle period, which are methodologically and thematically akin to some passages from Merleau-Ponty’s early period. Cartesian dualism relegates pain to mental awareness and location to bodily extension, thus rendering common localizations of pain throughout the body as unintelligible ascriptions. Wittgenstein’s and Merleau-Ponty’s attempts at doing justice to common localizations of pain are mutually illuminating. In their light, Cartesian dualism turns out to involve an objectification (...) and a deappropriation of one’s body. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s unveiling a heterogeneous multiplicity of corporeal spaces (e.g. visual-space, tactile-space, feeling-space) rehabilitates the view, reinforced by Merleau-Ponty, that corporeal pain is intimately related to corporeal localization, while corporeal space is not part of the physical space of things. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.