University study can be a life period of heightened psychological distress for many students. The development of new preventive and intervention programs to support well-being in university students is a fundamental challenge for mental health professionals. We designed an 8-week online mindfulness-based program combining a face-to-face approach, text, audio, video components, and support psychotherapy principles with a unique intensive reminder system using the Facebook Messenger and Slack applications in two separate runs. We assessed the program’s effect on mindful experiencing, perceived (...) stress, emotion regulation strategies, self-compassion, negative affect, and quality of life. The results of the presented pilot study confirmed that eMBP is a feasible and effective tool in university students’ mental health support. The students who completed the eMBP reported a reduction of perceived stress with a large effect size as well as a decrease of negative affect experience frequency and intensity, an increase of being mindful in their life, and a higher rate of self-compassion with a medium effect size. A small effect size was found in the frequency of using a cognitive reappraisal strategy. One new result is the observation of an eMBP effect on the decrease in attributed importance to the quality-of-life components replicated in two consecutive runs of the program. The study affirms that mindfulness-based interventions can be effectively delivered in an eHealth form to university students. (shrink)

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach. This is a reply to Burke.

Prior research has suggested that perceptual disfluency activates analytical processing and increases the solution rate of mathematical problems with appealing but incorrect answers (i.e., the Cogn...

Both of Gettier's examples are not representative of situations in which we would claim knowledge – we do not use language in this way. Therefore, Gettier has not shown that justified true belief is insufficient for knowledge. I am not denying that there is a problem about the definition of knowledge. Several decades earlier, Russell dealt with this problem, using a stopped clock to illustrate it.

Contents: 1. Testosterone is not the only Game in Town: The Transgender Woman Athlete 2. Queer Language Lessons: The Confusion over ‘My Pronouns’ 3. Legal Fictions: Changing Sex by Changing Gender 4. More than a Feeling: Rock Stars, Heroines and Transwomen 5. To Compete, or not to Compete, that is the Question: Which is Nobler for Transwomen Athletes? 6. The Power of Words 7. Feminism, Conceptual Engineering, and Trans Identit.

John Mair (1467–1550) was an influential post-medieval scholar. This paper focuses on his Tractatus insolubilium, in which he proposed semantic analysis of self-referential phenomena, in particular on his solution to alethic and correspondence paradoxes and his treatment of their general semantic aspects as well as particular applications. His solution to paradoxes is based on the so-called “network evaluation”, i.e. on a semantics which defines the concepts of truth and correspondence with reality in contextual terms. Consequently, the relation between semantic valuation, (...) synonymy and contradiction must be redefined. (shrink)

The paper sheds light on different approaches to normativity and on current tendencies to consider social and moral norms from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. The main objective of the paper is to show the similarities as well as differences between social and moral norms. Further, the author argues, that the differentiating characteristics, such as the influence of an external authority, the role of emotions and the role of conscious and subconscious judgments are not qualitative, but rather quantitative. Although the (...) moral norms are more universal and breaking them involves more emotions, the role of the social context is as important as with social norms. (shrink)

Under the Second Demographic Transition, alternative forms of living arrangement are on the rise. The aim of this article is to compare quality of life in children living in married and cohabiting families. We present the results of representative research conducted in Slovakia in 2018 (N = 1,010 respondents). We tested whether children brought up in traditional married families had better material resources and healthcare, fewer behavioural problems, better peer relations and spent more leisure time with their parents than children (...) brought up by cohabiting parents. We also investigated whether number of children in the family and net monthly household income affected the children’s quality of life. The results show that there were almost no differences in quality of life between children brought up by married and by cohabiting parents and that number of children in the family and level of net monthly household income affected only the child’s material resources. (shrink)

Seit 2018 regt sich im anglo-amerikanischen Raum vermehrt das Interesse, Sport als quasi-rechtliches Regelsystem zu untersuchen. Man geht davon aus, dass die Probleme und Lösungen in Sportsystemen den Vergleich mit Rechtssystemen erlauben. Tagungen, Aufsätze und Bücher zum Thema „Jurisprudence of Sport“ deuten darauf hin, dass hier ein neuer Forschungsbereich entsteht. Dieser Beitrag bietet eine Einführung in die Thematik.

What does it mean to subvert the rules? One way of doing so is to interfere with or curb the display of skill of your opponent by a) breaking the rules deliberately and openly or b) by acting contrary to the idea of sportspersonship. In both instances you violate the norm that displaying/exercising your game-related skills is central for a good contest. In the former you incorporate the penalty rules into the playing rules, i.e. you act as if breaking the (...) rules is part of playing the game. In the latter you adopt a (new) strategy which curbs the display of skill by your opponent, a strategy about which the rules are silent. The motivation for such acts is not to make the game better, but to ensure a win. The former suffers from a conceptual error, because it attempts to make transcendental elements of the game into part of play (e.g. strategic fouling). The latter strategy exploits the fact that the rules are ‘silent’ on many possible actions, because the gamewright cannot envision everything and/or because such actions are contrary to the spirit of the game (e.g. Bianca Walkden’s pushing strategy in Taekwondo; the underarm bowling incident from 1981). In this paper I will illustrate and analyse such rule subversion, combined with some reflections on game rules and the good contest. [There is also a Portuguese translation available on the Movimento website.] Resumo: O que significa subverter as regras no esporte? Uma forma de fazer isso é interferir ou restringir a exibição das habilidades do adversário, o que pode ocorrer de duas maneiras: a) violando deliberada e abertamente as regras, ou b) agindo de forma contrária ao espírito esportivo. Em ambos os casos, ocorre uma transgressão da norma que valoriza a demonstração/exercício de habilidades como elemento essencial para uma boa competição. No primeiro caso, você integra as penalidades às regras do jogo, como se infringir as regras fosse parte da própria dinâmica do jogo. No segundo caso, adota-se uma (nova) estratégia que limita a exibição das habilidades do adversário sobre a qual as regras nada estabelecem. A motivação por trás desses atos não é o aprimoramento do jogo, mas garantir a vitória. Neste artigo, ilustro e analiso essa subversão das regras, trazendo reflexões sobre o papel das regras no jogo e uma boa competição. (shrink)

There is a well-documented paradigm-shift in eighteenth century Jesuit philosophy and science, at the very least in Central Europe: traditional scholastic version(s) of Aristotelianism were replaced by early modern rationalism (Wolff's systematisation of Leibnizian philosophy) and early modern science and mathematics. In the field of probability, this meant that the traditional Jesuit engagement with probability, uncertainty, and truthlikeness (in particular, as applied to moral theology) could translate into mathematical language, and can be analysed against the background of the accounts of (...) probability, pre-mathematical Jesuit logic, Wolff's conceptual analysis, and Bernoullian mathematisation. The works of two Jesuit philosophers, Berthold Hauser and Sigismund Storchenau, can be related to this context. The core of their logic of (epistemic) probability is the account of negation (or ‘contradiction’) and implication (or ‘argument’), in particular, the algorithms for computing the reliability of one piece of evidence when compared to the respective counter-evidence and for computing the probability of a conclusion given the probability of its premises. (shrink)

The Significance of Business Localization Factors in the Czech Republic This article is concerned with the significance of individual localization factors during the decision-making of economic subjects regarding the location of their businesses. In the first phase of the research, the investigated localization factors were divided into four groups into regional, local, business, labor and infrastructure. The selected localization factors were investigated with the help of an empirical examination of thirteen selected economic branches in the secondary and tertiary sectors. In (...) subsequent stages, a statistical analysis of the acquired data was performed; the selected economic sections were compared among themselves; and with the help of a diffusion analysis, the dependence of the evaluation on the size of the enterprise and on the economic activities of the selected respondents was investigated. The main goal of the research was to identify the current localization factors associated with supplier and customer markets and to determine their significance. In the context of the research, the hypothesis was verified that despite the existence of various approaches to determining localization factors, in part there are localization factors that act universally in all economic branches and further factors that specifically manifest themselves only in some branches. In the context of each factor, investigated was whether the evaluation of a factor depends on the economic branch and whether it is possible to consider an investigated factor as universal. It was also determined whether or not the evaluation of a factor is directly proportionate to the size of the business. From the research results, it follows that during localization, businesses place the greatest significance on the availability of information and communications technologies, geographic proximity to customers, availability of qualified human resources and on transportation costs. Localization decision-making is affected by many factors and depends on a large number of circumstances. (shrink)

In life there can be good reasons to break the rules. Some sports philosophers have suggested that this also holds for games. In this essay I will compare and contrast reasons for rule-breaking in life and in sports. Some of my focus will be on recent attempts to defend strategic fouling (by Eylon & Horowitz, Russell, and Flynn). Supporters of strategic fouling try to provide a philosophical underpinning for the practice, but they ignore the genealogy of such rule-violations. I will (...) also discuss how some legal theorists view rule-breaking and contrast this with sport. Lastly, I will introduce the idea of ‘transcendental rules’ in games. They are the conditions for the possibility of playing a game. Following Aurel Kolnai, I will argue that strategic fouling violates a transcendental rule – it is not just a moral error, it is also a conceptual error. (shrink)

The problem of logical omniscience breaks down to the problems of the closure of knowledge under implication and of the distribution of knowledge over implication. In late medieval scholasticism these two related issues were engaged in various genres, in particular in general analysis of validity, games of obligationes, solution to self-referential antinomies and semantics of terms. The present study analyses the corpus of fourteenth-century texts with some overreaches to the subsequent two centuries, attempting to cover representatives of both the “British” (...) and the “Continental” tradition. With some degree of simplification, this results in a range of four basic positions: 1. knowledge is closed under “analytic entailment” (Buridan), 2. knowledge distributes over implication (Heytesbury), 3. knowledge distributes over implication provided that its consequent’s truth is being taken into consideration (Peter of Mantua), 4. knowledge does not distribute overimplication (Wyclif). (shrink)

Recently, David Boonin has put forward several objections to Carlos S. Nino's 'Consensual Theory of Punishment'. In this paper I will defend Nino against the 'explicit denial objection'. I will discuss whether Boonin's interpretation of Nino as a tacit consent theorist is right. I will argue that the offender's consent is neither tacit nor express, but a special category of implicit consent. Further, for Nino the legal-normative consequences of an act (of crime) are 'irrevocable', i.e. one cannot (expressly and successfully) (...) deny liability to them. I will suggest an explanation for Nino's irrevocability claim. (shrink)

One of the buzzwords of today is ‘inclusion’. But the idea that everyone should be ‘included’ is a mistake, thoughtlessly reproduced by many. This holds in the private sphere, as well as in the institutional settings of the public sphere. There is very little conceptual analysis of the term, although there is plenty of literature on ‘social inclusion’ and the political vision of including the marginalized. My aim is to show that there are constraints on inclusion – particularly in institutional (...) settings. Participation in social life is a kaleidoscope of inclusion and exclusion practices; this actually makes social life possible. Without inclusion/exclusion practices social life would be chaotic – if not impossible. Even philosophy journals have submission criteria which permit exclusion: e.g. the paper must not be under consideration by any other journal. Thus, exclusion is not per se a denial of someone’s dignity or a failure to recognize them as a fellow human being. The aim of this short essay is to raise awareness about inclusion and two of its constraints (eligibility and forfeiture), thereby starting a long overdue debate in the humanities. [open access]. (shrink)

One of the important topics in the field of philosophy of religion is the relationship between the various forms of the Divine, in particular the wellknown distinction between "philosophical God" and personalist understandings of God (Blaise Pascal). Spinoza's ethics is oriented mainly to the argumentation of the first understanding and is its consistent implementation. Hegel's interpretation of Spinoza is reconstructed here in view of the question of pantheism and atheism in Spinoza's system and whether and to what extent Hegel rehabilitated (...) and "justified" Spinoza. Our thesis is that Hegel's position on too many God in Spinoza is incomplete and imprecise. (shrink)

From a general semantic point of view, Thomas Bricot and John Mair are proponents of the solution to semantic paradoxes based on appreciation of the contextuality of truth, who differ in their approach to the relations of logical consequence and contradiction. The core of the study is the analysis of Mair's criticism of Bricot presented in the sixth quaestio of his Tractatus insolubilium where the consequences of non-compositional semantics for the concepts of synonymy and logical form are addressed. The polemic (...) between John Mair and Thomas Bricot is construed as having immediate consequences for research in the area of non-compositional semantics. (shrink)

In addition to structural issues and topic selection issues, the subject of professional interest is the interpretation of historical events, especially those that are to a certain extent controversial or play a negative role in terms of ethnic relations. It is not the intention to stop looking at national history "with our own eyes" and to try to look at the point of view of an independent observer (the emotional attitude to the history of one's own nation as a part (...) of the personal identity can not be dispensed with) - the sense should more often point to the positive mutual influences countries have enriched each other, as mutual contacts (including competition) have contributed to progress, such as the crossing of cultures and the lifestyle of their current form.--Publisher's website. (shrink)

The paper endeavours to identify three fundamental approaches to the depiction of the urban space. The first is that of the chronicling traveller, for whom thespace is always identified with the aid of events and operations which transmute into performative markings. This approach was replaced at the beginning of the modern period by representation in the form of the map. The third approach is Barthes' perceptions of the city as the Argo and of the urban centre as the place of (...) encounter. Here the urban space is determined through the active participant in play and by his body. (shrink)

Objektivistická filosofie Ayn Randové je i v současnosti myšlenkový směr, k němuž se někteří lidé aktivně hlásí a který zároveň představuje ideovou inspiraci některých směrů politických. Předkládaný text se zabývá kritickým zhodnocením konceptu ctnosti v kontextu objektivistické etiky, tzv. etiky egoismu. Nejprve se věnujeme tomu, jak sama Randová tyto předchozí etické koncepce hodnotí, a jejím vlastním základním východiskům – především principu sebezáchovy a racionálního lidského života. Další část textu se zabývá otázkou mezilidské interakce, ve které Randová odmítá jakékoli obětování a (...) altruismus. Centrální roli hraje v autorčině koncepci produktivní práce, k tvůrčí práci jako ke svému základnímu těžišti se vztahuje také její nauka o ctnostech. Specifický problém pak představuje koncepce žádosti a racionálního zájmu, která, jak se domníváme, vede k určitým kontraintuitivním důsledkům. Text je uzavřen srovnáním s koncepcí R. Nozicka a stručným závěrem. (shrink)

Robin Dembroff (Real Talk about the Metaphysics of Gender, 2018) believes that ‘non-binary’ is a social kind. I have my doubts about this, but if it is a social kind, then it is a very special one. The membership conditions of the social kind ‘non-binary’ are only accessible to non-binary persons. They establish and police their own membership conditions (Dembroff 2018: 36f.): ‘Individuals are granted authority over their gender kind membership.’ So, if this is indeed a ‘social kind’, then it (...) is a highly unusual one. (shrink)

The concept of natural law is fundamental to political philosophy, ethics, and legal thought. The present article shows that as early as the ancient Greek philosophical tradition, three main ideas of natural law existed, which run in parallel through the philosophical works of many authors in the course of history. The first two approaches are based on the understanding that although equipped with reason, humans are nevertheless still essentially animals subject to biological instincts. The first approach defines natural law as (...) the law of the strongest, which can be observed to hold among all members of the animal kingdom. The second conception presents natural law as the principle of self-preservation, inherent as an instinct in all living beings. The third approach, also developed in antiquity, shifts the focus to our rationality and develops the idea of natural law as the law of reason within us. Some Christian thinkers who consider the origin of reason in us to be divine, identify the law of reason inherent in us with God's will. This paper gives a brief exposition of the development of these three concepts of natural law in philosophy, with emphasis on the intertwining of these three concepts, which we, however, understand as primarily and essentially independent. The paper concludes with an overview of twentieth-century authors who exclusively focus on only one of the three concepts. The aim of this article is to argue against these one-sided interpretations and to uphold the independence and distinctness of the three historical conceptions of natural law. (shrink)

The late fourteenth-century English Carmelite Richard Lavenham was a prolific author of Latin and vernacular treatises on logic, physics, philosophy, and theology. Among other works pertaining to natural philosophy, he authored the short Tractatus terminorum naturalium, preserved in three complete or almost complete late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century copies, with the opening passage preserved in three other manuscripts. The text is fundamentally a redaction of the Heytesburian Termini naturales, a brief glossary of technical vocabulary of the natural philosophy and physics (...) of the Oxford Calculators, supplemented by additional textual and pictorial material. As such, Lavenham’s treatise is a specific branch of an influential tradition of school texts that took the form of elementary treatises, additional glosses, quaestio-commentaries, and excerpts. (shrink)

The paper deals with cognitive interview, a method for pre-testing survey questions that is used in pilot testing to develop new measures and/or adapt ones in foreign languages. The aim is to explore the usefulness of the method by looking at two questionnaires measuring anti-Roma prejudice. The first, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), contains questions that are dominantly used to test two dimensions of social perceptions of various groups: warmth and competence. The second, Interventions for Reducing Prejudice against Stigmatized Minorities (...) (INTERMIN) consists of the items most frequently used in contact research to measure attitudes, social distance, anxiety, trust and behavioural intentions towards outgroups. Two rounds of cognitive interviews were held on both questionnaires to verbally evaluate participants’ understanding and/or interpretation of the draft questions. The first round was attended by university students, while the second round (with improved versions of the questionnaires) was done with high school students, as they are the target group for planned interventions based on the contact paradigm. The paper explains the problems/difficulties the participants had answering some of the questions and our attempts at improving the questionnaires. The problems can be grouped around six issues: The first two deal with the strategies participants used to answer our questions – whom exactly did they have in mind when answering the questionnaires and whose viewpoint did they represent in their answers. The next four problems are around nuances in the formulations of our questions and generally have to do with how the participants interpreted our questions – they concern assumptions that distinct items were logically interconnected, the period of time and locality referred to in our questions, translation and transferability of meanings from one language to another and double negation. (shrink)

Given Bernard Suits’ stature in the philosophy of sport, his take on strategic fouling, surprisingly, hasn’t been given much attention in the literature. Rather than relying on a purely empirical or ‘ethos’ approach to justify the Strategic Foul he provides a mixed justification. Suits’ account combines a priori and a posteriori elements. He introduces a third kind of rule, which appears to be unlike rules of skill or constitutive rules, into his conceptual scheme. Suits claims that it is sometimes tactically (...) correct to break such a rule in order to gain an advantage. I will argue that the a priori element in his justification of strategic fouling is unconvincing because there is nothing special about ‘third type’ rule-violations, which incur a ‘fixed penalty’. Furthermore, the a posteriori element ultimately reduces to a rule of skill, and it is doubtful whether it has sufficient normative force to warrant breaking a rule. But, most importantly, the a posteriori element degrades the power of the a priori element. (shrink)

Lidská práva jsou v současné době předmětem řady komplexních otázek, které jsou politické, sociální či právní povahy. Abychom na otázky mohli smysluplně odpovídat, musíme brát ohled i na obecnější filosofické souvislosti a mít jasnější představu o tom, co lidská práva jsou a na jakých základech stojí. V předkládaném textu si klademe otázku, zdali máme v současné době k dispozici plně filosoficky fundovanou koncepci založení a legitimizace lidských práv. Předkládáme postupně různé současné přístupy, které jsou kandidáty na řešení tohoto problému a (...) přinášíme jejich kritické zhodnocení. Východiskem je pro nás představa lidských práv jako evidentních pravd a od ní odvozené přístupy zakládající je na racionální či emocionální evidenci. Dále se věnujeme možnosti náboženského založení lidských práv, přístupům přirozenoprávním, utilitaristickým a koncepcím vycházejícím z pojmu důstojnosti. Stručně jsou zmíněny i některé další související teorie a historický kontext analyzovaných pojetí. V závěru na položenou otázku odpovídáme, že zcela uspokojivá filosofická teorie lidských práv stále není k dispozici, a přinášíme také vlastní doporučení pro řešení předložených problémů zkoumaných teorií. (shrink)

A guide to defining and then creating a flourishing life, based on the popular class at Yale What makes a good life? The question is inherent to the human condition, asked by people across generations, professions, and social classes, and addressed by all schools of philosophy and religions. This search for meaning, as Yale professors Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz argue, is at the crux of a crisis that is facing Western culture, a crisis that, they propose, (...) can be ameliorated by searching, in one's own life, for the underlying truth. In A Life Worth Living, named after its authors' highly sought-after undergraduate course, Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz chart out this question, providing readers with jumping-off points, road maps, and habits of reflection for figuring out where their lives hold meaning and where things need to change. Drawing from the major world religions and from impressively truthful and courageous secular figures, A Life Worth Living is a guide to life's most pressing question, the one asked of all of us: How are we to live? (shrink)

Words don’t just describe the world; they change the world. We do things with words as John L. Austin (1975) has argued. But words can also change how we think about something. In this piece I wish to examine the everyday usage of words referring to strategic fouling, as it cuts across various languages. In some languages this rule-violation gave rise to figurative language after the practice became widespread. We find euphemisms but also dysphemisms, as well as evaluative language (whose (...) purpose here is to excuse the action). This is important, because ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought’ (as George Orwell observed). I will argue that euphemisms and other evaluative language which refer to strategic fouling are a piece of sporting propaganda, aiming to dull our senses to such rule-violations. (shrink)

Grammatische Ausdrucksmittel der Hierarchisierung der semantischen Struktur des Satzes.

Continuing the tradition of Oxford Calculatorial physics, the late fourteenth-century British Carmelite Richard Lavenham authored an amplification of the popular short textbook commonly referred to as Termini naturales. A copy of this amplification, preserved in a late fourteenth-century manuscript (Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, ms Lat. Z. 300 [= 1872]), is followed by a short series of notes and comments on some of the principles introduced in Lavenham’s treatise (drawn from the first four books of Aristotle’s Physics). The present article offers (...) an edition of the text, and analyses its content and relationship with fourteenth-century physics, especially with the physical doctrines of Richard Lavenham. (shrink)