This article offers a philosophic understanding of dissidence. We present a conceptual analysis of dissidence as connected to a net of other philosophic concepts such as ‘virtue’ and ‘truth’. ‘Dissidence’, like ‘right’ and ‘liberty’, is used both in precise philosophic discourse and with greater variations of meaning in ordinary language. Our discussion springs from a philosophic discourse of dissidence that flourished in Czechoslovakia in the seventies and eighties, during the ‘normalization’ period between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet (...) Revolution of 1989. During that period, a small section of Czechoslovak society found itself in a situation that was commonly referred to by the word ‘dissidence’. Since some dissidents were philosophers by inclination, education, or approach, they understood their situation by drawing on their philosophic background. The towering figure of dissident philosophy was Jan Patocka, one of the first spokespersons of Charter 77 on human rights and a student of Husserl. Of his students, Václav Havel and Petr Rezek made significant contributions to the philosophical discourse of the meaning of dissidence. Though emerging out of a particular historical context, post-Stalinist Communism, the discourse itself attempted to understand dissidence in universal philosophical terms. (shrink)

_Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology_ offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the (...) primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory. (shrink)

By the Galvin–Mycielski–Solovay theorem, a subset X of the line has Borel’s strong measure zero if and only if $M+X\neq \mathbb {R}$ for each meager set M.A set $X\subseteq \mathbb {R}$ is meager-additive if $M+X$ is meager for each meager set M. Recently a theorem on meager-additive sets that perfectly parallels the Galvin–Mycielski–Solovay theorem was proven: A set $X\subseteq \mathbb {R}$ is meager-additive if and only if it has sharp measure zero, a notion akin to strong measure zero.We investigate the (...) validity of this result in Polish groups. We prove, e.g., that a set in a locally compact Polish group admitting an invariant metric is meager-additive if and only if it has sharp measure zero. We derive some consequences and calculate some cardinal invariants. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss some interesting philosophical questions bound to color science, in its variant founded by Berlin and Kay’s linguistic and anthropological research. I will first refer to various criticisms, expressed by dissenting scientists. Further criticisms implied by a rather philosophical perspective will follow; a particular attention is paid to the question of synchronicity vs . diachronicity. The controversy about Berlin and Kay’s conception is paralleled by the development of Wittgenstein’s views on color that I will sketch (...) in short. Wittgenstein’s philosophy offers tools for illuminating the problem from yet another point of view. In the final part of the paper, I will try to point to the limits of the conception of basic color categories, but also to assess its relevance and possible philosophical contribution in terms of language games variety; especially with respect to the Color Incompatibility The orem and its implications. (shrink)

A review of Allen Carlson‘s and Sheila Lintott‘s (eds) Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, 458 pp. ISBN 9780231138864).

The following paper is based on a broad understanding of communication that considers as text basically anything that has been created within the framework of a cultural interaction by an author and that is perceived by a recipient. The first part of the paper introduces, explains and follows mostly cases in which the author’s violations of the recipient’s expectations have a communication value, i.e. provoke, in the recipient, a communication effect that matches the author’s intentions. In such cases, this effect (...) results as a consequence of an violation of the communication „cooperative“ principles. This, at the recipient’s end, translates into an event of expectancy violation. Each of such violations provokes an arousal in the recipient, which further motivates him/her to search for its cause. Finding this cause, and being “confronted” with the related violation pertaining to it with the norm equals, for the recipient, getting to the meaning of the text, or identifying its communication value etc. As part of the conclusion, a commented scheme is presented which offers a spectrum of possible communication outcomes “positioned” between the predictability of each textual element and the stochasticity of choice. The effort to illustrate all the explained facts results, in the paper, in a rich set of examples stemming from miscellaneous spheres of human activity – from “high styles” to rather day-to-day activities, to pop-culture. The objective is to show that the described principles, if not valid in general, permeate at least all forms of interaction. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of inductive learning and predicting in dynamic processes, which can be formally represented as time series of atomic events. The central notion of sequential event is characterised as a finite subsequence of adjacent atomic events in a series. In the first part of the article an algorythmic model of learning is introduced. The criterion of learning is based on the frequency of a particular sequential event and on the time-distance of its previous occurrences from (...) the moment of learning. The second part deals with the problem of evaluation of hypotheses in the process of predicting sequential events. A first order language of sequential events and axiomatic theory of sequential events are defined. The theory is proved to be consistent (a model of the theory is constructed). Then a probabilistic evaluation function for sequential events is defined as an analogy of Carnapian confirmation function. In the conclusion this probabilistic evaluation is discussed from the point of view of the foundations of probability. (shrink)

In the following paper, the meaning of philosophy as a specific intellectual activity would be presented on the example of revolutionary thoughts of Peter Tkachov. The paper concerns with the understanding of philosophy, its characteristics and status within the Russian intellectual movement in the second half of the 19th century. The understanding of both, individual and social functions of philosophy in the work of Tkachov revolutionary writing, is introduced. The paper is set within a wider framework of Thachov thoughts and (...) his idea of progress. After connecting these two specific topics of Tkachov, the question is formulated: Who is capable to answer the question of what is progress? While looking for an answer and studying works of Tkachov, a wide spectrum of possible variations is offered. The work is purposely conceptualized with an opened closure to present a concrete problem for further analysis and discussion. (shrink)

The pragmatist account of action in Brandom’s Making it Explicit offers a compelling defense of social embeddedness of acting. Its virtue consists of redefining the agent’s reasons for action in terms of her public commitments and entitlements. However, this account remains too intellectualist insofar as it neglects the embodied sense allowing the agent to respond to various situational demands and social constraints. In my article, I provide a less disembodied account of action that draws on Dreyfus’s emphasis on bodily skills (...) as constitutive aspects of intentional acting. Dreyfus’ notion of absorbed coping certainly highlights the role of body and affectivity in guiding the performance of action, but it ends up in underestimating the role of discursive and conceptual capacities in human agency. Against Dreyfus, I will demonstrate that involved and embodied coping not only answers to the demands of a given situation, but also involves responsiveness to reasons. My ambition is to defend a continuity between practical reasoning, i.e. our capacity to justify our performances through reasons, and our embodied coping skills, a continuity that has been overlooked by Brandom’s intellectualist and denied by Dreyfus’ anti-rationalist accounts. (shrink)

This article presents a general conception of aesthetic experience built on an analysis of the relationship between the narrative and the ambient dimensions of the aesthetic value of a natural environment, the forest. First of all, the two dimensions are presented with respect to the possibilities and problems raised by distinguishing between them. Next, the possibilities of their relationship are analysed and it is argued that they are strongly complementary. This complementarity becomes the core of the proposed conception of aesthetic (...) experience, which can explain the difference between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic, and can also provide an answer to the question of the non-reductive differentiation between the aesthetic experience of nature and the experience of a work of art. The conclusion of the article is mainly concerned to eliminate one of the problems localized in presenting the ambient dimension (the ambience paradox), by means of Ricoeur’s conception of the relationship between time and narrative. (shrink)

Problém svobodné vůle je tradičně považován za ryze metafyzický, a tedy neempirický. Díky současnému rozvoji kognitivních věd však narůstá množství argumentů založených na empirických poznatcích. Tento článek podává stručný přehled několika takových poznatků. Na jedné straně jde o výzkumy zabývající se otázkou kauzální potence vědomí a uvědomění si příčin svých akcí. Nejslavnější, avšak patrně nikoli nejvýznamnější, jsou zde bezpochyby experimenty Benjamina Libeta. Na druhé straně jde o zkoumání samotného prožitku svobodné agence. Zda danou akci vnímám jako svoji vlastní, závisí pravděpodobně (...) na prediktivních i postdiktivních faktorech, o čemž svědčí situace, kdy podkladové kognitivní mechanismy selžou a vedou k omylům. Závěrem příspěvku je zamyšlení nad důsledky vědeckých poznatků pro různá pojetí svobodné vůle: libertariánské a kompatibilistické. Argumentuji ve prospěch smysluplnosti kompatibilistické koncepce svobodné vůle, proti které lze vést námitky spíše z pozice psychologie než neurověd. (shrink)

In the majority of papers on probability in the framework of possible worlds the existence of a global probability distribution is taken for granted. The aim of the article is to discuss the epistemic aspect of this assumption in the connection to the status assigned to possible worlds. Two questions are discussed in particular: the justification of the global probability distribution and compatibility of the global probability assumption with the structure of the universe of the possible worlds.

[Subjective probability and realistic possible worlds].

The paper deals with neo-Kantianism and the value theory in Hungarian philosophy on the threshold of the 20th century. It shows how neo-Kantianism contributed to the Hungarian philosophy’s being professionalized as well as the transformations of neo-Kantianism in the works of its leading representatives. It also offers a detailed analysis of the value theory of K Böhm, who created the first original Hungarian philosophical system.

The paper describes that period of the Hungarian philosophy, in which it became professionalized, namely the Kant argument, which was the first step the Hungarian philosophy took towards its being public. The question has to be answered whether Kant’s thought could become a part of it. Due to political developments as well as the pressure of the church the turn of the century witnessed the shift from epistemology to the issues of moral philosophy and theology. Thus the conditions for the (...) reception of Kantianism and post-Kantian philosophy in the 19th century have been created. The fundaments for the development of axiology were laid as well. The paper covers the main phases of the debate with their leading representatives. (shrink)

Inferentialism is a philosophical approach premised on the claim that an item of language acquires meaning in virtue of being embedded in an intricate set of social practices normatively governed by inferential rules. Inferentialism found its paradigmatic formulation in Robert Brandom's landmark book Making it Explicit, and over the last two decades it has established itself as one of the leading research programs in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic. While Brandom's version of inferentialism has received wide (...) attention in the philosophical literature, thinkers friendly to inferentialism have proposed and developed new lines of inquiry that merit wider recognition and critical appraisal. From Rules to Meaning brings together new essays that systematically develop, compare, assess and critically react to some of the most pertinent recent trends in inferentialism. The book's four thematic sections seek to apply inferentialism to a number of core issues, including the nature of meaning and content, reconstructing semantics, rule-oriented models and explanations of social practices and inferentialism's historical influence and dialogue with other philosophical traditions. With contributions from a number of distinguished philosophers--including Robert Brandom and Jaroslav Peregrin--this volume is a major contribution to the philosophical literature on the foundations of logic and language. (shrink)

My paper aims to elucidate the emergence of subjectivity from the interplay between living beings and their environment. This attempt to give account of becoming-subject within the life itself leads to a confrontation between the phenomenology of life pursued since at least two decades by Renaud Barbaras with Canguilhem´s philosophy of biology. It starts with a criticism of Merleau-Ponty’s and Patočka´s respective failures to overcome the contrast between the level of bare life and the level of human existence. In order (...) to answer such a prejudicial separation between unexamined life and self-reflected existence, I adopt in the second part a bio-centric perspective on human existence, inspired by Canguilhem and Guillaume Le Blanc, in order to re-evaluate the notion of life in terms of normative, expansive movement that both shapes the living being itself and individuates the elements on which it acts. The final part of the paper seeks to understand the emergence of subjectivity from ordinary life-challenges such as illness and experiences of vulnerability or fragility, thus bypassing the need for stipulating a self-referencing consciousness as a primary mode of self-disclosure. (shrink)

Fine (J Philos Log 43:549–577, 2014) developed a truthmaker semantics for intuitionistic logic, which is also called exact semantics, since it is based on a relation of exact verification between states and formulas. A natural question arises as to what are the limits of Fine’s approach and whether an exact semantics of similar kind can be constructed for other important non-classical logics. In our paper, we will generalize Fine’s approach and develop an exact semantics for some substructural logics. In particular, (...) we will provide a truthmaker semantics for the Non-associative Lambek calculus and some of its extensions. This generalization will reveal some interesting connections between Fine’s recent work on truthmaker semantics and his early work on relevant logic. (shrink)

Many legal theorists and linguists have addressed the notion of legal language from different perspectives. Despite that, the definitions of legal language vary. Almost all of the approaches conclude that legal language entails several types of communication. Nevertheless, not all of these categories are sufficiently researched. Some types of legal communication seem to be neglected. This lack of interest might be rooted in the uncertainty of whether these texts or utterances even fall under the scope of the concept of legal (...) language. In order to avoid this superficiality in subsequent research, it is first necessary to come to a clear determination of which communicative acts can be considered a part of legal language and which cannot. Accordingly, in this search for the definition of legal language, we should not neglect the fact that language is executed in concrete communicative acts, and the only means to grasp the language is through communication. The aim of this article is therefore to clearly delineate the boundaries of this concept. Based on analysis of how the given term is currently defined, I draw out the common features and trace the characteristics in which they differ. Taking into account these findings, I propose a novel comprehensive demarcation of legal language. This concept argues that the ‘legal’ nature of language should be determined by the context and function of the particular statement or exchange, in connection with the role of participants in the communication. This means that a particular act may be considered a part of legal language not in accordance with a certain form or lexicon used, but mainly by extralinguistic circumstances in the context of which it is being performed. (shrink)

The World of Rules - Rules and the Particularity of Agents - The Orientation Turn - Rules and Persons in Morally-Loaded Situations - Addiction: A Normative Disorder - Beyond Perspective: Towards a Story - The Difficult Blessing of Being a Normative Creature.

Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Heidegger – the intersubjectivity. of sense].

This volume presents mathematical game theory as an interface between logic and philosophy.

We explore different ways to generalize Hintikka’s classic game theoretic semantics to a many-valued setting, where the unit interval is taken as the set of truth values. In this manner a plethora of characterizations of Łukasiewicz logic arise. Among the described semantic games is Giles’s dialogue and betting game, presented in a manner that makes the relation to Hintikka’s game more transparent. Moreover, we explain a so-called explicit evaluation game and a ‘bargaining game’ variant of it. We also describe a (...) recently introduced backtracking game as well as a game with random choices for Łukasiewicz logic. (shrink)

The role of artificial intelligence in the Turing test is to imitate human beings to such an extent that people will not realize it is a machine. With the rise of deep learning (a subcategory of AI), the situation is changing rapidly as the new systems do not focus on imitating human intelligence but emphasize thorough solutions to specific issues. The main difference between predefined AI and deep learning (DL) is that these systems are self-learning and have verifiable results. Firstly, (...) we need to analyse the application of the Turing test in the Loebner Prize because, there, the primary emphasis is on aspects of human intelligence – learning, reasoning and understanding. Secondly, in the Turing test, only general intelligence is considered, and this can be questionable. If DL does not possess this form of intelligence, by this reasoning, we should consider it unintelligent. However, is such understanding correct? The third and last aspect questions whether the Turing test is beneficial for an AI designed for specific tasks because the results do not bring any new data and conclusions. (shrink)

Článek je zaměřen na vybrané implikace mezi sociologickou hermeneutikou (přístup) a analýzou metafor (analytický koncept). Konkrétně je řešen vztah lingvistického kontextu textu (jako empirického korpusu) a vyplývajících (skrytých) implikací, které jsou odhalitelné díky kontextu metaforického významu. Určený vztah může pomoci k zpřesnění role sociologické hermeneutiky v sociálních vědách, konkrétně k možnosti volby v kvalitativních metodách skrze kritickou metodologii. Výstupem článku je konstatování silné vazby mezi tvorbou kontextuálních metafor a postavením polysémického slova ve větě, která díky tomu tvoří základním referenční objekt (...) empirického korpusu pro samotnou analýzu. (shrink)