According to linguistic relativism, we acquire knowledge about the world through language and thus the use of different languages results in different visions of the world. This view is sometimes supported by a statement saying that some of those visions are mutually inconsistent and they cannot be accepted simultaneously: the use of one of them is inconsistent with the use of the other. The paper discusses this statement referring to an example of languages of two logical calculi, and shows it (...) to be an overstatement. Theses of different languages are not inconsistent, for they are based on different concepts. Concepts, needed for negating theses expressed in either language, cannot be found in the other one. The paper therefore poses a question whether it is possible to compile conceptual apparatuses of languages which are believed to be incommensurable. It concludes that in fact there are no logical obstacles. Such languages can be used together without the risk of cognitive conflict. However, it can be difficult due to pragmatic reasons. Although this would not undermine the beliefs of people using the broadened language, it could undermine some of their values and attitudes. This way broadening of the cognitive perspective by compiling conceptual apparatuses of different languages is likely to weaken those attitudes towards reality, from which the languages in question originated. (shrink)

In this article several metalogical properties which are interesting and important from the philosophical point of view are discussed. Examples of non-classical logical systems which posses these properties are presented.

Online data collection with infants raises special opportunities and challenges for developmental research. One of the most prevalent methods in infancy research is eye-tracking, which has been widely applied in laboratory settings to assess cognitive development. Technological advances now allow conducting eye-tracking online with various populations, including infants. However, the accuracy and reliability of online infant eye-tracking remain to be comprehensively evaluated. No research to date has directly compared webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data from infants, similarly to data from adults. (...) The present study provides a direct comparison of in-lab and webcam-based eye-tracking data from infants who completed an identical looking time paradigm in two different settings. We assessed 4-6-month-old infants in an eye-tracking task that measured the detection of audio-visual asynchrony. Webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data were compared on eye-tracking and video data quality, infants’ viewing behavior, and experimental effects. Results revealed no differences between the in-lab and online setting in the frequency of technical issues and participant attrition rates. Video data quality was comparable between settings in terms of completeness and brightness, despite lower frame rate and resolution online. Eye-tracking data quality was higher in the laboratory than online, except in case of relative sample loss. Gaze data quantity recorded by eye-tracking was significantly lower than by video in both settings. In valid trials, eye-tracking and video data captured infants’ viewing behavior uniformly, irrespective of setting. Despite the common challenges of infant eye-tracking across experimental settings, our results point toward the necessity to further improve the precision of online eye-tracking with infants. Taken together, online eye-tracking is a promising tool to assess infants’ gaze behavior but requires careful data quality control. The demographic composition of both samples differed from the generic population on caregiver education: our samples comprised caregivers with higher-than-average education levels, challenging the notion that online studies will per se reach more diverse populations. (shrink)

Agricultural restructuring in Eastern Europe is a part of the restructuring of the economy as a whole. After democratic changes, Eastern European countries have fallen into a deep crisis. There are several reasons for this, including the large debt burden, decreased export opportunities, and monetary restrictions. The major reasons, however, are the lack of a clear economic policy at the governmental level and lack of confidence in the future of enterprises. In the industry and service sectors, ownership conditions are uncertain, (...) and this hinders investing from both private investors and managers of state owned enterprises.An unambiguous situation can be created only by rapid privatization. Privatization is slow and difficult, however, and there is no agreement even on its form.In agriculture, problems arise differently. Privatization there would mean giving up economies of scale. For widespread small farming, both capital and producer motivations are lacking as well. Working on state and cooperative farms with additional part-time farming has been a lifestyle of the people for decades. Apart from that, new smallholders, left on their own, could not survive falling domestic demand for agricultural products and decreasing export opportunities. Therefore, measures need to be implemented in order to reduce agricultural supply, labor, and land area.A feasible solution would be for socialist producer cooperatives to be transformed into real cooperatives, with cooperative and individual farming allowed to develop side by side. (shrink)

While avoiding taking part in the discussion of whether Fink’s philosophy should or not be considered from two different moments, the intention of the present contribution is to follow the track given by an evident readjustment in the interpretation of Hegel proposed by Fink in two different moments of his intellectual production. The thematic frame concerning his interpretation of Hegel privileges the concepts of absolute and identity, in order to show how they were articulated in two different ways throughout the (...) development of what we here refer to as Fink’s philosophical project. (shrink)

Guala argues that there is a mismatch between most laboratory experiments on costly punishment and behavior in the field. In the lab, experimental designs typically suppress retaliation. The same is true for most theoretical models of the co-evolution of costly punishment and cooperation, which a priori exclude the possibility of defectors punishing cooperators.

The present article analyses the research papers devoted to changes in industrial workers'states of Ukraine during 1905-1914. Current understanding of the basic principles of historiographical studies stipulates a many-sided approach to the studied problem. The analysis and generalization of extensive sweep of historical papers belonged to the historians of several generations outstand as an essential component. The presented article is devoted to presentation of the social and economic, political, ethnic changes in the environment of industrial workers of Ukraine in 1907-1914 (...) in the papers of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern historians. It is no coincidence that the workers of Ukraine came into view of the researchers- a change-over to capitalistic business model took place in consequence of economic growth and due to industrial advance of separate regions of Russian Empire in which there are two new classes: owners of enterprises - bourgeoisie and wage and salary workers - proletariat. A problem of the growth of a number of industrial workers in Ukraine in the period after revolution 1905-1907 in the terms of evolution of value judgments of this issue in the environment of historian was considered in the pages of the research. That fact that the overwhelming majority of industrial workers definitively severed ties with land and semi- agricultural sector was not remained out of view of the researchers. In the vast majority of papers there was traced the unified tendency- in estimating of the socio-economic state of industrial workers a salary level and unemployment index are considered. It should be emphasized that historians of the Soviet time pointed up the enterprises' drive against demonstration of labour solidarity, strike movements and trades unions. In contradistinction to them the modern researchers draw attention not to repressive-punitive measures of the government and enterprises but to democratic ways of search of understanding between two social classes. The foreign researchers do not leave aside the problems of the research of formation and development of industrial workers in the industrial regions of Russian Empire. They pointed out that progressive transformations were executed not through the capitalists' excessive jealousy for the state of wage workers and in the first instance for the purpose of increase in incomes by the intensive method of economy management. Consequently the following stages of research of changes in working environment in Ukraine during 1907-1914 can be distinguished in the following way - pre-revolutionary authors concerned themselves with accumulation of statistical data, reminiscences of parties involved in the events, descriptive materials which just stated the facts; the historians of the Soviet period gradually deviate from accumulation of information to its research, analysis, systematization and fusion that was most pronounced in the 70th -80th of the ХХ for a period of creation of collective papers; modern researchers basing on best practice of their predecessors consider transformation in the working environment in new perspective without ideological overrun of the Soviet period. At present there is necessity of creation of generalising historiographical papers the task of which consisted in systematization and generalization of the best practice of several generations of historians on the problem of industrial workers' state in Ukraine during 1907-1914. (shrink)

Back cover: Meister Eckhart betont in seinen Predigten und Traktaten die Gelassenheit als einen radikal freien Lebensvollzug in geistiger Tätigkeit. Anna Keiling vollzieht diese Konzeption anhand des Leitparadigmas der Musse nach. So können Darstellungen der Abgeschiedenheit, Gelassenheit, ledecheit und ruowe in mystischer Literatur in ihrem spezifischen Zusammenhang gesehen werden.

Let us assume that the expression A is a segment of the expression B. Now, let us assume that we try to transform the expression B into the expression B', removing A from B or replacing A with another expression, say A'. When shall we say that A is irremovable or occurs in B essentially? We shall do it, if we can neither remove A from B nor replace A with A', not influencing upon important properties of B. On the (...) other hand, when shall we say that the occurrence A in B is essential? We shall do it, if we can transform B into B' changing no properties of B. Let us say it more precisely. Let us assume - as concerns expressions x, y, x' and y' - that: (a) x occurs in y; (b) the only structural difference between y and y' is that x does not occur in y', or x' occurs in y instead of x. Then: x occurs in y inessentially-with-respect-to-w of y, iff y' is the same as y with respect to p. Correspondingly: x occurs in y essentially-with-respect-to-w of y, iff y' is different as y with respect to p. The occurrence x in y may be essential or inessential with respect to syntactic, semantic or pragmatic properties of y. In my paper, I discuss a variety of detailed concepts of the (in)essential occurrence of expressions in another expressions with respect to semantic properties of these expressions, i.e. with respect to semantic category, logical value, denotation and connotation. I also discuss some philosophical and methodological implications of presented solutions of the problem. (shrink)

Science increasingly deals with human behavior: biology, neuroscience, genetics, psychology, evolutionary theory, and ethology all bring new insights into our actions and uncover new facts about our agency. However, what is the philosophical significance of their findings? The answer to this question varies according to one's background philosophical views. On the one hand, the dominant empiricist view contends that the sciences can in principle tell us everything there is to know about human agency. On the other hand, there are other (...) non-empiricist views - such as Kantian or Aristotelian perspectives - which hold that although science can contribute to our understanding of agency, agency itself cannot be reduced to mere scientific facts. This collection of original essays brings together a number of experts from different philosophical fields (history of philosophy, philosophy of action, ethics, and philosophy of science) to discuss how recent scientific developments about human behavior may be interpreted by, and may be relevant for, non-empiricist conceptions of agency. Contributors share the project of reconciling the scientific and the manifest images of the world in order to reach a stereoscopic vision of reality, with the conviction that philosophy is an attempt to establish coherence among our beliefs, while taking, at least prima facie, all the aspects of our experience at face value. (shrink)

Action and Appearance is a collection of essays that look into the crucial and complex link between action and appearance in Hannah Arendt's political thought.Contributed by respected scholars, the essays articulate around the following themes: the emergence of political action when questioning the nature of law, subjectivity and individuality; the relationship between ethics and politics; the nexus of appearance, thinking and truth; and Arendt's writing as action and appearance. For Arendt, action is a worldly, public phenomenon that requires the presence (...) of others to have any effect. Therefore, to act is more than to decide as it is also to appear. Much has been said about Arendt's theory of action, but little attention has been paid to her approach to appearance as is done in this volume.Action and Appearance explores both Arendt's familiar texts and previously unpublished or recently rediscovered texts to challenge the established readings of her work. Adding to established debates, it will be a unique resource to anyone interested in Hannah Arendt, political thought, political theory, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Increasingly, feminist scholars examine how the stability of racial hierarchies is maintained through discourse. This article explores the importance of race discourse in the construction of white women's accounts explaining their race politics. Specifically, the author examines the connections between race discourse and politics as they emerged in interviews with white women involved in a local women's movement between 1972 and 1999. The interviews revealed five discursive strategies women used to talk about race and the movement's antiracist practices. In addition, (...) one of the most important contributions of this study is the evidence it provides of the relationship between the discursive construction of an “invisible white self” and the broader structure of power relations. (shrink)

The idea that episodic memory is memory of particulars is prominent in philosophy. The particularity of remembering, as I will call it, has been taken for granted in most recent theorizing on the subject. This is because the classical causal theory of memory, which has been extremely influential in philosophy, is said to provide a straightforward account of particularity. But the causal theory has been criticized recently, in particular due to its inability to make sense of the constructive character of (...) remembering. In this paper, I argue that recent attempts to account for the constructive character of remembering have failed to account for its particularity. This is either because they depart in important senses from the classical causal theory’s account of mnemonic causation or because they give up on mnemonic causation altogether. I then proceed to consider the question of whether we should go back to the classical causal theory of memory to account for particularity. I argue that, despite the widespread idea that the classical causal theory offers a straightforward account of particularity, there are good reasons to reject it. The upshot is that philosophers of memory should consider alternative accounts of particularity that do not revolve around mnemonic causation. (shrink)

La Kantkrise (« crise kantienne ») est un des aspects les plus étudiés de la pensée de Heinrich von Kleist, aussi bien par les historiens de la philosophie que par les germanistes. Au cours de presque un siècle de recherches sur ce thème 2, les interprètes ont identifié différemment l’œuvre de Kant – ou l’auteur, autre que Kant 3 – qui aurait déclenché cette crise 4. Pour la première fois, le présent article cherche à identifier le motif déterminant de la (...) crise dans un concept et permet de réviser l’idée même d’une « crise », entendue comme un événement ponctuel et isolé, pour lui restituer son sens d’événement intérieur, appartenant à un itinéraire intellectuel déjà engagé. Il s’agit d’un concept central pour la réflexion théologique et philosophique de la seconde moitié du XVIII e siècle, qui se trouve aussi en plusieurs textes littéraires : la « destination de l’homme » ( Bestimmung des Menschen ). (shrink)

O presente artigo aborda alguns textos fundamentais de Vilém Flusser adotando como eixo central a comparação entre o funcionamento das sociedades póshistóricas e o mecanismo da “caixa-preta”, o que permite articular questões específicas dos códigos de comunicação e seus produtos com questões que tratam das consequências das tecno-imagens para o funcionamento das sociedades caracterizadas por Flusser como sociedades de massa ou pós-históricas.