Kant and Sartre are two of the most significant figures in modern philosophy, and yet there has, until very recently, been little comparative research undertaken on them. Despite dealing with many shared philosophical issues, they have traditionally been taken to be too opposed to each other to render any search for possible parallels between their works a useful enterprise. Indeed, Sartre is often taken to be one of Kant’s most vocal critics in the literature, and as rather indebted to other (...) major figures, such as Husserl and Heidegger. As a consequence, often, where comparative analysis has been done upon Kant and Sartre, the emphasis has been on their differences, rather than on their similarities. However, as recent research has begun to show, the story is not that straightforward and there is much to be explored with regard to parallels between Kant and Sartre. Baiasu has characterised Sartre’s relation to Kant as one of an “anxiety of influence” – Sartre desires to explicitly distance himself from Kant, but this obscures some deeper underlying parallels between them1. Such parallels can form a foundation for productive dialogue, more widely, between the schools of Kantian “Critical philosophy” and existentialism2. (shrink)

According to the PCCP thesis, the probability of a conditional A → C is the conditional probability P. This claim is undermined by Lewis’ triviality results, which purport to show that apart from trivial cases, PCCP is not true. In the present article we show that the only rational, “Dutch Book-resistant” extension of the agent’s beliefs concerning non-conditional sentences A and C to the conditional A → C is by assuming that P = P. In other cases a diachronic Dutch (...) Book against the agent can be constructed. There is a tension between our findings and Lewis’ results, which needs to be explained. Therefore, we present a probability space which corresponds in a natural way to the diachronic Dutch Book—and which allows the conditional A → C to be interpreted as an event in a mathematically sound way. It also allows to formalize the notion of conditionalizing A → C on ¬C which plays a crucial role in Lewis’ proof. Our conclusion is that Lewis’ proof is circular, so it cannot be considered to be a sound argument against PCCP. (shrink)

Adverse childhood experiences are prevalent in many western populations. Large studies have put the likelihood of having at least one ACE above 50% of the general population. ACEs and the associated experience of chronic stress, moreover, have been consistently linked with a variety of negative physical and psychological health outcomes across the lifespan from behavioral problems and cognitive difficulties early on, to greater chance of suffering from a mental health disorder and engaging in self destructing behaviors. The literature puts forward (...) several protective factors, such as mother-child relations, parental health, and community engagement. In this perspective paper we put forward the potential of regular nature engagement as a possible additional protective factor. Nature’s therapeutic potential has been well documented, for many psychopathologies and mental health difficulties. Yet studies looking at the protective and therapeutic potential of nature with people with ACEs are remarkably limited in numbers. In this perspective piece we conduct a search of the literature to find previous applications of nature as a protective or therapeutic intervention for people with ACEs. We highlight the gap in the current literature, and put forward various mechanisms of action that justify a closer exploration of this area in further research. (shrink)

Recent health legislation in Norway significantly increases access to specialist care within a legally binding time frame. The paper describes the contents of the new legislation and introduces some of the challenges with proliferations of rights to health care. The paper describes some of the challenges associated with the proliferation of legal rights to health care. It explains the benefits of assessing the new law in the light of a rights framework. It then analyses the problematic aspects of establishing additional (...) priority rules as solutions to rights conflicts. It then defends adequacy criteria for acceptable priority rules when such rules are unavoidable. It finally defends our proposed method and explores concrete applications. (shrink)

Podejmując problem niejęzykowych myśli, Bermudez rozważa go przede wszystkim na dwóch płaszczyznach: epistemologicznej i eksplanacyjnej. Płaszczyzna epistemologiczna dotyczy tego, jak możliwe jest przypisywanie myśli do istot nieposługujących się językiem oraz czy możliwe jest poznanie treści niejęzykowych myśli. Do rozwiązania tego problemu Bermudez posłużył się koncepcją semantyki sukcesu, która umożliwia poznanie zawartości przekonań i pragnień oraz zastosowanie wyjaśniania psychologicznego. Płaszczyzna eksplanacyjna dotyczy natomiast takiej atrybucji myśli do NC, która odpowiednio wyjaśniałaby ich zachowanie. W tym celu Bermudez rozszerza pojęcie racjonalności do NC (...) przez wyróżnienie jej różnych poziomów. Ponadto wyodrębnia protologikę, ukazującą, jak praktyczne rozumowanie może być przypisywane do NC. Główne zarzuty w stosunku do jego stanowiska dotyczą m.in. relacji między myśleniem a wnioskowaniem, stosowanej metodologii oraz rozszerzonego pojęcia racjonalności. (shrink)

It is widely assumed in the developmental literature that certain classes of modal expression appear later in language acquisition than others; specifically, epistemic interpretations lag behind non-epistemic interpretations. An explanation for these findings is proposed in terms of the child’s developing theory of mind, i.e. the ability to attribute to oneself and others mental representations, and to reason inferentially about them. It is hypothesized that epistemic modality crucially implicates theory-of-mind abilities and is therefore expected to depend on prior developments in (...) the child's ability to handle representations of mental representations. In support of this hypothesis, it is shown that autistic individuals have difficulty with epistemics. (shrink)

In the summer and autumn of 2015, I met with activists in Athens and Thessaloniki, with the aim of collaboratively producing a conceptual mapping of LGBTQ social movement discourses. My point of entry was the use and signification of “racism” in LGBTQ discourses (and more generally in common parlance in Greek) as a superordinate or “umbrella” concept that includes “homophobic” and “transphobic” but also “misogynist,” “ageist,” “ableist,” and class- or status-based prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, in addition to that, of course, (...) based on “race” or “ethnicity.” As a political theorist whose work over the past decade has focused on the concept of intersectionality, its origins in US Black feminist thought, and its transnational travel beyond the Anglo-American context in which it originated, I wanted to examine how this use of “racism” relates to the concept of “intersectionality” which is now emergent in the Greek social movement context, in particular in LGBTQ and feminist discourses, yet which has not been engaged by academics, neither in the nascent and struggling field of gender studies, nor in legal theory. How do LGBTQ activists define the referential scope and semantic contents of these concepts, based on what knowledges grounded in lived experiences, and on what kinds of social movement strategies? How do these concepts and their theoretical underpinnings reflect or direct activists’ political resistance to the widespread violence that they identify within and on the borders of Greek society? Do they enable coalition-building with other minoritised groups targeted by institutional and interpersonal “racism”? In approaching these questions, I wanted to trace the ways in which my interlocutors produce theories, through which social conditions of racial and heteropatriarchal power are made visible, are explained, and are contested—conditions that they identify with the institutions—“nation, religion, and family”—that make up what they termed the “triptych” or the “syntax of power.” What emerged in my conversations with activists were vivid accounts of the atmospheric violence facing LGBTQ people in Greece, its institutional and interpersonal manifestations, both banal and extreme. Indeed, many activists defined violence as the quintessence of oppression as such, and as what links various systems or forms of oppression—or, “racisms”—to one another. In what follows, I draw on these conversations not to answer the questions with which I set out, but, primarily, those that my interlocutors generated, which concern, ultimately, the unlivability of queer and trans lives—the violence LGBTQ people face and resist, particularly at the intersections of youth, poverty, disability, rurality, racialisation, criminalisation, and patriarchy. (shrink)

Whatever societies accept as "knowledge" is embedded in specific epistemological, political and economic power relations. How is knowledge produced and functionalized? What is the difference between knowledge and the sciences? Can there be science without universal truth claims? Questions like these, all of them highly relevant, are discussed in twelve essays from the perspective of Sociology, Law, Cultural Studies and the Humanities.

This article explores the activities of the Society of Apothecaries and its members following the foundation of a laboratory for manufacturing chemical medicines in 1672. In response to political pressures, the guild created an institutional framework for production which in time served its members both functionally and financially and established a physical site within which the endorsement of practical knowledge could take place. Demand from state and institutional customers for drugs produced under corporate oversight affirmed and supported the society's trading (...) role, with chemical and pharmaceutical knowledge utilized to fulfil collective and individual goals. The society benefited from the mercantile interests, political connections and practical expertise of its members, with contributions to its trading activities part of a much wider participation in London's medical, scientific and commercial milieu. Yet, as apothecaries became increasingly engaged in the practice of medicine rather than the preparation and sale of drugs, the society struggled to reconcile the changing priorities of those it represented, and tensions emerged between its corporate and commercial activities. (shrink)

Research in social cognition aims to illuminate how agents can understand, communicate, and interact with other agents. When defining socio-cognitive abilities, standard cognitivist approaches tend to require demanding representational information processing. Thereby, they describe rather ideal cases. However, interdisciplinary research indicates multiple forms of how socio-cognitive abilities can be realized. Recent minimal approaches offer notions accommodating different kinds of cognitive processing. Nevertheless, the introduction of minimal cases of cognition raises new questions of how to account for commonalities and differences with (...) respect to the standard concepts. It seems to be a widespread strategy to adapt ideas of a two-system approach in order to distinguish less demanding instances from more demanding cases. This paper critically explores such an interpretation of a two-system approach and argues that a dichotomous understanding fails to capture the actual diversity of cognitive processes. (shrink)

In ‘The autonomy of the affect’ Brian Massumi wrote of the gap between affective and cognitive registering of the traumatic experience. Affect theorists and neuroscientists have long shared the notion of a gap between the somatic response to a traumatic event and the appraisal of the affective situation. This article develops theories on dissociation or nothingness, where nothingness is a measurement of the space between the affective and the cognitive registering of a traumatic event. It explores the concept of two (...) different systems, one a ‘conscious automatic’ system and the other an ‘intensity system’ that exists outside of normal physiological sequencing, beyond narration, and therefore incapable of integrating into memory systems. (shrink)

Abstrakt Analizy w zakresie starogreckich znaczeń słowa pathos skłaniają do postawienia tezy, że należy mówić o czterech głównych kontekstach, które ukształtowały rozumienie tej kategorii: o kontekście retorycznym, etycznym, tragicznym i emotywnym (passio). Chociaż wszystkie cztery wspomniane obszary pozostawały względem siebie stosunkowo niezależne, modyfikując sens pojęcia pathos w czasem bardzo odległych rejestrach czasowych, to można wskazać pewien wspólny rdzeń, determinujący charakter omawianej kategorii: mianowicie jej inherentną zakłóceniowość, kryzysogenność i afektywność. Pozostaje on w ścisłej relacji z odniesieniem patosu do doświadczeń bolesnych, nagłych, (...) zadziwiających, a także – tak, jak w ślad za Grekami czyni to Waldenfels – do stanów pasywnych, z których podmiot, pod wpływem patycznego ugodzenia, wybudza się jako żywo reagujący, cielesny „respondent”. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest prześledzenie owych starożytnych źródeł patosu i wskazanie ich współczesnych reminiscencji, rozbrzmiewających w Waldenfelsowskiej fenomenologii responsywnej. Struktura tekstu jest następująca: w pierwszej części przyglądamy się historycznym zastosowaniom pojęcia pathos (głównie w ramach tradycji greckiej); w części drugiej analizujemy patos pod kątem zdziwienia, uchodzącego według Platona i Arystotelesa za akt inicjujący myślenie filozoficzne; w części trzeciej, poświęconej fenomenologii Waldenfelsa, prezentujemy afektywny i cielesny wymiar doświadczenia patycznego, zradykalizowanego zarówno względem kartezjańskiego dualizmu, jak i Husserlowskiej teorii autoafekcji; w części czwartej powracamy do wyróżnionych wcześniej historycznych kontekstów patosu, aby pokazać, w jaki sposób Waldenfels na gruncie fenomenologii responsywnej aktualizuje je w ramach swojej polemiki z „klasycznymi” ujęciami doświadczenia i emocji. Słowa kluczowe: Patos, fenomenologia responsywna, Bernhard Waldenfels, retoryka, tragedia, etyka, afekt. (shrink)

Wojciech Dzieduszycki (1848-1909) łączył w sobie filozofa i polityka. Wzorował się na Sokratesie, z którym dzielił nie tylko zachowanie, lecz także poglądy. Dzieduszycki widział w greckim filozofie myśliciela politycznego, oddanego państwu obywatela, a więc odczytywał go w duchu konserwatywnych wartości. W Sokratesie upatrywał też „lekarstwa” na zmieniającą się rzeczywistość.

This comment focuses on part III of the book, ‘Carl Schmitt’s 21st Century’, by William Scheuerman. It raises two points. The first point concerns the author’s continuity thesis. According to Scheu...

In the early 1990s, the notion of culture-led regeneration entered the urban agenda of several European cities confronted with drastic economic changes due to losses in their industrial base. This paper critically addresses a major case in the City of Rome, indeed less affected by these phenomena. In here, the densely populated working-class districts of Ostiense and Testaccio along the Tiber River just outside the City Centre have become part for some years now of a culture-led regeneration program conveying a (...) brand new idea of “Knowledge City” deemed able to supplant the previous image of the “Factory City.”. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to better understand the characteristics of the language-related skills of bilingual children with specific learning disorders. The aim is achieved by analyzing language-related skills in a sample of bilingual and Italian monolingual children, with and without SLD.Patients and methods: A total of 72 minors aged between 9 and 11 were recruited and divided into four groups: 18 Italian monolingual children with SLD, 18 bilingual children with SLD, 18 Italian monolingual children without SLD, and (...) 18 bilingual children without SLD. Each child underwent tests to evaluate different aspects of language skills: lexical and grammar, metalanguage and executive functions.Results: With regard to lexical and grammatical skills, the conditions of SLD and bilingualism both impact naming in terms of total number of errors for words with low frequency of use, while the condition of SLD has an effect on semantic errors for words with low frequency of use. The condition of bilingualism impacts on the total errors for words with high frequency of use and on circumlocution-type errors for words with low frequency of use. There were significant effects of bilingualism and SLD on the metalinguistic test for understanding implicit meaning, and an impact of SLD on phonological awareness was also found.Conclusion: The results suggest that both SLD and bilingualism have an effect on some lexical skills, in particular for words with low frequency of use. Both conditions, bilingualism and SLD, seem to impact on metalinguistic abilities that depend on lexical knowledge. These findings reinforce the importance of improving understanding of the neuropsychological profile of bilingual children with SLD. (shrink)

Jones recognizes the existence of “primitives of conceptual structures,” out of which “local representations of kinship are constructed.” NSM semantics has identified these primitives through a cross-linguistic search for lexical universals (“NSM” stands for Natural Semantic Metalanguage and also for the corresponding linguistic theory). These empirical universals provide, I argue, a better bridge between cognitive anthropology and evolutionary psychology than the abstract constructs of OT, with dubious claim to conceptual reality.

The article aims at challenging the very idea of bioethics. Starting with a thought experiment which puts into perspective relations between law and ethics, a reflexion on founding moments of bioethics as a distinctive discipline will be proposed in order to contest some of its assumptions. Less traditional ways of seeing the field will be subsequently analyzed, yet the conclusion of this exploration will remain critical: we should rather think of an alternative way of seeing moral expertise in the biomedical (...) sphere, founded on plural knowledge of diverse agents who leave their moral presuppositions aside as much as this is possible. (shrink)

A Companion to the Philosophy of Action offers a comprehensive overview of the issues and problems central to the philosophy of action. The first volume to survey the entire field of philosophy of action (the central issues and processes relating to human actions) Brings together specially commissioned chapters from international experts Discusses a range of ideas and doctrines, including rationality, free will and determinism, virtuous action, criminal responsibility, Attribution Theory, and rational agency in evolutionary perspective Individual chapters also cover prominent (...) historic figures from Plato to Ricoeur Can be approached as a complete narrative, but also serves as a work of reference Offers rich insights into an area of philosophical thought that has attracted thinkers since the time of the ancient Greeks. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the philosophical and scientific positions of Ludwik Fleck, author of the first theory of democratic science and, at the end of the day, a scientific realist. This interpretation of his work is somewhat at odds with the more standard approach, wherein Fleck is presented as a pioneer of relativism or of social constructivism in the philosophy of sciences. In the following, I discuss Fleck's philosophical context o er an analysis of a few of his better-known (...) interpretations and offer a final perspective by showing his commitment to the reality of scientific practice, notwithstanding his scepticism towards scientific theories. And while this paper is an attempt to o er an alternative reading of Fleck's positions, it also aims at reaffirming a stance already defended by, among others, Ian Hacking. Scientific realism needs to be understood not in opposition to a historical perspective on dynamically developing sciences, but along with this perspective. (shrink)

In this text I analyze the presence of the philosophy of Nietzsche in the literary and intellectual work of the writer Albertina Bertha de Lafayette Stockler (Rio de Janeiro, 1880-1953). The interest and passion of the writer by the German philosopher is demonstrated in references, epigraphs and quotes of the philosopher. Nietzsche’s discussion of Bertha holds a historical interest in the fact that it is rare for a woman to attend philosophical forums on an equal footing with men in Brazil (...) at the time. In addition to the celebrated 1914 conference, which became the chapter in Estudos (1920), Nietzschean notions permeate the writings of Albertina Bertha, both in novels and essays. (shrink)