Book review of Sucharek, P. (2020) Udalosť, prázdno, otvorenie: Henri Maldiney a fenomenológia umenia. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta. ISBN 978-80-555-2612-6.

The aim of my paper is to assess in a critical way the views presented by Graeme Smith in his book A Short History of Secularism as well as in his paper Talking to Ourselves: An Investigation into the Christian Ethics Inherent in Secularism. According to Smith, secular Western societies are underpinned by Christian ethics. An example of a moral norm that – in Smith’s opinion – derives from medieval Christianity and shapes the moral condition of the members of contemporary (...) societies, is the concern about the poor. My criticism of Smith’s thesis is based on the distinction between moral norms and the ways of justifying them. Referring to this distinction, my objective is to show that certain norms which appear to be the same cannot be treated as identical due to the significant differences in their justification. (shrink)

Gleeson, Damian John In 1924, after a hiatus of a decade, the Australasian Catholic Record was re-established under the driving force of Monsignor John Joseph Nevin, the then vice-president of St Patrick's College, Manly. Mgr Nevin was ACR's principal editor up until 1937 and with the exception of a trip to Ireland and Europe in 1927, he contributed articles and answered questions on topics ranging across canon law, marriage, and moral theology in virtually every quarterly issue of ACR for more (...) than two decades. At Manly, he educated thousands of seminarians for dioceses across New South Wales and beyond, and was the college's president from 1929 to 1942. As such, Mgr Nevin was probably the most formidable Catholic clerical academic in New South Wales in the interwar period, yet we know little of this prodigious writer and intellectual who was a key adviser, not just to the Sydney hierarchy, but to a wide range of bishops. Apart from Dr Kevin Walsh's splendid history of St Patrick's College, Manly, church historians have not sought to consider the significant career of Mgr Nevin and his influence on several generations of clergy and bishops. (shrink)

Plotinus on the Soul is a study of Plotinus' psychology, which is arguably the most sophisticated Platonist theory of the soul in antiquity. Plotinus offers a Platonist response to Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of the soul that is at the same time an innovative interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. He considers the notion of the soul to be crucial for explaining the rational order of the world. To this end, he discusses not only different types of individual soul but also an (...) entity that he was the first to introduce into philosophy: the so-called hypostasis Soul. This is the first study to provide a detailed explanation of this entity, but it also discusses the other types of soul, with an emphasis on the human soul, and explains Plotinus' original views on rational thought and its relation to experience. (shrink)

One of the enduring contributions of Descartes to philosophy is Descartes’ response to the challenge of scepticism. In addressing the challenge of scepticism Descartes understood that scepticism was a philosophical challenge which needed to be answered by taking into account its inner logic. It is not surprising therefore that Descartes sought to demonstrate as a counter-point to scepticism that there is at least one truth we can know with certitude, namely, the truth of the self. By fulfilling the demand of (...) indubitability the emergence of the truth of the self, as it were, signals certain victory for Descartes in his fight against scepticism. Yet so far as we cannot say that the truth of the cogito is objective unless God guarantees its objectivity, it remains to be seen whether Descartes’ victory over scepticism is conclusive. Consequently, while the discovery of the cogito represents a key moment in Descartes’ effort to contain scepticism so far as it furnishes him with an indubitable foundation, his effort to reconstruct the edifice of knowledge ends in failure so far as it witnesses a resurgence of scepticism in respect of our knowledge of the external world. The argument of this paper is that Descartes’ appeal to God as the guarantor of the objective certainty of the truth of the cogito grossly undermines the overall success of Descartes’ response to the challenge of scepticism. (shrink)

This article takes stock of the project of ecological democracy, a project that has been central to debates in Environmental Values since the late 1990s. Whilst we can identify quite distinct articulations of eco-democratic thinking emerging out of the fields of green political theory, postcolonial/feminist political ecology and science studies/radical geography, it is argued that these discussions have reached something of an impasse of late following the rise of climate scepticism, authoritarian populisms and technocratic eco-modernisms. Resurgent eco-authoritarian impulses and the (...) hankering for a ‘green leviathan’, a climate Lenin or a ‘dictatorship of the sustainment’ to resolve our climate crisis make it more important than ever to affirm the need for just, rapid and democratic post-carbon transitions. The article goes on to outline how emerging discussions in radical design studies focused on redirective practice in conjunction with a revived eco-socialist focus on labour-focused political ecologies might open up different possibilities for a materialist re-grounding of ecodemocratic discussions. It is suggested that a political ecology of design embedded in public institutions, the workplace and civil society could possibleyreground a more substantive vision of ecological democracy but also allow us to think about the forms of creative labour that could drive the just transition. (shrink)

Production in sweatshops entails an elevated risk of occupational injury and sickness due to accidents and exposure to dangerous working conditions. As most sweatshop locations lack basic social security systems, health problems have severe consequences for affected workers. Against this background, this article considers what obligations employers of sweatshop labor have to their workers, and how they should meet them. Based on core libertarian concepts, it shows that they are morally responsible for health problems caused by their management decisions, that (...) they should compensate affected workers, and that they must prevent potentially irreversible health problems. In line with Nozick’s contractarian method, the article further argues that these obligations should be implemented through a compulsory employment injury insurance system. Such a system would impose industry-wide health and safety standards, in contrast to the view that libertarianism excludes any labor regulation for the protection of workers, as an illegitimate interference in voluntary labor contracts. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a solution to the puzzle of mirror perception: why do mirrors appear to reverse the image of an object along a left/right axis and not around other axes, such as the top/bottom axis? I set out the different forms the puzzle takes and argue that one form of it – arguably the key form – has not been satisfactorily solved. I offer a solution in three parts: setting out the conditions in which an apparent left/right (...) reversal of mirror images is generated; explaining why these conditions are so often met; explaining why we are cognitively biased towards the perception of left/right reversal when these conditions are met. (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest in the work of Raya Dunayevskaya and Herbert Marcuse, particularly regarding their shared concern with humanism and dialectics. Recent edited collections on Dunayevskaya’s correspondence have, however, drawn a sharp contrast between the conceptions of the dialectical method: Dunayesvkaya, who emphasized the need for ‘philosophic new beginnings’ to offer a new relationship between theory and practice, and Herbert Marcuse who, despite his piercing identification of the one-dimensionality of late capitalism, continued with a problematic basis (...) in (orthodox) Marxist categories. In this review essay, we outline the latest of these two volumes and its distinct contributions before engaging in a critique of Marcuse’s restrictions on humanism and dialectics, via a comparison with Dunayevskaya’s dialectical approach that was premised on questioning ‘the problems of the age’ and emphasized the open and negative polarity of dialectical possibilities. (shrink)

Since the epistemological turn initiated by Descartes at the start of the modern period and subsequently cemented by Kant's Copernican revolution in epistemology, attention has focused more on the issue of criteria of truth than the essence of truth. This is especially true in respect of discussions in philosophy of truth in contemporary philosophy. While Bradley recognizes the importance of the issue of criteria as far as the problem of truth is concerned, he is nonetheless more concerned with the question (...) of the nature of truth in his engagement with the problem of truth. Bradley sees a fundamental continuity between both concerns, to the extent that in the final analysis truth cannot be divorced from reality, so that truth is not merely a property of propositions as many contemporary theories of truth maintain, but rather a feature of reality. Bradley's approach is peculiar, no doubt, but I argue that it helps to correct certain imbalances associated with contemporary philosophies of truth. (shrink)

Las experiencias místicas y el conocimiento que producen son comunicados a través de un lenguaje religioso. En este texto presentaré un estudio de caso de una tradición yóguica del norte de la India, el Surat Shabdt Yoga, que se practica para obtener este tipo de experiencia. Desde el punto de vista de la teoría verificacionista del significado desarrollada por Alfred J. Ayer, el lenguaje religioso carece de significado.Mi objetivo es analizar y evaluar la teoría verificacionista y mostrar que no sólo (...) se auto refuta; sino que también exhibe ciertas inconsistencias lógicas, empíricas y cognitivas que la debilitan como un buen criterio para evaluar la significatividad del lenguaje religioso. Se argumentará que los instrumentos y métodos de verificación se constriñen a nuestras habilidades, límites, expectativas e intereses cognitivos específicos; por lo que el valor de verdad del contenido fáctico de los enunciados religiosos no puede ser decidido de forma indubitable. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo responde algunas críticas planteadas por Ignacio Ávila a mi interpretación de la epistemología davidsoniana. Presento argumentos en contra de: a) que sea necesario distinguir entre representaciones epistemológicamente “peligrosas”e “inofensivas”; b) que el empirismo mínimo sea un tipo de realismo directo; c) que mi uso de la expresión “evidencia distal” y el interés por la teoría de la correspondencia sean asuntos ajenos a Davidson. Finalmente, sostengo que la triangulación es un elemento fundamental de la epistemología davidsoniana, pues permite (...) sortear la ansiedad realista manteniéndose en una postura no representacionalista. ABSTRACT In this article, I respond to some of Ignacio Ávila's criticisms of my interpretation of Davidson’s epistemology. I argue against: a) the need to distinguish between epistemologically “dangerous” and “harmless” representations; b) the idea that minimal empiricism is a kind of direct realism; and c) the claim that my usage of the expression “distal evidence” and interest in the theory of correspondence are issues that do not pertain to Davidson. Finally, I claim that triangulation is a key element in Davidsonian epistemology since it allows us to deal with the realist anxiety while maintaining a non-representationalist viewpoint. (shrink)

Damian Byers analyzes the form Husserl gives to the problem of knowledge—the way this form influences the development of the phenomenological method, and the results of its application. In a very clear fashion, Byers presents Husserl’s understanding of the roles of intentionality, idealism, temporalization, and kinesthesia in the constitution of knowledge. Drawing upon all of Husserl’s major texts, he corrects many misapprehensions about Husserl’s doctrines of intentionality and idealism. Byers argues that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is both a philosophy of closure (...) and control and a philosophy of openness and vulnerability. (shrink)

How should business deal with society's increasing demands for ethical and social responsibility? In plain language this book considers these and other ethical questions of direct relevance to business in the 1990s. It discusses the nature of ethics, ethical reasoning, the use of stakeholder analysis, and other central concepts used in business ethics. Using mainly, but not exclusively, Australian cases and specific examples, the book covers issues such as fairness in business dealings, advertising ethics, discrimination, and codes of ethics.

This book sets out in plain language ethical questions of direct relevance to business today. This new edition expands the range of issues covered and includes a chapter on international business ethics, drawing extensively from Asian examples.

I define two metaphysical positions that anti-physicalists can take in response to Jonathan Schaffer’s ground functionalism. Ground functionalism is a version of physicalism where explanatory gaps are everywhere. If ground functionalism is true, arguments against physicalism based on the explanatory gap between the physical and experiential facts fail. In response, first, I argue that some anti-physicalists are already safe from Schaffer’s challenge. These anti-physicalists reject an underlying assumption of ground functionalism: the assumption that macrophysical entities are something over and above (...) the fundamental entities. I call their position “lightweight anti-physicalism.” Second, I go on to argue that even if anti-physicalists accept Schaffer’s underlying assumption, they can still argue that the consciousness explanatory gap is especially mysterious and thus requires a special explanation. I call the resulting position “heavyweight anti-physicalism.” In both cases, the consciousness explanatory gap is a good way to argue against physicalism. (shrink)

Paraconsistent logics are logical systems that reject the classical principle, usually dubbed Explosion, that a contradiction implies everything. However, the received view about paraconsistency focuses only the inferential version of Explosion, which is concerned with formulae, thereby overlooking other possible accounts. In this paper, we propose to focus, additionally, on a meta-inferential version of Explosion, i.e. which is concerned with inferences or sequents. In doing so, we will offer a new characterization of paraconsistency by means of which a logic is (...) paraconsistent if it invalidates either the inferential or the meta-inferential notion of Explosion. We show the non-triviality of this criterion by discussing a number of logics. On the one hand, logics which validate and invalidate both versions of Explosion, such as classical logic and Asenjo–Priest’s 3-valued logic LP. On the other hand, logics which validate one version of Explosion but not the other, such as the substructural logics TS and ST, introduced by Malinowski and Cobreros, Egré, Ripley and van Rooij, which are obtained via Malinowski’s and Frankowski’s q- and p-matrices, respectively. (shrink)

In Kripke’s classic paper on truth it is argued that by adding a new semantic category different from truth and falsity it is possible to have a language with its own truth predicate. A substantial problem with this approach is that it lacks the expressive resources to characterize those sentences which fall under the new category. The main goal of this paper is to offer a refinement of Kripke’s approach in which this difficulty does not arise. We tackle this characterization (...) problem by letting certain sentences belong to more than one semantic category. We also consider the prospect of generalizing this framework to deal with languages containing vague predicates. (shrink)

Infectious logics are systems that have a truth-value that is assigned to a compound formula whenever it is assigned to one of its components. This paper studies four-valued infectious logics as the basis of transparent theories of truth. This take is motivated as a way to treat different pathological sentences differently, namely, by allowing some of them to be truth-value gluts and some others to be truth-value gaps and as a way to treat the semantic pathology suffered by at least (...) some of these sentences as infectious. This leads us to consider four distinct four-valued logics: one where truth-value gaps are infectious, but gluts are not; one where truth-value gluts are infectious, but gaps are not; and two logics where both gluts and gaps are infectious, in some sense. Additionally, we focus on the proof theory of these systems, by offering a discussion of two related topics. On the one hand, we prove some limitations regarding the possibility of providing standard Gentzen sequent calculi for these systems, by dualizing and extending some recent results for infectious logics. On the other hand, we provide sound and complete four-sided sequent calculi, arguing that the most important technical and philosophical features taken into account to usually prefer standard calculi are, indeed, enjoyed by the four-sided systems. (shrink)

In this article we revisit a number of disputes regarding significance logics---i.e., inferential frameworks capable of handling meaningless, although grammatical, sentences---that took place in a series of articles most of which appeared in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy between 1966 and 1978. These debates concern (i) the way in which logical consequence ought to be approached in the context of a significance logic, and (ii) the way in which the logical vocabulary has to be modified (either by restricting some notions, (...) or by adding some vocabulary) to keep as much of Classical Logic as possible. Our aim is to show that the divisions arising from these disputes can be dissolved in the context of a novel and intuitive proposal that we put forward. (shrink)

While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an “uncanny” spectral presence. The encompassing ethico-philosophical question (...) is this: what is it about spectral space and the feeling of absence with regard to the university that is important to understand? The Spectral University is characterized by the absence of what used to give the university its constitutive form and structure; of what is essential to the university as an important place of learning and growth. What is gone is the ability to pursue the academic virtues. (shrink)

The subject of the article is the philosophical narratives of secularization and their importance for the study of religion in modern society. I am focusing in particular on Charles Taylor’s narrative presented in his monumental A Secular Age. Contrary to some of Taylor’s critics, especially Ian Hunter, I argue that the philosophical approach to secularity presented by the Canadian thinker cannot be equated with ideologically marked “combat concepts” that characterize the emergence of modernity as a result of either the overcoming (...) of religion by autonomous reason or as the “self-alienation of Christianity”. The “conditions of belief” analyzed by Taylor indicate the mutual mediation of religion and secularity and provide a hermeneutical framework thanks to which we can criticize both the Enlightenment narratives about the triumph of religion over reason and religious visions, which perceive modernity as a theological phenomenon in its essence (John Milbank). Referring to David Martin’s considerations, I also draw attention to the heuristic dimension of Taylor’s narrative and its relevance to the research on religion. (shrink)

Recently, religious organisations, governments and public institutions have begun to offer apologies for historical wrongs. Can they legitimately do so? Departing from the tendency, Professor Hubert Markl, President of the Max Planck Society, has offered strong reasons for not apologising for the crimes of medical scientists who experimented on human subjects during the Nazi era. He argues that only the perpetrators can meaningfully apologise. Markl’'s position is considered and rejected in favour of the view that apologies by proxy for historical (...) wrongs are justifiable and should be made by institutions that have the authority to do so. (shrink)

Arbib et al.'s comprehensive review of neural organization, over-relies on modernist concepts and restricts our understanding of brain and behavior. Reliance on terms like coding, transformation, and representation perpetuates a “black-box approach” to the study of the brain. Recognition is due to the authors for attempting to introduce postmodern concepts such as chaos and self-organization to the study of neural organization. However, confusion occurs in the implementation of “biologically rooted” schema theory in which schemas are viewed as computer programs. The (...) inclusion of an additional functional level between structure and dynamics is unnecessary in a postmodernist perspective of brain and behavior. (shrink)

Se aborda la cuestión normativa del bienestar social en su relación con la utilización que de esta noción se hace en la medición de la desigualdad económica. El asunto, que interesa a varias disciplinas, se aborda a través de un enfoque estrictamente filosófico. El tema central de toda la obra es :¿cómo es posible hacer un juicio fiable sobre la desigualdad de las distribuciones de renta y riqueza? Primeramente se trata la posibilidad de una valoración social del bienestar tal y (...) como se la plantea la teoría de la elección social. Luego se tratan los problemas específicos de la desigualdad económica. (shrink)

En este artículo haré un análisis crítico del debate entre Larry Laudan y algunos defensores del Realismo Epistemológico Convergente. Según esta postura, las mejores teorías científicas exhiben éxito referencial y este rasgo prueba que tales teorías son, al menos, aproximadamente verdaderas. Para Laudan, es irrelevante considerar y tratar a las teorías científicas como si fueran verdaderas. Mostraré que los argumentos de Laudan en contra del Realismo Epistemológico Convergente son bastante plausibles, por lo que la defensa realista en contra de estos (...) argumentos parece no ser exitosa. (shrink)

El artículo muestra 1) el distanciamiento de Nietzsche respecto de la filología clásica de su época, 2) explicita las fuentes de las que bebió El nacimiento de la tragedia y 3) pasa a analizar su metafísica del arte, la cual es presentada bajo la dialéctica entre Apolo y Dioniso leídos como instintos de la naturaleza. Seguidamente, 4) muestra su crítica del optimismo socrático, la cual puede ser leída como una crítica de la modernidad necesaria para su proyecto de la renovación (...) cultural por medio de la cultura trágica. En este sentido, el texto busca articular los presupuestos metafísicos en esta primera etapa de Nietzsche con su proyecto de reforma cultural para Alemania. Termina con unas cortas conclusiones. (shrink)

At the end of May 1917, Max Weber attended a “cultural congress” at the picturesque castle of Lauenstein in Thuringia. The congress had been organized by the publicist Eugen Diederichs of Jena and by the Patriotic Society for Thuringia 1914. The moment was a particularly tense one in the life of the embattled German Reich. Against the advice of many cooler heads within the country, Germany had declared unrestricted submarine warfare in January, which together with other antagonistic moves on its (...) part, had led to the entry of the United States into the war in April. By this point it was clear to all but the most indefatigable optimists that Germany would lose the war. In this atmosphere of dread and of new hope that a phoenix-like new Germany or a new humanity would arise out of the ashes of the war, the participants outlined their visions of the future. The eccentric former Social Democrat-turned-nationalist Max Maurenbrecher denounced capitalist mechanization but called for a revival of the traditional Prussian concept of the state, for an “idealistic state” and for workers to be educated towards national consciousness by means of the German literary and philosophical classics. (shrink)