Despite some excellent resources on this topic, the parts of our syllabi devoted to inclusion and accessibility remain somewhat, well, exclusive and inaccessible.

In the Gorgias, Socrates claims that painful bodily punishment like flogging can improve certain wrongdoers. I argue that we can take Socrates’ endorsement seriously, even on the standard interpretation of Socratic motivational intellectualism, according to which there are no non-rational desires. I propose that flogging can epistemically improve certain wrongdoers by communicating that wrongdoing is bad for oneself. In certain cases, this belief cannot be communicated effectively through philosophical dialogue.

Socrates believes that living well is primarily an intellectual undertaking: we live well if we think correctly. To intellectualists, one might think, the body and activities related to it are of little interest. Yet Socrates has much to say about food, eating, and cookery. This paper examines Socrates’ criticism of ‘feeding on opson’ (opsophagia) in Xenophon’s Memorabilia and of opson cookery (opsopoiia) in Plato’s Gorgias. I argue that if we consider the specific cultural meaning of eating opson, we can see (...) that Socrates takes a nuanced stance on food and cookery: he recommends careful consumption and skillful production, not austerity or abstinence. This nuance in Socrates’ discussion of food changes our interpretation of Socrates’ criticism of rhetoric in the Gorgias: in comparing rhetoricians to opson chefs—not to pastry chefs, as many have assumed—Socrates evokes the dangers of indulging in speeches while acknowledging their necessity for Athenian public life. (shrink)

Socrates’ view about human motivation in Plato’s early dialogues has often been called ‘intellectualist’ because, in his account, the motivation for any given intentional action is tied to the intellect, specifically to beliefs. Socratic motivational intellectualism is the view that we always do what we believe is the best (most beneficial) thing we can do for ourselves, given all available options. Motivational intellectualism is often considered to be at the centre of Socrates’ intellectualist account of actions, according to which: (1) (...) we never act against our present judgment about what is best to do; (2) all wrongdoing is due to ignorance; (3) non-rational desires cannot motivate actions; (3) we all desire the good; and (5) no one does wrong willingly. Despite their centrality for Socratic philosophy, interpreters disagree on the exact interpretation of these five claims and of Socrates’ account of motivation. This chapter surveys the interpretative landscape so that the reader may more easily navigate the primary and secondary literature and decide for themselves whether Socrates is a motivational intellectualist and, if so, in what sense. (shrink)

What makes a good leader? This paper takes Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues as the starting point for developing three leadership skills that are still relevant today: being on a mission, thinking in questions, and thinking like a beginner. I arrive at these Socratic leadership skills through an interdisciplinary approach to Plato’s early dialogues that puts Socrates in conversation with a diversity of thinkers: modern-day business leaders and leadership coaches, educators, Zen Buddhists, and art historians. I show that Socratic leadership (...) skills are valued in today’s business world, and I propose concrete exercises that can help anyone acquire these skills. In contrast to Platonic leadership—the leadership skills of the philosopher king—Socratic leadership skills have not been the focus of much investigation. This paper aims to advance a scholarly conversation about Socrates as a leadership model. (shrink)

Let me present to you the ultimate life-coaching team: Marie Kondo and Socrates. Marie Kondo, the modern Japanese consultant devoted to uncluttering our households; Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher devoted to uncluttering our minds. If we open ourselves to their methods of tidying up, we will live a happier life, they promise.

Imagine that Socrates gets a cavity treatment. The drilling is painful, but he also knows that it is best to get it done and so he stays. Callicles is not so smart. Once the dentist starts drilling, Callicles takes off. I argue that this scenario presents a puzzle that interpreters have missed, namely: why does Socrates have an aversion to pain? To us, this might not be puzzling at all. Socrates, however, believes that we have an aversion only to bad (...) things and that pain is not in fact bad. If Socrates knows that pain is not bad, why does he still feel aversive pain from drilling? I argue that the Protagoras and Hippias Major suggest that pain immediately appears to be bad to us. So even though pain is not in fact bad, it appears and feels that way, and thus even Socrates has an aversion to it. Pain is a felt evaluation. My interpretation contributes to the debates in the literature in two ways. First, it fills an explanatory gap. Interpreters have acknowledged that a Socratic theory of motivation has room for pain aversions as “itches,” but they leave unexplained why we have an aversion to pain, i.e., why those itches itch. Second, I offer an alternative account of Socratic motivation by proposing that pain aversions can motivate some of our actions. (shrink)

In the Statesman (287c3-5), Plato proposes that the philosophical divider should divide analogously to how the butcher divides a sacrificial animal. According to the common interpretation, the example of animal sacrifice illustrates that we should “cut off limbs” (kata mele), that is, divide non-dichotomously into functional parts of a living whole. We argue that this interpretation is historically inaccurate and philosophically problematic: it relies on an inaccurate understanding of sacrificial butchery and leads to textual puzzles. Against the common interpretation, we (...) argue that the example of animal sacrifice illustrates that correct division minimizes (it cuts into the smallest number possible) by first dividing dichotomously and then dividing non-dichotomously into “parts,” not “limbs.” We will show that both the philosophical divider and sacrificial butcher proceed exactly in this way. By taking Plato’s comparison to the historical practice of animal sacrifice seriously, our interpretation provides better solutions to the textual puzzles than the common interpretation. (shrink)

In this book review, I discuss Smith’s new interpretation of Socrates' epistemology of virtue, according to which (a) Socratic virtue knowledge is craft knowledge (knowing how to live well), and such knowledge comes in degrees; and (b) Socrates has a certain degree of virtue knowledge, and one does not have to be an inerrant expert to have any virtue knowledge at all. I argue that Smith succeeds in presenting Socratic philosophy in a new light, while also pointing to remaining questions (...) about his account of virtue—specifically, about what exactly the craft of virtue is and how we can practice it and thereby improve ourselves. (shrink)

There is a paucity of experimental data addressing how peers influence adolescent risk-taking. Here, we examined peer effects on risky decision-making in adults and adolescents using a virtual social context that enabled experimental control over the peer “interactions”. 40 adolescents (age 11-18) and 28 adults (age 20-38) completed a risk-taking (Wheel of Fortune) task under 4 conditions: in private; while being observed by (fictitious) peers; and after receiving ‘risky’ or ‘safe’ advice from the peers. For high-risk gambles (but not medium-risk (...) or even gambles), adolescents made more risky decisions under peer observation than adults. Adolescents, but not adults, tended to resist ‘safe’ advice for high-risk gambles. Although both groups tended to follow ‘risky’ advice for high-risk gambles, adults did so more than adolescents. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between the effects of peer observation and peer advice on risky decision-making. (shrink)

„Czytelnicy sięgną po tę książkę przede wszystkim z racji nie ogłoszonych dotąd drukiem listów Martina Bubera" - pisze w pierwszym Słowie wstępnym Freya von Moltke, znana niektórym jako Honorowa Przewodnicząca Rady Fundacji „Krzyżowa". Drugie Słowo wstępne dołączył Maurice Friedman, obecnie emerytowany profesor filozofi w amerykańskich uczelniach, któremu zawdzięczamy m.in. obszerne trzytomowe dzieło o życiu i twórczości Bubera. Czytelnika może zastanowić fakt, że tak zatytułowana pozycja jest tłumaczeniem z języka angielskiego, dokładniej: z amerykańskiego - jak podaje nota bibliograficzna.

Marjorie Grene has argued in a number of contexts that any attempt to reduce the explanation of human actions to “mechanistic” explanations is doomed to failure in advance because it is absurd. “This argument examines the status of the reductivist thesis in its own terms and reduces it to absurdity …” ; “the attempt to reduce human purposive, or ‘intentional,‘ action to physiology and ultimately to physics and chemistry is an absurdity rather than simply a confusion”. I wish to show (...) that this argument is fallacious because it involves a petitio principii; and if Plato can be credited with introducing the same argument in the Theaetetus, as she suggests, so much the worse for Plato. (shrink)

Книгу характеризует широкий охват затронутых проблем, глубина анализа, оригинальность подхода, многоаспектность освещения материала. Для специалистов.

The usual definition of (non-contextual) hidden variables is found to be too restrictive, in the sense that, according to it, even some classical systems do not admit hidden variables. A more general concept is introduced and the term “approximate hidden variables” is used for it. This new concept avoids the aforementioned problems, since all classical systems admit approximate hidden variables. Standard quantum systems do not admit approximate hidden variables, unless the corresponding Hilbert space is 2-dimensional. However, an appropriate non-standard quantum (...) system, which arises by focussing on momentum and position and neglecting the remaining observables, admits approximate hidden variables. Systems associated with JBW-algebras (resp. von Neumann algebras) and satisfying some mild conditions admit approximate hidden variables iff they are classical, that is, iff the corresponding JBW-algebra (resp. von Neumann algebra) is associative (resp. commutative). (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect (delayed response due to interference) elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

_Zettel, _ an en face bilingual edition, collects fragments from Wittgenstein's work between 1929 and 1948 on issues of the mind, mathematics, and language.