RésuméCet article met en lumière un court traité inédit, le Masʾalatān (Deux questions), attribué à Avicenne (d. 1037). Alors que le premier témoin du texte, le manuscrit Ayasofya 4853, contient une part substantielle des textes laissés par Avicenne, euxmêmes partiellement intégrées aux Mubāḥaṯāt et aux Taʿlīqāt, le Masʾalatān est resté un ouvrage autonome à la circulation limitée. Il s'agit donc d'abord de vérifier son authenticité d'après les données disponibles. Cet article présente une édition critique du texte ainsi qu'une traduction parallèle, (...) mais il sert également d’étude de cas sur les possibilités de vérification de l'auteur. Il rassemble également des informations codicologiques, mais il propose surtout un commentaire, en analysant les arguments du texte et en les comparant à ce que l'on sait de manière incontestable des positions d'Avicenne. La première question porte sur le fait de savoir si tout existant est localisé dans l'espace, tandis que la seconde explore l'impossibilité d'un corps infini réel. Le commentaire interprète le texte en tenant compte du contexte culturel et théologique qui a pu inspirer de telles interrogations, et tente également d'aborder son influence ultérieure. Outre le fait qu'il dévoile un texte jusqu'alors inédit à la communauté scientifique pour des recherches plus approfondies, il met également en question l'attribution avicennienne du texte. (shrink)

Mainstream metaphysics has been preoccupied by inquiring into the nature of major kinds of entities, like objects, properties and events, while avoiding minor entities, like shadows or holes. However, one might want to hope that dealing with such minor entities could be profitable for even solving puzzles about major entities. I propose a new ontological puzzle, the Shadow of Constitution Puzzle, incorporating the old puzzle of material constitution, with shadows in the role of the minor entity to guide our approach (...) to the issues involved. I then analyze the standard answers to the original puzzle of constitution, in their role as potential solutions to the new puzzle. Finally, I discuss three views that can solve the proposed puzzle. (shrink)

Against its prominent compatiblist and libertarian opponents, I defend Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility. Against John Martin Fischer, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that an agent can be responsible for an action only if he is responsible for every factor contributing to that action. Against Alfred Mele and Randolph Clarke, I argue that it is absurd to believe that an agent can be responsible for an action when no (...) factor contributing to that action is up to that agent. Against Derk Pereboom and Clarke, I argue that the versions of agent-causal libertarianism they claim can immunize the agent to the Basic Argument actually fail to do so. Against Robert Kane, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that simply the presence of indeterministic factors in the process of bringing an action about is itself what rules out the agent’s chance for being responsible for that action. (shrink)

István Mészáros; IX—Metaphor and Simile: Preliminary Notes to a Discussion of Norms and Values, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 J.

Recenzio Kiraly V. Istvan Death and History c. konyverol.

Intercultural Pragmatics studies how language systems are used in social encounters between speakers who have different first languages and cultures, yet communicate in a common language. The field first emerged in the early 21st century, joining two seemingly antagonistic approaches to pragmatics research: the cognitive-philosophical approach, which considers intention as an a priori mental state of the speaker, and the sociocultural-interactional approach, which considers it as a post factum construct created by both speaker and hearer though conversation. Istvan Kecskes, an (...) early proponent of intercultural pragmatics, was among the first to propose merging the two to form the socio-cognitive approach now core to the field. In Intercultural Pragmatics, the first book on the subject, Kecskes establishes the foundations of the field, boldly combining the pragmatic view of cooperation with the cognitive view of egocentrism in order to incorporate emerging features of communication. He argues that people cooperate by generating and formulating intention that is relevant to the given actual situational context. At the same time, however, because of their egocentrism they activate the most salient information to their attention in the construction and comprehension of utterances. Within this approach, interlocutors are considered as social beings searching for meaning with individual minds embedded in a socio-cultural collectivity, and intention is a cooperation-directed practice that is governed by relevance which depends on actual situational experience.Intercultural pragmatics is a rapidly-growing field, and the only subfield of pragmatics to incorporate features of intercultural interaction into mainstream pragmatics. This volume offers both a valuable synthesis of current research and a new way to think about pragmatics. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction: in particular, to algebras of relations of various ranks, and in general, to the part of algebraic logic algebraizing quantifier logics. The paper has a survey character, too. The most frequently used algebras like cylindric-, relation-, polyadic-, and quasi-polyadic algebras are carefully introduced and intuitively explained for the nonspecialist. Their variants, connections with logic, abstract model theory, and further algebraic logics are also reviewed. Efforts were made to make the review part relatively comprehensive. In some (...) directions we tried to give an overview of the most recent results and research trends, too. (shrink)

Contemporary phenomenological psychopathology has raised questions concerning selfhood and its possible alterations in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Although the notion of the self is central to several accounts of anomalies, it remains a question how exactly the radically minimal experiential features of selfhood can be altered. Indeed, the risk is to reduce the notion of selfhood so drastically, that it can no longer account for alterations of experience. Here we propose to give thickness to the minimal self. To do this we (...) first discuss Sartre’s phenomenological definition of coenesthesia as the translucent matter of consciousness articulating it with the notion of existential feelings. We then draw on the historical research on coenesthesia to dig deeper in this translucent materiality identified as the element of the body. We show that selfhood, even in its most minimal level, must be conceived of with a specific elemental thickness, corresponding to a phenomenological materiality of embodiment. We argue that a phenomenological reading of coenesthesia as the bodily element of ipseity can shed a new light on the anomalies of self-experience. (shrink)

Connectionist research first emerged in the 1940s. The first phase of connectionism attracted a certain amount of media attention, but scant philosophical interest. The phase came to an abrupt halt, due to the efforts of Minsky and Papert (1969), when they argued for the intrinsic limitations of the approach. In the mid-1980s connectionism saw a resurgence. This marked the beginning of the second phase of connectionist research. This phase did attract considerable philosophical attention. It was of philosophical interest, as it (...) offered a way of counteracting the conceptual ties to the philosophical traditions of atomism, rationalism, logic, nativism, rule realism and a concern with the role symbols play in human cognitive functioning, which was prevalent as a consequence of artificial intelligence research. The surge in philosophical interest waned, possibly in part due to the efforts of some traditionalists and the so-called black box problem. Most recently, what may be thought of as a third phase of connectionist research, based on so-called deep learning methods, is beginning to show some signs of again exciting philosophical interest. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 7, July 2022.

Over the last few decades, our knowledge of how the human mind and brain works increased dramatically. The field of cognitive science enables us to understand religious traditions, rituals, and visionary experiences in novel ways. This has implications for the study of the New Testament and early Christianity. How people in the ancient Mediterranean world remembered sayings and stories, what they experienced when participating in rituals, how they thought about magic and miracle, and how they felt and reasoned about moral (...) questions--all of that can be now better understood with the help of insights from cognitive science. István Czachesz argues that the field of New Testament Studies witnesses the beginning of a cognitive turn. He surveys relevant developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion and explores the field of cognitive and behavioral sciences in search of opportunities of gaining new insights about biblical materials. Czachesz presents some methodological tools and initial steps, together with a large number of examples of applying the cognitive approach to the New Testament and related ancient literature. (shrink)

Recent discussion, both in the academia-related popular media and in some professional academic venues, about the current state and role of mainstream Anglo-American analytic philosophy among the humanities, has revealed a certain uneasiness expressed by both champions of this approach and traditional adversaries of it regarding its perceived isolation from the other fields of humanities. The fiercer critics go as far as to claim that the image of this type of philosophizing in the contemporary world is one of a discipline (...) that is disconnected from reality, a veritable inbreeding academic cottage industry of empty scholasticism. Though I am unsympathetic to the critics who would question the very essence of how this kind of philosophy is pursued, myself being a representative of it, I nevertheless present some admittedly sketchy but, in my opinion, interesting and revealing statistical data on the evolution of several top journals of analytic philosophy over the last hundred years in terms of the style of papers that get published, which might also justify to some extent the above mentioned complaint against analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Hermeneutical Considerations on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and on the Revisiting of his Path of Thinking (I). Starting with preliminary philological-hermeneutical considerations concerning the way Heidegger’s Black Notebooks can and should be dealt with, as well as concerning the question what tasks may be derived from them for future research, the paper attempts to discuss the Black Notebooks applying a variety of methods and multiple approaches. Themes that are discussed at more or less length include: Time factor and the formulation of (...) our task; explanation and understanding or the way a philosophical path should be approached and dealt with methodically (hermeneutically); the theme related to “Heidegger and anti-Semitism” and the question concerning individuality; prejudices from a hermeneutical perspective and the way to deal with them; relapses and their philosophical explanation; missing and increased sensibility; Heidegger and Hegel; equivocality and the dark side of the “formal indication”; Lukács, Scheler and the devil; Heidegger’s great being-historical treatises and their greatness; suggestions for a reconsideration of Heidegger’s way of thinking. -- One important hermeneutical claim brought to bear on the various discussions is this: just as it would be in-appropriate in our dealing with Heidegger’s texts to disregard Heidegger’s own self-interpretations, it would be no less inappropriate to consider those self-interpretations--which themselves call for interpretation--as telling us the sole and ultimate truth. (shrink)

The book aims to serve as a theoretical framework for the socio-cognitive approach (SCA) that is an alternative to the two main lines of pragmatics research: linguistic-philosophical pragmatics and sociocultural-interactional pragmatics. SCA broadens the scope of the field with an intent to incorporate not only L1 communication but also intercultural communication, and communication in a second language. The author integrates the pragmatic view of cooperation and the cognitive view of egocentrism and emphasizes that both cooperation and egocentrism are manifested in (...) all phases of communication, albeit to varying extents. SCA places equal importance on the social and cognitive individual factors in pragmatics. The author claims that while (social) cooperation is an intention-directed practice that is governed by relevance, (individual) egocentrism is an attention-oriented trait dominated by salience. The book serves as a theoretical guide for researchers and students who would like to understand how we need to change first language-based theories to make sense of what happens not only in L1 but also in intercultural and multi-lingual interactions. (shrink)

(1990). Uncertainty as a Technique of the Exercise of Power: An Approach to the Question of Transition. World Futures: Vol. 29, Transition in Eastern Europe, pp. 47-67.

The paper presents the current status and the principal directions of research work in Hungary. The author lists the basic studies published in the 1960’s as well as the major journals and publications concerned with ethical problems. Moreover he describes the main centres responsible for initiating and coordinating ethical researches and the teaching of ethics.

An important question in language evolution is whether segmentation as a linguistic process is able to yield compositionality. Segmentation is hypothesized to be a process to bridge the gap between holistic and compositional lexicons. However, to date no thorough analytical method has been provided to test the feasibility of segmentation. In this paper, an analytical model is presented that can predict the probability of encountering various kinds of overlaps by observing utterance pairs, and the probability of finding confirmation in the (...) language for newly extracted segments. Language users start by using a previously evolved holistic lexicon to communicate about simple environments. They segment these holistic utterances to smaller pieces, which can be used as elements of a compositional lexicon. The model reveals that the feasibility of segmentation depends on the definition of counterexamples, i.e. those associations (pairs), which either cause ambiguous extraction of segments, or do not allow segmentation at all. On one hand if inexact overlaps are considered to be contradictory (i.e. causing confusion) to a perfect exact overlap, then the probability is so minuscule that it renders the role of segmentation marginal during language evolution. On the other hand, if such inexact counterexamples are able to be segmented unambiguously due to extra cognitive capacities, segmentation may have a much higher feasibility. Keywords: segmentation; fractionation; analysis; holistic; protolanguage; compositionality. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind, both in the conceptual analysis tradition and in the empirical informed school, have been implicitly neglecting the potential conceptual role of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) in understanding sensory and perceptual states. Instead, the philosophical as well as the neuroscientific literature has been assuming that it is the Central Nervous System (CNS) alone, and more exactly the brain, that should prima facie be taken as conceptually and empirically crucial for a philosophical analysis of such states This is (...) the first monograph that focuses on the PNS and its constitutive role in sensory states, including pain, mechanoception, proprioception, tactile perception, and so forth. -/- The author argues that the brain-centeredness of current philosophy of mind is a prejudice, and proposes a series of original ways in which classic puzzles in the philosophy of mind can be solved once the hypothesis that PNS is a constitutive element of mental states is taken seriously. The author calls this “the Peripheral Mind Hypothesis”, and employs it in a vast range of issues, such as functionalism, physicalism, mental content, embodiment, as well as some issues in neuroethics. -/- Making equal use of conceptual analysis, empirical data from neuroscience, first-person phenomenological data, and philosophical speculation, this work offers a fresh look at, and novel solutions to many philosophical problems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tolerantia: A Medieval ConceptIstván BejczyThe notion of tolerance is generally considered a product of modern times and in particular of the Age of Reason.1 The enlightened philosophers, who laid the foundations of liberalism and democracy, are often hailed as the men who introduced the notion of tolerance as a means of guaranteeing maximum freedom to the individual members of society. Writings such as the Epistola de tolerantia of John (...) Locke and the Traité sur la tolérance of Voltaire prove indeed that tolerance was an important topic in enlightened thought. Sometimes it is believed that an earlier notion of tolerance can be found, most notably in the writings of Christian humanists like Erasmus. As a matter of fact, “Erasmian tolerance” is a standing phrase in the Netherlands, where the people are happy to link the one virtue for which they openly praise themselves with the only Dutch author who is universally known.The Middle Ages, on the other hand, have no reputation for tolerance, the lack of which is usually attributed to the influence of a powerful Church that was able and willing to suppress all major deviations from the exclusive truth it was convinced it possessed. Only the Reformation, it is often argued, forced the Church to change its attitude and to redefine its relation towards dissidents.2 As a consequence, many historical studies of the idea of tolerance begin only in the sixteenth century.3This representation of the history of tolerance is, however, distorted. In the Middle Ages tolerantia was a highly developed political concept, and it was [End Page 365] widely applied in the ecclesiastical as well as the secular sphere. This observation is not altogether new. In a limited number of studies the medieval concept of tolerance receives due attention. The most important of these studies are those by Joseph Lecler, Mario Condorelli, and Klaus Schreiner, but unfortunately none of these authors treat the subject of medieval tolerance in a satisfactory way.In his monumental Histoire de la tolérance au siècle de la Réforme (1955) Lecler does not investigate the term or the concept of medieval tolerance systematically, but briefly surveys the attitude adopted by Christian scholarly authors towards heretics and unbelievers. In fact Lecler tacitly equates the notion of “tolerance” with “freedom of religion,” a concept which indeed found little support among medieval scholars.4 Condorelli’s study (1960) is much more systematic, but it has a rather limited scope. It concentrates on the development of religious toleration in medieval canon law between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.5 The canon lawyers in fact coined the medieval concept of tolerantia with specific attention to religious toleration, and for this reason Condorelli’s work remains important and useful. But Condorelli does not analyze medieval tolerantia in its full range, nor does he compare the concept with later uses of the term.Schreiner’s article on tolerance in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1990) contains a detailed discussion of the concept of tolerance and its development in western intellectual history.6 On the patristic and medieval periods Schreiner offers a wealth of material, and his representations of historical facts and developments are generally correct. His evaluations of the facts, however, strike me as misleading as far as the Middle Ages are concerned. Schreiner refuses to take medieval tolerance seriously. The pretension of Christian religion to embody the absolute truth and its function as the main integrating factor of society would have impeded a full development of tolerance; Schreiner even considers medieval Christianity intolerant in its very essence. As he argues,Only when the early modern state proceeded to make natural religion instead of a closed system of belief the consensus-shaping vinculum societatis, it set free spaces of action in which individuals and groups could realize their rights of freedom of belief and conscience.... Only [End Page 366] the dissolution of the historically grown bonds between religion and justice, which restituted freedom to religion and prudence to justice, enabled the free expression of religion in a spirit of mutual patience.7We can reproach Schreiner with several inaccuracies. First, it is questionable whether medieval religion represented a closed system which can be... (shrink)

A short discussion on how photography can capture the sturdiness lent to our personality by our long-term policies structuring our reasoning, even during times of war and other cataclysms.

The paper discusses radical constructivism about episodic memory as developed by Kourken Michaelian under the name of “simulationism”, a view that equates episodic memory with mental time travel. An alternative, direct realist view is defended, which implies disjunctivism about the appearance of remembering. While admitting the importance of mental time travel as an underlying cognitive mechanism in episodic memory, as well as the prima facie reasonableness of the simulationist’s critique of disjunctivism, I formulate three arguments in defense of disjunctivism, which (...) thus appears to be a feasible alternative to radical constructivism. (shrink)

There are several systems which provide computer support to legal decisions. Perhaps the most significant ones, besides various computerised systems for administration, are information retrieval systems that locate statutes and documents. Other research projects, however, deal with legislation and adjudication, making it possible to use information techniques in making legal decisions. I wish to describe two decision-support programs and to link them to some theoretical findings of my former researches. What connects those programs is that they give some new information (...) for decisions on the basis of previous similar legal cases; both describe cases with the help of criteria and use diverse artificial intelligence methods for different types or criteria. The first of the two programs aims to support decisions of insurance specialists by assessing the measure of the compensation for immaterial damage. The result is given by the combination of a neural network, based upon previous judicial cases, and an expert system. The neural network gives the first assessment for the sum of compensation while the expert system refines the network's output. The other program can be used by judges and lawyers in the course of preparing a decision. Studying cases of road accidents, we find that fuzzy logic methods can help to approximate decisions actually given by judges. In this way, the process of decision making by courts and lawyers receives an additional piece of information, obtained by comparing the seriousness of the actual case with that of previous cases. (shrink)