The aim of this paper is to show why the theories of impossible worlds do not fully solve the problem of counterpossibles, but merely shift it. Moreover, by making a distinction between two types of languages, we will show that some expectations about proper theory of counterfactuals might be too great.

The aim of this paper is to argue in favor of the view that some counterpossibles are false. This is done indirectly by showing that accepting the opposite view, i.e., one that ascribes truth to each and every counterpossible, results in the claim that every necessarily false theory has exactly the same consequences. Accordingly, it is shown that taking every counterpossible to be true not only undermines the value of debates over various alternative theories and their consequences, but also puts (...) into question the very possibility of such debates. In order to explicate this thesis, the close bond between counterpossibles and the so-called story prefix is explored. A number of possible responses to this criticism are also presented, and it is argued that none of them address the main problem. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a speech-act based account of presumptions. Using a score-keeping model of illocutionary games, I argue that presumptions construed as speech acts can be grouped into three illocutionary act types defined by reference to how they affect the state of a conversation. The paper is organized into two parts. In the first one, I present the score-keeping model of speech act dynamics; in particular, I distinguish between two types of mechanisms—the direct mechanism of illocution and the (...) indirect one of accommodation—that underlie the functioning of illocutionary acts. In the second part, I use the presented model to distinguish between the unilateral act of individual presumption, the point of which is to shift the burden of proof by making the hearer committed to justifying his refusal to endorse the proposition communicated by the speaker, whenever he refuses to endorse it, the bilateral act of joint presumption—‘bilateral’ in that it is performed jointly by at least two conversing agents—the function of which is to confer on the proposition endorsed by the speaker the normative status of jointly recognized though tentative acceptability, and the indirect or back-door act of collective presumption, the purpose of which is to sustain rules and practices to which the conversing agents defer the felicity of their conversational moves. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the idea of external language and examine the role it plays in our understanding of human linguistic practice. Following Michael Devitt, I assume that the subject matter of a linguistic theory is not a psychologically real computational module, but a semiotic system of physical entities equipped with linguistic properties. 2 What are the physical items that count as linguistic tokens and in virtue of what do they possess phonetic, syntactic and semantic properties? According to Devitt, (...) the entities in question are particular bursts of sound or bits of ink that count as standard linguistic entities3 — that is, strings of phonemes, sequences of words and sentences — in virtue of the conventional rules that constitute the structure of the linguistic reality. In my view, however, the bearers of linguistic properties should rather be understood as complex physical states of affairs — that I call, following Ruth G. Millikan, complete linguistic signs4 — within which one can single out their narrow and wide components, that is, (0 sounds or inscriptions produced by the speaker and (if) salient aspects of the context of their production. Moreover, I do not share Devitt's view on the nature of linguistic properties. Even though I maintain the general idea of convention-based semantics — according to which semantic properties of linguistic tokens are essentially conventional — I reject the Lewisian robust account of conventionality. Following Millikan, I assume that language conventions involve neither regular conformity nor mutual understanding. (shrink)

If we could build artificial persons (APs) with a moral status comparable to this of a typical human being, how should we design those APs in the right way? This question has been addressed mainly in terms of designing APs devoted to being servants (AP servants) and debated in reference to their autonomy and the harm they might experience. Recently, it has been argued that even if developing AP servants would neither deprive them of autonomy nor cause any net harm, (...) then developing such entities would still be unethical due to the manipulative attitude of their designers. I make two contributions to this discussion. First, I claim that the argument about manipulative attitude significantly shifts the perspective of the whole discussion on APs and that it refers to a much wider range of types of APs than has been acknowledged. Second, I investigate the possibilities of developing APs without a manipulative attitude. I proceed in the following manner: (1) I examine the argument about manipulativeness; (2) show the important novelty it brings to a discussion about APs; (3) analyze how the argument can be extrapolated to designing other kinds of Aps; and (4) discuss cases in which APs can be designed without manipulativeness. (shrink)

The present, XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet since the Chinese occupation of his native land 50 years ago has gone into exile in India. Since the seventies the Dalai Lama has started traveling the whole world, meeting with all important political leaders and scientists of all major Universities, giving thousands of lectures to crowds of people and advanced Buddhist teachings and initiations to Western Buddhists. Since receiving the Nobel Peace Przie in 1989 the Dalai Lama has become a person with (...) the worldwide moral authority, comparable only with that of the Polish Pope John Paul II. During his third visit to Poland in December 2008 the Dalai Lama has met with many important people and has given a lot of advice and inspiration. This major visit is recountedhere by the author.His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet visited Poland for the third time, between the 5th and the 12th of December 2008. The previous visits happened in 1993 and 2000, but were much smaller in scope. This time the visit was a major media and social event, drawing the nation’s attention. The Dalai Lama visited the four main cities in Poland. (shrink)

Książka ta jest poświęcona analizie filozofii politycznej Johna Deweya osadzonej w kontekście kryzysu liberalizmu po pierwszej wojnie światowej. Jedną z dróg wyjścia z impasu, w jakim znalazła się myśl liberalna, był radykalny liberalizm reprezentowany przez takich intelektualistów, jak John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Karl Polanyi i Karl Mannheim. Wymienieni myśliciele upatrywali szans na odrodzenie liberalizmu w odrzuceniu koncepcji wolnorynkowych i dialogu z myślą socjalistyczną. W pracy przedstawiono zręby ideologii radykalnego liberalizmu oraz stosunek lewicowych liberałów do innych ideologii, w szczególności zaś do (...) liberalizmu ekonomicznego i rewolucyjnego marksizmu. Osobny rozdział pracy poświęcony jest refleksji Johna Deweya na temat demokracji, która należy do najoryginalniejszych osiągnięć amerykańskiego filozofa. Przedstawiona interpretacja uwypukla związki myśli Johna Deweya z radykalizmem Nowej Lewicy oraz twórczością takich teoretyków, jak C. W. Mills Axell Honneth czy James Bohman. Drugim ważnym obszarem podejmowanych w pracy rozważań jest rekonstrukcja Deweyowskiej koncepcji myślenia jako rozwiązywania problemów. Pragmatyzm utrzymuje, że możliwe jest znalezienie mniej lub bardziej obiektywnych odpowiedzi na pytanie, co należy robić w danej problematycznej sytuacji. „Pragmatyczne oświecenie”, by posłużyć się terminem Hilarego Putnama, wyrzeka się oświeceniowego uniwersalizmu, ale nie rezygnuje całkowicie z roszczeń do obiektywności w dziedzinie rozstrzygnięć moralnych i politycznych. (shrink)

By definition, the implicit commitment of a formal theory $$\textrm{Th}$$ Th consists of sentences that are independent of the axioms of $$\textrm{Th}$$ Th, but their acceptance is implicit in the acceptance of $$\textrm{Th}$$ Th. In Cieśliński (2017, 2018), the phenomenon of implicit commitments was studied from the epistemological perspective through the lenses of the formal theory of believability. The current paper provides a comprehensive proof-theoretic analysis of this approach and compares it to other main theories of implicit commitments. We argue (...) that the formal results presented in the paper favour the believability theory over its main competitors. However, there is still a fly in the ointment. We argue that in its current formulation, the theory cannot deliver all the goods for which it was defined. In particular, being amenable to a generalised conservativeness argument, it does not support the view that the notion of truth is epistemically light. At the end of the paper, we discuss possible ways out of the problem. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the meaning and significance of legal evidence is being constituted throughout the course of a singular instance of legal proceedings. This is to be achieved by describing what legal agents _do_ while appealing to different propositions of fact and inferring from them throughout the course of legal proceedings. The authors claim that the process of applying the law is ultimately rooted in the inferential discursive practices of exchanging reasons on the part (...) of the participants of legal proceedings. Therefore, they set forth a model of legal proceedings that consists of an interplay between three types of reasons, which are exchanged by the participants of legal proceedings: i.e. legal reasons, epistemic reasons and stake reasons. To illustrate this interplay, the authors deploy a metaphor of law as a game, and provide a description of legal proceedings as a particular instance of playing a game of law. The conclusion is that the legal concept of evidence is (at least in part) constituted by the role that evidence plays in affecting which reasons for action the participants to legal proceedings choose to act on. The other final assumption of this paper is metatheoretical: authors want to show that when analyzing what legal evidence is, one should begin from the perspective of a singular instance of legal proceedings, rather than from the perspective of law in general. (shrink)

This paper aims to introduce Meinongian Abstractionism (MA), i.e. a view on the metaphysics of truthmaking and modality. This approach is based on the notion of objectives—one of the key elements of Alexius Meinong’s Theory of Objects. In the light of it, worlds are interpreted in terms of sets of subsistent and non-subsistent objectives. This—along with Meinong’s characterization of objectives—provides a ground for possible as well as impossible worlds. One of the consequences of Meinongain Abstractionism is a reformulation of the (...) relation of truthmaking in modal terms. Importantly, this reformulation avoids the problem of too-coarse grained analysis of truthmakers. This makes MA a metaphysically–oriented supporter of the so-called ‘hyperintensional revolution.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss features of the interaction between a user and digital technology and how this transforms our contemporary experience of space and place. Analyzing this interaction is important for understanding global processes of displacement and creation of what Marc Augé calls non-places and their relation to technology in general. Drawing from Heidegger’s tool-analysis, I show that displacement is a structural element of the usage of absolutely ready-to-hand, access-providing digital devices. My main argument runs as follows: a) the (...) use of digital devices bypasses place directly in our activities; b) because of that, places themselves become more and more obsolete; and c) that leads to changes in how we conceive places and placefulness of technology. Instead, we think of the latter as immaterial, without a location. The immateriality of technology that we experience is reinforcing processes of displacement, as it allows them to continue thriving without being noticed and adequately conceptualized. (shrink)

This book is about time and its powerful influence on our personal and collective daily life. It presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of contemporary knowledge on temporal psychology inspired by Zimbardo's work on Time Perspective (TP). With contributions from renowned and promising researchers from all over the globe, and at the interface of social, personality, cognitive and clinical psychology, the handbook captures the breadth and depth of the field of psychological time. Time perspective, as the way people construe (...) the past, the present and the future, is conceived and presented not only as one of the most influential dimensions in our psychological life leading to self-impairing behaviors, but also as a facet of our person that can be de-biased and supportive for well-being and happiness. Written in honor of Philip G. Zimbardo on his 80th birthday and in acknowledgement of his leading role in the field, the book contains illustrations of the countless studies and applications that his theory has stimulated, and captures the theoretical, methodological and practical pathways he opened by his prolific research. (shrink)

Piotr Kropotkin był najważniejszym przedstawicielem tzw. darwinizmu rosyjskiego oraz teorii pomocy wzajemnej, która podkreślała znaczenie współpracy wewnątrzgatunkowej w procesie doboru naturalnego oraz walki o byt. Na jej kanwie rosyjski badacz wysunął tezę o ewolucyjnych źródłach moralności, będącej problem badawczym w niniejszym artykule. Stanowi to jednocześnie powód dlaczego poza przedstawieniem wspomnianej tezy i jej założeń, w publikacji zilustrowana została także teoria pomocy wzajemnej. Zaproponowana przez Kropotkina wizja moralności suponowała, iż stanowi ona „przyrodzoną” właściwość ludzkiej natury. Podstawę dla niej stanowić ma instynkt (...) społeczny oraz jego przejawy, takie jak: równość, solidarność, sprawiedliwość, itd., a także pomoc wzajemna. Stawiało to propozycję rosyjskiego darwinisty w opozycji wobec dominujących trendów w myśleniu o ludzkiej moralności na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, zwłaszcza wobec tzw. darwinizmu społecznego i charakterystycznego dlań dualizmu moralnego. Ponadto zrywała z antropocentryzmem zakładając, iż poza gatunkiem ludzkim, także inne gatunki cechują się uczuciami moralnymi. (shrink)

In this study, we reconcile conflicting findings from the extant literature on the impact of tax system parameters on tax noncompliance. We argue that social norms play a role of heuristics facilitating tax payers’ response to the instrumental incentives posed by the systemic parameters, such as tax rate and penalties for evasion, and thus moderate the effect of those parameters on willingness to evade taxes. Relying on a unique survey experiment conducted in fourteen countries of Central-Eastern Europe, we demonstrate two (...) types of a conditioning effect of norms. First, the impact of tax rates on respondents’ propensity for tax evasion is moderated by the perceived norms of the society at large. In particular, an increasing tax rate lowers the probability of evasion as long as one views “most others” as honest taxpayers, which highlights the importance of equitability concerns for tax compliance decisions. In contrast, the impact of punishment is moderated by the perceived norms of one’s immediate reference group. Strong subjective compliance norms tend to effectively replace penalties as a mechanism discouraging tax evasion, suggesting that the deterrent effect of a penalty can be entirely suppressed when subjective norms are strong. These findings have important implications for the understanding of tax compliance decisions under different formal and informal regimes. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate (...) results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

Recent research observed a sensitive window, at about 14 years of age, in the acculturation rates of Chinese immigrants to Canada. Tapping an online sample ofusimmigrants, we tested these relationships in a broader population and explored connections with new potentially causally related variables: formal education, language ability and contact with heritage-culture and mainstream United States individuals, both now and at immigration. While we found that acculturation decreased with age at immigration and increased with years in theus, we did not observe (...) a similar sensitive window. We also present an exploratory path analysis, exposing the relationships in our sample between acculturation and the variables above. The novel relationships documented here can improve theorising about this rich and complex empirical phenomenon. (shrink)

Time perspective theory provides a robust conceptual framework for analyzing human behavior in the context of time. So far, the concept has been studied and applied in multiple life domains, such as education, health, social relationships, environmental behavior, or financial behavior; however its explanatory potential has been completely neglected within the domain of sport. In the present paper we provide a deepened theoretical analysis of the potential role of temporal framing of human experience for sport-related attitudes, emotions, and athletic performance. (...) We propose a conceptual model in which time perspectives influence psychological functioning and performance of athletes via three major mechanisms: 1) magnitude and persistence of sport motivation and resulting athlete engagement, 2) regulation of affective states during sport performance, and 3) appraisal of one’s performance and coping with resulting emotions. We support the theoretical considerations based on the major assumptions of time perspective theory with research findings regarding the regulatory role of time perspectives in other life domains. We also highlight potential research paths that would allow us to empirically test the present model and determine the actual role of temporal perspectives in shaping crucial aspects of athletes’ psychological functioning, as well as levels of their sport performance. (shrink)

Artykuł oferuje nowe rozwiązanie problemu usytuowania umysłu (situated cognition), polegające na wykazaniu, jak i dlaczego ludzki umysł wydobywa z otoczenia nie informację, lecz wiedzę. Wiedza jest definiowana jako informacja posiadająca dla organizmu określoną wartość. Zaprezentowany został mechanizm, za pomocą którego owa wartość zostaje do bodźca informacyjnego wprowadzona. Usytuowanie – według tej interpretacji – polega na tym, że część poznania procesów człowieka wykonują za niego inni ludzie, mianowicie ci, którzy wytworzyli jego otoczenie poznawcze. Otoczenie poznawcze jest definiowane jako suma wartościowych bodźców (...) informacyjnych. Wiedza wydobyta z otoczenia definiuje różne style poznawcze człowieka, które – z uwagi na zewnętrzne źródło klasyfikacji – nazywane są ekotypami poznawczymi. Wyróżnione zostają cztery ekotypy poznawcze człowieka, na podstawie kształtu ich otoczenia poznawczego (rodzaje ofert ucieleśniających wartościową informację) oraz kompetencji poznawczych niezbędnych do wydobycia wiedzy z otoczenia. (shrink)

The idea of sustainable consumption is discussed as a plausible alternative to consumerism on condition that it has an anthropological and moral underpinning. Contrary to what many people believe, the real dilemma regarding the consumer society is neither ecological, nor technological, but moral. Deplorable side-effects of consumerism, including environmental damage, are due to its extremely reductive vision of the human nature. Selected moral consequences of this false anthropology are presented. Integral human formation is indicated as a major solution to the (...) degenerate anthropology and bogus happiness of the consumer society. (shrink)

Musical Work Analysis is a holistic approach to the cognitive theory of the musical work. The book develops some of Roman Ingarden's concepts on the epistemology of an actually existing work of music. The author outlines an epistemological theory of the musical work by discussing the role of musical analysis in modern musicology, defining sources and objects of epistemological activity, formulating a systematization of analytical terms, issues and methods, both normative and descriptive, and addressing the relation between analysis and interpretation (...) of a musical work. The book was published in Polish language in edition of the Foundation for Polish Science (Wrocław University Press, Wrocław 2003) and awarded by the Polish Ministry of National Education (2004). (shrink)

This article demonstrates the fallacy of legal deduction as a method which is supposed to guarantee the certainty and predictability of the law. The Author asserts that legal deduction is in fact not of a logical nature. Their premises are of an uneven character or else one of them must be created in a non-mechanical way. This in turn makes legal deduction that is comprehended as a mode of inference that is infallible, provided its premises are true / valid nothing (...) more than misunderstanding and fallacy. In addition, in this paper, the outcomes of legal deduction are shown to be highly dependent on the direct and indirect context under the threat of their being utterly absurd. Since the lack of fixity and clarity, these contexts, however, may lead one to madness, i. e. at least unless she or he abandons the idea that only logical types of inferences govern legal deduction and are solely responsible for its outcomes. (shrink)

Many irreconcilable accounts of ratio legis in legal science, often concerned with legal interpretation, suffer from being disconnected from practical reasoning. Different theories of legal interpretation which result in one-sided views of ratio legis are by-products of one-sided semantics. The first part of the chapter diagnoses this problem by providing a model of three types of one-sided semantics—upstream, midstream and downstream—and explaining how they translate into respective accounts of legal interpretation and ratio legis. The second part of the chapter presents (...) an alternative to one-sided semantics in legal theory. The alternative account which combines semantics and practical reasoning in legal theory is based on Brandom’s inferential pragmatism. The usefulness of inferential pragmatism in legal theory with regard to the problem of ratio legis is tested and followed by extending an inferentialist account of ratio legis provided by Canale and Tuzet. A model of agent’s actions and reasons, and their impact on the reasoning of interpreters and decision-makers is the essential part of this extension. (shrink)

The paper develops a score-keeping model of illocutionary games and uses it to account for mechanisms responsible for creating institutional facts construed as rights and commitments of participants in a dialogue. After introducing the idea of Austinian games—understood as abstract entities representing different levels of the functioning of discourse—the paper defines the main categories of the proposed model: interactional negotiation, illocutionary score, appropriateness rules and kinematics rules. Finally, it discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in illocutionary games and (...) argues that the proposed model presupposes an externalist account of illocutionary practice. (shrink)

Normativity and Variety of Speech Actions embraces papers focused on the performative dimension of language. While all texts in the volume recognize speech primarily as a type of action, the collection is indicative of the multifaceted nature of J.L. Austin’s original reflection, which invited many varied research programmes. The problems addressed in the volume are discussed with reference to data culled from natural conversation, mediated political discourse, law, and literary language, and include normativity, e.g. types of norms operative in speech (...) acts, speaker’s intentions and commitments, speaker-addressee coordination, but also speech actions in discursive practice, in literal and non-literal language, performance of irony, presupposition, and meaningful significant silence. -/- Contributors are: Brian Ball, Cristina Corredor, Anita Fetzer, Milada Hirschová, Dennis Kurzon, Marcin Matczak, Marina Sbisà, Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka, Maciej Witek, and Mateusz Włodarczyk. (shrink)

The paper aims to develop an interactional account of illocutionary practice, which results from integrating elements of Millikan's biological model of language within the framework of Austin's theory of speech acts. The proposed account rests on the assumption that the force of an act depends on what counts as its interactional effect or, in other words, on the response that it conventionally invites or attempts to elicit. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first one reconsiders Austin's and Millikan's (...) contributions to the study of linguistic practice. The second part presents the main tenets of the interactional account. In particular, it draws a distinction between primary and secondary conventional patterns of interaction and argues that they make up coherent systems representing different language games or activity types; it is also argued that the proposed account is not subject to the massive ambiguity problem. (shrink)

This paper develops a new argument for ontological pluralism—the thesis that being fragments. The argument goes, roughly, as follows. It is conceivable that some beings are ontologically dissimilar. So, it is possible that some beings are ontologically dissimilar. This is sufficient for ontological pluralism. So, being fragments.

The subject of this article is the Principle of Characterization—the most controversial principle of Alexius Meinong’s Theory of Objects. The aim of this text is twofold. First of all, to show that Bertrand Russell’s well-known objection to the Principle of Characterization can be reformulated against contemporary unrestricted interpretations of it. Second, to propose an alternative formulation of this principle. This refers to the methodology of metaphysics and is based on the distinction between pre-theoretical and theoretical languages. The proposed formulation fits (...) well with every type of contemporary interpretation of the Theory of Objects and helps to overcome Russell’s criticism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of faultless disagreement for predicates of taste may be fruitfully explained by appealing to the vagueness of predicates of taste and the epistemicist reading of vagueness as defended by Timothy Williamson (1994). I begin by arguing that this position is better suited to explain both the “faultless” and “disagreement” intuition. The first is explained here by appealing to the necessary ignorance of the predicate’s boundaries and a plausible account of constitutive norms of (...) taste assertions, while the second by insisting on classical, absolutist semantics for judgments containing predicates of taste. Furthermore, I analyze the arguments against the reading of taste predicates as vague based on the alleged epistemic privilege concerning one’s taste and on the lack of definite cases. Responding to these objections, I develop a plausible account of constitutive norms of taste assertions, comment on the assumed epistemic privilege concerning taste ascriptions and provide a more detailed account of sources of the vagueness of predicates of personal taste, which I dub “super-vagueness.”. (shrink)

The common view has it that there are two families of approaches towards the logical structure of impossible worlds – Australasian and North American. According to the first, impossible worlds are closed under the relation of logical consequence of one of the non-classical logics. The North American approach is more liberal, allowing for impossible worlds where no logic holds. After pointing out the questionable consequences of each view, I propose a third one. While this new perspective allows for worlds where (...) no logical consequence holds, it also imposes some constraints on what worlds are built upon. This renders the proposed view not as restrictive as the Australasian approach and not as liberal as the North American approach. Due to its intermediary nature, I have named this perspective ‘the Pacific’ approach. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is influencing our lives in an enormous and unprecedented way. Here, we explore COVID-19-lockdown's consequences for creative activity. To this end, we relied on two extensive diary studies. The first, held on March 2019, involved 78 students who reported their emotions and creativity over 2 weeks. The second, conducted on March 2020, involved 235 students who reported on their emotions, creativity, and the intensity of thinking and talking about COVID-19 over a month. We found that (...) compared with 2019, during the lockdown, students engaged slightly yet statistically significantly more in creative activities. An analysis of diaries collected during the pandemic also showed that the days when students spent more time discussing or searching for information about COVID-19 were characterized by a higher creative activity yet also mixed emotions. We discuss potential explanations of these unexpected results along with future study directions. (shrink)

This paper examines how Japan has embraced advanced technologies to address the challenges of an aging society and shrinking labor markets. Using Japan as a case study, this paper explores the relationship between human dignity, the intrinsic value of work, and the fourth industrial revolution. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section describes the scale of aging and shrinking labor markets in Japan, and the measures that the Japanese government has used to tackle these problems. The second (...) section offers a selection of five mini cases that show how advanced technologies are used in different sectors of the Japanese economy. The third section outlines some ethical concerns that go beyond utilitarian benefits of using advanced technologies to address the problem of aging. The perspective of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is adopted as a main advocate of a person-centered social ethics. The fourth section offers an assessment of Japan’s experiment and outlines further research opportunities. (shrink)

This chapter explores the axiological convergence between classical liberalism and Catholic Social Thought (CST). The chapter argues that CST and classical liberals should build on their complementary values to strengthen public support for liberal democracy and a free-market economy among Catholic voters and in society at large. Although populist regimes, especially far-right conservative nationalists, portray liberalism as an antithesis of Catholicism, this chapter shows that there is a broad consensus between the two traditions. Contrary to far-right populist positions, the chapter (...) argues that it is possible to maintain Catholic values in a liberal market democracy without denouncing one’s religious identity. The chapter emphasizes the importance of re-constructing a centrist tradition of Catholic liberal thought to mitigate populist assault on political, economic, and social freedoms. (shrink)

The paper develops a non-Gricean account of accommodation: a contextadjusting process guided by the assumption that the speaker’s utterance constitutes an appropriate conversational move. The paper is organized into three parts. The first one reconstructs the basic tenets of Lepore and Stone's non-Gricean model of meaningmaking, which results from integrating direct intentionalism and extended semantics. The second part discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in conversational practice. The third part uses the tenets of the non-Gricean model of meaning-making (...) to account for the discursive mechanisms underlying accommodation; the proposed account relies on a distinction between the rules of appropriateness, which form part of extendedgrammar, and the Maxim of Appropriateness, which functions as a discursive norm guiding our conversational practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss one of Peter van Inwagen’s charges against the Meinongian thesis, which states that some objects do not exist. The charges aimed to show that the thesis either leads to a contradiction or that it is obscure. Both consequences support the opposite Quinean thesis, which states that every object exists. As opposed to the former, the latter ought to be consistent and clear. I argue why there is no contradiction in the Meinongian thesis and why the (...) Quinean thesis is not clear. (shrink)