University study can be a life period of heightened psychological distress for many students. The development of new preventive and intervention programs to support well-being in university students is a fundamental challenge for mental health professionals. We designed an 8-week online mindfulness-based program combining a face-to-face approach, text, audio, video components, and support psychotherapy principles with a unique intensive reminder system using the Facebook Messenger and Slack applications in two separate runs. We assessed the program’s effect on mindful experiencing, perceived (...) stress, emotion regulation strategies, self-compassion, negative affect, and quality of life. The results of the presented pilot study confirmed that eMBP is a feasible and effective tool in university students’ mental health support. The students who completed the eMBP reported a reduction of perceived stress with a large effect size as well as a decrease of negative affect experience frequency and intensity, an increase of being mindful in their life, and a higher rate of self-compassion with a medium effect size. A small effect size was found in the frequency of using a cognitive reappraisal strategy. One new result is the observation of an eMBP effect on the decrease in attributed importance to the quality-of-life components replicated in two consecutive runs of the program. The study affirms that mindfulness-based interventions can be effectively delivered in an eHealth form to university students. (shrink)

One of the important topics in the field of philosophy of religion is the relationship between the various forms of the Divine, in particular the wellknown distinction between "philosophical God" and personalist understandings of God (Blaise Pascal). Spinoza's ethics is oriented mainly to the argumentation of the first understanding and is its consistent implementation. Hegel's interpretation of Spinoza is reconstructed here in view of the question of pantheism and atheism in Spinoza's system and whether and to what extent Hegel rehabilitated (...) and "justified" Spinoza. Our thesis is that Hegel's position on too many God in Spinoza is incomplete and imprecise. (shrink)

Grammatische Ausdrucksmittel der Hierarchisierung der semantischen Struktur des Satzes.

Continuing the tradition of Oxford Calculatorial physics, the late fourteenth-century British Carmelite Richard Lavenham authored an amplification of the popular short textbook commonly referred to as Termini naturales. A copy of this amplification, preserved in a late fourteenth-century manuscript (Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, ms Lat. Z. 300 [= 1872]), is followed by a short series of notes and comments on some of the principles introduced in Lavenham’s treatise (drawn from the first four books of Aristotle’s Physics). The present article offers (...) an edition of the text, and analyses its content and relationship with fourteenth-century physics, especially with the physical doctrines of Richard Lavenham. (shrink)

In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Italian logician, natural philosopher, and doctor of medicine Cajetan of Thiene wrote a commentary on William Heytesbury’s Regulae solvendi sophismata, which later became a part of the printed edition of Heytesbury’s treatises. Several late fifteenth century reprints sustained its circulation and further influence. Following Heytesbury, Cajetan listed four alternative treatments of paradoxes, where the first three were formulated in general logico-semantic terms and the last one in terms of obligationes. The present (...) analysis reconstructs the first three positions in terms of the theories of logical operators endorsed as part of the solution to paradoxes. This reconstruction uncovers different underlying views of operators, namely context-sensitive, value-functional, and supervaluationist.Priore dimidia parte saeculi 15 Caietanus de Thiena, logicus, physicus et medicus, commentarium super G. Hentisberi Regulis solvendi sophismata conscripsit, quod posterius una cum Hentisberi tractatibus typis impressum est. Cuius commentarii notitiam auctoritatemque continuam iteratae nonnullae eius editiones in fi ne 15 saeculi factae sustinebant. Caietanus quattuor vias tractandi insolubilia distinxit, quarum tres primae conceptibus generalibus logico-semanticis, quarta doctrina de obligationibus innixae sunt. In analysi hic proposita auctor primas tres vias reconstruit, doctrinas varias de logicis coniunctionibus vel notis reserans, super quibus illae viae solvendi paradoxa fundantur. Quarum prima vim notarum a contextu sermonis dependentem facit. Altera notas pure “compositionaliter” tractat. Tertia iuxta modum doctrinae de “supervaluatione” omnes formales tautologias servat, aliis considerationibus neglectis. (shrink)

Further development of the research on the fourteenth-century logic of iterated modalities leads to further exploration in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian scholasticism, in particular, the contributions of Paul of Venice and his followers. The research confirms the well-established notion of “British logic in Italy”, as the major logical strategies used in the analysed works can be traced back to earlier British authors. Logically speaking, the problem of iterated epistemic modalities was framed as debate on the consistency of the hypothesis that (...) an agent doubts whether she knows φ and the hypothesis that an agent knows φ and doubts whether she knows φ, in which the principles of positive and negative introspection play a major part. Philosophically speaking, the debate on the possibility of doubting one’s own knowledge utilised theories of evidence and scientific proof and philosophy of the mind. (shrink)

The author finds the possibility of overcoming the current liberal-capitalist system in a different conception of time, which requires a different attitude towards both the past and the future. The paper begins with an analysis of the Benjamin?s critique of Marx, followed by analysis of Derrida?s critique of Benjamin and finally Derrida?s critique of Marx. Benjamin points out the problem of teleological understanding of time, the understanding that the meaning of events comes only from the future, which is present in (...) Marx, and which prevents us from escaping the?circle? of violence. Although he relies on Benjamin?s conception of time, the author seeks to transcend the understanding of law as something separate from justice, and law as violence. Therefore, the paper turns to Derrida and his understanding of the law, eventually providing new possibilities for understanding and constituting the left, social theory, but also critical thinking today. (shrink)

We study cardinal invariants of systems of meager hereditary families of subsets of ω connected with the collapse of the continuum by Sacks forcing S and we obtain a cardinal invariant yω such that S collapses the continuum to yω and y ≤ yω ≤ b. Applying the Baumgartner-Dordal theorem on preservation of eventually narrow sequences we obtain the consistency of y = yω < b. We define two relations $\leq _{0}^{\ast}$ and $\leq _{1}^{\ast}$ on the set $(^{\omega}\omega)_{{\rm Fin}}$ of (...) finite-to-one functions which are Tukey equivalent to the eventual dominance relation of functions such that if $\germ{F}\subseteq (^{\omega}\omega)_{Fin}$ is $\leq _{1}^{\ast}$ -unbounded, well-ordered by $\leq _{1}^{\ast}$ , and not $\leq _{0}^{\ast}$ -dominating, then there is a nonmeager p-ideal. The existence of such a system F follows from Martin's axiom. This is an analogue of the results of [3], [9, 10] for increasing functions. (shrink)

Although Slovenia is a small, relatively new nation-state, it has been justifiably called “neocorporatist” and a “coordinated market economy,” making it unique among postcommunist societies, including ten new EU member states. The authors explore how it became so, and in the process shed light on the debate between varieties of capitalism and power resources theories about how coordinated or neocorporatist economies emerge. Although several of the elements predicted by the varieties of capitalism perspective were present in Slovenia, others were not. (...) The authors also find that a significant mobilization by organized labor at a crucial point played an essential role, and overall find that power resources theory has greater explanatory power in this case. However, in turning from explaining how the Slovenian model was formed to why it was so unique among postcommunist cases, they find that specific historical legacies were critical, particularly those from the distinct Yugoslav form of communism. (shrink)

Záměr zkoumat metafyziku stoické filosofické školy naráží na řadu problémů. Předně se metafyzikou zabývali zejména nejstarší stoičtí filosofové, především Zénón, Chrýsippos a Kleanthés, ovšem bohužel právě od nich se plně nedochoval žádný spis a tak o jejich filosofických postojích získáváme informace z druhotných zdrojů, jejichž autoři měli často ke stoické filosofii odmítavý postoj. Zároveň se názory těchto myslitelů v určitých bodech rozcházely a stoická filosofie sama procházela vývojem a proměnami, které zprostředkovány jen druhotnými zdroji působí značné interpretační potíže. Přes tyto (...) obtíže se v tomto textu pokoušíme podat přehled základní struktury stoické metafyziky, tak jak se v tomto nejstarším období zformovala, přičemž poukazujeme na některé problémové či sporné otázky. Východiskem je pro naši analýzu pojem tělesa, od něhož docházíme k rekonstrukci třístupňové stoické metafyziky a nejuniverzálnější kategorie „něco“. Následně se věnujeme činnému a trpnému principu tělesnosti a od nich se odvíjejícího metafyzického systému. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, Volume 32, Issue 1, Page 33-54, Spring 2021.

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach. This is a reply to Burke.

Puente Hurtado de Mendoza (1578–1641), Iberian Jesuit and author of one of the earliest comprehensive Baroque philosophy courses, entered the debate on the modality “moral” or “morally” in the sense of a qualifier of evidence, certainty, being, and necessity or impossibility in the first half of the seventeenth century. This paper presents his analysis of the different forms (or levels) of evidence and necessity or impossibility in 1630s, where “moral” represents the weakest degree of these properties. First, it covers the (...) notion of moral evidence in the sense of a wise decision that is in accordance with the consensus of either the majority of mankind or of the learned community, as introduced in Disputationes de Deo. Second, it covers the notions of moral necessity and impossibility, introduced in De Deo homine in terms of a strong inclination, and developed in Hurtado’s later theological texts. Third, Hurtado introduced the notion “morally” in his De actibus humanis in frequentist terms. (shrink)

De Neys proposes an elegant solution to several theoretical problems of the dual-process theories but underspecifies the role of motivation in initiating, intensifying, and ceasing deliberation. Therefore, I suggest including a meta-cognitive control component in the working model that can moderate deliberation, for instance by affecting the deliberation threshold.

The paper aims to present Spinoza’s understanding of the ontological status of finite beings, which was heavily influenced by mathematics, i.e. geometry. Spinoza stratified finite beings into two fairly incompatible layers: the one subjectively conceived, while the other is the objective level. The first level is related to the essence of being that is caused by God through immanent causality: here, we speak of entailment on the logical and epistemological level, and not the level of reality. Unlike essence, existence represents (...) the second level of being: existence is caused by the real finite being through transeunt cause. The first level, by its ontological status, is very close to mathematical entities, therefore the qualification that Spinoza ‘geometrized reality under a species of the essences’. Namely, he geometrized the segment under the scope of ontology, i.e. the essences of finite modes. The final part of the paper is dedicated to one of the main reasons why Spinoza failed to provide a satisfactory solution to this ontological problem, which is not the only such problem of his system. This would be that Spinoza paid too much attention on ethics, to the detriment of metaphysics, i.e. ontology as general metaphysics. For Spinoza, ontology is subjected to epistemology and ethics, therefore the name ‘functional metaphysics’. (shrink)

Insolubilia novissima is a short anonymous fifteenth-century treatise on semantic paradoxes printed in the Cambridge compendium Libellus sophistarum. Along with a working edition of this treatise, basic information about its content and historical and systematic context is offered. Insolubilia novissima endorses the Swyneshedian contextualist solution to paradoxes based on distinguishing between compositional and contextual meaning of sentences.

We investigate the classes of ideals for which the Egoroff’s theorem or the generalized Egoroff’s theorem holds between ideal versions of pointwise and uniform convergences. The paper is motivated by considerations of Korch :269–282, 2017).

In 2004 in Prague, I met Slovak philosopher Miroslav Marcelli, who had attended Foucault's lectures in Paris in 80s. We talked about the legacy of Foucault and contemporary philosophy. Mr. Marcelli taught me philosophy at Comenius University in 1995.. I never visited his lectures, I only passed the exam.. The most interesting point was his answer to my 'provocations' replicating the common prejudice about impracticability of the philosophy. He answered "Do you think that e.g. Descartes didn't know about it?" (...) In fact, people tend to think that philosophers or mathematicians, are "asocial" without "social" intelligence, while their occasional isolation (e.g. Nietzsche) is a product of social exclusion, rather than their choice. In 2013 I applied Foucault's concept of Discontinuity to short 10 minutes movie: Discontinuity, projected in my exhibition "From Animation" in Holland Park, London. The film has 3 parts, ends as it starts to show the significant historical events in 4 windows, when the same idea appears to disappear to re-appear.. Foucault's philosophy doesn't seem to me so unique now, e.g. the idea that many historical changes or progress itself is often illusionary - masking the power structure, had already been explored 515 BC, in depth by Parmenides who concluded: the change is impossible. (shrink)

Prior research has suggested that perceptual disfluency activates analytical processing and increases the solution rate of mathematical problems with appealing but incorrect answers (i.e., the Cogn...

Background: -/- Having colonised the social role ‘woman’, and entering female-only spaces, there is one bastion of womanhood left which has always been closed off to men who claim to be women: the inner life, the phenomenology of inhabiting a female sexed body. This bastion has come under attack; trans women claim that they ‘feel like a woman’ or that they are ‘a woman inside’. The aim of this essay is to assess such claims. -/- The appropriation of ‘womanhood’ by (...) males leads to the sidelining of women. Trans women are lauded as exemplars of womanhood. They are crowned ‘woman of the year’, become university women’s officers, represent women in political parties, or are being nominated for a women’s prize for fiction. The message is that trans women make for better ‘women’. The philosophical underpinnings for this view can be found in the work of Talia Mae Bettcher. -/- Road Map: -/- Part I: Recently, trans women have been claiming to have the phenomenal experience of women (I am a woman inside; I feel like a woman). Relying on Thomas Nagel[1] and Frank Jackson,[2] I will argue that they are in error. The inner life of trans women is fundamentally different from that of women, because the former cannot take up the female perspective. Being a woman means, among other things, to have a female body and, consequently, to experience yourself and the world through a female body. This is the core of being a woman, and trans women can never satisfy this condition, because they are – and remain – male-bodied (regardless of any bodily modifications). Thus, such claims are simply wrong. Trans women are not physiologically equipped to share in the female phenomenal experience. -/- Without a female body there is no female experience; the latter relies on the presence of the former.[3] This means that trans women are not women because a) they lack the respective body, and b) they lack the respective phenomenal experience. Their imitations of the female (experience) don’t make them into women. -/- Part II: Trans theory offers a way out, by sidelining the body. Talia Mae Bettcher’s account of ‘first-person authority’ (henceforth, FPA) about gender as well as the ‘liberatory project’ constitutes the strongest defence available to take the avowals of trans people (about sex, gender and their phenomenal experience) seriously. Bettcher’s theory has two advantages. It doesn’t matter whether you have a female body or not, and it doesn’t matter whether you are mistaken about your avowals or not (i.e. the epistemic question). The avowals of transgender people have ‘ethical force’, rather than epistemic force. This would mean that we need to affirm trans women in their belief that ‘trans women are women’, and it would follow that the ethical force would underwrite their claims of feeling like a woman inside. I will subject Bettcher’s cogitations to philosophical scrutiny; this is something that, surprisingly, is missing in the literature. Most subsequent writers adopt Bettcher’s FPA uncritically. I will conclude that Bettcher’s project fails, and that trans claims about having the phenomenal experience of women cannot find support from Bettcher’s FPA. -/- [1] Nagel, T. 1974. What is it like to be a bat?, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83:4, pp. 435–450. -/- [2] Jackson, F. 1986. What Mary didn’t know, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 83:5, pp. 291–295. -/- [3] A stillborn girl is female, although she will never have female experiences. Her body is the condition of the possibility for having female experiences, i.e. for ‘being’ a woman. (shrink)

Expanding on the recent research of Stephen Read and Catarina Dutilh Novaes concerning Thomas Bradwardine's theory of truth, the present paper makes an effort to analyse the Currian conditional in terms of the so-called ?Bradwardine principle?, i.e. the principle that meaning is closed under entailment. Based upon two possible applications of this approach, alternative solutions to the issues of semantic pathology and trivialisation of deductive systems are presented.

The subject of the present article is the analysis of fundamental logical-semantical terminology of late-medieval nominalistic logician Jean Buridan (c. 1295–1360). The analysis focuses on the concepts of truth conditions and logical consequence, whose clarification presupposes explication of modal terminology as well as a solution of semantical antinomies such as “Liar” (or an attempt to solve them). The analysis of Buridan’s argumentation suggests that Buridan’s project of logic actually fails due to several failures of conceptual analysis of semantical and modal (...) terminology. An alternative solution of the question concerning logical consequence is thus proposed in terms of Buridan’s implicit (and unused) semantical conception of modalities that makes it possible to establish conceptually and therefore explicatively closed logical framework. (shrink)

From a general semantic point of view, Thomas Bricot and John Mair are proponents of the solution to semantic paradoxes based on appreciation of the contextuality of truth, who differ in their approach to the relations of logical consequence and contradiction. The core of the study is the analysis of Mair's criticism of Bricot presented in the sixth quaestio of his Tractatus insolubilium where the consequences of non-compositional semantics for the concepts of synonymy and logical form are addressed. The polemic (...) between John Mair and Thomas Bricot is construed as having immediate consequences for research in the area of non-compositional semantics. (shrink)

The so-called “Trinitarian paralogisms” are apparently legitimate instances of syllogistic inference-schemes with premises and conclusions containing expressions of the language of the Trinity doctrine, which fail to be truth- or acceptability-preserving. The logical problem of the Trinity splits into two levels of analysis. First, the technical aspects of Trinitarian paralogisms are analysed in terms of logical innovations in theories of “suppositio” and “distributio”. Second, the philosophical aspect of Trinitarian paralogisms translates into the question of formality as general applicability of logic. (...) The sixteenth century tradition can be reconstructed as a reaction to the fourteenth century nominalist logical analysis. As opposed to post-medieval scholasticism developing the medieval approach, humanism and reformation criticise scholastic logic in terms of diff erent specifi c anthropological theories. (shrink)