If climate change represents a severe threat to humankind, why then is response to it characterized by inaction at all levels? The authors argue there are two complementary explanations for the lack of motivation. First, our moral judgment system appears to be unable to identify climate change as an important moral problem and there are pervasive doubts about the agency of individuals. This explanation, however, is incomplete: Individual emitters can effectively be held morally responsible for their luxury emissions. Second, doubts (...) about individual agency have become overly emphasized and fail to convincingly exonerate individuals from responsibility. This book extends the second explanation for the motivational gap, namely that the arguments for the lack of individual agency do in fact correspond to mechanisms of moral disengagement. The use of these mechanisms enables consumption elites to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions. (shrink)

The article sets out to initiate a dialogue between two normative conceptions of democratic society, overwhelmingly depicted as irreconcilable by the partisans of each position: the political liberalism of John Rawls and the radical democracy of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The paper argues that both approaches share the same underlying ethos in envisioning society (called the “the ethos of contingency” in the paper) informing Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of radical democracy and hegemony, as well as Rawls's view of justice (...) as fairness conceived in terms of reciprocity with its accompanying idea of public reason and reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Since 1984 when J. Lotman’s article “On semiosphere” was published, this concept has been moving from one terminological field to another. In the disciplinary terminological field of the Tartu–Moscow School semiotics of culture, ‘semiosphere’ is connected with terms ‘language — secondary modelling system — text — culture’. From interdisciplinary terminological fields, the associations either with biosphere and noosphere, or with logosphere, are more important. As a metadisciplinary concept, semiosphere belongs to the methodology of culture studies and is associated with the (...) concepts of holism and the part and the whole. In this context, semiosphere marks the complementarity of disciplines studying culture, the movement towards the creation of general culture studies and “understanding methodology”. On the background of the contemporary trends of science it has to be remembered that semiosphere is simultaneously an object- and a metaconcept. The dynamism of culture as a research object forces science to search for new description languages but the new description languages in turn influence the cultural dynamics as they offer new possibilities for self-description. Often, however, from a historical perspective, a new description language is nothing but a methodological translation. Thus also the term semiosphere joins together several concepts that are related to semiotics of culture and that have gained new relevance on the background of the culture’s developmental dynamics. The concept of semiosphere brings semiotics of culture again into contact with its history, as it also brings applicational cultural analysis into contact with the history of culture and with the newest phenomena in culture. These contacts determine the place of the semiotics of culture among the sciences studying culture. (shrink)

Within current debates about the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on human society, roughly three different perspectives can be recognised: the technology-centric perspective, claiming that AI will soon outperform humankind in all areas, and that the primary threat for humankind is superintelligence; the human-centric perspective, claiming that humans will always remain superior to AI when it comes to social and societal aspects, and that the main threat of AI is that humankind’s social nature is overlooked in technological designs; and the (...) collective intelligence-centric perspective, claiming that true intelligence lies in the collective of intelligent agents, both human and artificial, and that the main threat for humankind is that technological designs create problems at the collective, systemic level that are hard to oversee and control. The current paper offers the following contributions: a clear description for each of the three perspectives, along with their history and background; an analysis and interpretation of current applications of AI in human society according to each of the three perspectives, thereby disentangling miscommunication in the debate concerning threats of AI; and a new integrated and comprehensive research design framework that addresses all aspects of the above three perspectives, and includes principles that support developers to reflect and anticipate upon potential effects of AI in society. (shrink)

The most common difficulty in translation studies has traditionally been the dilemma between the historical and synchronic approaches in the analysis and description of the culture of translation. On the one hand the culture of translation might be presented as the sum of various kinds of translated texts (repertoire of culture), on the other hand it might be described as the hierarchy of the various types of translations themselves. The first approach assumes plenty of languages for such description, in the (...) latter one suggests only one language for the same representation. A cultural critic faces the same problems. In these perspectives the translation reveals important mechanisms of the performance of culture. First of all it is the semiotic interpretation of the theory of translation, introduced by the number of scientists beginning with R. Jakobson and including U. Eco who put together interlinguistic, intra-linguistic, and inter-semiotic translations, so crucial for the further understanding of culture. As a result, the general notion of culture might be described as the process of total translation. And secondly, the othervaluable contribution to the theory of translation has been made by both M. Bakhtin and J. Lotman in terms of the synthesis of two traditions in semiotics of culture resulted in juxtaposing such notions as dialogism and autonomy — creolization, polyphony, counterword, and translation. (shrink)

This biography of Jacques Derrida tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world – a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the École Normale Supérieure, the cluster of (...) structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of 1968 and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage. And we watch as a concept – deconstruction – takes wing and exerts an extraordinary influence way beyond the philosophical world, on literary studies, architecture, law, theology, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. In writing this compelling and authoritative biography, Benoît Peeters talked to over a hundred individuals who knew and worked with Derrida. He is also the first person to make use of the huge personal archive built up by Derrida throughout his life and of his extensive correspondence. Peeters’ book gives us a new and deeper understanding of the man who will perhaps be seen as the major philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to identify the forms of being of science in the philosophy of the Muslim thinker Abū Naṣr Muhammad al-Fārābī, who lived in the 9th–10th centuries. In this regard, the article first addresses the problem of the origin of science. The enumeration of sciences is manifested in al-Farabi’s research as “divine science,” that is, metaphysics and individual sciences, with a Muslim specificity. Science as a process of cognition is an ascent from the imperfect to the (...) perfect. The First Cause (the First Being) of everything is the absolute perfection. It is also a deity and the “cause” of the origin of sciences. The comprehensive encyclopedism of al-Farabi’s predetermined science is a kind of worldview. In this context, he distinguished between the science of language, logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, and civil science, which explains the essence of real happiness. Only members of the ideal community (“the inhabitants of a virtuous city”) are able to achieve happiness. Therefore, the study of sciences in totality creates the respective “virtuous” worldview. (shrink)

In this commentary, I discuss three aspects of Monique Deveaux’s account. First, the method of Grounded Normative Theorizing she adopts to engage directly with the contexts and views of those experiencing poverty fits within a range of proposals to enhance the methodology of moral and political philosophy, and I would call on all philosophers working in this space to further develop these innovative methodologies. Second, Deveaux extends the capabilities approach by focusing on the group-based character of poverty and making the (...) case for building the collective capabilities of poor-led social movements. While I do not substantially disagree with this argument (in practice), I argue that we should be careful to avoid normative collectivism (as a theoretical assumption). Finally, Deveaux discusses political solidarity with people experiencing poverty. I argue that this should be based on esteeming each other’s various contributions in more diverse ways than only in narrow economic terms. Treating people in poverty and poor-led social movements as agents of justice, as Deveaux advocates, is a significant step in this endeavour. (shrink)

RESUMO A Escola de Tártu-Moscou aceitou, como atitude profissional, reconstruir a tradição e ligar-se com as realizações - esquecidas ou reprimidas cultural e cientificamente - das primeiras décadas do séc. XX. Uma missão de Lotman como um de seus líderes foi conhecer e mediar a herança esquecida. Na situação de censura muitos contatos entre Lotman e a teoria russa não estavam visíveis. Dessa forma, a síntese de Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein e outros, num intenso diálogo implícito, pode ser a (...) base para a formação da próxima etapa da semiótica da cultura. Enfim, a compreensão de Tynianov acerca da dinâmica literária e cultural, a teoria semiótica lotmaniana de texto e seus pensamentos sobre um modelo de espaço como uma das linguagens primárias da cultura, e a teoria bakhtiniana do cronotopo formam um complexo teórico que pode oferecer novas possibilidades para o desenvolvimento tanto dos princípios culturais teóricos e práticos quanto da análise textual. ABSTRACT The Tartu‒Moscow School accepted as its professional attitude to reconstruct the tradition and connect itself to the forgotten or repressed cultural-scientific achievements of the period of the first decades of the 20th century. One mission of Lotman as one of the leaders of the Tartu-Moscow School was knowing and mediating forgotten heritage. In the situation of censorship many contacts between Lotman and Russian theory were not visible. Thus, the synthesis of Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein and others, in an implicit dialogue, can be the basis for the formation of the next stage of semiotics of culture. Finally, Tynjanov’s understanding of literary and cultural dynamics, Lotman’s semiotic theory of text and his thoughts about a model of space as one of the primary languages of culture, and Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope form this theoretical complex that can give new possibilities for developing both, theoretical and practical principles of cultural and textual analysis. (shrink)

The article addresses the two sides of the work of Nicholas Maxwell – his criticism of science and his call to bring about a revolution in academia encouraging it to become much more effective in tackling the real problems humanity is facing. I would use: It focuses on the connection of these two aspects of Maxwell’s work and provides a critical analysis of Maxwell’s conceptual framework. It is argued here that the two sides of Maxwell’s whole conception are not necessarily (...) connected, and do not have to be. Academia can be more effectively organized even without a change in our understanding of science. Maxwell has argued that academia has to aim at making wisdom rather than knowledge its goal. The knowledge-inquiry framework that currently prevails should be exchanged for wisdom-inquiry. Maxwell has explained his understanding of wisdom in several publications, while not being fully consistent in his explanations of what wisdom-inquiry has to embrace. In addition, Maxwell’s original approach to rationality goes against traditional attitudes. Maxwell is definitely critical of the Enlightenment but his attitude to Romanticism remains unclear. Related to these, the article addresses the future tasks of universities. (shrink)

Though many of our social, scientific, and medical practices are shaped by technological artefacts, we lack a framework that adequately accounts for the cognitive role such artefacts play. Current approaches to mind and technology interaction often depart from the extended mind thesis, and are cashed out in terms of information-processing. While proposals for mind extension have generated daring new research programs, (post)phenomenologists have argued that the extended mind account of mind-technology interaction is flawed and incomplete. This paper contributes to this (...) debate by presenting a positive proposal for how we may understand mind-technology interaction from an enactive perspective. The proposal does justice to the shaping roles that artefacts play in cognitive processes and aligns with current approaches in philosophy of technology in general and the school of postphenomenology in particular. This provides enactivism with a toolkit that allows them to better understand mind-technology interaction, while simultaneously providing a cognitive underpinning for the postphenomenological framework. (shrink)

Virtue ethics enjoys new-found attention in philosophy of technology and philosophical psychology. This attention informs the growing realization that virtue has an important role to play in the ethical evaluation of human–technology relations. But it remains unclear which cognitive processes ground such interactions in both their regular and virtuous forms. This paper proposes that an embodied, enactive cognition approach aptly captures the various ways persons and artefacts interact, while at the same time avoiding the explanatory problems its functionalist alternative faces. (...) Inspired by recent discussions in roboethics, the paper departs from the consideration of practical wisdom as a key idea to evaluating human–technology interaction. It then examines a prominent argument against the viability of practical wisdom that proposes a situationist alternative. The examination of this alternative reveals two tensions to be addressed. The first tension is resolved through developing an account of how persons can self-program their practical reasoning through the idea of distal intentions. The second tension is resolved by comparing extended functionalist and enactive accounts of the self, and arguing for the latter when framing our relations with technologies. In developing its proposal, this paper contributes to an enactive account of virtue and practical wisdom that should prove a fertile soil for future ethical debates on human–technology interaction. (shrink)

In view of the recent criticisms of Janar Mihkelsaar the authors explicate their position on what political semiotics is and why it is important for both semiotics and the social sciences. Some further research trajectories are also discussed in moving from semiotic theory of hegemony to fully developed subdiscipline of political semiotics that would be part of the “relational turn” in political analysis more generally.

We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps. First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human–robot relationships. Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing (...) how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users. Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human–robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios. Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility. (shrink)

L’ouvrage qu’on va lire se veut être une fondation transcendantale des logiques développementales (essentiellement celle de Lesniewski). Une telle démarche n’a jamais été tentée. Pour ce faire, il a fallu remonter aux sources immanentes de la Critique de la Raison Pure et de son architectonique. L’auteur a ainsi produit une apparence ontologique correspondant à l’ontologie du logicien polonais. Pour saisir la portée des définitions de la vérité et de l’objet, Marc Peeters convoque quatre concepts : la discrépance, le simulacre, la (...) reprise et l’historicité transcendantale. Ces concepts et les principes qui les régissent servent à repenser la logique chez Kant et à poser la question renouvelée, historique et logique, de la métaphysique. (shrink)

Mario Villalobos and Pablo Razeto-Barry argue that enactivists should understand living beings not as autopoietic systems, but as autopoietic bodies. In doing so, they surrender the principle of multiple realizability of the spatial location of living beings. By way of counterexample, I argue that more motivation is required before this principle is surrendered.

This is an attempt to take a look at chemistry from the point of view of practical realism. Besides its social–historical and normative aspects, the latter involves a direct reference to experimental research. According to Edward Caldin chemistry depends on our being able to isolate pure substances with reproducible properties. Thus, the very basis of chemistry is practical. Even the laws of chemistry are not stable but are subject to correction. At the same time, these statements do not necessarily make (...) Edward Caldin a predecessor of practical realism. The latter has other predecessors, like Rom Harré’s policy realism or Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism. Chemistry is an experimental science. The experiment is a purposeful and critically theory-guided constructive, manipulative, material interference with nature according to Rein Vihalemm, the founder of practical realism. Chemistry is physics-like science but just partly so. This is an important point in the context of the current paper. (shrink)

Although climate change jeopardizes the fundamental human rights of current as well as future people, current actions and ambitions to tackle it are inadequate. There are two prominent explanations for this motivational gap in the climate ethics literature. The first maintains that our conventional moral judgement system is not well equipped to identify a complex problem such as climate change as an important moral problem. The second explanation refers to people’s reluctance to change their behaviour and the temptation to shirk (...) responsibility. We argue that both factors are at play in the motivational gap and that they are complemented by crucial moral psychological insights regarding moral disengagement, which enables emitters to dissociate self-condemnation from harmful conduct. In this way, emitters are able to maintain their profligate, consumptive lifestyle, even though this conflicts with their moral standards with respect to climate change. We provide some illustrations of how strategies of moral disengagement are deployed in climate change and discuss the relationship between the explanations for the motivational gap and moral disengagement. On the basis of this explanatory framework, we submit that there are three pathways to tackle the motivational gap and moral disengagement in climate change: making climate change more salient to emitters and affirming their self-efficacy; reconsidering the self-interested motives that necessitate moral disengagement; and tackling moral disengagement directly. (shrink)

The increasing complexity and ubiquity of autonomously operating artificially intelligent (AI) systems call for a robust theoretical reconceptualization of responsibility and control. The Meaningful Human Control (MHC) approach to the design and operation of AI systems provides such a framework. However, in its focus on accountability and minimizing harms, it neglects how we may flourish in interaction with such systems. In this chapter, I show how the MHC framework can be expanded to meet this challenge by drawing on the ethics (...) of carebots and embodied design. First, I examine how discussions about flourishing with carebots invite us to consider the extent to which we control our moral character Second, I argue that we can understand the cultivation of moral character in terms of embodied virtues arising from operating in particular ecologies. Third, I demonstrate how this analysis fruitfully informs the design of carebots as supporting reciprocity and empathy. (shrink)

The capabilities approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has become an influential viewpoint for addressing issues of social justice and human de- velopment. It has not yet, however, given adequate theoretical consideration to the requirements of environmental sustainability. Sen has focussed on the instrumental importance of human development for achieving sustainability, but has failed to consider the limits of this account, especially with respect to consumption-reduction. Nussbaum has criticised constraining material consumption for its paternalistic prescription of one particular conception (...) of the good life, without considering it as an imperative of justice. We discuss two possible extensions of the capabilities approach. First, the concept of ca- pability ceilings contains several attractive elements, but it also suffers from some shortcomings. Therefore, second, we advocate constraining people’s combinations of functionings in accordance with a personal budget which con- sists of a fair share of environmental resources. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the pragmatic turn towards embodied, enactive thinking in cognitive science, in the context of recent empirical research on the memory palace technique. The memory palace is a powerful method for remembering yet it faces two problems. First, cognitive scientists are currently unable to clarify its efficacy. Second, the technique faces significant practical challenges to its users. Virtual reality devices are sometimes presented as a way to solve these practical challenges, but currently fall short of delivering (...) on that promise. We address both issues in this paper. First, we argue that an embodied, enactive approach to memory can better help us understand the effectiveness of the memory palace. Second, we present design recommendations for a virtual memory palace. Our theoretical proposal and design recommendations contribute to solving both problems and provide reasons for preferring an embodied, enactive account over an information-processing treatment of the memory palace. (shrink)

The article concentrates on the possibilities of bringing into dialogue two different theoretical frameworks for conceptualising social reality and power: those proposed by Ernesto Laclau, one of the leading current theorists of hegemony, and Juri Lotman, a path breaking cultural theorist. We argue that these two models contain several concepts that despite their different verbal expressions play exactly the same functional role in both theories. In this article, however, we put special emphasis on the problem of naming for both theorists. (...) We propose to see naming as one of the central translating strategies in the politico-hegemonic discourse. Our main thesis is that through substituting some central categories of Laclau’s theory with those of Lotman’s, it is possible to develop a model of hegemony that is a better tool for empirical study of power relations in given social formations than the model proposed by Laclau, who in his later works tends more and more to ground it in psychoanalytic ontology. (shrink)

The semiospherical approach to semiotics and especially to semiotics of culture entails the need of juxtaposing several terminological fields. Among the most important, the fields of textuality, chronotopicality, and multimodality or multimediality should be listed. Textuality in this paper denotes a general principle with the help of which it is possible to observe and to interpret different aspects of the workings of culture. Textuality combines in itself text as a well-defined artefact and textualization as an abstraction (presentation or definition as (...) text). In culture, we can pose in principle the same questions both to a concrete and to an abstract text, although an abstract text is only an operational means for defining, with the help of textualization, a certain phenomenon in the interests of a holistic and systemic analysis. The practice of textualization in turn helps us to understand the necessity of distinguishing between articulation emerging from the textual material itself and articulation ensuing from textuality or textualization — the former provides for comparability between texts made from the same material, thelatter makes comparable all textualized phenomena irrespective of their material. Textuality is a possibility that culture offers to its analyser, and at the same time it is an ontological property of culture and an epistemological principle for investigating culture. (shrink)

Unlike the majority of philosophers, Hannah Arendt was not inclined to look down on common sense. She became convinced of common sense’s invaluable significance for our common world, especially when she came to understand that totalitarianism consists of its undermining. No matter how important the role of the concept in her thought, however, its meaning remains ambiguous insofar as it refers to two related, yet different ‘faculties’, common sense as a cognitive faculty on the one hand and common sense as (...) a faculty of judgment on the other. The aim of this two-part paper is to clarify this complicated relation.The first part sketches the development of the concept and demonstrates how the polemic created by Eichmann in Jerusalem sharpened Arendt’s understanding of the difference between truth and opinion, knowing and judging. Subsequently, it focuses on Arendt’s analysis of common sense as a cognitive faculty, i.e. as a ‘sixth sense’ that enables us to grasp the common and worldly context of our experiences and therefore also enables us to tell truth from falsehood. It is not thinking, with its search for meaning, but our common sense that warrants the revelation of truth and with it the possibility of knowledge . Because truth compels the mind and precludes debate, Arendt distinguishes it sharply from opinion, which is never self-evident.Nevertheless, this distinction does not end, as in Plato, in the hierarchical subordination of opinion to truth . At the same time, Arendt was aware of the powerlessness and vulnerability of truth in the public forum, in spite of its compelling character. This paradox calls for a discussion of Arendt’s view on the possibilities and limitations of modern mass-manipulation. (shrink)

How should sociologists use the word theory? Gabriel Abend’s recent insistence that this question should be tackled politically raises two important issues: Is sociology political? And if so, what normative implications follow for its organization? Drawing on Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance and post-Gramscian theories of hegemony, I argue that Abend’s proposal that semantic questions about theory can be addressed separately from ontological, evaluative, and teleological ones is untenable. Disagreements about the latter are constitutive, not merely supplementary to the meaning (...) of theory. Against Abend’s deliberative-democratically oriented vision, I propose an agonistic politics of theory. In doing so, I consider both the internal inconsistencies of deliberativism and the practical advantages and sociological relevance of agonism. (shrink)

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Philosophy has sometimes been considered to be the science of science. Analogously, it can perhaps be called inquiry of inquiry. Traditional modern science has been aimed at acquiring knowledge of truth. Thus, it can be called knowledge-inquiry. It can be debated, however, whether knowledge of truth is the ultimate goal we have to achieve in science. Perhaps solving the problems of living should be brought to the foreground rather than the problems of knowledge. In order to fulfil this task, we (...) have to exchange knowledge-inquiry for wisdom-inquiry as Nicholas Maxwell has suggested. The latter involves the quest for knowledge but adds its application to the picture. There has to be constant improvement of the aims of scientific research in order to reach for the problems of living. This can be achieved in the scope of a new Enlightenment. As the result, the position of social sciences and humanities will be turned into a fundamental one. The attempts to model these fields after physics have to be stopped. The main task of social sciences and humanities is decisively different from that of physics and all other natural sciences. A new methodology has to be invented for these intellectual fields. (shrink)

Memory perspectives on past events allegedly take one of two shapes. In field memories, we recall episodes from a first-person point of view, while in observer memories, we look at a past scene from a third-person perspective. But this mere visuospatial dichotomy faces several practical and conceptual challenges. First, this binary distinction is not exhaustive. Second, this characterization insufficiently accounts for the phenomenology of observer memories. Third, the focus on the visual aspect of memory perspective neglects emotional, agential, and self-related (...) social aspects. Fourth, the focus on the time of recall neglects the fact that visual, emotional, agential, and social aspects of perspective can also be dissociated in the original experience. In this chapter, we move away from the standard visual dichotomy. Instead, we propose that memory perspective is better understood along four lines: visual, agential, emotional, and social. Drawing on empirical research, we argue that these dimensions predict a disposition to recall a past event based on the present situation of the memorizer. This account supports seeing episodic memory as a natural kind, supported by scenario construction mechanisms and minimal memory traces. By remapping the classic distinction between field and observer perspectives along four dimensions, our proposal provides explanatory advantages and secures practical gains by enabling testable hypotheses. (shrink)

Using telephone interviews among a random sample of 537 Dutch children aged 7–12 years old, we investigated the prevalence of fear reactions to television news among younger and older children and among boys and girls, what types of news items children in different age and gender groups refer to as frightening, and whether children's fear reactions to regular adult television news differed from their fear reactions to a special children's news program. Overall, 48.2 % of the children who reported watching (...) the adult or children's news programs, reported fear reactions to adult news, while 32.6 % reported fear of children's news content. For both types of news programs, younger children and girls more often reported fear than older children and boys did. The most prevalent fear-inducing news content categories were interpersonal violence, fires, accidents, and disasters, and visual depictions of the consequences of violence. (shrink)

If one wants to understand translation, it is necessary to look at all its aspects from the psychological to the ideological. And it is necessary to see the process of translation, on the one hand, as a complex of interlinguistic, intralinguistic, and intersemiotic translations, and on the other hand, as a complex of linguistic, cultural, economic, and ideological activities. Translators work at the boundaries of languages, cultures, and societies. They position themselves between the poles of specificity and adaptation in accordance (...) with the strategies of their translational behaviour. They either preserve the otherness of the other or they transform the other into self. By the same token, they cease to be simple mediators, because in a semiotic sense they are capable of generating new languages for the description of a foreign language, text, or culture, and of renewing a culture or of having an influence on the dialogic capacity of a culture with other cultures as well as with itself. In this way, translators work not only with natural languages but also with metalanguages, languages of description. One of the missions of the translator is to increase the receptivity and dialogic capability of a culture, and through these also the internal variety of that culture. As mediators between languages, translators are important creators of new metalanguages. (shrink)

For decades, the British philosopher of science Nicholas Maxwell has been promoting a new approach to science called aim-oriented empiricism. Maxwell's basic claim is that the regular way of doing science, called standard empiricism, is untenable because it does not account for the basic general assumptions that scientists actually adhere to without acknowledgment. Standard empiricism is unable to make sense of the progress of science as it is happening. The alternative approach that Maxwell advocates, aim-oriented empiricism, acknowledges some basic metaphysical (...) assumptions, comprehensibility, unity and simplicity as inherent parts of science itself. By including these metaphysical assumptions into science, Maxwell is looking for ways to make sense of the progress of science from a philosophical perspective. This paper challenges Maxwell's claim with the help of another new approach to science, practical realism. While the founder of practical realism, Rein Vihalemm, claims that his approach is closely related to Maxwell's views, he does not acknowledge any need for metaphysics in science. (shrink)