Drawing on current debates at the frontiers of economics, psychology, and political philosophy, this book explores the challenges that arise for liberal democracies from a confrontation between modern technologies and the bounds of human rationality. With the ongoing transition of democracy's underlying information economy into the digital space, threats of disinformation and runaway political polarization have been gaining prominence. Employing the economic approach informed by behavioral sciences' findings, the book's chief concern is how these challenges can be addressed while preserving (...) a commitment to democratic values and maximizing the epistemic benefits of democratic decision-making. The book has two key strands: it provides a systematic argument for building a behaviorally informed theory of democracy; and explores how scientific knowledge on quirks and bounds of human rationality can inform the design of resilient democratic institutions. Drawing these together, the book explores the centrality of the rationality assumption in the methodological debates surrounding behavioral sciences as exemplified by the dispute between neoclassical and behavioral economics; the role of rationality in democratic social choice; behaviorally informed paternalism as a response to the challenge of irrationality; and non-paternalistic avenues to increase the resilience of the democratic institutions towards political irrationality This book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in behavioral economics and sciences, political philosophy and the future of democracy. (shrink)

This paper addresses the ontological status of the body in the context of bodily practices in body-oriented disciplines, such as sport training, dance, and physiotherapy. Following Descartes’, Huss...

Shows how different forms of skepticism can lead to remarkably different moral and political implications.

Structural completeness properties are investigated for a range of popular t-norm based fuzzy logics—including Łukasiewicz Logic, Gödel Logic, Product Logic, and Hájek's Basic Logic—and their fragments. General methods are defined and used to establish these properties or exhibit their failure, solving a number of open problems.

This monograph presents a general theory of weakly implicative logics, a family covering a vast number of non-classical logics studied in the literature, concentrating mainly on the abstract study of the relationship between logics and their algebraic semantics. It can also serve as an introduction to algebraic logic, both propositional and first-order, with special attention paid to the role of implication, lattice and residuated connectives, and generalized disjunctions. Based on their recent work, the authors develop a powerful uniform framework for (...) the study of non-classical logics. In a self-contained and didactic style, starting from very elementary notions, they build a general theory with a substantial number of abstract results. The theory is then applied to obtain numerous results for prominent families of logics and their algebraic counterparts, in particular for superintuitionistic, modal, substructural, fuzzy, and relevant logics. The book may be of interest to a wide audience, especially students and scholars in the fields of mathematics, philosophy, computer science, or related areas, looking for an introduction to a general theory of non-classical logics and their algebraic semantics. (shrink)

Uniform infinite bases are defined for the single-conclusion and multiple-conclusion admissible rules of the implication–negation fragments of intuitionistic logic and its consistent axiomatic extensions . A Kripke semantics characterization is given for the structurally complete implication–negation fragments of intermediate logics, and it is shown that the admissible rules of this fragment of form a PSPACE-complete set and have no finite basis.

Originally published in 1944, this book presents a study of the life and work of Roman Catholic priest and scholar Alfred Loisy, written by fellow Modernist Maude Petre. Petre died shortly after completing this short biography, and the text begins with a note on her life by James A. Walker. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in this important figure in the controversial Catholic Modernist movement.

This paper is a contribution to Mathematical fuzzy logic, in particular to the algebraic study of t-norm based fuzzy logics. In the general framework of propositional core and Δ-core fuzzy logics we consider three properties of completeness with respect to any semantics of linearly ordered algebras. Useful algebraic characterizations of these completeness properties are obtained and their relations are studied. Moreover, we concentrate on five kinds of distinguished semantics for these logics–namely the class of algebras defined over the real unit (...) interval, the rational unit interval, the hyperreals , the strict hyperreals and finite chains, respectively–and we survey the known completeness methods and results for prominent logics. We also obtain new interesting relations between the real, rational and hyperreal semantics, and good characterizations for the completeness with respect to the semantics of finite chains. Finally, all completeness properties and distinguished semantics are also considered for the first-order versions of the logics where a number of new results are proved. (shrink)

It is argued that George Berkeley’s term ‘common sense’ does not indicate shared conviction, but the shared capacity of reasonable judgement, and is therefore to be classed as a mental ability, not a belief-system. Common sense is to be distinguished from theoretical understanding which, in Berkeley’s view, is frequently corrupted either by learned prejudice, or by language that lacks meaning or camouflages contradiction. It is also to be distinguished from the deliverances of divine revelation, which—however enlightening Berkeley supposed them to (...) be—are not necessarily available to all people. This interpretation of common sense is supported both by attention to Berkeley’s own texts, including his sermons, letters and philosophical writings, and by attention to the views of John Locke and René Descartes, who also understand ‘common sense’ as susceptibility to the ‘natural light’. In addition, this interpretation renders Berkeley’s appeal to common sense in support of his immaterialism a straightforward appeal to the reader’s native reason. No longer, then, are we forced to see Berkeley as improbably maintaining that the denial of matter is really the view of ‘the common people’, but rather that those who have least attachment to theory and doctrine will be best able to grasp the case for immaterialism. (shrink)

The one-variable fragment of a first-order logic may be viewed as an “S5-like” modal logic, where the universal and existential quantifiers are replaced by box and diamond modalities, respectively. Axiomatizations of these modal logics have been obtained for special cases—notably, the modal counterparts $\mathrm {S5}$ and $\mathrm {MIPC}$ of the one-variable fragments of first-order classical logic and first-order intuitionistic logic, respectively—but a general approach, extending beyond first-order intermediate logics, has been lacking. To this end, a sufficient criterion is given in (...) this paper for the one-variable fragment of a semantically defined first-order logic—spanning families of intermediate, substructural, many-valued, and modal logics—to admit a certain natural axiomatization. More precisely, an axiomatization is obtained for the one-variable fragment of any first-order logic based on a variety of algebraic structures with a lattice reduct that has the superamalgamation property, using a generalized version of a functional representation theorem for monadic Heyting algebras due to Bezhanishvili and Harding. An alternative proof-theoretic strategy for obtaining such axiomatization results is also developed for first-order substructural logics that have a cut-free sequent calculus and admit a certain interpolation property. (shrink)

[Aquinas and Cajetan on the analogy of names].

This article identifies the assumption of responsibility as a basic need of human beings and applies the concept specifically to older people with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. It suggests a two‐level concept of responsibility, based on the approach of discourse ethicist Karl‐Otto Apel, as a promising approach to recognizing human diversity while at the same time respecting people's equal rights to participate in discourse. This concept can serve as a theoretical starting point for the construction of individually adapted types of (...) responsibility. Furthermore, the article describes practical ideas (primarily the practice of doll therapy) that can enable people with dementia or Alzheimer's disease to assume responsibility. Direct communication and a reflective, sensitive consideration of each individual case are identified as important prerequisites for the inclusion of elderly people with dementia. (shrink)

While the assumption that the sociopolitical and economic situation affects adolescents’ well-being, encompassing life satisfaction and a positive sense of self, is plausible, few studies have confirmed such macrosocial influences. The case of the Czech Republic offers an example of a society transitioning from totalitarian government (from 1989) to western democracy. Our study provides statistical description of Czech adolescents’ well-being over the past 30 years in association with the subjective perception of everyday problems. These daily hassles represent experiences and conditions (...) of daily living that have been appraised as salient and harmful or threatening to adolescents’ well-being. We analyzed four samples of adolescents aged 14–17 years surveyed at four time points over the last three decades—1992, 2001, 2011, and 2019, totalN = 4,005 (1992: 255, 2001: 306, 2011: 363, 2019: 3081; 54.6% females). The results show that life satisfaction, self-esteem, and self-reported daily hassles changed only marginally from 1992 to 2019 with small differences related to the post-revolution 1992 cohort. Adolescents reported increasing problems in school, relationships with parents, sports, and leisure time over the study period. A model linking daily hassles and self-esteem to life satisfaction across four cohorts showed that daily hassles strongly predicted life satisfaction except in the post-revolution cohort of 1992 when life satisfaction was also the lowest. The effect was slightly higher in females. Across the cohorts, gender differences in life satisfaction changed from males being more satisfied in 1992 to females being more satisfaction in 2019. Limitations stemming from sampling differences across cohorts are discussed. (shrink)

The present article is a critical engagement with Aleksei Yurchak’s Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. It contends that, as rich as Yurchak’s insights on the language culture of Brezhnev’s Stagnation have proven to be, his account ends up seriously misrepresenting the Stalinist episode in the life of Soviet ideology. This misrepresentation is due, in large part, to the problematic use of post-structuralist models, and particularly of Claude Lefort’s theorization of ideology in the modern (...) era. Through a re-examination of Lefort’s “Outline of the Genesis of Ideology in Modern Societies,” the present article advances an alternative understanding of the discursive “shift” in Soviet ideology. Yurchak has argued that, before being set afloat in the 1950s, Soviet official discourse was held together through the figure of the “external master,” Stalin himself. The master is able to mask what Yurchak terms the “Lefort paradox” of Soviet ideology and which he glosses as the divergence between ideological enunciation and ideological “rule.” Yet Yurchak misreads Lefort’s theory, and specifically the latter’s references to “master” and “rule.” When these terms are restored to their proper theoretical significance, it becomes possible to formulate in a new way the contradictory duality at the heart of Soviet ideology. The article contends, contra Yurchak, that this is not the duality of enunciation and actual exercise of power; but rather the split internal to ideological discourse, between the “rule of reality” and the “reality of the rule.” The “shift” of Soviet ideological discourse begins as a slippage between these two ideological representations, and not as the removal of some anchor external to representation. (shrink)

Some aspects of vagueness as presented in Shapiro’s book Vagueness in Context [23] are analyzed from the point of fuzzy logic. Presented are some generalizations of Shapiro’s formal apparatus.

Formal systems of fuzzy logic are well-established logical systems and respected members of the broad family of the so-called substructural logics closely related to the famous logic BCK. The study of fragments of logical systems is an important issue of research in any class of non-classical logics. Here we study the fragments of nine prominent fuzzy logics to all sublanguages containing implication. However, the results achieved in the paper for those nine logics are usually corollaries of theorems with much wider (...) scope of applicability. In particular, we show how many of these fragments are really distinct and we find axiomatic systems for most of them. In fact, we construct strongly separable axiomatic systems for eight of our nine logics. We also fully answer the question for which of the studied fragments the corresponding class of algebras forms a variety. Finally, we solve the problem how to axiomatize predicate versions of logics without the lattice disjunction. (shrink)

This is the continuation of the paper :417–446, 2010). We continue the abstract study of non-classical logics based on the kind of generalized implication connectives they possess and we focus on semilinear logics, i.e. those that are complete with respect to the class of models where the implication defines a linear order. We obtain general characterizations of semilinearity in terms of the intersection-prime extension property, the syntactical semilinearity metarule and the class of finitely subdirectly irreducible models. Moreover, we consider extensions (...) of the language with lattice connectives and generalized disjunctions, study their interplay with implication and obtain axiomatizations and further descriptions of semilinear logics in terms of disjunctions and the proof by cases property. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to Nikolay Lossky who was one of the leading Russian philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century. We demonstrate the interrelationship between three aspects of Lossky’s philosophy: realism in the theory of knowledge, hierarchical personalism, and supra-naturalistic concept of evolution. We pay attention to the contemporary relevance of Lossky, and we discuss and critique his ideas in light of those of other philosophers. Lossky acknowledges that the subject interacts with being itself and that knowledge (...) is not a shadow or copy of being. His ontology is based on intuitivism and epistemological optimism. Its main categories are God, as the super-systematic principle, and monads. In Lossky’s metaphysics, the idea of abstract ideal principles of being is quite harmoniously combined with personalism. Lossky’s ontology has strong ethical underpinnings. He considers that values are rooted in being and that the evolution of the world is directed by God towards the good. Lossky elaborates a supra-naturalistic concept of evolution. He extrapolates principles of teleological determination, which are fundamental to human existence, on the underlying levels of the world as a whole. Many trends of modern thought are in tune with Lossky’s philosophy, including a return to metaphysics, panpsychism, Platonism, and the desire to unite the religious worldview with new scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Current research suggests that stressful life experiences and situations create a substantive effect in the development of the initial manifestations of psychotic disorders and may influence temporo-limbic epileptic-like activity manifesting as cognitive and affective seizure-like symptoms in non-epileptic conditions. The current study assessed trauma history, hair cortisol levels, epileptic-like manifestations and other psychopathological symptoms in 56 drug naive adult young women experiencing their initial occurrence of psychosis. Hair cortisol levels among patients experiencing their initial episode of psychosis, were significantly correlated (...) with stress symptoms measured by Trauma Symptom Checklist-40, and complex partial seizure-like symptoms measured by the Complex Partial Seizure-Like Symptoms Inventory and LSCL-33. Hair cortisol levels were not found to be significantly correlated with symptoms of anxiety and depression measured by Beck depression Inventory and Zung Anxiety Scale. These findings suggest a significant relationship between epileptic-like symptoms and stress responses demonstrated by patients in their first psychotic episode. These findings may suggest the potential for research to explore usefulness of anticonvulsant treatment in patients who do not respond to usual psychotropic medication. (shrink)

Gabriel Vásquez discusses two deterministic arguments ascribed to John Wyclif. He appeals to the Anselmian solution based on the distinction between two types of necessity: antecedent and subsequent necessity. Unlike the former, the latter necessity does not destroy future event’s contingency, which is required if it is to result from a free choice. The paper discusses the Aristotelian objection according to which a statement describing some contingent future event is either without truth-value, and thus antecedently contingent but not subsequently necessary (...) at present, or it has a truth-value, but then it is not merely subsequently necessary but also antecedently necessary. The Anselmian temporal ontology is such that no absolute present parameter is to be included in the evaluation of modal tensed statements. This recognition disposes of modal notions tied to the absolute temporal qualification of statements and thus undercuts the objection. (shrink)

In this paper, I combine an exposition of the historical development of sociology and the philosophy of science from the era of grand theories onwards, with an explication as to why the grand theories have failed. First, I trace some parallels in the history of each of the disciplines. After presenting their chronological development, I scrutinize the metatheoretical findings about the disciplines and examine the main ontological and epistemic reasons why attempts at these general theories or frameworks have not succeeded. (...) Among them are the lack of a universal methodology and of a theoretical core, together with the impossibility of achieving a common objective view. On this basis I conclude that general theories or frameworks are not achievable in principle. As it turns out, however, some contemporary social theorists and philosophers still harbor hopes that they can be successfully formulated, or at the least do not rule out such a possibility. Thus, in closing, I argue that the critical points can also be applied to these latest attempts, as the call for grand theories or frameworks has never ceased and returns regularly with each new generation of social theorists and philosophers of science. (shrink)

This comment on E. Borisov's text deals with some technical complications that his proposed analysis faces, according to the author's opinion. The author argues that Borisov's definition of the operator O is not clear and his theory might predict nonexistent readings unless the definition is stated clearly. The author criticizes Borisov's proposal for not being compositional and outlines an alternative analysis in terms of the contemporary semantic treatments of comparative constructions and attitude reports.

The paradox of the Anthropocene is that humankind has become the planetary superpower, and yet faces an unprecedented ecological crisis as well as other forces that it is not capable of controlling. The solution is not to be found in putting faith in technological innovations that do not yet exist, but in a completely new attitude of humanity towards itself and all non-human beings and entities: posthumanism. Nature in fact speaks with more voices than only human ones, and humans have (...) always and are still able to listen to these other voices. However, according to ecophenomenologist David Abram, this listening is becoming increasingly difficult, for these voices are being drowned out by the purely human logic of abstract thought and scientific-technical society. The article focuses on the meaning of Abram’s ideas from the point of view of posthumanism and ecophenomenology as such. By means of this, it tries to demonstrate in what lies the import of phenomenology when it is applied to one of the greatest challenges of our time and why it should go still further in this regard than did Abram. (shrink)

Current thinking suggests that dissociation could be a significant comorbid diagnosis in a proportion of schizophrenic patients with a history of trauma. This potentially may explain the term “schizophrenia” in its original definition by Bleuler, as influenced by his clinical experience and personal view. Additionally, recent findings suggest a partial overlap between dissociative symptoms and the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, which could be explained by inhibitory deficits. In this context, the process of dissociation could serve as an important conceptual framework (...) for understanding schizophrenia, which is supported by current neuroimaging studies and research of corollary discharges. These data indicate that the original conception of “split mind” may be relevant in an updated context. Finally, recent data suggest that the phenomenal aspects of dissociation and conscious disintegration could be related to underlying disruptions of connectivity patterns and neural integration. (shrink)

On the Notion "Type of Language" Petr Sgall It is well known that the high frequency of terminological vagueness and confusion has been a serious obstacle ...