ABSTRACTIn the philosophy of sport, an opinion that chess is in fact not sports because it lacks physical skills is a standard position. I call the argument that leads to this conclusion a mind sport syllogism. Its analysis enables me to explicate four possible positions concerning the sport-status of chess. Apart from the standard position, which excludes chess from the sport family, I also present analysis of other possible positions, which – for various reasons – do not deny that chess (...) is a sport. A position that postulates including chess into the family of sport by broadening the definition of sport turns out to be particularly interesting from the philosophical viewpoint. Having confronted this position with the standard, i.e. ‘conservative’, position, I come to the conclusion that the conceptual revision consisting in the broadening of the concept of sport is a rational option and is a probable direction of the evolution of the concept of sport. (shrink)

While talking about sports (and games) we use such expressions as ?random victory?, ?winning by accident?, ?skill against luck?, ?chance (fortune) favours the better player?, etc. Unfortunately, chance-related notions that occur in these expressions are not well defined?their meaning is vague and it is not clear whether they refer to one or many different phenomena. Because such phenomena play an important role in sport, from the viewpoint of the philosophy of sport it is necessary to give a systematic account of (...) this topic. Although the works of De Wachter, Simon, Dixon, Breivik and Loland contain many important insights, there is still a room for further research in this field. The author tries to establish a typology of phenomena that could generally be called ?chance-phenomena?, which however, should be precisely distinguished. As such the primary task is to present an analysis of several different kinds of chance in sports. In constructing this typology the author uses both the distinction between different kinds of games (performative vs. kinetic) as well as analysis of structure of a game (four constitutive elements: players, constitutive rules, material substrate of the game and the world of the game). The most important method used is phenomenological analysis, especially Ingarden-style analysis. These kinds of ?chance-phenomena? are: aleatoriness, chaos, irregularity, imprecision and arbitrariness. The paradigm cases of each kind of chance are discussed. The genesis and functions of the respective phenomena in sports and games are also shown, as well as their position in the structure of the game. Such analytic work should precede any solutions of the chance vs. skill problem, or other problems concerning chance in sport. As a test of usefulness of the provided distinctions, the author considers the veracity of the judgements expressed in such sentences as ?Fortune favours the better player? (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we contextualize and introduce the papers that comprise the special issue, “Bernard Suits’ Legacy: New Inspirations and Interpretations.” The articles discuss the work of S...

The main aim of this article is to reconstruct and comment on Bernard Suits’ argument concerning the paradoxicality of the perfectly played game and explain how the argument might contribute to the game vs. performance distinction. The argument was mentioned by Suits in ‘Tricky Triad: Games, Play and Sport’ in the course of argumentation for the distinction between games and performances but it has not been presented in any of Suits’ works published during his lifetime. However, Suits’ fonds deposited in (...) the Special Collections and Archive of the University of Waterloo contains two texts that were nevertheless meant for publication: ‘A Perfectly Played Game’ (recently published as Appendix III to Suits’ Return of the Grasshopper) and unpublished ‘The Search for a Perfectly Fair Game’. The latter is a modified version of the former; there is an overlapping core in both texts, but there are also some essential differences between them. To provide a formula capable of embracing Suits’ ideas from both texts and remove the tension between the ideas of a perfectly played and perfectly fair game, I introduce the concept of a perfect game. (shrink)

Volume 13, Issue 3-4, August - December 2019, Page 486-488.

The paper is devoted to detailed analysis of the notion of goal in games. It is argued that Suits’ analysis which provides a distinction between prelusory goal and lusory goal is insufficient, and thus introduction of a third kind of goal is necessary. I suggest to call this third kind of goal institutional goal. The paper discusses the definition of this kind of goal as well as its relations to other kinds of goals in games and other elements of game-playing. (...) These three goals create the goal triad, a conceptual map of all possible goal-related situations. Both Venn diagrams and Euler diagrams are used to represent this triad. Various fields of these diagrams, which represent a spectrum of specific situations that occur in games, are illustrated by case-studies, taken mainly (although not exclusively) from the history of association football (soccer).El artículo plantea un análisis detallado de la noción de objetivo de los juegos. Se argumenta que el análisis de los juegos de Suits, que ofrece una distinción entre objetivo lúdico y meta pre-lúdica, es insuficiente, por lo que es necesaria la introducción de un tercer objetivo. A este tercer objetivo sugiero llamarlo meta institucional. El artículo analiza la definición de este tipo de objetivo, así como sus relaciones con los otros tipos de objetivos y elementos del juego. Estos tres objetivos constituyen la tríada de objetivos, un mapa conceptual de todas las relaciones posibles entre objetivos. Para representar la tríada se emplean los diagramas de Venn y de Euler. Varios campos de estos diagramas, que representan un espectro de situaciones específicas que suceden en los juegos, se ilustran con estudios de casos, tomados principalmente (aunque no exclusivamente) de la historia del fútbol. (shrink)

Although the very existence and need for an exact definition of sport is still debatable, there is common agreement that competitive sport events on elite level are, among others, goal directed, rule-governed and institutionalized activities. These three facts will guide us in an analysis of the complex issue concerning the idea of goal in games. The first of these facts - that games are goal-oriented activities – is reflected in the very basic notion of prelusory goal. The fact that achieving (...) the prelusory goal in games is rule-governed is reflected in the notion of a lusory goal. Finally, the institutionalized aspect of games is reflected in the notion of, nomen omen, an institutional goal. The paper is thus devoted to detailed analysis of the notion of goal in games. It is argued that Suits' analysis which provides a distinction between prelusory goal and lusory goal is insufficient, and thus introduction of a third kind of goal is necessary. I suggest to call this third kind of goal institutional goal. The paper discusses the definition of this kind of goal as well as its relations to other kinds of goals in games and other elements of game-playing. These three goals create the goal triad, a conceptual map of all possible goal-related situations. Both Venn diagrams and Euler diagrams are used to represent this triad. Various fields of these diagrams, which represent a spectrum of specific situations that occur in games, are illustrated by case-studies, taken mainly from the history of association football. These examples are meant to test the usefulness of distinctions provided in the analytical part of the paper. (shrink)

The article presents an ontological analysis of games. In every game one could distinct four constitutive elements: players, game rules, material substratum of the game and intentional world of the game. The last element correspond with make-believe quality of games. These are two kinds of acts of playing (creating the world of the game): performative and kinetic. The article presents an analysis of these two kinds of acts of playing and present the division of games (performative-based/kinetic-based) which is ontologically fundamental (...) and sets two radically different groups of games. Kinetic games are based on physical, kinetic aspect of the player’s bodies and material tools they use in the game. Performative games are based on transmission some pieces of information. This division enable us to indicate some non-trivial facts about games, like implicit presence of laws of physics in kinetic games or double character or rules in performative games. Interesting fact is that although these two groups of games are very different in the terms of kinds of acts of playing (and also kinds of effort connected with these acts) there is at least one performative-kinetic hybrid game – chessboxing. (shrink)

W filozofii czasu Ingardena szczególną rolę odgrywa charakterystyka ontologiczna teraźniejszości. Należy do niej m.in. szczelinowość. Okazuje się, że pojęcie to można powiązać z koncepcją tzw. teraźniejszości pozornej (specious present). Opierając się ponadto na pewnych rozważaniach S. Lema oraz B. Ogrodnika wiążę różne wartości szczelinowości (trwania kwantu teraźniejszości), ze złożonością formalną budowy przedmiotów. Uogólnienie tych wyników umożliwia dopełnienie rozważań Ingardena nad szczelinowością – sformułowanie zarysu ontologicznej teorii względności trwania teraźniejszości.

ABSTRACTThe article presents the story of the Polish translation of Bernard Suits’s The Grasshopper. It was prepared by Filip Kobiela, a philosopher and researcher of Suits’s legacy, and published in 2016. Some remarks concerning the difficulties of the translation and its peculiarities particularly related to the Polish ludic terminology have been added as well as an explanation of the translator’s attitude towards the translation as a type of game in Suits’s sense of the term. The article concludes with (...) information concerning the reception of the translation of Suits’s magnumopus in Poland and its possible impact on future research. (shrink)

The paper addresses the family of questions that arose from the field of interactions between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. On the one hand, apparently partial coextensivity of research domain of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences sets the goal of their cooperation and mutual inspiration. On the other hand, there are some obstacles on the path to achieve this goal: phenomenology and the cognitive sciences have different traditions, they speak different languages, they have adopted different methodological approaches, and last but (...) not least, their prominent exponents exhibits different styles of thinking. In order to clarify this complicated area of tensions, the paper presents the results of philosophical reflections of such topics as: 1) philosophical presuppositions and postulates of the cognitive sciences 2) abstraction of some phenomena during idealisation and the dialectical model of science's development 3) argumentation based on prediction of future development of the cognitive sciences. This finally leads to the formulation of a phenomenology-based postulate for adequate model of mind and the discussion of humanistic dimension of cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Artykuł zawiera prezentację niektórych wątków Kantowskiej filozofii przedkrytycznej, w dziedzinie filozofii przyrody zawierającej wiele oryginalnych hipotez i argumentów często niewykorzystanych w krytycznej filozofii Kanta i przez to mniej znanych. Przedstawiona jest nowatorska hipoteza wiążąca trójwymiarowość przestrzeni z prawem grawitacji pochodząca z pierwszej rozprawy Kanta Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurteilung der Beweise z 1747 roku. Omówiona została praca Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels zawierająca słynną hipotezę Kanta dotyczącą genezy układu planetarnego. Przedstawiono też tzw. argument z (...) ręki (pochodzący z pracy Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume) wraz z jego krótka dyskusją. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the widespread assumption that the conditions for singular reference are more or less the same as the conditions for singular thought. I claim that we refer singularly to things without thinking singularly about them more often than it is usually believed. I first argue that we should take the idea that singular thought is non-descriptive thought very seriously. If we do that, it seems that we cannot be so liberal about what counts as acquaintance; only (...) perception will do. I also briefly discuss and reject semantic instrumentalism. Finally, I argue that while singular reference is cheap, singular thought comes only at a price. (shrink)

I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast (...) to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society. (shrink)

In this brief discussion piece I try to offer some considerations in favor of the so-called Simple Intention Theory of demonstratives, which is rejected by Gómez-Torrente. I try to show that the main argument offered against the Simple Intention Theory appears to be based on false data.

In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on (...) the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel. (shrink)

The article proposes to analyse whether the current configuration of national migration legislation from Arendt's perspective on the universalization of human rights and Agamben's reflections on bare life and the state of exception demonstrates its capacity to protect the human rights of people undergoing forced migration. To this end, a literature review of a bibliographical nature was used, using the historical procedure method. In order to interpret the effectiveness of the current configuration of the human rights of this vulnerable group, (...) an analysis of international and national legislation on migration was carried out, focusing mainly on the case of the New Brazilian Migration Law. To this end, a theoretical discussion was built to understand how human rights are framed considering the situation of migration and statelessness in the face of an increasingly prevalent state of exception. It was noted that the constitutive fragility of forced migrants is a perennial situation, aggravated by the political inaction of nation states. It has also been noted that there is a need for states and international organizations to adopt new practices to promote the human dignity of forced migrants. (shrink)

Because philosophical reflections on touch usually start from our ability to perceive properties of objects, they tend to overlook features of touch that are crucial to correct understanding of tactual perception. This paper brings out these features and uses them to develop a general reconception of the sense of touch. I start by taking a fresh look at our ability to feel, in order to reveal its vital role. This sheds a different light on the skin's perceptual potential. While it (...) is commonly observed that tactile experiences have two intentional objects, an external object and one's own body, I will advance a more accurate alternative: in tactile experiences, one becomes aware of what one's body undergoes. This alternative not only fits better with tactility's vital role; it is also key to explaining how active touching provides for a unique contribution to our perceptual relation to material objects. By thus connecting tactility's vital role to the way we rely on touch while manipulating objects, this essay offers a cross-sectional survey of our tactile powers that reveals the interplay between sensing and touching. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the links between Jakob von Uexküll’s theoretical biology and Adolf Portmann’s conception of organic life. Its main purpose is to show that Uexküll and Portmann not only share a view of the living being as an autonomous and holistically organized entity, but also base this view on the seminal idea of the subjectivity of the organism. In other words, the respective holistic principles securing the autonomy of the living being—the Bauplan, for Uexküll; the Innerlichkeit, for Portmann—share (...) an essentially subjective character. Such principles, indeed, express themselves in a centrally directed and formative way; moreover, in organisms endowed with a central nervous system, they also extend their influence on the overt behavioral sphere and on the organism’s capacity to give meaning to the surrounding reality. The conclusion of the article will show how, though starting from this common background, the two authors develop divergent positions on the issue of the anthropological difference. If Portmann emphasizes the special status of the relationship between the human animal and the world, Uexküll tends to see a substantial continuity in the biosemiotic processes through which human and non-human animals constitute their species-specific worlds of experience. (shrink)

I argue that the adjective δαιμόνιος (‘daemonic’) and the substantivized adjective τὸ δαιμόνιον (‘the daemonic’) that occur in Aristotle’s dream treatises basically mean ‘divine-like,’ denoting an illusory appearance of divine intervention, typically in the form of an alleged god-sent prophetic dream. Yet the appearances to which the terms refer are, in fact, neither divine nor supernatural at all, but involve merely coincidental correlations between the dream and the fulfilling event. It is shown that Aristotle’s use of ‘daemonic’ is traditional and (...) reflects the endoxon that prophetic dreams are closely related to the divine. The paper also examines a set of earlier readings of the daemonic in De divinatione in relation to the proposed interpretation. (shrink)

Les termes d’espèce naturelle font débat : s’agit-il de termes descriptifs qui exprimeraient des caractéristiques des objets tombant dans leur extension, ou fonctionnent-ils plutôt comme des noms qui désigneraient directement leur espèce, sans l’intermédiaire d’une description? Selon la théorie causale de la référence (TCR), un terme comme « Tigre » nomme directement l’espèce du Tigre grâce à l’ostension d’un échantillon de tigres individuels qui constitue l’étalon de référence pour les usages ultérieurs du terme. Je me propose ici de confronter la (...) TCR à la pratique des noms de taxons telle qu’elle est réglée par le Code International de Nomenclature Zoologique. Je tâcherai de montrer qu’en dépit de contre-exemples avancés récemment, les prédictions de la TCR sont vérifiées par les noms scientifiques d’espèces et de sous-espèces. (shrink)

This paper briefly presents an account, partially based upon Ryle’s approach, of the functions of intentional psychological terms as they are used in ordinary language. According to this account, intentional psychological terms describe known patterns of behavior that are determined by selective mechanisms of causation. That is, these terms describe relations between certain responses, selected on the basis of the consequences they produce in the environment, and contexts of their occurrence, to which they become associated. Intentional psychological terms do not (...) point to inner causes of a given behavior, but can explain it only in the sense of stating that it could be expected to occur, if we can identify its behavior pattern and the context in which it occurs. We proceed then to examine three main objections that have been raised against Ryle’s position, namely: (a) Davidson’s challenge to the non-causal accounts of reason-explanations; (b) Armstrong’s worries about “leaving the counterfactuals hanging in the air”; and (c) the holistic objection to the (wrongly) presumed Ryle’s atomism. We aim at showing that none of these objections pose serious problems to the proposed account. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science, and neuroscience. Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes. In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime stimuli. This was (...) true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)

In Liberating Oedipus?: Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory, Dr. Filip Kovacevic demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory can join political theory in designing alternative political norms and values. Kovacevic proves that political practice without an emancipatory psychology to guide it is potentially dangerous.

Mon but ici est de réconcilier deux conceptions relativement populaires dans leurs domaines respectifs : d’une part, la théorie des contreparties de David Lewis, en métaphysique modale, d’autre part, la thèse de la rigidité mise en avant par Saul Kripke en sémantique. De prime abord, le concept de rigidité ne semble pas pouvoir s’appliquer dans TC : un terme rigide est censé désigner le même objet au travers des mondes possibles, tandis que TC formule les conditions de vérité des énoncés (...) modaux de re en termes non pas d’identité transmonde mais de similarité comparative. Je soutiens néanmoins qu’il peut y avoir de la rigidité au travers des ressemblances. Partant d’une suggestion de Lewis, je montre qu’on peut définir un concept de rigidité, la rigidité lewisienne, qui est adapté à TC. Malheureusement, la thèse de la rigiditéL ainsi reformulée bute sur un obstacle de taille : l’extrême prodigalité de la relation de ressemblance qui prévaut dans TC entraîne une prolifération des relations de contrepartie, ce qui a pour effet de trivialiser la thèse de la rigiditéL, en faisant de tous les termes singuliers, sans discrimination, noms propres aussi bien que descriptions définies, des désignateurs rigidesL. Suivant une piste d’Allan Gibbard et de Lewis, je propose alors de relativiser la rigiditéL à un aspect de similarité variable selon le contexte conversationnel. De là, je forge un concept plus contraignant, celui d’hyper-rigiditéL, à l’aune duquel le contrepartiste peut enfin capturer la différence entre noms propres et descriptions définies. (shrink)

This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader can therefore observe (...) how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion. (shrink)

Tekst ten stanowi krytyczne omówienie książki „Dwa ciała” Didiera Francka. Zdaniem Filipa Gołaszewskiego, książka ta stara się realizować jedną z jej najpierwotniejszych funkcji, którą jest dialog. Autor udziela własnej odpowiedzi na pytanie, z jakim skutkiem Franck wywiązuje się z tego zadania.