Was Heidegger a 'realist' or an 'idealist'? The issue has been and continues to be hotly debated in Heidegger scholarship. Here it is argued that the much more desirable realistic interpretation of Heidegger can be sustained, provided his theory of moods is given its due. Moods, I argue, are not only 'equiprimordial' with Dasein's understanding of being, but are also irreducible to the latter. It is often held - correctly, as it seems to the author - that Heidegger's idealism is (...) all but inevitable if Dasein's awareness of entities is grounded only in Dasein's understanding of being. But in Being and Time Heidegger speaks also of how what there is is 'disclosed moodwise'. The essay closely analyzes this specifically moody mode of disclosure, and shows both its autonomy vis-à-vis the understanding of being and its function of securing, for Dasein, an access to a truly independent reality. (shrink)

In this work of original philosophy, Piotr Hoffman focuses on two of the central concerns of modern philosophy—doubt and time.

In this original analysis, Hoffman shows how the modern self's drive for total autonomy and independence defines the relations of human selves as essentially violent. He further argues that the notion of violence underlies some of the key components of mainstream modern philosophizing.

Following on the arguments adumbrated in his previous works, Piotr Hoffman here argues that the notion of and concern with violence are not limited to political philosophy but in fact form the essential component of philosophy in general. The acute awareness of the ever-present possibility of violence, Hoffman claims, filters into and informs ontology and epistemology in ways that require careful analysis. In his previous book, Doubt, Time, Violence , Hoffman explored the theme of violence in (...) relation to Descartes' problematic of doubt and Heidegger's work on temporality. The pivotal notion deriving from that investigation is the notion of the other as the ultimate limit of one's powers. In effect, Hoffman argues, our practical mastery of the natural environment still leaves intact the limitation of human agents by each other. In a violent environment, the other emerges as an insurmountable obstacle to one's aims and purposes or as an inescapable danger which one is powerless to hold at bay. The other is thus the focus of an ultimate resistance to one's powers. The special status of the other, as Hoffman articulates it, is at the root of several key notions around which modern philosophy has built its problematic. Arguing here that when the theme of violence is taken into account many conceptual tensions and puzzles receive satisfying solutions, Hoffman traces the theme through the issue of things versus properties; through Kant's treatment of causality, necessity, and freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason; and through the early parts of Hegel's Logic. The result is a complete reorientation and reinterpretation of these important texts. Violence in Modern Philosophy offers patient and careful textual clarification in light of Hoffman's central thesis regarding the other as ultimate limit. With a high level of originality, he shows that the theme of violence is the hidden impulse behind much of modern philosophy. Hoffman's unique stress on the constitutive importance of violence also offers a challenge to the dominant "compatibilist" tradition in moral and political theory. Of great interest to all philosophers, this work will also provide fresh insights to anthropologists and all those in the social sciences and humanities who occupy themselves with the general theory of culture. (shrink)

The concept of power shapes both the political philosophy and the general worldview of the modern age. For this reason, two areas of philosophy - ontology and political philosophy - which were hitherto treated separately, must be brought together. Freedom, Equality, Power brings out the ontological framework shared by the political philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. In the last chapter (The Ontological Consequences), the author uses the results of his earlier analyses as the stepping stone for developing some themes (...) belonging to ontology in general. (shrink)

Opposition and particularity -- Opposition and intersubjectivity -- Opposition and temporality.

Individuation -- Will -- Continuity -- Freedom.

In its attempt to come to grips with the nature of the human mind idealism employs such terms as "pure self," "transcendental apperception," "pure con sciousness" and so on.

Body and World is the definitive edition of a book that shouldnow take its place as a major contribution to contemporary existentialphenomenology. Samuel Todes goes beyond Martin Heidegger and MauriceMerleau-Ponty in his description of how independent physical natureand experience are united in our bodily action. His account allows himto preserve the authority of experience while avoiding the tendencytoward idealism that threatens both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.Todes emphasizes the complex structure of the human body ;front/back asymmetry, the need to balance in a (...) gravitational field, and so forth ;and the role that structure plays in producing the spatiotemporal field of experience and in making possible objective knowledge of the objects in it. He shows that perception involves nonconceptual, but nonetheless objective forms of judgment. One can think of Body and World as fleshing out Merleau-Ponty's project while presciently relating it to the current interest in embodiment, not only in philosophy but also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. Todes's work opens new ways of thinking about problems such as the relation of perception to thought and the possibility of knowing an independent reality ;problems that have occupied philosophers since Kant and still concern analytic and continental philosophy. (shrink)

There is an ongoing investigation by scholars of ethics and economics into whether human decision making and the resultant acts should be guided by rules and procedures or by judgment and discretion. Although each of these modes offers advantages and disadvantages to decision makers, they are by no means neutral in their effect on professional development. The paper presents an in-depth view of discretionary decisions using an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework. This is the first of the series of papers which focus on (...) the application of realistic philosophical principles to ethical professional behaviour and decision making in daily practice. Results indicate that classical philosophical theories which use virtues and truth as indispensable components still may give rise to desirable and moral conduct among individuals who apply them. (shrink)

The article discusses problems of image development in selected professional engineering communities, as expressed in their ethical codes. Specific codified norms are presented and their likely effects discussed on two levels: personal and social. The findings show, that not all of the codes of ethics solve the development problem identically, with the differences likely to cause some variability in be-havioural patterns among members of the professional societies. The analysis suggests the need for further research and analyses as well as the (...) standardization of codified solutions to this problem among professional engineering societies. (shrink)

The paper attempts to analyse the ethical duties of engineers contained in selected engineering codes of ethics and indicates a few problems arising in teaching professional engineering ethics in technical studies. The codes of ethics under analysis, both Polish and foreign (American), show similarities and differences. The author indicates the likely causes of these similarities and differences and suggests the need for further research on the development of ethical standards as well as their implementation, application and enforcement. The author discusses (...) teaching ethics based on his own experience and compares a few American textbooks used for engineering ethics teaching. The author indicates a lack of necessary teaching materials in Polish and the existence of no Polish forum for discussing ethical problems of engineering in Poland both in the areas of teaching and research. (shrink)

Integrity is a common and well established concept in the ethical vocabulary. It is also being used in various codes of ethics, and investigated by means of various methods. However a review of the contemporary reference literature reveals various meanings associated with this term, which is followed by its variable applicability. It is mentioned among the desirable virtues possessed by the professionals. In various Polish codes of engineering ethics there is an absence of the integrity concept, at least comprehended as (...) fully as it is in the ethics literature. The paper contains an analysis of the meaning of integrity in English and its translations into Polish in selected codes of engineering ethics. The scopes of the used terms are compared and in result it is postulated that some initiatives be undertaken in order to clarify the discrepancies existing in various engineering codes of ethics around the professional integrity concept. (shrink)

It is argued that important information on the emergence of space is hidden at the quark/hadron level. The arguments follow from the acceptance of the conception that space is an attribute of matter. They involve in particular the discussion of possibly relevant mass and distance scales, the generalization of the concept of mass as suggested by the phase-space-based explanation of the rishon model, and the phenomenological conclusions on the structure of excited baryons that are implied by baryon spectroscopy. A counterpart (...) of the Eddington–Weinberg relation concerning Regge towers of hadronic resonances is noted. (shrink)

Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Instead of offering explanations that refer to the same set of (...) principles, we observe systematic equivocations in PP‐based models, or outright contradictions with its avowed principles. To make matters worse, PP‐based models are seldom empirically validated, and they are frequently offered as mere just‐so stories. The large number of PP‐based models is thus not evidence of theoretical progress in unifying perception, action, and cognition. On the contrary, we maintain that the gap between theory and its biological and computational bases contributes to the arrested development of PP as a unificatory theory. Thus, we urge the defenders of PP to focus on its critical problems instead of offering mere re‐descriptions of known phenomena, and to validate their models against possible alternative explanations that stem from different theoretical assumptions. Otherwise, PP will ultimately fail as a unified theory of cognition. (shrink)

The article presents a thought experiment aimed at indicating a possibility for thinking education beyond the logic of progress. In its first part, the argument reconstructs the entanglement of the modern idea of progress (as found in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the specific coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Through such an analysis a link between the ideas of progress and of emancipation is determined, which leads to the acknowledgement of the difficulty of the (...) task of imagining education outside of the logic of progress. In the second part an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis of the practices involved in studying with a teacher points to a specific way of living together that such a collective study involves. This way of living together is formed by continual exercises in the humble equality realized through shared attention to something worthy of study: this stems from attentiveness to what exists, and it develops an attitude of care and respect for being as such. (shrink)

Topic modeling—a text‐mining technique often used to uncover thematic structures in large collections of texts—has been increasingly frequently used in the context of the analysis of scholarly output. In this study, we construct a corpus of 19,488 texts published since 1971 in seven leading journals in the field of bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and we use a machine learning algorithm to identify almost 100 topics representing distinct themes of interest in the field. On the basis of intertopic correlations, we (...) group the content‐based topics into eight clusters, thus providing a novel, fine‐grained intellectual map of bioethics and philosophy of medicine. Moreover, we conduct a number of diachronic analyses, examining how the “prominence” of different topics has changed across time. In this way, we are able to observe the distinct patterns in which bioethics and philosophy of medicine have evolved and changed their focus over the past half a century. (shrink)

This theoretical paper is offered in the spirit of advancing the debate on the socioemotional wealth construct and its impact on how family firms conceptualize and practise corporate social responsibility. The study builds on Kellermanns et al.’s :1175–1182, 2012) claim that the SEW dimensions can be positively and negatively valenced as well as makes a distinction between the selective and instrumental approach to CSR and the holistic and normative one. Drawing on these considerations, it provides a theoretical underpinning in favour (...) of the view that SEW has ambivalent nature and therefore can produce detrimental outcomes for stakeholders of family companies. In this way, the study challenges the implicit assumption prevalent in the literature that SEW is “a prosocial and positive stimulus”. Crucially, it expands on the SEW construct by arguing that, given its ambivalent nature, SEW, as such, is at odds with the “strategic, whole-business view of responsibility”. Consequently, it posits that family firms—because of their concern with SEW—may be more likely to adopt the instrumental and selective rather than strategic and normative approach. Hence, it also makes the case for regarding the latter as a reference point to investigate the family company’s attitude towards social responsibility. It concludes by summarising the argument and offering future research avenues. (shrink)

Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N = 214), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that (1) the justification prompt alone was (...) sufficient to reduce incarceration rates, (2) the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and (3) incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about 25%) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These effects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

This book addresses two basic questions: What is the proper philosophical analysis of the concept of substance? and What kinds of compound substances are there? The second question is mainly addressed by asking what relations among objects are necessary and sufficient for their coming to compose a larger whole. The first 72 pages of the book contain a short history of attempts to answer the first question, and a brief presentation of the analysis the authors defend at length in their (...) earlier book, Substance Among Other Categories. In the remaining 119 pages, the authors take up the second question. This order of presentation makes sense; but it may help to create a false impression in those who only glance at the first few pages—that this book is just a simplified version of the earlier one, with a little bit of history thrown in. It would be quite unfortunate, however, if very many potential readers get this impression; for it might discourage them from looking closely at the bulk of the book, which is new. The issues discussed in the later chapters are at the center of one of the most lively debates in contemporary metaphysics; and the position Hoffman and Rosenkrantz stake out is appealing and carefully articulated. Their views deserve careful attention from philosophers working on the metaphysics of persistence through time, personal identity, artifact identity, and mereology. (shrink)

Research background: To a limited extent, modern researchers are interested in ordoliberalism, as a theory of the socio-economic system, which is confirmed by the results of the bibliometric analysis. In conducted studies, the assumptions of ordoliberalism are used partially, for example, for research on: the role of the state in the economy, the antitrust law, the theoretical assumptions of the SME, the determinants of German economic policy after World War II. Purpose of the article: The aim of this article is (...) to present the possibilities offered by the ordoliberal theory that predispose it to determine a socio-economic order which makes it possible to tackle the dysfunctions and crises that afflict today’s economy. Methods: The research methodology involves a critical analysis of the works of the most essential representatives of ordoliberal thought, particularly Walter Eucken and others, from the perspective of the above-mentioned purpose of the study. This requires examining German-, Polish- and English-language publications by authors recognised as representatives of mainstream ordoliberalism. Findings & Value added: As a result of the conducted analysis, the hypothesis about the existence of the elements of ordoliberal theory that allow it to respond to the challenges of the modern world, including economic, social, environmental and climate crises and pandemic threats has been confirmed. Research of this kind implies a return of thinking in terms of economic order, and thus contributes to the theories that seek to overcome the crisis in both the real economy and the theory of economics. (shrink)

The works of many early critics of the Christian church were burned by ruling emperors or otherwise destroyed in the second and third centuries, but the writings of the Greek pagan philosopher, Celsus, have survived indirectly through his eloquent opponent Origen of Alexandria. In his apologetical treatise, Contra Celsum, Origen argues against the ideas set forth by Celsus and quotes from Celsus' The True Doctrine at length. Through this treatise, Celsus has come to represent the detached pagan voice of the (...) ages. In this translation, Professor Hoffmann has, for the first time, painstakingly reconstructed the main order of the philosopher's argument. Celsus' discourse shows him to be an eclectic philosopher--a dabbler in various schools of thought, including Platonism and Stoicism, and a student of the history and religious customs of many nations. Hoffman supplements this definitive translation with an informative introduction, summarizing Celsus' premises and placing the identity of Celsus in its historical context. (shrink)

Samuel J. Wheeler defends Wittgenstein's criticism of Cantor's set theory against the objections raised by Hilary Putnam. Putnam claims that Wittgenstein's dismissal of the basic tenets of this set theory concerning the noncountability of the set of real numbers was unfounded and ill‐conceived. In Wheeler's view, Putnam's charges result from his failure to grasp Wittgenstein's intention and, in particular, to consider the difference between empirical and logical impossibility. In my paper, I argue that Wheeler's defence is unsuccessful and, at the (...) same time, that Putnam's objections go too far. (shrink)