There is a popular view on depiction which holds that convincingly realistic paintings depict their subjects through evoking in the spectator the illusion of seeing these very subjects face to face. There is, as it were, an exact 'match' between the visual experience of seeing something in a picture and the corresponding visual experience one would entertain if one were to stand in front of the real thing. This view, which we shall call 'illusionism', supports the widespread assumption that some (...) kinds of pictures -- notably post-Renaissance perspective paintings -- provide the correct, 'natural' way to depict physical space because they capture the way the visual system enables one to see the world. The most notable defence of illusionism has been offered by Ernst Gombrich. In his Art and Illusion, Gombrich (1960) argues that the development of Western art consists in a series of discoveries about the nature of visual perception that eventually lead to pictorial techniques that are able to elicit illusionary visual experiences on part of the spectator and thus reach the perfection of naturalistic representation. (shrink)

Has art still something to do with aesthetics? Traditional aesthetic theories were abandoned under influence of the arguments of Morris Weitz. It seems that there is no longer a place for aesthetics in the philosophy of art. Furthermore, a lot of contemporary art seems to be radically anti-aesthetic. It is argued that there is nonetheless a central role to be played for aesthetic experience in art.

What is the Role of Mental Imagery in Perception? A Defense of the Continuity Thesis What is the nature of the mental image, and which role does mental imagery play in perception? According to David Hume and Immanuel Kant, the capacity to form images lends a constitutive contribution to our perception of the world. Both philosophers portray the imagination as a unifying power that connects perceptions of different objects of the same kind, and that connects different perceptions of the same (...) object. I shall call this view the continuity thesis. Since the beginning of the 20th century the continuity thesis is heavily under attack. Jean-Paul Sartre and Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasize the conceptual and phenomenological distinction between perception and mental imagery. These philosophers are sceptical about the important psychological and epistemological role that is traditionally attributed to imagery. The central target of critique against the continuity thesis is primarily the Humean view that mental images, however complex, can be traced back to pictures or ‘copies’ of sense impressions. It will be argued that the sceptics about mental imagery, even though they justifiably attack pictorialism, have no grounds to dismiss the continuity thesis. Then I shall discuss the reassessment of the mental image with the rise of cognitive science since the 1970s, and I shall argue that the continuity thesis is supported by the so-called ‘enactive’ theory of mental imagery. (shrink)

Modern logic is undergoing a cognitive turn, side-stepping Frege’s ‘antipsychologism’. Collaborations between logicians and colleagues in more empirical fields are growing, especially in research on reasoning and information update by intelligent agents. We place this border-crossing research in the context of long-standing contacts between logic and empirical facts, since pure normativity has never been a plausible stance. We also discuss what the fall of Frege’s Wall means for a new agenda of logic as a theory of rational agency, and what (...) might then be a viable understanding of ‘psychologism’ as a friend rather than an enemy of logical theory. (shrink)

Epistemology and epistemic logic At first sight, the modern agenda of epistemology has little to do with logic. Topics include different definitions of knowledge, its basic formal properties, debates between externalist and internalist positions, and above all: perennial encounters with sceptics lurking behind every street corner, especially in the US. The entry 'Epistemology' in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Klein 1993) and the anthology (Kim and Sosa 2000) give an up-to-date impression of the field. Now, epistemic logic started as a (...) contribution to epistemology, or at least a tool in its modus operandi, with the seminal book Knowledge and Belief (Hintikka's 1962, 2005). Formulas like Ki for "the agent i knows that " Bi for "the agent i believes that " provided logical forms for stating and analyzing philosophical propositions and arguments. And more than that, their model-theoretic semantics in terms of ranges of alternatives provided an appealing extensional way of thinking about what agents know or believe in a given situation. In particular, on Hintikka's view, an agent knows those propositions which are true in all situations compatible with what she knows about the actual world; i.e., her current range of uncertainty. (shrink)

We analyze extensive games as interactive process models, using modallanguages plus matching notions of bisimulation as varieties of gameequivalences. Our technical results show how to fit existing modalnotions into this new setting.

For a Euclidean space , let L n denote the modal logic of chequered subsets of . For every n 1, we characterize L n using the more familiar Kripke semantics, thus implying that each L n is a tabular logic over the well-known modal system Grz of Grzegorczyk. We show that the logics L n form a decreasing chain converging to the logic L of chequered subsets of . As a result, we obtain that L is also a logic (...) over Grz, and that L has the finite model property. We conclude the paper by extending our results to the modal language enriched with the universal modality. (shrink)

We discuss how issues of information and computation interact with logic today, and what might be a natural extended agenda of investigation.

Labeled transition systems are key structures for modeling computation. In this paper, we show how they lend themselves to ordinary logical analysis (without any special new formalisms), by introducing their standard first-order theory. This perspective enables us to raise several basic model-theoretic questions of definability, axiomatization and preservation for various notions of process equivalence found in the computational literature, and answer them using well-known logical techniques (including the Compactness theorem, Saturation and Ehrenfeucht games). Moreover, we consider what happens to this (...) general theory when one restricts attention to special classes of transition systems (in particular, finite ones), as well as extended logical languages (in particular, infinitary first-order logic). We hope that this puts standard logical formalisms on the map as a serious option for a theory of computational processes. As a side benefit, our approach increases comparability with several other existing formalisms over labeled transition systems (such as Process Algebra or Modal Logic). We provide some pointers to this effect, too. (shrink)

It has been known since the seventies that the formulas of modal logic are invariant for bisimulations between possible worlds models — while conversely, all bisimulation-invariant first-order formulas are modally definable. In this paper, we extend this semantic style of analysis from modal formulas to dynamic program operations. We show that the usual regular operations are safe for bisimulation, in the sense that the transition relations of their values respect any given bisimulation for their arguments. Our main result is a (...) complete syntactic characterization of all first-order definable program operations that are safe for bisimulation. This is a semantic functional completeness result for programming, which may be contrasted with the more usual analysis in terms of computational power. The 'Safety Theorem' can be modulated in several ways. We conclude with a list of variants, extensions, and further developments. (shrink)

Some initial motivations for the Guarded Fragment still seem of interest in carrying its program further. First, we stress the equivalence between two perspectives: (a) satisfiability on standard models for guarded first-order formulas, and (b) satisfiability on general assignment models for arbitrary first-order formulas. In particular, we give a new straightforward reduction from the former notion to the latter. We also show how a perspective shift to general assignment models provides a new look at the fixed-point extension LFP(FO) of first-order (...) logic, making it decidable. Next, we relate guarded syntax to earlier quantifier restriction strategies for achieving effective axiomatizability in second-order logic – pointing at analogies with ‘persistent’ formulas, which are essentially in the Bounded Fragment of many-sorted first-order logic. Finally, we look at some further unexplored directions, including the systematic use of ‘quasi-models’ as a semantics by itself. (shrink)

This article discusses the meanings of “creativity”—tvorchestvo—as we encounter it in Georges Florovsky’s thought, first and foremost in his magnum opus Ways of Russian Theology (1937). Tvorchestvo had by this time become a key concept in Russian pre-revolutionary and later émigré thought. It is associated above all with Nikolai Berdyaev’s philosophy, but it also plays an important role in Sergei Bulgakov’s philosophy of economy. In both cases, it stands for the human response to divine creation. Moreover, and somewhat less famously, (...) it was also an epistemological concept in the religious idealism of Vladimir Solovyov as well as in Russian neo-Kantianism (Fyodor Stepun), where it stood for the active, synthetic faculty of our minds. Florovsky, meanwhile, used it as a description of how we should relate to the patristic heritage, but also to history more generally: Our attitude should be “creative,” active, as well as both backward- and forward-looking. This “return to the Fathers” was a central component of Florovsky’s neopatristic program, but, interestingly, in order to conceptualize this return, Florovsky took over a concept from traditions that his own approach otherwise firmly criticized. By analyzing Florovsky’s use of tvorchestvo, this article addresses the broader question as to the differences and parallels between the neopatristic movement and the legacy of the Russian Renaissance (Silver Age). (shrink)

In this article, we develop a bimodal perspective on possibility semantics, a framework allowing partiality of states that provides an alternative modelling for classical propositional and modal logics. In particular, we define a full and faithful translation of the basic modal logic K over possibility models into a bimodal logic of partial functions over partial orders, and we show how to modulate this analysis by varying across logics and model classes that have independent topological motivations. This relates the two realms (...) under comparison both semantically and syntactically at the level of derivations. Moreover, our analysis clarifies the interplay between the complexity of translations and axiomatizations of the corresponding logics: adding axioms to the target bimodal logic simplifies translations, or vice versa, complex translations can simplify frame conditions. We also investigate a transfer of first-order correspondence theory between possibility semantics and its bimodal counterpart. Finally, we discuss the conceptual trade-off between giving translations and giving new semantics for logical systems, and we identify a number of further research directions to which our analysis gives rise. (shrink)

Perceptual organization comprises a wide range of processes such as perceptual grouping, figure-ground organization, filling-in, completion, and perceptual switching. The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization provides a broad and extensive review of the current literature, written in an accessible form for scholars and students.

Minimal predicates P satisfying a given first-order description φ(P) occur widely in mathematical logic and computer science. We give an explicit first-order syntax for special first-order ‘PIA conditions’ φ(P) which guarantees unique existence of such minimal predicates. Our main technical result is a preservation theorem showing PIA-conditions to be expressively complete for all those first-order formulas that are preserved under a natural model-theoretic operation of ‘predicate intersection’. Next, we show how iterated predicate minimization on PIA-conditions yields a language MIN(FO) equal (...) in expressive power to LFP(FO), first-order logic closed under smallest fixed-points for monotone operations. As a concrete illustration of these notions, we show how our sort of predicate minimization extends the usual frame correspondence theory of modal logic, leading to a proper hierarchy of modal axioms: first-order-definable, first-order fixed-point definable, and beyond. (shrink)

Modern logic is about information flow and communication far beyond its traditional agenda of inference and meaning. This makes it a player at a central academic interface between many disciplines, where normative and descriptive stances, often thought to be at odds, meet in creating new practices which also affect reality. This same theatre is where philosophy in general would thrive, if it so wished.

This article seeks to defend and develop a stakeholder pragmatism advanced in some of the work by Edward Freeman and colleagues. By positioning stakeholder pragmatism more in line with the democratic and ethical base in American pragmatism (as developed by William James, John Dewey and Richard Rorty), the article sets forth a fallibilistic stakeholder pragmatism that seeks to be more useful to companies by expanding the ways in which value is and can be created in a contingent world. A dialogue (...) between a defence company and peace and arbitration society is used to illustrate the main plot of this article. (shrink)

The article discusses the notion of culture as it appears and is conceptualized in the works of G.P. Fedotov. The analysis focuses on two articles by Fedotov published in Russian migr journals, "The Holy Spirit in Nature and Culture" of 1932 and "Eschatology and culture" of 1938, and in his magnum opus in a Western context, The Russian Religious Mind of 1946. The author proposes to analyze Fedotov's ideas as a theology of culture due to the profoundly religious meaning the (...) Russian migr thinker attributed to cultural products and production, regardless of their religious intention. By implication, Fedotov understood culture in a religious framework as the human experience of and response to the divine, though not necessarily as dependent on firm belief. Viewing Fedotov as a theologian of culture enables us, furthermore, to compare him with other thinkers across the West-East cultural gradient, most notably Paul Tillich. This approach contextualizes Fedotov in a post-Schellingian pan-European idealist tradition, to which Russian thinkers' analyses of religious experience and imagination have made seminal contributions, in particular from Vladimir Solov'ev on. The article discusses these issues within the framework of the perspectives of global intellectual history, entangled history, and transnationalized Russian studies. (shrink)

Evert van der Zweerde’s book is the most recent result of the author’s long-time study of Russian philosophy and Russian philosophical culture. The latter concept has been one of Zweerde’s main con...

In the post-Soviet context, various cyclical models of recurrent Russian “Times of Troubles” have become increasingly popular. This perspective emerged first in Soviet dissident circles, who used it as a means to expose as mistaken the Soviet belief in continual historical progress on Russian soil. In post-Soviet Russia this critical approach has been continued by members of the “Akhezier circle,” the economist Egor Gaidar, and others. Meanwhile it was given an affirmative, conservative reinterpretation by Aleksandr Panarin, according to whom Russia (...) has always managed to overcome its phases of devastating Westernization and state collapse. This idea of Russian history has become influential; even Vladimir Putin has talked about Russia as a strong state able to survive various “Times of Troubles” from the early seventeenth century to the early post-Soviet period. It also figures prominently among members of the neoconservative Izborsk Club. This article analyzes different conceptions of Russian history as cyclical and their prominent place in the prevailing civilizational discourse of post-Soviet Russia. By means of postcolonial perspectives, this discourse is seen on the one hand as an attempt to question and reject Western hegemony, attempts that on the other hand nevertheless seem unable to liberate themselves from a normative dependence on the West. (shrink)

In this paper, we generalize the set-theoretic translation method for poly-modal logic introduced in [11] to extended modal logics. Instead of devising an ad-hoc translation for each logic, we develop a general framework within which a number of extended modal logics can be dealt with. We first extend the basic set-theoretic translation method to weak monadic second-order logic through a suitable change in the underlying set theory that connects up in interesting ways with constructibility; then, we show how to tailor (...) such a translation to work with specific cases of extended modal logics. (shrink)

This book is part of the core materials project of the 'European Ethics Network'.

This paper develops propositions on the added value for SMEs of normatively based, employee-oriented corporate social responsibility (CSR). We suggest that not only motives but also the skills of the owner/manager as an institutional entrepreneur are critical in dealing with institutional variance. Also, the transfer of employee-oriented CSR can have positive results for SMEs that could imply that globalisation is not only a race to the bottom.

Slavoj Žižek and Graham Priest are two philosphers who have a unique place within respectively postmodernist and formal-logic philosophy. They both defend Hegelianism within the two domains that could historically be characterized a anti-Hegelian. We characterize their formal Hegelianism through respectively the style form of chiasm and the inclosure schema. In addition to this, we make concrete the two movements in which they are situated on the basis of two prominent philosophers: Jacques Derrida and Bertrand Russell. We outline the two (...) Hegelians#39; criticism of these figures and in this way we come to a refinement of the analogy and difference between the them. Finally, we explain how they could be considered in relation to their movements in general. (shrink)

Today, applied ethics confronts many problems: technological and biomedical innovations, crisis of the welfare state, rising unemployment, migration and xenophobia. These and the changes accompanying them are, in themselves, important objects of study.An investigation on the level of the differentiated disciplines of practical ethics is insufficient. In as far as practical ethics also serves to disclose reality, it shows that modern problems can only be understood in the light of the general cultural crisis of which they are, at the very (...) least, symptoms. In the first part of this article, we will try to clarify this byanalyzing the crisis in the ethos of modern secularized society. The second part will try to show that Christian ethics can offer a meaningful answer to this cultural crisis, and how it can do so. (shrink)

Business Ethics has really taken off in Belgium. The author is Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, and an Associate Editor.

‘Narrativity and Hermeneutics’ is not an obvious subject to mark the fifth anniversary of a centre devoted to applied ethics. Narrative tradition and the interpretation of texts are not the main concern of handbooks on biomedical ethics, engineering ethics, business ethics or ecological ethics. The reasons are evident; most practitioners of applied ethics see their area of research as a functionally differentiated discipline, a carefully circumscribed field wherein only specialists are competent. In their textbooks they adopt the view of ethical (...) expertise as defended by Theo van Willingenburg in his noteworthy thesis Inside the Ethical Expert. According to this view, practitioners of applied ethics are experts possessing a body of specialized knowledge and skill within a given domain acquired through a substantial amount of study and training. Besides being able to clarify problems and analyze concepts and arguments, they are, as experts, also able to apply specific skills of moral reasoning to reach a substantiated evaluation of values and norms, with the ultimate purpose of offering suitable ethical advice.The acquisition of a certain amount of expertise is doubtless important. The practice of applied ethics is more than probing for a good moral intention. They primarily pursue the right moral choice, i.e. the action that in a given, often complex situation, is objectively suitable to express a good moral intention. A right moral choice is impossible without a thorough clarification of the complex reality about which a moral judgment must be made.Yet emphasizing ethical expertise does not say everything. Is it correct to position ethicists as experts parallel to the medical, economic or technical experts with whom they deal? Does applied ethics, because of its functionally differentiated approach, not run the risk of either reducing itself to a professional deontology with a limited view of responsibility or enclosing itself with other experts in an iron cage of technocratic, bureaucratic or instrumental rationality? When forming an ethical judgment, is it possible to exclude completely all influence arising from personal convictions? (shrink)