This article addresses the growing industry of retail socially responsible investment (SRI) profiled mutual funds. Very few previous studies have examined the final consumer of SRI profiled mutual funds. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to, in an exploratory manner, examine the impact of a number of pro-social, financial performance, and socio-demographic variables on SRI behavior in order to explain why investors choose to invest different proportions of their investment portfolio in SRI profiled funds. An ordinal logistic regression analysis (...) on 528 private investors revealed that two of the three pro-social variables had a positive impact on how much the consumer invested in SRI profiled funds. Moreover, there was proof of a non-altruistic motive for investing in SRI as consumers who perceive that financial return of SRI is equal or better than "regular" mutual funds, invested a greater proportion of their portfolio in SRI profiled mutual funds. Furthermore, the results showed that women and better-educated investors were more likely to invest a greater proportion of their investment portfolio in SRI. Overall, the findings indicate that both financial perceptions and pro-social attitudes are connected to consumer investment in SRI. (shrink)

A recent report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in cooperation with the Swedish Security Service shows that the Internet has been extensively used to spread propaganda by proponents of violent political extremism, characterized by a worldview painted in black and white, an anti-democratic viewpoint, and intolerance towards persons with opposing ideas. We provide five arguments suggesting that philosophical dialogue with young persons would be beneficial to their acquisition of insights, attitudes and thinking tools for encountering such propaganda. (...) The arguments are based on stated requirements for problem solutions given by experts in violent political extremism, recent research about the effects of philosophical dialogue in young persons’ thinking skills, and parts of the basic theoretical framework of Philosophy for Children. Philosophical dialogues seem a promising way for young people to achieve a stronger democratic awareness and a more tenacious resistance against extremist views online. (shrink)

The traditional square of opposition is generalized and extended to a cube of opposition covering and conveniently visualizing inter-sentential oppositions in relational syllogistic logic with the usual syllogistic logic sentences obtained as special cases. The cube comes about by considering Frege–Russell’s quantifier predicate logic with one relation comprising categorical syllogistic sentence forms. The relationships to Buridan’s octagon, to Aristotelian modal logic, and to Klein’s 4-group are discussed.GraphicThe photo shows a prototype sculpture for the cube.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a widely spread diagnosis.The dominant paradigm of ADHD is biomedical where ADHD isdefined as a brain disorder. At the same time, the legitimacy of thediagnosis is being questioned since it is unclear whether or not ADHDcan be deemed a medical disorder in itself. The aim of this article is tocritically assess the merits of understanding the diagnosis of ADHD as amedical condition defined as a brain disorder. This is being done usingthe seventeenth century philosopher Benedict (...) Spinoza’s notions of adequate and inadequate knowledge and his counterintuitivetheory of mental health. Doing so it becomes clear that ADHD, howeveradequate it may seem, is founded on inadequate knowledge and thatthe legitimacy of the individual diagnosis should therefore be questionedon the grounds that on a long term scale it is passivizing andstigmatizing rather that liberating. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 1 Seiten: 35-65.

This article explores the idea of film as a possible means for articulating original philosophical concepts, in Gilles Deleuze’s sense of concepts. The first of two parts, critically re-examines current ideas about film as philosophy in relation to Deleuze’s ideas on philosophy and cinema/art. It is common within the field of film-philosophy to trace back its central argument that film/cinema is capable of expressing original philosophy, to Deleuze’s cinema books. In and around these books, however, Deleuze did not express such (...) an idea and rather underlined sharp formal differences between cinematic thinking and philosophy. Cinematic thinking takes the form, he argues, of blocks of movement/duration whereas philosophy is defined as the art of creating concepts. Still, could a close critical scrutiny of and some creativity with Deleuze’s thought allow for taking a step he did not take? The second part of the article takes on the speculative question of whether it is possible to create a notion from within Deleuze’s thought as a whole, that allows for at least the theoretical possibility of articulating original philosophical concepts – as Deleuze defines them – in and through film, and what this would mean for our understanding of the concrete form of concepts. The article examines Deleuze’s concept of concepts, his descriptions of complicating intersections between philosophy and art, some partly conflicting statements on Godard over the years, aspects of his analyses of filmic thinking in Cinema 2 that can be seen to provide preliminary components for articulating concepts in and through film, and it discusses the place and function of words and texts in such filmic articulations. If the aim of the first part is to clarify Deleuze’s positions on film and philosophy the aim of the second part resonates with the Deleuzian/Nietzschean quest for formal renewal of philosophy. The overall aim is to re-problematize and provide subtle new means for conceiving of and discussing the notion of film as philosophy. (shrink)

This paper discusses psychological hedonism with a special reference to the writings of Bishop Butler, and Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Contrary to philosophical orthodoxy, Sober and Wilson have claimed that Butler failed to refute psychological hedonism. In this paper it is argued: (1) that there is a difference between reductive and ultimate psychological hedonism; (2) that Butler failed to refute ultimate psychological hedonism, but that he succeeded in refuting reductive psychological hedonism; and, finally and more importantly, (3) that (...) Butler’s criticism of reductive hedonism can be used as a stepping-stone in another argument showing the implausibility of ultimate psychological hedonism as well. (shrink)

The topic of this study is to what extent standards of rational inquiry can be rationally criticized and revised. It is argued that it is rational to treat all such standards as open to criticism and revision. Arguments to the effect that we are fallible with regard to all standards of rational inquiry are presented. Standards cannot be ultimately justified and with certainty established either as adequate or as inescapable presuppositions. Apel's attempt to give ultimate justifications of certain moral and (...) logical rules is examined and criticized. Special attention is given to our fallibility with regard to logical inference rules. The idea that certain logical rules cannot be put into question because any critical argument presupposes them is criticized. It has been claimed that there must be some basic standards which are such that they cannot be rationally evaluated and hence are rationally unrevisable. This is called "the unrevisability thesis". Related to this thesis is the normative policy according to which rationality requires that some standards be treated as unrevisable, the unrevisability policy. Two arguments that have been used to defend the unrevisability thesis and policy are examined and criticized. The conclusion is that we are not forced to accept either the thesis or the policy. The negation of the unrevisability policy is the revisability policy, according to which it is rational to treat all standards as open to rational criticism and revision. Objections that have been directed against the revisability policy are discussed and criticized. According to the objections, the revisability policy leads to rationality relativism. These objections are refuted, and it is argued that it is, on the contrary, rational to adopt the revisability policy and treat all standards of rational inquiry as criticizable and revisable. It is proposed that the rational change of standards should be viewed as a bootstrap process. General features of a bootstrap view of rational change of standards are presented, and it is argued that it is impossible to formulate a real theory of bootstrapping. Two models of standard change are presented and discussed: Laudan's reticulated model of scientific rationality and Briskman's bootstrap theory. It is claimed that in spite of defects and limitations, these models contribute to a richer understanding of bootstrapping. The fallibility and revisability of standards of rational inquiry have consequences for how the normativity of rationality should be understood. The book ends with an account of how the rationality of cognitive actions is related to the idea of the adequacy of standards. A distinction between absolute and standard-relative rationality is made, and it is argued that what an inquiring agent rationally ought to do coincides with what it is standard-relatively rational for him to do. It is shown that this view of rationality of inquiry is nevertheless inconsistent with rationality relativism, and that it is compatible with an objectivistic view of rationality. (shrink)

Compassion is often described in terms of suffering. This paper investigates the nature of this suffering. It is argued that compassion involves suffering of a particular kind. To begin with a case is made for the negative claim that compassion does not involve an ordinary, or afflictive, suffering over something. Secondly, it is argued that the suffering of compassion is a suffering for someone else’s sake: If you feel compassion for another person, P, then you suffer over P:s suffering for (...) P:s sake, and if that is all you do, then you are not affected with an afflictive suffering over something. The final section identifies and addresses a problem concerning self-pity, and a suggestion is made on how to specify the proposed account so as to cover both self-directed and other-directed compassion. (shrink)

The topic of this study is a notion of empathy that is common in philosophy and in the behavioral sciences. It is here referred to as ‘the notion of empathy as emotional sharing’, and it is characterized in terms of three ideas. If a person, S, has empathy with respect to an emotion of another person, O, then (i) S experiences an emotion that is similar to an emotion that O is currently having, (ii) S’s emotion is caused, in a (...) particular way, by the state of O or by S’s entertaining an idea of the state or situation of O, and (iii) S experiences this emotion in a way that does not entail that S is in the corresponding emotional state. The aim of the study is to clarify this notion of empathy by clarifying these three ideas and by tracing the history of their development in philosophy. -/- The study consists of two parts. Part one contains a short and selective account of the history in Western philosophy of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. In chapter 2 Spinoza’s theory of imitation of affects and Hume’s theory of sympathy are presented. It is argued that these theories only exemplify the second idea characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. Chapter 3 contains presentations of Adam Smith’s theory of sympathy, and Schopenhauer’s theory of compassion. These theories are shown to exemplify the second and the third idea. In chapter 4 there are presentations of Edith Stein’s description of Einfühlung, and Max Scheler’s account of empathy and fellow-feeling. It is shown that these accounts contain explicit specifications of the third idea, and it is argued that they also exemplify the second idea. -/- In part two, the three ideas are further clarified and the notion of empathy as emotional sharing is defined. Chapter 5 contains a discussion of the main contemporary philosophical analyses of empathy. Three different views are distinguished: one that construes empathetic emotions as emotional states, one that construes them as imagined emotions, and one that construes them as off-line emotions. The first two views are criticized and rejected. The third is accepted and further developed in chapter 6, which contains a general analysis of the emotions. A distinction is made between two ways of experiencing an emotion, and it is argued that it is possible to have the affective experience characteristic of a particular kind of emotional state without being in that kind of state. In chapter 7, a definition of ‘empathy’ is proposed. This definition contains specifications of the three ideas characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing, and it shows both how the empathizer’s emotion resembles the emotion of the empathee, and how this emotion is caused and experienced. (shrink)

In recent years some archaeological commentators have suggested moving away from an exclusively anthropocentric view of social reality. These ideas endorse elevating objects to the same ontological level as humans – thus creating a symmetrical view of reality. However, this symmetry threatens to force us to abandon the human subject and theories of meaning. This article defends a different idea. It is argued here that an archaeology of the social, based on human intentionality, is possible, while maintaining an ontology that (...) does not involve dualistic conceptions of reality. Building upon the philosophical work of Vincent Descombes, it is contended that humans are intentional actors and society is predicated on triadic relations that involve humans, objects and meanings. These relations can only be understood holistically, given that these relations are merely parts of a meta-narrative. These meta-narratives contain specific historical and social settings, and it is only within these settings that social relations are intelligible. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that it is the explicativecharacter of Tarski's semantic definition of truth given in his study of 1933 that allows forconsideration of a philosophical background of this definition in the proper sense. Given the explicativecharacter of this definition it is argued that the philosophical tradition that should be taken intoaccount with regard to this philosophical background is the tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw Schoolin its connections with the School of Brentano. As an example of (...) the explanatory power ofconsidering this tradition as far as Tarski's philosophical choices are concerned I use here thenotion of sentence-inscription, i.e., the notion of that entity of which truth is predicated inthe definition in question. One of the consequences of these statements is that philosophicaldiscussions concerning the semantic definition of truth can be regarded from two points ofview. On the one hand, they may take the perspective of its explicational function, i.e., theperspective of its philosophical background. On the other hand, they might consider the philosophicalconsequences of the definition with respect to the goal of the explication, i.e., they may considerits philosophical content independently of its historical background. (shrink)

psychiatric diagnoses such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a rapidly growing and globally increasing phenomenon, not least in different educational contexts such as in family and in school. Children and youths labelled as ADHD are challenging normative claims in terms of nurturing and education, whereas those labelled as ADHD are considered a risk for society to handle. The dominant paradigm regarding ADHD is biomedical, where different levels of attention and activity-impulsivity are perceived as neurobiological dys/functions within the brain best (...) managed by means of an individual diagnosis and instrumental pedagogy. The majority of those labelled as having ADHD encounter a dominant educational model in the form of what is referred to in this article as neurobehaviorism, which is based on onto-epistemological violence. As opposed to this act of violence against being—and against the psychiatrized subject—a less violent educational model is proposed, based on French philosopher Alain Badiou’s ontological examination of being and his concept of love as a truth procedure. In terms of the latter, the focus is on the potential of the encounter as a ‘Two scene of love’. Here, the encounter is a place where it is possible to create new truths and subjects, instead of taking the individual diagnosis as an axiom which only leads to individuals having fixed identities codified in a hierarchical order. This argument is drawn from the ‘mathematical’ formula 1 + 1 = ♥, which originates from an online forum for people who have come into contact with ADHD in one way or another. (shrink)

The dominant theory of judgment in 1870 was one or other variety of combination theory: the act of judgment is an act of combining concepts or ideas in the mind of the judging subject. In the decades to follow a succession of alternative theories arose to address defects in the combination theory, starting with Bolzano’s theory of propositions in themselves, Brentano’s theory of judgment as affirmation or denial of existence, theories distinguishing judgment act from judgment content advanced by Brentano’s students (...) Twardowski, Husserl and Meinong, and finally, Adolf Reinach’s addition of a linguistic dimension to the Brentano-Husserlian theory of judgment – an account of judgments as ways of doing things with words in what Reinach called ‘social acts’. (shrink)

At a purely instrumental level, quantum theory is all about multiplication, addition and taking mod squares of complex numbers called probability amplitudes. The rules for combining amplitudes are deceptively simple. When two or more events are independent you multiply their respective probability amplitudes and when they are mutually exclusive you add them. Whenever you want to calculate probabilities you take mod squares of respective amplitudes. That’s it. If you are prepared to ignore the explanatory power of the theory (which you (...) should not) the rest is just a set of convenient mathematical tools developed for the purpose of book-keeping of amplitudes. Thus we tabulate amplitudes into state vectors and unitary matrices, and place them in Hilbert spaces. (shrink)

Author: Szutta Artur Title: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ’S CONCEPT OF THE ‘THIRD STATES’ (Stany trzecie w ujęciu Władysława Tatarkiewicza) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 617-627 Keywords: “THIRD STATES”, LEISURE, PHILOSOPHY, THEORY, INTELLECT, SENSE OF LIFE, WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ, JOSEPH PIEPER Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article treats on the concept of “third states” (as opposed to the other two kinds of states: those of work and entertainment) introduced by (...) Władysław Tatarkiewicz in his treatise On Happiness. A thorough analysis of the passage on “third states” as well as of the very concept allows to see its relevance to the considerations on such important philosophical questions as those of the nature of doing philosophy, the meaning of life, intellectual intuition, theoria or contemplation. The paper consists of five parts. The first part is focused on Tatarkiewicz’s understanding of “third states” as well as on a phenomenological analysis of the concept itself. The second part is a kind of extension of the analysis enriched by Josef Pieper’s interpretation of the idea of leisure which I find very close to what Tatarkiewicz means by “third states”. In the light of the analysis the concept of the ‘third states’ turns out to be very inspiring and useful in dealing with a number of philosophical questions, which is shown in the fourth part of the paper. The final step consists of questioning the above conclusion by short outlining a possible naturalistic interpretation of the ‘third states’ in the light of which the picture of philosophy, human life or human cognition, based on the concept of the ‘third states’ might turn out to be a mere illusion. I do not give a final answer to this question but treat the conclusion of the paper as an invitation to a deeper consideration of the matter. (shrink)

Humans are often extraordinary at performing practical reasoning. There are cases where the human computer, slow as it is, is faster than any artificial intelligence system. Are we faster because of the way we perceive knowledge as opposed to the way we represent it? -/- The authors address this question by presenting neural network models that integrate the two most fundamental phenomena of cognition: our ability to learn from experience, and our ability to reason from what has been learned. This (...) book is the first to offer a self-contained presentation of neural network models for a number of computer science logics, including modal, temporal, and epistemic logics. By using a graphical presentation, it explains neural networks through a sound neural-symbolic integration methodology, and it focuses on the benefits of integrating effective robust learning with expressive reasoning capabilities. -/- The book will be invaluable reading for academic researchers, graduate students, and senior undergraduates in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive science and engineering. It will also be of interest to computational logicians, and professional specialists on applications of cognitive, hybrid and artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the account of objective truth taken for granted by logicians at least since the publication in 1933 of Tarski’s “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages” arose out of a tradition of philosophical thinking initiated by Bolzano and Brentano. The paper shows more specifically that certain investigations of states of affairs and other objectual correlates of judging acts, investigations carried out by Austrian and Polish philosophers around the turn of the century, (...) formed part of the background of views that led to standard current accounts of the objectivity of truth. It thus lends support to speculations on the role of Brentano and his heirs in contemporary logical philosophy advanced by Jan Wolenski in his masterpiece of 1989 on the Logic and philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School. (shrink)

In this paper a bootstrap theory of rationality is presented. Such a theory is an attempt to explain how standards of rational inquiry may be rationally revised — without assuming that there are any basic and fixed standards for evaluating such revisions. The general bootstrap idea is briefly presented in the first sections. The main part of the paper consists of a discussion of what normative requirements a bootstrap theory should contain, and a number of requirements on rational revisions are (...) proposed. The final section deals with the question of whether a bootstrap theory is self-referentially coherent. (shrink)

The dominant theory of judgment in 1870 was one or other variety of combination theory: the act of judgment is an act of combining concepts or ideas in the mind of the judging subject. In the decades to follow a succession of alternative theories arose to address defects in the combination theory, starting with Bolzano’s theory of propositions in themselves, Brentano’s theory of judgment as affirmation or denial of existence, theories distinguishing judgment act from judgment content advanced by Brentano’s students (...) Twardowski, Husserl and Meinong, and finally, Adolf Reinach’s addition of a linguistic dimension to the Brentano-Husserlian theory of judgment – an account of judgments as ways of doing things with words in what Reinach called ‘social acts’. (shrink)

The earliest utopian studies in Poland coincided with the rise of the socialist movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first such work, entitled Dwaj znakomici komuniści, Tomasz Morus i Tomasz Campanella, i ich systematy, Utopija i Państwo Słoneczne, was written by Bolesław Limanowski, a historian and socialist activist, who stressed the similarities between utopian institutions and those of socialist and communist projects. Foregrounding the question of property, he argued that socialists only wanted to implement the collectivization (...) of land and means of production, without... (shrink)

SummaryThis paper deals with the less researched issue of regional federation projects in East-Central Europe from the period 1848 to 1918. Based on exhaustive research, primarily using original sources—works of the intellectuals who designed these projects—the paper examines the reasons why these federation projects were written, their historical-political context, and why these plans had to fail at their time. Similarities and differences of ideas in these projects are also presented. The intention is not to give a simple presentation of a (...) series of historical facts, but to present some early ideas focused on regional integration, which, in turn, could also provide inspiration in the present. (shrink)

The topic of this paper I would like to divide into two other questions than that of its title. The first question is the historical one and sounds like this: Why had Tarski chosen physical objects as truth-bearers in his original work from 1933 about truth in formalized languages?1 This historical problem may be still of importance not only from a historical point of view. Tarski’s truth-definition is still seen as one of undeniable importance for any contemporary philosophical analysis of (...) truth. (shrink)