This is the first collection of papers covering the main trends in moral British philosophy in the 20th century. It has three sections. Roots, Theories and Applications. The articles are signed by: C. Kirwan, Jim MacAdam,Rom Harre, Catherine Audard, Roger Crisp, David McNaughton, Onora O'Neill, John Lucas, Bernard Williams.

Aceasta este prima colectie de lucrari care acopera principalele directii in filosofia morala britanica. Sunt trei sectiuni: Radacini, Teorii si Aplicari Articolele sunt semnate de: C. Kirwan, Jim MacAdam,Rom Harre, Catherine Audard, Roger Crisp, David McNaughton, Onora O'Neill, John Lucas, Bernard Williams.

We continue our investigation of paraorthomodular BZ*-lattices PBZ*-lattices, started in Giuntini et al., Mureşan. We shed further light on the structure of the subvariety lattice of the variety PBZL∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbb {PBZL}^{\mathbb {*}}$$\end{document} of PBZ∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{*}$$\end{document}–lattices; in particular, we provide axiomatic bases for some of its members. Further, we show that some distributive subvarieties of PBZL∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbb {PBZL}^{\mathbb (...) {*}}$$\end{document} are term-equivalent to well-known varieties of expanded KleeneKleene, C. lattices or of nonclassical modal algebrasNonclassical modal algebras. By so doing, we somehow help the reader to locate PBZ∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{*}$$\end{document}–lattices on the atlas of algebraic structures for nonclassical logics. (shrink)

The theological formulation of the “eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son”, developed by the patriarch of Constantinople Gregory of Cyprus in the 13th century, has been the subject of numerous studies in the 20th century and played an important role in the renewal of Trinitarian Orthodox theology. The interpretations are however diverging. Most theologians see in this formulation the manifestation of the uncreated energy, which would have been formalized later by Gregory Palamas. Others understand it as a hypostatic (...) reality concerning the third Person of the Trinity. This paper contributes to the discussion by re-analyzing the main texts of Gregory of Cyprus and of Gregory Palamas on this matter. In a first step, we defend the thesis that in the thought of the Byzantine patriarch, this expression truly concerns the hypostasis of the Spirit. In a second step, we question the existence of the theme of an “eternal manifestation” of the uncreated energy in the work of Gregory Palamas. (shrink)

This volume contains a new and careful translation of the famous work of moral philosophy "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" from Immanuel Kant, followed by a detailed commentary, the first of this kind in Romania, which explains almost line by line the basic concepts, the historical context, the significance of Kantian "formulas" of the categorical imperative and the theoretical architecture offered by this work of the philosopher.

In previous work, we have introduced and studied a lifting property in congruence–distributive universal algebras which we have defined based on the Boolean congruences of such algebras, and which we have called the Congruence Boolean Lifting Property. In a similar way, a lifting property based on factor congruences can be defined in congruence–distributive algebras; in this paper we introduce and study this property, which we have called the Factor Congruence Lifting Property. We also define the Boolean Lifting Property in varieties (...) with \ and \ having Boolean Factor Congruences and no skew congruences, and prove that it coincides to the Factor Congruence Lifting Property in the congruence–distributive case; we particularize this result to bounded distributive lattices and residuated lattices. (shrink)

The volume Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania is the first contribution that aims at showing to the Japanese reader a sample of contemporary philosophy in Romania. At the same time a volume of contemporary Japanese philosophy is translated into Romanian and will be published by the University of Bucharest Press. -/- Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania includes several original articles in applied ethics and theoretical moral philosophy. It is representative of the variety of research and the growing interest in applied (...) ethics in the last few years in Romania. The philosophy practised here is at the same time an international activity, but also a kind of research deeply involved in Romanian realities. The contributors to the volume are Romanian philosophers from the most important Universities in the country, including members of the Romanian Academy, but also junior researchers. -/- This volume was made possible thanks to the relationship established between the Applied Ethics Centres of the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Hokkaido University, Japan. (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over other (...) methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

The translation and the commentary of Mr. Muresan are 2 times welcomed. The translation will make known to Romanian reader this important philosopher. The commentary,parts of which I have read in the English translation, is one extremely original and critic,in the scholar sense of the term, a result of a detailed knowledge of ethical works and other works of Mill; he uses the rich critical literature elaborated mostly in the last years and especially by English language philosophers. Mr. (...) class='Hi'>Muresan transmits the spirit of this critical tradition; but he surpasses it at the same time with his own daring interpretations. His book is a subtle contribution to research on Mill and on ethics in general, being useful not just in Romania, but anywhere it may be accessible in the philosophical world. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

This book represents a first attempt, after the anti-communist Revolution of 1989, to investigate with analytical methods the reliability of the "official philosophy"in the ex-communist countries - the diamat. It is not a factual, historical or politological approach, but a conceptual analysis of two main topics: the "materialism" and the "dialectics". It is mainly focused on the Romanian case.

Delia Popa, Emmanuel Levinas, Les aventures de l’economie subjective et son ouverture a l’alterite (Eemmanuel Levinas, The adventures of the subjective economy and its opening towards alterity) Lumen Publishing House, Iasi, 2007.

The main aim of this article is to clarify the answer to the question: "What does it mean to measure the efficiency (or effectiveness) of an ethical code? Is this efficiency measurable?" Although this phrase is frequently used, it covers difficulties, both conceptual and of implementation. The proposed solution is to abandon the above question and redirect our attention towards a more complex one: What does it mean to measure the "efficiency" of a moral enhancement program, grounded on a code (...) of ethics and having as the objective to increase the organization's "moral content"? This outcome is brought about by "encapsulating" and dissolving the immoral behavior according to the guide of the seven institutional virtues identified by Kaptein. After introducing the "praxiological" concept of "moral efficiency", in which the "efficiency of the ethical code" is substituted by the "efficiency of moral programs", one shows how is it possible to measure the efficiency of the moral enhancement programs introduced to strengthen the moral content of an organization. (shrink)

Starting March 2020, Romania has been faced with a health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis reflected in media communication. In such situations, media play a crucial role in making relevant information timely and accessible, to help people learn about and understand what this pandemic is and how it is assessed, how to protect themselves, and what measures are taken by the authorities. This study aims to analyse how Romanian students keep informed during this national and global crisis, (...) which also generates adjacent media phenomena such as an increase in misinformation, lack of transparency in communicating with the public or over-abundance of information. To this end, we applied a questionnaire which was answered by 426 students from a public university in Romania. The results show that students use many sources to get the information they consider important, believe that the types of messages that help them feel properly informed about the pandemic and its implications: data, figures, accurate facts, and the information received from authorities or experts and that they prefer multimedia digital content. Young people tend to be cautious concerning the transparency of official communication and continue to consume information transmitted by the mainstream media, perceived as being more credible than other news sites. (shrink)

Taking into consideration the concepts of „knowledge” and „power”, whose correlation authored the very idea of modernity, this study on Foucault traces their evolution through two cultural patterns: the archive and the diagram. A world picture can be constructed only by making appeal to the archives of knowledge. In every historical moment the structure and the quality of the archive actuate the initiatives of power, that is, the play of forces between actors, institutions, centres of decision in society, and between (...) agents and patients. The play of these forces, ever reshaping, allows the temporary drawing of the power diagram. It is in the precarious balance realized by a diagram that the social play happens, which, by reverting to its archive sources, transforms the cycle of knowledge. As a central idea, it can be asserted that it is between knowledge and power, between archive and diagram and that it is according to the actual schemes of their correlation that the evolutionary curve of a human world is decided. (shrink)

Review of Ioan-Aurel Pop, Biserică, societate şi cultură în Transilvania secolului al XVI-lea. Între acceptare şi excludere (Church, society and culture in 16 th Century Transylvania. Between acceptance and exclusion) , București: Editura Academiei, 2012.

The main purpose of this paper is to show that Kant’s transcendental philosophy is tacitly laden with the structures of modern modal thought. More exactly, the surprising parallelism which seems to exist between Kant’s manner of defining necessity (and, on this basis, nomicity) and the modern approaches of the same concepts in the frame of “possible worlds philosophy” is stressed. A new interpretation of the Categorical Imperative is also offered on this basis.

Vasile Frãteanu, Tratat de metafizicã Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 2002.

Two recent French poets, Henri Meschonnic and Jacques Roubaud, have found in Wittgenstein's philosophy an alternative to post-structuralist poetics. Meschonnic's poetry and his theoretical writings show a sustained critical engagement with Wittgenstein, whom he reads in conjunction with Emile Benveniste. The writers inform his theory of poetic rhythm and his practice of biblical translation. Roubaud's use of Wittgenstein, by contrast, here examined in the collection Quelque chose noir, is linked partly with the poet's grief following the death of his wife (...) Alix Cléo Roubaud, a photographer and an avid reader of Wittgenstein. In Roubaud, Wittgenstein opens up the space for a meditation on disappearance and absence. Roubaud reformulates passages from Wittgenstein's On Certainty in poems evoking Alix's memory. (shrink)

In his celebrated masterpiece, Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and, of course, Plato's mentor Socrates - each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness. And then into the party bursts the drunken Alcibiades, the (...) most popular and notorious Athenian of the time, who insists on praising Socrates himself rather than love, and gives us a brilliant sketch of this enigmatic character. The power, humour, and pathos of Plato's creation engages the reader on every page. This new translation is complemented by full explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction. (shrink)

Why do moral people so often fail to act morally? Standard scientific answers point to poor moral judgment (based on deficient character development, reason, or intuition) or to situational pressure. I consider a third possibility: a relative lack of truly moral motivation and emotion. What has been taken for moral motivation is often instead a subtle form of egoism. Recent research provides considerable evidence for moral hypocrisy—motivation to appear moral while, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral—but very (...) little evidence for moral integrity—motivation to actually be moral. The lack of truly moral motivation may, in turn, be linked to a lack of truly moral emotion, at least in response to violation of certain moral standards. (shrink)

"This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition..., offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship"--Front flap of dust jacket, volume 1.

forthcoming in R. Cameron, B. Hale and A. Hoffmann (ed.s), The Logic, Epistemology and Metaphysics of Modality, Oxford University Press. Presents a concept-grounding account of modal knowledge.

Анотація. У статті проаналізовані досягнення Соціального Вчительства Католицької Церкви, репрезентовані працями Лева ХІІІ, Пія ХІ, Пія ХІІ, Івана Павла ІІ, що розкривають змістовні характеристики поняття «принцип субсидіарності», його роль і значення в системі християнських цінностей. Принцип субсидіарності робить можливими такі взаємовідносини в соціальному житті, коли спільнота вищого порядку не втручається у внутрішнє життя спільноти нижчого порядку, перебираючи на себе належні тій функції; заради спільного добра, спільного блага вона надає їй у разі потреби підтримку й допомогу, узгоджуючи у такий спосіб її (...) взаємодію з іншими соціальними структурами. Принцип субсидіарності скеровує соціальну практику на утвердження спільного блага в людському співтоваристві. Поширення і застосування принципу субсидіарності протистоїть небезпеці «одержавлення» суспільства та найзагрозливіших проявів колективізму, обмежує абсолютизацію влади, бюрократизацію державних і соціокультурних структур, стає одним із гарантів дотримання прав і свобод громадян своєї країни. (shrink)

I argue that acknowledging Hume as a doxastic naturalist about belief in a deity allows an elegant, holistic reading of his Dialogues. It supports a reading in which Hume's spokesperson is Philo throughout, and enlightens many of the interpretive difficulties of the work. In arguing this, I perform a comprehensive survey of evidence for and against Philo as Hume's voice, bringing new evidence to bear against the interpretation of Hume as Cleanthes and against the amalgamation view while correcting several standard (...) mistakes. I ultimately isolate the interpretation of Philo's Reversal at the end of the Dialogues as of paramount importance, and show how my naturalistic interpretation makes this, and other notoriously difficult passages, unproblematic. (shrink)

Philosophers of biology typically pose questions about individuation by asking “what is an individual?” For example, we ask, “what is an individual species”, “what is an individual organism”, and “what is an individual gene?” In the first part of this chapter, I present my account of the gene concept and how it is used in investigative practices in order to motivate a more pragmatic approach. Instead of asking “what is a gene?”, I ask: “how do biologists individuate genes?”, “for what (...) purposes?”, and “do their practices of individuating genes serve these purposes?" In the second part of this chapter, I propose that we use this approach when analyzing concepts of organisms and biological individuals. Following philosophical pragmatism, I argue that we should abstain from attempts to situate individuation of Darwinian individuals or of holobionts in a philosophy of nature. Instead, we should analyze practices of individuating organisms in terms of three-place relations between the world, ideas, and human purposes and actions. I conclude with three lessons: an ontological, an epistemological, and a meta-philosophical lesson, which I suggest, apply to philosophy of science generally and to philosophy and metaphysics at large. (shrink)

In this critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect.