There are two approaches to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: to view it as a national or as a social affair; a fight for national independence or for a revolutionary transformation of society. The two approaches can be collapsed into a comprehensive one in the name of autonomy, and this is what Feher and Heller did, remaining mindful, however, of the two major and irreducible aspects of the actual events and their motivating forces. Their main argument is threefold. The people (...) in revolt wanted to establish a “dual system” of a socialist economy and a political pluralism; they wanted a renegotiation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements; and in the course of the revolution they achieved a national consensus that could actively negotiate a compromise implied by both major aims. (shrink)

Sentimentalists believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. Epistemic sentimentalists subscribe to what I call the final-court-of-appeal view: emotional experience is ultimately necessary and can be sufficient for the justification of evaluative beliefs. This paper rejects this view defending a moderate version of rationalism that steers clear of the excesses of both “Stoic” rationalism and epistemic sentimentalism. We should grant that emotions play a significant epistemic role in justifying evaluations. At the same time, evaluative justification is not uniquely or (...) especially dependent on emotions. The anti-sentimentalist argument developed in this paper is based on the indeterminacy thesis. The thesis states that the evaluative properties picked out by our emotional responses are too indeterminate to play a central role in our evaluative practices. I argue that while the indeterminacy thesis undermines the final-court-of-appeal view it supports the claim that emotional responses can provide prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs. (shrink)

The article analyzes ethnic data collection pertaining to criminal justice in Hungary. With such a sensitive and delicate issue at hand, Hungary has decided on an evasive approach, resisting ethnic data collection by law enforcement authorities. The author argues that this approach has become one of the obstacles in fighting discrimination and ethnic profiling. Moreover, Hungary’s restrictive approach to ethno-national data classification also causes severe constitutional problems in other, noncriminal legal circumstances, where ethnic data is used in the context of (...) additional rights and affirmative protection provided for ethno-national minorities. The first part of the article describes general problems relating to ethnic data collection and analyses of the Hungarian minority protection framework, in particular, the minority self-government structure (a unique constitutional institution). The second part focuses on the criminal justice system; the author’s aim is to show that prohibiting the official recognition and collection of data on ethnicity by criminal justice authorities has potentially ethnically discriminatory consequences. (shrink)

This paper argues that group attitudes can be assessed in terms of standards of rationality and that group-level rationality need not be due to individual-level rationality. But it also argues that groups cannot be collective epistemic agents and are not collectively responsible for collective irrationality. I show that we do not need the concept of collective epistemic agency to explain how group-level irrationality can arise. Group-level irrationality arises because even rational individuals can fail to reason about how their attitudes will (...) combine with those of others. In some cases they are morally responsible for this failure, in others they are not. Moreover, the argument for collective epistemic agency is incoherent because reasons-for-groups are ipso facto reasons-for-individual. Instead of talking about reasons-for-groups, we should therefore distinguish between self-regarding reasons and group-regarding reasons. Both kinds of reasons are reasons-for-individuals. These conceptual considerations in favour of moderate individualism are strengthened by an analysis of our moral practice of responding to collective shortfalls of rationality and by the unpalatable moral implications of collectivism about epistemic agency. There is no need to change the subject. Groups can be rational or irrational, but they do not reason. (shrink)

The prevailing justification for constitutional institutions is that such institutions reflect and enable rational solutions to social problems. However, constitutions are constructed through emotionally driven processes that reflect both the public sentiments of the day and, at least to some extent, basic moral emotions. Historical examples from France and the United States demonstrate the role of such emotional processes in shaping the design of liberal constitutionalism. Further, constitutional law both sets and regulates emotional display rules; favors or disfavors certain emotional (...) commitments; and, particularly through the formulation of fundamental human rights, reflects and shapes emotional moral judgments. The emotional contributors to constitutional design and interpretation may be called “constitutional sentiments.”. (shrink)

If the task of constitutional theory is to set out a language in which the discourse of constitutional law may be grounded, a question of the utmost importance is how this terminology is created, defined and interpreted. In this groundbreaking new work, András Jakab maps out and analyses the grammar and vocabulary on which the core European traditions of constitutional theory are based. He suggests understanding key constitutional concepts as responses to historical and present day challenges experienced by European societies. (...) Drawing together a great and diverse range of literature, much of which has never before been touched upon by scholarship in the English language, Jakab reconceptualises and argues for a new understanding of European constitutional law discourse. In so doing he shines new light on what constitutes its distinctively European nature. This remarkable book is essential reading for all scholars and students of constitutional theory in Europe and beyond. (shrink)

The paper relates two different fields of research: the historiography of generative linguistics and argumentation theory, a central topic of which is the investigation of fallacies. Relating the two fields is a challenge: Since fallacies seem to be at the heart of the historiography of generative linguistics, any thorough evaluation of its present state of the art also involves accounting for fallacies. The paper applies Kertész and Rákosi’s p-model of plausible argumentation to a case study on heated discussions in the (...) historiography of generative linguistics. As a result, basic properties of fallacious argumentation are revealed and delimited from plausible argumentation in linguistic historiography. In addition, the paper also draws generalizable conclusions that may affect the historiography of other human sciences as well. (shrink)

Individualists hold that moral responsibility can be ascribed to single human beings only. An important collectivist objection is that individualism is morally deficient because it leaves a normative residue. Without attributing responsibility to collectives there remains a “deficit in the accounting books” (Pettit). This collectivist strategy often uses judgment aggregation paradoxes to show that the collective can be responsible when no individual is. I argue that we do not need collectivism to handle such cases because the individualist analysis leaves no (...) responsibility-deficit. Harm suffered in such situations can have only two sources. Harm is either due to culpable wrongdoing by individuals. Harm is then redressed by holding these individuals responsible. Or harm does not result from culpable wrongdoing. Such harm may have to be redressed too, but not because anyone is responsible for it. Therefore, the charge of moral insensitivity against individualist accounts can be rejected. Furthermore, in the last section of the chapter I will show that collectivist talk about moral responsibility can be used for ethically questionable purposes as well. Collectivists cannot claim the moral high ground. (shrink)

Many believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. This paper focuses on epistemic aspects of the putative link between emotions and value by asking two related questions. First, how exactly are emotions supposed to latch onto or track values? And second, how well suited are emotions to detecting or learning about values? To answer the first question, the paper develops the heuristics-model of emotions. This approach models emotions as sui generis heuristics of value. The empirical plausibility of the heuristics-model (...) is demonstrated using evidence from experimental psychology, evolutionary anthropology and neuroscience. The model is used then to answer the second question. If emotions are indeed heuristics of value, then it follows that emotions can be an important and useful source of information about value. However, emotions will not be epistemically superior in the sense of being the highest court of appeal for the justification of axiological beliefs (the latter view is referred to as the Epistemic Dependence Thesis, or EDT for short). The paper applies the heuristics-model to celebrated cases from the philosophy of emotions literature arguing that while the heuristics-model offers a good explanation of typical patterns of emotional reactions in such cases, advocates of EDT will have a hard time accounting for these patterns. The paper also shows that the conclusions drawn from special cases generalize. The paper ends by arguing that skepticism about the metaethical significance of emotions is compatible with a commitment to the importance of emotions in first-order normative ethics. (shrink)

Mutually beneficial exchanges in markets can be exploitative because one party takes advantage of an underlying injustice. For instance, employers of sweatshop workers are often accused of exploiting the desperate conditions of their employees, although the latter accept the terms of their employment voluntarily. A weakness of this account of exploitation is its tendency for over-inclusiveness. Certainly, given the prevalence of global and domestic socioeconomic inequalities, not all exchanges that take place against background injustices should be considered exploitative. This paper (...) offers a framework to identify exploitation in mutually beneficial exchange, focusing on the case of sweatshop labor. It argues that an employer can be viewed as taking unfair advantage of an underlying injustice if and only if the employer’s surplus from the exchange in the unjust state of affairs exceeds the surplus it could maximally obtain in a just state of affairs. The paper illustrates the applicability of this framework using three different conceptions of justice and argues that it is superior to microlevel accounts of exploitation that regard background justice as irrelevant. The paper concludes by describing some normative implications that follow from judging an exchange exploitative. (shrink)

People seem to differ in their visual search performance involving emotionally expressive faces when these expressions are seen on faces of others close to their age compared to faces of non-peers, known as the own-age bias. This study sought to compare search advantages in angry and happy faces detected on faces of adults and children on a pool of children and adults. The goals of this study were to examine the developmental trajectory of expression recognition and examine the development of (...) an OAB. Participants were asked to find a target face displaying an emotional expression among eight neutral faces. Results showed that children and adults found happy faces significantly faster than angry and fearful faces regardless of it being present on the faces of peers or non-peers. Adults responded faster to the faces of peers regardless of the expression. Furthermore, while children detected angry faces significantly faster compared to fearful ones, we found no such difference in adults. In contrast, adults detected all expressions significantly faster when they appeared on the faces of other adults compared to the faces of children. In sum, we found evidence for development in detecting facial expressions and also an age-dependent increase in OAB. We suggest that the happy face could have an advantage in visual processing due to its importance in social situations and its overall higher frequency compared to other emotional expressions. Although we only found some evidence on the OAB, using peer or non-peer faces should be a theoretical consideration of future research because the same emotion displayed on non-peers’ compared to peers’ faces may have different implications and meanings to the perceiver. (shrink)

Neanderthal extinction is a matter of intense debate. It has been suggested that demography (as opposed to environment or competition) could alone provide a sufficient explanation for the phenomenon. We argue that demography cannot be a ‘stand-alone’ or ‘alternative’ explanation of token extinctions as demographic features are entangled with competitive and environmental factors, and further because demography should not be conflated with neutrality.

This paper argues that emotions can play an epistemic role as justifiers of evaluative beliefs. It also presents the heuristics theory of emotion as an empirically informed explanation of how emotions can play such a role and why they in practice usefully complement non-affective evaluative judgments. As such, the heuristics theory represents a form of moderate rationalism: it acknowledges that emotions can be epistemically valuable, even privileged in some sense, but denies that they would be uniquely privileged. I argue that (...) judgments and emotional responses pick out different but correlated kinds of evaluative properties and therefore emotional responses and non-affective evaluative judgments play mutually complementary rather than mutually exclusive roles. It follows that emotional responses can be legitimately drawn upon to support evaluative beliefs, but they lack supreme epistemic authority. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that certain hard moral choices constitute tragic moral dilemmas in which no available course of action is justifiable, and so the agent is blameworthy whatever she chooses. This paper criticizes a certain approach to the debate about moral dilemmas and considers the metaethical implications of the criticisms. The approach in question has been taken by many advocates as well as opponents of moral dilemmas who believe that analysing the emotional response of the agent is the key (...) to the debate about moral dilemmas. The metaethical position this approach is most naturally associated with is sentimentalism. Sentimentalists claim that evaluation, and in particular moral evaluation, crucially depends on human sentiment. This paper is not concerned with the question whether moral dilemmas exist, but rather with emotion-based arguments used on both sides of the debate. The first aim of the paper is to show that emotion-based arguments by friends or foes of moral dilemmas cannot garner support from sentimentalism. The second aim is to show that this constitutes a serious problem for sentimentalism. (shrink)

The idea that language is metaphoric in nature has often been suggested or stated since Vico and Rousseau. Derrida, too, often writes about metaphor and the impression he gives is that he is arguing for the metaphoric nature of both thought, whether philosophic or not, and language. Interpreters like de Man or Culler have helped to spread this impression. If it is correct, Derrida shares a pan-metaphoric view of language and whatever can be made with it. It is useful to (...) refer to Derrida's view because in my opinion he has been very good at saying what language is, even if he has been very much in the wrong in seeing no distinction between language and language use. Let us consider first what he has been good at. (shrink)

Filosofía antigua -- Filosofía medieval : heavy metal y religión -- Filosofía moderna y contemporánea.

The study aimed to identify the psychological changes that result from the amputation of a limb and the ways in which patients coordinate their daily lives. The study uses an interpretative phenomenological analysis aimed at understanding individual experiences in seven patients who have suffered limb amputation. The method used consisted of individual, semi-structured interviews, conducted approximately 4 months after surgery, to patients at home or in hospital, at the time of their regular checkup. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and, (...) following the qualitative analysis performed, six common themes were identified: emotional impact, negative affects, tendency toward isolation, role constraints and limitations, phantom limb, and emotional balancing. A specific theme for patients who have suffered amputations is phantom limb pain, which has received special attention from researchers. The last topic relates to the tendency toward emotional balancing and psychological calibration to return to normal life. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical discussion of Philip Pettit’s book A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). It evaluates the general prospeets of a ‘global theory of freedom’ of the kind advocated by Pettit, i.e. one that seeks explicitly to link a metaphysical theory of free agency to a distinct conception of political liberty. Pettit’s in many ways innovative views concerning ongoing debates in metaphysics and political theory (e.g. compatibilism, republicanism, (...) etc.) are also examined in detail. While recognising the legitimacy and originality of this intellectual endeavour, the paper concludes that, however full of important insights, Pettit’s account fails to realise the desired “reflective equilibrium” between a theory of free agency and that of political liberty. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of how economic and political institutions can limit the applicability of principles of justice even in non-relational cosmopolitan conceptions. It shows that fundamental principles of justice underdetermine fair distributive shares as well as justice -based requirements. It argues that institutions partially constitute the content of justice by determining distributive shares and by resolving indeterminacies about justice -based requirements resulting from strategic interaction and disagreement. In the absence of existing institutions principles of justice might not be (...) applicable for assessing distributions or guiding individual action and institutional design. Hence, accepting a specific cosmopolitan conception of justice is insufficient to settle global distributive questions. (shrink)

The thirty year long friendship between Imre Lakatos and the classic scholar and historian of mathematics Árpád Szabó had a considerable influence on the ideas, scholarly career and personal life of both scholars. After recalling some relevant facts from their lives, this paper will investigate Szabó's works about the history of pre-Euclidean mathematics and its philosophy. We can find many similarities with Lakatos' philosophy of mathematics and science, both in the self-interpretation of early axiomatic Greek mathematics as Szabó reconstructs it, (...) and in the general overview Szabó provides us about the turn from the intuitive methods of Greek mathematicians to the strict axiomatic method of Euclid's Elements. As a conclusion, I will argue that the correct explanation of these similarities is that in their main works they developed ideas they had in common from the period of intimate intellectual contact in Hungarian academic life in the mid-twentieth century. In closing, I will recall some relevant features of this background that deserve further research. (shrink)

Bioeconomy solutions potentially reduce the utilization demand of natural resources, and therefore, represent steps towards circular economy, but are not per se equivalent to sustainability. Thus, production may remain to be achieved against losses in natural resources or at other environmental costs, and materials produced by bioeconomy are not necessarily biodegradable. As a consequence, the assumption that emerging bioeconomy by itself provides an environmentally sustainable economy is not justified, as technologies do not necessarily become sustainable merely through their conversion to (...) using renewable resources for their production. A source of the above assumption is that the utility of bioeconomy is mostly assessed in interaction between technology developers and economists, resulting in biased assessment with private commercial technology benefits being included, but environmental costs, especially longer term ones, not being sufficiently considered in the economic models. A possible solution to this conceptual contradiction may come from bioethics, as a strong concept in environmental ethics is that no technological intervention can be imposed on nature beyond its receptive capacity. To achieve a better balanced analysis of bioeconomy, environmental and ecological, as well as non-economic social aspects, need to be included in the overall assessment. (shrink)

The original proposal of H. H. Pattee (1971) of basing quantum theoretical measurement theory on the theory of the origin of life, and its far reaching consequences, is discussed in the light of a recently emerging biological paradigm of internal measurement. It is established that the "measurement problem" of quantum physics can, in principle, be traced back to the internal material constraints of the biological organisms, where choice is a fundamental attribute of the self-measurement of matter. In this light, which (...) is shown to be a consequence of Pattee's original suggestion, it is proposed that biological evolution is a gradual liberation from the inert unity of "subject" and "object" of inanimate matter (as "natural law" and "initial conditions"), to a split biological existence of them and, as a consequence, the "message of evolution" is freedom, rather than complexity in itself. Some classical philosophical systems are brought into context to show that the epistemologies of several strictly philosophical systems of the social sciences are well acquainted with the problem and their solutions support our conclusions. (shrink)