_Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology_ offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the (...) primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory. (shrink)

The article shows a difference in Aristotle’s ethical theory between the Protrepticus and Eudemian Ethics on the one hand and the Nicomachean Ethics on the other. The difference is explicated by means of the interpretation of the concept of ὅρος (standard) in these writings. The Protrepticus and Eudemian Ethics present ethical theory as an expertise which – together with other sciences – has a standard for decisions and actions taken from nature and the divine. The ethical theory presented in the (...) Nicomachean Ethics does not entail such a strong concept of ὅρος and it treats ethics in contrast to other, more exact, sciences. Finally, the article presents a tentative suggestion as to why it seems that the Nicomachean Ethics VI,1 raises hopes that it will provide a detailed account of ὅρος when in fact there is no discussion of it. (shrink)

While there is a general consensus around the role of religion in the abolition of the Slave Trade, historians continue to give little to no detail on exactly how Christian theology influenced the abolitionist movement. This article seeks to interrogate one major theological factor inherent in the spirituality that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely their notion of Divine Providence, and particularly its moral-emotive correlate: the fear of God’s wrath. These theological notions are discussed based mainly on the (...) analysis of the primary sources and within the theoretical framework of judicial providentialism, aptly captured by John Coffey among others. (shrink)

While there is a general consensus around the role of religion in the abolition of the Slave Trade, historians continue to give little to no detail on exactly how Christian theology influenced the abolitionist movement. This article seeks to interrogate one major theological factor inherent in the spirituality that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely their notion of Divine Providence, and particularly its moral-emotive correlate: the fear of God’s wrath. These theological notions are discussed based mainly on the (...) analysis of the primary sources and within the theoretical framework of judicial providentialism, aptly captured by John Coffey among others. (shrink)

The article discusses the ecological aspects of John Milbank’s thought in the context of the growing climate crisis. For this purpose, the concept of integral ecology is interpreted in the spirit of Milbank’s integralism, which rejects the notion of “pure nature” as a manifestation of secularism and calls for theological grounding of the environmental discourse. This perspective allows us to see the limitations of the modern way of thinking, caught up in the metaphors of “conquest of nature” and “return to (...) nature.” As an alternative, the concept of “kenotic anthropocentrism” is proposed, which sees man as a rational, social, creative and religious animal, that somehow transcends his own nature, being called to union with God. On the one hand, such an approach proclaims the ontological superiority of man over other creatures, and on the other, it reminds us of his role as the guardian—and not the owner—of the Earth. Thus, it differs significantly from Clive Hamilton’s “modest anthropocentrism,” whose call to care for the environment is ultimately based on arbitrary freedom and the imperative of self-preservation. Milbank’s position is closer to Bruno Latour’s anthropocentrism emphasizing the role of man as a political representative of silent earthlings—rivers, mountains and animals. However, Milbank advocates a strong ontological hierarchy rejected by Latour, which makes him less sensitive to the material dimension of climate change. Moreover, Milbank’s militant anti-secularism may be an obstacle to a much needed broader discussion of the ecological crisis, even if his critique of modernity is hard to ignore. (shrink)

The study focuses on the relationship between K. Jaspers and S. Kierkegaard. First, it evaluates the current scholarship regarding Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard’s thought; second, it offers an independent analysis of Jaspers’ early work (especially the 1909 Heimweh und Verbrechen, and then the Psychologie der Weltanschauungen). It is demonstrated that Jaspers’ early work on nostalgia presents the first case study of limit situations (Grenzsituationen). The paper traces the link between Kierkegaard’s conception of aesthetic existence and Jaspers’ concept of limit situations. (...) It is shown that Jaspers’ study of nostalgia can be considered the original inspiration for the idea of limit situations, and that, at the same time, it was arguably Kierkegaard who had helped Jaspers to develop this germinal idea into a broader notion of limit situations. (shrink)

In his paper "What Metaphors Mean", Donald Davidson attacks various theories of the metaphorical meaning. His radical thesis is that the metaphor has except the literal meaning no other (metaphorical or secondary) meaning. He refuses primarily the idea that the metaphor is some sort of communication-the speaker puts a hidden message in it and the recipient have to decode it. Davidson supported this negative attitude with a number of more or less conclusive arguments. I would like to discuss some of (...) them in this essay. My interpretation of Davidson's argumentation can be summed up as that the idea of the metaphorical meaning is not nonsensical, but it is unsuitable for explaining the intricate role of metaphors in our language. A positive theory of metaphor was only suggested by Davidson, but not properly elaborated. This was a task of his followers, in the first place of Richard Rorty. He emphasized, however, the causal character of a metaphorical effect, which radicalizes Davidson's account. As opposed to Rorty, Davidson shared with his predecessors an opinion that in a metaphor one thing is seen as another thing. None of the authors was able to explain this metaphorical definition of the metaphor. (shrink)

Jaký obraz člověka nabízejí současné společenské a humanitní vědy? Tato otázka je středobodem zájmu autorského kolektivu, v němž má své zastoupení sociologie, antropologie, filosofie, historiografie, andragogika, psychologie i evoluční biologie. Ač je publikace jako celek svým zaměřením především teoretická, v jednotlivých kapitolách nalezneme množství konkrétních příkladů z reálného světa: od umění a vážení přes čtverylku a hokej až po panenku Barbie či vztah lidí k horám. Kniha ukazuje, že obrazy člověka v různých oborech nejsou zcela nesourodé, ale že naopak umožňují (...) vzájemné obohacení. Nejde o soupeřící „pohledy“ na tentýž předmět zájmu, ale spíše o možnost mezi jednotlivými společenskovědními „hrami“ svobodně volit – s vědomím toho, že každá z nich má nejen své meze a pravidla, ale i svůj vlastní půvab. (shrink)

This text maps the history of debate on the authenticity of Plato's or pseudo-Plato's Alcibiades I.

A paradox, according to Wittgenstein, is something surprising that is taken out of its context. Thus, one way of dealing with paradoxical sentences is to imagine the missing context of use. Wittgenstein formulates what I call the paradigm paradox: ‘one sentence can never describe the paradigm in another, unless it ceases to be a paradigm.’ There are several instances of this paradox scattered throughout Wittgenstein’s writings. I argue that this paradox is structurally equivalent to Russell’s paradox. The above quotation is (...) Wittgenstein’s version of the vicious circle principle which counteracts the paradox. The prohibition Wittgenstein describes is, however, limited to a certain language-game. Finally, I argue that there is a structural analogy between a noun being employed as a self-membered set and a paradigmatic sample being included in or excluded from the set it generates. Paradoxical sentences are not prohibited forever; they can indicate a change in our praxis with a given paradigm. (shrink)

This essay traces the Greek and Roman roots of Polish sixteenth- to eighteenth-century political thought by discussing the Polish nobility’s concept of the “Golden Freedom”. By focusing on the Roman and the Greek concepts of liberty and the mixed constitution, it argues that the Golden Freedom, a notion central to the Polish-Lithuanian nobility’s self-identification, was based on Roman political ideals and practices that were incompatible with the political reality of the Commonwealth.

Locke claims that a person’s identity over time consists in the unity of consciousness, not in the sameness of the body. Similarly, the phenomenological approach refuses to see the criteria of identity as residing in some externally observable bodily features. Nevertheless, it does not accept the idea that personal identity has to consist either in consciousness or in the body. We are self-aware as bodily beings. After providing a brief reassessment of Locke and the post-Lockean discussion, the article draws on (...) phenomenological arguments that show the body as lived, that is, lived as one’s own body, but also possibly as “other” or “strange.” Against what has been claimed in recent writing, especially in literature on Merleau-Ponty, the author argues that the “mineness” of the body and its “alterity” are not two mutually exclusive features. In the final part of the article, the author suggests that the becoming strange of one’s own body may legitimately be considered as a prominent experience of what it means to be a person. (shrink)

Forrest and Gross expose the scientific failure, the religious essence, and the political ambitions of "intelligent design" creationism. They examine the movement's "Wedge Strategy," which has advanced and is succeeding through public relations rather than through scientific research. Analyzing the content and character of "intelligent design theory," they highlight its threat to public education and to the separation of church and state.

According to panqualityism, a form of Russellian monism defended by Sam Coleman and others, consciousness is grounded in fundamental qualities, i.e. unexperienced qualia. Despite panqualityism’s significant promise, according to David Chalmers panqualityism fails as a theory of consciousness since the reductive approach to awareness of qualities it proposes fails to account for the specific phenomenology associated with awareness. I investigate Coleman’s reasoning against this kind of phenomenology and conclude that he successfully shows that its existence is controversial, and so Chalmers’s (...) critique is inconclusive. I then present a critique of panqualityism that avoids this controversial posit, arguing that the panqualityist treatment of awareness faces an explanatory gap, failing to account for the intimate cognitive access to qualities which we are afforded, i.e. for our ‘strong awareness’ of qualities. The real worry for panqualityists is thus not the contested phenomenology of awareness, which Chalmers relies on, but rather the special way in which we are aware of qualities. (shrink)

The paper offers a parallel exposition of Ricœur and Patočka in the narrow context of their respective reading of Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation. At the same time, it follows a broader goal, namely to confront a hermeneutics of the self with a phenomenology freed of subjectivism. Ricœur claims that phenomenology presupposes interpretation. Under this assumption, even the paradox of intersubjectivity in the 5th CM can be restated as an interpretation of the self/other difference. Patočka in his interpretations of the 5th (...) CM drew on his own observations regarding embodiment and a possible self-awareness of the bodily subject. He claims that the first form of explicit self-reflection is made possible through the other. It is against the background of this claim that he gives his original reading of the “appresentation” of the other as leading to the appresentation of myself in the other. At the end, the paper localizes the point in which Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self and Patočka’s non-subjectivist phenomenology part ways: it is the possibility of the self to be oneself. While the emphasis in Ricœur and his hermeneutics of the multiplied forms of alterity is put on being oneself as another, in Patočka it is through another that being oneself is possible. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether a general method is capable of accommodating the vast array of contexts in which art objects are studied. I propose a framework for such a general method, which is, however, limited to a specific research task: reconstructing the circumstances under which a culturally and/or temporally distant or “exotic” art object becomes interesting (or menacing) to look at. The proposed framework is applied to evaluate Anthony Forge’s essays on the visual art of the Abelam. (...) The essays played a central role in the rekindling of anthropological interest in visual art, but they have also been subject to criticism for forcing on Abelam art Western categories that distort the role art objects play in the Abelam world. Assessing the corpus in terms of the proposed framework allows me to exemplify the main differences between a pragmatic and a semantic approach to gaining access to the efficacy of culturally or temporally distant art. (shrink)

Forrest and Gross expose the scientific failure, the religious essence, and the political ambitions of "intelligent design" creationism. They examine the movement's "Wedge Strategy," which has advanced and is succeeding through public relations rather than through scientific research. Analyzing the content and character of "intelligent design theory," they highlight its threat to public education and to the separation of church and state.

The following article provides an interpretation of the structure of courage in Plato’s Laches, Meno and Protagoras. I argue that these dialogues present courage (ἀνδρεία) in the soul according to the same scheme: that there is a normatively neutral psychic state which is informed by the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) which informs this normatively neutral psychic state is called practical wisdom (which Plato refers to as φρόνησις or sometimes σοφία). This interpretation seems to negate the claim (...) that virtue is knowledge. I will show, however, that this is not a contradiction and that virtue is in fact knowledge, despite the complex moral psychology of courage. Finally, I will argue that the conception of courage in the Republic addresses some of the problems posed by the discussion of courage in the above-mentioned dialogues. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a concept of mind by the ethnologist Sergei Mikhailovich Shirokogoroff, as a precursor for a specific turn taking place in contemporary cognitive science. Such a turn is visible in the discarding of explanations focusing on brain or on other vehicles of cognitive processes, which are typical of traditional cognitive science. The followers of this traditional trend are united by the methodological assumption that the key to understanding cognitive processes lies in the precise (...) comprehension of the vehicle’s functioning. Currently, cognitive science is developing a paradigm describing cognition as being embodied, embedded and extended. Similarly, Shirokogoroff's research in the anthropology of religion is part of his general concept of mind understood to be a set of cognitive processes linked with a broadly viewed environment (combining its material, ecological, biological, cultural and ritual aspects). (shrink)

The chapter relates Alcibiades's speech in the Symposium to the dialogue Alcibiades I. I believe, the encomium on Socrates in the Symposium should be interpreted together with the Alcibiades I. There, Plato offers a fuller picture of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, one that gives a possible explanation of Alcibiades' failure and moral collapse, while keeping Socrates' position as a moral teacher intact. This approach presupposes that Plato wrote some of the dialogues in a deliberate order of the fictional (...) chronology. Interpreting the Symposium together with the Alcibiades I allows me then to make a broader claim concerning Plato's conception of the personal self. (shrink)

Narrative identity theory in some of its influential variants makes three fundamental assumptions. First, it focuses on personal identity primarily in terms of selfhood. Second, it argues that personal identity is to be understood as the unity of one’s life as it develops over time. And finally, it states that the unity of a life is articulated, by the very person itself, in the form of a story, be it explicit or implicit. The article focuses on different contemporary phenomenological appraisals (...) of the narrative account. The survey of this partly critical debate is followed by concluding observations concerning a possible phenomenological theory of personal identity. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism is a phenomenon that describes the human tendency to see human-like shapes in the environment. It has considerable consequences for people’s choices and beliefs. With the increased presence of robots, it is important to investigate the optimal design for this tech- nology. In this paper we discuss the potential benefits and challenges of building anthropomorphic robots, from both a philosophical perspective and from the viewpoint of empir- ical research in the fields of human–robot interaction and social psychology. We believe (...) that this broad investigation of anthropomorphism will not only help us to understand the phenomenon better, but can also indicate solutions for facil- itating the integration of human-like machines in the real world. (shrink)

Robert Saudek, a Czech graphologist, journalist, diplomat, playwright, and novelist, was heavily influenced in his youth by Fritz Mauthner’s critique of language. Saudek later became a pioneer in the field of psychological graphology. In this article, I examine the impact of Mauthner’s critique on Saudek’s work and evaluate whether Saudek’s approach to graphology aligns with Mauthner’s ideas. I argue that, although Saudek’s graphology is rooted in Mauthner’s critique of experimental psychology, there remains room for further development in the field of (...) psychological graphology, centering on the analysis of language. With this in mind, I compare Saudek’s method and contemporary conceptual metaphor theory. I further suggest that Saudek’s extensive use of the autographs of well-known figures follows a method of working from examples, or specimens, which is not uncommon in the philosophy of science. Based on these findings, I propose a way of understanding Saudek’s graphology that challenges its characterization as a pseudoscience. (shrink)

A commentary on Whitney Davis's essay 'Visuality and Vision: Questions for a Post-culturalist Art History' published in the same issue of Estetika.

The article’s aim is to clear the ground for the idea of aesthetic archaeology as an aesthetic analysis of remote artifacts divorced from aesthetic criticism. On the example of controversies surrounding the early Cycladic figures, it discusses an anxiety motivating the rejection of aesthetic inquiry in archaeology, namely, the anxiety about the heuristic reliability of one’s aesthetic instincts vis-à-vis remote artifacts. It introduces the claim that establishing an aesthetic mandate of a remote artifact should in the first place be part (...) of a quest after the norms of engagement an artifact’s kind signaled to the intended audience by its appearance. Rather than advocating for a new subdiscipline, the concept of aesthetic archaeology serves to bring into theoretical focus an aesthetic engagement with an artifact’s appearance under circumstances that rule out any acquired competence in distinguishing its aesthetic mandate perceptually—and thus rule out any aesthetic expertise. (shrink)

The paper deals primarily with the standard question in what exactly, according to Husserl, consists the crisis of the European sciences. In the literature so far, there have been two tendencies on this question, one focusing on the loss of the sciences’ meaningfulness for life, the other emphasizing the inadequacy of their scientificity. Instead of arguing for one of these two options or for some sort of combination of both, another interpretation of this topic will be suggested. The focus will (...) be on Husserl’s notion of historicity and its connection with the concept of life-world. It will be argued that it is the historical detachment of sciences from ideas and consequently the sphere of meaning altogether which lies at the core of their ill state. On this basis, it will show that Husserl’s approach to science in Crisis is actually double. For one, it is an attempt to supplement science with a philosophical justification. The other is a historical de-construction of scientific objectivism as a misleading metaphysical claim concerning the lived world. This second, historical approach is developed exclusively in the Crisis. However, it does bring out questions leading to rethinking the meaning and goals of transcendental phenomenology itself. (shrink)

In this paper, I do four things. First, I argue that Recanati’s recent argument for intentionalist semantics for demonstratives is erroneous. I do this partly by suggesting that demonstrations should be treated as features of Kaplanian context. Second, I explain why the classic ambiguity objection against conventionalist positions regarding demonstratives is not in any way less problematic for intentionalism. Third, I propose a novel semantic framework for demonstratives that is able to simultaneously explain the appeal of some prominent conventionalist and (...) intentionalist intuitions. Finally, I present some additional advantages of my view, e.g. the prospects of unifying the semantics for bare demonstratives with that for other related types of expression. (shrink)

Neo-republicans position James Harrington as a seminal figure in a tradition that asks what set of institutions grant the individual freedom from domination. This article argues that th...

The aim of this thesis is to argue in favour of the embodied music cognition paradigm, as opposed to traditional theories of musical mind. The thesis consists of three chapters. The goal of the first chapter is to examine computational music cognition, focusing on the main problem of this approach. In the second chapter, I will present and discuss Marc Leman’s EMC, that may serve as a response to the problems of the computational view of the musical mind. Although this (...) framework is interesting, it is unclear in several places. For that reason, I intend to enrich it with the references to the recent works on human mirror neuron system and enactivist views on music cognition. Given that, in the last chapter, I will answer the question, whether mental representations are necessary in music cognition. (shrink)

In this article, I present one view of Guardini’s ethics, to which he dedicated his late academic life. Christian ethics for Guardini is only a natural consequence of the whole Christian existence and thus unique. Therefore, it is fundamentally a christocentric ethics but it affirms also the being of man as creature and hence realistic. It is indeed based on the nature of man, but not natural in the biological sense. I focus on the interpretation of the good that is (...) never in Guardini’s eyes a mere concept, but objectively existing and concrete. I point out that ethics is always connected with the personal dimension, that man’s doing is radically a working-with-God, and that in and through action man grasps and perfects himself. Christian ethics is a participation in Christ’s properties and conformity to him, who is the personal and living norm of the new life. (shrink)

This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the (...) Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question. These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

According to some interpreters, Foucault's encounter with the Greek and Roman ethics led him to reconsider his earlier work and to turn away from politics. Drawing mostly from Foucault's last and hitherto unpublished lecture course, this paper argues that Foucault's turn to ethics should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous work, but rather as its logical continuation and an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding questions. I argue that the 1984 lectures on parrhesia should be (...) interpreted as Foucault's philosophical apology, as an attempt to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological nihilism, which were raised in response to his earlier work. In his last lectures, the Nietzschean Foucault somewhat surprisingly describes his earlier work as authentic Socratic philosophy and as ethical practice of freedom. In the conclusion, I assess the plausibility of Foucault's apology and speculate in which direction his work might have developed, had it not been cut off by his death. (shrink)

The article presents the first comprehensive interpretation of the ergon argument in Aristotle’s Protrepticus. It further argues that Aristotle in this argument distinguishes the ergon of an entity from the ergon of its virtue thus presenting a complicated argumentative structure which is explicitly simplified in the Eudemian Ethics. Based on the latest attempts to reconstruct the Protrepticus, the article shows the relation of the ergon argument to its other versions in both Ethics. This account not only clarifies the relation of (...) the Protrepticus to Aristotle’s other ethical writings, it shows that Aristotle intends the argument as a transition between describing what human being does and what a good human being does well, namely a natural transition from the descriptive to the normative. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt to show that Walter Block’s defense of the ostensibly libertarian character of evictionism against my original criticisms is unsuccessful, thought certainly informative and thought-provoking. In my exploration of Block’s counter-criticisms, I focus in particular on the role played in his account by the principle of proportionality, as well as on the putative disanalogy between cases of abortion and child abandonment on the one hand and my airplane thought experiment on the other hand.

This article discusses the character of hegemonic subjectification as it is seen by Ernesto Laclau. By explaining the concepts of the constitutive features and form of a hegemonically acquired political identity, such as antagonism, undecidability, overdetermination and decision, I define the social fields and dynamics of subjectification. At the same time, I adopt that such subjectification occurs within the boundaries of the particular –universal, i.e., the ideologically assigned view of identity as totality. Besides, in contrast to Laclau, I juxtapose the (...) dialectically conceived form of the particular–universal relation with its poststructuralist Laclau’s version, and I try to prove that—contrary to Laclau—the idea of hegemony enjoys its vitality thanks to Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of negative dialectics. To determine the points of similarity of the two methods of constructing and deconstructing identity and subjectivity, I reject Elmar Flatschart’s incomparability argument. Lastly, I point out the earlier mentioned points of convergence: on Adorno’s part—the concept of proper names and the concept of constellation; on Laclau’s part—the concept of undecidability and decision which keep discourse ontologically and epistemologically open. (shrink)

In the sense-certainty chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, we find one of Hegel’s famous puns, which utilizes homophonic affinities and differences between the verb beiherspielen and the noun Beispiel. I argue that the effect of this pun is that the word Beispiel acquires, beyond its usual meaning of ‘example’ or ‘instance’, the meaning of a play of something inessential, a play in passing. After reviewing all available translations into English, I suggest that, in order to preserve this wordplay, one (...) can translate Beispiel as ‘by-play’. Furthermore, I analyse other occurrences of the word beiherspielen in the Phenomenology and elsewhere in Hegel’s texts. Next, I focus on the crucial importance of this pun for Derrida’s interpretation and critique of Hegel’s dialectic. Only for a certain loose translation of beiherspielen does Derrida’s reasoning appear plausible. I conclude with a discussion of the ideal of terminological uniformity in translating Hegel’s texts. In preserving the wordplay by translating Beispiel as ‘by-play’, one is forced to sacrifice the uniformity of translation. (shrink)

The debate over the semantics of demonstratives is in a stalemate between those positions attributing some referential significance to a speaker's referential intentions and those not doing so. The latter approach is supported by cases driving the non-intentional intuition in which the speakers mistakenly point at objects other than the ones they intend to refer to. The intentionalists, such as Martin Montminy, reply that once we think of potential extensions of such cases in which the speaker explains to the hearer (...) what her referential intention was, it is the intentionalist intuition that prevails. In this paper, I develop a semantics for demonstratives whose task is to accommodate both of these seemingly contradictory intuitions within the general non-intentionalist framework. The proposed idea is that the reference of a use of a demonstrative can change over time, as the discourse develops. This idea is handled formally by the addition of a parameter of the index of evaluation that represents the referentially relevant aspects of the state of the discourse. Also, I provide reasons for preferring my view over two rival positions: one by Palle Leth, and one that I adjust to the demands of the semantics of demonstratives from the theory that Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies offer for epistemic modals, and from Laura Delgado's polyreferentialism for proper names. (shrink)

“Is every definition persuasive?” If essentialist views on definition are rejected and a pragmatic account adopted, where defining is a speech act which fixes the meaning of a term, then a problem arises: if meanings are not fixed by the essence of being itself, is not every definition persuasive? To address the problem, we refer to Douglas Walton’s impressive intellectual heritage—specifically on the argumentative potential of definition. In finding some non-persuasive definitions, we show not every definition is persuasive. The persuasiveness (...) lies not in syntactic or semantic properties, but the context. We present this pragmatic account and provide rules for analysing and evaluating persuasive definition—a promising direction for further research. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel psycholinguistic parser and tests it against experimental and corpus reading data. The parser builds on the recent research into memory structures, which argues that memory retrieval is content‐addressable and cue‐based. It is shown that the theory of cue‐based memory systems can be combined with transition‐based parsing to produce a parser that, when combined with the cognitive architecture ACT‐R, can model reading and predict online behavioral measures (reading times and regressions). The parser's modeling capacities are tested (...) against self‐paced reading experimental data (Grodner & Gibson, 2005), eye‐tracking experimental data (Staub, 2011), and a self‐paced reading corpus (Futrell et al., 2018). (shrink)

The core of the study is a critical comparison of Nietzsche’s notion of Übermensch, and its transhumanist rewriting into different variants of the posthuman. The first part contextualizes transhumanist thought, primarily in relation to certain evolutionary ideas that, in their totality, exhibit a fundamental anthropological deficit: they speak of the evolutionary overcoming of human, but the limit of sensibility that attempts to imagine a future human being is only the mere negation of what human has been so far. In this (...) way, the posthuman is not removed from the somewhat vague context of the technological “extension” of previous humanity. In this respect, the whole concept is grossly unaesthetic. The second part shows that Nietzsche’s rethinking of the overhuman was intertwined with other anthropological structures, for example, the idea of Mitfreude (‘shared joy’), which is supposed to creatively (in the manner of art) replace the morally misleading notion of compassion. The Übermensch therefore enabled Nietzsche to propose a different conception of intersubjectivity; one that would no longer be reduced to contempt for the human being. The third section traces the causes of the transhumanist failure in productive imagination. It is based on the hypothesis that this failure is driven by an unconscious preference for the figure of the comic book Superman. It postulates, through a Kantian conception of the sublime, that an adequate elaboration of the image of the posthuman cannot do without an affective component that would allow for Bejahung (‘affirmation’). Only the artificial will always appear, to some degree, as alien, and therefore will never transcend the limits of reactive adaptation. A living posthuman could only emerge if he offered anthropological techniques of the art of living. Therefore, transhumanism continuously raises anthropological questions, especially regarding the problem of the extent to which the artificiality of art can be identified with technology. Without proper answers, it will not achieve the complexity of Nietzsche’s overhuman, and will always only dilute him into technological supplements. The posthuman will come into being when he is conceived as a grandiose work of art. (shrink)