Two kinds of individuals are distinguished: abstract and concrete. Whereas abstract individuals belong to our conceptual sphere, concrete individuals (i.e. particulars) individuate the world of matter. A subject inquiring the external world projects abstract individuals onto the concrete ones (i.e. pieces of matter). Our theory offers a solution to various ontological and epistemological puzzles concerned with individuals, e.g., the Ship of Theseus, Polish Logician, problems with reidentification, or proper names.

Model-theoretic concepts of saturation and categoricity are studied in the context of accessible categories. Accessible categories which are categorical in a strong sense are related to categories of $M$-sets ($M$ is a monoid). Typical examples of such categories are categories of $\lambda$-saturated objects.

In his article ‘Art and Time’ Patočka argues that Hegel rightly recognized a fundamental difference between classical and contemporary art. In developing Hegel’s insight he offers a conception of two eras of art, the ‘artistic’ era and the era of ‘aesthetic culture’. Patočka supposes that artworks of both the artistic era and the aesthetic era always open up a certain ‘meaning’ that gives human existence its fundamental points of reference. The status of this world, however, radically changed from one era (...) to the next. The art of the artistic era offered objective and binding meaning, whereas aesthetic art offers personal or individual meaning. The current article points to an important discrepancy in Patočka’s treatment of the relation between the two eras, and presents Patočka’s later reading of Hegel’s notion of the past character of art. From the perspective of this interpretation, art reveals temporality as such, that is, as the ontological basis of the revelation of meaning. The article emphasizes that such an interpretation demonstrates the ontological relevance of the artwork in greater detail. Yet Patočka continued to use the concepts of the artistic era and the aesthetic era, without sufficiently clarifying the relationship between the two eras. Finally, the author argues that the discrepancy in the concept can be resolved with the help of Patočka’s later reflections on the ‘problematic nature’ of meaning. The article argues that in classical art such a nature is concealed, whereas in modern art it is revealed again. The article includes an English translation of Patočka´s ‘Art and Time’. (shrink)

Monadic MV-algebras are an algebraic model of the predicate calculus of the Łukasiewicz infinite valued logic in which only a single individual variable occurs. GMV-algebras are a non-commutative generalization of MV-algebras and are an algebraic counterpart of the non-commutative Łukasiewicz infinite valued logic. We introduce monadic GMV-algebras and describe their connections to certain couples of GMV-algebras and to left adjoint mappings of canonical embeddings of GMV-algebras. Furthermore, functional MGMV-algebras are studied and polyadic GMV-algebras are introduced and discussed.

A report on the International Congress of Aesthetics: Aesthetics Bridging Cultures, which was held in Ankara, Turkey, 9–13 August 2007.

Deschamps, Léger Marie,1716-1774; enlightenment; utopias; art and philosophy; philosophy, modern; 18th century.

In this paper, I explore several versions of the bundle theory and the substratum theory and compare them, with the surprising result that it seems to be true that they are equivalent (in a sense of 'equivalent' to be specified). In order to see whether this is correct or not, I go through several steps : first, I examine different versions of the bundle theory with tropes and compare them to the substratum theory with tropes by going through various standard (...) objections and arguing for a tu quoque in all cases. Emphasizing the theoretical role of the substratum and of the relation of compresence, I defend the claim that these views are equivalent for all theoretical purposes. I then examine two different versions of the bundle theory with universals, and show that one of them is, here again, equivalent to the substratum theory with universals, by examining how both views face the famous objection from Identity of Indiscernibles in a completely parallel way. It is only the second, quite extreme and puzzling, version of the bundle theory with universals that is not be equivalent to any other view; and the diagnosis of why this is so will show just how unpalatable the view is. Similarly, only a not-so-palatable version of the substratum theory is genuinely different from the other views; and here again it's precisely what makes it different that makes it less appealing. (shrink)

The successful early acquisition of reading literacy represents a crucial learning process determining the further course of academic development (Stanovich, 2009). During this process, interactions between children and their proximal social environment are of utmost importance. Therefore, we introduce a systemic framework for the development of learning potential (e.g., Mudrak et al., 2015, 2019, 2019b; Ziegler & Stoeger, 2017) and explore the interactions between the social and motivational processes associated with reading literacy development in school-age children. We base our analysis (...) on a representative Czech sample of fourth-grade pupils involved in the Progress in International Reading Literacy study (PIRLS, Martin et al., 2016). On the basis of the systemic framework, we hypothesized hierarchical relationships among family socioeconomic status, related developmental resources (including parental support, expectations, and reading resources), children’s reading motivation (including reading engagement and reading confidence), and manifested learning outcomes (including school grades and reading competence). We implemented three structural equation models to test the hypothesized relationships. The first model tested the direct effect of developmental resources on reading competence. The second model included the motivational variables as mediators between resources and competence. The third model included school grades as mediators between resources and motivational variables. Our analyses indicated the good fit of the proposed models. The final model explained 37.8 % of the variance in children’s school grades and 46.5 % of the variance in reading literacy test scores (compared to 34.8 % in the first model). Moreover, parental socioeconomic status was strongly associated with parental expectations, which were associated with reading confidence, partially through the effect of parental expectations on children’s school grades. Reading confidence was the main predictor of reading literacy within the model, followed by the direct effects of parental resources. The results illustrate complex processes through which the family environment affects the development of learning competencies such as reading literacy by providing children with the relevant social and material resources associated with their motivation and school outcomes. We discuss some of the reasons that these relationships may take place and consider their implications for educational practice. (shrink)

In this book, Jiri Benovsky defends the view that he doesn't exist. In this book, he also defends the view that this book itself doesn't exist. But this did not prevent him to write the book, and although in Benovsky's view you don't exist either, this does not prevent you to read it. Benovsky defends a brand of non-exceptionalist eliminativism. Some eliminativists, typically focusing on ordinary material objects such as chairs and hammers, make exceptions, for instance for blue whales (that (...) is, living beings) or for persons (that is, conscious organisms). Benovsky takes one by one all types of allegedly existing objects like chairs, whales, and persons and shows that from the metaphysical point of view they are more trouble than they are worth – we are much better off without them. He thus defends an eliminativist view about ordinary objects as well as the 'no-Self' view, where he explores connections between metaphysics, phenomenology, and Buddhist thought. He then also considers the case of aesthetic objects, focusing on musical works and photographs, and shows that the claim of their non-existence solves the many problems that arise when one tries to find an appropriate ontological category for them, and that such an eliminativist view is more natural than what we might have thought. The arguments provided here are always topic-specific: each type of entity is given its own type of treatment, thus proving a varied and solid foundation for a generalized, non-exceptionalist, full-blown eliminativist worldview. (shrink)

The classical liberal approach to deregulation is based on the consecutive elimination of state regulatory activities and their substitution by competitive market structure. Increasing competition accompanied with decreasing arbitrary state agencies’ interventions will undoubtedly cultivate the behaviour of market agents and bring benefits to consumers.The classical liberal approach to deregulation is incompatible with the EU deregulation model, which in case of network industries is still based on the permanent existence of regulatory agencies, Third-Party-Access, public service liability, centralized control of investments (...) and the negative reciprocity. The adoption of these principals will at least delay deregulation process in transition economies but will likely preserve the cartel structure on the utility markets.Economics of regulation and implicitly economics of deregulation is a product of the Chicago School of Economics. Since current “deregulation process” leads to tighter regulation, the adequate term for it should be the reregulation.L’approche libérale classique de la réglementation repose sur l’élimination de la réglementation étatique et leur substitution par des structures marchandes concurrentielles. Une concurrence accrue et une diminution des interventions arbitraires de l’état ne pourront que modifier le comportement des agents sur le marché et engendrer des bénéfices pour les consommateurs.L’approche de la déréglementation du libéralisme classique est incompatible avec le modèle de déréglementation de l’Union Européenne : dans le cas des industries en réseau, ce dernier demeure fondé sur l’existence continue d’agences de réglementation, la responsabilité du service public, le contrôle centralisé des investissements et la réciprocité négative. L’adoption de ces principes aura pour effet au moins de retarder le processus de déréglementation dans les économies en transition et probablement aussi de préserver la structure cartellisée des marchés de services publics.L’économie de la réglementation, et par implication, l’économie de la déréglementation est une contribution émanant de l’Ecole d’Economie de Chicago. Parce que les “processus de déréglemen- tation” en vigueur induisent des réglementations plus drastiques, l’expression appropriée devrait plutôt être la re-réglementation. (shrink)

The goal of our article is to review the widespread anthropological figure, according to which we can achieve a better understanding of humans by contrasting them with animals. This originally Herderian approach was elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, who characterized humans as “deficient beings” who become complete through culture. According to Gehlen, humans, who are insufficiently equipped by instincts, indirectly stabilize their existence by creating institutions, i.e., complexes of habitual actions. On the other hand, Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that corporeal relationship to (...) the world is already indirect because it is based on preestablished and readjusted “standards” or “norms” of interaction with the environment. Merleau-Ponty then calls these norms “institutions” and views culture as readjustment of institutions which operate already on the level of corporeal existence. The anthropological figure of confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. The Herderian approach can be meaningfully retained only if interpreted as an invitation to confront the norms of indirect interaction with the world in animals and in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

It is sometimes objected that Tichý’s logic is not a logic because it underestimates deduction, providing only logical analyses of expressions. I argue that this opinion is wrong. First of all, to detect valid arguments, which are formulated in a language, there needs to be logical analysis to ascertain which semantical entities are involved. Entailment is defined as an extralinguistic affair relating those constructions. The validity of an argument, composed of propositional constructions, stems from the properties of the constructions. Such (...) properties are displayed by the derivation rules of Tichý’s system of deduction. (shrink)

We study search problems and reducibilities between them with known or potential relevance to bounded arithmetic theories. Our primary objective is to understand the sets of low complexity consequences of theories Si2 and Ti2 for a small i, ideally in a rather strong sense of characterization; or, at least, in the standard sense of axiomatization. We also strive for maximum combinatorial simplicity of the characterizations and axiomatizations, eventually sufficient to prove conjectured separation results. To this end two techniques based on (...) the Herbrand's theorem are developed. They characterize/axiomatize Σb1-consequences of Σb2-definable search problems, while the method based on the more involved concept of characterization is easier and gives more transparent results. This method yields new proofs of Buss' witnessing theorem and of the relation between PLS and Σb1, and also an axiomatization of Σb1. (shrink)

This paper is about what counts as a photograph and what does not. One way in which this question arises stems from new technologies that keep changing our way of producing photographs, such as digital photography, which not only has now widely replaced traditional film photography but also challenges the very limits of what we count as a photograph. I shall discuss below at some length different aspects of digital photography, but also want to focus here on a new striking (...) type of photographic camera, announced in early 2012 by Lytro, Inc., namely, the so-called ?Light Field Camera?, which is said to represent a revolution in the photographic world. Indeed, unlike in the case of any previously available cameras, the photographs produced by a Light Field Camera can be re-focused after the photograph has been taken, which harbours many interesting consequences with regard to the resulting image and the way we interact with it. But of course, the initial question also arises in the case of traditional film photography as well as ?traditional? digital photography. The question amounts to asking about what the essential features of photographs are ? in short, what their nature is. (shrink)

Endurantism, as opposed to perdurantism, is supposed to be the intuitive view. But the ‘endurantist intuition’ – roughly, that objects persist through time by being numerically identical and wholly located at all times at which they exist – is behind more than just endurantism. Indeed, it plays an important role in the motivation of some theories about the passage of time, and some theories about the nature of the subject. As we shall see, the endurantist intuition is often taken in (...) these cases to be a reason, or at least a motivation, to endorse one or the other of these metaphysical theories. Sometimes, it is even said to constitute a basis for an argument in their favour. In this article, I show that such an appeal to this ‘endurantist intuition’ is misleading and wrong. I do not deny that there is an intuition of this kind, but I deny that it can play any philosophically significant role as a reason – and even less as a basis for an argument – in defending metaphysical theories such as endurantism, dualism, or the A-theory. (shrink)

[This paper is written in Czech language.] The aim of the article is to re-evaluate the still-surviving anthropological trope which, in reaction to an inquiry into the essence of man, compares humans with animals and points to culture as the means by which humans complete their “deficient” nature. This motif contrasting humans with animals has been extended by A. Gehlen who characterises humans as “beings of deficiencies”. In his view, the morphological-instinctive insufficiency of the human being must be stabilised by (...) cultural institutions, i.e. complexes of habitual actions. Merleau-Ponty, however, demonstrates that bodily beings always relate to their environment in an indirect way, on the basis of certain “standards” and “norms” of interaction, which exist by way of institution. The anthropological trope confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals, and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. It can be meaningfully retained only if it is interpreted in a Merleau-Pontyan way, that is, as an invitation to understand the transformation of the norms of indirect interaction with the world found in animals into those found in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

The article deals with José Gil’s considerations on the relationships between the virtuality and the actuality of the dancing body. At first, it analyses Gil’s idea of projecting the current position of the dancing body into virtual images and explores Gil’s notion of the multiplicity of virtuality. Further, it demonstrates how in the space of the body a consistent compound of movements is created at the level of the monstrous virtual body. Finally, the article emphasizes that, despite the connections between (...) the actual position of the body and its virtual images, there is a fundamental distinction between the actuality and the virtuality of the dancing body. It shows that the idea of the distinction between the virtual and the actual reflects Gil’s concept of virtual memory as a zone of accumulated possibilities of movement. (shrink)

Based especially on The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) the text tries to delimitate contours of „Durkheim’s epistemology“ (i. e. relatively coherent group of assertions). It argues that the deep „objective“ of this connection is to ensure autonomy and specific field for the new-born scientific province, sociology, through the claim that this contribution can solve and actually does solve (from the French sociologist’s point of view) „traditional epistemological hardships“ into which philosophical empiricism and rationalism fall. Durkheim’s sociological deduction of (...) categories (instead of transcendental deduction), as Ernst Cassirer calls it, is presented in contrast to the „holy positivists interpretations“ of his writing, exclusively intentional conceptualizations of action and notion formation, and correspondence theory of truth. The text concludes that despite noticeable inconsistencies Durkheim’s suggestions provide inspiring material even for today’s sociological production in this field. (shrink)

The spirit of the laws is a symbol reflecting the ontological status and transcendental ideals of the system of positive law. The article analyses historical links between the romantic philosophy of the spirit of the nation (Volksgeist), which subsumed Montesquieu’s general spirit of the laws under the concept of ethnic culture, and recent politics of cultural and ethnic identity. Although criticising attempts at legalising ethnic collective identities, the article does not simply highlight the virtues of demos and the superiority of (...) civic culture against the vices of ethnos and the regressive nature of ethnic politics of identity. Instead, the author argues that the civil democratic concept of political identity is part of the more general process of social differentiation: unlike the pre-political ethnic concept of identity, it can be converted to generalised democratic procedures and thus dismantle the totalitarian claims of cultural identity politics. (shrink)

Louis Cazamian develops Henri Bergson’s concise remarks, which show humour as a special sort of comical transposition of language. Cazamian stresses that humour is based on transposition, which is inevitably conscious, and he is concerned with the division of humour into four different species according to the modes of transposition. Cazamian focuses especially on the complexity of humour and its impact. Even if a certain view of the world and life, that is, a kind of “matter” of humour, is obviously (...) suggested by the mechanism of transposition, that is, by the “form” of humour, it is impossible to determine any universal rule describing the relationship between matter and form. In that sense Cazamian emphasizes the indefinability of humour, and points to the indeterminability of the humorous effect. These arguments demonstrate the essential influence that many important themes of Bergson’s aesthetics and philosophy have had on Cazamian’s conception of humour, a conception that proves to be integrally Bergsonian. (shrink)

If S, T are stationary subsets of a regular uncountable cardinal κ, we say that S reflects fully in $T, S , if for almost all α ∈ T (except a nonstationary set) S ∩ α is stationary in α. This relation is known to be a well-founded partial ordering. We say that a given poset P is realized by the reflection ordering if there is a maximal antichain $\langle X_p; p \in P\rangle$ of stationary subsets of $\operatorname{Reg}(\kappa)$ so that (...) $\forall p, q \in P \forall S \subseteq X_p, T \subseteq X_q \text{stationary}: (S We prove that if $V = L\lbrack\overset{\rightarrow\mathscr{U}}\rbrack, o^\mathscr{U} (\kappa) = \kappa^{++}$ , and P is an arbitrary well-founded poset of cardinality ≤ κ + then there is a generic extension where P is realized by the reflection ordering on κ. (shrink)

In the first part of continuation of our study we classify and analyze passive forms which belong to four kinds of findings. Further we investigate cases of unsuccessful finding; they do not trivially correspond to kinds of succesful finding. We can distinguish: 1) not-finding for the reason of not-seeking, 2) not-finding for the reason of not finished seeking, 3) not-finding for the reason of stopped seeking whereas a) an instance of the respective seeked intension is not existing, b) an agent (...) was not enough skilful and the question of existence of an instance of the respective seeked intension remains open. (shrink)

Přehledová studie sleduje a analyzuje proměny pojmu sociální inovace. Na základě silné společenské poptávky se z původně dílčí, teoreticky nediskutované a nefixované kategorie stává kategorie obecná. Pokrývá širokou oblast nemateriálních inovací a zároveň se profiluje jako aktivita normativní a intencionální, zaměřená na obecně uznávané sociální cíle. Co do ideově-hodnotových orientací současných koncepcí sociálních inovací studie identifikuje kromě mainstreamu, který zůstává u otevřených hodnotových charakteristik, ještě směr emancipačně-mobilizační a sociálně-tržně odpovědný. V epistemologické rovině se teoretici sociálních inovací hlásí především k praktickému (...) experimentování, pragmatismu, teorii komplexnosti a principům transdisciplinarity. (shrink)

During the Czechoslovak normalization era (roughly from the 1970s to the 1980s), the Czech lawyer Vladimír Čermák, who later became a Justice of the newly established Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic after the breakdown of the Communist regime, authored a monumental piece called The Question of Democracy. Although this ambitious work has no equal in the Czech context, no attention has been paid to it in the English-speaking world. The present article aims to fill this gap by analyzing the (...) most original aspects of Čermák’s political thought. First, I present Greek tragedy, Plato, and Augustine as the main influences on his thought, which was further shaped by Čermák’s experience with the First Czechoslovak Republic and the Communist era. Second, I show that the most important category permeating all of his intellectual project is the principle of polarity, combined with the concept of polémos as derived from Greek tragedy. Third, I focus on the consensually anchored value order of society, which is created through an interplay between positive and negative forces. Čermák’s idea that all law must be measured against the value order has deeply influenced the value-based jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. Finally, I position Čermák’s thought in the context of contemporary political theory, arguing that the contrast with the work of the radical political theorist Chantal Mouffe is particularly illuminating. Even though Čermák and Mouffe share a similar attitude to democracy—in that the primacy of strife renders universal rational consensus impossible—I maintain that Čermák’s theory, due to its emphasis on the categories of good and evil, can be more usefully described as “secular Augustinianism”. (shrink)

Many experimental found footage films base their meanings and effects on an interaction between the figurative content of the image and its material-technological underpinnings. Can this interaction arise accidentally without artistic appropriation? A recently digitised film by the Czech cinema pioneer Jan Kříženecký, Opening Ceremony of the Čech Bridge (1908), presents such an exercise in accidental aesthetics. At one point, the horizontal and vertical trembling of the cinematograph – obtained from the Lumière brothers – translates into a trembling of the (...) figures on the bridge so precisely that the figurative and material spheres appear to cooperate towards a common aesthetic goal. To account for such phenomena, film theory, found footage filmmaking, and archival practice need to join forces with philosophy. More specifically, Gilbert Simondon's notion of transduction, a process based on the intersection of diverse realities within a domain, allows us to conceptualise the paradoxical interaction between the figurative and material dimensions and the unintentional meanings that arise out of it. Transduction enables the distribution of elements between these heterogeneous spheres while maintaining a certain stability within a system. In the case of archival films in which transduction occurs without prior intention or expectation, transduction can be foregrounded and prolonged. The connection between transduction and the “trembling meaning” of Opening Ceremony, understood within the wider context of camera instability in experimental found footage, will uncover the aesthetic potentialities held by the autonomous creativity of film matter and its interferences with the figurative content. (shrink)

Un des problèmes persistants pour la philosophie pratique est de découvrir un procédé adéquat pour justifier des lois dont la finalité est de réguler le fonctionnement des démocraties constitutionnelles. Les libéraux partisans de la raison publique nient que cette justification puisse provenir de doctrines substantielles, étant donné que les lois doivent pouvoir être justifiées par tous les citoyens (raisonnables). La tradition de la loi naturelle offre un test utile quant à la plausibilité de cette thèse. L’article montre comment les deux (...) versions du libéralisme de la raison publique diffèrent quant à leur acceptation de raisons tirées du droit naturel, et pourquoi, étant donné l’influence de leurs points de départs disparates sur les critères normatifs par lesquels elles évaluent les lois, les partisans du droit naturel ont de bonnes raisons de les rejeter toutes les deux. (shrink)

_An Ethical Modernity?_ offers a new view of Hegel’s doctrine of ethical life (_Sittlichkeit_) in relation to modernity. In this collection of essays, the authors investigate various aspects of this relation and its importance for today’s world.