This volume is composed of extended versions of selected papers presented at an international conference held in June 2011 at Opole University—the seventh in a series of annual American and European Values conferences organized by the Institute of Philosophy, Opole University, Poland. The papers were written independently with no prior guidelines other than the obvious need to address some aspect of George Herbert Mead’s work. While rooted in careful study of Mead’s original writings and transcribed lectures and the historical context (...) in which that work was carried out, these papers have brought that work to bear on contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology, cognitive science, and social and political philosophy. There is good reason to classify Mead as one of the original classical American pragmatists (along with Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey) and consequently as a major figure in American philosophy. Nevertheless his thought has been marginalized for the most part, at least in academic philosophy. It is our intention to help recuperate Mead’s reputation among a broader audience by providing a small corpus of significant contemporary scholarship on some key aspects of his thought. (shrink)

The present paper is a response, of sorts, to the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID) and lockdown that we all must face. We have an idea of what doctors, nurses, teachers, among many of the other professions, do for the general public, but one may ask whether there is something substantial that philosophers and ethicists can offer in these circumstances. The thesis of this paper is that the stoic attitude towards times of trouble and the pragmatist way of finding (...) out what is possible to elevate the quality of living against all odds, if skilfully interwoven, could be an important tool in keeping mental health in good shape and, additionally, could contribute to the cultural scene at large. If this is the case, stoic pragmatists can indeed offer an interesting example of practical philosophy for many audiences, especially during the pandemic lockdown and, perhaps, for other serious difficulties or problems. To be effective in delivering their message, stoic pragmatists, as most with philosophers today, should enrich their textual and oral modes of traditional transmission of knowledge and become digital-culture public intellectuals that can recognize and reach more general audiences by, among other things, visual modes of digital communication. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen’s answer to the Special Composition Question, call it Organicism, says the xs compose y iff the activity of the xs constitutes a life. What about suspended lives (i.e., cryptobiosis)? Suppose a cat is alive at t1, completely frozen at t2, then revived at t3. Is the cat alive while frozen? Plausibly no, which according to Organicism means the cat-qua-composite ceases to exist at t2. Intuitively, however, the same cat seems present at all of t1, t2, and t3. (...) To account for these intuitions, van Inwagen modifies his answer: the xs compose y iff the activity of the xs constitutes or results from a life. Alas, this modification permits problematic duplication cases where one collection of objects composes something, yet a duplicate collection does not. This prompts the search for alternative modifications that identify frozen organisms as composites without introducing duplication problems. A dispositional variant is proposed. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the problem of the digital-culture-public-philosophy as a possible response of those philosophers who see the need to face the challenges of the Internet and the visual culture that constitutes an important part of the Internet cultural space. It claims that this type of philosophy would have to, among many other things, modify and broaden philosophers’ traditional mode of communication. It would have to expand its textual, or mainly text-related, communication mode into the aesthetic and visual (...) communication mode. More precisely, philosophers would have to learn how to aestheticize and visualize their ethical narratives by using some digital tools – YouTube clips for example. (shrink)

Max Bense gilt als Vorreiter der Computerkunst und der Technikphilosophie und war ein engagierter Förderer von Kunst und Literatur, Promotor interdisziplinären Denkens und politischer Provokateur. Häufig ist es bei der Auseinandersetzung mit Bense jedoch bei diesen Etikettierungen geblieben. Der Sammelband nimmt daher eine konzertierte Neuaufnahme der Diskussion von Max Benses Arbeiten aus literaturwissenschaftlicher, philosophie- und wissenschaftshistorischer sowie aus medien- und ästhetiktheoretischer Perspektive vor. Er versammelt Beiträge zu Themenkomplexen wie der Semiotik, Technikphilosophie, experimentellen Poesie und Ästhetiktheorie, zu Benses lokalen und internationalen (...) Kontakten und Netzwerken sowie zu seinem publizistischen Verhalten im Nationalsozialismus und in der Nachkriegszeit. (shrink)

Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana is a testament to the cross-cultural relevance of the work of one of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century, George Santayana. A list of geographic origins of the twenty-two contributions contained in this volume indicates the transatlantic cultural diversity of scholarly representation: scholars variously hailing from Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland, and from the United States, representing three of its major regions. The authors explore the major plots of (...) Santayana's thinking, including materialistic Platonism in ontology, skepticism in epistemology, rationality in social philosophy, naturalism in aesthetics, piety in materialism, and literary and poetic expression as a means to cosmic understanding. After a preface by Professor John Lachs, and an editorial introduction, the book is divided into three respective thematic parts: I. Ontology and Naturalism; II. Culture, Society, America; and III. Aesthetics, Poetry, and Spirit. Before each thematic section brief introductions of the section papers is provided to accommodate specific scholarly interests. The authors entrust the present volume to readers appreciative of the philosophic catholicity of the subject's work, invoking the book title which is taken from the preface of Santayana's mature system of philosophy, Scepticism and Animal Faith: "In the past or in the future, my language and my borrowed knowledge would have been different, but under whatever sky I had been born, since it is the same sky, I should have had the same philosophy". (shrink)