Articles on Indian philosophy; a Marxist's viewpoint.

Článek analyzuje argument Pascalovy sázky a některé klíčové námitky proti ní – kritiku Antonyho Duffa, Alana Hájka a tradiční námitku mnoha Bohů. Pascalův argument je reformulován tak, aby těmto námitkám co nejlépe odolal. Analýza ukazuje, že revidovaná podoba sázky zůstává otevřeným problémem teorie rozhodování.The article analyzes some important reasons pro and contra Pascal`s wager argument. Many gods objection and objections by Antony Duff and Alan Hájek are discussed. A reformulation of Pascal`s wager is offered in order to make the case (...) for Pascal`s conclusion stronger. It is shown that some form of wager could still represent a serious problem for rational decision theory. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, T. G. Masaryk presented his national programme. This vision of modern Czech society rested on the ideals of humanity, thus infusing the national ethos with a universal dimension. The significance of T. G. Masaryk's thought is investigated by current Czech thinkers in this volume.

The Anthropocene concept arose within the Earth System science community, albeit explicitly as a geological time term. Its current analysis by the stratigraphical community, as a potential formal addition to the Geological Time Scale, necessitates comparison of the methodologies and patterns of enquiry of these two communities. One means of comparison is to consider some of the most widely used results of the ESS, the ‘planetary boundaries’ concept of Rockström and colleagues, and the ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs of Steffen and colleagues, (...) in terms of their stratigraphical expression. This expression varies from virtually non-existent to pronounced and many-faceted, while in some cases stratigraphical proxies may help constrain anthropogenic process. The Anthropocene concepts of the ESS and stratigraphy emerge as complementary, and effective stratigraphic definition should facilitate wider transdisciplinary communication. (shrink)

The concept of a socially extended mind suggests that our cognitive processes are extended not simply by the various tools and technologies we use, but by other minds in our intersubjective interactions and, more systematically, by institutions that, like tools and technologies, enable and sometimes constitute our cognitive processes. In this article we explore the potential of this concept to facilitate the development of a critical neuroscience. We explicate the concept of cognitive institution and suggest that science itself is a (...) good example. Science, through various practices and rules, shapes our cognitive activity so as to constitute a certain type of knowledge, packaged with relevant skills and techniques. To develop this example, we focus on neuroscience, its cultural impact, and the various institutional entanglements that complicate its influence on reframing conceptions of self and subjectivity, and on defining what questions count as important and what kind of answers will be valued. (shrink)

Kaum ein anderer Denker hat die jüdische Moderne in einem so hohen Maße beeinflusst wie der Philosoph Baruch Spinoza. Als eine intellektuelle Grenzfigur, die nach ihrer Verbannung aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Amsterdams im Jahre 1656 in die christlich-abendländische Geisteswelt eintrat, inspirierte er jene Aufklärer der Haskala, die ein gutes Jahrhundert später nach einem eigenen jüdischen Weg in die europäische Moderne suchten. Diese Denker trafen dabei auf eine nichtjüdische Gelehrtenwelt, in der sich mit dem Namen des niederländischen Philosophen ebenso idealisierende Erwartungen (...) wie irrationale Ängste gegenüber dem in Spinoza identifizierten intellektuellen Idealtypus des Jüdischen verbanden. Somit ist die Geschichte der jüdischen Rezeption Spinozas seit dem Zeitalter der europäischen Aufklärung stets ein Indikator dafür, welchen Stand das wechselhafte Verhältnis zwischen jüdischer und nichtjüdischer Welt gerade erreicht hatte. Im Nachvollzug der Verlaufsformen der jüdischen Spinoza-Rezeption vom 17. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert zeigt die vorliegende Studie, wie sich jüdisches Selbstbild und Fremdzuschreibung immer wieder wechselseitig bedingt haben. (shrink)

This paper develops axiomatic foundations for a probabilistic-interventionist theory of causal strength. Transferring methods from Bayesian confirmation theory, I proceed in three steps: I develop a framework for defining and comparing measures of causal strength; I argue that no single measure can satisfy all natural constraints; I prove two representation theorems for popular measures of causal strength: Pearl's causal effect measure and Eells' difference measure. In other words, I demonstrate these two measures can be derived from a set of plausible (...) adequacy conditions. The paper concludes by sketching future research avenues. (shrink)

This book provides for the first time a complete history of the doctrine of the transcendentals and shows its importance for the understanding of philosophy in the Middle Ages.

Meetings differ from ordinary conversation in that they have an agenda that specifies in advance the topics to be addressed during the meeting. However, the introduction of these topics needs to be locally accomplished and recognized by the participants as agenda items. This article presents some characteristic practices used for introducing agenda-based topics. It shows that they rely on the known-in-advance status of the items, and are presented by the chair as unilateral announcements. They exploit and invoke the written agenda (...) in several ways. The announcements are often short phrasal constructions, just citing the written title of the agenda point. Furthermore, a gaze down at the written document is used as a public display that the introduction is related to the agenda. In contrast to this practice of introducing agenda items, topics not specified by the agenda are introduced by suggestions and questions that present the introduction as contingent on acceptance by the co-participants. The analysis sheds light on the ways in which institutional talk-in-interaction is permeated by the formulations and logic of written documents. (shrink)

Genesis: The Evolution of Biology presents a history of the past two centuries of biology, suitable for use in courses, but of interest more broadly to evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biomedical scientists, as well as general readers interested in the history of science. The book covers the early evolutionary biologists-Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin and Wallace through Mayr and the neodarwinian synthesis, in much the same way as other histories of evolution have done, bringing in also the social implications, the struggles with (...) our religious understanding, and the interweaving of genetics into evolutionary theory. What is novel about Sapp's account is a real integration of the cytological tradition, from Schwann, Boveri, and the other early cell biologists and embryologists, and the coverage of symbiosis, microbial evolutionary phylogenies, and the new understanding of the diversification of life coming from comparative analyses of complete microbial genomes. The book is a history of theories about evolution, genes and organisms from Lamarck and Darwin to the present day. This is the first book on the general history of evolutionary biology to include the history of research and theories about symbiosis in evolution, and first to include research on microbial evolution which were excluded from the classical neo-Darwinian synthesis. Bacterial evolution, and symbiosis in evolution are also excluded from virtually every book on the history of biology. (shrink)

It seems that the reception of Conrad Hal Waddington’s work never really gathered speed in mainstream biology. This paper, offering a transdisciplinary survey of approaches using his epigenetic landscape images, argues that (i) Waddington’s legacy is much broader than is usually recognized—it is widespread across the life sciences (e.g. stem cell biology, developmental psychology and cultural anthropology). In addition, I will show that (ii) there exist as yet unrecognized heuristic roles, especially in model building and theory formation, which Waddington’s images (...) play within his work. These different methodological facets envisioned by Waddington are used as a natural framework to analyze and classify the manners of usage of epigenetic landscape images in post-Waddingtonian ‘landscape approaches’. This evaluation of Waddington’s pictorial legacy reveals that there are highly diverse lines of traditions in the life sciences, which are deeply rooted in Waddington’s methodological work. (shrink)

Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice is a collection of essays of the moral and political philosophy of Jan Narveson. The essays in this collection share a consistent theme running through much of Narveson's moral and political philosophy, namely that politics and morals stem from the interests of individual people, and have no antecedent authority over us. The essays in this collection, in various ways and as applied to various aspects of the scene, argue that the ultimate and true point (...) of politics and morals is to enable us to make our lives better, according to our varied senses of what that might mean. (shrink)

This book is the first major account of political thought in twentieth-century Europe, both West and East, to appear since the end of the Cold War. Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and cultural history, Jan-Werner Müller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the movements and institutions they inspired. Müller (...) pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960s and neoliberalism, ending with a critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age. (shrink)

While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institutional, it became less visible internationally following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This article looks into the institutional state of history-of-science writing in Poland, and discusses several key focal points that emerged in recent years. By distinguishing between the core history of science, written at institutions devoted to this discipline, and broader academic discussions concerning science's past, I claim that, in recent decades, more important (...) topical and theoretical innovation has come from what we can term the “esoteric” circle (referring to Ludwik Fleck)—that is, scholars who do not identify themselves as historians of science. Given that those scholars from abroad who are interested in Polish history of science are in fact general historians, we get a strong impression that we are witnessing a deeper turn in the field, one with diminishing specialization and greater attention paid to situating science in a broader range of societal processes. (shrink)

The intention of this article is to make an educational analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of experience in order to see what it implicates for educational practice as well as educational research. In this way, we can attain an understanding what embodied experience might mean both in schools and other educational settings and in researching educational activities. The analysis will take its point of departure in Merleau-Ponty’s analysis and criticism of empiricist and neokantian theories of experience. This will be followed up (...) by an introduction of some central concepts in Merleau-Ponty’s own understanding of experience with emphasis on their relevance for educational analysis. This way of presenting the theory of embodied experience has the advantage of being able to indicate the difference it makes in the field of theories of experience. (shrink)

Educating the gaze is easily understood as becoming conscious about what is 'really' happening in the world and becoming aware of the way our gaze is itself bound to a perspective and particular position. However, the paper explores a different idea. It understands educating the gaze not in the sense of 'educare' (teaching) but of 'e-ducere' as leading out, reaching out. E-ducating the gaze is not about getting at a liberated or critical view, but about liberating or displacing our view. (...) It is not about becoming conscious or aware , but about becoming attentive , about paying attention . E-ducating the gaze, then, is not depending on method, but relying on discipline; it does not require a rich methodology, but asks for a poor pedagogy, i.e. for practices which allow to expose ourselves. One example of such practice is that of walking. Consequently e-ducating the gaze could be about an invitation to go walking. This idea is explored b way of a comment on two quotations, one by Walter Benjamin and one by Michel Foucault. (shrink)

Nového knížka Filosof T. G. Masaryk (1994) má tři roviny, které se přirozeně neustále stýkají a prolínají: bilancování dosavadní masarykovské literatury s důrazem na rozbor literatury nejnovější, pokus o systematizaci Masarykova díla, postižení jeho vnitřní logiky a vřazení do evropských souvislostí (Brentano, Husserl), a konečně otevírání a řešení otázek, které je možné v užším slova smyslu označit za problémové a aktuální. Nový ukazuje, jak pomáhá Masarykovo myšlení vracet znovu otázku smyslu a řádu našeho usilování a tvoření.

In this paper we extend some techniques from the theory of conse- quences operations and logical matrices into the wider area of entailment relations.

In this article, other-repetition after informing statements is investigated in a corpus of institutional encounters between native Norwegian clerks and non-native clients. Such repetition is used to display receipt of information. A plain repeat with falling intonation is described as a display of hearing, whereas a repeat plus a final response particle, ‘ja’, constitutes a claim of understanding. Repeats with high-tone response particles in addition display emotional stance, such as surprise or interest, and these are primarily exploited for the purposes (...) of topic organization. In the cross-linguistic context of the current encounters, the native speakers are shown to use receipts as embedded corrections of the non-native speaker’s utterances. The repeats also have certain formal features that are characteristic of the situation, such as less pronominalization and ellipsis, and this is explained as a procedure to ensure the joint construal of linguistic form. (shrink)

Freedom of thought is a fundamental human right, enshrined in many human rights treaties. It might very well be the only human right without any practical application. The paper reconstructs scope and meaning of this forgotten right and proposes four principles for its interpretation. In the age of neuroscientific insights and interventions into mind and brain that afford to alter thoughts, the time for the law to define freedom of thought in a way that lives up to its theoretical significance (...) has come. (shrink)

Karl Löwith, den Hans-Georg Gadamer als »den zweifellos begabtesten Schüler Heideggers« bezeichnete, zählt zu den bedeutendsten Vertretern der philosophischen Anthropologie. Sein Denken umkreist die Frage nach dem Selbstverständnis des modernen Menschen in der säkularisierten Welt. Max Weber folgend bejaht Löwith die Situation des modernen Menschen, der ohne göttliche Autorität auskommen muss, sich aber den Spannungen einer modernen kapitalistischen Gesellschaft ebenso ausgesetzt sieht wie den ihm eigenen Widersprüchen. Neben einer Einführung überträgt Jan Schenkenberger Löwiths Philosophie - unter Verwendung von teils unveröffentlichten (...) Quellen - in neue Kontexte und denkt ihren ethischen Kern in die Gegenwart weiter. (shrink)

Review text: "Es gibt Bücher, die durch ihre unprätentiöse, stille und sorgfältige Vorgehensweise auf den ersten Blick über die Sensation hinwegtäuschen, die sie bloßlegen und zur Diskussion anbieten. So ein Buch ist die "Wissenschaftphilosophie? von Jan C. Schmidt, die über die "Instabilität in Natur und Wissenschaft? handelt."Günter Altner in: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 9/2009.

A major part of police work consists in providing services and information to the general public. A stated goal of such police work is to be service-minded and contribute to a positive encounter. This article analyses service requests in calls to the duty desk of a large police station and focuses on how officers deal with requests that have to be rejected. It reveals a general pattern in which officers produce the rejection in a dispreferred format and include displays of (...) empathy, accounts for the rejection and suggestions for alternative solutions. However, in certain types of requests the rejections are not infrequently produced in a direct and unmitigated fashion, without accounts or explanations.This is especially notable in requests that touch upon institutional constraints, such as professional secrecy. And in certain cases the rejections are even delivered in an aggravated form, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to the legitimacy of the request. These rejections cast the caller in an oppositional role, infringing the professional constraints of the police. However, the constraints in question may not be accessible to the callers. The officers will consequently be experienced as hostile and will subvert their own objectives of showing service-mindedness. (shrink)

_This paper deals with the interrelationship between causal explanation and methodology in a relatively young discipline in biology: epigenetics. Based on cases from molecular and ecological epigenetics, I show that James Woodward’s interventionist account of causation captures essential features about how epigeneticists using highly diverse methods, i.e. laboratory experiments and purely observational studies, think about causal explanation. I argue that interventionism thus qualifies as a useful unifying explanatory approach when it comes to cross-methodological research efforts: It can act as a (...) guiding rationale to link causal models in molecular biology with statistical models derived from observational data analysis and to identify test-criteria for reciprocal transparent studies in different fields of research, which is a shared issue across the sciences.___. (shrink)

We develop a philosophical interpretation of altered experience in conditions of severe unipolar depression. Drawing on phenomenological analysis, on published depression memoires and on a recent questionnaire study with patients in Britain, we hold that depression is a profound impairment of agency. Its experiential core consists in a paralyzing loss of drive and energy, a suspension of initiative, an inability to adopt a stance and act in accordance with it. Moreover, we show that experiences such as a loss of self (...) and world, altered interpersonal relatedness, modified corporeal experience as well as marked changes in the experience of time go along with the loss of agency. In order to assess their broader philosophical significance, we relate our analyses to an almost forgotten philosophical discussion: that of the term Selbstgefühl in 19th century German philosophy and early psychiatry. We also briefly discuss recent debates about the alleged historical and cultural specificity of depression. (shrink)

Down through the past decade and more, no philosophical writer has taken a greater interest in the issues of how we ought to act in relation to animals, nor pressed more strongly the case for according them rights, than Tom Regan, in many articles, reviews, and exchanges at scholarly conferences and in print. Now, in The Case for Animal Rights we have a substantial volume in which Regan most fully and systematically presents his case for a strong panoply of rights (...) for animals. The argument is direct and cumulative, leading up to a final chapter in which Regan draws his conclusions: vegetarianism is obligatory, hunting and trapping wrong, and virtually no use of animals permissible in scientific experimentation. These are radical conclusions; few of us would be unaffected by them, and most of us, indeed, would be in for a terrific alteration in various aspects of our lifestyles. It certainly behooves us, then, to follow his arguments with care. In the present essay, my main concern will be to examine the arguments in this book. But I shall also be concerned to develop an alternative viewpoint, though at lesser length than the subject merits. (shrink)