This paper, located in the traditions of Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982) and Social Constructionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966), explores code-switching and identity practices amongst British-born Greek-Cypriots. The speakers, members of a Greek-Cypriot youth organization, are fluent in English and (with varying levels of fluency) speak the Greek-Cypriot Dialect. Qualitative analyses of recordings of natural speech during youth community meetings and a social event show how a new ‘third space’ becomes reified through code-switching practices. By skillfully manipulating languages and styles, speakers (...) draw on Greek-Cypriot cultural resources to accomplish two inter-related things. First, by displaying knowledge of familiar Greek-Cypriot cultural frames, they establish themselves as different from mainstream British society and establish solidarity as an in-group. Secondly, by using these frames in non-serious contexts, and at times mocking cultural attitudes and stereotypes, they challenge and re-appropriate their inherited Greek-Cypriot identity, thereby constructing the identity of British-born Greek-Cypriot youth. (shrink)

According to the beneficiary-pays principle, the involuntary beneficiaries of injustice ought to disgorge their unjustly obtained benefits in order to compensate the victims of injustice. The paper explores the effectiveness of the above principle in establishing a robust and unique normative connection between the rectificatory duties of the beneficiaries and the rectificatory rights of the victims of injustice. I discuss three accounts of the beneficiary-pays principle according to which the rectificatory duty of the beneficiaries towards the victims is grounded in (...) (a) their duty to oppose injustice and mitigate its effects, (b) their duty to give up benefits that are causally linked to an act of wrongdoing, or (c) their duty to not sustain wrongful harm against the victims. By criticizing these accounts, I intend to highlight the complexities of articulating a distinct rectificatory duty that applies uniquely to the beneficiaries of injustice qua beneficiaries. I conclude that, while it may seem complicated to defend the beneficiary-pays principle as an independent moral principle, it is more plausible to think of it as being derivative of more general principles such as the principle of fair play. (shrink)

This study concerns the theory of mystical knowledge advanced by the practically unknown seventeenth-century Carmelite author Philip of the Blessed Trinity in his work Summa Theologiae Mysticae. Philip introduces “a new kind” of spiritual species representing the intellectibilia to describe how individuals are granted mystical knowledge, and in doing so distinguishes between three kinds of species. Philip’s notion of mystical knowledge is closely related to the topic of contemplation and is profoundly influenced by The Interior Castle of St. Teresa of (...) Avila. The analysis presented here, therefore, represents an original contribution to the ongoing scholarly study of species, (mystical) knowledge, and Teresian spirituality. (shrink)

The past decade has seen extensive research carried out on the systematic causes of research misconduct. Simultaneously, less attention has been paid to the variation in academic misconduct between research fields, as most empirical studies focus on one particular discipline. We propose that academic discipline is one of several systematic factors that might contribute to academic misbehavior. Drawing on a neo-institutional approach, we argue that in the developing countries, the norm of textual originality has not drawn equal support across different (...) research fields depending on its level of internationalization. Using plagiarism detection software, we analyzed 2,405 doctoral dissertations randomly selected from all dissertations defended in Russia between 2007 and 2015. We measured the globalization of each academic discipline by calculating the share of publications indexed in the global citation database in relation to overall output. Our results showed that, with an average share of detected borrowings of over 19%, the incidence of plagiarism in Russia is remarkably higher than in Western countries. Overall, disciplines closely follow the pattern of higher globalization associated with a lower percentage of borrowed text. We also found that plagiarism is less prevalent at research-oriented institutions supporting global ethical standards. Our findings suggest that it might be misleading to measure the prevalence of academic misconduct in developing countries without paying attention to variations at the disciplinary level. (shrink)

Despite its historical focus on aberrant behavior, sexology barely dealt with sexual deviants in 1950s Czechoslovakia. Rather, sexologists treated only isolated instances of deviance. The rare cases that went to court appeared mostly because they hindered work or harmed the national economy. Two decades later, however, the situation was markedly different. Hundreds of men were labeled as sexual delinquents and sentenced for treatment in special sexological wards at psychiatric hospitals. They endangered society, so it was claimed, by being unwilling or (...) unable to conform to the family norm. The mode of subjection shifted from work to family. I analyse this change by using the tools of Gil Eyal’s sociology of expertise, which focuses on shifts in institutional matrices that bring forth new groups of agents creating new expert networks. I argue that sexology became profoundly institutionalized in the early 1970s, which brought the discipline closer to psychiatry and forensic science. New inpatient facilities were opened that could admit sentenced sexual deviants. Also, demographic changes accelerated in the 1960s, especially skyrocketing divorce rates and plummeting birth rates, which made it imperative for the government to focus on cementing the family. After the failed attempts of the Prague Spring in 1968, the new pro-Soviet government of communist Czechoslovakia did just that. During the time dubbed as ‘normalization’ by the new elites, anyone who strayed from the family norm was suspected of deviance. (shrink)

The paper examines Schiller’s argument concerning the subjective experience of adopting a morality based on Kantian principles. On Schiller’s view, such experience must be marked by a continuous struggle to suppress nature, because the moral law is a purely rational and categorically commanding law that addresses beings who are natural as well as rational. Essential for Schiller’s conclusion is the account he has of what it takes to follow the law, that is, the mental states and functions that encapsulate the (...) idea of moral self contained in Kant’s ethics. Focusing on the fundamental psychological elements and processes to which Kant’s theory appeals and on which it depends to have application, the paper defends an alternative idea of moral self to the one Schiller attributes to Kant. (shrink)

The paper introduces the notion of size of countable sets, which preserves the Part-Whole Principle. The sizes of the natural and the rational numbers, their subsets, unions, and Cartesian products are algorithmically enumerable as sequences of natural numbers. The method is similar to that of Numerosity Theory, but in comparison it is motivated by Bolzano’s concept of infinite series, it is constructive because it does not use ultrafilters, and set sizes are uniquely determined. The results mostly agree, but some differ, (...) such as the size of rational numbers. However, set sizes are only partially, not linearly, ordered. Quid pro quo. (shrink)

Laruelle's version of Marxism is termed "non-Marxism" whereby the "non-" is stated to stand for bracketing out Marxism's "philosophical sufficiency" and seeking to radicalise Marxism. It stands for the Laruellian non-philosophical variant of Marxism. It is precisely the non-philosophical use of Marx that has enabled the analysis at hand, demonstrating that at the heart of patriarchy and capitalism stands philosophical reason and its treatment of the Animal (both human and non-human). Women are de-realised even as use value and what is (...) exchanged in patriarchy is abstraction or the commodified femininity, which serves the multiplication of the surplus value or rather the pure value of masculinity. Just as the “C” in the M-C-M formula can be expunged as it is a mere relay for the endless repetition of the M-M automaton, so, to paraphrase Marx, because not an atom of matter enters the composition of woman as commodity, the material woman can be excluded from the equation P(hallus)-P(hallus). The less physicality in the pure value of femininity the more perfect the finite automaton of patriarchy. The fetishised femininity, as any form of commodity, is reified abstraction. The token of femininity is exchanged only in order for masculinity to engender itself. Masculinity (or the pure value of the Phallus), speculative reason, and rationalism are endowed with the same contempt for the physical, narcissistic circularity of thought and disgust for the woman outside the signifying automaton of fetishisation. (shrink)

Following François Laruelle's nonstandard philosophy and the work of Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Luce Irigaray, and Rosi Braidotti, Katerina Kolozova reclaims the relevance of categories traditionally rendered "unthinkable" by postmodern feminist philosophies, such as "the real," "the one," "the limit," and "finality," thus critically repositioning poststructuralist feminist philosophy and gender/queer studies. Poststructuralist (feminist) theory sees the subject as a purely linguistic category, as _always alread_y multiple, as _always already_ nonfixed and fluctuating, as limitless discursivity, and as constitutively detached from (...) the instance of the real. This reconceptualization is based on the exclusion of and dichotomous opposition to notions of the real, the one (unity and continuity), and the stable. The non-philosophical reading of postructuralist philosophy engenders new forms of universalisms for global debate and action, expressed in a language the world can understand. It also liberates theory from ideological paralysis, recasting the real as an immediately experienced human condition determined by gender, race, and social and economic circumstance. (shrink)

Katerina Deligiorgi offers a contemporary defence of autonomy which is Kantian but engages closely with recent arguments about agency, morality, and practical reasoning.

While the emancipatory efforts of the Czech national revival culminated at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century, manifestations of national feeling in the 17th century Czech Lands were rather rare. The article focuses on the concept of nationality as it was treated by scholars from the monastic orders such as the German provincial of the Czech Franciscan province, Bernhard Sannig (1637–1704), or the Czech Jesuit Bohuslav Balbín (1621–1688), whose views are briefly compared with those of the (...) most significant representative of the Czech Protestant emigration – Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670). By the means of analysis and comparison of several texts, the article investigates how the concept of nationality was gradually rationalized and moralized through the ethical categories of vice and virtue. These reflections on nation, nationality, and patriotism and their moral assessment demonstrate that their authors anticipated some elements of the later formulated doctrine of the natural law of nations, which theoretically justified the demands of the Czech national revival and formed the basis for the concept of Czech history. (shrink)

Departing from the premise that the poststructuralist paradigm still reigns supreme in feminist and gender theory, that is, despite the niche efforts made in the past two decades to challenge it linked to the so called “speculative” turn or the materialisms (and realisms) emerging from the feminist field itself (such as the Utrecht School, inspired by Rosi Braidotti), we set the call for papers for the issue before you in terms that would invite authors ready to challenge the dominant epistemic (...) framework. We invited papers that engage with materialism(s), realism(s), sciences and projects engaged in rethinking the post-human beyond the poststructuralist (and, we dare say, postmodern/ist) norm. -/- . (shrink)

The article takes the excavated cosmological texts as a basis for reinterpreting the relationship between cosmology, epistemology, and action in Warring States period thought, by focusing on the role of names in situatedness and self-actualization of being. It proposes to view the speculative and the practical concerns in terms of a dynamic union of the receptive and the creative within the onto-generative cycle. Building on Chung-ying Cheng’s onto-generative approach and Heidegger’s hermeneutics of Dasein in Sein und Zeit, the article identifies (...) names as the centre in which the receptive and the creative aspect of being come together. (shrink)

For over forty years John Finnis has pioneered the development of a new classical theory of natural law, a systematic philosophical explanation of human life that offers an integrated account of personal identity, practical reason, morality, political community, and law. The core of Finnis' theory, articulated in his seminal work Natural Law and Natural Rights, has profoundly influenced later work in the philosophy of law and practical reason, while his contributions to the ethical debates surrounding nuclear deterrence, abortion, (...) and sexual morality have been a powerful, and controversial exposition of the practical implications of his theory of natural law. The Collected Essays of John Finnis brings together 122 papers. Thematically arranged, the five volumes provide ready access to his contributions across central areas of modern practical philosophy - the philosophy of practical reason; the philosophy of personal identity and intention; political philosophy; the philosophy of law; and the philosophy of revelation and the role of religion in public life. Fully cross-referenced, cross-indexed, and introduced by the author, the Collected Essays reveal the connections and coherence of the different branches of Finnis' work, showing the full picture of his philosophical contribution for the first time. Covering topics from the nature of divine revelation, the morality of abortion, to the adoption of Bills of Rights, the work in these volumes offer a unique insight into the intellectual currents and political debates that have transformed major areas of public morality and law over the last half century. Together with the new edition of Natural Law and Natural Rights, they will be an essential resource for all those engaged with the philosophy of law and broader questions in practical philosophy. (shrink)

Hutto and Satne, Philosophia propose to redefine the problem of naturalizing semantic content as searching for the origin of content instead of attempting to reduce it to some natural phenomenon. The search is to proceed within the framework of Relaxed Naturalism and under the banner of teleosemiotics which places Ur-intentionality at the source of content. We support the proposed redefinition of the problem but object to the proposed solution. In particular, we call for adherence to Strict Naturalism and replace teleosemiotics (...) with autopoietic theory of living beings. Our argument for these adjustments stems from our analysis of the flagship properties of Ur-intentionality: specificity and directedness. We attempt to show that the first property is not unique to living systems and therefore poses a problem of where to place a demarcation line for the origin of content. We then argue that the second property is a feature ascribed to living systems, not their intrinsic part and therefore does not form a good foundation for the game of naturalizing content. In conclusion we suggest that autopoietic theory can not only provide a competitive explanation of the basic responding of pre-contentful organisms but also clarify why Ur-intentionality is attributed to them in such an intuitive manner. (shrink)

Over the course of 40 years of state socialism, the explanation that Czechoslovak criminologists gave for spousal murder changed significantly. Initially attributing offences to the perpetrator's class origins, remnants of his bourgeois way of life, and the lack of positive influence from the collective in the long 1950s, criminologists then refocused their attention solely on the individual's psychopathology during the period known as ‘Normalization’, which encompassed the last two decades of state socialism. Based on an analysis of archival sources, including (...) scholarly journals and expert reports, and following Ian Hacking's insight that ‘kinds of people come into being’ through the realignment of systems of knowledge, this article shows how new kinds of spousal murderer emerged as a result of shifting criminological expertise. We explain the change as the result of the psychiatrization of criminology that occurred in Czechoslovakia at a time when the regime needed to consolidate after the upheavals of the Prague Spring of 1968. The criminological framing of spousal murder as belonging squarely in the individualized realm of the private sphere reflected the contemporaneous effort of the regime to enclose the private as a sphere of relative state non-interference. (shrink)

In this essay I will attempt to explain the relation between the rule of law and the economic development. First I will describe the rule of law and its role through the years. Then, I will continue with the connection between economic development and the rule of law. I will try to clarify Macedonia’s legal framework and emphasize the constitution and its role regarding the rule of law and economic development. Latter, I will focus on the EU’s report on our (...) economy in our journey towards the union. And finally I will give something to think about for future researchers. (shrink)

Studie se věnuje otázce po ontologickém statusu ideálního, potažmo fenomenálního prostoru v pojetí Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibnize. Nejprve bude ujasněno, v jakém smyslu lze podle Leibnize za prostor v pravém slova smyslu považovat primárně pouze prostor ideální, sekundárně však rovněž prostor fenomenální. Posléze se vymezím zejména vůči takovým interpretacím leibnizovského ideálního prostoru, které v něm spatřují předzvěst prostoru kantovského. Leibnizův ideální, matematický prostor zde totiž bude přirovnán spíše k prostoru suárezovskému, případně hobbesovskému, nikoli však kantovskému.

Studie se věnuje otázce po ontologickém statusu ideálního, potažmo fenomenálního prostoru v pojetí Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibnize. Nejprve bude ujasněno, v jakém smyslu lze podle Leibnize za prostor v pravém slova smyslu považovat primárně pouze prostor ideální, sekundárně však rovněž prostor fenomenální. Posléze se vymezím zejména vůči takovým interpretacím leibnizovského ideálního prostoru, které v něm spatřují předzvěst prostoru kantovského. Leibnizův ideální, matematický prostor zde totiž bude přirovnán spíše k prostoru suárezovskému, případně hobbesovskému, nikoli však kantovskému.

After World War II, infant mortality rates started dropping steeply. We show how this was accomplished in socialist countries in East-Central Europe. Focusing on the two postwar decades, we explore comparatively how medical experts in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany saved fragile newborns. Based on an analysis of medical journals, we argue that the Soviet Union and its medical practices had only a marginal influence; the four countries followed the recommendations of the World Health Organization instead, despite not being (...) members. Importantly, we analyze the expert clashes over definitions of livebirth, which impact infant mortality statistics. We analyze the divergent practices and negotiations between countries: since the infant mortality rate came to represent the level of socioeconomic advancement, its political significance was paramount. Analyzing the struggle to reduce infant mortality thus helps us understand how socialist countries positioned themselves within the transnational framework while being members of the “socialist bloc.”. (shrink)

Natural Law and Natural Rights is widely recognised as a seminal contribution to the philosophy of law, and an essential reference point for all students of the subject. This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author responding to thirty years of comment, criticism, and further work in the field.

Is surveillance that is targeted towards specific individuals easier to justify than surveillance that targets broad categories of people? Untargeted surveillance is routinely accused of treating innocent people as suspects in ways that are unfair and of failing to pursue security effectively. I argue that in a wide range of cases untargeted surveillance treats people less like suspects than more targeted alternatives. I also argue that it often deters unwanted behaviour more effectively than targeted alternatives, including profiling. In practice, untargeted (...) surveillance is likely to be least costly morally and most efficient when used as a means of enforcing the rules of a specific activity or institution. Targeted alternatives are likely to be more appropriate means of law enforcement. (shrink)

Regulations implemented by World Athletics (WA) require female athletes with differences of sexual development to suppress their blood testosterone levels in order to participate in certain women’s sporting competitions. These regulations have been justified by reference to fairness. In this paper, we reconstruct WA’s understanding of fairness, which requires a “level playing field” where no athlete should have a significant performance advantage based on factors other than talent, dedication, and hard work over an average athlete in their category. We demonstrate (...) that by placing regulations only on testosterone levels, while ignoring physical as well as socioeconomic advantages, WA consistently fails to meet its own definition of fairness. We then discuss several ways in which this definition could be met. Our analysis shows that a categorical system, in which athletes are divided into categories based on properties leading to significant performance advantages, is best suited for meeting WA’s definition of fairness. (shrink)

This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author, in which he responds to thirty years of discussion, criticism and further work in the field to ...

An incomplete truth -- Multiple truths -- Media practice or media bribery? conceptual and theoretical considerations and implications -- Dispelling the myths of the ethical significance and validity of the concept of cultural relativism and the need for cultural tolerance in combatting media bribery worldwide -- The global study of media transparency -- Professional communities against media bribery -- A normative theory of media bribery.

Abstract:In Book X of the Republic, Plato develops a structured criticism of the images of painting in order to denigrate, by means of analogy, the cognitive value of poetry. Yet Plato persistently employs verbal images at points of utmost importance with regard to his philosophical aims. In the face of Plato’s critique of the image, his methodic use of images can seem paradoxical: critique and method point in opposing directions with regard to the cognitive value of the image. The aim (...) of this article is to promote a moderate cognitivist stance on Plato’s use of verbal images, using to this end the understanding that contemporary philosophy affords us. Operating through the lens of the metaphor of “philosophical paintings,” which they deem as apt and instructive, the authors (a) trace in Book X’s critique of painting the specific properties of the verbal images that can allow a cognitive function in the context of philosophical instruction, (b) examine and refute a pertinent objection to this moderate cognitivist stance, and (c) argue for the overall consistency between the critique of Book X and Plato’s use of verbal images, drawing on evidence in Plato’s practice that he acknowledges the risk of the image’s allure and is proactive in relation to this risk. (shrink)

Linking theses of Plato, Wittgenstein, and Weber, section I argues that identification of central cases and settling of focal meanings depend upon the theorist's purpose and, in the case of theory about human affairs—theory adequately attentive to the four irreducible orders in which human persons live and act—upon the purposes for which we intelligibly and intelligently act. Among these purposes, primacy is to be accorded to purposes which are, as best the theorist can judge, reasonable and fit to be adopted (...) by anyone, the theorist included. Section II defends the reasonableness of practical and moral judgments, against Michael Perry's ultimately nihilist claims that egoism's challenge to moral normativity has gone unanswered and that “reason for A” does not entail “reason for” anyone else. Section III takes up Steven Smith's suggestion that such subjectivism is encouraged by the talk in Natural Law and Natural Rights of “pursuing goods,” talk which is individualistic and neglectful of persons, inimical to an understanding of friendship, and impotent in the face of egoism. Here as elsewhere the key is to grasp that understanding any basic or intrinsic human good is to understand it as good for anyone like me and thus—since as I instantiate and embody a universal, viz. human being—as a good common to anyone and everyone. Section IV argues that common good gives reason for exercise and acceptance of authority, and for allegiance, even in time of breakdown. Section V argues that natural law theory is no more dependent on affirming God's existence than any other theory is, in any of the four orders of theory, but equally that is not safe for atheists. For, like any other sound theory, it suggests and is consistent with questions and answers about its grounds, in this case about the source of its normativity and of the human nature that its normative universals presuppose and affirm; and the answers are those argued for, too abstemiously, in the last chapter of NLNR and, more adequately, in the equivalent chapter of Aquinas. (shrink)

Phenotypic plasticity is a crucial feature of aggressive cancer, providing the means for cancer progression. Stochastic changes in tumor cell transcriptional programs increase the chances of survival under any condition. I hypothesize that unstable chromatin permits stochastic transitions between transcriptional programs in aggressive cancers and supports non‐genetic heterogeneity of tumor cells as a basis for their adaptability. I present a mechanistic model for unstable chromatin which includes destabilized nucleosomes, mobile chromatin fibers and random enhancer‐promoter contacts, resulting in stochastic transcription. I (...) suggest potential markers for “unsettled” chromatin in tumors associated with poor prognosis. Although many of the characteristics of unstable chromatin have been described, they were mostly used to explain changes in the transcription of individual genes. I discuss approaches to evaluate the role of unstable chromatin in non‐genetic tumor cell heterogeneity and suggest using the degree of chromatin instability and transcriptional noise in tumor cells to predict cancer aggressiveness. (shrink)

The Collected Essays of John Finnis brings together 106 papers, including nearly two dozen previously unpublished works. Thematically arranged, the five volumes provide a unique insight into the intellectual currents and political debates that have transformed major areas of public morality and law over the last half century.

The article presents the German philosopher G. W. Leibniz as a key precursor of the First Law of Thermodynamics. In this way, Leibniz tried to oppose Newton, who seems to have completely rejected the First Law of Thermodynamics, while at the same time remarkably anticipating the Second. Based on his polemics not only with Newton, from whose Laws of Motion thermodynamics originates, and with his advocate Samuel Clarke, but also with René Descartes, whose conception Leibniz partially followed, Leibnizʼs reasoning turns (...) out to be the most convincing. It is certainly no coincidence that the later founders of thermodynamics frequently acknowledged him. (shrink)

This paper examines the relevance and importance of the large number of examples which Aristotle uses in his "Prior Analytics." In the first part of the paper three preliminary issues are raised: First, it investigates what counts as an example in Aristotle's syllogistic, and especially whether only examples expressed in concrete terms should be considered as examples or maybe also propositions and arguments with letters of the alphabet. The second issue concerns the kinds of examples Aristotle actually uses from everyday (...) life as well as from various scientific and philosophical forms of discourse; among these, it seems that biological examples, rather than mathematical ones, have a predominant place. Finally, I discuss what Aristotle himself has to say about the use of examples, and in particular about the similarity between the use of an example and the use of induction. The second part of the paper focusses on the functions of Aristotle's logical examples. It is of course obvious that some of the examples in the Prior Analytics are used to illustrate, and thus to clarify, a definition, a logical rule, a type of argument. However, I think that Aristotle's logical examples have another function, which is philosophically more interesting, namely as integral parts of the procedure of proving something. To support this claim, I analyse three passages from the "Prior Analytics" in which examples are used either in order to prove that something is not the case, i.e. as counter-examples, or in order to prove positively that it is possible for something to be the case. At the end, I argue that for such uses of examples Aristotle uses the notion of 'ekthesis', which seems to have a wider sense than usually suggested; that is to say, it is used to refer to any proof by means of an example, and not only for the procedure which Aristotle uses to reduce imperfect to perfect syllogisms. (shrink)