The Destructions of the Modes of Signifying (henceforth: dms) is an anonymous fourteenth-century polemic against modist speculative grammar (grammatica speculativa). Wielding Ockhamist logic and metaphysics, the dms repeatedly attacks the very root of modism: the claim that the grammatical features of language are grounded in the metaphysical properties of the world. I call this the Modist Correspondence Thesis (henceforth: mct). In its most general form, mct says that every mode of signifying exhibited by an utterance corresponds to a mode of (...) being exhibited by a thing. The Emptiness Argument of the dms tries to show that mct fails to accommodate certain special cases, such as privative, fictitious, and divine utterances, like ‘blindness’ (caecitas), ‘chimera’ (chimaera), and ‘deity’ (deitas). The modist Thomas of Erfurt directly addresses the Emptiness Argument, anticipating the anti-modist criticisms present in the dms. In doing so, he points the way to alternative formulations of mct that are immune to those criticisms. (shrink)

The paper analyses the validity of arguments supporting the assumption of a constant universe of individuals over all possible worlds within Transparent Intensional Logic. These arguments, proposed by Tichý, enjoy widespread acceptance among researchers working within the system. However, upon closer examination, this paper demonstrates several weaknesses in the argumentation, suggesting that there is an open possibility to incorporate a variable universe of individuals even in models within this system.

This book explores a much-neglected area of moral philosophy--the typology of immorality. Ronald D. Milo questions the adequacy of Aristotle's suggestion that there are two basic types of immorality--wickedness and moral weakness--and argues that we must distinguish between at least six different types of immoral behavior. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts (...) of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to outline the history of anticommunist legislation in interwar Yugoslavia and to bring to the fore its key phases. This approach is employed to re-examine the effectiveness of the introduced laws, to pinpoint their shortcomings, but also their strong points. Virtually from its creation, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) was hostile to communism. Anticommunist convictions of the ruling elites influ­enced many aspects of governance, not only internal affairs, as the outlawing of (...) the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in December 1920, but also foreign policy, as postponing the recognition of the Soviet Union to 1940. There are three distinct phases of anticommunist legislation, each clearly marked by a key anticommunist law. During the first phase (1918-1921), there were few legal instruments for combating left-wing radicalism. The second phase (1921-1929) was marked by the introduction of a highly controversial Law on the Protection of Public Security and State Order, which gave previous unprecedented powers to the prosecutors and police to crush the emerging communist movement. This legal framework was further expanded after the proclamation of the King`s dictatorship in 1929, and the overhaul of the Law, as well as the introduction of a special tribunal – The State Court for the Protection of the State. (shrink)

What are the truth conditions of want ascriptions? According to an influential approach, they are intimately connected to the agent’s beliefs: ⌜S wants p⌝ is true iff, within S’s belief set, S prefers the p worlds to the not-p worlds. This approach faces a well-known problem, however: it makes the wrong predictions for what we call (counter)factual want ascriptions, wherein the agent either believes p or believes not-p—for example, ‘I want it to rain tomorrow and that is exactly what is (...) going to happen’ or ‘I want this weekend to last forever, but of course it will end in a few hours’. We solve this problem. The truth conditions for want ascriptions are, we propose, connected to the agent’s conditional beliefs. We substantiate this connection by pursuing a striking parallel between (counter)factual and non-(counter)factual want ascriptions on the one hand and counterfactual and indicative conditionals on the other. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas says that the eucharistic words of consecration – ‘This is my body’ (‘Hoc est corpus meum’) – are uttered by the consecrating priest both ‘significatively’ (‘significative’) and ‘recitatively’ (‘recitative’). This allows him to simultaneously account for the reference of the indexicals ‘this’ and ‘my’, the first of which must apply to some present substance, and the second of which must refer not to the priest but to Christ. This joint significative and recitative use can be distinguished from other (...) semantic and pragmatic features that the words exhibit, which I call significative productivity and instrumental representation: the words produce what they signify, and the speaker acts as an instrument of another, whom the speaker represents. Other sacramental forms share these features. What’s distinctive about the words of consecration is how they exhibit them – as a recitation. This recitative use can be explained by distinguishing between the sacramental gesture (such as the pouring of holy water or the anointing with oil) and the sacramental speech act (that is, the uttering of words that signify and produce the sacrament). In the eucharist, the sacramental gesture and sacramental speech act are one and the same. Despite identifying this intriguing linguistic phenomenon, Aquinas doesn’t fully explain. Puzzles linger, one of which concerns whether the recited words are also asserted. (shrink)

This book explores a much-neglected area of moral philosophy--the typology of immorality.

Connaissez-vous Daniel S. Milo? Il dit lui-même être « le seul témoin ici de [ses] propres exploits ». Il conviendrait donc de faire les présentations d’usage. Mais suffit-il de dire que l’homme est historien, romancier et philosophe, maître de conférences à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales à Paris? Difficile, car malgré tout on en vient vite à s’écrier, sur le ton de parents excédés par l’insubordination de leur rejeton : « Qu’est-ce qu’il...

Miloš Ćipranić Punoletstvo misli: Trivo Inđić.

The concept of cuteness, which can evoke positive emotions in people, is an essential aspect to consider in artificial intelligence design. This study aimed to investigate whether the use of baby schema designed avatars in computer-mediated communication elicits higher positive attitudes than neutral avatars and whether the ethnicity of the cute avatars influences individuals' perceived level of cuteness. 485 participants from Israel and Japan viewed six avatar images, including three baby schema avatars of different visual characteristics and ethnicities (Caucasian, Asian, (...) and Black) and three neutral avatars. Participants rated their attitudes on each avatar, and the results revealed that the baby schema designed avatars were rated cuter, more likable, approachable, and pleasant than the neutral mature avatars. Cultural differences were also evident, as the Caucasian baby schema avatar was rated cuter among Japanese participants, while the Asian and Black baby schema avatars were rated cuter among Israeli respondents. The study findings suggest that cute avatar design can serve as a powerful tool for promoting positive interactions in computer-mediated communication, especially in cultures that highly value cuteness, such as Japan. However, the subjective nature of cuteness is evident as attitudes toward cuteness varied significantly across cultures and individuals. This research highlights the significance of cultural diversity and emphasizes the importance of considering cuteness as a crucial aspect of artificial intelligence design, particularly when creating avatars intended to elicit positive emotions from users. Therefore, designers should be mindful of potential cultural and individual differences in the perception of cuteness while developing avatars for various applications. (shrink)

The convergence of computing, sensing, and communication technology will soon permit large-scale deployment of self-driving vehicles. This will in turn permit a radical transformation of traffic control technology. This paper makes a case for the importance of addressing questions of social justice in this transformation, and sketches a preliminary framework for doing so. We explain how new forms of traffic control technology have potential implications for several dimensions of social justice, including safety, sustainability, privacy, efficiency, and equal access. Our central (...) focus is on efficiency and equal access as desiderata for traffic control design. We explain the limitations of conventional traffic control in meeting these desiderata, and sketch a preliminary vision for a next-generation traffic control tailored to address better the demands of social justice. One component of this vision is cooperative, hierarchically distributed self-organization among vehicles. Another component of this vision is a priority system enabling selection of priority levels by the user for each vehicle trip in the network, based on the supporting structure of non-monetary credits. (shrink)

Cieľom tohto článku nie je, primárne, rozobrať Popperovu teóriu vedy, ale 1. predstaviť Lakatosove námietky proti tejto teórii; 2. kriticky ich analyzovať z hľadiska Popperovej teórie; a 3. vysvetliť, prečo justifikacionista Lakatos nemohol oceniť Popperov skepticizmus.

Abstrakt/Abstract Článok argumentuje, že idea tzv. sociálneho obratu, ktorá pochádza z dielne normatívneho pragmatizmu a ktorú v jednom zo svojich textov propaguje aj Vojtech Kolman, neprináša žiadne ovocie, ak je prenesená do oblasti epistemológie. V závere článku je preto načrtnutá alternatívna interpretácia idey sociálneho obratu a jej dôsledky pre epistemológiu. The paper argues that the idea of the so-called social turn introduced by normative pragmatism, and promoted also by Vojtech Kolman in one of his papers, bears no fruit when transferred (...) to the field of epistemology. Therefore, an alternative interpretation of the idea of social turn, as well as its consequences for epistemology, is outlined at the end of the paper. (shrink)

The right to informed consent, as established in the Supreme Court judgment in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11, I claim involves a ‘journey of love’ between clinicians and...

Terms do not always cover the same meaning all the time. While translating into another language we have to take care of possible shifts in meaning in each of both languages. Some examples have been shown here from the new translation of Locke‘s Essay into Czech.

Terms do not always cover the same meaning all the time. While translating into another language we have to take care of possible shifts in meaning in each of both languages. Some examples have been shown here from the new translation of Locke‘s Essay into Czech.

Tento článok pojednáva o Watkinsovom útoku na Popperovu teóriu vedy . Watkins tvrdí, že Popperova teória pravdeblízkosti zavádza do PTV justifikacionistické a induktivistické prvky. Cieľom článku je ukázať nepravdivosť Watkinsovej obžaloby. V PTV niet žiadneho dobrého dôvodu pre žiadnu domnienku. Podobne, neexistuje tu ani žiadny „induktívny spôsob“ získavania domnienok.

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)

To model behavioral and neural correlates of language comprehension in naturalistic environments, researchers have turned to broad‐coverage tools from natural‐language processing and machine learning. Where syntactic structure is explicitly modeled, prior work has relied predominantly on context‐free grammars (CFGs), yet such formalisms are not sufficiently expressive for human languages. Combinatory categorial grammars (CCGs) are sufficiently expressive directly compositional models of grammar with flexible constituency that affords incremental interpretation. In this work, we evaluate whether a more expressive CCG provides a better (...) model than a CFG for human neural signals collected with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants listen to an audiobook story. We further test between variants of CCG that differ in how they handle optional adjuncts. These evaluations are carried out against a baseline that includes estimates of next‐word predictability from a transformer neural network language model. Such a comparison reveals unique contributions of CCG structure‐building predominantly in the left posterior temporal lobe: CCG‐derived measures offer a superior fit to neural signals compared to those derived from a CFG. These effects are spatially distinct from bilateral superior temporal effects that are unique to predictability. Neural effects for structure‐building are thus separable from predictability during naturalistic listening, and those effects are best characterized by a grammar whose expressive power is motivated on independent linguistic grounds. (shrink)

Is it possible for a person to understand that what he proposes to do is morally wrong and yet prefer to do it nonetheless? I shall argue that wickedness consists in a defect of character that results in one's often having just such preferences. Yet many philosophers think that wickedness so conceived is impossible, because, for them, having such a preference is incompatible with believing, or at least knowing, that the act would be wrong.

Very often moral disagreements can be resolved by appealing to factual considerations because in these cases the parties to the dispute agree as to which factual considerations are relevant. They agree, that is, with respect to their basic moral standards. Hence, when their disagreement about the non-moral facts is resolved, so is their moral disagreement. But sometimes moral disagreement persists in spite of agreement on factual considerations. When this happens, and when neither party is guilty of illogical thinking, we have (...) a case of moral deadlock. (shrink)

José Ortega y Gasset studied painting in depth from the standpoint he called ratio-vitalism or the philosophy of vital reason. This paper explores whether the term živopis corresponds more to ratio-vitalist philosophy than the term pintura used by the Spanish philosopher. In other words, the question is whether the translation, in this case, is better than the original. Following Ortega’s thesis on the historicity of human creations, we will look for the origin of the word živopis, which contributes to the (...) consideration of whether it is an appropriate word for the art of painting from the perspective of the philosophy of life. (shrink)

The book presents Transparent Intensional Logic in several of its latest realisations in such a way that it makes a case for the system and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to a wide range of cases.

Dílo Hélène Metzgerové tvoří významný zdroj informací o dějinách chemie. Cílem tohoto textu je však představení jeho epistemologického rozměru. Na základě zkoumání dějin vědy Metzgerová formuluje epistemologické teze o vědeckém poznání obecně, ale vztahuje je i na práci historiků vědy. Vytváří tak epistemologii historiografie vědy, která má být alternativou k historiografii pozitivistické. Akceptuje duhemovský holismus i tezi o nedourčenosti teorie fakty, což vztahuje i na interpretace starých textů. Rozpracovává tak filosofickou metodu historiografie vědy, která se svými principy blíží hermeneutice.