The article discusses Iris Murdoch’s philosophical relationship to Buddhism. First, we argue that Murdoch was not, and did not identify herself as, a Buddhist. Then we suggest caution regarding Murdoch’s interpretations of Buddhism. On the one hand, she applies the limited viewpoint of her era. On the other hand, her approach is motivated by insights tracing affinities between Buddhism and Husserl’s and Sartre’s analyses of consciousness, as well as Platonic ideas of unselfing and self-purification. Murdoch’s reflections on Buddhism serve primarily (...) a complex argument about the role of religion in our moral lives, as these reflect the rapidly changing Western cultural environment. She envisages the possibility for Christianity to learn from Buddhism and move closer towards demythologisation and a radical, loving commitment to the others here and now. While Murdoch’s observations may not be accurate as a ‘diagnosis of our times’, they serve as a valuable opening for reflecting on our lives in the suggested terms. They are also inspiring in their optimism that there is the possibility to learn from others (other cultures, other religions) for the better. The ‘muddled’ nature of our reality does not thwart this possibility of learning; it only makes its particular steps unpredictable. (shrink)

This book investigates the role and significance that examples play in shaping arguments and thought, both in philosophy and in everyday life. It addresses questions about how our moral thinking is informed by our conceptual practices, especially in ways related to the relationship between ethics and literature, post-Wittgensteinian ethics, or meta-philosophical concerns about the style of philosophical writing. Written in an accessible and non-technical style, the book uses examples from real-life events or pieces of well-known fictional stories to introduce its (...) discussions. In doing so, it demonstrates the complex way examples, rather than exemplifying philosophical points, inform and condition how we approach the points for which we want to argue. The author shows how examples guide or block our understanding in certain directions, how they do this by stressing morally relevant aspects or dimensions of the terms, and how the sense of moral seriousness allows us to learn from examples. The final chapter explores whether these kinds of engagement with examples can be understood as "thinking primarily through examples." Examples and Their Role in Our Thinking will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in ethics and moral philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy of literature. (shrink)

The paper discusses the unique approach to the problem of evil employed by the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion and ethics that is primarily represented by D. Z. Phillips. Unlike traditional solutions to the problem, Phillips’ solution consists in questioning its meaningfulness—he attacks the very ideas of God’s omnipotence, of His perfect goodness and of the need to ‘calculate’ God’s goodness against the evil within the world. A possible weakness of Phillips’ approach is his unreflected use of what he calls ‘our (...) religious language’, against which he measures the meaningfulness of theodical conceptions. He apparently underestimates both the heterogeneity of the ‘ours’ and how philosophical ideas pervade and inform the actual practice. On the other hand, Phillips rightly identifies the fact that some theodical conceptions, if understood as general doctrines, commit the sin of insensitivity and do not pay appropriate respect to human suffering. The reason is that they neglect the seriousness and importance of the difference between issuing the theodical accounts in the first person and in the third person. He may, however, thereby accuse theodicies of failing in a task that theodicists never intended to undertake. Possible problems are also involved in Phillips’ use of the Holocaust as the central discussion example. (shrink)

This text presents an analysis of some aspects of the phenomenon of so-called incels. It focuses on the sexist and male supremacist ideology inherent to the incels’ narrative. It also follows a link between this ideology and the assumptions made by some commentators on the incels’ problem, who have been relying on a mixture of conservative views on society and reductionist naturalism. I present a critique of these background assumptions, relating to concepts that feature centrally in them. First, I criticise (...) the characterisation of a particular concept of ‘monogamy’ as natural and its possible construal as normative. Then I explore the rhetoric of sex as a ‘basic need’, pointing out the tendency to mistake what one wants for a ‘need’. I conclude by criticising the particular kind of idea of the science of human nature that underpin the reductionist accounts of sex-related violence. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 1, Page 21-39, January 2022.

My aim is to discuss the rhetoric of expertise as objective, and ideology-and value-free, on the example of environmental policy. The first section introduces examples of the common rhetorical figure of expert, ideology-free environmental protection, revealing their presuppositions. The second introduces objects of comparison - the cartoonish proposals of wiping out humanity - with the aim of showing that the two groups of proposals assume an analogous rhetoric. The third section discusses some prominent features of various proposals of?population control?, along (...) with the links to the current surge of so-called eco-fascism. The aim is to show that all these phenomena represent a scale of the idea of ideology-free environmentalism. The concluding section discusses the distorted understanding of expertise, ideology, and politics, central to examples given in the previous sections, as leading to deplorable ignorance or callous cynicism, and therefore, in effect, a moral failure. (shrink)

This paper discusses some difficulties in understanding the Turing test. It emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between conceptual and empirical perspectives and highlights the former as introducing more serious problems for the TT. Some objections against the Turingian framework stemming from the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy are exposed. The following serious problems are examined: 1) It considers a unique and exclusive criterion for thinking which amounts to their identification; 2) it misidentifies the relationship of speaking to thinking as that of a (...) criterion; 3) it neglects the “natural” course of the development in semantics. However, these considerations suggest only that it is problematic to label a successful chatbot as a “thinking entity” without further qualifications, but not necessarily and once and for all incorrect. Philosophy has only little to say about the technical possibility of creating such an effective program. (shrink)

The article discusses the case of Microsoft's Twitter chatbot Tay that “turned into a Nazi” after less than 24 hours from its release on the Internet. The first section presents a brief recapitulation of Alan Turing's proposal for a test for artificial intelligence and the way it influenced subsequent discussions in the philosophy of mind. In the second section, I offer a few arguments appealing for caution regarding the identification of an accomplished chatbot as a thinking being. These are motivated (...) principally by Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussions of mind and soul and by some Wittgensteinian philosophers' criticisms of AI endeavours. I will try to show that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of AIs such as chatbots as thinking beings, rather independently of their technical perfection and accomplishment. In the third section, the case of the “Nazi chatbot” Tay will offer me material for some light to be shed on the peculiar character of our interconnected concepts of thinking, soul and person and on the importance of their further ramified connections. (shrink)

Článek se zabývá problematickou politické korektnosti ve vztahu k feministické filosofii vědy. Zaměřuje pozornost na užší pojem politické korektnosti - hodnotově motivovanou nekorektní práci s fakty. Konstatuje, že navzdory explicitnímu soustředění feministických autorek a autorů na význam hodnot v projektu vědy nelze chápat feministickou filosofii vědy jako politicky korektní nebo jako vybízení k politicky korektní vědě. Naopak se politicky korektní argumentace v tomto užším smyslu mohou dopouštět i práce vystupující proti feministické či politicky korektní agendě ve vědě.

This chapter is a philosophical exploration of the topic specifically sidestepped in Patočka’s paper: the survival of the soul after the death of the body. First, I summarise arguments by some philosophers of religion (such as D Z Phillips) who offer a position analogous to that of Patočka: that the immortality of the soul should not be understood literally (ontologically), for that might be confused, but rather in a Platonic sense as the matter of a life lived in the light (...) of absolute moral concerns. However, I further argue that this appears insufficient to make sense of the multiple examples of the contacts with the dead or the spirits, rooted in rich situated practices of cultures and religions (rather than in confused metaphysics of academic philosophers). Here, the explicit rejections of ontological commitments as “confused” may amount to failing to do justice to the terms in which observers of a religion, but also bereaved people, understand their own experiences and in which these experiences are conceptualised in the lives of the broad social practices (including religious practices in a narrower sense). Here, I am following some insights achieved by the recent “ontological turn” in (the philosophy of) social sciences. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass Beispiele nicht nur als rhetorische Unterstützung für eine vorgestellte allgemeine These verwendet werden, sondern auch ohne Erklärung zirkulieren (ob mit oder ohne versteckte Absicht). Wir treffen oft auf Besonderheiten (Personen, Fälle, Situationen, Geschichten usw.), die erst mit der Zeit die Bedeutung eines Beispiels für etwas annehmen. Das Lernen aus solchen Beispielen ist ein langwieriger Prozess, der darauf beruht, dass man ernsthafte und bedeutsame Aspekte (oft im Zusammenhang mit wesentlichen Strukturen des menschlichen Lebens) erkennt, die (...) sich in ihnen widerspiegeln, und der dazu führt, dass man i) in der Lage ist, bedeutsame Verbindungen zu anderen Besonderheiten zu erkennen und ii) nach dieser Erkenntnis zu handeln. Es ist umstritten, ob i) und ii) untrennbar miteinander verbunden sind. Der schwer fassbare Charakter des Lernens an Beispielen - die Schwierigkeit, zu entscheiden, ob ein Lernen stattgefunden hat - wird am Beispiel umweltbezogener Handlungen illustriert. (shrink)

This volume showcases contemporary, ground-up ethical essays in the tradition of Wittgenstein’s broader philosophy and Wittgenstein-inspired ethical reflection. It takes the ethical relevance of Wittgenstein as a substantial and solid starting point for a broad range of ongoing thinking about contemporary ethical issues. The texts are organised in two sections. The first consists of chapters exploring questions around what could be called the “grammar” of our moral forms of life, and thus represents a more traditional approach in ethics after Wittgenstein. (...) The second part represents a recent turn in the tradition towards investigating moral conceptions, perspectives and concepts that are undergoing change, either because the world itself is changing (for instance with new technologies) or because human agency, such as social movements, has brought us to reconsider previously unquestioned ideas and structures. Within the book, the authors’ contributions are inspired, in their ways of working with ethical questions, by Wittgenstein’s conceptions of language, understanding and the nature of philosophical inquiry. This book is of interest to philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein, as well as to all ethicists seeking ideas for how to do philosophy in a manner close to lived experience and practice. (shrink)

The paper discusses alternatives of philosophical approach to addiction. While not denying the central position of problems of will or craving, it focuses on the broader anthropological context of addiction, using Heidegger’s existential analyses. It appears that addiction – in some cases, because an essentialist exposition is not viable here – is characterized by a defective pattern of the agent’s choice among possibilities and of temporality. The anecdotic observations can be synthesized into a treatise of addiction as a normative disorder: (...) a systematic inability of the addict to function within usual normative practices of various social contexts. The relevance of this perspective is testified also by therapeutic practice: addicts are treated not exclusively with respect to problems concerning will, but as persons who have to be re-socialized, i.e. led to a responsible attitude both towards themselves and society. (shrink)

The paper aims to trace the distinctive character of the talk of the soul and to disentangle it from the talk of the mind. The key context will be the way in which we talk about souls that are ailing. As a point of departure, I use the later Wittgenstein's notion of the soul as anti-dualist and anti-substantive, which brings it close to Dennett's or Davidson's philosophy of mind, but which Wittgensteinian ethicists have elaborated upon as concerned with matters of (...) good and evil, and beauty. In relation to these concerns, the sense of the ailing soul is different from issues relating to mental health. I then discuss cases of ailments of the soul that would be misleading to analyse as matters of mental health (issues): addiction, racism, and environmental grief. I conclude with a plea for maintaining the talk of the soul as helpful for making sense of existential or beauty- or morality-related ailments, yet as something that does not necessarily subscribe to any doctrine of the soul as a substance. In support, I also use arguments from the spheres of eco-theology and public theology. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss some interesting philosophical questions bound to color science, in its variant founded by Berlin and Kay’s linguistic and anthropological research. I will first refer to various criticisms, expressed by dissenting scientists. Further criticisms implied by a rather philosophical perspective will follow; a particular attention is paid to the question of synchronicity vs . diachronicity. The controversy about Berlin and Kay’s conception is paralleled by the development of Wittgenstein’s views on color that I will sketch (...) in short. Wittgenstein’s philosophy offers tools for illuminating the problem from yet another point of view. In the final part of the paper, I will try to point to the limits of the conception of basic color categories, but also to assess its relevance and possible philosophical contribution in terms of language games variety; especially with respect to the Color Incompatibility The orem and its implications. (shrink)

The text deals with the role of particular examples in our understanding, especially in the encounters with unfamiliar cases that may require us to expand our concepts. I try to show that Peter Winch’s reflections on the nature of understanding can provide the foundations for such an account. Understanding consists in a response informed by a background network of particular canonical examples. It is against this background that the distinction between appropriate differentiated reactions and misplaced ones makes sense. To accommodate (...) applications of known concepts to unfamiliar cases, particular examples are needed that invite the recipient in a certain direction of understanding, while providing a “closure” against arbitrary mis- or re-interpretations. This capacity has to do with a capacity or incapacity to convey the sense of seriousness of an example dealing with the _lives_ of the persons concerned. (shrink)

Love—for most of its theorists—involves thinking about certain further things that define what love is. Thus, according to some theories, love amounts to unconditional concern about the beloved’s well-being.1 Other theories, such as Troy Jollimore’s, suggest that love is a kind of appreciative response to the qualities of the beloved person.2 These viewpoints seem to require a particular kind of epistemic focus on the part of the lovers. You have to be clear about what promotes your beloved’s well-being; spare an (...) active thought for it. According to this view, loving someone cannot do away with preoccupation about that... (shrink)

Text usiluje o krátký kritický přehled některých prací sociálního psychologa Jonathana Haidta, s ohledem na to, jaké důsledky z Haidtových tvrzení vyplývají pro pojem morálky a možnosti filosofické diskuse o morálních problémech. Budu tvrdit, že jakkoli jsou Haidtova zjištění a jejich interpretace v mnohém pozoruhodná a přínosná, některé aspekty lidské morálky a morálního života zkreslují a spíše znesnadňují, než usnadňují jejich porozumění. V první části se dotknu Haidtova pojmu morální intuice a nejasností spojených s tím, jak mu rozumět. Vodítkem bude (...) způsob, jakým Haidt zavádí tento pojem a pracuje s ním ve svém příkladu sourozenců Marka a Julie. Ve druhé části naznačím, jaký dopad mají tyto nejasnosti pro Haidtovy politicko-psychologické analýzy. V poslední části poukážu na význam Haidtem přehlížené rozmanitosti filosofických teorií toho, co je to morálka. Společným jmenovatelem více mých kritických poznámek je to, že i když Haidt označuje svá zkoumání za čistě deskriptivní a pluralistická, fakticky implicitně předpokládá zhruba konsekvencialistické pojetí morálky, včetně jeho normativních aspektů. (shrink)

Tento článek se zabývá problematikou (organizované) nespolupráce a černého pasažérismu; jeho cílem je ukázat „spolupráci“ a „nespolupráci“ jako relativní pojmy odpovídající různým úrovním popisu. Závěrem naznačuje, že fenomén organizovaného obcházení pravidel může představovat problém pro naturalistické varianty teorie společenské smlouvy.

Článek se zabývá různými možnými úhly pohledu na problém závislosti, nakolik je relevantní pro filosofii. Nejprve diskutuje vztah mezi závislostí a akrasií; poté navrhuje další směry analýzy závislosti jakožto komplexního problému aktérova postoje k možnostem vlastní existence a pravidlům her a kontextů, v nichž se pohybuje.The paper deals with various possible points of view on the problem of addiction, as far as it is a relevant philosophical topic. It discusses first the relationship between addiction and akrasia; then it suggests other (...) directions for the analysis of addiction as a complex problem of the agent’s stance to the possibilities of her/his own existence and to the rules of the games and contexts within which she/he acts. (shrink)

In his post-war writings, Wittgenstein makes several comments on particularly “fitting” (treffende) words. However, the nature of this quality remains unclear and elusive. In this paper, I present some suggestions about what one might learn from Wittgenstein’s comments, though my purpose is not primarily exegetical, but rather simply to reflect upon what makes a word “fitting”. I discuss several options; first that it is the context what makes the word fitting, then that it is an “imponderable” quality it has. Eventually, (...) I opt for the explanation that the fittingness has (at least often) to do with the enthusiastic feeling the word can give rise to. The feeling should not be construed as a mental event of a private kind, though; rather, we can describe in these terms the dynamics of conversational situations that feature “fitting” words. (shrink)

Článek zkoumá status paměti jako determinanty přítomného lidského jednání na specifickém příkladu posttraumatické stresové poruchy. Snažím se ukázat, že vztah mezi prožitkem zpřítomněným pamětí a jednáním není kauzální a logický, nýbrž že ve světle prožitého traumatu (zprávy o něm) dává přítomné jednání smysl. Struktura této provázanosti je spíše narativní či hermeneutická.

Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Heidegger – the intersubjectivity. of sense].

This paper has two main parts. First, it overviews the topic of environmental grief and related emotions. Specifically, it stresses the need to think of emotions in at least partly cognitive terms and to consider an existential rather than medical account of environmental emotions. The second part is a reflection on the currently endemic worries about having children. I will argue that it is misplaced to analyse this attitude universally as an argument-based decision. Rather, if it relates to environment grief, (...) the emotion may be providing a reason for this attitude, or be expressed as the attitude. The misleading ‘argument’ framing and the near-condescending responses to it may be related to a specifically generational failure of understanding. (shrink)

Inferentialism is a philosophical approach premised on the claim that an item of language acquires meaning in virtue of being embedded in an intricate set of social practices normatively governed by inferential rules. Inferentialism found its paradigmatic formulation in Robert Brandom's landmark book Making it Explicit, and over the last two decades it has established itself as one of the leading research programs in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic. While Brandom's version of inferentialism has received wide (...) attention in the philosophical literature, thinkers friendly to inferentialism have proposed and developed new lines of inquiry that merit wider recognition and critical appraisal. From Rules to Meaning brings together new essays that systematically develop, compare, assess and critically react to some of the most pertinent recent trends in inferentialism. The book's four thematic sections seek to apply inferentialism to a number of core issues, including the nature of meaning and content, reconstructing semantics, rule-oriented models and explanations of social practices and inferentialism's historical influence and dialogue with other philosophical traditions. With contributions from a number of distinguished philosophers--including Robert Brandom and Jaroslav Peregrin--this volume is a major contribution to the philosophical literature on the foundations of logic and language. (shrink)