The paper investigates how formal/informal networks of scientists, while facilitating the scientific West-East transfer in the Cold War context, shaped the scientific field of sexology by imposing personal scientific credos, in a particular national context. The paper shows that in the Cold War context, sexual science was present in Communist Romania, but neither as imitation of the regional scholarship, nor as a simple reproduction of western advancements in the field. The post-war Romanian scholarship in the field of sexology was the (...) result of scientific interests of Stefan Milcu – long time party protégée and respected member of the international scientific community – and of its personal circle that included remarkable personalities such as Victor Săhleanu or Tudor Stoica. Presenting the public with information about sexual and re­productive functions, and sometimes even elaborated descriptions of sexual techniques, certainly was never meant to enhance the individual gratification or provoke any form of sexual revolution. The Romanian production of sex/educational manuals and of sexology works was part of a state policy towards a better, stable, family life, aiming for collective and social happiness. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, (...) the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported. (shrink)

Many scholars are ready to accept that first person thought involves a special way w such that, for any thinker x, only x can access the first person way w of thinking about x. Standard articulations of this Frege-inspired view involve a rejection of the strict shareability of first person thought. I argue that this rejection eventually forces us to renounce an intuitively plausible characterisation of communication, and specifically, disagreement. This result invites us to explore alternative articulations which, still within (...) an overall Fregean framework, may better explain how first person thoughts reach out into a public, shareable dimension. Here I shape this possibility in terms of perspectives, i.e. ways of thinking that do not individuate concepts or thoughts. Perspectives, I submit, can serve to unproblematically accommodate basic disagreement in indexical cases and to outline the dynamic character of first person thought. (shrink)

Consider the Unshareability View, namely, the view that first person thought or self-thought—thought as typically expressed via the first person pronoun—is not shareable from subject to subject. In this article, I show that a significant number of Fregean and non-Fregean commentators of Frege have taken the Unshareability View to be the default Fregean position, rehearse Frege’s chief claims about self-thought and suggest that their combination entails the Unshareability View only on the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence between way (...) of thinking and thought-individuating cognitive value, outline an account of self-thought that rejects the assumption and keeps intact all of Frege’s chief claims, and respond to a number of worries to the effect that this proposal yields undesirable results from the point of view of the individuation of self-thought at the level of cognitive value. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also (...) renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection. (shrink)

In this article I give a unified account of three phenomena: bullshit, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. My aims are partly conceptual, partly evaluative. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's seminal analysis of bullshit, I give an account of the three phenomena and of how they are related, and I use this account to explain what is bad about all three. More specifically, I argue that what is defective about pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy is precisely that they are special cases of bullshit. Apart from raising (...) interesting philosophical issues, gaining a clearer understanding of these phenomena is also of practical importance, in that it bears on how best to tackle the threat that they pose. (shrink)

A core tenet of metanormative non-naturalism is that genuine or robust normativity—i.e., the kind of normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements, and perhaps also of prudential, epistemic and even aesthetic requirements—is metaphysically special in a way that rules out naturalist analyses or reductions; on the non-naturalist view, the normative is sui generis and metaphysically discontinuous with the natural. Non-naturalists agree, however, that the normative is modally as well as explanatorily dependent on the natural. These two commitments—discontinuity and dependence—at least (...) initially pull in opposite directions, and one of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile them. In this paper I spell out the most pressing version of this discontinuity problem, as I propose to call it, and I go on to offer a novel solution. Drawing on the ideology of reasons-firstism, I formulate an account of normative explanation which reconciles the two commitments, and I argue that competing accounts either do not solve the problem or are implausible on independent grounds. (shrink)

Countries throughout the world are counting the health and socioeconomic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the strategies necessary to contain it. Profound consequences from social isolation are beginning to emerge, and there is an urgency about charting a path to recovery, albeit to a ‘new normal’ that mitigates them. Children have not suffered as much from the direct effects of COVID-19 infection as older adults. Still, there is mounting evidence that their health and welfare are being adversely affected. Closure (...) of schools has been a critical component of social isolation but has a far broader impact than the diminution of educational opportunities, as important as these are. Reopening of schools is therefore essential to recovery, with some countries already tentatively implementing it. Children’s interests are vital considerations in any recovery plan, but the question remains as to how to address them within the context of how society views children; should they be regarded as pawns, pathfinders or partners in this enterprise? (shrink)

Background: Caregivers and administrators in long-term facilities have fragile moral work in caring for residents with dementia. Residents are susceptible to barriers and vulnerabilities associated with the most intimate aspects of their lives, including how they express themselves sexually. The conditions for sexual agency are directly affected by caregivers’ perceptions and attitudes, as well as facility policies. Objective: This article aims to clarify how to approach capacity determinations as it relates to sexual activity, propose how to theorize about patient autonomy (...) in this context, and suggest some considerations for finding an ethically responsible and practically feasible way to respect the sexual rights of this population. Research Design: The focus is on residents with early to moderate dementia in states of daily dependency on professional caregivers. The article critically examines existing empirical research on sexuality among persons with dementia, caregivers’ attitudes, and institutional roadblocks to enabling residents’ sexuality. A relational lens and insights from disability studies are used in the philosophical analysis. Participants and Research Context: No research participants were part of this analysis. Ethical Considerations: This article offers a conceptual analysis and normative framework only. Findings: The analysis highlights the delicate balance that capacity assessments for sexual activity have to strike; while caregivers should protect those who cannot give adequate consent, the denial of sexuality among residents can cause deep, long-ranging harms. Sexual agency features into an ongoing sense of self for many individuals with dementia, and the imposition of inappropriate standards and expectations for sexual autonomy can lead to unwarranted obstacles to sexual activity. Discussion: Recommendations include developing clear and inclusive institutional policies and practices of care, providing education for caregivers on how to discuss and document residents’ sexual preferences over time, and taking advantage of ethics consultation services. Conclusion: This analysis establishes the need for more research and discussion on this sensitive topic. Future research should investigate the specific responsibilities of caregivers in furthering the sexual interests of residents, how exactly to modify existing capacity instruments, and how best to support historically marginalized patients in their sexual identities. (shrink)

Excerpt from Les Sceptiques Grecs Enfin le doute lui-meme n'est pas le scepticisme. C'est du doute seulement qu'on pourrait dire qu'il est a peu pres contem porain de la pensee humaine; car, pour un esprit qui reflechit, la decouverte de la premiere erreur suffit a inspirer une certaine defiance de soi; et combien de temps a-t-il fallu a des esprits un peu attentifs pour s'apercevoir qu'ils s'etaient plus d'une fois trompee? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of (...) rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Non-naturalists about normativity hold that there are instantiable normative properties which are metaphysically discontinuous with natural properties. One of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile this discontinuity with the supervenience of the normative on the natural. Drawing on J. L. Mackie’s seminal but highly compressed discussion in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, this paper argues that the supervenience challenge as usually conceived is merely a symptom of a more fundamental challenge in the vicinity.

After more than twenty years of representational debate in the cognitive sciences, anti-representational dynamicism may be seen as offering a rival and radically new kind of explanation of systematicity phenomena. In this paper, I argue that, on the contrary, anti-representational dynamicism must face a version of the old systematicity challenge: either it does not explain systematicity, or else, it is just an implementation of representational theories. To show this, I present a purely behavioral and representation-free account of systematicity. I then (...) consider a case of insect sensorimotor systematic behavior: communicating behavior in honey bees. I conclude that anti-representational dynamicism fails to capture the fundamental trait of systematic behaviors qua systematic, i.e., their involving exercises of the same behavioral capacities. I suggest, finally, a collaborative strategy in pursuit of a rich and powerful account of this central phenomenon of high cognition at all levels of explanation, including the representational level. (shrink)

Actions are uncontroversially public. However, the prevailing model of explanation in the debate about the de se seems to conflict with this fact by proposing agent-specific explanations that yield agent-specific types of action—i.e. types of action that no two agents can instantiate. Remarkably, this point affects both proponents and critics of the de se. In this paper, I present this kind of problem, characterise the proper level of analysis for action explanation compatible with the publicity of action—i.e. the agent-bound level—and (...) suggest that acknowledgement of this level highlights two important amendments of contemporary views. First, sceptics must accept that, when explanation is attitude-involving, the attitudes mentioned in the explanation of action must refer to the agent. Secondly, and perhaps more surprisingly, proponents of the de se should seek for accounts of de se attitudes that are not confined to a specific agent and are, therefore, sharable across agents. (shrink)

Theorists of first person thought seem to be faced with a pervasive dilemma: either accept the view that varying reference and sense are bound up together in first person thought, but then reject person-to-person shareability; or else, maintain the shareability of first person thought or belief at the price of giving up the connection between sense and subject-to-subject changing reference. Here, the author will argue that this is, in fact, a spurious dilemma based largely upon a failure to appreciate, if (...) not the existence, at least the crucial importance of the distinction between types, instantiable types and instantiated types of thought or belief. Only the level of the instantiable type is relevant for a proper assessment of the question of whether two different subjects have the same first person thought. (shrink)

This book offers new essays exploring concepts and applications of nonideal theory in bioethics. Nonideal theory refers to an analytic approach to moral and political philosophy (especially in relation to justice), according to which we should not assume that there will be perfect compliance with principles, that there will be favorable circumstances for just institutions and right action, or that reasoners are capable of being impartial. Nonideal theory takes the world as it actually is, in all of its imperfections. Bioethicists (...) have called for greater attention to how nonideal theory can serve as a guide in the messy realities they face daily. Although many bioethicists implicitly assume nonideal theory in their work, there is the need for more explicit engagement with this theoretical outlook. A nonideal approach to bioethics would start by examining the sociopolitical realities of healthcare and the embeddedness of moral actors in those realities. How are bioethicists to navigate systemic injustices when completing research, giving guidance for patient care, and contributing to medical and public health policies? When there are no good options and when moral agents are enmeshed in their sociopolitical viewpoints, how should moral theorizing proceed? What do bioethical issues and principles look like from the perspective of historically marginalized persons? These are just a few of the questions that motivate nonideal theory within bioethics. This book begins in Part I with an overview of the foundational tenets of nonideal theory, what nonideal theory can offer bioethics, and why it may be preferable to ideal theory in addressing moral dilemmas in the clinic and beyond. In Part II, authors discuss applications of nonideal theory in many areas of bioethics, including reflections on environmental harms, racism and minority health, healthcare injustices during incarceration and detention, and other vulnerabilities experienced by patients from clinical and public health perspectives. The chapters within each section demonstrate the breadth in scope that nonideal theory encompasses, bringing together diverse theorists and approaches into one collection. (shrink)

Recent philosophical developments on personal indexicals reveal a disagreement between those who defend and those who deny the existence of a distinctive class of second person thoughts. In this piece, I tackle this controversy by highlighting two crucial constraints based on paradigmatic felicitous singular uses of the second person pronoun. On the one hand, the Addressing Constraint is brought out by the awareness and action capabilities displayed in successfully addressing another. On the other hand, the Merging Constraint arises, among other (...) things, from the fact that ‘I’/‘you’-exchanges ground intersubjective disagreement. Once these constraints are fully in view, I go on to show that they pose a challenging dilemma for any account of the second person and that the chasm between friends and foes of the distinctness of second person thought is better seen as endorsements of one of the horns of the dilemma. In reaction to this, I outline a way of accommodating both constraints in terms of ‘perspectives’, i.e. ways of thinking of a reference that do not individuate a thought. On the recommended approach, the second person perspective is cognitively distinctive but does not itself signal the existence of a distinctive second person type of thought. By contrast, a single type of thought about selves expressible with personal indexicals—the self-thought type—can be shown to comprise the third, the second and, perhaps surprisingly, the first person perspective. Unlike other perspectival approaches, the here proposed analysis relies on an elucidation of perspectives in terms of specific information on which a thinker draws made available by a concept-individuating reference rule. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss two different metaethical challenges based on population ethical impossibility results. According to the anti-realist challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the existence of objective moral facts. According to the skeptical challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the reliability of our moral intuitions. My aim is to systematically explore and evaluate these challenges. In addition to clarifying the issues, I argue that population ethical impossibility results do not in fact support any anti-realist (...) or skeptical conclusions. (shrink)

This paper explores the metaethical ramifications of a coarse-grained criterion of property identity, sometimes referred to as Hume's dictum. According to Hume's dictum, properties are identical if and only if they are necessarily co-extensive. Assuming the supervenience of the normative on the natural, this criterion threatens the non-naturalist view that there are instantiable normative properties which are distinct from natural properties. In response, non-naturalists typically point to various counterintuitive implications of Hume's dictum. The paper clarifies this strategy and defends it (...) against objections by Bart Streumer and Ralf Bader. In addition, it is argued that proponents of naturalist and supernaturalist views, along with proponents of a certain kind of nihilism, should also reject Hume's dictum. This shows that non-naturalists can also attack the criterion indirectly, by pointing to partners in guilt. Also, it shows that not just any opponent of non-naturalism can appeal to Hume's dictum. Only certain nihilists can. (shrink)

Ever since John Perry's developments in the late 70s, it is customary among philosophers to take de se contents as essentially tied to the explanation of action. The target explanation appeals to a subject-specific notion of de se content capable of capturing behavioural differences in central cases. But a subject-specific de se content leads us, I argue, to a subject-specific notion of intentional action that prevents basic forms of generalisation. Although this might be seen as a welcome revision of our (...) pre-theoretical conceptions, I propose, instead, a strategy to circumvent this rather unexpected result: to reject subject-specific de se contents in favour of subject-specific ways of thinking that do not enter into the content of one's attitudes. (shrink)

This book investigates the argument from queerness against moral realism, famously put forward by J. L. Mackie in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). The book can be divided into two parts. The first part, roughly comprising chapters 1 and 2, gives a critical overview of Mackie’s metaethics. In chapter 1 it is suggested that the argument from queerness is the only argument that poses a serious threat to moral realism. A partial defense of this idea is offered in chapter (...) 2 via a discussion of Mackie’s argument from relativity, which is concluded to fail for reasons that generalize to other influential arguments against moral realism. Chapter 2 also explores Mackie’s moral semantics at length. The key notion of authoritative prescriptivity is analyzed, and a new interpretation of Mackie’s error theory is defended. In the second part, consisting roughly of chapters 3 and 4, the argument from queerness is taken apart and put back together, resulting in several different versions. Chapter 3 discusses three different supervenience-related arguments, all of which are found to be unpersuasive. Chapter 4 develops two different versions of the core argument from queerness, focusing on authoritative prescriptivity. A total of thirteen objections are discussed and rejected. It is concluded that the two arguments do indeed refute the targeted versions of moral realism. Finally, in chapter 5 the entire discussion is briefly summarized. (shrink)

There is an unresolved conflict concerning the normative nature of desire. Some authors take rational desire to differ from rational belief in being a normatively unconstrained attitude. Others insist that rational desire seems plausibly subject to several consistency norms. This article argues that the correct analysis of this conflict of conative normativity leads us to acknowledge intrinsic and extrinsic reasons to desire. If sound, this point helps us to unveil a fundamental aspect of desire, namely, that we cannot desire at (...) will. Unlike belief, however, desire can unproblematically accommodate a notion of instrumental attitude. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie argued that moral thought and discourse involve commitment to an especially robust kind of normativity, which is too weird to exist. Thus, he concluded that moral thought and discourse involve systematic error. Much has been said about this argument in the last four decades or so. Nevertheless, at least one version of Mackie’s argument, specifically the one focusing on the intrinsic weirdness of the relevant kind of normativity, has not been fully unpacked. Thus, more needs to be (...) said about the issue of how to interpret Mackie’s argument. Moreover, I argue that by looking closely at Mackie’s discussion, we can extract two distinct versions of the argument which together present a tougher, and also more precise, challenge for moral realism than extant versions. In this paper I thus revisit Mackie’s discussion with an eye to making progress on an important issue in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

According to a widespread, broadly Humean consensus, desires and other conative attitudes seem as such to be free from any normative constraints of rationality. However, rational subjects are also required to be attitude-coherent in ways that prima facie hold sway for desire. I here examine the plausibility of this idea by proposing several principlesfor coherent desire. These principles parallel principles for coherent belief and can be used to make a case for a kind of purely conative normativity. I consider several (...) objections to a principle for consistent desiring and reply to them. I conclude that, if attitude-coherence is a mark of rationality, the broadly Humean consensus must be rejected. (shrink)

We argue that we have obligations to future people that are similar in kind to obligations we have to current people. Modifying Michael Bratman’s account, we argue that as planning agents we must plan for the future to act practically in the present. Because our autonomy and selfhood are relational by nature, those plans will involve building affiliative bonds and caring for others. We conclude by grounding responsibility to future others by the way we plan through our social institutions. Our (...) account fills out the story of responsibility to future generations by referring only to ourselves, our practical identities, and practical reason. (shrink)

The beginning of the 21st century witnesses a trend for business and leisure travelers to make accommodation decisions by referring to online reviews of hotel accommodation services and the hotel management’s responses to such reviews. The responses, termed review response genre in this study, have since attracted considerable research attention. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it aims to identify the moves present in the review response genre; second, it aims to explore how the hotel management attempts to (...) achieve service recovery with the moves of the genre. A total of three obligatory moves are identified: Acknowledging Problem, Expressing Feeling and Thanking Reviewer. The findings will have significant implications for the hospitality and wider service industry practitioners responsible for handling negative online reviews. (shrink)

Problem 2 at the 56th International Mathematical Olympiad asks for all triples of positive integers for which ab−c, bc−a, and ca−b are all powers of 2. We show that this problem requires only a primitive form of arithmetic, going back to the Pythagoreans, which is the arithmetic of the even and the odd.

Can subjects genuinely possess concepts they do not understand fully? A simple argument can show that, on the assumption that possession conditions are taken to fully individuate concepts, this question must be answered in the negative. In this paper, I examine this negative answer as possibly articulated within Christopher Peacocke’s seminal theory. I then discuss four central lines of attack to the view that possession of concepts requires full understanding. I conclude that theorists should acknowledge the existence of indefinitely many (...) cases of genuine concept possession for partially understood concepts and therefore face the determination challenge, namely, the challenge of fully determining concept individuation from concept possession conditions of partially understood concepts. (shrink)

From Fodor and Pylyshyn’s celebrated 1988 systematicity argument in favour of a language of thought (LOT ), a challenge to connectionist models arises in the form of a dilemma: either these models do not explain systematicity or they are implementations of LOT. From consideration of this challenge and of systematicity in domains other than language, defenders of connectionism have mounted a parallel systematicity argument against LOT which results in a new self-defeating dilemma, what I call here the systematicity challenge challenge (...) (SCC): either LOT does not explain nonlinguistic systematicity, or it is in no better position than its rivals to explain any systematicity, even linguistic systematicity. In this paper, first, I critically examine the SCC and some considerations that seem to support it. Second, I offer a response to the SCC by: (1) showing that LOT was never meant to be a cognitive model restricted only to linguistic systematicity, and (2) formulating a new argument in favour of LOT from nonlinguistic systematicity. Third, I argue that there is a central assumption underlying the SCC and maintain that it is mistaken. I conclude that the classical systematicity challenge continues to be fully valid for linguistic and nonlinguistic domains. (shrink)

Moral reasoning and arguments are truly a driving force for social change in politics. Without it, progress is impossible. The key is patience, persistence, and mutual respect. Under the right conditions, moral arguments can move mountains — slowly but surely.

The central challenges for moral fictionalism are twofold: first, to explain how its recommendation that we abandon moral belief and assertion can be reconciled with its rationale of preserving the motivational efficacy of moral thought and discourse; second, to explain what the point is of replacing moral belief and assertion to begin with. This chapter clarifies these challenges and argues that Richard Joyce’s recent “metaphorist” version of fictionalism fares no better with respect to them than his earlier “narrationist” version. Just (...) like its narrationist predecessor, metaphorist fictionalism fails to secure the motivational efficacy of moral thought and talk. The authors also find faults with yet more recent attempts at answering the above challenges for moral fictionalism, leaving the conservationist recommendation a more attractive alternative. This conclusion could be overturned if the conservationist proposal were sufficiently problematic in other respects, but the authors argue that it isn’t. (shrink)

Precise measurements of well-being would be of profound societal importance. Yet, the sceptical worry that we cannot use social science instruments and tests to measure well-being is widely discussed by philosophers and scientists. A recent and interesting philosophical argument has pointed to the psychometric procedures of construct validation to address this sceptical worry. The argument has proposed that these procedures could warrant confidence in our ability to measure well-being. The present paper evaluates whether this type of argument succeeds. The answer (...) is that it depends on which methodological background assumptions are motivating the sceptical worry to begin with. We show this by doing two things. First, we clarify (a) the different types of well-being theories involved in the science of well-being, and (b) the general methodological dimensions of well-being theorising. Second, we apply these distinctions and argue that construct validation is an unsuccessful response to measurement scepticism if this scepticism is motivated by a form of methodological non-naturalism. In the light of this, the overall point of the paper is that philosophers and scientists, when discussing measurement of well-being, should explicate their deeper methodological commitments. We further suggest that making such explicit commitments might present philosophers with a dilemma. (shrink)

We show that the first-order theory of a large class of plane geometries and the first-order theory of their groups of motions, understood both as groups with a unary predicate singling out line-reflections, and as groups acting on sets, are mutually inter-pretable.

Vigorous Fodorian criticism may make it seem impossible for Inferential Role Semantics to accommodate compositionality. In this paper, first, I introduce a neo-Fregean version of IRS that appeals centrally to the notion of rationality. Second, I show how such a theory can respect compositionality by means of semantic rules. Third, I argue that, even if we consider top-down compositional derivability: a) the Fodorian is not justified in claiming that it involves so-called reverse compositionality; and b) a defender of IRS can (...) still offer a satisfactory account in terms of the inferential capacities of rational thinkers. (shrink)

Presented in the form of an acrostic, the text offers six entries. It begins with the Japanese term nagori, the etymology of which is in nami-nokori, ‘remains of the waves’, to refer to the ephemeral imprints left by the waves as they withdraw from the beach. The modern word nagori carries a more general sense of resignation, of a destiny that cannot be changed, of things that pass. The opening entry, for example, refers to our present time as the nagori (...) of photography – as being ‘everywhere’ even before being shattered and scattered by the internet, by social media and cameras in mobile phones. Underlying the six entries is specific reference to the work of Roland Barthes, notably as a form of writing with Barthes, not about him. As such, and as the final contribution to a special issue of Theory, Culture & Society, ‘Neutral Life/Late Barthes’, this opens up for the ‘reader’ a specific practice and politics of writing. (shrink)

Block makes a case for the existence of conscious experience without access. His case would have been much stronger, however, if he had woven fully unconscious processing into the and considered arguments that are intrinsic to neuroscience.

Hyperbolic geometry can be axiomatized using the notions of order andcongruence (as in Euclidean geometry) or using the notion of incidencealone (as in projective geometry). Although the incidence-based axiomatizationmay be considered simpler because it uses the single binary point-linerelation of incidence as a primitive notion, we show that it issyntactically more complex. The incidence-based formulation requires some axioms of the quantifier-type forallexistsforall, while the axiom system based on congruence and order can beformulated using only forallexists-axioms.