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Experimental philosophy relies on traditional philosophy to define the problems by which traditional philosophy objectifies its theories. As opposed to this approach, experimental philosophers strive to distinguish their colleague’s intuitions from folk intuitions, with regard to notions such as free will, determinism, the afterlife, moral responsibility. According to experimental philosophers, a theory can be verified through an empirical database, using inventories, questionnaires and even case studies. Thus, a philosopher’s concept of moral responsibility should not be taken for granted; instead, in striving for certainty, a philosopher’s theory should be compared with that of non-philosophers. This method does not devalue the philosopher’s opinion but rather supports philosophical concepts and theory with empirical data.Experimental philosophers tend to explore intuitions in order to find which beliefs are intuitively produced and which are not. Also, how large and significant is the difference between the intuitions of philosophers and those of ordinary people. A good way to find the answer is to survey both groups and see how their answers differ. In the article, the author explores what kind of intuitions philosophers and ordinary people have and share, and to what extent philosophical theories can be confirmed or rejected on the basis of a comparative analysis between the responses of these two groups.
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In imitation of a remark by Wittgenstein, in which he speaks of “Zufriedenheit”/ “contentment”, and with the help of other relevant remarks, the present brief paper tries to show the great importance the concept of “contentment” had for Wittgenstein. It is an important link between Life and Philosophy in Wittgenstein’s work, and demonstrates what he held to be the desirable way of living and philosophizing.
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Wittgenstein holds an interesting place in the debate about philosophical Realism. Was Wittgenstein a Realist in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus? The short answer to this question is “no”. In order for sentences or the complex propositions expressed by sentences to take place, the atomic propositions that are configurations of logically separate names in logical space must be analyzed. These in turn correspond to objects, whose agglomerations are called states of affairs (atomic facts), which correspond to the atomic propositions. Semantic ontology is a form of representationalism. Complex propositions are truth-functions of simple propositions, whose truth or falsity is determined by the ways in which they logically depict states of affairs. Тhe core of this semantic ontology is a “picture theory of meaning” which must be shared by the propositions and facts they represent. The important thing is that, in the atomic facts, there must be objects that have the same form as the names in the atomic propositions. What objects are is not determinable and not sayable. Three questions arise in regard to logical constants. First, are there such things? Second, how are they defined? Third, do they occur in the propositions of logic?
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The title phrase “The Owls Are Not What They Seem”, taken from the TV series Twin Peaks, is a motivating metaphor for reflections concerning the fact that contemporary non-classical science often provides us with what I call an epistemological surprise. The main lesson contained in this surprise is that things which we know from our centuries-long experience are in fact not what they appear to be. For the purpose, I discuss the misleading role of naïve philosophical realism lying in the background of the growth of contemporary scientific knowledge.
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This article addresses the postmodern attack on science. On the basis of relativism, postmodernism posits that science should not have a more privileged status than pseudoscientific or plainly anti-scientific disciplines. Some 20th-century philosophers have unfortunately provided intellectual ammunition for this attack. Levi-Strauss’s approach to rationality, Peter Winch’s criticisms of Evans-Pritchard, Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games”, Kuhn’s approach to the incommensurability of paradigms, and Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism, are duly addressed and criticized in the article. Likewise, Popper’s philosophy of science has been erroneously used by postmodernists to attack science. This article clarifies some of these misconceptions
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Aristotle‘s categories are presented as a system relying on logic and syntax instead of on meanings. His square of oppositions is found to be of crucial importance.
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In a series of six articles, the author traces the responses of philosophers to the epoch-making achievement of Bishop Berkeley, set out in his An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. The comments on Berkeley’s theory serve as an occasion for the modern reader to focus on some overwhelming conclusions regarding the life of philosophy and philosophical education in Bulgaria. The third article deals with Wolfgang Köhler.
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The article attempts to translate adequately into Bulgarian my more or less essayistic interpretation (originally written in German (1988)) of Deleuze's book Le pli. Leibniz et le Baroque. The problem of the relevant translation and the multilingualism of my approach to the book can in itself already be regarded as a kind of philosophical reflection insofar as the invention of new terms, according to Deleuze, already represents a philosophical practice. My text concentrates on the French term pli (fold), which Deleuze first discovers in his reading of Leibniz's Monadology and then uses to define Baroque mentality in general. This term also becomes synonymous with monad or subject in the same sense as Deleuze understands it – namely, as a difference.Parallel to my analysis of Deleuze's book, references are also made to other texts and authors who have explicitly dealt with the Baroque period, which helps me to define his philosophy and aesthetics precisely as proto-postmodern.
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This text researches Riegl’s and Dvořák’s concepts of artistic will and spirit of art as theoretical foundations for structural transformation in the history of art. The focus is on the common points as well as the differences; the article develops the thesis that, while Riegl still adheres to strict normativity in the theory of art, Dvořák manages to adapt his theory to the on-going processes in modern art, and particularly to expressionism.
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This text is part of George Santayana’s central aesthetic opus, The Sense of Beauty, and presents three paragraphs from Part I. The Nature of Beauty. The main topics covered in the paragraphs are, in successive order: the argumentation of the philosophy of beauty as a theory of values, the difference between aesthetic values and moral ones, and a narrower definition of beauty.
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: The text poses the question of the ontological definition of the aesthetical subject independently of historiographical and cultural accretions. It therefore sees aesthetics as stemming from the knowledge of the form of the “pure” aesthetical subject. Morphology, understood in the context of the unity between inner and outer form, is presented in turn as a method mediating between the two and revealing the meaning of the creative act.
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The article discusses the historical evolution of the concept of authorship in theatre, It explores the subject of the death of the author, the disappearance of subjectivity and reality in postmodern art. Аnother topic is the conceptual crisis of aesthetics with regard to the definition and evaluation of contemporary art forms.
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The aim of this paper is to show the close connection between the question of the metaphysical notion of the Beginning (arche) in Ancient Greek philosophy and the aesthetical perception of the male form. The philosophical notion of “arche” and all abstract-theoretical thought, I conclude, is part of the organic mythological perception represented in the numerous kouroi statues that show the idealized male body.
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The article discusses the European context of the scientific work of the prominent Bulgarian Revival activist Dr. Petar Beron. The author attempt to give an assessment (and partially, a reassessment) of the scientific activity of P. Beron in connection with the achievements of European (and world) science of that time. The article describes the scientific orbit he followed and in particular, the influences exerted upon him by the science of his time. The basic conclusion is that the conceptions of Beron were rather speculative and not in step with the contemporaneous trend of intensification of experimental science. The author argues that Beron’s place in the science of that time should be studied in greater depth.
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The present study is focused on the zoological content of Vasil Stoyanov-Beron’s book Natural history: Part One. Zoology”. As one of the first works of its kind in Bulgaria, the book particularly merits analysis, which would permit evaluating the level of zoological knowledge in the country at the time of its publication and enable making comparisons with the respective level of knowledge in other countries at that time as well as in the present. The article provides such an analysis. A significant characteristic of the book in question is that it combines zoological information that is still valid in our time with a variety of popular and accessible topics that are absent in the scientific style of writing today.
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The text discusses philosophical and historical issues present in the works of the prominent Bulgarian educator Ivan Gyuzelev (1844–1916). His publications in the religious periodicals Church Newspaper and Associated Labor are commented on. The ideas of the philosopher regarding the connection between religion and social progress are analyzed. The article concludes that Gyuzelev represents a paradoxical combination between the basic views of the French Enlightenment and Christianity. His conception defines religion as a natural striving for perfection. According to this Bulgarian mathematician and philosopher, the relationship between Christianity and material and spiritual progress is directly proportional. His thesis is that Christianity is a religion of progress, and progress – just like Christian asceticism – is one of the pathways to the Kingdom of God.
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The author aims to formulate some observations regarding the connection between evil, time, and the human being. The discourse focusses especially on the ways in which the evil appears and manifests itself in human life-world. There are a lot of prejudices regarding the evil, many of them being philosophically constituted. But all prejudices, both the philosophical ones and the common ones, come from a certain tradition and talk about an “existential” support for each bad deed. The evil does not intervene in the world by a divine or natural decision or cause; it appears only in the core of human life. But this idea is a pre-judgment found both in public consciousness and in philosophy (in theology, certain sciences, or even in ideology). This pre-judgment crosses all these contexts due to its obvious existential support, in other words, because it is lived by a person in flesh and blood (leibhaftig). The author will attempt to point out its meontological meanings, by a temporal analysis, in fact, by two kinds of temporal reduction.
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