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Review of: Judith Butler (ed.) et.al., What’s Left Of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory, New York and London: Routledge, 2000
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Review of: Judith Butler (ed.) et.al., What’s Left Of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory, New York and London: Routledge, 2000
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Folosind ca pretext un citat despre teorie atribuit lui José Ortega y Gasset (1883– 1955), citat pe care Eugeniu Coșeriu (1921–2002) l-a reprodus deformat într-o prelegere ținută în limba română (în 1992), îmi propun—dincolo de identificarea lucrării filosofului spaniol din care a fost extras citatul în cauză—să fac o prezentare a concepțiilor celor doi savanți cu privire la raportul dintre teorie și realitate sau, altfel spus, dintre teorie și faptele investigate. La prima vedere, cele două concepții par similare, cu atît mai mult cu cît cei doi gînditori dau frecvent impresia că aparțin aceleiași mari familii de gîndire. Voi încerca să arăt aici în ce puncte sînt convergente, respectiv divergente cele două viziuni, evidențiind, totodată, unele consecințe care derivă din ele, de interes și pentru filosofia limbajului.
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Taking as a starting point a quote about theory attributed to José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), a quote which Eugeniu Coșeriu (1921–2002) reproduced distorted in one of his lectures delivered in Romanian (in 1992), I aim—apart from identifying the Spanish philosopher’s work from which the respective quote was extracted—at making a presentation of the two scholars’ conceptions regarding the relation between theory and reality or, better said, between theory and the facts investigated. At first sight, the two conceptions look similar, especially since the two thinkers frequently create the impression of belonging to the same grand family of thinking. I will try to show in this article both the convergent and the divergent aspects of their conception, also pinpointing some consequences which derive from them, of interest for the philosophy of language, as well.
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Review of: Quentin Meillassoux, Après la finitude, Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 2006.
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The article draws parallels between the Bulgarian fairytale “The Three Brothers and the Golden Apple” and the second chapter of Vishnu Purana. The general philosophical aspects of these texts, which serve as a basis for the proposed hypothesis, are discussed. These are narratives of wisdom as a basis for the creation, development, existence of life, and human civilization. The gold thread in Vishnu Purana and the golden apple in the Bulgarian magic fairytale are symbols of knowledge and wisdom, with the power of which the visible world and the human society were created. If in Vishnu Purana this symbol is wrapped in a philosophical narrative about the creation of life, in “The Three Brothers and the Golden Apple” philosophy is hidden behind the seemingly concrete images and characters of the fairytale. In “The Three Brothers and the Golden Apple”, the tree with golden fruits symbolizes the tree of knowledge - an image that is present in all the sacred texts of the religions around the world. The tale is a story of the trials that one goes through in order to overcome one’s weaknesses, to know oneself, to understand the spiritual possibilities and qualities that make a person close and equal to God. The third brother continues his journey in the world, having a faithful companion - his intuition, symbolized by the most beautiful and intelligent princess. The third brother, or the symbol of the man who has overcome his weaknesses, can always benefit from the eternal Divine wisdom, symbolized by the golden apple.
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The subject of the text is the logical analysis of the concepts of necessary condition and sufficient condition. Three explanations of what they mean are considered. The first, the material implication account, has the absurd consequence that if two sentences are true, the states of affairs they express are necessary and sufficient conditions for one another. In addition, it contradicts the way the concepts are used in mathematics, where a necessary or sufficient condition is given through a predicate rather than a sentence. The second explanation, the strict implication account, does not have the first of the above two deficiencies but has the key disadvantage that it is not applicable to the extensional language of mathematics, where the two expressions are most commonly used. The article defends an explanation through a formal implication. Unlike the other two, the formal implication account corresponds to mathematical usage. Moreover, when the necessary or sufficient condition is given through a sentence instead of a predicate, the account treats it as an intentional (modal) expression, which avoids the absurd consequence of the first account.
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In this paper we present Paul Grice’s most influential insights on language. According to him, the analysis of linguistic meaning should be based on the speaker’s intention to produce an effect in their audience. And the process of understanding is analysed by Grice as consisting (generally) of the following components: i) X intends to produce an effect in Y by having Y recognise this intention; ii) Y recognises the intention of X and thus the intended effect is produced. These intentions lie at the core of all types of meaning distinguished by Grice: from the timeless meaning of an expression in a language to the specific utterer’s meaning on a given occasion. Since the conventional meaning of a sentence can differ from the utterer’s meaning on a given occasion, the notion of implicature is introduced as a way of explaining the connection between the two. The specific utterer’s meaning on a given occasion is, for Grice, the most fundamental form of meaning, having a logical priority over the timeless meaning. From this point of view, pragmatics is the framework in which natural language semantics should be examined in order to be better understood.
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The present text proposes a new way to tackle the metaphysics of modality, which is based on the concept of “actualized possibility”. It is organized as follows: (§1) scrutinizes the traditional reductive approaches to the concept of possibility; (§2) proposes reasons to accept the thesis that the possibility-talk is correlative to the discourse about causes and reasons; (§3) examines the conceptual apparatus of promise theory; (§4) utilizes this apparatus in order to explicate twelve different “agent modalities”; (§5) discusses the connection between these agent modalities and the classical “system” modalities. The thesis that the text aims to substantiate is that the agent modalities (which relate possibilities to capabilities) are basic and ontologically charged.
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The paper discusses the modal-tensed response to van Inwagen’s objection against Lewis’s indexical theory of actuality. Yagisawa’s proposal is shown to fail in its intentions mainly on account of the inherent problems of modal dimensionalism in general that make the response either argumentatively irrelevant or question-begging.
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The paper reconstructs the early attempts of Donald Davidson to design a formal theory of truth – and, hence, a formal semantics for the ordinary languages. Following his failures to realize this task step by step the paper deconstructs the very task. If truth is to be understood as a formal “relation between sentences, speakers, and dates” as Davidson initially suggests then the demonstratives (all the language devices pointing out contextual circumstances and times) should be treated as “logical constants”. But such a formal treatment – in the course of the attempts to be found - appears to be mission impossible. Moreover, nearly in the same time Davidson finds that the “saying that” and the “quotation” have explicitly demonstrative character. But “saying that” and “quotation” are integral parts of truth-saying: the quotation and dis-quotation are even at the core of the Tarski’s formalized T-equivalence. Taking into account this discovery as well as Davidson’s misfortunate attempts to formalize the demonstratives we can infer: not a formal one but some explicitly demonstrative theory of truth should be developed from here. This is the direction sketched out not by Davidson but by the author in the end of the paper.
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By this text I seek an experimental goal – a comparative reading of Françoise Dolto's book „The Unconscious Body Image“ and Darin Tenev's article „Modalities, Modalisations, Modal Transitions“ and, on this basis, seeking an adequate commensurability between different disciplinary fields of both texts. Such a comparative reading presupposes the hypothesis that socio- and psychoanalytic concepts, theses and arguments have a chance to encounter in the „no-man's land“ of the body as openness, as intensity and inclining of forces, as immanent modalisation without substance, where modalisation of modalities acquires the affective power of transmodalities and their role in modal and transmodal transitions. Re-indexicalisation relies on the immanent dynamism of the transcendental as a place-giving opening of space.
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In the last 15-20 years “populism” has become a highly popular characteristic in the public discourse. In most cases it carries negative value connotations and, as of today, is used for practically all kinds of behaviors in politics. Even accusations of being a populist become subject of a contrary critique being qualified as populist. The paper propounds a critical analysis of populism by focusing on three of its widespread usages: as a characteristic of politicians and their organizations, as an ideological platform, and as a political marketing technique. These approaches to populism and the associated usages of the word do not provide sufficient information about the ways and conditions a populist wave could rise nor about how it could organize itself into a political movement. In all three views populism is taken as an autonomous political position whose public base remains indeterminate yet presumed self-evident. At the same time populism is not only compatible with democracy, it also has its roots in mass democracy. The secret of populism therefore does not lie in the fact that some politician, party, movement, or way of public speech is populist. As an attribute populism is secondary. The essence of populism consists in the condition, the situation in which it acquires mass currency and high legitimacy.
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This article was first published in Public Seminar on 11 September 2019 It is part of the Eurozine Focal Point 'Information: A public good'. © Sydney Tarrow / Public Seminar / Eurozine
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This article aims to investigate transhumanism, which has become very popular nowadays, and intends both physiological and psychological transformation of human beings by using the possibilities of science and its basic predictions. At the same time, it aims to contribute to the awareness which is tried to be raised about subject. In the first stage of the study, the main elements of the term humanism, which constitute the intellectual origin of transhumanism, and the important turning points in the transition from humanism to transhumanism were pointed out and the possibility of transhumanism was discussed. Then, based on the ideals of development and emancipation, the main objectives of transhumanism are addressed and its possible benefits are mentioned. In the second stage, the main problems likely to arise in case of realization of transhumanist ideals are emphasized. In this context, the problems that transhumanism will cause due to the change of the ontological status of man are critically examined. Additionally, the sociological problems that transhumanism can cause and its effects in the context of traditional religious and moral orders have also been focused on. In this stage of the study, a general evaluation was made based on the criticisms of both conservative and religious circles towards transhumanists.
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