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The article dwells on the image of Russia as a bear in contemporary German media. The studies changes in portraying Russia and its representatives in 2000 – 2013 in comparison with 1990s.
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The author of the article poses the following question: Why would we find Dewey's classic pragmatism interesting and is it true that everything that is really important can be found in the works of his followers: Rorty and Shuterman. The author emphasizes that in her narrative she is mostly interested in more primal Dewey whose philosophical thoughts, naturalistic empiricism, as he himself called his philosophy, as well as the aesthetic concepts are not subject to frequent debates in our country. She indicates that there are certain abuses in the interpretation of Dewey’s philosophy. One of them is, for example, treating Dewey as a leftist philosopher who has not had much to offer when it comes to the approach to tradition and history. The author emphasizes that although Dewey's point of view was very far from being right-wing or far from accepting nationalism, he is not a left-wing thinker. Dewey is a philosopher who remains extremely attached to tradition and he believes that knowledge about history is crucial to understand philosophy and culture. The author specifically refers to emphasize that Dewey reminds us of what full of life and contemporary art really is. It stems from the rhythm and needs of social life and it expresses beliefs of a given community or society.
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Kindness - perhaps the most important human quality - has not given rise to philosophical research like the other virtues; there is not an ethic of kindness as there is an ethic of duty; it is not a grand concept because it is grandeur itself. What is goodness, in fact? An ethic or a cognitive virtue? Does it play any role in science or in metaphysics? Kindness today is increasingly taken for naivety, weakness, idealism, lack of pragmatism. If we refer to the great behaviors in the history of humanity such as Socrates or Jesus who, knowing the maximum suffering caused by human injustice, gave the spiritual dimension of kindness identified with justice or love, it is difficult to appreciate whether human nature is in moral progress or in a deep crisis. Addressing such an issue stems from the need to raise the awareness for the synergistic role of human kindness in our lives, in creation, from the simplest activities to science and philosophy. Kindness implies rationality, intelligence, self-control, altruism, dedication, spirit of sacrifice, heroism, forgiveness, boundless love. It is a condition of happiness, the very human being’s reason to exist.
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Rethinking education in a globalized world requires the analysis and thorough research of the great philosophers-educators’ works as current education claims a new philosophy which needs to be based on authentic landmarks that can be objectified under the new circumstances. From this perspective, we consider it useful and necessary to examine the contribution of the American philosopher and educator J. Dewey with a view to analyzing some of the most valuable ideas in the philosophy of education, which we think of great importance for adapting the Romanian education system to the specific of a dynamic and pragmatic youth, by rethinking the national curriculum after the American pragmatist model.
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In this paper, I focus on the notion of expressive completeness in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit. For Brandom as a normative pragmatist, a theory of meaning is expressively complete if it specifies a human practice that is sufficient to confer on expressions conceptual contents so rich that the very conferring practice can be described by means of these expressions. I put the notion of expressive completeness in contrast with the related, but non-identical notion of self-referentiality of a semantic theory. Further, I examine the position of the concept in Brandom’s philosophical project: I assess the justification Brandom provides for his claim of expressive complete-ness of the presented theory, and I outline the consequences he can draw for his overall project provided that expressive completeness is achieved. Whether it is actually achieved, remains however an open question.
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Review of: Huw Price: Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xii + 204 pages
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I argue that indefinite descriptions are referring terms. This is not the ambiguity thesis: that sometimes they are referring terms and sometimes something else, such as quantifiers (as argued by Chastain and recently Devitt). No. On my view they are always referring terms; and never quantifiers. I defend this thesis by modifying the standard conception of what a referring term is: a modification that needs to be made anyway, irrespective of the treatment of indefinites. I derive this approach from my speech-act theoretic semantics (2004). The basic thought is that referring terms have as their meanings speech-acts of a certain kind called proto-referring acts. These are acts in which speakers advertise or present intentions to denote, where denotation is a word-world relation, and advertising an intention is acting as if one has intentions, where it is open whether one has them or not, or whether the referring term used denotes or not. I show how this works for proper names. The meaning of a proper name is the speech-act proto-referring act type defined by a certain referential tree. This gives us the basis for an account of proper name meaning irrespective of denotation: a uniform treatment of full and empty names. Applied to indefinites, we can capture cases where speakers perform proto-acts—in which they advertise an intention to denote something—where they intend to denote, but others where they do not, but they still perform the proto-act: advertising an intention to denote. Two cases are ‘Fred saw a hippo’ and ‘Jane did not see a hippo’. In both cases U performs the same proto-act, represent it as R(a hippo)pro, but possesses the advertised intention in the first case, but not in the second. In the first case, R(a hippo)pro gains referential content—its descriptive content is expanded to include seen by Fred, whereas in its second token use it has no content augmentation or sentential determination of reference. In the second case ‘a hippo’ is an empty referring term, just as ‘Pegasus’ is empty in ‘Fred did not see Pegasus; he does not exist’. But in both sentences ‘a hippo’ functions in the same basic way: in both cases the basic proto-referring act R(a hippo)pro is performed. Using this approach, I show how definite descriptions can be construed as indefinites with added meaning.
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This paper attempts to analyze in detail the difference between a pragmatic and non-pragmatic approach to explanation. Proponents of a pragmatic explanation analyze it by means of the concepts of context or audience. However, there could be various disguises of this type of approach. It is possible to include pragmatic concepts into the characterization of the item to be explained or the item that explains. On the other hand, pragmatic approach may focus on the specific relation between the item to be explained or the item that explains and context or audience. Finally, the paper underlines that there is a distinction between a pragmatic approach to explanation and the pragmatics of explanation, which should not be ignored.
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Formulácia hlavných pôvodných variantov pragmatického chápania pravdy sa viaže na tri dominatné postavy americkej filozofie konca 19. a začiatku 20. storočia - Ch. S. Peircea, W. Jamesa, J. Deweya.
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V dňoch 20. - 23. júna 2000 sa v priestoroch Villa Lanna v Prahe konala medzinárodná konferencia (USA, Veľká Británia, Irsko, Nemecko, Hongkong, Česká republika) s názvom Pragmatizmus a sémantika, ktorú organizoval známy český logik a filozof Jaroslav Peregrin a oddelenie logiky pražského Filozofického ústavu A V ČR.
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The paper discusses some of Peter Strawsonś views in philosophy of language. It does not focus on the core of his original achievements in this field, but rather characterizes his position towards the conceptions of three other major philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. The first part deals with Strawson\' criticism of Austinś account of conventional nature of illocutionary force. The author still maintains that force can be regarded as conventional in a week sense derived from the institutional nature of speech acts as well as in a stronger sense concerning the determination of the force of particular utterances. Strawson has, however, rightly rejected simplifications based on an unjustified generalization of specific features of certain "ritualized" speech act types. The second part considers Strawsonś criticism of the original Gricean definition of uttererś meaning which, among other things, revealed the mechanism generating infinite regress in definitions of this type. The author argues that the complexity of the Grice-type definitions does not reflect the real complexity of communication but rather internal problems of the theory, arising from the misinterpretation of communicative transparency as overtness of the speakerś intentions. The third part characterizes Strawsonś views on the relation between two projects in the theory of meaning: one based on the notion of speakerś intentions and the other on the notion of truth-conditions. Strawsonś programmatic considerations anticipated in important respects futher discussions about Davidsonś project as well as the development of the project itself.
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Review of: Hilary PUTNAM - Richard RORTY: Co po metafyzice? Archa, Bratislava 1997, 94 s.
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Úvodom nadviažem na myšlienku R. Rortyho z predošlej časti o tom, že rozdiel medzi mentálnym a fyzikálnym by sme mali považovať skôr za pragmatický, než za ontologický.
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It is quite plausible to say that you may read or write implies that you may read and you may write (though possibly not both at once). This so-called free choice principle is well-known in deontic logic. Sadly, despite being so intuitive and seemingly innocent, this principle causes a lot of worries. The paper briefly but critically examines leading accounts of free choice permission present in the literature. Subsequently, the paper suggests to accept the free choice principle, but only as a default (or defeasible) rule, issuing to it a ticket-of-leave, granting it some freedom, until it commits an undesired inference.
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The characteristic asymmetry in ascribing intentionality, known as the Knobe effect, is widely thought to result from the moral evaluation of the side effect. Existing research has focused mostly on elucidating the ordinary meaning of the notion of intentionality, while less effort has been devoted to the moral conditions associated with the analyzed scenarios. The current analysis of the moral properties of the main and side effects, as well as of the moral evaluations of the relationship between them, sheds new light on the influence of moral considerations on the attribution of intentionality in the Knobe effect. The moral evaluation of the relationship between the main and side effects is significant in that under certain circumstances it cancels asymmetry in intentionality ascription.
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The idea that natural languages are shared by speakers within linguistic communities is often taken for granted. Several philosophers even take the notion of shared language as fundamental and that allows them to use it in further explanations. However, to justify the claim that speakers share a language, it should be possible to demarcate the shared language somehow. In this paper, I discuss: A) the explanatory role which the notion of shared language can play, and B) a strategy for demarcating shared languages from within the linguistic production of speakers. The aim of this paper is to show that the indeterminate nature of meaning in natural languages problematizes the intuitive idea of natural languages as shared.Keywords
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I explain how Karl Popper resolved the problem of induction but not the pragmatic problem of induction. I show that Popper's proposed solution to the pragmatic problem of induction is inconsistent with his solution to the problem of induction. I explain how Popper’s falsificationist epistemology can solve the pragmatic problem of induction in the same negative way that it solves the problem of induction.
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The main views on the nature of narrative in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy are analyzed. It is shown how, realizing the research narrative, he paid attention to the linguistic means of expression of our thoughts, reference to the actual reality, the logical component of argumentation. It is shown that in order to place worldview accents more clearly and strengthen the expressive effect of thought, Wittgenstein pragmatized the narrative, in particular, used metaphors, images of learning, took into account the historico-cultural context. It is important for him to show that the form of the narrative influences what meanings the interlocutor will comprehend. Through a system of micro- and macro-narratives, Wittgenstein intended to express his opinion as clearly as possible, although he made the reader an active participant in the narrative. The thinker did not deviate from the analytico-scientific standards of philosophizing, although he showed that the relevant analysis of the narrative is significantly complicated by the ambiguities of its interpretation, the uniqueness of human experience and the identity of each narrator’s value system. It is argued that a pragmatic approach to narrative analysis significantly expands the research methodology of the analytic thinker and, accordingly, makes it possible to deepen our understanding of reality and human existence, as well as more clearly define the specifics of their knowledge.
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This paper investigates conversational implicatures within the context of magic realism cinema, with a specific focus on Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile. In the genre of magic realism, where the boundaries between reality and the supernatural blur, understanding the deeper layers of dialogue is crucial for deciphering thematic elements and character motivations. The film, which blends supernatural events with human drama, serves as an ideal case study for exploring how conversational implicatures shape meaning and viewer interpretation. Using Grice’s Cooperative Principle as the theoretical framework, the study analyzes how characters’ dialogue conveys implicit meanings beyond the literal interpretation. The Cooperative Principle posits that conversational participants collaborate to communicate meaning, and from this, conversational implicatures emerge—hidden messages that are interpreted based on contextual clues and shared knowledge. The research method involves a corpus analysis of selected dialogue excerpts from The Green Mile, focusing on the pragmatic strategies employed by characters. The study’s results demonstrate that conversational implicatures significantly enhance the portrayal of supernatural phenomena, moral dilemmas, and thematic motifs in the film. For example, specific scenes reveal how subtle dialogue choices allow viewers to grasp deeper moral and emotional undertones. By dissecting key moments, the analysis highlights how these strategies engage the audience, enriching their understanding of the narrative. Beyond The Green Mile, the findings also offer broader insights into the relationship between language and meaning within the magic realism genre. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse in film studies by illustrating the importance of pragmatics in cinematic storytelling, particularly in genres where reality and the supernatural intersect.
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One way of integrating the metacognitive approach to avoiding cognitive and emotional biases suggested by Maynes (2015) and Schraw (1998) into critical thinking teaching and learning activities is illustrated in which the types of biases exemplified are considered specific to domains, such as political thinking and the assessment of global phenomena, rather than general.
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