EMPIRIZMO DOGMŲ KRITIKA: UŽMOJAI IR RIBOS

Author(s): Mindaugas Japertas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 72/2007

The article looks into the recent history of the repudiation of the so-called dogmas of traditional empiricism, starting with “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, a celebrated paper by Willard V. O. Quine. Quine initiated, but was not to bring to an end, the whole enterprise of debunking and rejecting the untenable dogmas. A few decades later, Donald Davidson found the dualism of the conceptual scheme and empirical content at work in Quine’s own philosophy and labelled it “the third, and perhaps the last,” dogma of empiricism. It was not the last, however. John McDowell, the author of Mind and World, criticized Davidson for succumbing to the dualism of reason and nature, a “dogma” which he claims to be the real source of the familiar dualisms of modern philosophy (surely including the empiricist tradition).

What Was Einstein’s „Biggest Mistake in Life

Author(s): Angel S. Stefanov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 4/2016

The aim of this paper is to provide arguments for three claims. The first one refers to Einstein’s philosophical commitment to constructive realism. The second claim concerns the variety of the assessments of his theoretical results and methodology. And the third states that, if Einstein ever made a mistake with respect to his theoretical expectations, it was not his introducing the cosmological constant – which he is said to have confessed as his mistake, but his ontological belief expressed in his famous saying „God does not play dice“.

ABOUT PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING

Author(s): Arto Mutanen / Language(s): English Issue: 89/2016

Knowledge is, by definition, reliable and, hence, it can be applied to a variety of different problems. Nevertheless, in practical problem solving, we do not rely on mere truthful knowledge, but also on information which frames the practical acceptability. We are not looking for truthful solution but an optimal solution. Optimal solution is found out by optimizing some given (practical) parameters. The optimization is both theory based and practice based process. That is, practical problem solving is a human deliberation that interconnects theoretical and practical knowledge. So, the philosophical foundation of practical problem solving interconnects theoretical and practical philosophy. Especially ethical deliberation plays – or should play – central role in practical problem solving. The complexity of the advanced scientific knowledge needed in solving present day practical problems separates the people who know, from the people who do (decide). The situation makes immediate that we need some deeper pedagogical conviction: we need ecological education.

Ръселовата философска логика: 25 години залози и печалби

Author(s): Denitsa Zhelyazkova,Kristiyan Enchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2-3/2017

FREGE’S „BEDEUTUNG“ KAIP „REIKŠMĖ“ IR KAIP „NURODYMAS“

Author(s): Albinas Plėšnys,Marius Povilas Šaulauskas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 91/2017

This article deals with the problems of understanding and translating the term Bedeutung as introduced by Gottlob Frege, which arose in the analytic tradition of philosophy of English-speaking world, and with their solutions in the context of Lithuanian philosophical terminology. Two different approaches in the translation of the term should be distinguished: literal, which pays the biggest importance to the lexical properties of the word within the context of the natural source language, and interpretive. Both approaches emerge at the crossroad of contemporary problems in philosophy of language, mind and science, and choice of one over another demonstrates rather methodological attitude than possible defects in one’s translation technique. Thus the development of Lithuanian analytic philosophy is hardly imaginable without the corresponding equivalents in Lithuanian language at hand. Literal translation of Bedeutung as reikšmė satisfies the needs for being used in both such contexts, where literal English translations, such as meaning or significance of word Bedeutung are used, and where the traditional diachronic standpoint of historiography of philosophy is held. Admitting that the vast majority of texts in contemporary analytic philosophy are written in English we suggest adding a new notion to the Lithuanian philosophical terminology, namely nurodymas, as a way to avoid conceptual difficulties and problematic usage of word referencija.

Истината – Димитър Михалчев contra Иван Саръилиев

Author(s): Georgi Belogashev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2012

The article is concerned to a considerable philosophical problem of truth which is basically a pragmatist conception. The professor of the Sofia University Dimitar Mihalchev offers a discussion of the possibility to apply the method and the criterion of pragmatism conception in the science.

Защо е негативно отношението към Тодор Павлов ?

Author(s): Dimitar Dimitrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2012

Relying on arhival materials the article attempts at providing an answer to the question why Todor Pavlov as philosopher is predominantly negatively assessed. The need to revisit and revise the imposed today interpretative schemata is pointed out.

Лингвистичният обрат и раждането на логическия анализ на езика: Готлоб Фреге (1891–1895)

Author(s): Kamen Lozev / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

The paper reveals the changes which took place in Frege’s way of thinking in the years 1891-1895 with regard to some fundamental notions defended in his Begriffsschrift, 1879. The “judgeable content” was rethought in terms of its Sinn (meaning) and Bedeutung (sense or denotation). This change of mind helped Frege explain the epistemological and informative aspects of identity statements and prepared the ground for precise formulation of some of his important conclusions presented in the first volume of his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893. The paper traces the application of the notions of Sinn and Bedeutung to proper names of objects, concept words and sentences. The author emphasizes Frege’s arguments as to why the Bedeutung of the sentence should be its truth-value.

Trauma Freud: Sigmund Freud as a Fictional Character in D. M. Thomas’s The White Hotel

Author(s): Miroslav Kotásek / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

The paper views the novel The White Hotel (1981) written by D. M. Thomas as a specific model of a general situation of a human in Modernism. It points at specific instances where the text of the novel itself refers to certain limitations of such a view of trauma which interprets it as an effect of a real (primal) event onto the life of an individual (i.e. as a structural trauma), while the attempt to overcome the personal horizon, so as to apply a general psychoanalytic structure of human existence (structural trauma) onto an individual trauma implies unacceptable consequences. For the purpose of “criticizing” psychoanalysis the text of the novel employs different strategies, especially an imitation of the genre and structure of a Freudian “case study” (Krankengeschichte), making Sigmund Freud one of the main characters in the novel at the same time. The second part of the paper focuses on the article concentrates on the relationship between the traumatizing event and its possible or necessary deformations caused by its later attempted linguistic account. Especially relevant in this context is the way in which Anatoly Kuznetsov used the eye witness testimonies of the Babi Yar massacre survivor, while the article stresses the strategy D. M. Thomas employed when using Kuznetsov’s “documentary novel” in The White Hotel.

Frege’s „reikšmė“

Author(s): Jonas Dagys / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 97/2020

The article raises the question what is the content of Frege’s infamous notion of Bedeutung? It is claimed that the so–called standard interpretation of this notion – Bedeutung as referential relation between a name and an object – was developed and established evaluating Frege’s ideas in philosophy of language in isolation from his logicist ideas. However, precisely his logicist concerns have motivated Frege’s interest in semantic issues. A broader consideration of Frege’s works reveals an internalist and rationalist notion of meaning, that is based on the context principle, and that should not be reduced to mere reference. The question of the meaning of subsentential components, for Frege, is closely related to the question of the meaning of the whole sentence, that is, the meaning of sub–sentential components should be construed as secondary with regard to the meaning of the whole sentence.

Емоционално-наративното съществуване

Author(s): Chavdar Dimitrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2020

The article is about a dimension, referable by the concepts of ‘affectivity’, ‘emotionality’ and ‘sensitivity’. The issue addresses both the “disorder of habitual complicity with the world” and the fact that “our acting, talking, feeling and thinking begins as a response to ‘something’ indeterminable that comes from elsewhere”, i.e. to the narrative life experience in which there is enduring/undergoing or “being overwhelmed“ (Sabeva 2016: 241, 244). The subject-matter sets the task of explaining a common field. At its basis, sensitivity is the initial appearance of behaviors and things, because moods (Stimmungen) “throw” us or co-constitute us in the world; emotions are part of our worldly comportment where potential narrativity is equally important. Social attitude, which has its origin in existential “disposedness” (Heidegger 2005: §§ 29–31), sharеs some extraordinaries and gaps. In this process a limit of the self is reached, when one accepts the inevitability of what is being experienced, and self-understanding becomes alienated from one’s own position. The claim of the research is to add a point to the understanding of social integration in interdisciplinary studies.

The Basics of Neo-Realist Cosmology: Bertrand Russell against Alfred North Whitehead

Author(s): Andrii Synytsia / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

The article presents a comparative analysis of neo-realist views of Russell and Whitehead on cosmology in the first decades of the 20th century. It is noted that despite the similarity of the basic theoretical and methodological principles of their philosophizing, these thinkers formulated philosophical-cosmological conceptions that differed significantly from each other. The reason for this was that Russell, at the epistemological level, used the theory of degrees of certainty, and on the logical one he developed the theory of descriptions, but Whitehead, in contrast, was a supporter of the theory of critical realism in epistemology and the method of extensive abstraction in logic. All this influenced the former to pay more attention to the questions of analysis and, accordingly, to use the basic concepts of facts, logical atoms, and propositions, and the latter to focus on the question of synthesis and to consider the structure of being through the prism of concepts of actual entities, eternal objects and prehension. Hence the world for Russell is a static formation (set of events), and we only need to define its laws, and for the Whitehead world is a dynamic formation (set of processes), the laws of which still need to be understood. It is emphasized that as a result, Russell’s cosmology rejected the previous metaphysics, but Whitehead’s cosmology aimed at finding the origins of modern cosmology in the writings of early thinkers. Nevertheless, it is argued that the cosmological teachings of both had a significant influence on the development of analytic philosophy.

Conjoining and the Weak/Strong Quantifier Distinction

Author(s): John Collins / Language(s): English Issue: 60/2020

Pietroski’s model of semantic composition is introduced and compared to the standard type hierarchy. Particular focus is then given to Pietroski’s account of quantification. The question is raised of how the model might account for the weak/strong distinction in natural language quantification. A number of options are addressed and one proposal is tentatively recommended.

Generative Linguistics Meets Normative Inferentialism: Part 1

Author(s): David Pereplyotchik / Language(s): English Issue: 60/2020

This is the first installment of a two-part essay. Limitations of space prevented the publication of the full essay in present issue of the Journal. The second installment will appear in the next issue, 2021 (1). My overall goal is to outline a strategy for integrating generative linguistics with a broadly pragmatist approach to meaning and communication. Two immensely useful guides in this venture are Robert Brandom and Paul Pietroski. Squarely in the Chomskyan tradition, Pietroski’s recent book, Conjoining Meanings, offers an approach to natural-language semantics that rejects foundational assumptions widely held amongst philosophers and linguists. In particular, he argues against extensionalism— the view that meanings are (or determine) truth and satisfaction conditions. Having arrived at the same conclusion by way of Brandom’s deflationist account of truth and reference, I’ll argue that both theorists have important contributions to make to a broader anti-extensionalist approach to language. What appears here as Part 1 of the essay is largely exegetical, laying out what I see as the core aspects of Brandom’s normative inferentialism (§1) and Pietroski’s naturalistic semantics (§2). In Part 2 (next issue), I argue that there are many convergences between these two theoretical frameworks and, contrary to first appearances, very few points of substantive disagreement between them. If the integration strategy that I propose is correct, then what appear to be sharply contrasting commitments are better seen as interrelated verbal differences that come down to different—but complementary—explanatory goals. The residual disputes are, however, stubborn. I end by discussing how to square Pietroski’s commitment to predicativism with Brandom’s argument that a predicativist language is in principle incapable of expressing ordinary conditionals.

WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT. KNOW-HOW, HYBRID WAYS, AND COMMUNICATIVE (INTER)ACTIONS

Author(s): Ion Copoeru,Adrian Luduşan / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

The goal of this paper is primarily to pinpoint some substantial analytical and conceptual difficulties with the account of knowledge how proposed by (Stanley & Williamson, Knowing How, 2001) [henceforth S&W] and (Stanley, Knowing (How), 2011), (Stanley, Know How, 2011) based on (Groenendijk & Stokhof, 1984) [henceforth G&S] semantic analysis of embedded questions. In light of such difficulties, (1) we propose supplementing their account with an integrated approach of knowledge how, and suggest adding a mereological layer to the semantic framework of embedded questions (2) we argue that the characteristics of what we call ‘hybrid ways’ and ‘hybrid knowledge’ strongly indicate reopening the issue of the proper account of questions towards the complementary relevant account of interrogation in communicative interactions, and the role of the context (in)forming knowledge-how. As a methodological principle, we remain neutral on the intellectualist vs anti-intellectualist debate. We also remain silent on the nature and explanation of the modes of presentations or ways of thinking that should be developed in order to adequately account for hybrid ways and hybrid knowledge.

On the impossibility of phenomenological langugage in the context of Wittgensteins manuscripts from 1929-1933

Author(s): Georgy Chernavin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The article treats Ludwig Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts where he formulates the problemof impossibility of “phenomenological language” defined by him as the “description of immediate sensual perception without any hypothetical supplementation.” One may find this phase of his philosophy(1929–1933) a bit paradoxical because the philosopher claims this phase, from the very beginning,to have been overcome; we deal here with philosophical self-criticism. The Lewis Carroll’s paradox isconsidered in terms of analogy to this criticized project of “phenomenological language”—the paradoxof a ridiculously exact map which coincides with the mapped area. We open up new possibilities forcomparison between the Wittgensteinian project of the “primal language” and Husserlian, Heideggerian and Finkian projects of “phenomenological language.”

Wittgenstein and the Pseudo-Problem of Evil

Author(s): Zoheir Bagheri Noaparast / Language(s): English Issue: 55/2021

Theists believe that our world was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. If God with such traits creates a world, we would expect that the world to have certain features. Such features should be compatible with God’s traits. We do not expect a God who is omnipotent and omniscient to create a poorly-designed world. If we believe that our world is created by God with the aforementioned traits and yet our world is poorly designed, we would either abandon our belief that our world was created by God or we would preserve our belief. If we wish to preserve our belief we would either revise the traits we attribute to him, or we would find a way to justify the co-existence of God with such traits as the creator and a poorly-designed world. In the history of philosophy one feature of our world has been subject to a great many debates, namely ‘evil’. By evil we have all the pain and sufferings that sentient beings go through. God is said to be omnibenevolent, as a result he would not want us to go through pain and suffering. He is also omniscient and omnipotent and therefore he has the knowledge and power to do so. Yet we are facing pain and suffering in this world. For the theists reconciling the existing evil in this world with God is a great challenge and atheists try to argue from evil and prove the non-existence of God. The debate between theists and atheists surrounding the problem of evil presupposes a certain conception of God. The presupposition is that God is a person who possesses a mind, will power and has a moral character. For Wittgenstein attributing personhood to God is a confusion. As a result, for Wittgenstein there can be no ‘problem of evil’ and the debates between the theists and atheists is not engaging with a real problem but a pseudo-problem. The problem of evil does not need a solution and smart arguments and counter-arguments, rather it needs therapy.

Philosophical and Cognitive Existence of Linguistic Subjectivity and Its Realisation Paths from the Perspective of Integrating Embodied Philosophy and Cognition

Author(s): Bingzhuan Peng / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

Language is the product of human’s discursive practice. It is bound to bear speakers’ feelings, attitudes and opinions toward events, that is, linguistic subjectivity (LS). However, the phenomenon of linguistic subjectivity (LS) cannot be fully unravelled by the existing single perspective of semantics, pragmatics, philosophy, or cognitive linguistics. To reveal the philosophical attribute and cognitive nature of linguistic subjectivity (LS), a model of integrating embodied philosophy and cognition of linguistic subjectivity (IEPCLS) was constructed, and a philosophical cognitive analysis frame work of linguistic subjectivity (LS) was proposed. By integrating the embodiment and non-objectivity of language meaning in embodied philosophy and the speaker’s self-orientation in cognitive linguistics, the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) was explored. The concrete realisation paths of the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) were investigated on the basis of the framework, and the feasibility of the model and framework was verified by taking discourse constructions as examples. The results show that linguistic subjectivity (LS) is the attribute of speakers as subjects and exists in the speaker’s realistic experience, the speaker’s self, and the speaker’s interaction and perception of the social communication context (SCC). The realisation paths of the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) include the speaker’s self-expressions, the speaker’s meaning assignment to social communication context (SCC), and the speaker’s meaning interpretation of social communication context (SCC). The study provides references for interpreting the subjective factors behind discourse.

ETHICAL SUBTERFUGES OF CIORANIAN NIHILISM

Author(s): Liliana PAVEL (MIREA) / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 26/2021

The existential vacuum arises from several interfering causes and can occur in a multitude of forms, masks and faces. The true meaning of life must be discovered outside, in the world, because the human being is not a closed system. To become human means, without a doubt, to dedicate yourself to causes oriented outside you, to a sense of love that looks at the other. In the struggle with himself, in the burden of suffering, Cioran seems to miss precisely this alliance of human perfection, often deliberately omitting contact with the world, blinded by the obsession of his own suffering. Then suffering begins to dig the (inner) subterfuges of ethics, to which we cannot determine the efficiency, nor the viability in relation to the outside, in a possible ethical process with the world, their origin being so sensibly subjective. In other words, self-transcendence is essential for ethical relationships; without it man remains captive in himself, exterminating any possibility of reconciliation with the world. The human being temporarily comes to resort to a helpful, adapted ethic.

Imaging the Absolute: Can Philosophy Visualize Abstractions?

Author(s): Leon Miodoński / Language(s): English Issue: 62/2023

This article consists of three parts: the first gives a synthetic outline of intellectual tendencies in post-Renaissance thought (Hermeticism, Alchemy, Kabbalah, which generated the iconic turn (emblematics, iconology). Its essence boils down to the integral relationship of the motto (lemma), the engraving (imago), and the poetic text (subscription). The second part is a more detailed analysis of one of the illustrations contained in the first volume of the German edition of Jacob Böhme’s works from 1682 (Gutenberg Project). The epoch, aesthetic tastes prevailing at that time and the Theosophical content of the work allow us to read this illustration from the point of view of iconology. The third part is devoted to two issues: First, one of the central themes in German idealism was the discussion around the notion of the absolute—whether the absolute can be grasped in concepts (Hegel) or in internal intuition (Schelling). Romanticism was dominated by a tendency to a subjective and speculative approach to the absolute. The philosophy and art of Romanticism was modeled on, among other things, medieval German mysticism and Böhme’s theosophy, seeking in these sources the best representation of what is unrepresentable, i.e., the absolute. Secondly, philosophical and artistic Romanticism developed a new type of imagery–language images. The dilemma that resulted from the discussion in German idealism—the notion or inner vision—from the modern point of view should be solved by a compromise: word and image.