Has critique run out of steam, as Bruno Latour (2004) famously suggested? In this paper we take a closer look at Judith Butler's concept of 'performativity' as an exemplary case of a certain paranoid epistemological stance in contemporary critical theory more broadly. Whereas Butler's edifice posits an 'infinitely distant' nature as a kind of transcendental occasion which enables the productive work of cultural fictions, thereby confining critique to the realm of language, we seek to offer two plausible alternatives to this epistemic prison: the new materialist approach, which offers an affirmative possibility of theorizing nature, and the value-form reading of Marx, which discovers a certain negativity of value at the heart of contemporary social formations.
This paper examines the philosophical implications of AI-generated digital objects in artistic institutions, focusing on Ahmed Elgammal's (2017) study, which assumes that aesthetic appeal, novelty, and indistinguishability from human-made artworks suffice to classify these objects as artworks. I challenge this tacit premise by arguing that AICAN-generated digital objects cannot be evaluated in the same way as human artworks because they lack extrinsic properties necessary for correct categorization. Drawing on Kendall Walton's Categories of Art (1970), I assert that truth and falsity apply to aesthetic judgments of artworks. I examine and defend Walton's requirements for the correct categorization of artworks against relevant objections. I proceed by applying Walton's requirements to AICAN outputs. I argue that AICAN's digital objects fail to meet two crucial requirements for correct categorization. Thus, their aesthetic properties necessarily remain category-relative, exposing artistic practice to radical relativism in aesthetic judgment. I contend that Walton's distinction between aesthetic objects and artworks provides a plausible framework for understanding AICAN's outputs and the aesthetic response they elicit. Accordingly, I argue that AICAN digital objects should be regarded as aesthetic objects rather than artworks.
This paper criticizes the interpretation that Sextus considered Academic philosophy as a form of dogmatism, either negative or positive. First, it offers an interpretation of Academic philosophy as a third main kind of philosophy distinct from dogmatism. Next, it examines what Sextus says concerning each major Academic: Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Clitomachus. Finally, it holds that Academic philosophy is the closest philosophical neighbor to skepticism by developing a new interpretation of the final part of the Outlines. In each case, it is shown that, for Sextus, both Pyrrhonism and Academic philosophy are non-dogmatic, and that they differ in their specific ways of being non-dogmatic. The main thesis of this paper is that Academic philosophy is closer to skepticism than to dogmatism.
In this paper, I propose a logical model of mixed feelings. I claim that contrary emotions of desire, fear and indifference can be felt towards the same state of affairs and that this phenomenon can be modeled with the fuzzy logical hexagon. In the fuzzy logical hexagon, contrary notions are allowed to be true simultaneously, but with a special proviso: the sum of their values must be 100%. The same ratio, I claim, appears among the emotions of desire, fear and indifference when they are felt towards one and the same state of affairs. To calculate the percentage of an emotion in an 'emotional ratio', I propose an analysis of states in terms of their aspects, understood as relevant implications. For instance, a state can be both desired and feared if some of its relevant implications are desired and some feared. The present approach is in opposition to a non-realist stance in philosophy of affectivity about the possibility of simultaneous contrary emotions, where differentiation between aspects of a state is often used to explain away the possibility of mixed feelings. The proposed model also differs from some other graded formal approaches to desire and fear, which treat these two emotions separately, each according to its own logic. I claim that logic of desire and logic of fear is one and the same-that of the fuzzy logical hexagon.
This article offers a critical reconsideration of the gendered relation between virt & ugrave; and fortune in Machiavelli's principal political texts. In the current feminist studies on Machiavelli, this relation is perceived in either antagonistic or mimetic terms. In dialogue with both strands of feminist readings and with special attention to Pitkin's interpretation of Machiavelli, this paper seeks to bridge the democratic and feminist face(s) of Machiavelli. From a feminist and gender-dissidence perspective, it then provides an alternative view of the new prince as a man in drag and examines his role in the regulation of social conflict.
Positive social interactions are crucial for our well-being. According to Fredrickson, the key to these interactions is positivity resonance, a form of positive emotional resonance that requires shared positive emotions, mutual care, and psychophysical synchrony. To achieve this, we must recognise emotions and have a fundamental ability to perceive others. Arnold's research delves deeper into emotional reverberation, suggesting that emotional contagion arises merely from shared emotions. Empathy, sympathy, and compassion, instead, are all forms of emotional resonance that require a dynamic understanding of others' emotions. As humans, we can interpret both our own and others' emotional experiences, although there is some confusion between empathy and sympathy. While the two concepts may seem similar, psychologists and phenomenologists aim to clarify their essential differences. Sympathy is a positive emotion that highlights our affective consciousness and capacity for social cognition. This article argues that positive emotional resonance (Fredrickson's notion of love) is sympathy's psychophysiological scaffolding or counterpart. It also argues the ethical dimension of sympathy and compassion since we can foster them through moral decisions and habituation. Ultimately, it highlights the impact of sharing positive emotions on interpersonal interactions.
This article evaluates the significance of Marxist philosophy in Croatia by examining the carefully selected facts (research was carried out in 2023). These facts, while not exhaustive, primarily pertain to the most influential figures within Croatian Marxist philosophy. The assessment interpretation focuses on readily verifiable data, such as the role of these philosophers as mentors or committee members for Ph.D. theses in Marxist philosophy, their published works, citation counts, and their notable ideas. Croatian Marxist philosophy is characterized as lacking a substantial body of high-quality philosophical output, as evidenced by relatively small number of publications, citations, and notable ideas, particularly on the international level. Consequently, its overall impact is relatively minor, and their importance overstated.
According to supporters of epistemic democracy, the most important virtue of democratic forms of government is that they provide the best method for determining correct public policies. On their view, this does not primarily result from the fact that any policy a democratic government enacts will reflect conjoined citizen interests and so be more likely to satisfy them, but from the fact that, as they believe Condorcet has demonstrated, majorities are more likely to get things right than any minority is. I argue that any such view fails to capture what is usually meant by self-government, and that, due to this critical shortcoming, epistemic rationales for democracy should be abandoned in favor of voluntaristic, aggregative theories of the kind that were popular prior to mid-20t Century objections generally claiming either that collective preference aggregations are necessarily incoherent or that pervasive injustices must result from unconstrained, and hence tyrannical, majorities.
Our intention in this paper is to show that works of literary fiction, especially those based on possible but untrue representations of the world, can be cognitively valuable and enable the acquisition of certain cognitive benefits. In the paper, we focus in particular on three objections to this thesis: the objection that there are no institutional constraints that determine the epistemic reliability of fiction, the objection that emphasizes the aesthetic complexity of fiction that allegedly disables its cognitive dimension, and the objection that it is impossible to generate moral principles on the basis of works of fiction. Using the example of the novel Conquest by the French writer Michel Houellebecq and through a discussion of the thesis that the cognitive value of literary fiction is partly dependent on its similarity to thought experiments, we show that, despite these objections, fictional representations such as those we find in literature have cognitive value and can be a source of knowledge.
In this paper, I offer a definition of epistemic justification and a pseudo- code algorithm for determining the justification status of an epistemic agent's belief. By applying the proposed definition and the pseudocode algorithm to Gettier's Case I, another possibility emerges: the epistemic agent is not justified in believing that p . At the heart of the argumentative strategy that this paper employs is the idea that S 's belief that p and S 's evidential basis, e , for believing that p are inseparable from each other. As a consequence, S 's belief that p cannot correctly be assessed on its own but only in conjunction with S 's evidential basis e for believing that p .
In the article, I point out the reasons that raise doubts in favor of contemporary academic philosophy for the non-philosophical public. I argue that academic philosophers in the extra-academic environment can play the role of popularizer, applied ethicist and public intellectual. Whatever role they take, there are good reasons to believe that the general non-academic public does not benefit too much from their involvement. The explanation for such a state of affairs should not be sought so much in the general public as in the nature of philosophy as an academic discipline, but also in the way it is practiced today.
In The Presocratics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger, W. Julian KorabKarpowicz presents a new interpretation of this important theme in the later Heidegger. Korab-Karpowicz argues that the relationship between the early and late Heidegger can be understood as analogous to the relationship between a question and an answer; the later Heidegger provides the answer to the question which the early Heidegger posed, but he discovers this answer in the fragments of Anaximander, Heraclitus and Parmenides. I argue that Korab-Karpowicz fails to substantiate his claim and exemplifies both the vices which Heidegger scholarship ought to avoid - obscurantism on the one hand and trivialization on the other. In doing so, however, Korab-Karpowicz performs an important service; he shows what Heidegger scholarship should strive to avoid.
This paper examines the methodological significance of feelings and moods in Heidegger's philosophy, challenging the modern philosophical view that prioritizes cognition over feelings in acquiring knowledge. Heidegger argues that by exploring the disclosive and disruptive qualities of feelings, philosophy can provide "philosophical knowledge,"which he considers superior to scientific knowledge as it entails knowledge about the world from which science originates. Heidegger's assertion of the primacy of feelings is based on the notion that only feelings can reveal essential and yet concealed aspects of the correlation between humans and beings, and that these aspects are crucial for our understanding of the world. This paper will explore these claims by engaging with the strongest critics of Heidegger's position, namely philosophers of the Neo-Kantian tradition, who claim that he has abandoned philosophy to the arbitrariness and irrationality of mere feelings.
paper examines the structure of moral paradoxes, arguing that moral dilemmas are grounded in moral agents and necessitate the same explanation as the logical behavior of these agents. Consequently, logical and moral laws derive from a different source than nomological and metaphysical laws. Furthermore, it is asserted that logical and moral laws are pluralistic in nature, permitting numerous logical deviations without leading to absurdity.
In this historical account, we describe two ways of preventing set paradoxes in the early 20th century. We begin with an account of Russell's theory of types, which culminated in the publication of Principia Mathematica in collaboration with Whitehead. We then describe the circumstances of the emergence of Zermelo's axiomatization, which remains the main axiomatization of set theory today. Finally, we briefly mention two other ways of preventing the appearance of paradoxes: Quine's theory and Bo & ccaron;var's method of trivalent logic.
