Philosophers are uniquely qualified to negotiate a balance between the reflective potential of globalization and the great routine powers of nations, states, tribes, and families. Here's how we can do it: we can teach the difference between playing a game and choosing a game. From time immemorial people of all tribes and cultures have marked a sharp distinction between those individuals deemed qualified by age, expertise, or status to choose or write the rules, and those other, lesser individuals who are obliged merely to obey those rules. This is the traditional difference between a person, on the one hand, and a utensil, on the other: persona est sui iuris; servus non est persona ("A person chooses its own laws; a slave is not a person"). Persons, but not utensils such as shoes, have, and deserve, good will. To a person, a culture is a means of creating a sustainable humane environment. To a culture, a person is a means for the culture to replicate itself. Placing culture first is a tradition we can no longer afford to maintain, because it makes enduring peace impossible. The purposes utensils can be made to serve have become too terrible (and, with the advent of global communication, too obvious) for the human race to endure, and the capacity of the voiceless to express themselves violently is increasing without limit. Hence we must create new traditions in which we teach all our children reflective thought, with which rules are pragmatically justified rather than unquestionable. To that end I propose to distinguish random, routine, and reflective thought and action. Each of these three levels of thought and action has its costs and its benefits; together they contain the entire range of human possibility. Three familiar philosophical concepts support my claim that reflective thought and action can and must be taught to and learned by all.

Do functional explanations eclipse the intentionality of human actions? Put differently, do intentional and functional explanations of actions conflict with each other? In this paper, I want to argue that both sorts of explanation, if conceived in a proper way, are compatible instruments. First, I will make a distinction between three kinds of explanatory pluralism of actions: a pluralism of theories of actions, a pluralism of sorts of explanations of actions, and a pluralism of methods for the explanation of actions. Intentional and functional explanations are sorts, not theories or methods, of explanation. Next, I will briefly distinguish intentional and functional explanations: intentional explanations refer to the beliefs and desires of an agent, and functional explanations refer to the function of a motive of an action (etiological functions), or to the function of a result of an action (system functions). Finally, I discuss possible conflicts between both sorts of explanation. In cases where real conflicts between functional and intentional explanations do arise, this is due to the lack of sufficient information or the misinterpretation of information of one or both explanations. Hence, such conflicts are not conflicts between sorts of explanations.

This paper refutes a common and influential thesis about the conditions under which desires provide agents with practical reasons. That thesis is that if any agent. A, has a desire which A could satisfy by (ping, then A has a reason—a minimal reason, at least—to (p. Although this thesis comes close to stating a truth, it falls short.

The main purpose of this paper is to show that under globalization many traditional concepts are no longer acceptable, and may be preconceived. In Vietnam, the system of values Jriend-enemy, success-failure, chance-risk, endogenous-exotic has somehow changed in globalization. Globalization in se marks a new trend, a new change for humankind. A considerable difference in the consumption of goods exists between population strata. The "world of things" owned by the poor has become distant from that owned by the rich to such an extent that no dialogue is possible. But the difference in the consumption of cultural values has to merit concern. This paper displays these value changes in Vietnam in the process of globalization: (a) the value of studiousness and the emphasis on education does not decline, but deviates; (b) the value of "diligence" tends to increase; (c) The value of family and community" tends to diminish. The process of globalization can only be understood in the context of the search for new values, and a critique of globalization is possible if one investigates the very root of the human search for new values: values are values only when they still generate their contributions to solving human problems.

In the human world if there is knowledge about something, if this knowledge is true, then there must be a connection between the epistemological object and the judgment that gives us knowledge about this object. It seems that there is a universal consensus about that.But when the issue is knowledge about value and values, judgments about the value of something and about values are not considered to be genuine. This is a typical prejudice of our age about value and values. It is true that so-called value-judgments, i.e. judgments in which people call things good or bad, are not genuine judgments, because they don't possess any epistemological object. But propositions about values, which are also called 'judgments', as well as 'statements' or 'assertions', are not the same as value-judgments, because this kind of knowledge, too, is about something that is independent of the person who puts forward such a judgment, something that has its own ontical specificity. Judgments or propositions or statements about values are knowledge, and can provide knowledge, while value-judgments are not knowledge and cannot provide any knowledge. Knowledge about the value of something and about values do seem to be judgments, but this cannot justify the confusion of such a judgment with a value-judgment. To dispel such confusion, first of all we have to clarify the terms we use.

Guilt feelings are an important part of our emotional life that is relevant to moral philosophy, and guilt feelings raise many theoretically interesting questions. One such question is the problem of how it is possible that sometimes people seem to feel guilty because of an act they have committed even if they believe that the act is not wrong and that it does not have any moral costs. A person raised in a religious family may have been taught that going to the theater is wrong, and even if she has rejected this taboo years ago, she may still feel guilty when attending theater. At least, this seems to be the case. If it is the case, then one must explain how it is possible that a person may feel guilty without believing that she is guilty, i.e. that (1) she is responsible for the act and that (2) the act is wrong or has moral costs. Suppose, however, that it is not possible to feel guilty while believing that one is not guilty. Then one must explain why it seems that sometimes—in taboo cases—one can feel that she is guilty and at the same time believe that she is not guilty. In this paper I evaluate some of the usual solutions to the problem and explicate their problems.

When decision makers have more to gain than to lose by changing their minds, and that is the only relevant fact, they thereby have a reason to change their minds. While this is sage advice, it is silent on when one stands more to gain than to lose. The two envelope paradox provides a case where the appearance of advantage in changing your mind is resilient despite being a chimera. Setups that are unproblematically modeled by decision tables that are used in the formulation of the two envelope paradox are described, and variations on them are stipulated. The problems posed by the paradoxical modeling are then contrasted with the variations. The paper concludes with a brief explanation of why the paradoxical modeling does not gain support from the fact that one envelope has twice the amount that is in the other.

According to the early versions of the causal theory of action, intentional actions were both produced and explained by a beliefdesire pair. Since the end of the seventies, however, most philosophers consider intentions as an irreducible and indispensable component of any adequate account of intentional action. The aim of this paper is to examine and evaluate some of the arguments that gave rise to the introduction of the concept of intention in action theory. My contention is that none of them is conclusive. To sustain my claim, I first discuss some of the main differentiating functions commonly attributed to intentions. Contrary to the dominant view, I show that many of these functions, especially those attributed to distal intentions, have little to do with the causal character of action theory. I also maintain that many of the allegedly specific functions of intentions can be ascribed to the preeminent motive of the agent. Finally, I argue that the intention thesis cannot be reconciled with the motivational strength thesis, and that the latter is a decisive reason to forsake the former.

Nowadays the real threat has appeared: "thinking man" will disappear from the planet, and his place will be taken by "information consuming man." The rapidly evolving spiritually dependent consumer will turn into a completely controlled human being. A value orientation that we did not create will entirely determine all our choices and dominate our attention. Both the values and the products of mass culture are being spread among consumers as extensively as possible by mechanisms of culture manufacture, in accord with the technological opportunities of the modern culture industry, connected in many ways with the mass media, and are being consumed on the same level as other products offered in the modern market. It becomes clear that the ecology of consciousness, along with the ecology of human life, is the most urgent and the most current problem of contemporary society.The main tasks of a global ecology of consciousness are to understand the conditional character of the external system of values and the radical reorientation that is appropriate to it; to create a culture of life as the realization of the original boundlessly disclosing free spirit, manifested in the encounter of man and world; and to return from captivity to imaginary things to life as dialogue with the world. First of all it is necessary to advance to a deep ecological understanding of the world—an understanding of nature, completed in the "noosphere," as the unique and perfect home of human consciousness. When a human being recognizes "the internal eco-crisis" and discovers the chaos and senselessness behind the imaginary clarity, he inevitably realizes the necessity for radical changes. His activity is initiated by the deepest satisfaction accompanying the expansion of the bounds of perception. We are speaking about the integral human being, personifying in himself both nature and civilization at the point of their intersection, removing the contradictions between the physical and the spiritual, between naturalness and technological progress.

A series of features of the contemporary globalization of human society, especially its dual positive arid negative effects, shows that contemporary globalization has great significance for the survival and development of mankind as a whole. From the point of view of its deep axiological significance, globalization has resulted in the formation of common human interests that manifest themselves negatively as the emergence of various global problems. The formation of common human interests and the emergence of global problems in turn have objectively introduced a specific norm of value to contemporary global society. This norm of value requires people in the contemporary global society to take common human interests as their value orientation when dealing with the relationship between the human being and the world, if they are to solve various contemporary global problems and make possible the continued survival of mankind and the sustainable development of human society.

This paper is part of an attempt to clarify the relationship between explanatory reasons and justificatory reasons for actions of various kinds. It draws on a distinction between two notions of rationalization, viz., ex ante and ex post rationalization, to recast the akratic case on the one hand and to explicate an adequate sense in which an explanatory but non-justificatory reason for an action rationalizes the latter on the other hand. The explication is helped by analysis of a hypothetical example, and the name "quasi-rational" is legitimated for the type of actions this example represents. Last, but not least, the paper demonstrates that an implication of the argument is the falsity of one well-known principle in Davidson's action theory, i.e., the principle claiming that the (primary) reason for an action is also its cause.

The main ideas in this paper can be summarized in the following three points. (1) Openness, indeterminacy, and exemplarity are elements of both Kant's aesthetics and Wittgenstein's notion of language games. (2) These elements are essential to what makes a person. They are necessary in processes of decision-making and in the development of a person. (3) Such aspects were in the center of discussion during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, especially in the tradition of the so-called Bildungsroman. Unfortunately, they tend to be forgotten nowadays.

My lecture is concerned with a presentation of the method of Deleuzian thought, which - I would like to contend - well represent the change that has taken place in postmodernist thought. Deleuze is unique in calling himself a "classical metaphysicist," i.e. a restorer of classical thought, albeit via the screen - thought which has managed to survive and overcome the obstacle of modernity. The Deleuzian unification of pre-modern thought and modernist critique with Nietzsche's theory of eternal repetition gives rise to a method, whose utter meaning is an attempt to provide thinkers with sharp tools for successfully opposing later capitalism and globalization, something that stands at the very heart of Deleuzian metaphysics. This opposition, which in effect is also a new doctrine of moral aesthetics, lies at the core of this present lecture. I would like to present the special combative nature of Deleuzian thought, and through him to present a different radical angle of the post-modern paradigm.

Hermeneutics, in its phenomenological mode, has become one of the dominating issues in contemporary philosophical discours. Hans-Georg Gadamer, the leading exponent of phenomenological hermeneutics, develops his theory in his monumental work Truth and Method1, by regarding hermeneutics as an exploration of both the archaeology of human understanding and constitutive role of language in experience. In this paper, we have presented a brief exposition of Gadamer's views, giving an emphasis on how human understanding of objects inevitably mingles with its traditions or prejudices. Following Gadamer, we also have offered a systematic account of the role of language upon our overall understanding and building of an impersonal criterion of the truth and meaning of experiences. And finally we have critically examined Habermas* critique of Gadamer's failure to see language as a camouflage of domination of stronger experiences and the fact that the history of understanding is systematically distorted by this domination.

The issues of difference, diversity, otherness, and the possibility of community have emerged as leading philosophical and socio-political questions in recent times. An increasing theoretical emphasis on issues of difference and alterity, with a corresponding convergence of topics like globalization, have brought into renewed focus not only the question of otherness, but more fundamentally, the question of how the encounter with the Other is to take place. My paper examines the treatment of issues of difference and otherness within a perspective of philosophical hermeneutics. In recent writings, Gadamer has suggested that the principles of his philosophical hermeneutics can prove beneficial in reflections on contemporary social problems of diversity and cultural difference. In examining these claims, I question whether Gadamer acknowledges sufficiently the challenges and resistance of otherness. At the same time, I also question the claims of some theorists who maintain that it is never possible to bridge difference and otherness. In the end I suggest that while the resistance of difference might be underestimated, there are nevertheless promising approaches for thinking difference and diversity to be found in a hermeneutical perspective.

In his Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (GA 65), Heidegger claims: "Making itself intelligible is the suicide of philosophy" (435). He defines intelligibility in terms of the modern metaphysical forms of thinking and speaking about beings as objects of representation. Moreover, intelligibility involves a uniform accessibility for the inauthentic. anybody of an age marked by thoughtlessness. Thus, Heidegger upholds and tries to adhere to a principle of unintelligibility for the thinkers in the crossing from the first beginning to the other beginning of philosophy. Thinkers in the crossing are essentially ambiguous and indefinite in their attempt to move through and away metaphysical thinking toward a be-ing-historical thinking. Their only option is to say the metaphysical language of beings as language of be-ing, and this involves a transformation of language and thinking through a "turning around" of the meaning of metaphysical words. Unintelligibility is an essential feature of this transformed and transformative effort to carry out the ultimate task of "the bringing back of beings from the truth of be-ing" (11). If philosophy makes itself intelligible, then it fails to accomplish its mission in the age of the abandonment of be-ing by beings. Unintelligibility in Heidegger, as he defines it and as it occurs in his own writing, suggests the concomitant demand on us, the philosophers of today, to make the effort to interpret the language of beings as language of be-ing.

The present text shows the hidden root of the question of being in Heidegger's Early Writings. His first logic and epistemological investigations in a neokantian atmosphere moves to ontological interests: he gives up the notion of transcendental subject, and asks for the historical and temporal background of live. In this sense, the young Heidegger gives his work a new direction by searching for the hermeneutical pressupositions that allows philosophy to formulate again the question of being from a radical point of view.