It is often said that literature is cognitively valuable, and that there are many things that we learn from literary fiction. But it is hard to say how exactly this process of acquiring new beliefs and expanding our knowledge takes place through engagement with literature. In this paper, I develop an account of this process, claiming that literary works are a special kind of testimony. I then go on and claim that testimony can not only transfer knowledge from one person to another (this is the role testimony is traditionally given), but can also help an audience in reaching some other cognitive states considered valuable, such as understanding. Grounding literature in its social (institutional) setting and insisting on its humanistic aspect, in the last part of the paper I develop the roles of author-as-testifier and reader-as-audience and try to show how a reader can in fact learn from literary fiction.

The paper begins from the idea that an image is being shaped in the communication process and depends for this shaping on social interaction. The unhistorical elements of the image (archetype, myths and symbols), together with the historical ones (representation and stereotype), are transmitted through communication processes that depend of the ways that individuals and groups relate. Considering this, the paper argues that we may discuss a certain historicity of myths and symbols if we approach a communication point of view, as they are forms of interpreting and decoding reality.

Pejoratives carry with themselves as part of their meaning the stereotype containing representations (concepts) of negative qualities ascribed to the target, and the claim that the target is bad because it has these negative qualities. This is the kernel of our conceptual truth conditional proposal that this paper expounds and defends. The paper starts with a brief taxonomy of views, and very briefly mentions the reasons for disagreeing with the majority of them. The paper then argues for our truthconditional conceptual view from ordinary nasty inferences involving pejoratives, and then passes to figurative pejoratives offering a novel argument from the metaphorical nature of them. Decoding metaphorical meaning is a cognitive task. Since cognition has to do with semantic traits, and since the cognitive task is a good indicator of semantic structure, this cognitive complexity indicates interesting semantic properties of pejoratives, namely that the negative material involved in the traditional uses of such a pejorative is not merely expressive, but is part of its cognitive, truth-evaluable meaning. Some objectionsand replies follow. The conclusion briefly discusses the pragmatics of pejoratives pointing to the ubiquitous but little noticed use of pejoratives in the third person, slurring in absentia. This use suggests a novel interpretation of the perlocutory nature of the use of pejoratives.

The aim of this paper is to explore the split between two kinds of reasoning – non-public (culturally dependent) and public (characteristic for the procedures of policy design and, more generally, of taking generally binding decisions within the institutions of power). A largely acknowledged problem is that attempts to influence the public policies from the positions of cultural communities cannot be rationally substantiated because the arguments used are in most cases not recognized as valid by the general public, which does not share the particular beliefs and assumptions that guide reasoning in a contextually “embedded” cultural environment. This “barrier” between non-public and public reasoning is hindering the progress of recognizing minority rights and allowing the input of religiously inspired ideas into public life, to say the least. More concretely, my purpose is to point out certain philosophical debates which can provide, in my opinion,theoretical “instruments” that might help reconceptualize the possibilities for communication between the nonpublic and the public domains. I mean first of all, but not only, the theories of political liberalism and deliberative democracy as well as the differentiation between “substantivist” and “procedural” kinds of discourse.

Conventionalists about modality deny that the world has a modal structure. Metaphysical necessity is not a real feature of the world, but a linguistic necessity grounded in conventions governing our use of words. In this paper, I focus on Allan Sidelle’s conventionalist account and especially on his claim that the idea of real necessity should be abandoned since it is puzzling. My strategy for the defense of the realist notion of modality is twofold. First, the ontology of undifferentiated stuff, which underlies his conventionalist account, is itself very puzzling and in need of further defense. Second, the alleged problems of the realist interpretation are based on an empiricist view of the world.

Humanism as an ideological term in the modern sense finds its roots in the 18th century Enlightenment. However, it has been exposed to some important changes. For example, Sartre and Heidegger interpreted the concept of humanism by abstracting it from its ideological content and differentiated the term according to their own essential understanding. At the end they both identified their original grasp of humanism with their own philosophies, which at first glance resemble each other as Sartre thought, but in detail are very different. The difference between the concepts of humanism that Sartre and Heidegger understand occurs in their starting point of philosophizing. Sartre, according to Heidegger, starts from existence and could not be able to understand Being. For this reason, Sartre reaches a different kind of understanding on humanism. On the opposite side, Heidegger insists on moving from Being itself, hence attains another concept of humanism which has a different content from Sartre. In this paper my aim is to discuss the concept of humanism on the basis of these two philosophers’ views and draw a frame for understanding how the term gains different implications. In this context, the issue is argued on the basis of the works of Sartre Existentialism Is a Humanism and Heidegger The Age of World Pictures and Letter on Humanism.

This essay tries to review the main elements of the concept of public reason as presented by John Rawls with reference to his latest book (The Law of Peoples with The Idea of Public Reason Revisited) and simultaneously brings up the arguments for and against this concept that have been put forward by the literature. Many of the arguments presented here are not new, but what this essay aims at is a reassessment of the debate by confronting many of the interpretations and points of view raised around the concept of public reason. Based on the argumentation that if ‘right’ precedes this leaves room for the (different existences of) ‘good’ I propose that public reason ought to be conceived more as a political concept and less of a comprehensive account of morality.

In this paper I explore how the discussion about the existence of laws in biology, more specifically laws about species taxa, bears on the issue of whether species are kinds or individuals. One of the main arguments offered in favor of the view that species are individuals is that it explains the lack of laws about species taxa, since laws cannot refer to individuals. My aim in this paper is to question the premise that there are no laws about species axa and consequently to show that the proposed argument fails. I will argue that even if there are no strict scientific laws about species taxa, still, scientifically interesting, law-like generalizations are made which are used for explaining phenomena and predicting properties of species members. The existence of these law-like generalizations, in turn, suggests that species are, at least prima facie, best conceived of as kinds.

Speculations about Islam, Islamization and Fundamentalism proceed from the deficit of a serious historic study on the origin and activity of the Bulgarian Muslims (the Pomaks), which is due to both the politicization and ideologization of this theme through many centuries, and various national and chauvinistic interests. From the beginning of the 1890's and especially in the 1920’s and 1930's, the continuous campaign in the press encourages public opinion to differentiate religious affiliation from ethnic affiliation and to accept the Pomaks as the part of the Bulgarian nation. In the 1960’s, there is a growing pressure to integrate the “Bulgarian Muslims” (the Pomaks) into the community of the ethnic Turks at the same time that the ethnic Turks use the privileges of communism,of which they were gradually deprived later. Twenty years after the change, the state continues to abdicate its responsibilities for this clearly Bulgarian compactmass of the population, whose mother tongue is Bulgarian. The state does not pay attention to the poor, to education, to the large unemployment rate, the lack of investments in these regions, the lack of infrastructure, the discovery of the adequate and transparent way of financing the religious education of these people, or to their need to participate actively in the processes of building civil society.

This paper proposes an outline of a view concerning intuitions, tying them to our basic cognitive competences, or virtues-capacities, a view that is here called The Moderate Voice-of-Competence view. This view claims that intuitions form a kind, albeit a relatively superficial one, united by their phenomenal appearance, but linked to capacities for understanding various domains. Further, intuitions are extroverted, turned towards the items they are explicitly about, and normatively answerable to them; they teach us about things “outside”, not merely about our representation(s) of them. This view also takes seriously the actual dialectics of having intuitions: asking (or being asked) a question, imagining a scenario, giving a simple, preliminary answer to the question, formulating the immediate intuition which is often developed by considering other examples, and so on. This work involves more than mere inference following rules of logic. Further, this view is for the most part committed to realism about the objects of intuitions, and is very keen on their explainability. Finally, this view offers a complex answerabout the normative epistemic status of intuitions, tilted towards a posteriority: although intuitions are prima face a priori, their reflective justification has a rich structure in which a posteriori elements play a crucial role.

This essay intends to reveal the contribution of some Aristotelian concepts – such as “just measure” (metron, meson) and “lack of measure” (alloiosis) as well as some other connected pathological affections (pathe) of the human volitive part of the soul (thymos), caused by certain changes of the humoral mixtures, especially the ones of the black bile, a humoral substance that was considered largely responsible for the severe alterations of the normal rational activity of the human soul (logismos). – to the definition of melancholy as a natural/pathological condition. This type of analysis could be useful for wider cultural studies in which certain medical traditions would have a significant contribution and would help us understand better the holistic thought of the ancient and medievalEuropean culture.

The paper argues that the concept of civilisation has been frequently used as a metaphorin arguments both in favour of and against Turkey’s eventual EU membership. However, an examination of the discourse suggests that civilisation, which is a polyvalent concept, has been understood and used differently by each side. While the concept of civilisation used by supporters of Turkish accession is an inclusive one, according to which civilisation is one and (potentially) available to all, it is used in a very different way by opponents of Turkey’s full membership. In this case, the conception of civilisation is similar to that of Huntington, as multiple, culturally based and relatively inflexible. Hence, on this basis, it is argued that Turkey is not a suitable candidate for full EU membershipas it does not share the civilisational background of European countries, and thus cannot easily adapt to ‘European’ values such as democracy or human rights. Finally, a minority of arguments imply a culturally based, yet more flexible view of European civilisation as being historically influenced by Islam, and by Turkey in particular. Such a view, similar to Delanty’s ‘civilisational constellations’ implies support of Turkish accession on a cultural basis.

The topic of this paper is Timothy Williamson’s understanding of the logical form of thought experiments as involving counterfactual conditionals which are true when their antecedent is impossible. At the same time, he sees the ability to handle counterfactuals as grounded in our everyday capacities. The aim of this paper is to drive a wedge, on empirical grounds, between our ordinary capacities and the counterfactuals which require an impossible antecedent.

Starting from the marginal status allotted to ideology in the present day field of political philosophy, caused both by what I consider to be a “semantic narrowing” and by what I call “semantic contamination”, this article points to the possibility of a conceptual reconsideration of ideology within contemporary political philosophy. In line with Michael Freeden, my standpoint is one according to which the concept of ideology can be recovered by political philosophy as an analytical tool, because it plays not only an important normative role, situated at an abstract level, but also a very important role when it comes to explaining political reality. This requires, of course, an interdisciplinary approach, bearing in mind the influences that political philosophy itself receives in our time. Virtually,I believe that the political-philosophical perspective on ideology should open, in an interdisciplinary manner, towards related fields such as political sociology, political anthropology or discourse analysis, specific to communication sciences.

This paper interprets and extends Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished ontology of flesh in order finally to settle accounts with the Cartesian legacy that has hungover Western metaphysics for the last three centuries. The essay does this by advancing Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of two closely intertwined topics—the relationship of consciousness and Nature and the meaningfulness of Nature itself. Among other things, the essay seeks to explain the emergence of consciousness from Nature and defends a view of consciousness as the mobilization of the powers of corporeity—including intercorporeity—to investigate, articulate, and creatively adumbrate Nature and Being as such. It does so by responding to natural resonances and rhythms, through intensities of feeling andthe perception of possibilities.

Seemingly, metaphysics is trapped between the Scylla of being superfluous, on the one hand, and the Charybdis of being esoteric, on the other. Is there a wayout? In discussing two large-scale metaphysical projects that are very different in character, the article analyses one of the roots of this impasse – the ontological paradigm. The author tries, further, to argue for another stance towards the theoretical task metaphysics has to submit itself to: the paradigm of transcendentals. The structural-systematic philosophy will be a point in case.

It has long been theorized that Heidegger’s idea for Dasein was highly influenced by the Chinese notion of the Dao. This is due to a misinterpretation on behalf of Heideggerian scholars and others of what the Dao represents. In fact, Heidegger, in explicating what he thought to be “the most extreme inversion of φύσης-ουσία [phusis-ousia],” made this equal to “Chinese-like ‘constancy,’” which is the basis of the Dao. Taking what Heidegger interpreted phusis to be (derived from Aristotelian metaphysics and an assumption of pre-Socratic thought) as a process of unconcealment from continuing re-concealment which signals a kind of “truth” of being [phusis], that which calls for constant presence is inauthentic Dasein, rather than authentic Dasein. In other words, Heidegger’s idea of what inauthentic Dasein calls for could be explained within Aristotle’s system as equal to aiming to replace phusis with the know-how of τέχνη [techne]. The Dao, as rightfully understood and utilized by the master craftsman and the Sage, is accessible, constant, and knowable. This could not be in more opposition to Heidegger’s notion of phusis.