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1. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Javier Agüero–Águila

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This article represents an interpretation of Jacques Derrida’s work Les fins de l’homme (The ends of the man). The first part of the article is an analysis of the implications of Derridian criticism to a kind of human-ism present in France after the Second World War. This humanism, called by Derrida “Philosophical Anthropologism”, is mainly expressed through the figure of Jean Paul Sartre, for whom, according to Derrida, the notion of man is a descriptive and structural one, and as such different from Heidegger’s metaphysical notion that involved an examination of the being in its ontolog-ical dimension. Thus, it is important to scrutinize Derrida’s interpretations of Heidegger’s thought. The second part of the article emphasizes the analysis of the metaphysical deficiencies of “Sartrean humanism”, which implies the division between the ontic and onto-logic, favoring the historicity of the first one. That is why the concept of “neighborhood” between the man and the being has been introduced, which sees everyone as the aim of the other. One’s aims, in this way, appear as defined by the impossibility of thinking about the being beyond the man himself and vice versa. Finally, some ideas related to the Derridian project and its Heideggerian inspirations are discussed. They represent a criticism of logocentricism in its latest version. They are consid-ered, according to Derrida, as Sartrean ones.
2. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Türker Aksun

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The relation between morality and the existence of God is explicitly or implicitly presupposed not only in the ethical theories of different philosophers and thinkers but also in many politicians’ addresses to public, in the interviews of famous authors and columnists, in the sermons of priests or even in the most well-known masterpieces of world literature. We are often told by these social leaders that the idea of God and that of immortality are indispensable for morality, and that in an atheistic or naturalistic world there can be no ethics at all. What underlies this widespread conviction is actually the great debate on the foundation of morality, which has been a major issue in ethics for a long time. This paper aims first of all to examine the relation between morality and the existence of God within the framework of Divine Command Theory (contrary to the common confusion, not of belief in God); and then to criticize that claim based on William Craig’s arguments (Craig being one of the most influential Christian moralists). The arguments for the Divine Command Theory will be intentionally restricted to Craig’s ideas because, although he attacks humanism and naturalism in his debates with Kurtz, Nielsen, Harris and Taylor, he does not have to defend his position. This paper mostly targets his ideas based on religious terms, not philosophy.
3. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Emanuele Antonelli

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Recovering an ancient debate on the meaning of the Latin word pomoerium, I will show that if John Searle has offered the standard version of social ontology, Maurizio Ferraris has good reasons to claim that his ‘Theory of Documentality’ can go further. Nonetheless, his anti-post-modernism and his blindness about the religious origins of the social objects he deals with, reduce the width of his argument. Complementing his hasty analysis of mimesis with the mimetic theory of religion, violence and the sacred, put forward by René Girard, I will try to show that social objects always hide a scapegoating event and not just a document, as Ferraris would say. Recovering the underlying Derridean paradigm and adding a Girardian reading, such an investigation would turn Ferraris’ static and insufficient analysis into a dynamic ontology of actuality. Thus my aims are: 1) to verify to what extend Ferraris’ theory holds ground, 2) point out, through the application of mimetic theory, certain limits of the theory pertaining to the origins of the social objects investigated, and 3) hint at a new paradigm based on the graft of Derridean thought with the trace of Girardian thoughts on mimesis.
4. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Nikolay Biryukovv

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The paper distinguishes between two varieties of determinism: a strong one and a weak one. Weak determinism asserts that whatever happens is caused and that cause necessitates the effect; strong determinism is not satisfied with this assertion, but goes further stating that whatever happens can be traced to just one universal cause. If we define freedom as a capacity to start a new causal chain, strong determinism would allow only one properly free agent; it is thus indistinguishable from fatalism. Weak de-terminism, allowing a plurality of free agents, preserves whatever we need to account for our possession of scientific knowledge (the notion of necessity), but evades fatalism with its characteristic identification of determination and predestination. The discourse on freedom and necessity is often presented as controversy between compatibilism and incompatibilism. The above argument would normally fall under the former category; I prefer, however, an incompatibislm, albeit of a different kind, viz. that free will is incompatible with indeterminism. For free will, if it is seen as real ability, is not mere intention to do something on one’s own; it is only feasible in a deterministic world.
5. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Elena Bolotnikova

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The paper states that an individual, once it has discovered the problem of meaning of its own existence, uses solutions offered by the cultur-al experience of civilization: religion or philosophy. The study of philosophy is understood, along with religious choice, as a way of self-care. Religion and philosophy are compared according to structural elements of self-care marked by Michel Foucault, such as: telos, ethical substance, mode of subjection and ascetic practices. The differences are confirmed by historical examples. In this paper I criticize the current state of social reality, that, due to the development of technology and communication strategies, complicate the interpretation of the individual’s own being. By facilitating transfer of any knowledge of the self and the world as a discursive mode, network tech-nology multiplies the hum of everyday life, making society the “silent ma-jority.” The original self-care isn’t focused on collecting “likes” and reposts on the net, but assumes motion in discursive/non-discursive knowledge area, thus creating the space where an individual realizes himself and his being.
6. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Andreia Margarida Pires Carvalho

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This brief presentation, guided by the thought of archi-writing of Jacques Derrida, has the double purpose of, on the one hand, showing how the Greco-Western philosophical tradition is based on the irreducible privilege of a supposed living word (phoné) – logo-phono-centrism – and, on the other hand, showing how the thought of archi-writing deconstructs this privilege, pointing out that every mark, spoken or written, occurs already in a scene that makes it, in advance, a response. With this in mind, it becomes essential, in a first moment, to elucidate the concept of logo-phono-centrism, assuming it as the fundament of the privilege of the living word (phoné) and consequent secondarization of the writing, under its traditional conceptual-ization. In a second moment, deconstructing the logo-phono-centric orien-tation enunciated before, the way in which the thought of archi-writing is highlighted, leading to the impossibility of any originary fullness of sense reveals a singular notion of response that shows a deconstruction already operating in every mark, written or spoken.
7. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Boris Chendov

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The most distinctive feature of the third period of the history of science (since Wiener’s “Cybernetics”, 1948) is the essential role of the inter-disciplinary investigations which represent a specific form of manifestation of the integrative tendency in the history of science. The result was a cardinal re-organization of the system of science: together with the further development of the canonical sciences, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. as well as of their branches of various degrees. What also took place is a pro-cess of formation of complex theories, or even of complex sciences, involving in a new synthesis problems of various canonical sciences. They became rel-evant problems of philosophy of science. This process of peculiar solution of the philosophical problems in different complex fields of investigation resulted into disintegration of the united system of philosophy into various fragments, seen in a close connection with relevant problems from special sciences. This tendencies lead to different forms of positivistic philosophy.This disintegration of the system of philosophy is not a rough rejection of the united system of philosophy of science, nor does it represent the united positivism.
8. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
María del Carmen Dolby Múgica

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Simone Weil undertakes the critique of Marxism, particularly in her work: “Reflections on the causes of freedom and social oppression,” and she raises what I would call her utopia of work, where she elaborates the ways of eliminating oppression characteristic not only of a capitalist state but also of a socialist one. Weil discusses what she calls the dogma of scientific socialism, i.e., the strong belief that oppression will end when the capitalist society disappears definitively. Simone says that it is quite illusory to think that the oppression will disappear along with capitalism. This is because the key of oppression is in the total subordination of workers to the company and its leaders. The human being is a “thinking entity” and only a form of production that implies and admits the thought of individual workers, can be the basis on which to build a free society. Thought and action are the authentic hinges of her philosophy. Weil’s ideal is based on a spiritual conception of human being that should pay attention to the work not just to develop his higher faculties, but also to elevate himself to the transcendent values and ultimately, to God.
9. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Jude Raymund Festin

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It is theoretically risky to juxtapose Collingwood with Wittgenstein. The former is a metaphysician who has deep sense of history, while the latter is a logician who is celebrated for his unorthodox way of doing philosophy. Collingwood sees things in their interconnected whole, while Wittgenstein grasps them in minute detail. The former approaches a philosophical problem always from a historical standpoint in an orderly and holistic fashion, ever mindful of how things hang together. The latter examines a philosophical question in a diagnostic manner. Given their different intellectual backgrounds and tempers of mind, it may seem that Collingwood and Wittgenstein have little in common, if any at all. There are, however, significant similarities in their philosophical ideas, as have been noted by a good number of Collingwoodian scholars. Wittgentein’s notion of certitudes in “On Certainty”, for instance, bear striking resemblance to Collingwood’s idea of absolute presuppositions in “Essay on Metaphysics”. Their views on the phenomenon of magic intersect at some interesting points. And their respective insights on the nature of language also show salient affinities. How does one account and explain such convergences from two philosophers from contrasting backgrounds, with different tempers of mind? This paper intends to show that Collingwood’s conception of philosophical overlap and Wittgenstein’s notion of family-resemblances converge at some interesting points. This suggests that, despite the stark differences in personalities and philosophical interests, Collingwood and Wittgenstein are philosophers cast in the same mold of thought.
10. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Alla G. Glinchikova

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The main idea of this paper is a reflection on two types of individualization, “ascending” and “descending”, a classification done in accordance to two basic forms of Christian Modernity: the Russian and the European one. Christian and post-Christian Modernity were initially based on two types of Antique-Christian synthesis: western, associated with the name of Saint Augustine; and Eastern, associated with the name of Dionysius Areopagita. Therefore, this paper is particularly focused on the phenomenon of “ascending individualization”, which is considered to be a basic one in the Eastern Antique-Christian synthesis. It shows the role of this kind of individuation in the development of the European and of the Russian types of Modernity. As a conclusion we can suggest a possible way out of the crisis of Modernity through the synergy of the two types of individualization.
11. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Victoria Gritsenko

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Karl Marx scientifically predicted the appearance of some extraordinary tendencies of social development that in the second half of the XX century were given a common name of post-industrial or informational society and interpreted as post-bourgeois, post-capitalist, post-business society and late capitalism. Autonomist Marxism and Perm philosophy school had separately come to a conclusion that all the phenomena noticed by the post-industrial theory could be adequately explained if we consider the historically new form of material labor, appeared now. Marx, who predicted this new form, named it automated, scientific, or universal labor. With the appearance of the universal labor the wealth of the society depends on the universal human powers that help to involve the extensive powers of nature into the production process. Universal labor cannot be averaged or measured by the labor time as the abstract labor; it implies high complexity and creativity. Involving increasingly powerful forces of nature and human society, it appears to be the labor of another essence and by its essence it doesn’t create value.
12. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Boris Gubman

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In the rapidly globalizing world, contemporary philosophy should work out a strategy combining universalism and critical approach to a mosaic of its cultural reality. After the demise of classical metaphysics, philosophy is no longer able to address culture with its ideal image portraying the teleological path of its perfection. However, despite its new roles of mediator and witness bridging gaps between different cultural forms, philosophy should not lose its capacity of a self-founding thinking. Otherwise, it may degenerate into a kind criticism aimed at the unique phenomena and producing no general meanings nourishing cultures. The hermeneutical reason is moving to a new kind of critical universalism getting into prolific negotiations with a variety of cultures, learning from them and producing general meaningful interpretations of human world problems that are directed against any form of power abuse and violence existing in society.
13. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Lai He

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A significant achievement in thought, reached with the change from theoretical to practical philosophy, is that the popular taste for aristocratism is on the wane. Meanwhile, philosophy is turning away from authoritarianism towards democracy. This is a radical change in the spiritual character and disposition of philosophy. The desire of privileged class and the noble men lies in philosophy as a traditionally rooted complex, which is represented by an idea of truth (that conception is being), an idea of values (that idea is the perfect good) and an idea of history (that reason is the road). Philosophy’s renouncement of noble mentality does not mean the degradation of philosophical development, but indicates a kind of theoretical self-consciousness and self-enlightenment regarding the rational mode of philosophy and its function. This keeps us alert for the dogmatism and arbitrariness of philosophy. And also it shows that it is vital to highlight the democratic spiritual disposition of philosophy both for philosophy and for those who work on it.
14. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Ivan Brian Inductivo

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Disputations on the trans-temporal identity have been a perennial predicament of philosophy. Despite the many array of theories, the persistence of identity through time presents hackneyed and relentless arguments which seeks to suffice our appropriation of identity. Identity is absolute if taken in the strictest sense and in sheer idem-identity. But identity, especially of ipse-identity, does not just constitute of absolute sameness alone but also of the recognition of self and the inevitable inclusion of temporality. In the gamut of works of Charles Hartshorne held in scrutiny, process philosophy has offered a neoclassical paradigm in approaching this interminable trans-temporal knot of identity, i.e., a partial (personal) identity through the novel injunction of the concept of inheritance. This study aims to present a tenable option for identity that serves as a plausible alternative to the problem of persistence through temporal passage and of continuity of character without resorting to “substance-like” metaphysics (Aristotelian) and absolute connectedness or absolute discreteness.
15. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Jörg Löschke

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In the philosophy of love there is discussion about the reasons for love and how to understand them. According to the property-approach, reasons for love are grounded in features of the beloved; according to the relationship-approach, they are grounded in facts about the relationship. The property-approach seems to be intuitively the more plausible view, but it faces the problems of fungibility and continuity. The talk defends the property-approach by applying Dancy’s holistic conception of reasons to this question. This can solve the fungibility problem, since it only arises when reasons of love are understood atomistically. Furthermore, the continuity problem can be solved by applying the distinction of favorers (the features of the beloved) and enablers (the fact that it is this specific person who instantiates the features). If the beloved is understood as a general enabler, it is conceivable that the reasons for love change with the propertis of the beloved, making a continuity of love possible when the properties of the beloved change.
16. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Jurate Morkuniene

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Contemporary philosophy generalizes the most complicated and rapidly changing objects such as society and person. In this sense, philosophy is an incomplete, relatively open and, thus, theoretically “imperfect”, “non-systematic”, and vulnerable theory. Philosophy develops by reconsidering the problems of order and disorder, complexity and simplicity, evolution, truth and error, etc. In the 21st century philosophy revives to the degree its methods correspond to the present paradigm of science. Sciences find instability, imbalance, probability, or irreversibility everywhere. This cannot be avoided neither by social sciences nor philosophy, although they are much more inert. The methods of philosophy are, first of all, modified by understanding that history is incomplete and cannot be stopped at a certain phase by declaring to be the absolute solution of human needs, aspirations and problems. New concepts are being adopted in philosophy. What proceeds is a conceptual synthesis, a “joining”, or introducing into philosophy the methods and the language of the other sciences.
17. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Robin M. Muller

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My paper is motivated by two thoughts: (1) that there’s significant overlap between J. G. Herder’s romanticism and, what I call, the ‘late’ conceptualism of John McDowell; (2) that recognizing this helps to settle a dispute in contemporary epistemology concerning the contents of perception. I argue, on the basis of that overlap, that “romantic conceptualism” avoids two pressing criticisms of conceptualism: It offers a reply to the argument from the fineness of grain of perceptual experience and it explains the relationship between human perceptual experience and the perceptual experiences of non-human animals. I start with the interpretation of McDowell’s views, tracing the significant revisions in the period following the publication of Mind and World; then I try to compare his views with Herder’s, trying to establish a framework for responding to the more trenchant criticisms of McDowell’s non-conceptualist opponents, and the explanatory force of conceptualist hypotheses beyond the context of contemporary epistemology. The first arc of the paper, therefore, traces the evolution of McDowell’s thought concerning perceptual contents. The second attempts to demonstrate where (and with what consequences) that view converges with a romantic philosophy of mind.
18. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Vladimir Orlov

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Having been developed in the way of concept extension, Marx-ism appears to be nowadays a concrete-universal theory, in which originally imperfect transition program from abstract-universal to concrete-universal concepts of logic and sense is realized on materialistic foundation. This very program that was brought about in K. Marx’s “Capital” has not been sufficiently expressed in classical or contemporary philosophy. The base of this new Marxist philosophical form is not constructed by the terms of overall matter, movement and development, but by the conception of the general naturally de-termined universal process of infinite movement from lower to superior forms of matter. We are aware of four of them: physical, chemical, biological and social matter. Representing the eternal world as the progressive whole, modern materialism makes nature as the proper place of each fundamental science understandable, and helps to clarify the location and development of future trends of the Man in the World.
19. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Yiouli I. Papaioannou

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One of the most important dispute in the history of philosophy is the conflict between the proponents of deontology who claim that our choices must be guided and assessed of what we ought to do, and the supporters of consequentialism who maintain that choices are to be morally assessed solely by the states of affairs they bring about. Today, the interest in this conflict has increased dramatically because of the recent scientific advances which present evidence that consequentialism, in comparison to deontology, is the best approach to morality.In particular, according to recent scientific findings, the moral assessment of our choices and actions grounded on consequences and results is more rational than the moral assessment grounded on duties and intentions. In an interesting study of the way in which brain process moral dilemmas, researchers found significant differences in the neural processes of subjects, depending upon whether they were considering moral dilemmas in relation with their consequences or with duties and intentions. Our moral responses in relation to consequences seem to evolve under more rational brain processes than morals responses which emerge from a sense of duty.However, a more assiduous consideration of the philosophical concepts of duty/intention and of consequences demonstrates that it is impossible to establish morality without taking into consideration both of the notions of intention and consequences.
20. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Michel Paquette

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We offer a formulation of a set of rules for definitions that is informed by modern logic. We aim to be as precise as possible in our formulation. The set of rules that we discuss derives from Aristotle’s treatise on the art of dialectic, Topics. The concern about rules for definitions can be traced back at least to Socrates, as represented in Plato’s early dialogues. Since we view our task as belonging to general philosophical methodology and as being central to it, we approach the rules for definitions from a general perspective and try to avoid adjudicating controversial issues in scientific methodology or contemporary theories of meaning. We discuss some philosophical difficulties as we proceed. First, we distinguish three components in a rule: a principle, a criterion and a motivation. Secondly, we discuss the logical form of definition sentences and the properties of the relation “…=df …”. Thirdly, we account for six classical rules, highlighting the components for each rule. The rules address issues about extensional equality, essential predication, circularity, negative definitions, synonymous expressions and metaphorical language. Our formulation makes it apparent that the principles of definition are either logical requirements or pragmatic rules.