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articles

1. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Teodor Dima

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We consider that the epistemological recourse to semiotic dimensions could lead to peace: those in favour of an epistemology without a knowing subject are right (if they keep themselves within the syntactic and semantic frames of theoretical construction) and those who add a knowing subject are also right (if they want to express the concrete process of building up scientific convictions).
2. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Mihai D. Vasile

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Any logical analysis – and therefore philosophy itself – begins with the question: is there an indubitable knowledge? To answer this question Bertrand Russellappeals to tradition – both mathematical and philosophical – in which he recognizes himself. The process used by Russell, in order to build mathematics on a new foundation, was to build concepts logically, starting from atomic elements and known relationships. For example, a logical construction as that of the “class” is that a sentence, which includes a fixed concept, is turned into a logically equivalent statement (example analyzed by Russell is “Scott” and “the author of Waverley”) which unlike the first, entails relations that include concepts. Thus, the primitive concept can be replaced and removed. The new method was named the “theory of types” and became the intellectual program of Russell and his successors. Among the method’s performances is solving logical and mathematical paradoxes. The importance of Russell’s logical investigations exceeded the reductionist program, stimulating the formalist program of philosophy andmethodology and the logical analysis of the language of science with a logical-mathematical apparatus. This program was definitively concluded, it seems, by Kurt Gödel’s results on the decidability problem in the formal axiomatic systems of P type, a problem closely linked to the question of “truth” and the two other meta-theoretical properties of P formal systems, namely “consistency” and “completeness”. Gödel’s Theorems do not affect the now established legitimacy of a meta-theoretical system concerning the formalizing processes, but prove that the hilbertian original program to reduce mathematics to logic is old and the very meaning of the whole process of realizing it must be analyzed again. Considering that in a formal P system, the decision process is demonstrability of true statements, Gödel’s research findings prove the consubstantial relationship of the four meta-theoretical properties Truth-Consistency-Completeness-Demonstrability.
3. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Marin Aiftincă

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On the assumption that, among forms of human communication, artistic communication is one of the most rich and complex, this paper mainly analyses two major aspects. The first refers to the phenomenon of contemporary art characterized by its reflective, but also commercial, nature, by its questioning of the essence, the forms of expression and the purpose of art, which seeks its identity with respect to the requirements of our time. The second brings into focus another major issue: the current strained relations between contemporary artistic creation and the public, each with its own development and justifications that are not easy to reconcile. Finally, this study advocates the idea that, beyond any indulgence to "anti-aesthetic", post-historical artistic creation, the public claims that art should offer aesthetic satisfaction, for she seeks beauty in artistic creation, to the delight of contemplation and spiritual perfection.
4. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Marko Jurjako

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In this article I discuss and evaluate the selectivity problem as a problem put forward by Bermúdez (1997, 2000) against anti-intentionalist accounts of self-deception. I argue that the selectivity problem can be raised even against intentionalist accounts, which reveals the too demanding constraint that the problem puts on the adequacy of a psychological explanation of action. Finally I try to accommodate the intuitions that support the cogency of the selectivity problem using the resources from the framework provided by an anti-intentionalist account of self-deception.
5. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Mirela Fuš

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Among Singularists, it has been widely accepted that one can have singular thought by acquaintance, and that acquaintance encompasses the perceptual acquiring, memorizing and communicating of singular thoughts. I defend the possibility of having a singular thought via extending acquaintance to intermediaries other than just through written and spoken words. On my account, singular thought includes two types of representations, namely indexical-iconic representation and indexical-discursive representation. Also, it is determined by two constraints: (i) the acquaintance constraint: singular thought includes a causal-historicalrelation to the object; and (ii) the cognitive significance constraint: we have a cognitive capacity to deliberately encode an indexical-iconic representation into anindexical-discursive representation, which enables us to have a singular thought.
6. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Jimmy Alfonso Licon

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Sceptical theism is supposed, by a number of philosophers, to undercut the evidential basis for the evidential problem of evil. In this paper, I argue that even ifsceptical theism succeeds, its success comes with a hefty epistemic price: it threatens to undermine a good deal of what we supposedly know. Call this the problem of epistemic evil. Thus, sceptical theism has a costly philosophical price of admission. In light of this, it seems that the evidential problem of evil is harder to dislodge than it might have initially seemed; i.e. with sceptical theism, we trade the evidential problem of evil for the problem of epistemic evil.
7. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Ana Smokrović

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Chomsky and Foucault are closer to each other in their views than it is often assumed. This paper focuses on the “Chomsky-Foucault debate”, and in particular on the most philosophical topic discussed in the book, namely the question of whether there is a human nature. This paper argues that the contrast is more one of focus and stress than one of deep philosophical disagreement. This fact is of interest for the present day continental-analytic debate, given the importance of the two authors for the respective schools of thought. A constructive approach should look for bridges and enhance the dialogue of the two schools; Chomsky and Foucault are excellent authors in this regard, both as role models and as foci of inquiry.
8. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Peter Cholakov

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The function of rationality in A Theory of Justice (1971), which is of paramount importance for John Rawls’ (1921–2002) project, is often criticised as ambiguous.David Gauthier, for example, claims that Rawls develops principles for recipients who essentially share his intuitions of morality, without managing to prove theirvalidity. In Political Liberalism (1993), Justice as Fairness (2001) and other writings Rawls himself embarks upon the task to throw more light on this issue, making the Kantian distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’. I intend to demonstrate that in A Theory of Justice the formulation and the compliance with the principles of justice are based on the interaction between the rationality, represented in the idea of the good, and the sense of justice of individuals.
9. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Gabriela Tănăsescu

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The paper aims to indicate the complex genealogy of Spinoza's conception of the autonomy of philosophy and its political status. In essence, the study highlights the main directions of the history of thought – Western, Hebraic, Arabic and Greek – which inspired Spinoza in his approach to the great dramatic nature of the “separation” of philosophy from religion.

discussion

10. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2

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11. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Dimitri Ginev

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This paper differentiates between science’s intentional theoretical objects and purely idealized theoretical objects. One identifies the former by inquiring into thefunctions they fulfill in a dynamic system (say, the system of chemical reactions in a metabolic pathway), whereas the latter get introduced by means of mathematical idealizations. Regardless of the epistemological differences, the existence of both types of theoretical objects is projected upon possibilities that are to be appropriated in a research process. The paper addresses the potentiality-for-being of the intentional theoretical objects. Though the functions which such an object fulfills are throughout experimentally recognizable, its being never becomes transformed into an actually accomplished presence.

book reviews

12. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 2
Marţian Iovan

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13. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Editorial Board

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articles

14. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Christina Schneider

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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.
15. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
William S. Hamrick

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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.
16. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Tina Röck

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For centuries most ontological systems have been based on the presupposition that the paradigmatic type of being is the kind of being things like stones and houses have. But if one looks at the beginning of Philosophy, at the emergence of philosophic thought, this choice was not an obvious one. For the pre-Socratics and even for Plato and Aristotle it was not obvious that reality is composed out of static and distinct elements.In this paper I want to investigate the relationship between the static and the dynamic description of reality historically and systematically. I argue for the thesis thatstatic ontologies are ultimately based on an analysis of predication and that dynamic ontologies are mainly based on an empirical or phenomenological investigation of singular and concrete reality.
17. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Nenad Miščević

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Non-primary qualities are ubiquitous and humanly quite important. This paper briefly argues that they can be best understood on a dispositional model (or, that they are what is nowadays called in literature “responsedependent”), and offers a particular version of the model, the response-intentionalist one. It then discusses combinations of non-primary qualities and argues that there is a layered structure of iterated response-dependence, underlying aesthetic and other interesting properties such as meaningfulness.
18. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Ştefan Afloroaei

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The question I intend to answer is whether one can speak of a tacit metaphysics, not expressed conceptually, but nevertheless common. If the answer is positive and providing that it is specific to day-to-day life, such metaphysics may be called everyday metaphysics. To this end, I review the meaning of everyday life and its ambivalent character. Next, I present several milestones in the debate on the subject, from authors who have focused on a kind of usual, common or ‘natural’ metaphysics. Lastly, I formulate the idea under consideration, namely that the everyday life implies or underlies a certain metaphysics. I note that it is an implicit metaphysics – not expressed formally – and rather free. Embraced in experience with a certain degree of freedom, it is recognisable by means of certain representations active in our mind, by the manner of speaking or of understanding and by the common forms of expression. Its vibrancy, concrete and relaxedcharacter makes it highly evocative of the mental life of an era. It ensures a truly essential difference in our everyday mode of being.
19. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Gheorghe Vlăduțescu

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This investigation discusses the relation between ontology and metaphysics. They are different, but how different? While metaphysics is transcendental and has as purpose the justification of being as existence, it establishes it, too. Metaphysics is speculation (as theoretical approach in the strong meaning of the term) on being. This relation can only emphasize the aporetic quality of metaphysics.
20. Balkan Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Claudiu Baciu

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The following text presents the concept of knowledge that founds the Hegelian Phenomenology of Mind, as this concept is developed mainly in the “Introduction.” Starting with Hegel’s critique of the Kantian epistemological presuppositions, it shows that in Hegel’s method the terms of “object” and “subject” of knowledge receive a new signification. Due to this signification, Hegelian “knowledge” is no longer a knowledge of outer reality, but a dynamic knowledge of knowledge itself, i.e. a knowledge of the different forms and phenomena of knowledge that emerge dialectically in human history.