The main purpose of the research over the presence of Spengler’s famous book “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” in the Bulgarian intellectual area between the two world wars is to find explanation about the power and significance of the prophecy that the book contained – especially in the “Bulgarian case.” An accent is put on the interaction between Spengler’s ideas about the decline of the West, and the Eurasian movement whose manifesto carried the emblematic title “Back to the East.” The conclusion is that Spengler’s book played its most important role with regard to this vital question for Bulgarian national selfconsciousness– the definition of Bulgarian cultural identity.

Some general, programmatic points about informal logic are addressed. The informal approach to argument analysis faces serious foundational problems which have been recognized by its practitioners – but informal logic has yet to come together as a clearly defined discipline. Another problem is the dilemma of the dialectician (Sextus Empiricus): informal logic is either trivial or powerless on its own (field expertise is needed). According to Johnson and Blair the central notion in theory of argument is cogency which replaces soundness. An argument is cogent if and only if (i) its premises are rationally acceptable, (ii) its premises are relevant to its conclusion and (iii) its premises provide sufficient reason to accept the conclusion. I propose to understand cogency as a broader notion that includes deductively valid inferences. The criteria of cogency are simply the basic ideals of scientific methodology which requires a respect for available evidence and “reasonable” inference, an awareness of alternatives and a willingness to modify or reject those beliefs that fail to conform to the evidence. Informal logic in the sense of elementary scientific methodology is concerned with proper reasoning and not with proper dialogue. Informal logic involves non-trivial argumentativeskills and abilities applied to the subject area and accessible to every normally intelligent and educated person.

The focus of the paper is the conditions under which an agent can be justifiably held responsible or liable for the harmful consequences of his or her actions. Kant has famously argued that as long as the agent fulfills his or her moral duty, he or she cannot be blamed for any potential harm that might result from his or her action, no matter how foreseeable these may (have) be(en). I call this the Duty-Absolves-Thesis or DA. I begin by stating the thesis in a more precise form and then go on to assess, one by one, several possible justifications for it: that (i) it wasn’t the view Kant himself actually held or was committed to; (ii) there is nothing strange about the DA, either theoretically or intuitively; (iii) the DA is more plausible as an account of legal (either criminal or tort) liability; (iv) the DA becomesperfectly plausible when conceived as a thesis about what insulates the agent from either remedial moral responsibility or the demands of compensatory justice; (v) the rationale for the DA is to protect our moral assessment of agents and their actions from the threat of moral luck. I show, using the famous Inquiring Murderer example, all these (and some other) justificatory attempts unsuccessful. I conclude that besides being counter-intuitive, the DA-thesis also lacksfirm theoretical grounding and should therefore be rejected as (part of) an account of outcome moral responsibility.

The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, four types of meaning theories are presented (namely, formal or truth-conditional theories, use theories, structuralism and the cognitivist and conceptualist approaches) with respect to how crucial they consider the notion of truth to be in the explication of meaning. In the second part, Conceptual Semantics, as the theory that understands the inquiry into meaning as an investigation of our conceptual structure, and doesn't use truth as a key notion, is advocated as a very promising approach. In the final part of the paper, a construal of truth as a matter of multiple fit is proposed as onethat both sits well with the framework of Conceptual Semantics and also sheds some light on the ways in which our cognitive system operates with the notion of truth.

The paper confronts the issue of single jurisprudence facing a value (-system) pluralism, the one often arising nowadays. Starting from the Raz – B. Williams debate, it outlines a proposal close to Raz’s but ontologically less demanding.

The study of a pragmatic dimension of semiotics appears only late in the history of this discipline. “Pragmatics” seems the last one called into the dispute of signs. The following study focusses on semiotics and the theory of action, stressing the distinction between “pragmatism” and “practical” matters within this philosophical discipline. The theory of “speech acts” is investigated and related to the new perspectives opened in the semiotics in order to highlight furtheravenues for research.

Jean Luc-Marion’s assertion that Heidegger has not sufficiently addressed the notion of gratitude and the Call is incorrect. Based on Heidegger’s discussion in What is Called Thinking? of thankfulness and its relation to thinking, I argue that Heidegger indeed articulates a place for gratitude as the proper situation, the proper attitude of phenomenology. While I make an apology for Heidegger, I also note, however, that Husserl’s own discussions require more authentic reappraisal within the context of Heidegger’s work, thereby reinforcing the notion that gratitude has something to say in terms of the way phenomenology getsbuilt up over time, both in form and content.

In this essay, I home in on the difficulties with group-to-individual (G2i) inferences in neuroscience and how they impact the legal system. I briefly outline how cognitive shortcutting can distort legal decisions, and then turn my attention to G2i inferences, with a special focus on issues of intellectual disability and brain damage. I argue that judges and juries are not situated to appreciate the nuances in brain data and that they are required to make clinical decisions without clinical training. As a result, they effectively ignore those responsibilities and simply decide cases in virtue of what they already believe to be true. How judges actually make decisions in highstakes criminal cases is troubling, but they are also hamstrung in a variety of ways.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the rationale behind the use of data from neuroscience, particularly neuroimaging, in psychiatric legal expert procedures and their interference with the mind-brain problem.The critical argument is that the employment of mental health evaluation of the defendants and/or witnesses as collected with clinical assessment methods in court proceedings should not be considered irrespective to the data from neuroscience. Essentially, neuroscience methods belong to the domain of nomothetic (natural explanatory) knowledge, whereas clinical evaluation methods in psychiatry belong to the domain of intra- and inter-subjective narratives. There exists an explanatory gap between those two groups of disciplines which concerns the ability to translate and integrate data across diverse methodological and terminological systems. Furthermore, it depends largely on the implicit positions in the mind-brain debate and the brain-to-behavior connections, which reflect on the professional and legal reasoning in terms of prioritizing certain solutions or approaches over another in the expert judgements. There are described those tacit positions adopted in the mind-brain debate by different traditions in psychiatry, with special emphasis on reductive and non-reductive forms of physicalism.In conclusion, a cognitive pluralist stance is adopted which sets priority for the supervenience theory of mind.

In the following article we first present the growing trend of incorporating neuroscience into the law, and the growing acceptance of and trust in neuroscience’s mechanistic and reductionistic explanations of the human mind. We then present and discuss some studies that show how nudging peoples’ beliefs about matters related to human agency (such as free will, decision-making, or self-control) towards a more deterministic, mechanistic and/or reductionistic conception, exerts an influence on their very actions, mentality, and brain processes. We suggest that the neuroscientific view of the human mind exerts an influence on the very cognitive phenomena neuroscience falsely believes to be studying objectively. This holds especially when we consider the systematic integration of neuroscience into the public domain, such as the law. For, such an integration acts as a reinforcement of the public’s and legal decision-makers’ endorsement of and trust in neuroscience’s view of human nature that further changes how people think and act. Such looping effects of neurolaw are probably inevitable. Accordingly, we should be aware of the scope of neuroscientific explanations and be careful not to overstate neuroscientific evidence and findings in legal contexts.

Advancements in neuroscience cast new light on the functioning of the human mind. This is especially important within the context of criminal law, wherein consciousness plays a crucial role in determining criminal responsibility. Yet, there are some caveats in the direct application of these new findings, most of which are related to the specific conceptual framework of law based upon commonsense knowledge and (sometimes) outdated psychology. This framework has also produced different doctrines of interpretation in the systems of common and civil law. Moreover, the goals of the law are to some extent different from scientific research on the brain. The aim of this study is to assess to what extent and under what interpretation scientific knowledge concerning consciousness might be useful for legal purposes, especially for the criminal law. Our assessment is that most of the current concepts of criminal law are directly related to outdated psychological and neuroscientific theories, and that the content of those concepts should be updated according to the newest scientific findings while remaining in accordance with the primary functions of criminal law.

The Retributivist approach to punishment attempts to address the challenges posed by utilitarian conception that punitive actions should strictly be associated with a costeffective means to certain independently identifiable goods at the expense of justice. Justice proffers how the guilty deserve to be punished and no moral consideration relevant to punishment outweighs an offender’s criminal desert. However, this just desert provokes difficulty in discerning proportionality between the moral gravity of each offence and the specific penalties attached. This consequently degenerates to another form of ‘lex talionis’ (revenge) in punitive justice.

Neurolaw is the emerging research field and practice of applying neuroscientific knowledge to legal standards and proceedings. This intersection of neuroscience and law has put up some serious claims, the most significant of which is the overall transformation of the legal system as we know it. The claim has met with strong opposition from scholars of law, such as Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson (2011), who argue that neurolaw (and neuroscience more generally) is conceptually wrong and thus perceive most of it as “nonsense” (Patterson, 2003). I expose a flaw in Pardo and Patterson’s arguments by means of confirmation theory. My main point is that Pardo and Patterson use implicit hypothetico-deductivism in their attack on neurolaw, and that we have good reasons to doubt the employment of such a model, because it faces serious theoretical problems. I then demonstrate how the alleged problems associated with neurolaw disappear if we use a quantitative probabilistic account of confirmation. I also explain why it provides a better account for the way the legal system actually works.

This paper seeks to argue that advances in the study of freewill and responsibility are directly relevant to jurisprudence. Following Daniel Dennett attempts to discredit the existence of freewill with the help of experiments can be checked by arguing that freedom should be understood as something that has evolved over time rather than being a pre-existent feature of our species. The major function served by freedom is to ensure responsibility for actions. This understanding of freedom as something that evolved to enhance responsibility suggests that freedom can be developed further. This can be understood as enhancing the ability to follow social norms by overcoming factors that limit responsibility. Jurisprudence has to take into account the ability to follow norms as a variable, even within the category of adults, and treat violations accordingly. Further, efforts to enhance the capacity to be free from habitual reactions need to be made part of education, and the state has to focus on this aspect without which the task of ensuring adherence to law of citizens will remain incomplete.

Alfred North Whitehead, although probably known best for his collaborative work with Bertrand Russell on the Principia Mathematica, also developed an original theory of learning and instruction which has much to offer for our times. His theory will be discussed in this paper. In order to do so, two criteria are first developed which in their combination give rise to five categories: radical behaviorism, cognitivism, and radical constructivism, with the intermediary categories of moderate behaviorism and moderate constructivism. A great number of educational researchers are ascribed to one of these five categories. After discussing the shortcomings of the three major philosophical proponents of these three major educational approaches (Hume, Kant, and Berkeley), the basic assumptions of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism are presented, and his assumptions concerning learning and teaching are discussed in view of it. Finally, it is shown that Whitehead’s organismic philosophy is able to offer a frame for integrating Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism, thereby solving a long standing scandal of education.

The paper explores the intricate interplay of two parallel developments: on the one hand, the Socratic turn in epistemology with its shifting focus on information retrieval, evidence-based reasoning, and the cognitive relevance of questions; and the advance of dynamic epistemic logic with its accent on knowledge-acquisition. Both are relevant for any realistic model of knowledge which pays due attention to learning. It is argued that the formal models are still wanting in some key respects, but the development of alternative and mutually complementing logical systems marks a promising trend for re-establishing the close links between epistemology and epistemic logic.

Whitehead believed that education must give us ideas that are usable in our actual lives. This line of thought is naturally provoked by the significant abundance of inert ideas that people pile up though education. The main reason for that, I claim, is the wrong focus of traditional education. It aims at producing individuals that would deliver high results on exams and tests. I take Whitehead’s claim the education must put emphasis on usable ideas as my starting point. I give a specific interpretation of useable ideas as abilities or functions. This provides a ground for connecting Whiteheadian thought to an already existing educational platform, offered by Nel Noddings. Noddings develops a cognitive theory of education which places cognitive structures (I assume a robust analogy between structures, functions, and abilities) in the center of educational concern. At the end of the paper, I estimate some consequences from adopting the terminology of functions for connecting between human and machine learning.

An undiscovered chapter in the history of architecture comes from the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia. Poetics of Architecture is the name given to the studioworkshop at the Georgian Technical University set up by the Georgian architect Shota Bostanashvili (1948–2013). From 1990 until his death he delivered insightful, playful and rather provocative lectures on architecture at this university. He preferred to call his architectural philosophy, critical discourse on architecture. Themes ranged from poetics to metapoetics of architecture. His philosophy of architecture is illustrated by some of his designs and executed projects which demonstrate a drift from existentialism to the philosophy of play. This study includes reference to his last building, a project whose demolition Bostanashvili witnessed before passing away. Based on the concept of the return of the sacred, this edifice was a sort of counter movement to technogenic architecture.

The purpose of the present study is that of examining what I call Robert Nozick’s “evolutionist turn” in ethics. More specifically, my aim is to provide an answer to the following question: what type of ethical theory does Robert Nozick sketch in his last book, Invariances? My first objective will be that of delineating the philosophical framework which will accommodate my future discussion, highlighting the distinction between the metaphysical and scientific approaches to ethics as proposed by Ken Binmore, but also Emanuel Socaciu's taxonomy of ethical theories, which stems from the particular way in which moral philosophers tackle the nature of ethical norms and moral motivation. I then set forth to show that, in the philosophical framework previously described, Robert Nozick's approach from Anarchy, State, and Utopia should be seen as a metaphysical one. The last and most important part of my study aims to show how Nozick's “evolutionist turn” took place and developed, from his perspective on rationality in The Nature of Rationality, to his ethical theory advanced in Invariances.

Processuality as refusal to “freeze,” “eternize,” and fragment reality is an attempt to deconstruct the I’s main mechanism, which is, as it was named in psychoanalysis, the compulsion of repetition. Through this deceit and illusion fabrication mechanism, the knowing I tries to “freeze”, to “fixate” and to fragment reality, through “catching” it in different images, formulae, dogmas, theories, ideologies, symbols and systems which become just as many “icons” or graven images of reality. This attempt of deconstruction is made from the perspective of a philosophy/vision of process, quite sporadic in the Western space, bringing arguments from the perspective of Henri Bergson and Emil Cioran’s intuitionist philosophy, as well as from that of the new scientific paradigm of quantum mechanics. All these philosophies could be seen as philosophies of process, demanding as it were an understanding of reality in terms of process, and not of result. This understanding of process takes place with the help of intuition, the only one which can grasp, beyond the static, rigid and artificial concepts or categories of the intellect, the movement, “verb” or interior pulsation of things within the framework of an integration process which reveals the unity, non-separability, intercorrelation and mutual interconnectivity of things.