Editorial: paradoxes

2017

Many thought Brexit would not win and Donald Trump could not be elected. An entire media apparatus that was increasingly certain came to produce confusion instead. We are now said to be in a “post truth” time, one where debate over truth has been replaced by a chaos of facts. The more information grows, the more knowledge seems to retreat, and the thought vacuum is increasingly filled with hate speech, hoaxes, and so-called fake news. Moreover, emotions seem to count more than facts. But to neatly separate “personal belief” from “objective fact” is hard if impossible work. As difficult as reality is to grasp, its consequences are hard to miss: suffering and death all over the world have a concreteness that escapes any rhetorical strategies, a reminder of the limits of the defeatism of simply claiming everything is fake or a simulation. The question of democracy in the technocratic era is also at stake. The rise of right-wing populism and related post-political consensus poses great challenges, as well as the polarization of the public debate that pushes people to the fringes, given that provoking is an effective way to maximize engagement. The aim of this issue is to introduce a critical perspective amidst this wave of anti-inclusionary and counter-informative forces, without falling in the equally undesirable opposites of cynical functionalism (truth is merely what works) or a new, patronizing positivism: truth as a matter of numbers, a sovereignty of data that ends up killing reality, by neutralizing its uncountable aspects. The responsibility of subjects, rather than the “objectivity” of facts, is today at stake: but what can Foucault’s “parrhesia” mean in the digital age certainly needs further reflection, as truth is at the same time impossible to achieve and to be totally said, and necessary to pursue: therefore to be “sign of what is lacking”, in De Certau’s words, is a paramount effort in the digital age of globalized accessibility.

2017

This book includes the abstracts of all the papers presented at the 12th Annual International Conference on Philosophy, 22-25 May 2017, organized by the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER). In total 46 papers were submitted by over 50 presenters, coming from 25 different countries (Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UAE, UK, and USA). The conference was organized into 19 sessions that included a variety of topic areas such as ethics, metaphysics, political philosophy, existentialism, and more. A full conference program can be found beginning on the next page. In accordance with ATINER’s Publication Policy, the papers presented during this conference will be considered for inclusion in one of ATINER’s many publications.

Philosophy Today 66:1, 2022

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https://www.appliedphil.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SAP_Annual-Conference-2020_Booklet-of-Abstracts-and-other-resources_final_1.pdf My question in this paper is: how are we to describe political conflicts? I advance what I call a “realist” theory of description, and contrast it with a “theoretical” alternative. The gist of the argument is that descriptions must be constrained by the practical question agents face in political circumstances, as they themselves actually understand it. Importantly, this has the consequence that, especially in contemporary democratic societies, it is often not possible to arrive at a unified description. That is, we should eschew the idea that we can describe the conflict as having one nature. All we can aspire is to describe the phenomenon as being in a certain way for some people and in a different way for others. Realist descriptions, I contend, show the limits of philosophy to impose order in politics.The structure of the paper is as follows. First, I present both alternative theories of description and defend the realist one. Second, I flesh out the concept of practical possibility that realist descriptions use. I argue that practical possibility is grounded on political agents’ practical questions: what it is possible for them given that they are trying to figure out what to do in a particular political context. Third, I show that from that understanding of practical possibility it follows that realist descriptions sometimes are disunified. Finally, I consider the political and philosophical implications of the argument.

2019

The digital police state: Fichte’s revenge on Hegel/ Slavoj Žižek ............................. Personal or impersonal knowledge? / Susan Haack …………………………...……. Heidegger never got beyond facticity/ Thomas Sheehan ……………...…….……… Our confrontation with tragedy/ Simon Critchley …….…..…………...…......…..… On the permissible use of force in a Kantian dignitarian moral and political setting, or, Seven Kantian Samurai/ Robert Hanna, Otto Paans………...…………… Self-, social-, or neural-determination/ Lawrence Cahoone……....................……… Important aspects of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy that could not be known through Husserl’s own publications during his lifetime/ Iso Kern………………………………………………………..………… Heidegger’s Socrates: “pure thinking” on method, truth, and learning/ James M. Magrini ………………………………………………...………………………..…….. Intuition as a capacity for a priori knowledge/ Henry W. Pickford…………….….. The absence of self: an existential phenomenological view of the Anatman experience/Rudolph Bauer…………………………………………………….…...…. Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and natural man: an existential inquiry into being and rights/ Anthony Asekhauno …………………………....…… Heidegger in Iran: a historical experience report/Bijan Abdolkarimi ………….…. The priority of literature to philosophy in Richard Rorty/Muhammad Asghari..… An argument in defense of voluntary euthanasia/Hossein Atrak………………...… Existential anxiety and time perception: an empirical examination of Heideggerian philosophical concepts towards clinical practice/ Alireza Farnam, Samira Zeynali, Mohammad Ali Nazari, Prinaz Vahid Vahdat, Masumeh Zamanlu ……………………………………………………………………….………………… Plantinga on divine foreknowledge and free will/Abdurrazzaq Hesamifar……..….. Language and philosophy: an analysis of the turn to "subject" in modern philosophy with historical linguistic approach/Ahmad Hosseini ….……….……… Divine foreknowledge and human moral responsibility (in defense of muslim philosophers’ approach)/Tavakkol Kuhi Giglou, Seyed Ebrahim Aghazadeh………………………………………………...…………………..……….. "Autrui" selon Lévinas et Blanchot/ Maryam Mesbahi, Mohammad Hossein Djavari, Allahshokr Assadollahi Tejaragh ………………………………...…….…… Language, gender and subjectivity from Judith Butler’s perspective/ Massoud Yaghoubi-Notash, Vahid Nejad Mohammad, Mahmoud Soufiani……….………...…

Book of abstractas , 2023

Articles Patrick BONDY, How to Understand and Solve the Lottery Paradox William A. BRANT, Levelling the Analysis of Knowledge via Methodological Scepticism Caroline Alexandra MATHIEU, The Confrontation Between Qualitative and Quantitative Researchers: A Different Article, a Daring Publication Peter MURPHY, Another Blow to Knowledge from Knowledge Anguel S. STEFANOV, Zeno’s Paradoxes Revisited Debate Jimmy Alfonso LICON, Dissecting the Suicide Machine Argument: Insights from the Hales – Licon Debate Clayton LITTLEJOHN, Are Epistemic Reasons Ever Reasons to Promote? Nicolás LO GUERCIO, Reply to Palmira

Postdigital Science and Education

Steve Fuller pleads the case for democratizing knowledge by, among other things, dismantling the expertise "protection racket" run by universities and professional bodies (what he calls academic "rentseeking"). He argues that "facts" have "always existed in the state of scare quotes, not only in politics but also in science," contending that this insight does not carry with it a lack of respect for knowledge and expertise, but simply the recognition that the plausibility of a claim can only be assessed within the rules of hypothesis-testing set within the context of the scientific institutions in which expertise is formed and exercised. Fuller describes the activities of academic disciplines, professional bodies, and accreditation agencies as different kinds of gatekeeping and boundary work, all of which exists for the purposes of keeping people out rather than letting them in. If universities genuinely want to produce and disseminate knowledge as a public good, then their main task is not to prime a select few to be admitted into their ranks, but to aid in the redistribution of epistemic wealth and social capital. The aim of the perpetual revolution for which the university classroom is a fitting scene, he suggests, would be the achievement of a common sense of humanity. But insurgencies begin with dissatisfaction. If the academy is serious about promoting the public good, then it should be able to make a convincing case about what academic knowledge can do for those who are sceptical. According to Fuller, the answer is "modal power," enhanced control over what is conceivable as true or false, possible, or impossible. This increased capacity to change rule rules of the game benefits all insofar as it can be further intensified when it is more widely available and disributed. While there are risks involved in the phenomenon of "ProtScience" that he envisions, there are also enormous gains to be made.

2017