The thesis pursued in this dissertation raises and examines a specific philosophical problem, e... more The thesis pursued in this dissertation raises and examines a specific philosophical problem, essential to the study of the ontology of the social world. This problem has its origin in the question: 'how is is possible that the social world is constituted as a unified totality or complex whole?'. It is argued that the defining feature of a viable theory of social holism is that it is able to posit this metaphysical kind of problem. In this sense, the holist discourse that provides the terms for expressing the meaningfulness of this problem or the conditions of its legitimacy is, equivalently, an attempt to answer it, giving the form of the social world as an ontological domain. Thus this thesis discloses what is here proposed as the formal ontology of social reality and investigates the cluster of issues relevant to this. The study consists of three related stages (Parts). Part One spells out the formal mode of ontological inquiring and lays down the metatheoretical validi...
Taking its cue from Ian C. Jarvie’s views on the philosophy of film and his approach to the ontol... more Taking its cue from Ian C. Jarvie’s views on the philosophy of film and his approach to the ontology of films as Popperian “World Three” objects, this chapter elaborates on the latter by highlighting similar theses by Bernard Bolzano and Gottlob Frege in order to safeguard an alternative route toward the possibility of (some kinds of) film being vehicles of philosophy.
The International Symposium: Platonism and Forms of Intelligence / Le platonisme et les formes de... more The International Symposium: Platonism and Forms of Intelligence / Le platonisme et les formes de l'intelligence / Platonismus und Formen der Intelligenz / Il pensiero platonico e le forme dell'intelligenza / Platonizam i oblici inteligencije under the official patronage of the President of the Republic of Croatia, Stjepan Mesiae and Hvar, Croatia.
This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the questi... more This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the question whether innate conceptual repertoires, if admitted as plausible, should matter to transhumanist debates. The latter should turn their attention to analyzing the radically enhanced cognitive capacities with which such future human beings will be endowed. The answers eventually given to this puzzle will inevitably challenge received views on education, especially the kind of education appropriate for such future minds.
The chapter discusses the three intertwined notions central to Mario Bunge’s thought, emergence, ... more The chapter discusses the three intertwined notions central to Mario Bunge’s thought, emergence, systems and mechanism. It draws lines that contact or diverge from his counterparts and wider uses in recent philosophical work. Bunge’s status as an early pioneer of the systemic approach, emergence and mechanismic explanation means that his work may be fruitfully supplemented or complemented by these recent advances. The chapter then moves on to discuss Bunge’s philosophy of technology as the additional central theme in his overall opus. His insistence on technology being inherently philosophical, as technophilosophy, and his related thesis, technoethics, are further analyzed and expanded upon. It is proposed that along with neurons, at the physical level, and what Bunge has dubbed “psychons” at the level of the mental, there may be a notion of “technon” at the emerging level of modern technological convergence.
During the last couple of decades, a number of public policy and university initiatives triggered... more During the last couple of decades, a number of public policy and university initiatives triggered a drastic increase in neuroscientific research. The advances in neuroscience increased public awareness and gave rise to a “brain turn” for many disciplines in the humanities. In turn, traditional thematic areas are being approached through a more brain-oriented perspective, while new collaborations across traditionally non-neighbouring disciplines are being established. For instance, the debate about knowledge acquisition has very recently taken a new form and researchers in fields as diverse as Cognitive Science, Neuroscience and Education have started to show interest in combining their efforts with an end of promoting a systematic account of improving current learning and educational practices. However, researches in brain sciences and education are still only tenuously interconnected. This special issue brings together papers highlighting the prospects and challenges of recent adva...
This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the questi... more This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the question whether innate conceptual repertoires, if admitted as plausible, should matter to transhumanist debates. The latter should turn their attention to analyzing the radically enhanced cognitive capacities with which such future human beings will be endowed. The answers eventually given to this puzzle will inevitably challenge received views on education, especially the kind of education appropriate for such future minds.
Aristotle and Kant are usually considered to be the representatives of antiquity and modernity, r... more Aristotle and Kant are usually considered to be the representatives of antiquity and modernity, respectively, and especially of the two contrasting views on the human good and morality in the Western tradition. The difficulty is that there does not seem to be any way of reconciling Kantian ethics which is dominantly formal with the Aristotelian doctrine that complete happiness involves contemplation of what is eternal and non-contingent whereas the domain of ethics and politics is the science of the contingent. It is possible, however, to advance towards a rapprochement of the two philosophers by looking at two areas, that of the role of contemplation and that of the connection between ethics and politics. This paper is divided into two parts focusing on these two areas and argues for a Kantian extension of what the Aristotelian contemplating person can accomplish in ethics and politics.
Is a Health Care Ethics possible? Against sceptical and relativist doubts Kantian deontology may ... more Is a Health Care Ethics possible? Against sceptical and relativist doubts Kantian deontology may advance a challenging alternative affirming the possibility of such an ethics on the condition that deontology be adopted as a total programme or complete vision. Kantian deontology is enlisted to move us from an ethics of two-person informal care to one of institutions. It justifies this affirmative answer by occupying a commanding meta-ethical stand. Such a total programme comprises, on the one hand, a dual-aspect strategy incorporating the macro- (institutional) and micro- (person-to-person) levels while, on the other, it integrates consistently within moral epistemology a meta-ethics with lower-ground moral theories. The article describes the issues to be dealt with and the problems which have to be solved on the way to a unifying theory of that kind (Sections I-III) and indicates elements of Kantian moral philosophy which may serve as building blocks (Section IV). Among these are not only Kant's ideas concerning the moral acting of persons and his ideas concerning civil society and state but also his ideas concerning morality, schematism and religion.
This article addresses the question as to whether it is logically possible to fashion a discourse... more This article addresses the question as to whether it is logically possible to fashion a discourse exclusively for the natural environment. Could such a discourse emerge without colonization by other social spheres acting as proxy? The prospects appear to be rather bleak, for even in the case of two apparently non-human-directed or non-committal discourses, that of extensionist ethics and new sophisticated management (of environmental crises), the latent social-constructionism built into both renders them monistic discourses hegemonically mapping the territories of what they refer to. It becomes increasingly difficult to escape the human epistemic locatedness anti-anthropocentric critics demand. Despite this, such an exercise offers us the benefit of being mindful of what the crisis of social-scientific discourses amounts to as well as what to expect of discourse analysis as such. Furthermore, the prospects of the two discourses examined are being mapped onto two modified models draw...
Res-Publica-Revista Lusófona de Ciência Política …, 2009
Resumo Este artigo analisa a medida em que algumas discussões recentes na teoria política e socia... more Resumo Este artigo analisa a medida em que algumas discussões recentes na teoria política e social têm sido bem sucedidas em fornecer discursos que legitimam a ruptura de fronteiras nacionais/estatais (internas e externas). Isto está claramente evidente na Europa de hoje, ...
Love as the foundation of moral education and …, 1998
CHAPTER IV THE ASYMMETRY OF HOPE: REFLECTIONS ON A HUMAN PREDICAMENT BYRON KALDIS To Hope, that k... more CHAPTER IV THE ASYMMETRY OF HOPE: REFLECTIONS ON A HUMAN PREDICAMENT BYRON KALDIS To Hope, that kindles love on earth aright Thou, for thyself and others, strength supply. Dante, Paradiso, Canto xxv, II. 44-451 THE PSYCHOLOGISM OF HOPE Hope, ...
The thesis pursued in this dissertation raises and examines a specific philosophical problem, e... more The thesis pursued in this dissertation raises and examines a specific philosophical problem, essential to the study of the ontology of the social world. This problem has its origin in the question: 'how is is possible that the social world is constituted as a unified totality or complex whole?'. It is argued that the defining feature of a viable theory of social holism is that it is able to posit this metaphysical kind of problem. In this sense, the holist discourse that provides the terms for expressing the meaningfulness of this problem or the conditions of its legitimacy is, equivalently, an attempt to answer it, giving the form of the social world as an ontological domain. Thus this thesis discloses what is here proposed as the formal ontology of social reality and investigates the cluster of issues relevant to this. The study consists of three related stages (Parts). Part One spells out the formal mode of ontological inquiring and lays down the metatheoretical validi...
Taking its cue from Ian C. Jarvie’s views on the philosophy of film and his approach to the ontol... more Taking its cue from Ian C. Jarvie’s views on the philosophy of film and his approach to the ontology of films as Popperian “World Three” objects, this chapter elaborates on the latter by highlighting similar theses by Bernard Bolzano and Gottlob Frege in order to safeguard an alternative route toward the possibility of (some kinds of) film being vehicles of philosophy.
The International Symposium: Platonism and Forms of Intelligence / Le platonisme et les formes de... more The International Symposium: Platonism and Forms of Intelligence / Le platonisme et les formes de l'intelligence / Platonismus und Formen der Intelligenz / Il pensiero platonico e le forme dell'intelligenza / Platonizam i oblici inteligencije under the official patronage of the President of the Republic of Croatia, Stjepan Mesiae and Hvar, Croatia.
This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the questi... more This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the question whether innate conceptual repertoires, if admitted as plausible, should matter to transhumanist debates. The latter should turn their attention to analyzing the radically enhanced cognitive capacities with which such future human beings will be endowed. The answers eventually given to this puzzle will inevitably challenge received views on education, especially the kind of education appropriate for such future minds.
The chapter discusses the three intertwined notions central to Mario Bunge’s thought, emergence, ... more The chapter discusses the three intertwined notions central to Mario Bunge’s thought, emergence, systems and mechanism. It draws lines that contact or diverge from his counterparts and wider uses in recent philosophical work. Bunge’s status as an early pioneer of the systemic approach, emergence and mechanismic explanation means that his work may be fruitfully supplemented or complemented by these recent advances. The chapter then moves on to discuss Bunge’s philosophy of technology as the additional central theme in his overall opus. His insistence on technology being inherently philosophical, as technophilosophy, and his related thesis, technoethics, are further analyzed and expanded upon. It is proposed that along with neurons, at the physical level, and what Bunge has dubbed “psychons” at the level of the mental, there may be a notion of “technon” at the emerging level of modern technological convergence.
During the last couple of decades, a number of public policy and university initiatives triggered... more During the last couple of decades, a number of public policy and university initiatives triggered a drastic increase in neuroscientific research. The advances in neuroscience increased public awareness and gave rise to a “brain turn” for many disciplines in the humanities. In turn, traditional thematic areas are being approached through a more brain-oriented perspective, while new collaborations across traditionally non-neighbouring disciplines are being established. For instance, the debate about knowledge acquisition has very recently taken a new form and researchers in fields as diverse as Cognitive Science, Neuroscience and Education have started to show interest in combining their efforts with an end of promoting a systematic account of improving current learning and educational practices. However, researches in brain sciences and education are still only tenuously interconnected. This special issue brings together papers highlighting the prospects and challenges of recent adva...
This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the questi... more This paper programmatically posits, argues for the relevance of, and briefly addresses the question whether innate conceptual repertoires, if admitted as plausible, should matter to transhumanist debates. The latter should turn their attention to analyzing the radically enhanced cognitive capacities with which such future human beings will be endowed. The answers eventually given to this puzzle will inevitably challenge received views on education, especially the kind of education appropriate for such future minds.
Aristotle and Kant are usually considered to be the representatives of antiquity and modernity, r... more Aristotle and Kant are usually considered to be the representatives of antiquity and modernity, respectively, and especially of the two contrasting views on the human good and morality in the Western tradition. The difficulty is that there does not seem to be any way of reconciling Kantian ethics which is dominantly formal with the Aristotelian doctrine that complete happiness involves contemplation of what is eternal and non-contingent whereas the domain of ethics and politics is the science of the contingent. It is possible, however, to advance towards a rapprochement of the two philosophers by looking at two areas, that of the role of contemplation and that of the connection between ethics and politics. This paper is divided into two parts focusing on these two areas and argues for a Kantian extension of what the Aristotelian contemplating person can accomplish in ethics and politics.
Is a Health Care Ethics possible? Against sceptical and relativist doubts Kantian deontology may ... more Is a Health Care Ethics possible? Against sceptical and relativist doubts Kantian deontology may advance a challenging alternative affirming the possibility of such an ethics on the condition that deontology be adopted as a total programme or complete vision. Kantian deontology is enlisted to move us from an ethics of two-person informal care to one of institutions. It justifies this affirmative answer by occupying a commanding meta-ethical stand. Such a total programme comprises, on the one hand, a dual-aspect strategy incorporating the macro- (institutional) and micro- (person-to-person) levels while, on the other, it integrates consistently within moral epistemology a meta-ethics with lower-ground moral theories. The article describes the issues to be dealt with and the problems which have to be solved on the way to a unifying theory of that kind (Sections I-III) and indicates elements of Kantian moral philosophy which may serve as building blocks (Section IV). Among these are not only Kant's ideas concerning the moral acting of persons and his ideas concerning civil society and state but also his ideas concerning morality, schematism and religion.
This article addresses the question as to whether it is logically possible to fashion a discourse... more This article addresses the question as to whether it is logically possible to fashion a discourse exclusively for the natural environment. Could such a discourse emerge without colonization by other social spheres acting as proxy? The prospects appear to be rather bleak, for even in the case of two apparently non-human-directed or non-committal discourses, that of extensionist ethics and new sophisticated management (of environmental crises), the latent social-constructionism built into both renders them monistic discourses hegemonically mapping the territories of what they refer to. It becomes increasingly difficult to escape the human epistemic locatedness anti-anthropocentric critics demand. Despite this, such an exercise offers us the benefit of being mindful of what the crisis of social-scientific discourses amounts to as well as what to expect of discourse analysis as such. Furthermore, the prospects of the two discourses examined are being mapped onto two modified models draw...
Res-Publica-Revista Lusófona de Ciência Política …, 2009
Resumo Este artigo analisa a medida em que algumas discussões recentes na teoria política e socia... more Resumo Este artigo analisa a medida em que algumas discussões recentes na teoria política e social têm sido bem sucedidas em fornecer discursos que legitimam a ruptura de fronteiras nacionais/estatais (internas e externas). Isto está claramente evidente na Europa de hoje, ...
Love as the foundation of moral education and …, 1998
CHAPTER IV THE ASYMMETRY OF HOPE: REFLECTIONS ON A HUMAN PREDICAMENT BYRON KALDIS To Hope, that k... more CHAPTER IV THE ASYMMETRY OF HOPE: REFLECTIONS ON A HUMAN PREDICAMENT BYRON KALDIS To Hope, that kindles love on earth aright Thou, for thyself and others, strength supply. Dante, Paradiso, Canto xxv, II. 44-451 THE PSYCHOLOGISM OF HOPE Hope, ...
Uploads
Papers by Byron Kaldis