Abstracts
Anton Markoc
Title: The Cogency of the Levelling Down Objection
Abstract:
The most famous argument against telic egalitarianism and, indirectly, for
prioritarianism is the so-called Levelling Down Objection. It is usually assumed
that if this argument works and if there are no other equally strong objections to
prioritarianism or more plausible competing views to it, we should accept it. My
paper has two aims. First, I will show that the Levelling Down Objection,
contrary to all accusations, rest on a solid principle and poses a genuine
challenge to telic egalitarianism. Second, I will argue that the objection itself
threatens prioritarianism to a no lesser degree than egalitarianism.
Viktor Ilievski
Title: Unity of the theory of unity of virtue in Plato's Laches and Protagoras
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine the content of the Socratic theory of
unity of virtues which has been a subject of lively debate in the last few decades.
In striving to add to the debate, I will focus on the relevant passages of the two
main sources of the theory, namely Plato's dialogues Laches and Protagoras.
With this paper I attempt to establish, on the basis of textual evidence and
reasoning, that a) there is no incongruity between the Laches' and the
Protagoras' account of the status of virtues, and b) when Socrates in the
Protagoras poses the question whether virtue is a single whole having justice
etc., as his parts, or whether the latter are just synonyms referring to the same
thing, the answer he expects is that they are all reducible to knowledge and thus
simultaneously one and different.
Zsuzsanna Balogh
Title: Sense of self and the loss thereof
Abstract:
There are several notions of the self in philosophy but there is no consensus
about what exactly it means to be a self. The concept is characterised in a
variety of ways, including the uses of different terms, such as the core self
(Damasio, 2000); the embodied self (Gallagher, 2005, Gallagher and Zahavi
2008); the autobiographical self; the extended self (Damasio, 2000); the
narrative self (Schechtman, 2011) and the social self (James, 1890) to name but
a few. Regardless of the metaphysical status of the self, our phenomenological
self-experience gives rise to a vivid sense of self accompanying experience and
action (Damasio 2000, Sartre 1957), which sense I take to be more fundamental
than any kind of self.
The analysis of this sense of self is the subject of my doctoral thesis, as in my
view, a study of the sense of self as opposed to what the self is, gives us much
finer-grained and more valuable insight into individuation and personal identity
than a metaphysical account may do. On the one hand, the phenomenological
characterisation of self-experience offers an account of the sense of self that
involves pre-reflective and reflective levels of first-person experience and
corresponding senses of the self (Zahavi, 2005), viz. the minimal sense of self
and the narrative one. The minimal sense of self individuates in a basic way in
my view, by providing the 'experiential boundaries' of the self. The narrative
sense of self differentiates on more elaborate levels.
On the other hand, empirically-informed characterisations of personality
disorders and psychopathologies often make reference to the senses of self in
their terminologies, thereby offering a way of connecting their insights to
phenomenology. One such reference involves the loss of one's sense of self. I
analyse what this amounts to in the case of schizophrenia in terms of
phenomenology and explain the ways in which patients' self-reports of this
aspect of the psychopathology may inform our understanding of the senses of
self. I also revise the characteristics of the minimal sense of self offered by
Nelson et al. (2009) from a philosophical standpoint.
Işık Sarıhan
Title:
Mary’s Ignorance of Intentional Objects: A Physicalism-Friendly
Representationalist Explanation for Why Having a Type of Experience is
Necessary to Fully Understand that Experience-Type.
Abstract:
Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument is an argument to the effect that
knowledge of phenomenal mental states cannot be acquired through what he
calls “physical information”. In his paper where he presents us the thought
experiment involving Mary the Color Scientist, he also presents us the simpler
case of Fred, who can see more colors than the ordinary person. He does this to
point to our intuition that one cannot have the knowledge of a phenomenal state
type (such as experiencing a shade of red) without oneself undergoing that
state. For instance, colorblind people do not know what color experiences are
like. Like colorblind people, Mary in her black and white room doesn’t know what
color experiences are like, even though she has all the physical knowledge one
can acquire through linguistic media. This paper is an attempt to show how we
can give a philosophical account of this correct intuition in a way compatible with
physicalism. This will be done by using the resources of representationalism
about phenomenal states. I will not argue for the truth of representationalism, I
will just try to demonstrate that if representationalism is true, then we have a
simple account of the lack of phenomenal knowledge, an account which is
indifferent to the truth or falsity of physicalism.
George-Florin Calian
Title:
Is Plato a Platonist regarding Numbers?
Abstract:
This paper deals with the relation between numbers and forms in Plato’s
Parmenides, as an attempt to provide an answer to the question if numbers can
be forms for Plato. In the Republic, the realm of mathematics is separated from
the realm of forms. Why did Plato operate such a difference between the realm
of forms and that of mathematics, despite the fact that he did not operate such a
difference in other circumstances – on the contrary, he used mathematics as the
example par excellence to prove that forms are real? In Meno, mathematical
knowledge is treated undifferentiated from the knowledge of forms. Therefore,
does the difference argued for in the Republic imply that numbers are not forms?
And that numbers are intermediates between forms and things, as Aristotle
testifies? A possible answer could be given by the reading of the second
hypothesis from the second part of the Parmenides (142b-145a). I am discussing
its analytical argument suggesting that Plato conceived numbers as generated,
but not as forms, in order to avoid an infinite number of forms.
Alina Asavei
Title:
Re-thinking Disinterestedness: Aesthetic Disinterestedness and Political-Critical
Art
Abstract:
Political-critical art strives to arouse viewer’s awareness of the mechanism of
domination, turning her in a conscious agent. Thus we can talk more about an
active use of art, rather than a passive response to it. Is then possible to
preserve an instance of aesthetic disinterestedness in attending politically
concerned art? I will argue that we can shed a positive light on interestedness in
attending art in general (and political-critical art in particular), without radically
displacing
the
traditional,
old-fashioned
and
contested
aesthetic
disinterestedness. One of the most important (if not the only one) contemporary
attempts to find a middle ground between an interested and a disinterested
apprehending of politically-charged art is undertaken by Peggy Zeglin Brand but,
even though her endeavor is significant for contemporary aesthetics, it may still
be questioned (especially because of the difficulties resting in the core of her
argument – “the switch of attentions”). I argue that political art might be
aesthetically experienced if we re-think some traditional concepts (like
“disinterestedness”). Moreover, political-critical art’s appropriate attendance
involves a disinterested interest and purpose but traditional aesthetic theories of
disinterestedness, with their emphasis on disinterested perception and attention
cannot accommodate them precisely because for these theories the
“disinterested purpose” is oxymoronic. I argue that political art’s theory could
(to some extent) better accommodate the theory of disinterestedness as
envisaged by Lord Shaftsbury, its author, than the more contemporary theories
(like Stolnitz’s in the 20th century).