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research articles

1. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Alex Blum

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We intend to show that Aristotle’s contention that future tense contingent statements are neither true nor false leads to inconsistency.
2. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Curran F. Douglass

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This paper confronts two questions: How is it possible to be free if causal determinism is true?; and relatedly, How then is the practice of holding persons responsible for their actions to be justified? On offer here is a compatibilist account of freedom, tying it to control; the relation – argued to be a necessary connection – is considered in some detail. Then the question of ability to ‘do otherwise’ is discussed, which has held a fascination for many in regard to free choice. Our ability to learn to choose rationally is key here, to becoming able to choose well and (hence) freely, freedom being understood realistically. A developed rationality is necessary for maximal free choice, and (as argued here) is also key to the justification of the practice of holding persons responsible for their actions – a practice which is both necessary (socially indispensable) and capable of being justified, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. There is nothing in determinism that threatens that justification, but rather enables it.
3. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Jude Edeh

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The challenge faced with the proliferation of various kinds of cognitivism is the difficulty of providing a straightforward characterization of moral realism and antirealism. In light of this tension, I identified a problem in Sayre-McCord's way of specifying the criteria of moral realism. Furthermore, I provided a framework that characterized the moral realism beyond the features of cognitivism. Finally, I argue that any successful characterization of moral realism must capture its ontology robustly in order to separate it from other realist-like positions that espouse the idea of truth-value and objectivity.
4. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Anna Kawalec

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Through a detailed case study of investigations on beauty, I demonstrate that a thoughtful consideration of empirical evidence can lead to the disclosure of the fundamental assumptions entrenched in a philosophical discipline. I present a contrastive examination of two empirically oriented approaches to art and beauty, namely, the anthropology of art and the anthropology of aesthetics. To capture these two different ways of interpreting the available evidence, I draw upon a debate between Alfred Gell and Jeremy Coote on the understanding of beauty and art in the Dinka community. Following Gell, I reveal that the Western-centric predilection of Coote, who uses traditional aesthetic categories, leads to his failure to grasp the functional and causal roles of beauty in the social relations of the Dinka. In more general terms, my study reveals the inherent limitations of aesthetics as developed in the Western tradition and its Kantian legacy. Being steadily driven towards purely abstract and speculative concepts, such as ‘work of art,’ Western aesthetics has lost the ability to account for the causal role of beauty in social relations. By contrasting this approach with Gell’s anthropological approach to art, I indicate those fundamental assumptions of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline that apparently confine it to a particular cultural context, compromising its ability to account for the universal human condition. As my study illustrates, this limitation could be overcome by a thoughtful and unprejudiced examination of empirical evidence.
5. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Rajesh Sampath

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This paper begins with several opening passages from the most esoteric writings in Hinduism’s vast, ancient religious-philosophical heritage, namely the Upanishads. The aim is to reveal certain essential connections between the primordial relation between self and sacrifice while exploring uncanny paradoxes of eternity and time, immortals and mortals and their secret linkages. The work is entirely philosophical in its intent and does not aspire to defend a faith-perspective. The horizon for this exposition follows the spirit of Ambedkar’s critique of Brahmanic superiority inherent in this entire system of religious thought: we must expose what lies in the heart of modern Hinduism to reveal its inner-contradictory entanglements, which are not exactly innocuous. A phenomenological-deconstructive inspiration motivates our own critical theoretical-philosophical conceptualizations beyond Ambedkar’s basic attestation to liberate India from Hinduism. The enterprise derives from a speculative appropriation and extension of the depths of (CC.) ‘Religion,’ the penultimate chapter of Hegel’s indomitable Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). The aim of the paper is to advance new philosophical theses in an unrelenting metaphysical critique of Hinduism– beyond Ambedkar’s writings–but also in a manner that is irreducible to the Western philosophical cosmos within which the nineteenth-century Hegel inhabited. The paper argues that the internal contradictions and aporias of mortality, immortality, self, bodyhood, time, and eternity in the Hindu Upanishads can be contrasted with Hegel’s speculative Western-Christological propositions to expose a greater metaphysical complexity that escapes Eastern and Western religious and philosophical traditions alike. Therefore, the paper falls within the scope of comparative philosophies of religion.
6. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Dmytro Shevchuk, Maksym Karpovets

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Performance theory is one of the methods that can explain dynamic and unpredictable social phenomena. The basics of our research are to be found in the artistic practices that destroyed previous classical patterns in art, while overcoming its boundaries. Accordingly, performance as a practical phenomenon has become the basis for a theoretical explanation of different political processes with carnival nature that influence and change social reality. This article proves that the Maidan in Kiev had a performative nature as well, which developped spontaneously due to its active involvement of the human body and the release of unconscious elements. It is claimed that the use of performative practices inside the Maidan allowed to overcome the totalitarian vertical logic of power, realizing democratic ideals and overcoming nihilism. Therefore, we suggest that performative theory can be applied to similar carnival political, social, and cultural phenomena, revealing their procedural and creative substance.

7. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1

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8. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1

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9. Symposion: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1

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