Pro-Fil – An Internet Journal of Philosophy

Melanie G. Rosen – The Dreaming Mind: Understanding Consciousness During Sleep

Ayush Srivastava — 2024-12-23

Book Review

Shannon Vallor – The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

Jakub Peloušek — 2024-12-23

Book Review

Miserable, Meaningless Lives, and Unwelcome Deaths

Friderik Klampfer — 2024-12-23

David Benatar has been championing the cause of the overall badness of human lives since the turn of the century, most forcefully in his 2006 academic bestseller Better Never to Have Been. In his more recent book, The Human Predicament (OUP, 2017), he added some extra layers of dark paint to his sinister portrait of human destiny by arguing that our lives are not just miserable, but also insignificant, i.e. devoid of (cosmic) meaning and purpose. And yet, just like in Better Never to Have Been, he has once again shunned from taking what appears to be the next logical step from such revelation and concluding that a quick and painless death would be a relief and a blessing for every one of us. And yet, if human life is not only of poor quality but also mostly meaningless, how come death is not (more) welcome? If human life, or existence, is a problem and a burden, how come death, which ends it, is not a solution and a relief? In the paper, I take up this challenge and investigate whether Benatar’s particular blend of existential pessimism and cosmic nihilism can offer a plausible solution for it.

Social Freedom and The Politics of Emancipation

Ciprian Turčan — 2024-12-23

The study focuses on the theoretical-methodological analysis of the concept of social freedom as a special concept of individual autonomy in relation to the social conditions of its applicability. The aim of the analysis is to reveal and clarify the main political implications and normative claims that result from it for political theory. The thesis is formulated and argued in the article that the philosophical concept of social freedom in its applicability programmatically leads to a model of the politics of emancipation as a process of social transformation and political overcoming of recognized forms of unfreedom, historical forms of social oppression and domination. Social understanding of individual freedom becomes the normative basis of politics as a form of collective activity through which associated individuals govern the social conditions of their lives. By comparing the two basic forms of emancipatory politics – class politics and identity politics – the main problems of such an understanding of politics are discussed.

The Cognition of the World Soul in Plato’s Timaeus (Tim. 37a2-c5)

Jiří Stránský — 2024-12-23

This study focuses on explaining the problem of cognition of the world soul through a detailed analysis of passage 37a2–c5 from Plato’s Timaeus. It is divided into three sections, each dedicated to interpreting a different part of the passage. First, the necessary conditions for the soul to be able to cognize correctly are discussed. Second, it is demonstrated that the world soul’s cognition is essentially discursive. It is further argued that the soul makes two different types of declarations that form a single complex inner speech, allowing the soul to cognize both the corporeal and the intelligible. Finally, it is explained how specific cognitive acts arise from the soul’s inner speech.

The Universals of Human Nature

Tomáš Károly — 2024-12-23

With the arrival of biological evolutionism and behaviourism, the concept of human nature has become very unstable. The proposed method for detecting the features of human nature based on discomfort allows us to reconsider human nature and regard the species as ontological entities. The human species is represented by biosubstrates that instantiate essential universals. When society restricts fundamental behavioural expressions, individuals experience discomfort, which leads to rebellion. These expressions of discomfort lead us to recognise the basic universals of human nature. Discomfort arises from the disruption of the symmetrical relationship between nature and nurture. These propositions are also supported in fiction, as seen in Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Men Like Gods, Abduction and Childhood’s End.