Romulus Brâncoveanu, „Reason and Faith in God. The Case of The Public Use of Reason”, prezentată în cadrul Conferinţei Internaţionale “Living in Truth. A Conceptual Framework for a Wisdom Society and the European Construction”, 9 -12 sept., Cluj, 2008.
Abstract: This paper is about the relation between reason and faith from the perspective of the public use of reason. I will analyze the general relation between reason and faith in God, without having in view the Christian faith in God or any other religious belief in God. This means the recognition of the legitimacy of all traditions which claim having true faith in God, each in its way, paying attention just to the act of faith as such: Is the act of believing in God a rational act? If it is, what follows from this for the religious beliefs in God? Having to deal with skepticism and fundamentalism, it is reasonable to answer these questions on the basis of the public use of reason.
Romulus Brâncoveanu, „Orientation and reconciliation: Kant and Rawls on the limits of public reason”, The XXII World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul, Corea, 30 iulie – 5 august 2008.
Abstract: In this paper I present a comparative study on Kant’s and Rawls’s conceptions on the limits of the public use of reason. Even though Rawls emphasized more than once the difference between his conception on public use of reason and Kant’s, still both Kant and Rawls affirm the necessity of public use of reason in solving political problems but, in the same, time they claim that there are many cases in which reason is not applied in its public use. Although they define public reason in a different way, they oppose to it a concept that establishes limits in its application: private reason (Kant), nonpublic reason (Rawls) are the reasons which limit the free public use of reason. From this point of view, Kant and Rawls display similar theories and I submit that limiting the public exercise of reason and the acceptance of the existence of a private or nonpublic reason are motivated by the fact that public reason is always applied in concrete historical and cultural circumstances that limit its exercise: the Enlightenment ideals can only be realized in concrete circumstances of the historical development (Kant) and applying the principles of justice can only take place in societies that have their own cultural configuration (Rawls).
Romulus Brâncoveanu, „Maşinăria politică, societatea civilă şi critica culturii”, Sfera politicii, an XV, nr. 126 - 127, pp. 72 – 96.
Abstract: Taking as a starting point of the discussion the new proposal issued by intellectuals in Romania on setting-up a new centre right political party, this article analyses the role of the intellectuals during the transition in Romania. Unlike the period 1990 – 2000 when the intellectuals had rebuilt the civil society which then they handed out to be used by democratic political parties, in the last period of time intellectuals have been trying to invent new modes of participation in and influence on the political life. The civil society as it had been built by intellectuals was based on various forms of communication and mobilization which nowadays have become ineffective. Intellectuals are now trying to put at work the tradition of the Romanian critique of culture to build up a new ideological form to be seen as common for both liberal and conservatory forces.
Mircea Dumitru, „Conceivability and Possibility. Remarks on the Mind-Body Dualism in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind”, The XXII World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul, Corea, 30 iulie – 5 august 2008.
Abstract: Explaining phenomenal consciousness may be the scientific and philosophical problem of our time, the last frontier of knowledge. This is not at all an easy task. For any serious attempt to find a place for consciousness within the natural world has not been successful so far. There is a conceptual tension here which makes this business of coming up with a unified (monist) explanation of mind and physical world one of the most intriguing mystery. The most predominant image of the natural world is one of a physicalist type, whereas the mind, and especially the conscious subjective experience seem not to fit well within that physicalist explanation. That explanatory failure may require a dualist metaphysical scheme (probably of a neo-Cartesian type). It may seem very well that we are caught in a dilemma, for we either embrace a physicalist explanation, but then it seems that we leave out consciousness from the big picture we are looking for, or else we face the huge task of conceiving a dramatic change of our scientific outlook about the natural world, and we don’t quite see how that would be possible or desirable. But then, should any attempt to understand consciousness be a dead-end, something doomed to fail from a theoretical and explanatory point of view? In my paper I explore some philosophical underpinnings of contemporary dualism, focusing on the modal facets of the conceivability (neo-Cartesian) arguments. I will asses both the prospects and the moot points of this type of arguments.
Constantin Stoenescu, „Problema irealităţii timpului la McTaggart şi posibilitatea unei soluţii din partea epistemologiei empiriste”, Actele Societăţii Române de fenomenologie, Ed. M. Vlad, A. Sandu, Memoria filosofilor de la Platon la Derrida, Zeta Books, 2007.
Abstract: The memory, without being one of the central themes of the philosophy, has always been present in the field of philosophical research, starting from the Greeks up to the recent modern philosophy. My paper shows the variety of the possible approaches to memory and its hermeneutical generosity, being structured in order to interpret McTaggart’s conception on problems related to time.
Mircea Dumitru, “Reasons and Beliefs. A conceptual Analysis”, în Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideology (în curs de apariţie).
Mircea Dumitru, “Obiecte ficţionale şi descripţii libere”, în Revista Română de Filosofie Analitică, vol. 1, 1, iulie-decembrie 2007, pp. 38-52.
Mircea Dumitru, “Models and Rules. Representationalism vs. Inferentialism in the Foundations of the Contemporary Semantics”, în Les Actes du Colloque International "Systemes, Images, Languages", Bucharest, 14 et 15 Juin, 2006, editeurs Mihaela Pop, Sabin Totu, Viorel Vizureanu, Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, pp. 63-69.
Mircea Dumitru, “Incompletitudine. Aspecte modale”, în curs de apariţie în Revista de Filosofie, Academia Română.
Mircea Dumitru, “Quine's Animadversions Upon Second-Order Logic”, în curs de apariţie, Revue roumaine de philosophie, 52, nr. 1-2, 2008, pp. 39-63.
Mircea Dumitru, “Reference without Referents”, co-autor cu Fred Kroon (New Zealand), în Critica, Mexic (în curs de apariţie).
Constantin Stoenescu, “The Doxastic Ideal in Traditional Epistemology and the Project of an Epistemology of Religion”, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideology, în curs de apariţie.
Abstract: The standard definition of knowledge and the concept of objective knowledge, as they were described in the epistemology sprung from the Vienna Circle, are too restricted in comparison with our natural disposal to admit different beliefs as reliable. The main guilt for this state of arts in epistemology belongs to the so- called, in Wolterstorff’s terms, “doxastic ideal”, namely, the traditional picture of the ideally formed beliefs. If we succed to reject this ideal, then it become possible to extend the epistemological analysis over other sorts of beliefs, religious beliefs included.
Constantin Stoenescu, “Who has killed the logical positivism? The dossier of a self-statement: Karl R. Popper”, în Revista Română de Filosofie Analitică, vol. 1, nr. 1.
Abstract: In his book Unended Quest – An Intellectual Autobiography, Popper wrote that he has been ready to assume the responsibility for the so called death of logical positivism. Indeed, the relation between Popper and the Vienna Circle was a critical one, but we can ask and doubt, of course, if the criticism enlarged by Popper upon the positivistic topics was conclusive and mortal for them. This article casts a glance over the beginnings of the Vienna Circle and tries to settle the Popper’s role in the development of the debates inside the Circle, although Popper wasn’t in fact a member of it. If the Circle assimilated partly some of the Popper’s thoughts and insights and why Popper became an official opponent of the Circle are two matters which can be enlightened only through a closer examination of some topical connections, among them, two verificationistic issues, the problem of the demarcation criterion and the epistemic statute of basic propositions. After all, Popper neither replaced Wittgenstein as kind of influence upon the Circle, nor pulled down positivistic cornerstones.
Constantin Stoenescu, “Preliminaries to a causal theory of personal identity”, în Analele Universităţii din Craiova, nr. 19.
Abstract: Descartes’s argument favorable to metaphysical dualism is well-known. Starting from this point it is possible to put a question: what means to be a soul which has a body? This question leads us at least two answers: 1. the mental and physical events are parallel, but synchronically; 2. the mental events can be the cause of physical (cerebral) events and vice versa. After Descartes, different theories developed versions of these two answers and tried to explain them. If we add another question, namely, “What means to be a person which has a soul and a body?", then we have a new problem regarding personal identity. Locke has answered to this question in a Cartesian framework and opened the debate about bodily continuity against psychological continuity. In this study are deemed some arguments based on memory as a criterion of personal identity. But they fail. Is the rival criterion, based on bodily continuity, a better one? The author develops this line of reasoning and arrives at the conclusion that the appeal to causality in terms of neurophysiologic structure is supported by contemporary cognitive sciences.
Constantin Stoenescu, “Demarcaţie si criticabilitate”, în volumul Filosofia lui Karl Popper. Analize şi interpretări, editori D. Stoianovici, G, Flonta, C. Stoenescu, Editura Pelican, 2007.
Constantin Stoenescu, “Knowledge and communication Preliminaries to a consensual theory of truth” în volumul Language, Shaping, Communication, editor Gh. Ungureanu, Editura Universităţii din Piteşti, 2007.
Constantin Stoenescu, “Ideea de dependenţă funcţională şi cercetarea sistemelor complexe. Un caz exemplar: teoria Gestalt-istă”, comunicare, workshop organizat de CELFIS, 29 martie 2008.
Constantin Stoenescu, “Modul teandric şi raportul dintre religie şi cultură la Nichifor Crainic“, simpozion organizat de Patriathia Ortodoxă Română si Ministerul Culturii şi Cultelor, 19-20 iunie, 2008.
