Team
Daniela Vacek (née Glavaničová) is the project's principal investigator. She is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, public research institution, and at Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. She focuses on Transparent intensional logic (TIL), analytic aesthetics, responsibility, deontic logic and (ethics and law of) artificial intelligence. In 2018, she was a visiting postgraduate student at the University of York, UK. She defended her dissertation in 2020. In 2021, she received an award for young researchers from Slovak Academy of Sciences. She was visiting the University College London/University of Oxford based ERC project Roots of Responsibility during the second term of 2021/2022. She has published papers in leading journals such as Analysis, Erkenntnis, British Journal of Aesthetics, Science and Engineering Ethics, Logic and Logical Philosophy, Estetika, among others. In the project, she focuses on the application of Tichý's ontology in philosophy of fiction and on the semantics of names in religious discourse.
Marie Duží is a project member and a full professor of computer science at the VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. She is one of the leading figures in TIL. She graduated in mathematics and worked in various software companies in then Czechoslovakia. After the revolution, she became an assistant professor at the Charles University of Prague. In 2010, she published (with Bjørn Jespersen and Pavel Materna) the book Procedural Semantics for Hyperintensional Logic; Foundations and Applications of Transparent Intensional Logic, Berlin: Springer. In this book, the development of TIL theoretical foundations and their practical applications have been presented. Marie Duží has dealt with many applications of TIL in natural-language processing: propositional and notional attitudes, property modifiers, tenses and truth conditions, topic-focus articulation, presupposition, among others. She also applied TIL in the analysis and design of question-answering systems over large corpora of natural language texts and in multi-agent systems. Another area under her scrutiny was the analysis of St. Anselm's ontological arguments, particularly that of Proslogion III, which was first analysed by Pavel Tichý in his 1979 paper. She published more than a hundred papers indexed in WoS and Scopus and three books mostly on TIL, gave invited talks all over the world and participated in many significant conferences.
Jan Hrkút is a project member and an associate professor of philosophy at the Department philosophy at Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia. He studied philosophy (PhD), aesthetics and practical theology (Mgr equal to MA). In Spring 2015 he was a visiting scholar at University of Notre Dame (Nanovic Institute). His research interests cover analytic aesthetics and philosophy of religion. In these areas he published two books and several papers. The main topics of his research are identity and normativity of artworks, aesthetic representation, theodicy, and petitionary prayer. In his teaching he passionately uses thought experiments, Kahoot!, and Jeopardy Labs.
Miloš Kosterec is a project member based at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, public research institution, Slovakia. He has published in leading philosophical journals, such as Erkenntnis, Synthese, Journal of Philosophical Logic, and Analysis. He received several national awards for his work. In the project, he investigates the semantic theories of empty or fictional names within the framework of Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). He studies the formal properties of the system as well as its applications within a wide range of philosophical problems (the problem of logics for hyperintensional contexts, the problems of co-hyperintensionality, (intensional) essentialism, the problem of varying domains of universe, and so forth). He also focuses on the type assignment to the putative names of gods and the correct model of their hyperintensional counterparts within the framework of TIL. The investigation also consists in checking the strengths of TIL with respect to various metaphysical assumptions concerning the denotata (if any) of such terms.
Jozef Majerník is a project member based at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, public research institution, Slovakia. He holds an MA from Leiden University and a Ph.D. from the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. During his Ph.D. studies he also spent two semesters at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München. His dissertation is an interpretation of Nietzsche's Untimely Considerations as a single and coherent whole, with the focus on the central role of the articulation of the human soul in these essays for Nietzsche's thought and philosophical-political project. Some results of this study have been published in the 2020 edition of Nietzsche-Studien. The main subject of his research is the human soul, especially as understood by Plato and Nietzsche; another of his major interests are the possibilities of philosophic thinking of the divine. He is currently working on a study of the Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka's interpretation of Plato and of the influence of Plato on Patočka's own thought. More about his work can be found at https://jozefmajernik.wordpress.com/.
C. Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum is a project member based at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, public research institution, Slovakia, and at the University of Vienna. Her research interests relevant to the project are in the philosophy of logic & language, as well as metaphysics; outside the project, she is also interested in the philosophy of language & mind, and she has published in all three areas. She was educated at the Universities of Vienna and Oxford, has taught at Vienna since 2008 and held a research position previously at the SAS in 2019. In addition to her current membership in this project, she has been a Hertha-Firnberg fellow at Vienna since 2020, and from January to June 2023 an academic visitor at Oxford University.
Martin Vacek is a project member based at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, public research institution, Slovakia, where is the head of the Department of Analytic Philosophy, deputy director, and a member of the Scientific Board. He did his MA in Leeds and PhD in Slovakia. He was a visiting student in Australia in 2014 and 2015. In Autumn 2021, he was a visiting researcher at the University of Bristol. From April 2022, Vacek visits Oxford University. His main research interests focus on metaphysics, modality, and hyperintensionality. He has published two books and several research papers on these topics. He has delivered numerous talks across the globe. He is the Editor-if-Chief of the journal Organon F and he organises the Modal Metaphysics: Issues on the (Im)Possible conference. Check out his webpage for more: www.martinvacek.com
Dávid Kurák holds master's degree in philosophy and history of philosophy at Comenius University in Bratislava. During his studies he spent half a year as an exchange student at Cyprus University. He also occupied the first place of the 2021 nationwide competition of philosophical essays and published in the journal Filozofia.
William Kilborn is a project member based at the University of York, United Kingdom.
Bridger Landle is a project member based at the University of York, United Kingdom.