Rules serve many important functions in society. One such function is to codify, and make public and enforceable, a society's desired prescriptions and proscriptions. This codification means that rules come with predefined punishments administered by third parties. We argue that when we look at how third parties punish rule violations, we see that rules and their punishments often serve dual functions. They support and help to maintain cooperation as it is usually theorized, but they also facilitate the domination of marginalized (...) others. We begin by reviewing literature on rules and third-party punishment, arguing that a great deal of punishment research has neglected to consider the unique power of codified rules. We also argue that by focusing on codified rules, it becomes clear that the enforcement of such rules via third-party punishment is often used to exert control, punish retributively, and oppress outgroup members. By challenging idealized theory of rules as facilitators of social harmony, we highlight their role in satisfying personal punishment motives, and facilitating discrimination in a way that is uniquely justifiable to those who enforce them. (shrink)

Anchored in a decolonial framework, we understand race and gender as co-constructions of colonial modernity. Drawing on María Lugones’ concept of the colonial/modern gender system, we show that non-normative racialized trans subjects are pathologized through the imposition of a racial-colonial system of binary gender. We argue that coloniality, when adopted into the medical-psychiatric apparatus, takes shape as transnormativity: an individualized, medicalized form of trans identity which is rooted in a white, Western understanding of gender. Building on Jasbir Puar’s framework of (...) homonationalism and trans(homo)nationalism, and critiques of assimilationist queer politics through the lens of racial capitalism and anti-imperialism, we argue that trans(homo)nationalism is the absorption of transnormativity into the broader operations of state power, and see transnormativity as an extension of coloniality, operating as neo-colonialism. We argue that the political implications of trans(homo)nationalism include the sanctioning of violence and marginalization of non-normative and racialized trans subjects, and the continued imposition of a regime of racialized normative gendering. This assimilationist nationalist agenda is funneled through the for-profit medical-psychiatric apparatus wherein transition is co-opted into a curative, progress-based temporality. Looking to theorizations of trans temporality, we critique notions of linearity and futurity insofar as they bolster the deployment of racist, nationalist, imperialist state agendas. We articulate a vision for futurity grounded in a trans of color framework which resists assimilation into normativized gender, and call for truly radical futures for trans people which resist medicalized forms of trans identity which subscribe to the colonial, white, Western ideals of gender. (shrink)

If you have enjoyed any of the 7 (seven) other books I have published over 20 years, including literally thousands of pages of mathematical and topological concepts, Python programs and conceptually expanding papers, please consider buying this book for $20.00 on google play books. -/- Introduction: -/- Though the following pages provide extensive exposition and dedicated descriptions of the phenomenological velocity formulas, theory and mystery, I thought it appropriate to write this introduction as a partial explanation for what phenomenal velocity (...) is, and describe, briefly its theory and applications. Phenomenological Velocity is a method for solving for something that ought cancel out with itself, but there are specific implicit forms for this thing that, “ought cancel out with itself,” namely the Lorentz coefficient ought cancel out with itself when applied to the height of a cone derived from the difference between the circumferences of two circles applied to the Pythagorean Theorem, or, more generally, the height implied by application of the Pythagorean theorem to the difference between two arc lengths’ equaling a third arc length. These difference equations are essential to conceptualizing differentiation, and in these further chapters, I demonstrate that the phenomenological velocity is, indeed the conditional derivative in the chapter, “Conditional Integral of Phenomenological Velocity.” The phenomenological velocity algebraic solution to the velocity within the Lorentz coefficient when applied to the height function in such a way that it ought cancel out with itself is both constructive mathematics and it employs the concept of, “bracketing,” - first introduced by Edmund Husserl in his writings on the phenomenological reduction. Phenomenological Velocity’s algebraic solution from the difference between two arc lengths applied to the Pythagorean Theorem to solve for a theoretical height (which is a projected distance in space), employs bracketing, because we, “set aside,” the existence of an undefined solution, namely due to the presence of necessitated complex analytical forms by the architecture of the equation, or the “mathetecture,” of the algebraic form. -/- With respect to theology, the phenomenological velocity is somehow symbolic of the creation itself; symbolic of creation due to the fact that we find the canceling out of the Lorentz coefficient as, “impotent,” non-existent or non-effecting to the mathetecture of the height function. However, via the modus-ponens work around to phenomenological velocity, which in itself does not require the complex field, but embeds implied complex field solutions to the equation while maintaining logical consistency, we find existence from non-existence. This is directly linguistically applicable to the concept of the big-bang, the resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah, and opens analogies for us to draw relationships between the, “fall,” of Adam and Eve as the generation of error, or the introduction of paradox, as we see the phallus representing paradox topologically. -/- The phenomenological velocity is a gestalt concept, relevant to cosmology, because we find that it is the perfect language-form for discussing dark matter. It does, however, require the reader to re-conceive or re-frame rather, some of the fundamental aspects of assumed physical reality like time, experience, solidity of dark matter, etc. We find the hidden dimension of phenomenological velocity to have been an overlooked aspect of mathematical physics by the researchers of Bell’s theorem and undoubtedly a host of other theorems. Thus, raising awareness about the real existence and necessitated reality of phenomenological velocity is in no way an endeavor deserving further procrastination by the scientific community, for doing so would be intellectually dishonest and further the propagation of incomplete or misleading theories on reality. -/- This work details how the Lorentz coefficient, when applied to the height of a cone in such a way as to cancel out with itself, permits the velocity variable to have a solution to it anyway, even though it ought cancel out with itself. This mathe-tecture, so to speak has consequences for complex analysis, and pave the way for, "transcendental relativity," building an adaptive framework for consciousness and physical reality. (shrink)

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human discourse and a crucial force in shaping our social reality. From mundane squabbles about matters of taste to high-stakes disputes about law and public policy, the way we express and navigate disagreement plays a central role in both our personal and political lives. Legal discourse, in particular, is rife with disagreement - it is the very bread and butter of courtroom argument and legal scholarship alike. Consider a debate between two legal philosophers, Ronald (...) and Herbert, about the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Ronald asserts: ‘It is the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. In response, Herbert states: ‘It is not the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. We intuitively think Ronald and Herbert are disagreeing, which reveals in the fact that they are licensed to use ex¬pressions like no (it isn’t) and nuh-uh when responding to their opponent’s claim. But despite the ubiquity and significance of legal disagreement, its precise nature remains elusive. This chapter discusses what exactly is going on when two people disagree about what the law requires, and how can hybrid theory may answer this question. (shrink)

Many political and moral philosophers try to reconcile freedom and equality. One such theory is left-libertarianism, which establishes exclusive property rights over one’s own body and egalitarian property rights over natural resources. These rights are realized through the policy of unconditional basic income. Recently, left-libertarianism has come under fire from another similar approach, reciprocal libertarianism. This concept combines exclusive rights over one’s own body with the requirement for an egalitarian distribution of the fruits of social cooperation among those who make (...) a fair contribution to its system. On the face of it, reciprocal libertarians reject basic income because it doesn’t satisfy the fair contribution condition. This article explores the case for a basic income from a reciprocal libertarian perspective. In particular, two institutional regimes will be examined: reciprocal left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism. Each is compatible with a basic income coupled with broader redistribution according to the principle of reciprocity. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a paradigm-based explanation of respect. Paradigm-based explanations propose to illuminate subject matter that are basically disunified, by identifying a form of them (“the paradigm”) that is then shown to be explanatorily basic to the subject as a whole. This explanatory strategy is well-suited to the subject of respect, which is widely agreed to encompass two distinct kinds, appraisal respect and recognition respect. Accordingly, the paper sets out to determine which of these two kinds is paradigmatic (...) and which, derivative. It begins by advancing a novel account of appraisal respect (“perspectival respect”), which it also hypothesizes is respect in its paradigmatic form. On this hypothesis, perspectival respect is paradigmatic in virtue of its apparent “point” or function, which is that it constitutively aims at understanding another person’s perspective on things. The paper then tests the viability of this hypothesis by showing how one central form of recognition respect (“respect for persons”) can reasonably be understood to derive from respect in its paradigmatic form, by showing how it is illuminated by the aim of interpersonal understanding. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a paradigm-based explanation of respect. Paradigm-based explanations propose to illuminate subject matter that are basically disunified, by identifying a form of them (“the paradigm”) that is then shown to be explanatorily basic to the subject as a whole. This explanatory strategy is well-suited to the subject of respect, which is widely agreed to encompass two distinct kinds, appraisal respect and recognition respect. Accordingly, the paper sets out to determine which of these two kinds is paradigmatic (...) and which, derivative. It begins by advancing a novel account of appraisal respect (“perspectival respect”), which it also hypothesizes is respect in its paradigmatic form. On this hypothesis, perspectival respect is paradigmatic in virtue of its apparent “point” or function, which is that it constitutively aims at understanding another person’s perspective on things. The paper then tests the viability of this hypothesis by showing how one central form of recognition respect (“respect for persons”) can reasonably be understood to derive from respect in its paradigmatic form, by showing how it is illuminated by the aim of interpersonal understanding. (shrink)

Todd and Rabern (2021) mount an argument that – contra both Thomason’s (1970) supervaluationism and MacFarlane’s (2014) relativism – an “open future” view is incompatible with the principle they call “Retro-closure”, according to which today’s rain implies that yesterday it was true that it would rain a day later. In a recent piece, MacFarlane replies. This paper has two aims. First, I argue that MacFarlane’s response to Todd and Rabern is unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I attempt to clarify (...) Todd and Rabern’s overall argument, and explain how MacFarlane’s replies should be construed within the overall dialectic. The intended result: if you want an "open future", then one's best option is a modified Peirceanism (Todd 2021); if one wants Retro-closure, one's best option is one on which there is a determinate "Thin Red Line" (a view sometimes called "Ockhamism"). However, one cannot have what supervaluationism and relativism both promise, viz., a view that preserves both. (shrink)

In this article, main tenets of Bühler’s theory of language are compared with Plessner’s view on the position of language. Language crystallizes into an in- termediary position highlighting its crucial importance for both philosophy of culture and philosophical anthropology. On the assumption that a sensuously and commonly experienced reality is the basis for speaking and understanding subjects, Plessner and Bühler conceive of language as the crucial medium of »ec- centric beings«. Eccentric positionality and language prove to be co-constitutive.

In the wake of the non-ideal theory turn in political philosophy, few have paused to ask: Is non-ideal theory a form of ideology? And perhaps even fewer have paused to ask: Is the debate between ideal/non-ideal theorists itself a form of ideology? To the first question, I argue that non-ideal theory is ideological in virtue of the fact that it rules out more utopian ways of theorizing by methodological fiat, and in so doing, risks entrenching an unjust status quo. To (...) the second question, I argue that the debate between ideal/non-ideal theorists is itself a form of ideology, one which serves to reinforce the status quo by convincing political philosophers/theorists that the most pressing problems are problems about what we should think about what we are doing. But this is false. An upshot of my argument is that we ought to abandon the ideal/non-ideal theory debate and address the pressing problems of political philosophy head-on in pluralist fashion, oscillating back and forth between these two modes of theorizing without a decision procedure to tell us when we should take up one perspective or the other. (shrink)

Quien lea sobre el gueto y luego lea algo pseudointeligente o incluso genuinamente inteligente sobre nuestra moderna “civilización de masas”, debe soltar una risa amarga. Masas, “hombre masa”: no es el telespectador en su casa unifamiliar, incluso si está expuesto a la presión de los medios de comunicación de masas. El habitante del gueto se había convertido físicamente en uno con la masa, al mismo tiempo que luchaba sin sentido y desesperadamente contra las otras células de esta masa de carne. (...) El gueto era un tumor maligno de la humanidad. Cada uno de los que estaban hacinados en él lo entendía como tal y se sentía como la célula enferma de un organismo, lo que, objetivamente, realmente era. Por lo tanto, podía amarse a sí mismo tan poco como a la persona de al lado. (shrink)

What are the roles of scientific causal knowledge in relation to the evidential requirements of policy making? In this chapter, I review the existing approaches in philosophy of science to the policy relevance of causal knowledge. I assess the specific concerns and questions on which these philosophical accounts have focused and show how they only offer a partial perspective of the relation between causal knowledge and policy making. Most existing views are top-down approaches: they start from philosophical concerns about causation (...) and evidence, and then make general claims about (potential) policy implications, but leave the notion of “policy” unanalyzed. As an alternative, I put forward some ideas toward a bottom-up approach: one that understands policy making as a dynamic process with several stages, and that starts from concrete policy problems, to then examine how causal notions and methods can contribute in various ways to the specifics of the process of policy making. (shrink)

Breaking with the orthodoxy, Compassionate Conservationists have taken issue with the way that individual wild animals are routinely sacrificed for the sake of species preservation or for the good of the ecosystem. Though explicitly aligning themselves with virtue ethics, there has been some confusion about what this means in practice. How is the perfectly compassionate person to act when the choice is between intentionally harming animals and protecting biodiversity? And what if the choice is between direct and indirect harm to (...) animals? Some critics suggest that when faced with these kinds of conflicts of value, Compassionate Conservationists will invariably base their choices either on the arbitrary feelings an action elicits in them, or else revert back to the decision-making procedures that characterize Traditional Conservation. In response, I argue (first) that these critics fail to appre- ciate that compassion often plays an essential role in moral deliberation. Second, that being compassionate matters even if it does not end up having a discernable effect on what one chooses to do. When one is faced with a tragic predicament in which harming individual animals is unavoidable, for instance, it matters here that one respond with an appropriate compassion. Third, that even when a situa- tion’s difficulty requires one to appeal to the impersonal norms of justice, here too it is required that one proceed with compassion. I end by illustrating these points through the close consideration of a case study: New Zealand’s controversial preda- tor extermination campaign. (shrink)

I present a novel view on the nature of time: primitivism. This view is the conjunction of two theses: that presence is concreteness and that the present changes, where change is a fundamental process that cannot be analyzed. After explaining this view in-depth, I look at how it explains the flow of time and solves many puzzles, for example, McTaggart’s famous paradox about the unreality of time.

Sideloading is the creation of a digital model of a person during their life via iterative improvements of this model based on the person's feedback. The progress of LLMs with large prompts allows the creation of very large, book-size prompts which describe a personality. We will call mind-models created via sideloading "sideloads"; they often look like chatbots, but they are more than that as they have other output channels, like internal thought streams and descriptions of actions. -/- By arranging the (...) predictive power of the facts about a person, we can write down the most important facts first. This allows us to get a high level of fidelity in a person's model by writing down a finite number of facts and running it as an LLM prompt with instructions to create a person's chatbot. This instruction also includes an extensive general sideload prompt (we will call it a prompt-loader), which explains how the person's sideload should work, but it is universal and works as an operating system for different persons. -/- I created my personal sideload to test all this and it started working surprisingly quickly. We found that there are three main levels of facts about a person: core facts, long-term memory, and historical facts. Core facts should go to the main prompt of the LLM, long-term memory belongs to RAG, and historical facts – which a person often does not remember – should be only used to extract new relevant data. The most important thing in preparing data for sideloading is to get a full list of the core facts, and not to mix it with long-term memory and historical facts. The LLM-sideload project is inherently future-oriented. New state-of-the-art LLMs with large prompt capabilities emerge quarterly. This allows for the preparation of prompts that exceed current LLM capabilities, anticipating smooth execution in the following year. Below we present the key findings of this work in the form of an executive summary: Quality of sideloads is evaluated using three metrics: • Facts: Accuracy of the answers about the person's life • Vibe: How well the sideload captures the person's style and personality, as judged by the person themselves and their acquaintances • Brilliant insights: Ability to contribute unique, valuable ideas beyond the training data, while maintaining the author's style • Coarseness: Levels of details as percent of the total of recordable textual information from memory estimated to be 10000 pages. Similar to the jpeg level of compression. Estimated performance of Alexey Turchin's sideload: • Facts: 70% correct • Vibe: 20% accurate • Brilliant insights: near zero • Coarseness: 10% The project achieved these results in about one month of work. Vibe is harder to evaluate and regulate than facts. This approach focuses on informational personal identity, setting aside issues of observer identity and internal qualia. (shrink)

My focus in this philosophy paper is rocks. When I say rocks, I mean the solid mineral material that forms parts of the earth’s surface, otherwise known as pebbles, boulders, or a mountain range. Specifically, my aim in this paper is to detail the kinds of moral responsibilities that humans have toward rocks within an ethical framework of Indigenous Kinship Ethics. This responsibility is complex and contextual–like all moral responsibility–but complexity is not a compelling argument to dismiss ethical obligation. To (...) do this work, first I overview the metaphysics of the force that drives moral responsibility with so-called ‘natural objects’: what I refer to as the relations-measure. Then, I detail the moral responsibilities that human agents have to rocks, as well as rocks have to human agents through a two tiers of humility model. I offer one example of relationality with rocks within Indigenous Kinship Ethics–the reverential role that Siedi rocks hold in Sámi culture, both in Sápmi and in the Sámi-American diaspora–to detail the kinds of moral responsibilities to rocks that Indigenous Kinship Ethics commits us to in pluralistic ways. Lastly, I discuss the implications of moral responsibility to so-called natural objects in global conversations on Indigenous Environmental Justice. (shrink)

This paper builds upon Peter Singer's ethical framework asserting that individuals bear a moral duty to aid those in need. It argues that giving to charity is obligatory, particularly in times of economic downturn affecting developing nations. Focusing on the current economic challenges faced by many developing countries, including declining remittances, foreign exchange shortages, energy market imbalances, and inflation, the study contends that collective action is essential to navigate these crises. It advocates for a shift in individual priorities towards essential (...) needs over luxury expenditures and emphasizes the importance of resource conservation and waste reduction. Additionally, it underscores the significance of supporting local economies by patronizing domestic products and services to alleviate hardship among vulnerable populations. Ultimately, the paper explores the necessity of shared responsibility to ensure the long-term sustainability of developing nations. (shrink)

I absolutely loved The Kingfisher Story Collection by Quan-Hoang Vuong. This book is such a unique and delightful blend of humor, wisdom, and cultural insight. The stories take you into a whimsical bird village, where the wise Kingfisher and his friends teach valuable life lessons through their adventures.

Nghiên cứu thực hiện phân tích và đánh giá tình hình áp dụng thương mại điện tử (TMĐT) của các tiểu thương. Thông qua phương pháp định lượng với số mẫu khảo sát là 185 tiểu thương bán lẻ tại chợ Vĩnh Long, kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có 29,73% tiểu thương đã áp dụng TMĐT, chủ yếu qua mạng xã hội. Tỷ lệ này còn khá thấp. Các thách thức chính là chi phí đầu tư cao, thiếu kiến (...) thức công nghệ, và tâm lý ngại thay đổi. TMĐT cũng mang lại cơ hội mở rộng thị trường và giảm chi phí vận hành. Khoảng 80% tiểu thương nhận thấy lợi ích trong việc tiếp cận khách hàng và 50,91% thấy giảm chi phí vận hành là quan trọng. Từ dó, các giải pháp cũng được đề xuất nhằm giúp tiểu thương vượt qua rào cản và khai thác tiềm năng của TMĐT. (shrink)

Đầu tư gián tiếp nước ngoài (FPI) có vai trò quan trọng đối với nền kinh tế nói chung, cũng như tăng trưởng kinh tế nói riêng. Để bổ sung sự thiếu hụt về nguồn vốn trong nước, thúc đẩy phát triển sản xuất, kích thích tăng trưởng kinh tế, giải quyết việc làm và cải thiện đời sống của người dân, thì thu hút đầu tư nước ngoài là một nhiệm vụ quan trọng đối với các nước đang phát (...) triển như Việt Nam. Bài viết làm rõ các tác động tích cực, cũng như những hạn chế của FPI đối với tăng trưởng kinh tế ở Việt Nam thời gian qua. Từ đó, đề xuất các giải pháp để tận dụng những tác động tích cực và hạn chế những rủi ro tiềm ẩn cho nền kinh tế trong việc thu hút FPI đối với tăng trưởng kinh tế Việt Nam. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm phân tích hoạt động cho vay khách hàng cá nhân tại Ngân hàng Thương mại Cổ phần Quốc tế Việt Nam (VIB) Chi nhánh Biên Hòa. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, các nhân tố: Chính sách tín dụng; Cán bộ tín dụng; Khách hàng và Sản phẩm tín dụng có ảnh hưởng tích cực đến Phát triển hoạt động cho vay khách hàng cá nhân tại VIB Chi nhánh Biên Hòa. Từ kết quả phân tích, nghiên (...) cứu đề xuất các giải pháp chiến lược nhằm cải thiện và thúc đẩy hoạt động cho vay khách hàng cá nhân tại VIB Chi nhánh Biên Hòa trong giai đoạn 2025-2030, góp phần gia tăng năng lực cạnh tranh và tạo động lực phát triển bền vững cho Ngân hàng. (shrink)

PropTech hay công nghệ bất động sản (BĐS) là xu hướng và tương lai của một thị trường BĐS phát triển và hội nhập. Tại Việt Nam, PropTech đã xuất hiện từ những năm 2000, có những bước phát triển nhanh chóng và đang dần tiếp cận với các quốc gia khác trong khu vực cũng như trên thế giới. Bên cạnh những cơ hội và tiền năng, trong quá trình áp dụng và vận hành PropTech còn gặp nhiều khó (...) khăn và thách thức. Nghiên cứu đưa ra các đánh giá về các cơ hội và thách thức của PropTech trong phát triển thị trường BĐS Việt Nam hiện nay, đồng thời đề xuất một số giải pháp nhằm góp phần thúc đẩy sự phát triển của PropTech trong tương lai. (shrink)

Sản xuất tinh gọn (Lean) là phương pháp quản lý sản xuất được áp dụng rộng rãi trong các doanh nghiệp sản xuất hiện đại và đã trở thành một phần không thể thiếu của bối cảnh sản xuất trên thế giới. Bài viết đánh giá 5 nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc áp dụng sản xuất tinh gọn tại các doanh nghiệp sản xuất công nghệ phụ trợ nhựa đúc, gồm: (1) Văn hóa doanh nghiệp; (2) Sự cam kết (...) của ban lãnh đạo; (3) Đội ngũ nhân sự; (4) Trình độ công nghệ; (5) Áp lực từ các bên liên quan. Từ đó, nhóm tác giả đưa ra một số đề xuất nhằm cải thiện và nâng cao chất lượng sản xuất trong việc áp dụng sản xuất tinh gọn cho các doanh nghiệp nhựa đúc nói chung. (shrink)

The rise of populism and its consequences – such as democratic backsliding, the erosion of constitutional principles, and the weakening of the rule of law – are among the most pressing issues facing comparative constitutional scholars today. To address these emerging challenges, the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine (UCAD) has emerged as the most promising remedy for the “third counterwave of democracy”. However, a fundamental problem with UCAD is how to apply it effectively without undermining constitutional democracy, as it is often (...) criticised and deemed illegitimate from the perspective of democratic principles. (shrink)

The question of how to legitimize authority is generally addressed with reference to Raz’s service conception of authority. Yet, his functional explanation does not concern itself with how authoritative institutions are empowered at the outset. Even though Raz’s monistic account of authority is coupled with input legitimacy and pluralized with Waldron’s analysis of the inter-institutional allocation of authority, it does not assist us in inter-legal situations. As inter-legality is a theory oriented towards finding legitimate ways of legal intersection, this article (...) aims at showing how authorities between different legal orders may engage in a legitimate relationship. In doing so, it benefits from Roughan’s pluralistic and relational account of authority coupled with a conjunctive justification thesis. (shrink)

The recent Covid-19 global health crisis not only brings into sharp relief the current problems afflicting the international intellectual property regime (IIPR) but also calls into question its legitimacy as an international authority. Against this backdrop, the article aims to launch an investigation into the legitimacy of the IIPR, as an international co-ordinative authority, designed to protect IP rights without prejudice to international trade norms. Drawing on Raz’s service conception of authority, it explores whether the IIPR lives up to its (...) promises by enabling co-ordination between states over IP rights without undermining the initial balance on which it is founded, struck between developing and developed countries, as well as between international protection of IP- cum-trade rights and domestic regulatory autonomy. It does so by classifying the historical evolution of the IIPR under three different phases: (i) its foundation, (ii) before, and (iii) after the TRIPS-plus. Upon showing the legitimacy challenges inherent in its undemocratic foundation, the article points to the success of the regime in finding a balance between conflicting interests before the TRIPS-plus era. Later, it underlines the many challenges that come with linking the IIPR to the investment regime and argues that the FTAs and frequent regime-shifting activities put further pressure on the authority and legitimacy of the regime. Stressing the importance of democratic participation for the legitimacy of any co-ordinative authority, the article casts doubt on the IIPR’s legitimacy and concludes by raising some points to overcome the ongoing legitimacy challenges. -/- . (shrink)

The liberal international legal order faces a legitimacy crisis today that becomes visible with the recent anti-internationalist turn, the rise of populism and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Either its authority or legitimacy has been tested many times over the last three decades. The article argues that this anti-internationalist trend may be read as a reaction against the neoliberal form taken by international law, not least over the last three decades. In uncovering the intricacies of international law’s legitimacy crisis, (...) the article uncovers the paradox of global constitutionalism: that its need to adopt a sectoral form of integration may cause a legitimacy gap/deficit because international authorities, resting their legitimacy primarily on instrumental grounds, may face problems in compensating for the legitimacy deficit caused by the erosion of domestic sovereignty and extending their legitimacy to non-instrumental grounds. This paradox has one necessary structural and two contingent content-related implications for domestic democracies: (1) it necessarily narrows down the regulatory space of nation-states; and this may in turn (2) impair democratic stability and solidarity, and (3) provide a fertile ground for populism. Drawing on Raz’s service conception, the article focuses on the interaction between international and domestic authorities and highlights the problematic aspects of the neoliberal constitutionalization of international law. (shrink)

Trong các mẩu chuyện ngắn trong Wild Wise Weird, rất nhiều cuộc họp của Xóm Chim đã diễn ra về những nội dung và với những tình tiết rất khác biệt. Mặc dù quý vị độc giả có thể dễ dàng hình dung ra những âm thanh chí chóe trong lúc tranh luận các “vấn đề” của Xóm Chim, nhưng mà trực tiếp nghe và ghi lại thì cũng thú vị không kém.

In Proslogion, Anselm claims that understanding God as “something beyond which a greater nothing can be thought” refers to God’s existence in the mind and facilitates our understanding of God existing also in reality. The argument is epistemological and not ontological since its conclusion is our understanding of God’s existence, not a proof or demonstration that God exists. However, I argue that Anselm’s notion of existence in the mind invokes mentalism, a claim that meaning is housed in the mind and (...) semantic rules are contained within linguistic expression itself. Wittgenstein argued that mentalism is a mistaken conflation of linguistic understanding with ostensive reference to one’s private sensations. Instead, all linguistic understanding depends on the public use of rules operating within a specific semantic context. If mentalism is false, then the concept of existence in the mind alone is a shallow metaphysical idea, rendering the rest of the argument invalid. (shrink)

In this commentary published, I explore the difficult but urgent question: has civil society in Bangladesh failed to uphold its responsibility as a check on government power? Over the years, civil society’s silence has allowed concerning issues like electoral manipulation, human rights abuses, and corruption to go unchecked. From the forced resignation of Chief Justice Sinha to the tragic murder of Abrar Fahad, the lack of strong, collective action has left many crucial injustices unchallenged. Civil society has a fundamental duty (...) to defend democratic principles, demand transparency, and hold power accountable. But too often, our intellectuals, academics, journalists, and human rights defenders avoided direct engagement, especially during moments that called for bold stances. This silence has enabled a climate of impunity and fear that damages the very foundations of democracy. I argue that civil society owes an apology for its inaction—this isn’t merely symbolic. Admitting these past failures is the first step toward rebuilding trust and credibility. Civil society must recommit to its role as the people's voice and stand firmly against abuses of power while protecting the rights and freedoms that all Bangladeshis deserve. (shrink)

In this commentary, I explore the ongoing debate surrounding Bangladesh’s electoral reform as the interim government has launched a commission to examine alternatives to the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system. Proponents of Proportional Representation (PR) argue it could lead to fairer, more inclusive representation by better reflecting each party’s share of the vote. However, the reality is more complex: PR risks unintended consequences like weakened governance, legitimacy issues that may challenge democratic principles, and technical problems such as the “rounding problem,” where minor (...) vote fractions can affect seat allocation. While the PR system sounds promising, especially to address concerns about the over-centralization of power, it’s essential to critically assess how this model might impact Bangladesh’s unique political landscape. (shrink)

This is an extended critical notice of Gillian Russell's book, Barriers to Entailment.

This article explores an overlooked motif in the Critique of Pure Reason: the Damsel in Distress. Kant uses the trope to motivate his first Critique on a narrative level. Reason is depicted as a high-born female subject in a hopeless predicament, unable to free herself. A hero rescues her, not by liberation, but by discipline, mirroring the myth where the rescued female is appropriated through marriage. The paper examines the parallels between this popular trope and the narrative of the first (...) Critique, arguing that Kant’s choice of this motif is due to cultural and political biases. While this narrative aligns with Kant’s goal of establishing philosophy as a strict science, it marginalizes the also present, progressive potential of Kant’s concept of the highest faculty as a hermeneutical, world-making, and orienting capacity as means for universal cum critical thinking. The discussion proceeds from (1) argumentatively relevant methodological considerations, to showing that Kant (2) does use the damsel in distress in the Critique of Pure Reason. Subsequently, (3) with regard to the reasons for the choice of the narrative, it is argued that it is based on the convictions about the nature of women that Kant advocates in the Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime and in his Anthropology. (4) Insofar as narratives and metaphors shape convictions and delineate the realm of the conceivable, Kant’s narrative choice undermines his own conception of reason, according to which the highest faculty is to be understood positively as an active, hermeneutic and orienting ability as well as a selfreflective basis for critical thinking. The discussion ends (5) with a conclusion. (shrink)

After some generalities about connections between functions and relations in Sections 1 and 2 recalls the possibility of taking the semantic values of ‐ary Boolean connectives as ‐ary relations among truth‐values rather than as ‐ary truth functions. Section 3, the bulk of the paper, looks at correlates of these truth‐value relations as applied to formulas, and explores in a preliminary way how their properties are related to the properties of “logical relations” among formulas such as equivalence, implication (entailment) and contrariety (...) (logical incompatibility), concentrating for illustrative purposes on binary logical relations such as those just listed. To avoid an excess of footnotes, some points have been deferred to an Appendix as “Longer Notes”. (shrink)

We discuss conditions under which the following ‘truism’ does indeed express a truth: the weaker a logic is in terms of what it proves, the stronger it is as a tool for registering distinctions amongst the formulas in its language.

Wicked problems are tricky to solve because of their many interconnected components and a lack of any single optimal solution. At the science–policy interface, all problems can look wicked: research exposes the complexity that is relevant to designing, executing and implementing policy fit for ambitious human needs. Expertise in philosophical research can help to navigate that complexity.

In the Groundwork, we find three distinct conceptions of freedom: (i) A negative conception of freedom, understood as a capacity for spontaneous action independent of alien causes; (ii) a positive conception of freedom, understood as the capacity of giving law to oneself; and (iii) a second positive conception, understood as the capacity to give laws that bind others as well as oneself. The dominant interpretation of Kant ignores this third conception of freedom and interprets the second conception as a capacity (...) for self-determination or self-governance, which is seen as the most basic and important Kantian conception of autonomy. In this paper, we will focus mainly on explaining the distinction between the second and third conceptions of autonomy and will defend the claim that the third conception is morally the most basic. We will also explain briefly why Kant thinks that having the capacity for citizenship is necessary for having the capacity for self-governance. (shrink)

CONTENTS /(TITLES OF THE CHAPTERS) -/- Parte Prima: I PRINCIPI DI RAGIONE -/- Capitolo 1: LA VERSIONE CAUSALE DEL PRINCIPIO: LEIBNIZ E HOBBES 1. Quanti sono i principi di ragion sufficiente? 2. Gli antecedenti: causa sufficiente e causa totale 3. La teoria dei requisiti 4. Moto e azione 5. La contingenza e il primo principio di ragion sufficiente Scheda: Il giovane Leibniz e la teoria politica di Hobbes -/- Capitolo 2: LA VERSIONE DELIBERATIVA DEL PRINCIPIO: OPTIMUM, PERFEZIONE E PROBABILITA' 1. (...) Perfezione ed equilibrio 2. Probabilità e optimum. 3. Possibilità logica e possibilità proeretica -/- Capitolo 3: LA VERSIONE LOGICA DEL PRINCIPIO. PRINCIPIO DI RAGIONE E CONCETTI COMPLETI 1. I futuri contingenti e la loro ratio scibilitatis 2. Le relazioni espressive e l'involutio 3. Le due facce della percezione 4. Gli ingredienti del concetto completo: predicati e leggi 5. Contingentismo e limiti del Principio di Ragione -/- Riepilogo -/- Parte Seconda: ATTIVITÀ E AZIONE -/- Capitolo 1: L'INVENZIONE DELLA SPONTANEITA' 1. Spontaneità contro libertà di indifferenza 2. Le attività del pensiero: l'anima e l'automa 3. Actio mixta passioni: le virtù e gli affetti 4. L’indifferenza relativa -/- Capitolo 2: DELIBERAZIONE UMANA E DELIBERAZIONE DIVINA 1. Potentia refracta 2. L’enigma della scelta divina 3. Cause e ragioni -/- Index Nominum . (shrink)

CONTENTS: -/- SEZIONE I IL TUTTO E' UNO? IL RISVEGLIO DI UN PROBLEMA TRA SCOLASTICA E RINASCIMENTO Il principio omne causatum est compositum fra Tommaso e Cajetano Igor Agostini, p. 25 Parti e tutto in Montaigne. La natura e l'individuo tra frammentazione e integrazione Raffaele Carbone 45 Le minuzzarie e il tutto. Giordano bruno e la conoscenza universale Maurizio Cambi 75 -/- SEZIONE II A PARTIRE DA CARTESIO. COME PUO' ESSERE UN TUTTO L'UOMO? -/- Mente/Corpo in Cartesio. Spunti per un'interpretazione (...) mereologica Stefano Di Bella 93 Nos sumus ex Deo et pertinemus ad Deum. Appartenenza, dipendenza e relazione nel pensiero e nel lessico di Arnold Guelincx Cristina Santinelli 115 L'integrità di corpo e mente nell'"invenire" terapeutico di E. W. von Tschirnhaus Manuela Sanna 133 L'indivisibilità della natura umana e della società in Francesco Longano. Un episodio della ricezione di Locke in Italia Roberto Evangelista 147 -/- SEZIONE III L'IRROMPERE DELL'ORGANICO. LA BIOLOGIA FILOSOFICA TRA SEI E SETTECENTO -/- Convenienza e discrepanza. Parti e tutto nella Lettera 32 di Baruch Spinoza Francesco Toto 169 Mereologia della sostanza e mereologia del vivente in Leibniz Enrico Pasini 197 Teleologia e mereologia dell’organismo da Leibniz a Bonnet Francesco Piro 209 Il nesso delle parti: mereologia e scienza secondo Christian Wolff Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero 239 Il problema del tutto e delle parti. il caso del vitalismo di Montpellier Charles T. Wolfe 257 -/- SEZIONE 4 TOTALITA' CRITICHE: DALLA CRISI DEL NATURALISMO ILLUMINISTICO ALLA FILOSOFIA DELLE CULTURE -/- La logica del tutto (e delle parti di tutto, vale a dire niente) in Dom Deschamps Jean-Claude Bourdin 273 l’(in)afferabile forma. Totalità e contingenza nel pensiero di Kant tra Critica della ragion pura e Critica del giudizio Luigi Imperato 303 la relazione Parte-Tutto nel primo Schelling Giuseppe D’Anna 327 Hegel o della totalizzazione dello spazio di interiorità Vittorio Morfino 343 A partire da Kant: Begriffsbiìldung teleologica e relazione Parti-Tutto nelle indagini di Rickert sulla logica delle scienze storiche della cultura Edoardo Massimilla 359 . (shrink)

This story reproduces “The Perfect Plan” in the fiction title Wild Wise Weird, written by Professor Quan-Hoang Vuong with his permission. Prof. Vuong ’s other nonfiction title is Meandering Sobriety.

I sat by the riverbank, watching a stork family flying back to their nest after a hard working day. To my astonishment, a kingfisher landed beside me, his feathers shimmering like the pages of a timeless book.

Place is a geographical space with meaning attached to it, and philosophers think about the concept of place because of its role in understanding this meaning in relation to one’s self and the world. Many socio-political implications arise from place, but there are few prescriptions on how to use the concept or why we should even use it. In this paper, I discuss the previously proposed concepts of place and highlight how place gives rise to distinct types of discrimination. In (...) particular, I argue that place discrimination cannot be reduced to other forms of discrimination such as racial discrimination. I also discuss placism as a way to understand place alongside various oppressive structures and realities. (shrink)

In seminal work, Zeijlstra has proposed that the sentential negative marker in strict negative concord languages is a meaningless particle (uNeg) that invokes a silent negative operator (iNeg) at the periphery. Negative concord items (NCI) are also supposed to have uNeg. This paper puts forth new arguments to the effect that the Hungarian negative marker NEM has uNeg, but NCIs do not. Their relation to negation is indirect; they need to be exhaustified, which in turn requires an intervening negation to (...) maintain logical coherence (Chierchia 2013). This eliminates the appearance of redundancy in the negative marker co-occurring with NCIs. The paper sets the analysis in the context of the hybrid (strict and non-strict) NC system of Hungarian. (shrink)

The expressive nature of musical improvisation is dissected, navigatingbetween two predominant theses: The Transparency Thesis (1) which proposes thatexpressiveness in improvisation transparently reflects the musician’s subjectiveaffectivity, and the Objective-Generic Expressiveness Thesis (2) asserting that ithinges only on the musicpractice’s objective components. This article challenges boththeses, arguing against (1) by emphasizing that musical expressivity transcends a merenatural outburst, and counteracting (2) by highlighting that it is not merely anenactment of objective expressive topoi. Introducing a novel perspective through theconceptual pair of (social) (...) Habitusand (individual) habit, a third stance is defended:the specific expressiveness in improvised music is significantly impacted by itsimprovisational quality, whereby the expressiveness emerges from the manipulationand transformation of an expressive Habitus within the musical performance’scontingent situation. (shrink)

It is often assumed that habits and aesthetic experiences are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. Typically, aesthetic experiences are considered to necessitate non-habitual behavior and to provoke unexpected mental states and extraordinary affective sensations. This article challenges this assumption. Moving beyond potential structural analogies between habitual behavior and aesthetic experience, I focus on two key aspects. Firstly, I argue that the experience of beauty and aesthetic experiences in general actually depend on certain habits, specifically those engaged in aesthetic agency and appreciation, (...) which I term «aesthetic habits». Secondly, I propose that habits have an aesthetic origin, as they virtuously evolve and adapt to their environment. This transformative capacity, along with their ability to resonate with specific situational demands, embodies an improvisational quality that should be encouraged, reflecting the inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This article explores the role of habits in shapingaesthetic normativity. It asserts that standards of value within aesthetic agency are not immutable, objective criteriadetached from personal engagement in appreciationand creation, nor should they be reduced to mere individualsubjective pleasure. The former stance fails to consider theessential expressivity and creativity at the heart of aestheticpractices, while the latter overlooks the normative frameworkthat underpins the significance, validity, and qualityof aesthetic agency. This framework is represented in theestablished rules of taste, the need for (...) aesthetic education,and the dynamics of aesthetic disagreements. Consequently, effective aesthetic normativity requires abalance: practices must be organized structurally aroundvalues that are, to a certain degree, communally shared, yetflexible enough to incorporate the expressive creativity ofindividual appreciation. This article contributes a nuancedexplanation of aesthetic normativity by elucidating the impactof habits on aesthetic practices. (shrink)

This essay presents Programmed Conceptual Deconstruction (PCD), an algorithm developed by the author specifically to analyze the foundations of logic, along with the introduction of the concept of Conceptual Quarks (CQs), an original notion that identifies the basic units of knowledge. Using these tools and experimenting with a custom-built AI model, it is demonstrated that fundamental logical principles, such as the principle of identity or the principle of non-contradiction, are not absolute truths, but constructions that arise from the specific properties (...) of our reality. This work is based on concepts created by the author and combines philosophy with technology precisely to reevaluate traditional perspectives of logic. (shrink)

New AI technologies have the potential to cause unintended harms in diverse domains including warfare, judicial sentencing, biomedicine and governance. One strategy for realising the benefits of AI whilst avoiding its potential dangers is to ensure that new AIs are properly ‘aligned’ with some form of ‘alignment target.’ One danger of this strategy is that – dependent on the alignment target chosen – our AIs might optimise for objectives that reflect the values only of a certain subset of society, and (...) that do not take into account alternative views about what constitutes desirable and safe behaviour for AI agents. In response to this problem, several AI ethicists have suggested alignment targets that are designed to be sensitive to widespread normative disagreement amongst the relevant stakeholders. Authors inspired by voting theory have suggested that AIs should be aligned with the verdicts of actual or simulated ‘moral parliaments’ whose members represent the normative views of the relevant stakeholders. Other authors inspired by decision theory and the philosophical literature on moral uncertainty have suggested that AIs should maximise socially expected choiceworthiness. In this paper, I argue that both of these proposals face several important problems. In particular, they fail to select attractive ‘compromise options’ in cases where such options are available. I go on to propose and defend an alternative, bargaining-theoretic alignment target, which avoids the problems associated with the voting- and decision-theoretic approaches. (shrink)

The early 21st century has witnessed a significant rise in extreme nationalism, racism, and xenophobia, deeply affecting the rights of minorities such as the Roma, who have historically faced systemic discrimination and racism. Given that many political leaders who downplay minority rights often engage in populist discourse, a debate has emerged about the relationship between populism and minority rights. While many scholars argue that populism inherently undermines liberal principles like the protection of minorities, the question remains whether populism is necessarily (...) anti-pluralist and anti-minority. What about the case of left-wing populism? Furthermore, why is the relationship between anti-populism and minorities often overlooked? In this article, we examine the relationship between populism, anti-populism, and minorities through the case of two different governmental discourses in crisis-ridden Greece. Specifically, we focus on the governmental political discourse and policies of the populist SYRIZA (2015-2019) and the anti-populist ND (2019-2023) on Roma, with the aim of showing that populism is not necessarily anti-pluralist, while anti-populism is not always pluralist, as both phenomena can follow inclusionary or exclusionary logics. (shrink)

We reply to Eva's comment on our "New Possibilities for Fair Algorithms," comparing and contrasting our Spanning criterion with his suggested Spacing criterion.

Tradition contrasts “cold,” motivationally-inert, “standard” perception with “hot,” motivationally-potent, emotion and affect. Against this backdrop, it has recently been argued that perceptual experiences have another fundamental phenomenal aspect, beyond their sensory aspects–perception in all sense-modalities is (at least often) Intrinsically valenced. Roughly, its phenomenal character is inherently pleasant or unpleasant, feeling good or bad to some degree. Yet, the revolutionary notion of Intrinsically Valenced Perception (IVP) requires elucidation and is fraught with theoretical difficulties. The paper aims to explicate and address (...) some foundational questions regarding the very notion of IVP: What is required for perception to be intrinsically valenced? Specifically, if perception itself is valenced, what should be the relations between its valenced aspects and sensory aspects? The paper identifies the relevant notion of IVP by uncovering various principles that express constraints and desiderata that IVP must meet. It further offers a Determination-Dimension Model of the relations between sensory and valenced aspects that aims to resolve the previously identified theoretical difficulties. (shrink)

This is the first chapter of Mark Julyan's 'History of the Heavens' which, as a whole, focuses on the many different interpretational problems that emerge within the controversial and previously unavailable appendix to Kant's 'Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens'. The first chapter makes the contention that we should interpret J.L. Austin's curious and otherwise eccentric capitalization of the font in the word KANT (twice on pp.2-3) of his 'How to do Things with Words' (1962), through pp.13-14 of (...) the 'Elementum: eine Vorarbeit zum Griechischen und Lateinischen Thesaurus' of Hermann Diels (1899), where Diels describes the Thesaurus of the font based on Aristotle's description of ancient atomism (twice in the Metaphysics and Gen et Corr). This, alongside a play on the words of the name Bernard de Fontenelle and the provocative nature of Austin's obviously false statements regarding Kant, suggest he had seen Kant's astonishingly scandalous opening statement to the appendix; and that he was making a cryptic, but nonetheless fairly tangible reference to it, by means of showing us How To Do Things With Words by embodying a witticism ass encryption, an instance of his theory into his text. (shrink)

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

Questo lavoro di tesi propone una ricerca riguardante le teorie del complotto seguendo un approccio che mette in collaborazione la filosofia, l’epistemologia, la semiotica e la psicologia sociale al fine di poter disegnare un quadro sufficientemente ampio del modo in cui si formano e diffondono le teorie del complotto nelle società contemporanee. Inizialmente si cercherà di fare chiarezza sui motivi per cui si è scelto questo argomento, su quali obiettivi si propone questo lavoro di tesi e sul perché si ritenga (...) importante studiare le teorie del complotto, in quanto strumenti per comprendere le dinamiche attraverso cui si produce il senso nelle società contemporanee. Successivamente si discuteranno le eventuali conseguenze sociali e il ruolo di bias cognitivi e vizi epistemici nella formazione di una mentalità complottista. Infine la trattazione verterà sul nuovo, introducendo l’influenza che i social media esercitano sulla diffusione di questo fenomeno. -/- . (shrink)

This essay argues that trans philosophy - and perhaps philosophy more broadly - should be understood according to the interplay of social, material, and emotional circulations. It opens by bridging insights from underemployed library work during the COVID-19 pandemic with Sara Ahmed’s analysis of the circulation of emotions in relation to texts and archives. The first major section diagnoses Martha Nussbaum’s confusing analysis of “the new trans scholarship” to establish that trans philosophy is differentially circulated across the discipline of philosophy. (...) The second major section argues that trans philosophy can be understood through the interplay of four different circulations: (1) trans philosophy as creating a space; (2) trans philosophy as the trans question; (3) trans philosophy as the gender wars; and (4) trans philosophy as the trans cult. I conclude that trans philosophy is a field that has yet to clearly form as it continues to twist and multiply according to affect, professional dynamics, political intrigue, who gets thrown away, and who is granted the space, time, energy, and money to write and publish. (shrink)

This Derridean reading of Freud asks the question of how we should read Freud with respect to sexual difference and what Derrida considers a radicalized concept of trace, a "scene of writing" of differance ---that is, how we should read Freud with respect to phallogocentrism. Throughout I consider the possible relationships between the "mainstyles" of various psychoanalyses, deconstructions, and feminisms. By analyzing what is most original for Freud---the cause of hysteria, the navel of the dream, the perceptual identity, the primal (...) phantasies, for example---I find that Freud consistently seeks a single origin, a "caput Nili," on which to base a grand narrative. At first this narrative is an etiology of hysteria, but it evolves into a masterplot of sexual development and later into one of humanity. The establishment of an oedipal origin and telos, and the masterplot based on them, moves psychoanalysis toward a totalizing theory, and therefore its openness to chance and something beyond what that theory can master is greatly reduced. ;I approach these topics in terms of a question of the ethics of psychoanalysis. This appropriative or reductive process of Freud's masterplotting is based on what Derrida calls "castration-truth" in his reading of Lacan, "Le facteur de la verite." In contrast to some theorists who appeal to the radical spirit of Freudian theory as a basis for their radicalization of psychoanalysis---specifically Barnaby B. Barratt's Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse---I argue that Lacan's phallogocentric "return to Freud" is actually a more faithful one since I find both "mainstyles" of these psychoanalyses based on a logic of lack or "castration-truth." I argue throughout that the radical spirit of Freud is at times overemphasized or exaggerated by Derridean theorists---and even Derrida himself, though rarely---and that the dominant specter of Freud is an "establishment" or appropriative one, rather than one which is radical or "other-wise." I connect this trend of Derridean thinkers claiming too much debt to psychoanalysis to these thinkers not taking seriously Freud's commitment and interest in an idealized phylogenetics: "phylo-'genetics.'" Since my establishment of this establishment specter of Freud as the "mainstyle" of Freudian theory itself risks reproducing exactly the kind of appropriative discourse I hope to problematize, I attempt to avoid such a reproduction by considering what remains of the radical spirit of Freudian theory in what might be called a deconstructive "technology of iterability;" a "cyborg-analysis;" or what I call "post-psychoanalysis.". (shrink)

The immense outpouring of archaeological discoveries this past century has shed new light on ancient East Asia, and China in particular. Yet in concert with this development another, more troubling, trend has likewise gained momentum: the looting of cultural heritage and the sale of unprovenienced antiquities. Scholars face difficult questions, from the ethics of working with objects of unknown provenance, to the methodological problems inherent in their research. The goal of this Element is to encourage scholars to critically examine their (...) relationships to their sources and reflect upon the impact of their research. The three essays in this Element present a range of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on systemic issues and the nuances of method versus ethics, with a case study of the so-called 'Han board' MSS given as a specific illustration. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Un fait Mooréen, selon l'expression de David Lewis, est « l'une des choses que nous savons mieux que toute prémisse d'une argumentation philosophique visant à é tablir le contraire. » Le sujet des faits Mooréens soulève des questions profondes, à la fois de méthode philosophique et d'épistémologie de premier ordre. Comment devrions-nous répondre aux arguments qui remettent en question des croyances dont nous sommes extrêmement confiants ? Dans quelle mesure ces arguments – ou plutôt ceux qui les avancent – peuvent-ils (...) espérer avoir une emprise ou une traction rationnelle sur nous ? Dans quelle mesure, si même c'est le cas, notre point de départ limite-t-il les types de révisions de nos croyances que la philosophie pourrait légitimement inspirer ? Quand sommes-nous justifiés (si jamais nous le sommes) à refuser de se laisser influencer par un argument qui, pour autant qu'on puisse en juger, est sans faille, et quand un tel refus relève-t-il simplement du dogmatisme ? Ce sont là de vastes questions, auxquelles je ne tenterai pas ici de répondre complétement. Mon ambition, plus modeste, est de tenter de progresser sur ces questions, et d'autres questions connexes, en examinant la notion de fait Mooré que je trouve chez Lewis et chez d'autres. (shrink)

Aim: This research aimed to determine the teaching competence towards job satisfaction and teacher performance of secondary school teachers of Cagayan de Oro City and Misamis Oriental for the School Year 2020-2021. Methodology: This study utilized a descriptive-survey method of research, a patterned and modified questionnaire of Javillonar and Boni of 2023. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation to describe the variables of the study where the three hundred fifty secondary (350) secondary (...) public school teachers from the two divisions of Cagayan de Oro City are the respondents of the study. Results: The study examined with a 0.01 correlation coefficient (two-tailed) on the significance between teacher competence, job satisfaction, and job performance found that teachers demonstrated high competence in critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, professionalism, and career management. The job satisfaction was generally high, but areas like compensation, facilities, and interpersonal relationships showed lower satisfaction. Teachers also demonstrated high performance in content, pedagogy, diversity of learners, curriculum planning, and community linkage. It has found out that there is a significant positive correlation between teacher competence and job satisfaction and performance, suggesting that teachers with strong competence are more likely to experience higher job satisfaction and superior performance. Conclusion: The teacher's proficiency in influencing job satisfaction and performance outcomes demonstrated high competence in essential skills; concerns in areas like compensation and interpersonal relationships impact overall satisfaction levels. The positive correlation between teacher competence, job satisfaction, and performance underscores the need for investing in professional development to enhance skills and engagement. Their skill is crucial in creating job satisfaction, which means an improvement in teaching skills is correlated with higher job satisfaction levels. (shrink)

The concept of “progress” in evolutionary theory and its relationship to a putative notion of “Progress” in a global, normatively loaded sense of “change for the better” have been the subject of debate since Darwin admonished himself in a marginal note to avoid using the terms ‘higher’ and ‘lower.’ While an increase in some kind of complexity in the natural world might seem self-evident, efforts to explicate this trend meet notorious philosophical difficulties. Numerous historians pin the Modern Synthesis as a (...) pivotal moment in this history; Michael Ruse even provocatively hypothesizes that Ernst Mayr and other “architects” of the Synthesis worked actively to eliminate Progress from evolutionary biology’s scientific purview. I evaluate these claims here with a textual analysis of the journals Evolution and Proceedings of the Royal Society B (a corpus of 27,762 documents), using a dynamic topic modeling approach to track the fate of the term ‘progress’ across the Modern Synthesis. The claim that this term declines in importance for evolutionary theorizing over this period can, indeed, be supported; more tentative evidence is also provided that the discussion of ‘progress’ is largely absent from the British context, emphasizing the role of American paleontology in the rise and fall of ‘progress’ in 20th-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Through the guidelines of D.O No. 22, s. 2021, the study finds that the majority of 304 teachers from both public elementary and secondary schools are married females between the ages of 30 and 40 with 1 to 4 years of work experience and 15,000 to 30,000 monthly income. Findings exposed the “high level of comprehension perceived” in financial knowledge, behavior, and attitude. Also, the perception of asset acquisitions as the highest priority, along with other relevant factors from budgeting and (...) decision-making and retirement preparedness, demonstrated “importance” in the level of their comprehension. The significant difference through test variation in teachers' retirement preparedness and asset acquisitions towards the age variable is significant. Thus, teachers' retirement preparedness based on their perceptions of budgeting has a strong impact on their teaching experience. Accordingly, financial literacy and retirement preparedness have an essential or direct relationship. This indicates a strong impact of financial preparedness on financial literacy. (shrink)

While philosophers have highlighted important reasons to resist one’s own oppression, they tend to overlook the phenomenon of complacency about one’s own oppression. This paper addresses this gap by arguing that some oppressed agents are obligated to resist complacency about their own oppression because failing to do so would significantly harm themselves and others. Complacent members of oppressed groups fail to resist meaningfully, are self-satisfied, and are epistemically culpable. I contend that focusing on the obligation to combat complacency is useful (...) for at least two reasons. First, complacency about one’s own oppression is a distinctive phenomenon that warrants separate philosophical attention. Second, focusing on the obligation to resist complacency helps analyze an undertheorized group of oppressed agents by challenging the binary understanding of power prevalent in the literature on the duty to resist, thereby sharpening philosophical accounts of resistance and filling a gap in a prominent well-being-based theory of resistance. (shrink)

According to Stanley Kubrick, “[i]f it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed”. This is true for award-winning Irish short story writer Claire Keegan (1968) whose sparse and effective prose has hit the core of audiences struggling to process the lingering impact of national trauma. Keegan confronts it all head-on, highlighting social issues that loom large in evocative narratives where thoughts, situations and scenarios spill over into the space between the words. What is left unsaid says it all. (...) The silence that reigns in a space of ‘NON-sayability’ in Keegan’s stories is anything but opaque. In Small Things Like These she navigates treacherous territories in a dark Christmas tale about the widespread and notorious Magdalene Laundry apparatus that keeps weighing heavily on our collective conscience. How can we remain passive in the face of wrongdoings and how does Keegan unlock the past and urge us to scrutinise history? (shrink)

The material conditional and the suppositional analysis of the indicative conditional are based on different philosophical foundations and they leave important successes of their competitor unexplained. This paper unifies both accounts within a truth-functional, trivalent model of the suppositional analysis. In this model, we observe that the material and the suppositional conditional exhibit the same logical behavior while they have different truth conditions and different probabilities. The result is a unified semantic analysis that closes an important gap in the suppositional (...) story and explains the persistent appeal of the material conditional analysis for philosophers and psychologists of reasoning. (shrink)

Review of "Earth Against Heaven: A Tiananmen Square Anthology" (1990).

Review of "A.D. Hope: Questions of Poetic Strength" (1993).

In recent trends, the pervious concrete has grasped the attention of civil engineers’ research fraternity because of its special application related to drainage aspects. From the past researches, indicated the significant importance of pervious concrete which is also called as permeable concrete or no-fines concrete, used in concrete flat applications allows water from precipitation and its associated sources to pass directly through, thereby decreasing runoff and permitting groundwater recharging. The method of compaction is one of the most important one in (...) judging the mechanical and durability characteristics of any type of concrete. The current study focuses on the effect of the different types of compaction on the compressive strength of the pervious concrete. The types of compaction adopted in this experimental study are with no compaction, with a tamping rod, with a proctor hammer, with a Marshall hammer, and also with a table vibrator. The range of compressive strength of pervious concrete cubes using different compaction methodologies was arrived in the range of 1.18 MPa to 8.63MPa. Compaction by proctor hammer shows a remarkable increase in compressive strength in terms of 29%, 32%, 59%, and 86% over the Tamping rod, Marshall hammer, no compaction, and Table vibrator. Based on these experimental results, it was observed that table vibrator type of compaction was not suitable for pervious concrete, since cement paste was drained at the bottom of specimens. (shrink)

Contents: - positioning Pound’s contributions to theory – aesthetic organicism - Emerson, Pound, and the aim of language - Confucian philosophy and Pound’s tradition.

The centered Everett interpretation solves a problem that various approaches to quantum theory face. In this paper, I continue developing the theory underlying that solution. In particular, I defend the centered Everett interpretation against a few objections, and I provide additional motivation for some of its key features.

The divide between Analytic and Continental philosophy has profoundly influenced contemporary philosophical discourse, offering distinct approaches to understand logic, language, science, culture, and human experience. Philosophy, hitherto divided into ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary stages, reflects this bifurcation in its contemporary phase. Given the groundwork laid by Frege's logic, Analytic Philosophy, propagated by people such as Russell and Wittgenstein, now deals exclusively with linguistic analysis, scientific strictness, and logical clarity. While on the other hand, Continental philosophy has stretched from Husserl's (...) phenomenology through Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida to emphasize existential, cultural, and subjective dimensions. This paper will outline the origin, key figures, and intellectual trajectories of these divisions, and discuss points of convergence, conflict, and transformation between them. While Analytic philosophy focuses on clarity and scientific explanation, Continental philosophy invests in much deeper questions of humanism, politics, and culture. Particular attention is given to the global significance of these traditions, especially their standing in South Asia, where postcolonial thought has fostered a unique integration. The research underlines their joint contribution to the enrichment of contemporary philosophy by investigating the historical and thematic interplay between two schools. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to address the underrepresentation of Iranian women architects in historical narratives, exploring the perishable traces of their work and contributions to the field of architecture. Inspired by Carla Lonzi's call for women to consider their narrative incomplete and the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), I delve into the unique challenges Iranian women architects face and their impact on architectural history. I examine the historiographical review of Iranian women architects, their work, and their contributions (...) to the field, highlighting the importance of preserving and disseminating this often-overlooked knowledge. By investigating the current editorial challenges, I explore how archived material should be disseminated and the agency of such material in shaping a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative. Furthermore, I discuss the role of resources, archives, and new technologies in preserving and accessing the work of Iranian women architects. Considering data feminism and information visualization, I consider the implications of algorithms and digital technologies on accessing archived information and the potential for a more inclusive historical narrative. Through the lens of Iranian women architects, this paper contributes to the broader discussion on the representation and history of women in architecture by unearthing and preserving the perishable traces of their work. (shrink)

I propose and articulate a novel theory of desire, called the Revised Reward Theory. As the name suggests, the theory is based—and expands—on Arpaly and Schroeder’s (2014) Reward Theory of Desire. The initial Reward Theory identifies desires with states of the reward learning system such that for an organism to desire some P is for its reward system to treat P as a reward upon receipt. The Revised Reward Theory identifies desires with a different state of the same system, such (...) that for an organism to desire some P is for its reward system to expect or predict that P will be rewarding (roughly) prior to receipt. The difference amounts to equating desires with what we ultimately find rewarding or satisfying versus those that underlie our motivations to obtain that which we take ourselves to desire. I argue that the structure of the reward system is incompatible with the original Reward Theory but compatible with the Revised Reward Theory. I demonstrate that this difference has important philosophical implications. I focus on moral responsibility and demonstrate Arpaly and Schroeder’s argument, that addiction can mitigate moral responsibility, turns on this precise difference. Arpaly, Schroeder, and I all ascribe to a meta-theory called ‘natural kindism’ which identifies mental kinds with neurocognitive kinds. This discussion, in addition to defending a theory of desire, is intended to act as a proof of concept for natural kindism as offering a powerful framework for relating empirical results to philosophical issues. (shrink)

Science increases understanding, and offers more and more approximate natural explanations. The process of rationality uncovering patterns as well as causes constitutes scientific inquiry. This book is a multidisciplinary study of the mind body problem. Hypothesis of this book challenges reductionist-scientists identification of mind and body, and the so-called common-sense religious dualism of soul-in-the-machine of the body. Though human mind cannot be disserved from its neuronal correlates as a separate entity, it is irreducible to the brain. If mind and brain (...) are neither two dichotomised substance nor one and the same substance, then what is it? As the brain is made up of components, even the thoughts or the self, in some sense, are emergent properties of those components. But how? Answer to these questions consist in the ubiquitous phenomenon of emergence. The inquiry incorporates essential themes such as complexity, system dynamics, emergence, cosmological-biological evolution, thermodynamics and evolution. Human mind as the emergent functionality of the human brain is a biological system embedded in the universe that has thermodynamic-evolutionary history. The universe, which is a matter-energy-information system, actualised in time and space, becomes conscious of itself at least through one of its invention viz. human mind-brain. (shrink)

Here is a puzzle about aesthetic education. In a variety of contexts, we commit significant time, energy, and resources to aesthetic education. We teach (and in many cases publicly subsidize) university courses and degrees that have aesthetic education as their primary aim; we also invest public resources into museums, including enrichment programs that are also designed to afford aesthetic education. It would seem that if our commitment to aesthetic education is rational, then aesthetic appreciation is something that can be done (...) better or worse. However, we also, in a variety of contexts (oddly enough, some of them being the same sorts of contexts that are designed to abet aesthetic education), act as if it is true that there is no disputing taste. We may try to persuade students to come around to particular judgments, but we do not penalize students for judging one way or another. The aim of this paper is to dissolve the apparent puzzle of aesthetic education by clarifying its aims and advancing a conception of it that deemphasizes the role of taste. I claim that, pace “the default view of aesthetic education” (as I shall call it), the primary purpose of aesthetic education is not to educate taste. It is, rather, to facilitate the development of certain perceptual-cognitive capacities so as to enhance aesthetic experience and improve aesthetic appreciation. Thus, I call the view of aesthetic education advanced here “a perceptual-cognitive model”. (shrink)

The River and The Flow: Philosophy of Recursive Existentialism explores the profound interconnectedness of existence through the lens of recursion, offering a dynamic framework for understanding energy, consciousness, and ethics. At its core, the book challenges the illusion of separation, framing individuality as a transitional phase within an infinite, recursive flow of becoming. By examining patterns across nature, cognition, and culture, it reveals recursion as the silent architect of coherence and complexity, from fractal geometries to collective awareness. -/- The text (...) delves into the evolution of consciousness, presenting the ego as both a necessary scaffold for self-awareness and a limitation to be transcended. It offers an ethical vision grounded in systemic harmony, where actions align with the recursive patterns that sustain balance and resilience. Themes of beauty, fluidity, and transformation underscore the aesthetics and ethics of interconnection, while practical insights into mindfulness, creativity, and systems thinking provide tools for aligning personal and collective actions with the flow of existence. -/- With essays bridging metaphysical inquiry, ecological principles, and technological foresight, The River and The Flow invites readers to embrace life as an iterative process of connection and transformation. By dissolving binaries, integrating perspectives, and navigating thresholds, it offers a vision of humanity's evolving role within the infinite recursion of the cosmos. (shrink)

Solanum melongena (Eggplant) is a medicinal plant belonging to the family Solanaceae. This study aimed to perform a comparative assessment of the methanol extracts of the fruit and the leaf of Solanum melongena against multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The crude extracts were obtained from the leaves and fruits of the plant using methanol. The plant extracts were tested for the presence of various phytochemical constituents qualitatively. The antibacterial assay and minimum inhibitory concentration for the crude extracts were carried (...) out using the agar well diffusion and agar dilution methods, respectively. Phytochemical analysis of methanol extracts of Solanum melongena revealed the presence of various phytoconstituents. Antibacterial assay of methanol extracts of Staphylococcus melongena against multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates with ciprofloxacin as a reference control revealed inhibition zone diameter ranging from 04.0±0.0 to 11.0±0.0 mm; in contrast that of multi-drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates revealed inhibition zone diameter, with ciprofloxacin showing no inhibition. The minimum inhibitory concentration of the methanol extracts on Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates ranges from 25.0 to 50.0 mg/ml and 25.0->50.0 mg/ml, respectively, in comparison, the minimum inhibitory concentration of the methanol extracts on Staphylococcus aureus isolates ranges from 6.25 to 50.0 mg/ml and 6.25->50.0 mg/ml respectively. Thus, the fruit extract had better activity against test multi-drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus than the leaf extract of Solanum melongena. (shrink)

Considering the whole set of social systems known to history, we can recognize a very interesting distinction that divides all systems into two large classes. This distinction is based on the degree of homogeneity of the political sphere of society, the extent to which representatives of the political class of the society separate themselves established on identity from the people under their control, on cultural distance between upper and lower classes.

Using the original theory of social identity the article considers ethnicity, quasi-ethnicity, and nationality in a context of ethnopolitics. The article introduces logically strong definitions for mentioned identities, shows the possibility of exploding a nationalism basing on any quasi-ethnical social identity – with some historical examples. One non-banal result: the functions of nation in USSR were carried on by the Communist Party.

The Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) was the first stable, long-lasting and politically powerful Chinese empire. This meant a formative period during which the administrative structure and political and cultural patterns that were largely followed by subsequent Chinese dynasties were established. Additionally, the conception of the world was developed and systematized which influenced not only the traditional but also the contemporary Chinese understanding of the world. Although it is a key period of Chinese history, the philosophy of the (...) Han dynasty, and thus its conception of the world, has not been sufficiently explored. As a contribution to the understanding of the thought of the period, this paper examines the philosophical reflection on the world focusing on the key texts of the Western Han period. The aim of this paper is to present the basic features of the conception of the world and to provide a hermeneutic framework for their explanation. It will be shown that the conception of the world in the philosophy of the Western Han dynasty is based on the conception of order and the categorical apparatus that supports it, which is the theory of correlativity, the principles of accumulation and radial order. This understanding of the world will have implications for the new place and role of man, his relationship with other living beings, as well as the ontological status of human work. Namely, man is assigned the role of the one who "completes" natural processes through moral and any other correct action, which opens up the possibility of realization "of great peace." This conception of the world manifests the language of incorporation and accommodation typical of the Han dynasty period, and can be understood as a result of the historical and social circumstances and cultural and philosophical tendencies of the first stable empire. (shrink)

In recent years, several scientific disciplines have been undergoing replication crises, and in response, preregistration has been offered as a solution to replicability problems. In this paper, I will draw connections between this new focus on preregistration and an older debate in the philosophy of science, namely predictivism—the thesis that predictions are epistemically superior to accommodations. Specifically, I shall argue that predictivism justifies preregistration. As it turns out, predictivists of all stripes have subtly different reasons to support preregistration. This unity (...) is significant because firstly, preregistration proponents often seem to be implicitly committed to stronger versions of predictivism, but strong predictivism has long been deemed untenable by philosophers of science. Furthermore, the efficacy of preregistration in dealing with Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) like p-hacking and HARKing is at best contentious, which blocks a straightforward empirical justification of preregistration. Although empirical validation of preregistration—which need not be based on preventing QRPs—will eventually be required, it would be nice to have a principled justification for preregistration while we await the empirical evidence. I will also argue that preregistration offers something in return to predictivism: the former bolsters the latter by serving as a counterargument to accommodationism—the antithesis of predictivism. (shrink)

The accuracy levels of VGG19 and 3D CNN are compared using the performance metrics. This comparison helps in identifying which model performs better in the task of facial reconstruction from distorted images. Visualizing the results in the form of a graph provides a clear and concise way to understand the comparative performance of the algorithms. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a system that can accurately reconstruct distorted faces, which can be invaluable in identifying accident victims or (...) assisting in medical treatments. By providing a reliable method for facial reconstruction, this technology can potentially save lives and improve outcomes for individuals involved in accidents. (shrink)

The performance of the deep learning models is evaluated using metrics such as accuracy and error rate. Accuracy measures how well the models are able to reconstruct the facial features compared to the original images, while the error rate indicates the frequency of incorrect reconstructions. By quantifying these metrics, the project can assess the effectiveness of each algorithm in reconstructing distorted faces. The accuracy levels of VGG19 and 3D CNN are compared using the performance metrics.

I explore the question of whether Kant's theory in the _Critique of Judgment_ can account for judgments of taste regarding the ugly. While there has been much debate regarding this issue in recent decades, many scholars consider the harmonious free play of the faculties to be central to this question. Harmony between the imagination and understanding is stressed in a series of articles regarding pure judgments of taste of the ugly beginning in the mid-1990s and extending into the 2000s. I (...) investigate the status of harmony in relation to judgments of taste and assess whether harmony among these faculties is necessary to free play. In order to do so, I compare three cases and consider how they relate to cognitive activity: judgments of taste of the beautiful, sublime experience, and judgments of taste regarding works of genius. I argue that pure judgements of taste of the ugly are indeed possible by analyzing the cognitive activity produced in the aforementioned cases. These instances show that in Kant's system, cognitive harmony may not be necessary to free play. Rather, disharmony can also be produced by our aesthetic experience with the sublime, works of genius, and the ugly. I argue that in spite of the contrapurposiveness and disharmony that experience with the ugly spurs, it nonetheless can serve to further cognitive activity and quicken the mind, cultivate taste, and develop community, thus revealing a higher, and perhaps unexpected, purposiveness. (shrink)

. The accuracy levels of VGG19 and 3D CNN are compared using the performance metrics. This comparison helps in identifying which model performs better in the task of facial reconstruction from distorted images. Visualizing the results in the form of a graph provides a clear and concise way to understand the comparative performance of the algorithms. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a system that can accurately reconstruct distorted faces, which can be invaluable in identifying accident victims (...) or assisting in medical treatments. By providing a reliable method for facial reconstruction, this technology can potentially save lives and improve outcomes for individuals involved in accidents. (shrink)

The core objective of this project is to recognize and reconstruct distorted facial images, particularly in the context of accidents. This involves using deep learning techniques to analyze the features of a distorted face and regenerate it into a recognizable form. Deep learning models are wellsuited for this task due to their ability to learn complex patterns and representations from data the input data consists of distorted facial images, typically obtained from MRI scans of accident victims. These images may contain (...) various types of distortions such as swelling, bruising, or other injuries that affect facial appearance. (shrink)

This comparison helps in identifying which model performs better in the task of facial reconstruction from distorted images. Visualizing the results in the form of a graph provides a clear and concise way to understand the comparative performance of the algorithms. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a system that can accurately reconstruct distorted faces, which can be invaluable in identifying accident victims or assisting in medical treatments. By providing a reliable method for facial reconstruction, this technology (...) can potentially save lives and improve outcomes for individuals involved in accidents. (shrink)

How do individuals and communities respond to negative aesthetic experience? Historically, philosophical aesthetics has devoted much thought to positive aesthetic experience, including the beautiful, agreeable, charming, and tasteful. But this is only a partial picture. Some aesthetic experience displeases: the ugly, disgusting, and horrific are but a few examples with which aestheticians have grappled in recent decades. The aversive and visceral nature of disgust has generated particular interest. But as Carolyn Korsmeyer points out in _Savoring Disgust: The Foul & the (...) Fair in Aesthetics_, there is also a paradoxical attraction to that which arouses disgust. Following Kant and Korsmeyer from the Western philosophical tradition, I claim that the aversive-attractive response is integral to disgust’s power to motivate aesthetic engagement. On the one hand, people might feel its force and refuse to engage with that which disgusts. On the other hand, unshakeable interest may spur active responses including the exchange of judgments of taste; protests of a given artist, work, or exhibition; or even violent actions intended to damage or destroy a particular work. While the negative dimension of disgust response is often regarded as a liability from an aesthetic standpoint, disgust also has a corresponding productive dimension that has important implications for communities. In this chapter, I coin the term “generative disgust” in order to explain the productive capacity of disgust to inspire communal, often subcultural, activity. On my view, generative disgust has two orientations – destructive and constructive. Both forms activate the community in question based upon the valence of the group’s comportment towards a particular work of art. As such, destructive generative disgust galvanizes the community and spurs increased activity based upon negative response to art, whereas constructive generative disgust galvanizes the community and spurs increased activity based upon positive response to art. I explore two examples that reveal the dual character of generative disgust in communities: Andres Serrano’s _Immersion (Piss Christ)_ (destructive deployment) and Bryan Fuller’s _Hannibal_ (constructive deployment). In the case of _Piss Christ_, the intensity of generative disgust spurred some Christians to police moral-religious boundaries and restrict aesthetic expression in order to protect a community. Their activity culminated in vandalism and destruction of Serrano’s photograph. In the case of Hannibal, the intensity of generative disgust, combined with hedonic ambivalence inspired the “Fannibals” (the Hannibal fandom) to forge community, make art, and to try to find the show a new home when it was not renewed by NBC. Both instances manifest how generative disgust can incite aesthetic engagement and increase organized activity on the part of subcultural groups. (shrink)

According to Max Deutsch, conceptual engineers face a dilemma: either they target semantic meanings, in which case they are engaged in an infeasible activity (the “implementation challenge”), or they target speaker meanings, in which case they are engaged in a trivial enterprise (the “trivialization challenge”). Focusing on the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that the “transubstantiation version” of the implementation challenge only holds for representationalist approaches to conceptual engineering, according to which concepts are individuated by their representational relation (...) to phenomena or sets of objects in the world. From a non-representationalist (e.g. pragmatist) perspective, the dilemma is therefore dissolved. Nevertheless, Deutsch’s article still deserves a response from the pragmatist, since it raises a more general challenge to conceptual engineering that I dub the “practical implementation challenge”. I offer a pragmatist solution to that challenge, drawing on John Dewey’s theory of inquiry and Robert Brandom’s inferentialism. This solution includes recommendations distributed across all stages of the engineering process, in privileging projects that are (1) problem-driven, (2) bottom-up; ensuring that the proposal is (3) clearly justified, (4) maintains continuity with the existing inferential role; and finally, in (5) enforcing the novel concept in practices of deontic scorekeeping, (6) backed up by institutional or intellectual authority. (shrink)

Although doubt (Tvivl) and despair (Fortvivlelse) are widely recognized as two central and closely associated concepts in Kierkegaard’s authorship, their precise relationship remains opaque in the extant interpretive literature. To shed light on their relationship, this paper develops a novel interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the connection between despair and our agency over our beliefs, and its significance for Kierkegaard’s ethics of belief. First, I show that an important yet largely overlooked form of Kierkegaardian despair involves either failing to take (...) ethico-religious responsibility for one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs, or misusing one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs by refusing to recognize or comply with externally given ethico-religious norms governing belief. Second, I argue that Kierkegaard takes properly exercising one’s agency over one’s beliefs to matter because beliefs are partly constitutive of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) that Kierkegaard regards as the cure for despair. (shrink)

In his 2007 book, /Self-Consciousness/, Sebastian Rödl presents his topic—that of first-person thought—as ‘a manner of thinking of an object, or a form of reference’ to a particular thing. A decade later, in /Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism/, Rödl rejects what he now calls the ‘lingering naturalism’ of that earlier work, which he roots in the ‘dogmatic presupposition’ that ‘I’ is a word that makes reference. The volume under review comprises seventeen critical essays on /Self-Consciousness and Objectivity/, (...) together with an introduction by Jesse M. Mulder and a lengthy set of replies from Rödl. Given the scope of the issues they raise, my discussion focuses on one important thread that runs through a number of the essays, namely the question of whether Rödl’s anti-naturalism can accommodate the evident fact that at least some of the subjects of thought and judgment are individual human beings. (shrink)

Computational Functionalism is a subfield of philosophy of mind most relevant to the subject of cognitive science as well as to artificial intelligence (AI). The analysis of this paper focuses on Hilary Putnam’s and Gualtiero Piccinini’s standpoints regarding the molecular understanding of computation. Finally, Putnam’s argument of the functionalism in notion of the mental states is based on the positive definition of those states by their functions, while Piccinini, and on the other hand suggest that an understanding of the mechanism (...) of computation will go a long way to explaining cognition. This research also points out shortcomings of functionalism in their theories especially in regards to connectivity with physicality of AI structures. Therefore, the paper identifies the following gaps: The first gap holds that although both theorists have important insights, the two approaches put forward by the respective theorists are flawed and a better proposal is required, then a new proposal is suggested In identifying these gaps, the paper seeks to contribute to the literature by arguing for the need to develop a composite of the two theorists. The results show that the big ideas are important in present-day AI debate and analysis, which helps to explain the mind as computation. (shrink)

Se vorbește îndeobște mai mult despre un spirit al timpului (Zeitgeist) și amprenta acestuia asupra modului în care noi înțelegem și reflectăm lumea – asemenea cerului, al cărui joc de lumini și umbre oferă un contur de culoare lucrurilor. Nu trebuie însă să uităm solul din care ideile încolțesc și spiritul locului (Raumgeist) care le‐a animat creșterea. În acest orizont au loc întâlnirile, împlinirile, speranțele și dezamăgirile care ne edifică ca oameni și ne orientează busola căutărilor filosofice și spirituale. Există (...) roade pentru care dăm socoteală în secerișul vieții de zi cu zi și există resturi de care recolta zilei nu pare să ia seama – aparent neînsemnate pentru logica zilei, aceste resturi de roade sunt tocmai cele care la urmă, la apus, dau sens întregii strădanii. Avem sarcina existențială de a nu lăsa iarna vieții să se aștearnă pe resturile rămase în urma secerișului. Acesta este și imboldul volumului de față, care se dorește a fi un spicilegium, care în limba latină înseamnă „un mănunchi de resturi de spice rămase în urma recoltei”. Așadar, o antologie de paisprezece texte filosofice de diferite dimensiuni și subiecte, dar care reprezintă expresia unei comunități de cercetători, profesori, doctoranzi și pasionați de filosofie aduși împreună de filosofia studiată sau trăită cândva la Cluj‐Napoca. Chiar dacă este compus din texte eterogene, cititorul atent al acestui volum va putea sesiza cum spiritul acestui loc subîntinde toate tematizările: propensiunea față de idealism, profunzimea psihanalizei, subtilitatea fenomenologiei, pasiunea realist speculativă și fervoarea căutării autentice a binelui, adevărului și frumosului în lume, în gândire și artă sunt predispozițiile care însuflețesc și textele de față. - Dan Siserman. (shrink)

Gioacchino din Fiore (n. 1135 – d. 30 martie 1202), călugăr cistercian și fondator al Ordinului Florensian din Calabria, a fost unul dintre cei mai influenți teologi și filosofi ai Evului Mediu. Plasat de Dante în Paradis (Cântul XII), Gioacchino este considerat de către unii profet, iar de alții eretic, iar despre ideile sale se afirmă că au influențat atât Ordinul Franciscan, cât și mișcările escatologice medievale și moderne, respectiv teoriile ulterioare ale filosofiei istoriei. Cunoscut în primul rând pentru împărțirea (...) istoriei în trei status-uri, al Tatălui, al Fiului și al Spiritului (Duhului Sfânt), prin care Sfânta Treime se revelează progresiv și pedagogic umanității, călăuzind-o înspre libertate și desăvârșire, sistemul de teologie și filosofie a istoriei dezvoltat de abatele calabrez stă alături de De Civitate Dei a lui Augustin asemenea unui pilon al înțelegerii creștine medievale a sensului istoriei. - Dan Siserman -/- „Din faptul că după Cristos continuă încă o istorie bolnavă și profană, Gioacchino concluzionează că o istorie cu adevărat sfântă și bună trebuie încă să vină. Această istorie însă, recunoaște el cu satisfacție, este acum foarte aproape: într-adevăr, ea a crescut mult timp într-un mod ascuns, dar în curând va trebui să devină vizibilă. În acest eveniment iminent abatele calabrez își plasează bucuria plină de speranță și așteptarea plină de încredere; iar acesta este un fapt care indică un lucru cu adevărat semnificativ: că este cu adevărat posibil să privim spre viitor cu acea speranță plină de bucurie, care cândva își găsise expresia în acel „Marana tha” al primilor creștini, care așteptau plinătatea mântuirii odată cu întoarcerea lui Isus Cristos. Astfel, la Gioacchino, o adevărată așteptare a timpului sfârșitului a fost din nou posibilă – o așteptare care era pe deplin pătrunsă de spiritul speranței. […] După părerea mea, numai cu mari rezerve putem accepta teza conform căreia Gioacchino din Fiore a inițiat procesul de secularizare a speranței escatologice care a condus la conștiința epocală a Renașterii și Modernității. Este corect că odată cu Gioacchino s-a produs o turnură în ceea ce privește speranța escatologică; însă ar trebui să ne ferim să vedem pur și simplu un inițiator al Renașterii într-un astfel de om al contemplației care a profețit o eră monastică și contemplativă a purei interiorități.” – Joseph Ratzinger/Papa Benedict XVI. (shrink)