Intentional communication is perceptually based and about attentional objects. Three attention mechanisms are distinguished: scanning, attention attraction, and attention-focusing. Attention-focusing directs the subject towards attentional objects. Attention-focusing is goal-governed (controlled by stimulus) or goal-intended (under the control of the subject). Attentional objects are perceptually categorised functional entities that emerge in the interaction between subjects and environment. Joint attention allows for focusing on the same attentional object simultaneously (mutual object-focused attention), provided that the subjects have focused on each other beforehand (subject-subject (...) attention). It results in intentional communication if the subjects attend to each other as subjects (i) capable of attending, and (ii) attending in a goal-intended way. Intentional communication is fundamentally imperative and adapted to action. (shrink)

The subject of this book is the first person in thought and language. The main question concerns what we mean when we say 'J'. Related to it are questions about what kinds of self-consciousness and self-knowledge are needed in order for us to have the capacity to talk about ourselves. The emphasis is on theories of meaning and reference for 'J', but a fair amount of space is devoted to 'I' -thoughts and the role of the concept of the self (...) in cognition. The purpose is to give a picture of how we think and talk about ourselves in a wide range of circumstances. The topic has been discussed in numerous articles during the last decades, but rarely in the form of a monograph. I felt the need for a book of this kind while working on my dissertation. The manuscript is the result of many years of reflection on the self and indexicals. Some of the theories that I advance have developed as a result of my teaching an undergraduate course in the philosophy of language the last couple of years. (shrink)

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of (...) others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

How should the development of creativity be approached? Many accounts of children’s creativity focus on the relation between creativity and pretend play, placing make-believe and the mental exploration of possible scenarios about the world at the fore. Often divergent thinking and story-telling are used to measure creativity with fluency, originality, and flexibility as indicators. I will argue that the strong focus on conceptual processes and higher-order thought leaves procedural forms of creativity in the dark and hinders a proper investigation of (...) the development of creativity. Creativity involves both strategic and procedural elements and the mental and physical manipulation of ideas are equally important. Sahlin’s notion of rule-based creativity might serve as the starting-point for an approach to the development of creativity that is neutral as to the underlying nature of creativity and that permits investigating creativity independently of language. On this approach, creativity is characterized by the violation and subsequent replacement of a rule or norm that underlies a given activity with a novel strategy or procedure. When, where, and how children will manifest creativity is conditional on the kind of rule or norm that is violated. (shrink)

It is argued that the theory of situated cognition together with dynamic systems theory can explain the core of artistic practice and aesthetic experience, and furthermore paves the way for an account of how artist and audience can meet via the artist's work. The production and consumption of art is an embodied practice, firmly based in perception and action, and supported by features of the local, agent-centered and global socio-cultural contexts. Artistic creativity and aesthetic experience equally result from the dynamic (...) interplay between agent and context, allowing for artist and viewer to relate to the artist's work in similar ways. (shrink)

Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.

Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.

Several conditions for being an intrinsically intentional agent are put forward. On a first level of intentionality the agent has representations. Two kinds are described: cued and detached. An agent with both kinds is able to represent both what is prompted by the context and what is absent from it. An intermediate level of intentionality is achieved by having an inner world, that is, a coherent system of detached representations that model the world. The inner world is used, e.g., for (...) conditional and counterfactual thinking. Contextual or indexical representations are necessary in order that the inner world relates to the actual external world and thus can be used as a basis for action. To have full-blown intentionality, the agent should also have a detached self-awareness, that is, be able to entertain self-representations that are independent of the context. (shrink)

We trace the difference between the ways in which apes and humans co–operate to differences in communicative abilities, claiming that the pressure for future–directed co–operation was a major force behind the evolution of language. Competitive co–operation concerns goals that are present in the environment and have stable values. It relies on either signalling or joint attention. Future–directed co–operation concerns new goals that lack fixed values. It requires symbolic communication and context–independent representations of means and goals. We analyse these ways of (...) co–operating in game–theoretic terms and submit that the co–operative strategy of games that involve shared representations of future goals may provide new equilibrium solutions. (shrink)

An experimental paradigm that purports to test young children’s understanding of social norms is examined. The paradigm models norms on Searle’s notion of a constitutive rule. The experiments and the reasons provided for their design are discussed. It is argued that the experiments do not provide direct evidence about the development of social norms and that the concepts of a social norm and constitutive rule are distinct. The experimental data are re-interpreted, and suggestions for how to deal with the present (...) criticism are presented that do not require abandoning the paradigm as such. Then the conception of normativity that underlies the experimental paradigm is rejected and an alternative view is put forward. It is argued that normativity emerges from interaction and engagement, and that learning to comply with social norms involves understanding the distinction between their content, enforcement, and acceptance. As opposed to rule-based accounts that picture the development of an understanding of social norms as one-directional and based in enforcement, the present view emphasizes that normativity is situated, reciprocal, and interactive. (shrink)

The first part of the article examines some recent studies on the early development of social norms that examine young children’s understanding of codified rule games. It is argued that the constitutive rules than define the games cannot be identified with social norms and therefore the studies provide limited evidence about socio-normative development. The second part reviews data on children’s play in natural settings that show that children do not understand norms as codified or rules of obligation, and that the (...) norms that guide social interaction are dynamic, situated, and heterogeneous. It is argued that normativity is intersubjective and negotiable and starts to develop in the first year, emerging as a practical skill that depends on participatory engagement. Three sources of compliance are discussed: emotional engagement, nonverbal agreement, and conversation. (shrink)

In our response, we address four themes arising from the commentaries. First, we discuss the distinction between cognition and metacognition and show how to draw it within our framework. Next, we explain how metacognition differs from social cognition. The underlying mechanisms of metacognitive development are then elucidated in terms of interaction patterns. Finally, we consider measures of metacognition and suitable methods for investigating it.

We explain metacognition as a management of cognitive resources that does not necessitate algorithmic strategies or metarepresentation. When pragmatic, world-directed actions cannot reduce the distance to the goal, agents engage in epistemic action directed at cognition. Such actions often are physical and involve other people, and so are open to observation. Taking a dynamic systems approach to development, we suggest that implicit and perceptual metacognition emerges from dyadic reciprocal interaction. Early intersubjectivity allows infants to internalize and construct rudimentary strategies for (...) monitoring and control of their own and others’ cognitions by emotion and attention. The functions of initiating, maintaining, and achieving turns make proto-conversation a productive platform for developing metacognition. It enables caregiver and infant to create shared routines for epistemic actions that permit training of metacognitive skills. The adult is of double epistemic use to the infant – as a teacher that comments on and corrects the infant’s efforts, and as the infant’s cognitive resource in its own right. (shrink)

People are motivated by shared social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for ideological violence. The current study examined this dark side of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of sociopolitical violence, and determining the extent to which the engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral convictions. Participants reported their moral convictions about a variety of sociopolitical issues prior to undergoing functional (...) MRI scanning. During scanning, they were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of violent protests that were ostensibly congruent or incongruent with their views about sociopolitical issues. Complementary univariate and multivariate analytical strategies comparing neural responses to congruent and incongruent violence identified neural mechanisms implicated in processing salience and in the encoding of subjective value. As predicted, neuro-hemodynamic response was modulated parametrically by individuals’ beliefs about the appropriateness of congruent relative to incongruent sociopolitical violence in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and by moral conviction in ventral striatum. Overall moral conviction was predicted by neural response to congruent relative to incongruent violence in amygdala. Together, these findings indicate that moral conviction about sociopolitical issues serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural aversion to interpersonal harm. (shrink)

In his text, “The Question Concerning Technology”, Heidegger argues that modern mind is unaware of Being’s self-destining which determines Dasein’s relation to their own essence and that of other beings because it is in a delusion of being an ‘efficient cause’. A bluntness of this kind not only endangers human-freedom but also puts natural entities at the risk of losing their authenticity since the modern mode of production regards nature as a reserve that is constantly in the service of human-doings. (...) Accordingly, the discussion carried out in this article is, despite his criticism of the conception of ‘agency’ underlying western metaphysics, whether or not Heidegger overcomes the problem of anthropocentrism in his own philosophy. (shrink)

The evolution of Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is the result of the amount of research in the field of education and artificial intelligence in recent years. English is the third most common languages in the world and also is the internationally dominant in the telecommunications, science and trade, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomatic language as most of the areas of work now taught in English. Therefore, the demand for learning English has increased. In this paper, we describe the design of (...) an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching English language grammar to help students learn English grammar easily and smoothly. The system provides all topics of English grammar and generates a series of questions automatically for each topic for the students to solve. The system adapts with all the individual differences of students and begins gradually with students from easier to harder level. The intelligent tutoring system was given to a group of students of all age groups to try it and to see the impact of the system on students. The results showed a good satisfaction of the students toward the system. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to reveal the scientific approach that substantiates the impact of the creation of strategic alliances (SA) on the digital transformation of business and the development of their innovative power based on identified success factors. The aim was achieved using the following methods: abstract logic and typification (for classification of SA's success factors), generalization (to determine the peculiarities of SA's influence on their innovation development), analytical and ranking method (to determine the relationship between the dynamics (...) creating of SA and the degree of acceleration of digital transformation), expert evaluation (to determine the degree of influence of SA success factors by business areas). Implementing a business-integrated approach to understanding digital transformation will accelerate implementation of innovation and organizational change, identifies future prospects for market, customer and business relationships, highlighting the importance of researching the factors that ensure their success. An alternative vision of SA’s success factors is suggested, which are determined by the possibilities the organization of partnerships and organizational culture, integration of business sectors, compatibility of management goals, external relevance, obtaining synergies. Innovation is considered by the authors as an integration factor that reconciles all groups of SA success factors, giving them the necessary focus to solve business problems. The results of the study show that the creation of SA has a significant impact on accelerating and changes priority of digital transformation of business areas involved in strategic partnerships, and the impact of SA on the development of their innovation power is crucial. (shrink)

The article is aimed at studying environmental responsibility of multinational enterprises in electronics and IT sectors. The main aspects of environmental policy of global business enterprises have been systematized, their characteristics for such high-tech market leaders as Alphabet Inc, IBM and Intel Corporation have been given. Corporate policies have been analyzed and compared in three aspects of environmental activity of the companies selected for this study: waste recycling, energy use and environmental impact. The results of the analysis of eco-responsible companies’ (...) practices show that each company forms management style and tools by implementing environmental responsibility, but none of them has managed to hold higher positions in the ranking of business environmental responsibility. Reserves for activating eco-oriented companies’ policy in IT sector have been identified. (shrink)

The approach to the study the role of strategic alliances in the conditions of digital business transformations has been further developed in the article. In the course of a critical analysis of the content of scientific publications of modern scientists who studied the behavior, peculiarities of activity and the meaning of strategic alliances, it was established that the role of strategic alliances in the conditions of digital transformations does not disappear, but brings new advantages, requiring the maximization of returns from (...) more dynamic partnership relations, which requires more in-depth study of such benefits. Dynamics analysis of the number of concluded agreements in the field of strategic partnership in the period of 2014-2023 demonstrates their increase starting from 2017, which led to the activation of digital business transformations. In the course of research, it was determined that the role of strategic alliances in the conditions of digital business transformations is to ensure strategic flexibility under the conditions of continuity of digital transformations, improve competitive positions on the market, increase their innovativeness and efficiency, improve organizational stability and the ability of companies to learn, create opportunities for obtaining synergistic effect. It develops the ability of companies to proactively manage changes, contributes to the joint solution of strategic tasks and goals of partner companies, provides significantly greater opportunities for the development of innovative processes through the development and implementation of new methods and forms of work, new solutions in economic sectors, innovations in management, contributes to survival in market competitive environment and is an important competitive imperative to ensure overall long-term digital transformation. (shrink)

According to data provided by CRAN, in November 2023, the number of downloads of the bayesvl program reached 293, showing an increase of +57.5% compared to the previous month.

Accomplishing the sustainable development goal is challenging and requires the joint effort of the whole community, especially when humans are approaching the climate tipping point [1]. To contribute to promoting sustainable development, the AISDL Team has aggregated reliable and open-access scientific journals about environmental issues here as sources of knowledge for any interested researchers.

In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as _a desire to know._ Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to things unknown. The book introduces the notion of inostensible reference. Ilhan connects this notion to related concepts in philosophy of language: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description; the referential and the (...) attributive uses of definite descriptions; the _de re/de dicto_ distinction; and Kripke’s distinction between rigid and accidental designators. Continuing with a discussion of the conditions for curiosity and its satisfaction, Inan argues that the learning process—starting in curiosity and ending in knowledge—is always an effort to transform our inostensible terms into ostensible ones. A contextual account is adopted for the satisfaction of curiosity. It then discusses the conditions of successful reference to the object of curiosity and its presuppositions. The book concludes with a discussion on the limits of curiosity and its satisfaction. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

Intermediate phenomena of reality present particular characteristics of systemic self-organization, multilevel interrelations, recursivity, emergence of new «objects» with properties different from those of the elements that form them, and evolutionary dynamics, that probably need the formulation of new theoretical concepts and different paradigm principles. The sciences or perspectives of complexity, or the «complex» thinking, try to respond adequately to this complexity of reality. This approach adopts a multidimensional, integrated and dynamic view of reality: the world is made up of overlapping (...) levels of different elements which produce new properties or new organizations at higher levels. If we conceive what we call languages as simple and decontextualized objects, we can understand some of the more mechanical aspects but we will ignore their conditions of existence, functionality, maintenance, variation, change and extinction. (shrink)

This article argues that non-consensual vaccination is morally impermissible, for the same reasons for which sexual assault is not permissible. Likewise, mandatory vaccination is morally akin to sexual harassment, and therefore is not to be allowed.

Do thay đổi chính sách Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2023 có vài cải tiến. Các ấn phẩm trong Core Collections đều được công bố Journal Impact Factor (JIF).

The study aimed to identify training for the performance of the medical staff and its role in developing the quality of health care in Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the southern Palestinian governorates. , and technicians) of 2150 employees, a stratified random sample of 330 employees was selected, the questionnaire was distributed to them, and 302 questionnaires were retrieved, with a rate of 91.5%. One of the most important results of the study was the existence of a statistically significant effect of (...) training on the development of health care quality. One of the most important recommendations of the study was to provide more suitable opportunities to create a climate for the professional growth of employees, and pay more attention to the expansion of programs and training courses that are in line with the requirements of administrative empowerment. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the sharing of information and its impact on the quality of health care in Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the southern Palestinian governorates. The study adopted the descriptive analytical approach. The number is 2150 employees, and the questionnaire was distributed to a stratified random sample of 330 employees, and 302 questionnaires were retrieved, with a rate of 91.5%. One of the most important results of the study was that there is a statistically significant effect at the (...) level (α≤0.05) of information sharing for the performance of the medical staff in the quality of health care in Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the southern Palestinian governorates. The axis of participation in information came with a relative weight (69.6%) and a high degree. The level of health care quality was high with a relative weight of (69.0%). One of the most important recommendations of the study was the need to pay attention to measuring patients' satisfaction levels, and to set up a box for complaints and suggestions for patients, and what are their suggestions and point of view for the service provided to them. (shrink)

This collection of writings on aesthetics includes selections from Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Amy Mullin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Frederich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. This collection may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University bookstore.

The study aimed to identify the delegation of authority for the performance of the medical staff and its relationship to improving the quality of health care in Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the southern Palestinian governorates. Administrators, and technicians) with a total of 2150 employees, and the questionnaire was distributed to a stratified random sample of 330 employees, and 302 questionnaires were retrieved, with a rate of 91.5%. One of the most important results of the study was the existence of a (...) statistically significant relationship between delegation of authority and the quality of health care. One of the most important recommendations of the study was to strengthen the direction of senior management towards excellence in patient service, because the patient represents a fundamental focus in health services. (shrink)

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget contends that children below the age of 12 see no necessity for the logical law of non-contradiction. I argue this view is problematic. First of all, Piaget's dialogues with children which are considered supportive of this position are not clearly so. Secondly, Piaget underestimates the necessary nature of following the logical law of non-contradiction in everyday discourse. The mere possibility of saying something significant and informative at all presupposes that the law of non-contradiction is enforced.

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

To clarify the proper role of values in science, focusing on controversial expert responses to Covid-19, this article examines the status of (in)convenient hypotheses. Polarizing cases like health experts downplaying mask efficacy to save resources for healthcare workers, or scientists dismissing “accidental lab leak” hypotheses in view of potential xenophobia, plausibly involve modifying evidential standards for (in)convenient claims. Societies could accept that scientists handle (in)convenient claims just like nonscientists, and give experts less political power. Or societies could hold scientists to (...) a higher bar, by expecting them not to modify evidential standards to avoid costs only incidentally tied to error. (shrink)

This collection for a course in Social Thought and the Critique of Power includes selections from Sandra Bartkey, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, Juergin Habermas, Margaret Kohn, Saskia Sassen, Margit Mayer, David Ciavatta, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Jeremy Waldron. Selections include material on the city, neoliberalism, computer-mediated life, precarity, cosmopolitanism, and gender. This packet may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University Bookstore.

This out-of-print collection in the area of European twentieth-century political philosophy includes selections from Adorno, Benjamin, Benhabib, Marcuse, Ciavatta, Comay, Honneth, and Fraser.

This collection in the area of continental philosophy of language, aesthetics, and semiotics includes articles and book selections from Derrida, Ricouer, McCumber, Oliver, Sheshradi-Krooks, Lacan, and Kristeva. This collection is available in the University of Guelph bookstore.

This out-of-print collection on animal rights, applied ethics, and continental philosophy includes readings by Martin Heidegger, Karin De Boer, Martha Nussbaum, David De Grazia, Giorgio Agamben, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, David Morris, Michael Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Sue Donaldson, Carolyn Merchant, and Jacques Derrida.

This out-of-print, two-volume, photocopy packet, in the area of "Surrealism and the Politics of the Particular" includes readings on language, meaning, and surrealism from Adorno, Benjamin, McCumber, Breton, Heidegger, Freud, Kristeva, Ricouer, and Bataille.

This out-of-print collection in the area of the history, politics, ethics, and theory of privacy includes selections from Peter Gay, Alan Westin, Walter Benjamin, Catharine MacKinnon, Seyla Benhabib, Anita Allen, Ann Jennings, Charles Taylor, Richard Sennett, Mark Wicclair, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Nozick.

The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive (...) field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data. (shrink)

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested (...) or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. (shrink)

Some argue that time’s causal arrow is grounded in an underlying thermodynamic asymmetry. Often, this is tied to Humean skepticism that causes produce their effects, in any robust sense of ‘produce’. Conversely, those who advocate stronger notions of natural necessity often reject thermodynamic reductions of time’s causal arrow. Against these traditional pairings, I argue that ‘reduction-plus-production’ is coherent. Reductionists looking to invoke robust production can insist that there are metaphysical constraints on the signs of objects’ velocities in any state, given (...) other—including far later—states’ properties. The Past Hypothesis may thus be a metaphysical condition, not a physical law. (shrink)

In matters of personal taste, faultless disagreement occurs between people who disagree over what is tasty, fun, etc., in those cases when each of these people seems equally far from the objective truth. Faultless disagreement is often taken as evidence that truth is relative. This article aims to help us avoid the truth-relativist conclusion. The article, however, does not argue directly against relativism; instead, the article defends non-relative truth constructively, aiming to explain faultless disagreement with the resources of semantic contextualism. (...) To this end the article describes and advocates a contextualist solution inspired by supervaluationist truth-value gap approaches. The solution presented here, however, does not require truth value gaps; it preserves both logical bivalence and non-relative truth, even while it acknowledges and explains the possibility of faultless disagreement. The solution is motivated by the correlation between assertions’ being true and their being useful. This correlation, furthermore, is used not only to tell which assertions are true, but also to determine which linguistic intuitions are reliable. (shrink)

Bakla signals “effeminacy” and “homosexuality,” which stigma signifies being “weak,” “fake woman,” and “unreal man.” This historical research interrogates the etymology of bakla, which etymology claims that bakla only became a label for gay identity since the 1960s. A newfound evidence, the Bienvenido N. Santos’ “Recollections” (1932), challenges this etymology; as the document used bakla to signify “effeminate” decades before the 1960s. -/- Mobilizing this newfound evidence alongside theoretical, historiographic, and archival data, this thesis asks: (1) How can the 1932 (...) “Recollections” help explain the crystallization of bakla into a label for “effeminate homosexual male” identity since the 1960s? (2) What can socio-historical processes further reveal about the etymology of bakla, and why the word bears so much stigma? (3) How did “effeminacy” and male “homosexuality” become semantically linked with bakla’s historic senses? At its core, the study argues that sexism and political instability coincide in the social history of the bakla. -/- Contextualizing bakla’s semantic shifts reveals that the word’s stigma comes from its earliest meaning; besides “fearful and weak,” it was bakla as “deceptive.” While tracking bakla’s semantic links with the pre-existing terms for gay identity shows that bakla was forged alongside historical biases against women. These biases rendered gay men and trans women undesirable. And archival data uncover five (5) factors explaining why bakla crystallized into a gender label, which also offer insights on how bakla has been reclaimed and reworked, despite its persisting stigma, in more recent years. -/- The thesis exposes bakla’s status as a “keyword” in the Philippine conceptual, sexual, and social history. It undresses bakla, opens it to critique, and recognizes the importance its etymology can play in undoing bakla’s stigma, and its potential in rethinking Philippine history itself. (shrink)

Famous examples of conceivability arguments include (i) Descartes’ argument for mind-body dualism, (ii) Kripke's ‘modal argument’ against psychophysical identity theory, (iii) Chalmers’ ‘zombie argument’ against materialism, and (iv) modal versions of the ontological argument for theism. In this paper, we show that for any such conceivability argument, C, there is a corresponding ‘mirror argument’, M. M is deductively valid and has a conclusion that contradicts C's conclusion. Hence, a proponent of C—henceforth, a ‘conceivabilist’—can be warranted in holding that C's premises (...) are conjointly true only if she can find fault with one of M's premises. But M's premises are modelled on a pair of C's premises. The same reasoning that supports the latter supports the former. For this reason, a conceivabilist can repudiate M's premises only on pain of severely undermining C's premises. We conclude on this basis that all conceivability arguments, including each of (i)–(iv), are fallacious. (shrink)

In 2010s, the love story between Sidapa and Bulan, two oft-described as male gods, widely circulated online and eventually became a folkloric representation about the LGBTQIA+ during the pre-colonial Philippines. But in 2019 this queer mythological romance was exposed to be a hoax. However, instead of dismissing the story altogether for being a hoax, especially given the story’s already irreversible circulation in popular culture today, this paper rather examines the “mythification” of Sidapa-Bulan queer romance as a case for historical rethinking. (...) Drawing from a bricolage of digital, ethnohistorical, and historiographical materials, this paper is divided into four sections. The first section dissects this paper’s conceptual tools: the use of seemingly anachronistic categories of “queer” and “LGBTQIA+,” and how these categories intersect with the concepts of “myth-making” as a sociological (and by extension, historical) phenomenon, and what came to be known as “neo-archiving” (i.e., the use of fiction in response to the gaps in history). The second section explains the paper’s methodology and sources, specifically its use of four historical thinking skills in dissecting the Sidapa-Bulan myth. The third section examines the Sidapa-Bulan myth as a historical case, specifically in terms of sourcing and close reading, corroborating, and contextualizing. And the fourth section attempts to offer, albeit in broad strokes, some potential ways to move forward from the damages caused by the Sidapa-Bulan myth. As such, this paper argues that only by maintaining transparency over its own history, that the Sidapa-Bulan queer romance, as a case of contemporary myth-making (where queer artists, authors, and allies did not merely passively consume the story, but rather actively re-define and appropriate it), can become useful and integral in rethinking and, thus, enriching the Philippine LGBTQIA+ past. But in a practical sense, this paper demonstrates how historical thinking skills can empower the public to detect, dissect, and dispel disinformation today. (shrink)

Can a basic sensory property like a bare colour or tone be beautiful? Some, like Kant, say no. But Heidegger suggests, plausibly, that colours ‘glow’ and tones ‘sing’ in artworks. These claims can be productively synthesized: ‘glowing’ colours are not beautiful; but they are sensory forces—not mere ‘matter’, contra Kant—with real aesthetic impact. To the extent that it inheres in sensible properties, beauty is plausibly restricted to structures of sensory force. Kant correspondingly misrepresents the relation of beautiful wholes to their (...) parts. Beautiful form is not extrinsic to sensory force. Sensible beauty is just the holistic impact of agonistically-interacting sensory forces. When sensory forces interact hierarchically, their collective impact is closer to the sublime, in quality if not degree. The simplest sensory experience of sublimity is just the impact of radically intensified sensory forces, similar in kind if not degree to the individual ‘singing’ tones in a beautiful melody. (shrink)