Modern aesthetics in its early phase was “consciousness aesthetics” which upheld spirit but obviated body, hence offered demonstration for the priority of refined art as well as elite culture. In its later period, modern aesthetics converted into “somaesthetics” which, at the same time when it affirmed the identity of consciousness and body, laid particular stress on body, hence offered basis for the reasonableness of popular art as well as mass culture. Thus consciousness aesthetics and somaesthetics have their respective reasonableness and (...) limitation. We should transcend the opposition between them, acknowledging the spirit aspect of aesthetics as well as the body aspect of it and affirming the dominant position of spirit, so as to establish a modern aesthetics characterized by body-mind integration. (shrink)

Despite its strengths, Leech et al.'s model fails to address the important benefits that derive from self-explanation and task feedback in analogical reasoning development. These components encourage explicit, self-reflective processes that do not necessarily link to knowledge accretion. We wonder, therefore, what mechanisms can be included within a connectionist framework to model self-reflective involvement and its beneficial consequences.

According to the target article authors, initial experience with a circumstance primes a relation that can subsequently be applied to a different circumstance to draw an analogy. While I broadly agree with their claim about the role of relational priming in early analogical reasoning, I put forward a few concerns that may be worthy of further reflection.

This paper opens with a presentation of the philosophical underpinning and rationale of the concept of physical literacy. This is followed by an articulation of the concept of physical literacy. Three subsequent sections then consider aspects of the concept in a little more detail. The first investigates the relationship of the physical literacy to the development of a sense of self and to establishing interaction with others. Here the philosophical approach is informed by writings on cognitive development and recent neurological (...) insights. The second considers the universality of the concept and looks briefly at the views of existentialists and of contemporary sociologists. The third section addresses the place of propositional knowledge in being physically literate. The implications of objectifying the body in descriptive language are weighed against the fact that verbally expressed understanding and knowledge are an integral part of Western culture. The debate presented is one of a series that has, over the last five years, mapped the author's work on developing the concept of physical literacy. The aspects chosen to be discussed here are three that have generated considerable interest and debate. In conclusion, there is a short reflection on the implications of the views discussed for education and physical education. (shrink)

In this article the questions of what counts as play and philosophy are considered in relation to the question of early education for young children. The child subject characterised by the themes of playfulness, emotion, and irrationality is compared to the playful philosopher emanating from the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. This analysis contributes to the exploration of themes of truth and difference, the search for challenges to styles of philosophy in education, and to the role (...) of the educator in knowing and producing a particular creative child subject. Relationships between child and adult, player and philosopher are explored in order to question what counts as style, play and philosophy for both the child who is required to contribute as a creative player, and for the educator who is required to facilitate the development of such a child. The contemporary valorisation of children as active and constructive philosophers is, then, critically examined in terms of what counts as a philosopher and/or a child, and who gets to ‘do’ creative and playful philosophy. This article draws upon the New Zealand curriculum framework for early childhood education, Te Whāriki, and the work of Paulo Ghiraldelli, in exploring the contributions of both child and adult to the experience of education and philosophy. (shrink)

This essay explores the contingency of music's value, and the significant ways that contingency qualifies our understandings of the utility of instructional method. More specifically, it raises the possibility that the altruistic pursuit of methodological purity may serve ends dramatically different than those espoused by practitioners. Music making, music study, and music learning may be liberating, empowering, and educational; but they may also serve precisely opposite ends. More simply put, neither music nor its study is unconditionally or inherently good. The (...) essay explores various ways nihilism may be manifest in musical/instructional practices, and advances alternatives grounded in agency, action, and the acceptance of resistance and responsibility. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's early works criticize the development of modern democratic institutions as creating a surveillance society, which functions to control bodies by making them feel watched and monitored full time. His later works attempt to recover private space by exploring subversive techniques of the body and language. Following Foucault, pragmatists like Richard Shusterman and Richard Rorty have also developed very rich approaches to this project, extending it deeper into the literary and somatic dimensions of self-stylizing. Yet, for a debate centered (...) on the re-creation of the vision of the self, these discussions have yet to fully engage—even while they set the conditions for this engagement with—issues of posthuman technologies, such as AI, robotics, and genetic engineering. These certainly will constitute the primary engine of public institutional surveillance in the years to come. With this surveillance, the two spheres of private self-fashioning and public institutions will continue to evolve in relation to one another. As they do so, democratic society will change considerably. Perhaps Rorty's own normative and linguistic ideal of conversational maintenance may provide something of a democratic limit case on any future posthuman self-fashioning. (shrink)

The article discusses retributive justice and punitive restraint in response to the worst types of crime. I take the Breivik Case as a starting point. Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention for killing 69 people, mainly youths, at Utøya and 8 people in Oslo on July 22nd, 2011. Retributivist theories as well as commonly held retributive intuitions suggest that much harsher punishment is required for such crimes. According to some retributivist theories, most notably on the (...) influential theories of Kant and Hegel, the death penalty is warranted for murderers like Breivik. This suggests that the rationale for punitive restraint in a case like the Breivik Case can only be found in forward- looking, consequentialist theories of punishment, or by adding to retributivist theories a side-constraint in the form of a principle of parsimony. However, I argue that if we look closer at the function of punishment in the retributivist theories of Kant and Hegel, they too imply a rationale for punitive restraint, even for such horrific crimes as here discussed. Against Kant and Hegel’s own views on the death penalty, I argue that their broader “freedom theories” of retributive justice do not imply the justice of the death penalty or life imprisonment. In the last part of the article, I explore differences in the concepts of freedom entailed by Kant and Hegel’s theories, and I relate these to some of the background factors relevant to the Breivik Case. (shrink)

Scientific papers written as dialogues evoke Platonist philosophical discourses and are foreseen as elementary forms of expression in neoclassical scientific renaissance. Here we report on a study of the Brazil nut effect in a series of macroscopic and microscopic systems in the form of a play in three acts. The nut effect predicting the segregation of smaller grains at the bottom of the mixture and larger ones at the top was observed in a polydisperse mix of manually shaken playground pebbles, (...) albeit following different kinetics than in an agitated pile of chess pieces. Common sense predicts that vertical, gravity-driven segregation in colloidal dispersions with heterogeneous particle size distributions is such that larger particles would settle toward the bottom and the lighter ones cream at the top. Here we refute this expectation and demonstrate that segregation of colloidal particles in the vertical direction conforms to the Brazil nut effect when the agitation is delivered in the forms of vortex mixing or audio vibration, but not when the colloids are manually shaken. The effect is demonstrated on aqueous dispersions of hydroxyapatite and iron oxide nanoparticles. Kinetic experiments showed that segregation increases with the agitation time in mixtures of pebbles and with the post-agitation aging time in fine particle colloids. The particle size gradient established due to agitation-induced segregation led to a corresponding gradient in optoelectronic properties—band gap, conductivity, lattice acoustics—in the vertical direction of the colloidal column for both types of nanoparticles. Such morphological gradients induced by the Brazil nut effect can be harnessed as affordable and facile templates for the synthesis of functionally gradient materials. Discussion of the mechanism and the application potential of the observed effect in colloidal and coarse systems is enriched with a literature review of this curious effect and entwined with the literary elements of the dramaturgical narrative involving a family of scientist in exile from mainstream scientific institutions: the mother, the father, an elementary school boy and a kindergarten girl. The narrative conforms in its structure to the shape of a Brazil nut and presents the first research study whose findings are enacted through a dream. The play questions the humaneness and creative prospects of modern science and celebrates children’s science projects performed with meager resources and a plentiful of imagination, showing that they could be gateways to important scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Raquel Cascales and Luis Echarte focus on the development of practical wisdom and what they call ‘seeing with the heart’ for science students by means of reading science fiction literature. They argue that literature can bring the student into contact with the reality of moral life as moral dilemmas are made concrete by the characters and circumstances in a novel. They provide an analysis of how Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World can be read in the classroom and show how the (...) novel invites students to think about the role of science in society, the evolutionary paradigm, advances in genetic and psychological manipulation, as well as questions concerning human emotions,suffering, and friendship. (shrink)

C.S. Lewis’s ‘Argument from Desire’ is best summed up by his famous line, ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world’. In short, unfulfilled ‘seemingly transcendent desires’ point to fulfilment in another realm. Lewis’s argument is fraught with disagreement, and subsequently, questions remain as to its efficacy as a theistic argument. In this essay, I will take a novel approach by using (...) Bayes’ theorem to assess the success of Lewis’s argument in support of theism over and against naturalism. As I will argue, a strength of this approach is that it allows me to largely bypass a significant area of disagreement within the literature, namely, whether these desires are best seen as natural or artificial. Additionally, I will argue for why these desires are the sort of good God would be interested in giving to persons. Then, I will proceed to outline what I take to be the best naturalistic accounts of these desires and outline some of the challenges these accounts face. Finally, I will conclude with plugging these results into Bayes’ theorem. (shrink)

Currently there is such a cornucopia of conflicting theories in the field of addiction studies that it has become exceedingly difficult for treatment providers, therapists, and policymakers to integrate this vast field of knowledge into effective treatment. Since such a chaotic overabundance of treatment theories, styles, and definitions cloud the field of addictionology, many therapists claim their field is in need of a paradigm shift. In the last 20 years an integrative and compound model has emerged known as the biopsychosocial (...) model, but without a solid and comprehensive meta-framework, syncretistic confusion can result when therapists pick and choose techniques without direction or an overall rationale. To address this problem, Guy du Plessis applies integral theory as a conceptual framework for understanding addiction, as well as a meta-therapeutic framework for therapists. The integral foundation of addiction outlined in this book provides researchers, academics, treatment providers, policy makers, and therapists with a conceptual architectonic of addiction and its treatment that is integrative, inclusive, and practical. An Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment belongs on the shelf of every addiction treatment therapist, and anyone else who is impacted or influenced by the topic. (shrink)

This essay examines whether or not absurdity is intrinsic to human life. It takes Camus’ interpretation of ‘The Absurd’ as its conceptual starting point. It traces such thought back to Schopenhauer, whose work is then critically analysed. This analysis focuses primarily on happiness and meaning. This essay accepts some of Schopenhauer’s premises, but rejects his conclusions. Instead, it considers Nietzsche’s alternatives and the role of suffering in life. It posits that suffering may help people acquire meaning and escape absurdity. It (...) then analyses the role of compassion in absurdity, in reference to Nietzsche’s work and Buddhist teachings. Lastly, it examines absurdity in relation to death, rejecting the notion that death exacerbates absurdity. This paper understands absurdity to be a natural part of the human condition, as characterised by suffering, death and an absence of meaning. It concludes that although human life is absurd by nature, it need not remain so. (shrink)

The problematic vagueness inherent to the study of being requires an approach that transcends the use of a methodology pertaining to solely one research area. In the following pages we will explore the categories of being, their metaphysical meaning and their interrelations, approaching them via heuristic methods that incorporate symbolic mathematical abstraction and music theory analogies. We will propose a monadic system for explicating how the modes of being interact with each other, also exposing a harmonic model of the universe (...) derived from these hypotheses (Chapter I). The nature of consciousness and its properties will be investigated in Chapter II, followed by a research concerning possible internal self-adjustments of total-being-for-itself that might offer insights regarding the temporality and necessity of individual consciousnesses. The aim of this paper is to coalesce the categories of being (in-itself, for-itself, the Others) into a comprehensive system that could account as a unified ontological model compatible with inferences related to phenomenal manifestations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article deals with Dostoevsky’s controversial concept of love and its relation to that of Nietzsche. Despite many parallels, Dostoevsky’s thought on love can be viewed as a criticism, avant la letter, of Nietzsche’s claim to having unmasked the Christian idea of neighbour-love ‘for God’s sake’ as an illusion. Yet, in addition to neighbour-love, Dostoevsky also entertains the idea of ‘furthest love’, love for the Übermensch of the future. The article examines Dostoevsky’s experiments with love’s different forms and argues that (...) the question underlying these explorations is whether Christian love can positively impact the world or whether it is doomed to be ineffectual, even destructive. It is argued that, while Dostoevsky’s novels often expose love’s fallibility and even its impotence, they nonetheless manifest the quest for a love capable of redeeming the world. It is shown how Dostoevsky considered one’s understanding of love to hinge on anthropological views, such as belief in the immortality of the soul or the degree of human freedom and responsibility; and how the reality and practice of love, in turn, influences both who we are and understand ourselves to be.​. (shrink)

This article posits a number of theoretical pointers towards a conceptual clarification of the concept of non-violence, in particular in relation to notions of conflict, pact, mediation, compromise, strength, benevolence, and truth. It sets them against the concept of violence and the behaviours which are associated with it, and is based on the thought of M. K. Gandhi and E. Weil. Finally it presents some pointers towards a strategy for non-violence and explains the sense of the principle of non-cooperation.

Kant’s moral philosophy usually considers two types of duties: negative duties that prohibit certain actions and positive duties commanding action. With that, Kant insists on deriving all morality from reason alone. Such is the Categorical Imperative that Kant lays at the basis of ethics. Yet while negative duties can be derived from the Categorical Imperative and thus from reason, the paper argues that this is not the case with positive duties. After answering a number of attempts to derive positive duties (...) from the Categorical Imperative, most notably those of Barbara Herman, it sketches an alternative approach to understanding the relationship between the universal moral law and specific moral contents. (shrink)

The ArgumentLike many controversies in science, the one between Freud and Jung is overloaded with ad hominem arguments despite the incompatibility of such arguments with the pretensions of both sides to attain scientific ad rem validity. Unlike natural scientists, Freud and Jung regarded their own ad hominem arguments as relevant to general and impersonal truths. They practically legitimized such a use claiming to have a clinical basis for the rejection of the opponent's objections by a de-validating analysis of the opponent's (...) personality as a whole. The argument of this paper is that the de-validating strategy was neither an inevitable psychological outcome of the intricate interpersonal relationships in analytic situations nor the logical consequence of any clinical or scientific psycho-analytical discovery. It followed from the epistemological invalid pretension to have a general theory of mind which could explain by mental analysis the existence of “unreasonable opinions,” and the application of the same principles to the opinion that the theory itself is unreasonable. Such a pretension, apparently specific to mystical traditions in theology and metaphysics, was deeply rooted in the modern epistemological tradition. The paper examines the impact of the different branches of that tradition on Freud and Jung's respective ideologies, theories, and practice, including the ad hominem malpractice. (shrink)

Current organizations are underpinned by utilitarian ethics of Modernity. Pure economic motive driven organizations detach themselves from larger societal interest. Rising number of corporate scandals and intraorganizational income inequalities are breeding similar trends in society at large. Current organizations base their competitive advantage on resources and capabilities which boils down to economic supremacy at all cost whether it is named I/o or RBV of the firm. This theoretical article posits Ethics-based Trust as the main competency and capability for attaining sustained (...) competitive advantage. It in no way condemns utility view of the firms but treats it as a natural yet secondary outcome of genuine ethicality of the firm. Cultivating an ethical culture in the firm through identifying antecedents, organizational practices, and the outcomes where profitability is an automatic but secondary outcome under the supremacy of ethics is detailed in the multilevel model presented in this article. The main call of this article is to posit ethics and morality over and above short-term profits so that organizations fulfill their trustee role for society through enacting socio-humanistic theories within organizations. A brief analysis of the proposed ethical theory of firm is undertaken in light of the “schooling” notion in the contemporary organization theory literature. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur and Michel Foucault enjoy a privileged status in nursing academia as two thinkers who influence both nursing research and philosophical explorations of nursing practice. Most nurse authors, however, focus only on the earlier works of these two philosophers and, for example, base qualitative research methodologies on Foucault's genealogy and Ricoeur's hermeneutics. In their later years, both these writers talk more explicitly about being an ethical self. Ideas from their earlier writing is evident in their writing on ethics and (...) both writers could not discuss ethics without also exploring their ideas of the self and the other. I suggest that some of their thoughts on ethics connect with or complement each other quite well. I will first give an overview of Foucault's ethics, self and the other, and then do the same with Ricoeur's thought. In the third part of the paper I will describe how Foucault and Ricoeur complement each other, and conclude the paper by briefly suggesting how these writers influence my own practice as a nurse educator. (shrink)

Phenomenology is a well‐founded qualitative methodology that is frequently used by nurse researchers and considered of value when addressing research questions in nursing practice and nurse education. However, at present, nurse researchers using phenomenology tend to divide phenomenological methodology into the descriptive and interpretive formats. The nursing literature suggests that there is a deep divide between researchers following the methodological underpinnings and basic precepts pertaining to these two camps. If we are to reach a clearer understanding of the theory underlying (...) phenomenological methods it would be more helpful if we started to recognise that there are also important associations between transcendental and interpretive phenomenology. One such association is that a paradigm of movement exists that is not unique to transcendental and interpretive phenomenology but is common to them, as well as being inherent within a variety of fields of study. If we consider the universality of such imagery, looking to examples through parallel texts, we can obtain insights into phenomenology and its transposition into a workable scientific method that can be of use to the nurse researcher. (shrink)

À peu près tout le monde a déjà fait l’expérience intuitive de l’authenticité, d’un moment qui semble révéler une lueur de sa véritable identité. Pourtant, en posant l’existence d’un «vrai moi», l’idée d’authenticité pose des défis métaphysiques qui mettent en lumière les complexités de l’individualité. J’avance que pour être bien examinée, l’authenticité exige une structure essentialiste qui tend à s’appliquer à l’identité personnelle. J’examine ensuite les trois types d’approches les plus influents dans les discussions philosophiques modernes contre cette position : (...) le romantisme et ses héritiers contemporains, l’existentialisme tardif et les conceptions de la vertu. Cette analyse met en doute la possibilité de générer une conception philosophique complète de l’authenticité. (shrink)

Morality is traditionally understood as comprised of two components: justice and mercy. The first component, justice, the universal component of the form, is frequently seen as foundational for any moral system – which poses a challenge of explaining the second component, mercy, the particular component of content. Kantian ethics provides an example of this approach. After formulating his universalist theory of ethics in the Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals and further developing it in the Critique of practical reason, he (...) attempts to use it in order to establish the morality of mercy in the Metaphysics of morals. Yet can universal morality of justice necessitate particular ethics of mercy? Using the example of competitive games, the relations between the ethics of justice and that of mercy are demonstrated, and it is shown that the former does not lead to the latter. Moreover, the universality of the rules of moral behavior can serve as a form for blatant brutality. Analyzing the characteristics of particular morality, we can conclude that physical humanity of the moral object, perceived as such by the subject, is a required condition for mercy. Removal of object's humanity is a necessary step toward an ethical system that allows cruelty – a system that can still be based on universal moral rules. Bhagavad Gītā, on the other hand, can be seen as an example of combining nīṣkāmakarma, the formal, universal ethics of desireless action, with a variety of particular motivations originating in the nature and social context of the moral agent. (shrink)

This article offers an alternative to classical hermeneutics, which focuses on discursive products and grasps meaning as the play of difference between linguistic signs. Pragmatist hermeneutics reconstructs meaning through an indefinite triangulation, which brings symbols, icons, and indices to bear on each other and considers a meaningful occasion as an embodied semiotic process. To illuminate the word-body-action nexus, the discussion identifies three basic types of signifying media: (1) the symbolic-discursive, (2) the somatic-affective, and (3) the behavioral-performative, each one marked by (...) a special relationship between signs and their objects. An argument is made that the tension between various type-signifying media is unavoidable, that the pragmatic-discursive misalignment is an ontological condition, and that bridging the gap between our discursive, affective, and behavioral outputs is at the heart of ethical life. (shrink)

Are hierarchies necessary in human relationships? This issue is a central one for feminist theory, and there is a continuing need to rethink relationships and to envision what they might be like without any sort of dominance of some over others. To aid this process of envisioning alternatives, this paper examines more closely the way one of the most intimate of hierarchies - marriage - has been argued and envisioned historically.

In commenting on Susan Bordo's discussion of gender bias, I both support and build on her contention that women's exclusion from philosophical discourse has been epistemologically and politically significant. But I also explore difficulties associated with applying the concept of gender and I voice concern about how to characterize the perspectives we share as women. Finally, I consider some theoretical and political limitations of utilizing gender as an analytical category.

Concern with elective-death decisions usually focuses on individuals' competence and understanding of their situations and prospects. If problematic influences on individuals are considered, they almost invariably have to do with matters such as depression and the effects of medication. Too little attention is paid to how individuals, as subjects, are products of both external cultural and social influences on them, and of internal efforts and needs that determine their subjectivity.

There is ample evidence that humans (and other primates) possess a knowledge instinct—a biologically driven impulse to make coherent sense of the world at the highest level possible. Yet behavioral decision-making data suggest a contrary biological drive to minimize cognitive effort by solving problems using simplifying heuristics. Individuals differ, and the same person varies over time, in the strength of the knowledge instinct. Neuroimaging studies suggest which brain regions might mediate the balance between knowledge expansion and heuristic simplification. One region (...) implicated in primary emotional experience is more activated in individuals who use primitive heuristics, whereas two areas of the cortex are more activated in individuals with a strong knowledge drive: one region implicated in detecting risk or conflict and another implicated in generating creative ideas. Knowledge maximization and effort minimization are both evolutionary adaptations, and both are valuable in different contexts. Effort minimization helps us make minor and routine decisions efficiently, whereas knowledge maximization connects us to the beautiful, to the sublime, and to our highest aspirations. We relate the opposition between the knowledge instinct and heuristics to the biblical story of the fall, and argue that the causal scientific worldview is mathematically equivalent to teleological arguments from final causes. Elements of a scientific program are formulated to address unresolved issues. (shrink)

In this response, we reiterate the importance of development (both ontogenetic and phylogenetic) in the understanding of a complex cognitive skill – analogical reasoning. Four key questions structure the response: Does relational priming exist, and is it sufficient for analogy? What do we mean by relations as transformations? Could all or any relations be represented as transformations? And what about the challenge of more complex analogies? In addressing these questions we bring together a number of supportive commentaries, strengthening our emergentist (...) case for analogy (in particular with insights from comparative psychology), and review new supportive evidence. We also rebut those commentaries that ignore development at their peril. Along the way, we revisit the main assumptions underlying the analogy as relational priming (ARP) account of analogy, clarifying and elaborating as necessary. (shrink)

Christianity has recently undergone historic demographic and cultural shifts: it has expanded significantly in the global south while declining in the west. In an age of World Christianity, these changes bring diversity and competition, and renewed Christian witness. The global context for the faith reveals unavoidable tensions between missional expansion and the call to be one in Christ Jesus. Amid plurality and rapid changes in identity, Christians are challenged to re-appropriate the classic marks of the church – one, holy, catholic, (...) and apostolic. Engagement with all four marks, reframed for the contemporary situation, will help to maintain the creative tension between mission and unity, to connect Christians across geography and generations, and to forge a common vision of salvation in an interconnected world. (shrink)

Adorno and Horkheimer’s legacy is incomplete without reference to their infamous political quietism. To thinkers such as Habermas, this was the unfortunate consequence of their alleged evacuation of reason. Attending to the treatment of Nietzsche in Dialectic of Enlightenment illuminates the distinct irony of such charges. Here, in their most popular book, Nietzsche is presented as precisely that which they praised him for warning against elsewhere: an advocate of cruelty animated by a reactionary morality. I contend that this exaggeration is (...) not accidental, but rather illustrative; the authors present a consciously hyperbolized version of Nietzsche in order to articulate how he made possible his own misappropriation, and to distinguish themselves sharply from Nietzsche given their disagreements about the necessity of reason. Ultimately, however, even though Adorno and Horkheimer performatively differentiate themselves from the nihilism they saw in Nietzsche, their alternative would ironically be subject to precisely the same charges of irrationalism and political aporia that they sought so desperately to avoid. (shrink)

Smartfounding is the opposite of “dumbfounding” introduced by Jonathan Haidt’s research on disgust. Dumbfounders have general competence at thought experiment. However, they are flustered by thought experiments that support repugnant conclusions. Instead of following the supposition wherever it leads, they avoid unsettling implications by adding extraneous information or ignoring stipulated conditions. The dumbfounded commit performance errors, often seeming to regress to the answers of people who lack formal schooling. Smartfounders retain their composure. They practice subversive compliance, obeying the instructions in (...) a way that spoils the aim of the thought experiment. Smartfounders offer a more sophisticated grade of resistance to thought experiment. Whereas the lower grades of resistance are merely fallacious, smartfounding often constitutes a penetrating internal critique of the thought experiment and sometimes of thought experiments in general. (shrink)

Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career. In addition to well-known threats such as nuclear holocaust, the propects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks. Our future, and whether we will have a future at all, may well be determined by how we deal with these challenges. In the case of radically transforming technologies, a better understanding of the transition dynamics from (...) a human to a "posthuman" society is needed. Of particular importance is to know where the pitfalls are: the ways in which things could go terminally wrong. While we have had long exposure to various personal, local, and endurable global hazards, this paper analyzes a recently emerging category: that of existential risks. These are threats that could case our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth - originating intelligent life. Some of these threats are relatively well known while others, including some of the gravest, have gone almost unrecognized. Existential risks have a cluster of features that make ordinary risk management ineffective. A final section of this paper discusses several ethical and policy implications. A clearer understanding of the threat picture will enable us to formulate better strategies. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s remark to Drury that he looks at philosophical problems from a religious point of view has greatly puzzled commentators. The paper argues that the readings given by commentators Malcolm, Winch and Lebron are illuminating, but inadequate. Second, using Wittgenstein’s “use-conception of meaning” as an example, the paper proposes a more adequate reading that emphasizes Wittgenstein’s view that “nothing is hidden”. In this connection, the paper examines Fodor’s critique of Wittgenstein’s “use-conception” and shows how Fodor only refutes a “misuse-conception meaning” (...) because he presupposes a kind of linguistic meaning, the kind that Wittgenstein emphasizes, that is “already before his eyes”. Wittgenstein’s view that the truth is already before one’s eyes is further explained by employing an ethical analogy with Raskolnikov’s enlightenment in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Finally, the paper addresses the difficult question whether Wittgenstein is, despite his own denials, “a religious man”, and argues that there is a non-trivial religious dimension in Wittgenstein’s life but that there are several important senses in which Wittgenstein is correct that he is not a religious person. (shrink)

The overall aim of the composite thesis is the critical examination of the poetics and politics of memory, particularly in the extended role of the ekphrasis in literature. The creative work A Strange Chinese Tale draws on theoretical elements from Debord, Deleuze, Lefebvre, and Baudrillard, and provides a narrative for the post-modern political and cultural landscape of contemporary China, in relation to the individual’s search for a sense of belonging. The exegesis The Poetics, Politics and Writing of Memory argues for (...) the extension of the ekphrastic project into the domains of the photographic image and the ‘space of memory’. (shrink)

This essay uses theistic humanism as a super structure to do a hermeneutic appraisal of the doctrine of salvation in a pluralistic world. It operates on the assumption that reality is multidimensional, just as human belief systems and cultural perspectives are diverse. More importantly, is the point that most countries on the African continent house a potpourri of belief systems, prominent among which are Christianity, Islam and Traditional African Religion (ATR). Thus, theistic humanism offers us the opportunity to do a (...) pluralistic assessment of salvation, thereby making myriad interpretations of the notion of salvation possible.Again, the essay neither intends to examine the meaning of God nor is it interested in analyzing how God gets manifested in human existence. Rather, the basic objective is to consider the various ways in which salvation has been conceived in relation to the human condition. In the process of our delineation, it shall be shown that salvation as a doctrine can be conceived from two principal angles which are:1) the perspective of religion and2) the non-religious or secularist perspective. Whereas the first presents other-worldly account of salvation, the second presents a this-worldly account of salvation. The import here is that since in the most ordinary sense, God is all about perfection and human goodness, it implies that the quest for salvation in whatever dimension, deliberately or inadvertently, amounts to the search for the ultimate essence or the most perfect state of reality which religions call God. Consequently, the burden of this essay is to show that salvation is an ideal state of reality which humankind is striving to attain. Bearing in mind that humans as free beings that have the capacity to interpret salvation either anthropocentrically or theocentrically, thereby, making the myriad presentations of salvation possible; one is of the view that metaphysical notions of reality are also contagious of salvation. Hence, for monists and reductionists the way to salvation is narrow and single, while for the pluralists the way to salvation may be narrow but diverse. Thus, since the hermeneutic appraisal of salvation is hinged on the assumption that belief systems are diverse and multi-faceted, the essay privileges the pluralistic presentation of salvation over and above the monistic presentation of salvation. (shrink)

In his later lectures, published as The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault surveys different modalities of obtaining ‘truth’ about one's self and the world: from Socrates to the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans and early church writers. Genealogically tracing this opposition between knowing self and world, he occasionally invites phenomenological enquiry into how this epistemic couplet bears on education. Drawing on three vignettes familiar to educators, my investigation explores modes of discovering self and world through counselling, distributed governance in the classroom (...) and the arts of writing. In each case we confront a paradox of freedom, in that agency is needed, already, to liberate the self from the world. An exegetical task is to show how Foucault worked through this philosophical problem, of relevance to many situations in education, by re-reading Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger. (shrink)

Deleuze's theory of time set out in Difference and Repetition is a complex structure of three different syntheses of time – the passive synthesis of the living present, the passive synthesis of the pure past and the static synthesis of the future. This article focuses on Deleuze's third synthesis of time, which seems to be the most obscure part of his tripartite theory, as Deleuze mixes different theoretical concepts drawn from philosophy, Greek drama theory and mathematics. Of central importance is (...) the notion of the cut, which is constitutive of the third synthesis of time defined as an a priori ordered temporal series separated unequally into a before and an after. This article argues that Deleuze develops his ordinal definition of time with recourse to Kant's definition of time as pure and empty form, Hölderlin's notion of ‘caesura’ drawn from his ‘Remarks on Oedipus’ (1803) and Dedekind's method of cuts as developed in his pioneering essay ‘Continuity and Irrational Numbers’ (1872). Deleuze then ties together the conceptions of the Kantian empty form of time and the Nietzschean eternal return, both of which are essentially related to a fractured I or dissolved self. This article aims to assemble the different heterogeneous elements that Deleuze picks up on and to show how the third synthesis of time emerges from this differential multiplicity. (shrink)

We hear much these days of lifelong learning and higher levels of nursing practice. We have even been introduced to the concept of the supernurse. This paper seeks to contribute an ethico-political dimension to the largely performative uses of these terms in contemporary nursing politics. This is done by exploring the promise of certain elements of Nietzsche's philosophy for nursing. Certain major Nietzschean themes are outlined in the context of modernity followed by their exploration in a nursing context. These themes (...) come principally from Thus Spake Zarathustra, and include not only that of Übermensch (Superman), but also the related ideas of eternal recurrence, nihilism, and the last Man. It is argued that the conditions in which nurses now learn and practice have become increasingly instrumentalized and technorational to the extent that they are in danger of effecting a nihilism in what becomes a culture of perpetual obligation to those who would seek to measure our performance. It is against this background that Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch is explored as a figure for self-overcoming the professional subjectivity that may be constructed in the face of these conditions. However, it will be seen that this raises certain issues which beg the question of the productive value of Nietzsche's philosophy in this particular context. At this point, in the last part of the paper, by considering the tensive relation between the discourse practices of present-day managerialism and nursing ethics, it is argued that it is these very problems that present the Übermensch as a tensive but potentially productive figure for nursing and nurse education in its broadest sense. (shrink)

Internationally, initial teacher education has experienced shifts towards competence and school-based programmatic reforms. As a result, literature on the role of teacher educators operating within the academy suggests a sense of doom as market-based and political distrust of the academy grows. For now, initial teacher education in Ireland is largely housed within the academy. However, several governing policies have recently been published which subtly seek to marginalise the role and practices of teacher educators. Drawing on Camus’ understanding of the absurd (...) as emerging from the interaction between the longing of human beings for clarity and the universe’s indifferent and silent reply, this paper sets out to investigate possible methods that teacher educators may select in responding to an awareness of the absurd. (shrink)

This essay addresses the increasing prominence of ‘performance’ as an analytical frame in recent studies of science. Building on the insights of existing feminist criticism, it identifies two largely unacknowledged features of such performance-oriented studies: first, an implicit recuperation of a pre-discursively real body; and second, a persistent emphasis on the productive character of performances. The essay considers the limitations of these two themes, and concludes by exploring pathways suggested by other theoretical traditions.

We set out by noting the preference for circular flows in ecological thought, and the related abhorrence of inefficiency and waste that Western ecology shares with mainstream economic thinking. This has often been manifest in a shared disdain both for uncontained, free-burning fire and for ‘unmanaged’ sexual desire. The paper constructs a ‘pyrosexual’ counter-narrative that explores the mutually constitutive and generative implication of sex and fire. Bringing together the solar ecology of Georges Bataille, feminist and queer thinking about sexuality and (...) reproduction, and a range of ways of theorising biological life and fire, we explore how fire mediates between organismic desire and the energetic dynamics of the earth and solar system. The first section takes a genealogical approach to fire and sex that traces their entanglement from the initial ‘assembling’ of fire through to the emergence of a fire-handling creature. The second section looks at how fire has been contained and intensified by human actors, and the role that heat-driven transformations of inorganic matter have played in the incitement and channeling of desire in urban spaces. The third section addresses the development of industrial ‘heat engines’ and the implications for desire and reproduction of tapping vast reservoirs of subterranean solar energy. We round off by beginning to consider what alternative possibilities might lie in the renegotiation of sex and fire on a planet undergoing rapid change. (shrink)