This article offers a rereading of Monique Wittig's philosophical writing on sex, gender, and sexuality against some of the major criticisms that have led to limited engagement with her work. I argue that reorienting our understanding of Wittig's lesbian-feminism away from notions of sexuality per se enables us to read her in terms of a larger project that takes aim at the primacy of phallocentrism in how we understand subjectivity. In doing so, I establish and situate three themes in her (...) feminism that have remained largely unremarked upon in contemporary philosophical treatments of her work: domination, utopianism, and polysemy. Part of this reorientation also involves taking seriously the place of language in her philosophy and examining the ways in which she textually expresses the “lesbian” in her literature—a facet similarly underexamined. Although the account of Wittig's philosophy given here is by no means definitive, I aim through this preliminary re-evaluation to provide a richer reading of Wittig's work against prevailing criticism, demonstrate her continuing relevance to feminist thought, and present further avenues of investigation. (shrink)

By re-examining Nietzsche's notion of the “eternal-feminine” and his views on women and feminism, this volume offers new perspectives on some of his key ideas. It brings together a diverse group of scholars to critically engage with Nietzsche's use of late-19th-century gender stereotypes and the ways in which they served his critique of values, including his use of “woman” as a trope for truth. -/- Among other subjects, the contributors consider the role of psychology in Nietzsche's thought, his concern with (...) style, self-creation, and advocacy of perfectionism, his views on romantic love and marriage, and his aim of revaluing all values to instigate a distant philosophy of the future. They investigate parallels between Nietzsche's thought and Shaktism, his relation to Goethe and Stendahl, and his influence on Beauvoir, Butler, and Dohm. With the inclusion of two seminal essays on Nietzsche and women by Lawrence J. Hatab and Kelly Oliver, the volume also illustrates some of the ways in which scholarship on these subjects has evolved over the last four decades. -/- Providing fresh insights into these inter-related subjects, Nietzsche on Women and the Eternal-Feminine highlights the enduring relevance of his thought and its still-underappreciated potential for re-thinking both the bases for and aims of feminism and other emancipatory movements. (shrink)

Joseph Butler was an Anglican priest and later a bishop who wrote about ethics, religion, and other philosophical themes. He is not well known today. During his lifetime and into the early part of the twentieth century he was better known especially for his major work the Analogy of Religion (1736). Today he is known mostly for his sermons which are interpreted as essays on ethics and for his essay on identity. Butler had a profound effect on J. (...) H. Newman, Matthew Arnold, and W. E. Gladstone and some effect on many other popular, academic, and professional readers. This book is as much about Butler’s sources and his reception as it is about the way he arranged and presented the evidence in the first half of the 18th century. He was a good man and is recognized by the Anglican church as a divine. We have no interest in taking a nostalgic look at a quaint figure in English church history. To those who claim Butler is unknown, that he was “blown out of the water” by John Wesley or Karl Barth, or Cornelius van Til, we can only say Butler is not as well known in the 20th and 21st centuries as in the 19th, but he is certainly not unknown to those who have taken any interest in philosophy, religion, or ethics. Today there has been a revival of interest in Bishop Butler. Our concern is to build and maintain a bridge that will help to keep this momentum. He offers an ethic that is universal and clearly Christian, yet it is based on the nature of man. Kant had a similar project, but in our opinion, Butler makes more compelling arguments. What is of interest to the Christian apologist is Butler’s work in this area. The purpose of this book is to present Butler’s ideas. We believe that his ethics have a universality that is applicable to people of all religious faiths and those that have none. It is common sense way of looking at ethics for everyday interaction. This book is a narrative argument presenting in detail how Butler’s creative arrangement of the evidence served as a bridge between the ancients as known in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew originals, and the moderns, mostly Anglophone, who constituted Butler’s work environment and his reception in the latter day down to the present. We can hardly expect everyone to agree with Butler on all points, we certainly do not. The point at issue is rather whether he merits a seat at the present-day round table of deliberation on matters pertaining to philosophy, religion, and ethics. (shrink)

Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these intersections are explored through British media coverage of the Canadian‐born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. This coverage (...) is examined through the lens of ‘performativity,’ as articulated by Judith Butler. Through a critical application of Butler's ideas, the ways in which the media seek to recognise and normalise certain identities, while problematising and excluding others, can be more fully appreciated. Thus, it was within newspaper framings of Rusedski that hegemonic notions of White Englishness could be performed, maintained, and embedded. (shrink)

As it says on the in, the problem for a standard of objectual (referential) quantification is presented, and a solution offered.

Linda Zagzebski’s book on epistemic authority is an impressive and stimulating treatment of an important topic. 1 I admire the way she manages to combine imagination, originality and argumentative control. Her work has the further considerable merit of bringing analytic thinking and abstract theory to bear upon areas of concrete human concern, such as the attitudes one should have towards moral and religious authority. The book is stimulating in a way good philosophy should be -- provoking both disagreement and emulation. (...) I agree with much of what she says, and have been instructed by it, but it will be of more interest and relevance here if I concentrate upon areas of disagreement. Perhaps they are better seen as areas, at least some of them, where her emphases suggest a position that seems to me untenable, but that she may not really intend. In that event, I will be happy to have provoked a clarification or the dispelling of my misunderstanding. My focus will be upon problems in her account of communal authority and autonomy, especially with respect to religious and political authority. Here my worry is that she places too much trust in trust and not enough in what I call selective mistrust. (shrink)

We approach the notion of general (global) human intelligence as a prominently multifaceted concept which can be tested in at least seventy specific scenarios. We say that an agent has Artificial Global Intelligence (AGLI), if it is able to perform in an intelligent manner for at least the collection of tasks defining the former scenarios. In particular, based on Gartner's multiple intelligences theory, we describe the design of a concrete test for AGLI made in such a way that an ‘average’ (...) young human being should, per diffinitionem, pass it. We compare our holistic test with several highly representative human and artificial intelligence tests for deducing that our AGLI test is the one with the broader scope of the whole range of intelligence. However, we claim as a plausible hypothesis and based on the wide thematic spectrum of the test that the most outstanding inventions of AI currently available are far from getting a high score on it. Finally, we open a discussion about the fact that, although there are artificial agents being able to simulate intelligent behaviour at a perfect level for several local tasks, this seems not to be the case for AGLI. This would imply, in particular, a kind of practical implausibility of the notion of intelligence explosion coming from philosophy of AI. (shrink)

We present a multidisciplinary, universal a pragmatic theory of causation based explicitly on five methodological causal seminal dimensions. The first one is called formal-mathematical-idealist theory and emerges as a meta-conceptual fusion of several existing causal theories. The second one is essentially based on a global, scientific and technical perspective. In fact, this can be considered as a meta-dimension encompassing a huge number of academic disciplines. The third dimension arises once more as combination of former approaches having the mind and its (...) laws as the central paradigm. The fourth one is structurally related with our subjective phenomenological world and its objective impact on the external universe. And, finally, the fifth dimension is closely related with the first one, but more oriented toward the global implicit purpose of the universe and what this implies causally on the events in nature. We give several concrete examples elucidating the explanatory range of our theory. (shrink)

We describe (essential features and an axiomatization of) a new metamathematical (cognitive) ability, i.e., functional conceptual substratum, used implicitly in the generation of several mathematical proofs and definitions, and playing a fundamental role in Artificial Mathematical Intelligence (or Cognitive-computational metamathematics). Furthermore, we present an initial (first-order) formalization of this mechanism together with its characterizing relation with classic notions like primitive positive definability and Diophantiveness. Additionally, we analyze the semantic variability of functional conceptual substratum when small syntactic modifications are done. Finally, (...) we describe cognitively natural inference rules for (mathematical) definitions inspired by functional conceptual substratum and we show that they are sound and complete w.r.t.\ standard calculi. (shrink)

The boundless nature of the natural numbers imposes paradoxically a high formal bound to the use of standard artificial computer programs for solving conceptually challenged problems in number theory. In the context of the new cognitive foundations for mathematics' and physics' program immersed in the setting of artificial mathematical intelligence, we proposed a refined numerical system, called the physical numbers, preserving most of the essential intuitions of the natural numbers. Even more, this new numerical structure additionally possesses the property of (...) being a bounded object allowing us to work with quite similar axioms like the classic Peano axioms, but in a finite environment and with an enriched physical dimension. Finally, we present several enlightening examples and we conclude that the physical numbers provide a natural formal setting for approaching classic problems in number theory from a more hybrid perspective, i.e. with a potential participation in the generation of solutions, not only of working mathematicians but also of more sophisticated artificial interactive (mathematical) intelligent agents (within the context of cognitive-computational metamathematics or artificial mathematical intelligence) and more controlled by physically-inspired principles. Finally, this paper addresses a highly new, bottom-up and paradigm-shifting approach to the foundations of physics: One should refine and improve the conceptual formal setting of the language that we use for understanding physical phenomena (e.g. the mathematical grounding concepts and theories) for being able to understand better more subtle and complex physical phenomena. (shrink)

This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on ‘Bentham’s test’, which was devised by Matthew Kramer to limit the expansiveness of the interest theory. According to the test, a party holds a right correlative to a duty only if that party stands to undergo a development that is typically detrimental if the duty is breached. The article shows how the entire interest theory can be reformulated in terms of the test. The article (...) then focuses on a further strength of the interest theory, brought to the fore by the new formulation. In any Western legal system, the tortious maltreatment of a child or a mentally disabled individual results in a compensatory duty. The interest theory can account for such duties in a simple and elegant way. The will theory, on the other hand, struggles to explain such compensatory duties unless it abandons some of its main tenets. (shrink)

I think the basic intuition behind textualism correct – that the meaning of a law is fixed by referencing the meaning of its words according to the meaning common to the law’s ratifiers. However, even if true, it does not follow that interpretation of a law goes through the original ratifiers. Rather, a citizenry continually ratifies the laws to which it subjects itself, and as the meanings of those words change over time, so will those laws. Concerning, say, the U.S. (...) Constitution, though the text may be very nearly the same now as in the 18th century, a different constitution is in effect. (shrink)

We argue for the possibility of validating the presence of consciousness in another person from a perspective that blends both, a third-person approach of coming close to, observing, and understanding the other; and a first-person assessment of how the experience of the other feels like. For this, we will need to explain how the line between the third-person and first-person approaches is blurred in some methodological approaches. We rest our position largely on the back of some seminal conclusions of the (...) meditations of Ren\'e Descartes and other theories concerning consciousness like Chalmers' naturalistic dualism and, to some secondary extent on Integrated Information Theory (IIT). Additionally, we describe fundamental contextual principles already developed in the literature and the arts (like Stanivlaski's Acting System), and then we use them for setting a suitable methodology that we feel can be used to validate the presence of others' conscious experiences in one's consciousness (at suitable periods of spacetime). Finally, we give general methodological guidelines for the construction of the concrete experiment and we explore very briefly the potential implications of this kind of research in other academic and non-academic settings. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is one of the world's most influential living philosophers. Few contemporary thinkers display his breadth of argument and reference, or his ability to intervene in debates critical to both analytic and continental philosophy. Alain Badiou: Key Concepts presents an overview of and introduction to the full range of Badiou's thinking. Essays focus on the foundations of Badiou's thought, his "key concepts" - truth, being, ontology, the subject, and conditions - and on his engagement with a range of thinkers (...) central to his philosophy, including Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Heidegger and Deleuze. (shrink)

The Article analyzes the notion of legal “thinghood” in the context of the person–thing bifurcation. In legal scholarship, there are numerous assumptions pertaining to this definition that are often not spelled out. In addition, one’s chosen definition of “thing” is often simply taken to be the correct one. The Article scrutinizes these assumptions and definitions. First, a brief history of the bifurcation is offered. Second, three possible definitions of “legal thing” are examined: Things as nonpersons, things as rights and duties, (...) and things as property. The first two definitions are rejected as not being very interesting or serving any heuristic function. Conversely, understanding legal things as property is meaningful, useful, and helps to understand what it means to say that animals are legally things. Defining things as property has certain rather important implications, which are analyzed at the end of the Article. For instance, not everything needs to be either a person or a thing: The historical institution of outlawry involved treating individuals neither as legal persons nor as legal things. One must conclude that the person–thing bifurcation is less fundamental than is often assumed. (shrink)

As a national ideology, Pancasila has formal quality, but it is also part of the material aspects that shapes perspectives that drives national policies through the process of consensus. The open and ambiguous character of Pancasila allows a wide space for social and political interpretation, and therefore is open to critique and reformation through reinterpretations of its meaning. An examination of the ethics of the socio-political application of Pancasila is crucial in the current national climate, and these ethical valuations are (...) formed through public discussions and debates on the meaning of Pancasila. Using data drawn from mass media. In this paper, I will examine the Government Regulation on Law (Perppu No. 2/2017) as an example of how these political ethics develop through the discussion of the meaning of Pancasila. Second, I'll highlight how the space for interpretation of the meaning of Pancasila determines how the public, government and oppositional coalitions evaluate the pro and contra approaches to translating the ideology into practice. Third, in examining the process of socio-political consensus as a necessity in the democratic life of Indonesia, this paper will position the discursive deployments of Pancasila in the ethical and political considerations that stem from the practical application of these discourses of Pancasila. (shrink)

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

This article addresses the sensitive topic of human rights issues in Indonesia through a Kantian analysis. Cases of human rights violations are a common occurrence in Indonesia. Presently, human rights violations in the country are assessed from historical and legal perspectives. However, there is little commitment or willingness on the part of the Indonesian government to protect and defend the principles of human rights. This article is attempts to utilize arguments from political philosophy that can contextualize the protection and implementation (...) of human rights in Indonesia, through an analysis of the concept of social contract in Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy. According to Kant, freedom and equality are natural rights. This article demonstrates that Kant's social contract theory is linear with his formal moral philosophy. In his explanation, ‘contract’ is unified will. Therefore, the Indonesian state with its power is responsible to implement the will of the public to ensure order and rule of law and to protect the rights and freedom of each individual. (shrink)

With the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant once again forcing countries into lockdown, this essay seeks to outline a Foucauldian critique of various legal measures taken by the Danish government to cope with COVID-19 during the first year and a half of the pandemic. The essay takes a critical look at the extra-legal measures employed by the Danish government, as the Danish politicians attempted to halt the spread of the, now almost forgotten, Cluster 5 COVID-19 variant. This situation will (...) serve as a critical point from where to start using Foucault’s writings on life and biopolitics in order to expose various legally problematic governmental decisions that became visible during the handling of COVID-19 in general and the Cluster 5 mutation in particular. Reframing the pandemic within Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, this essay concludes that the state of exception has led to an increase in biopolitical logic, where some lives have come to matter more than others. As a critical counterpoint to this logic, the conclusion suggests that the notion of biocommunism could provide a suitable reconfiguration of communism. A reconfiguration that could mitigate some of the issues related to biopolitics is uncovered earlier in the essay. (shrink)

Betrachtet man den Gebrauch der Worte ‘Moral’ und ‘Vernunft’ etwas genauer, so stellt man fest, dass nicht klar ist, was sie bezeichnen bzw. wie Moral und Vernunft zusammenhängen. In dem Buch ‘Rationalität in der Angewandten Ethik’, in dem sich verschiedene Autoren die Aufgabe gestellt haben, diese Umstände in das Licht der Betrachtung zu rücken, finden wir Fragen darüber, wie “Moral”, “Angewandte Ethik” und “Vernunft” (auch in der Anwendung) zu verstehen und zu vereinen sind.

Social participation requires certain abilities: communication with other members of society; social understanding which enables planning ahead and dealing with novel circumstances; and a theory of mind which makes it possible to anticipate the mental state of another. In childhood play we learn how to pretend, how to put ourselves in the minds of others, how to imagine what others are thinking and how to attribute false beliefs to them. Without this ability we would be unable to deceive and detect (...) deception in the actions of others, and our ability to interact within our social group would be greatly impaired. In this paper I claim that the capacity for deception is necessary for a theory of mind, and a theory of mind is necessary for complex social interaction. (shrink)

Hillel Steiner has recently attacked the notion of inalienable rights, basing some of his arguments on the Hohfeldian analysis to show that infinite arrays of legal positions would not be associated with any inalienable rights. This essay addresses the nature of the Hohfeldian infinity: the main argument is that what Steiner claims to be an infinite regress is actually a wholly unproblematic form of infinite recursion. First, the nature of the Hohfeldian recursion is demonstrated. It is shown that infinite recursions (...) of legal positions ensue regardless of whether inalienable rights exist or not. Second, the alleged problems that this might pose for the analysis are discussed. The conclusion is that one should not worry about the recursion as long as one understands correctly the role of the Hohfeldian analysis in normative reasoning. (shrink)

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

In a world that celebrates academic institutions as the pinnacle of knowledge, progress, and enlightenment, the reality is far grimmer. Academia has become a self-serving oligarchy that imposes ideological conformity, restricts intellectual freedom, and manipulates public consciousness under the guise of “progress.” Far from being a champion of open inquiry, academia operates as the most insidious oppressor in American society, exerting control over public discourse, dictating acceptable beliefs, and marginalizing any who dare to dissent. In its thirst for dominance, academia (...) has transformed from a place of learning to a vehicle for intellectual tyranny, where it imposes its own rigid worldview and stifles diversity of thought. -/- In an imagined reinterpretation of The Apology, Socrates stands accused not merely of corrupting the youth of Athens but of something far more subversive: defining the word “oppressor” and exposing the façade of modern academic power structures. Socrates faces a tribunal of academic elites, his only crime a relentless quest for truth. He has introduced the concept of an “unmoved mover”—an entity not swayed by the ideological tides of his accusers. In our age, this unmoved mover might be called "truth" or "justice," yet the academic establishment brands it as “God,” something feared for its unwavering judgment against their hypocrisy. Through Socrates, we examine academia itself as the ultimate oppressor, an institution that defines and manipulates reality to preserve its power. (shrink)

The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically active neurones that generate an endogenous electromagnetic field, whose role in neuronal computing has not been fully examined. The source, magnitude and likely influence of the brain's endogenous em field are here considered. An estimate of the strength and magnitude of the brain's em field is gained from theoretical considerations, brain scanning and microelectrode data. An estimate of the likely influence of the brain's em field is gained from theoretical principles and (...) considerations of the experimental effects of external em fields on neurone firing both in vitro and in vivo. Synchronous firing of distributed neurones phase-locks induced em field fluctuations to increase their magnitude and influence. Synchronous firing has previously been demonstrated to correlate with awareness and perception, indicating that perturbations to the brain's em field also correlate with awareness. The brain's em field represents an integrated electromagnetic field representation of distributed neuronal information and has dynamics that closely map to those expected for a correlate of consciousness. I propose that the brain's em information field is the physical substrate of conscious awareness - the cemi field - and make a number of predictions that follow from this proposal. Experimental evidence pertinent to these predictions is examined and shown to be entirely consistent with the cemi field theory. This theory provides solutions to many of the intractable problems of consciousness - such as the binding problem - and provides new insights into the role of consciousness, the meaning of free will and the nature of qualia. It thus places consciousness within a secure physical framework and provides a route towards constructing an artificial consciousness. (shrink)

We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, and (...) discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances. (shrink)

In the April 2002 edition of JCS I outlined the conscious electromagnetic information field theory, claiming that consciousness is that component of the brain's electromagnetic field that is downloaded to motor neurons and is thereby capable of communicating its informational content to the outside world. In this paper I demonstrate that the theory is robust to criticisms. I further explore implications of the theory particularly as regards the relationship between electromagnetic fields, information, the phenomenology of consciousness and the meaning of (...) free will. Using cemi field theory I propose a working hypothesis that shows, among other things, that awareness and information represent the same phenomenon viewed from different reference frames. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

Philosophers working on time-biases assume that people are hedonically biased toward the future. A hedonically future-biased agent prefers pleasurable experiences to be future instead of past, and painful experiences to be past instead of future. Philosophers further predict that this bias is strong enough to apply to unequal payoffs: people often prefer less pleasurable future experiences to more pleasurable past ones, and more painful past experiences to less painful future ones. In addition, philosophers have predicted that future-bias is restricted to (...) first-person preferences, and that people’s third-person preferences are time-neutral. Philosophers disagree vigorously about the normative status of these preferences—i.e., they disagree about whether first-person future-bias is rationally permissible. Time-neutralists, for example, have appealed to the predicted asymmetry between first- and third-person preferences to argue for the rational impermissibility of future-bias. We empirically tested these predictions, and found that while people do prefer more past pain to less future pain, they do not prefer less future pleasure to more past pleasure. This was so in both first and third-person conditions. This suggests that future-bias is typically non-absolute, and is more easily outweighed in the case of positive events. We connect this result to the normative debate over future-bias. (shrink)

According to the canonical formulation of the modal account of luck [e.g. Pritchard (2005)], an event is lucky just when that event occurs in the actual world but not in a wide class of the nearest possible worlds where the relevant conditions for that event are the same as in the actual world. This paper argues, with reference to a novel variety of counterexample, that it is a mistake to focus, when assessing a given event for luckiness, on events distributed (...) over just the nearest possible worlds. More specifically, our objection to the canonical formulation of the modal account of luck reveals that whether an event is lucky depends crucially on events distributed over all possible worlds–viz., across the modal universe. It is shown that an amended modal account of luck which respects this point has the additional virtue of avoiding a notable kind of counterexample to modal accounts of luck proposed by Lackey (2008). (shrink)

The current study tries to verify the effectiveness of a training program in increasing Crowdfunding awareness. The sample was (50) students in CIS, who were purposively selected and distributed equally into a treatment and control group. The researchers designed the study tools (a training program to increase Crowdfunding awareness). The study findings revealed the existence of statistically significant differences between the treatment and control groups in favor of the former. Furthermore, there were statistically significant differences between the pre and the (...) post measures of the treatment group in favor of the post measures. Furthermore the current study is unique by the virtue of its nature, scope and way of implied investigation, as it is the first study for Crowdfunding training program in Arabic world. (shrink)

I have therefore decided to venture out of the philosophical armchair in order to examine the empirical evidence, as gathered by psychologists aiming to prove or disprove motivational conjectures like mine. By and large, this evidence is indirect in relation to my account of agency, since it is drawn from cases in which the relevant motive has been forced into the open by the manipulations of an experimenter. The resulting evidence doesn’t tend to show the mechanism of agency humming along (...) in accordance with my specifications; it tends to show the knocks and shudders that such a mechanism emits when put under stress. But we often learn about the normal workings of things by subjecting them to abnormal conditions; and viewed in this light, various programs of psychological research offer indirect support to my account of agency. I’ll begin by reviewing the relevant research, leaving its relevance to my account of agency for the final section of the paper. (shrink)

Background: Broccoli is an edible green plant in the cabbage family (family Brassicaceae, genus Brassica) whose large flowering head, stalk and small associated leaves are eaten as a vegetable. A leaf of Broccoli might be affected of Several Diseases descriped in this paper . When symptoms is encountered, it requires some kind of medical care. If appropriate Survival of Broccoli Diseases is not taken quickly, it can lead to Broccoli to die . Objectives: The main goal of this expert system (...) is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper the design of the proposed Expert System which was produced to help Farmers in diagnosing many of the broccoli diseases such as : Damping Off,Club root of crucifers or Finger and toe disease,Alternaria leaf spot,Black rot,Downy mildew, and White rust. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers debating the rationality of time-biases have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent empirical work, however, suggests that our preferences are more nuanced. First, there is evidence that our third-person preferences exhibit time-neutrality only when the individual with respect to whom we have preferences—the preference target—is a random stranger about whom we know nothing; given access to some information about the preference target, third-person (...) preferences mirror first-person preferences. As a result, the simulation hypothesis has been proposed, according to which third-person preferences will mirror first-person preferences when we can simulate the mental states of the preference target. Second, there is evidence that we prefer negative hedonic events to be in our past (we are first-person negatively hedonically future-biased) only when we view future events as fixed and in no way under our control. By contrast, when we perceive it to be within our power to mitigate the badness of future events, we are first-person negatively hedonically past-biased. This is the mitigation hypothesis. We distinguish two versions of the mitigation hypothesis, the squirrelling version and the heuristic version. We ran a study which tested the simulation hypothesis, and which aimed to determine whether the squirrelling or the heuristic version of the mitigation hypothesis enjoys more empirical support. We found support for the heuristic version of the hypothesis, but no support for the squirrelling version. (shrink)

Several areas of welfare economics seek to evaluate states of affairs as a function of interpersonally comparable individual utilities. The aim is to map each state of affairs onto a vector of individual utilities, and then to produce an ordering of these vectors that can be represented by a mathematical function assigning a real number to each. When this approach is used in intertemporal contexts, a central theoretical question concerns the evaluative weight to be applied to utility coming at different (...) times. This question concerns the rate of pure time preference, which is one key determinant of the social discount rate. This article argues that the standard philosophical account of pure time preference is mistaken, because it ascribes to economists a methodological commitment they need not, and often do not, accept. This in turn undercuts the most common philosophical objection to pure time preference, which traces at least to Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. The article then evaluates three further objections to pure time preference, concluding that it might still be defensible under certain circumstances. The article closes by articulating a final argument that is suggested by the “Social, Economic and Ethical Concepts and Methods” chapter of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. If this further argument is sound, it would constitute a decisive objection to pure time preference as it currently figures in much intertemporal welfare economics. (shrink)

If individual knowledge and justification can be vanquished by epistemic defeaters, then the same should go for group knowledge. Lackey (2014) has recently argued that one especially strong conception of group knowledge defended by Bird (2010) is incapable of preserving how it is that (group) knowledge is ever subject to ordinary mechanisms of epistemic defeat. Lackey takes it that her objections do not also apply to a more moderate articulation of group knowledge--one that is embraced widely in collective epistemology--and which (...) she does not challenge. This paper argues that given certain background premises that are embraced by orthodox thinking in collectivist epistemology, the more moderate account of group knowledge cannot make sense of either psychological or normative epistemic defeaters. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how the more moderate proposal might avoid this result. (shrink)

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we might conclude that they are irrational. This paper investigates one hypothesis, according to which future-bias (...) is explained by our having a phenomenology that we describe, or conceive of, as being as of time robustly passing. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found no evidence in its favour. Our results present a puzzle, however, when compared with the results of an earlier study. We conclude that although robust passage phenomenology on its own probably does not explain future-bias, having this phenomenology and taking it to be veridical may contribute to future-bias. (shrink)

If science fiction is a genre, then attempts to think about the nature of science fiction will be affected by one’s understanding of what genres are. I shall examine two approaches to genre, one dominant but inadequate, the other better, but only occasionally making itself seen. I shall then discuss several important, interrelated issues, focusing particularly on science fiction : what it is for a work to belong to a genre, the semantics of genre names, the validity of attempts to (...) define genres, and the connections between genre and normativity. One important but neglected clue to the nature of genres lies in the kinds of disagreements they generate over the assignment of works to genres. I conclude by explaining why these disagreements tell us something about the nature of genres, and discussing in some detail two famous cases of disagreement about whether some work or works are science fiction. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, many philosophers in America thought that time should be taken seriously in one way or another. George P. Adams (1882-1961) argued that the past, present and future are all real but only the present is actual. I call this theory ‘actualist eternalism’. In this paper, I articulate his novel brand of eternalism as one piece of his metaphysical system and I explain how he argued for the view in light of the best explanations of temporal (...) experience and the present. I argue that his exploitation of analogies between time and modality offer some lessons for current debates about time such as the importance of providing a temporal epistemology. I also extract what I call the temporal boundary problem and argue that it gives rise to an unaddressed challenge for presentists and growing block theorists. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss and demonstrate how research into real‐world scientific problem‐solving provides a novel window on the mind and insight into the human capacity to design and utilize resource rich environments at the highly creative end of the cognitive spectrum.

: The current difference in attitude toward germ-line enhancement in humans and nonhumans is unjustified. Society should be more cautious in modifying the genes of nonhumans and more bold in thinking about modifying our own genome. I identify four classes of arguments pertaining to germ-line enhancement: safety arguments, justice arguments, trust arguments, and naturalness arguments. The first three types are compelling, but do not distinguish between human and nonhuman cases. The final class of argument would justify a distinction between human (...) and nonhuman germ-line enhancement; however, this type of argument fails and, therefore, the discrepancy in attitude toward human and nonhuman germ-line enhancement is unjustified. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, an agent is morally responsible for an action of hers only if she could have done otherwise. The notion of a robust alternative plays a prominent role in recent attacks on PAP based on so-called Frankfurt cases. In this paper I defend the truth of PAP for blameworthy actions against Frankfurt cases recently proposed by Derk Pereboom and David Widerker. My defence rests on some intuitively plausible principles that yield a new understanding of (...) the concept of a robust alternative. I will leave aside whether PAP also holds for praiseworthy actions -/- Según el Principio de Posibilidades Alternativas, un agente es moralmente responsable de una acción sólo si hubiera podido actuar de otro modo. La noción de alternativa robusta desempeña un papel prominente en ataques recientes al PPA basados en los llamados casos Frankfurt. En este artículo defiendo el PPA para la culpabilidad moral frente a casos Frankfurt propuestos recientemente por Derk Pereboom y David Widerker. Mi defensa descansa en algunos principios intuitivamente plausibles que dan lugar a una comprensión nueva del concepto de alternativa robusta. No trataré la cuestión de la verdad del PPA para acciones moralmente laudables. (shrink)

Insight often strikes us blind; when we aren’t expecting it, we suddenly see a connection that previously eluded us—a kind of ‘Aha!’ experience. People with a propensity to such experiences are regarded as insightful, and insightfulness is a paradigmatic intellectual virtue. What’s not clear, however, is just what it is in virtue of which being such that these experiences tend to happen to one renders one intellectually virtuous. This paper draws from both virtue epistemology as well as empirical work on (...) the psychology of problem solving and creativity to make some inroads in accounting for insightfulness as an intellectual virtue. Important to the view advanced is that virtuously insightful individuals manifest certain skills which both cultivate insight experiences (even if not by directly bringing them about) and enable such individuals to move in an epistemically responsible way from insight experience to epistemic endorsement. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify the decision support systems and their role on the strategic management development in the Universities- Case Study: Islamic University of Gaza. The descriptive approach was used where a questionnaire was developed and distributed to a stratified random sample. (230) questionnaires were distributed and (204) were returned with response rate (88.7%). The most important findings of the study: The presence of a statistically significant positive correlation between the decision support systems and strategic management in the Islamic (...) University in Gaza, and this shows that there is a role for decision support systems in strategic management development. The senior management is convinced of the importance of strategic management of the organization, and this conviction paid to clearly understand the process of the development of strategic management and thus led to a commitment to this process to improve its performance. There is an impact on the strategic management of the capabilities available for the use of decision support systems, and the type of decision support systems used, while there is little effect of top management support for the use of decision support systems. Also, the results showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the averages of the respondents answers attributed to personal data. The research also concluded a series of recommendations: The Islamic University of Gaza need to develop its infrastructure of decision support systems when it develops the strategic management. It should increase its interest in organizational potential through the necessity of a separate unit for decision support systems. As well as increased interest in the physical and technical capabilities available to decision support systems through continuity in keeping pace with technological means and techniques, continued support of senior management in the organization of strategic management for its positive role on decision support systems, that senior management will continue in the organization in creating a culture of strategic management, and it should encourage employees to participate in the strategic management process. (shrink)

An adequate account of laws should satisfy at least five desiderata: it should provide a unified account of laws and chances, it should yield plausible relations between laws and chances, it should vindicate numerical chance assignments, it should accommodate dynamical and non-dynamical chances, and it should accommodate a plausible range of nomic possibilities. No extant account of laws satisfies these desiderata. This paper presents a non-Humean account of laws, the Nomic Likelihood Account, that does.

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in (...) aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)

This article outlines an epistemological perspective to understand the organism as a temporally changing whole. To analyze the mental faculties involved, the organism’s development and persisting existence is differentiated into four interdependent aspects: descent, future existence, persistent species, and environmentally adapted physical appearance. It is outlined that these aspects are recognized by comparative memory, concept-guided anticipation, conceptual thinking, and sensory perception, respectively. Furthermore, it is pointed out that these aspects correspond to the famous four Aristotelian “causes” or principles of explanation. (...) The descent of an organism corresponds to Aristotle’s efficient principle (“where does it come from?”), its future existence to the final principle (“what is if for?”), its physical structure to the material principle (“out of what is it?”) and its persistent species to the formal principle (“what is it?”). Aristotle regarded the unity of the efficient, formal and final principle as the ontological cause of the organism and called it the “soul” (psyche), while the material principle can be understood to represent its “body” (soma). I suggest that Aristotle’s “soul” corresponds to three of the four mental faculties required for cognition of a self-maintaining organism. I argue that in a Kantian perspective, the Aristotelian “soul” represents the condition for recognizing an organism at all. Therefore, the Aristotelian principle of life becomes intelligible and even empirically observable through the inner sense. In summary, I suggest that the four aspects of the organism described here can be viewed as the general, epistemological and ontological principle of the organism, the Bio-Logos. (shrink)

Many classically valid meta-inferences fail in a standard supervaluationist framework. This allegedly prevents supervaluationism from offering an account of good deductive reasoning. We provide a proof system for supervaluationist logic which includes supervaluationistically acceptable versions of the classical meta-inferences. The proof system emerges naturally by thinking of truth as licensing assertion, falsity as licensing negative assertion and lack of truth-value as licensing rejection and weak assertion. Moreover, the proof system respects well-known criteria for the admissibility of inference rules. Thus, supervaluationists (...) can provide an account of good deductive reasoning. Our proof system moreover brings to light how one can revise the standard supervaluationist framework to make room for higher-order vagueness. We prove that the resulting logic is sound and complete with respect to the consequence relation that preserves truth in a model of the non-normal modal logic _NT_. Finally, we extend our approach to a first-order setting and show that supervaluationism can treat vagueness in the same way at every order. The failure of conditional proof and other meta-inferences is a crucial ingredient in this treatment and hence should be embraced, not lamented. (shrink)