The aim of the research is to identify the relationship between the performance criteria and the achievement of the objectives of supervision which is represented in the performance of the job at the Islamic University in Gaza Strip. To achieve the objectives of the research, the researchers used the descriptive analytical approach to collect information. The questionnaire consisted of (22) paragraphs distributed to three categories of employees of the Islamic University (senior management, faculty members, their assistants and members of the (...) administrative board). A random sample of 314 employees was selected, 276 responses were retrieved with a return rate of 88.1%. The SPSS program was used to enter, process, and analyze the data. The results of the study showed a positive relationship between the performance criteria and the achievement of the control objectives represented by the job performance in the Islamic University from the point of view of the members (senior management, faculty and their assistants and the administrative board). The researchers also recommended a number of recommendations, including the provision of an appropriate level of control system components today through the continuous updating and development of performance standards and the need to provide the necessary physical and financial resources to continue the development and achievement within the university. Expand the development of technology in the various activities of the university through the construction of a complete and integrated system to support the control systems in the university to suit its size. The researchers also recommended the follow-up, review of the performance standards and work to modify them in line with the mission of the university and the goals that the university seeks to reach. (shrink)

Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity (...) to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, we consider three broad questions. 1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? 2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And 3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what? (shrink)

The Eugenic Mind Project is a wide-ranging, philosophical book that explores and critiques both past and present eugenic thinking, drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of eugenics in North America and his previous work on the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, the fragile sciences. Informed by the perspectives of Canadian eugenics survivors in the province of Alberta, The Eugenic Mind Project recounts the history of eugenics and the thinking that drove it, and critically engages contemporary manifestations of eugenic thought, newgenics. (...) An accessible, original work of scholarship adopting what the author calls a standpoint eugenics, this book focuses on the roots of eugenic thinking past and present. It will provoke and enrich discussions about human nature and human diversity, the social uses of biotechnology, and social policy governing future generations. You can download the preface and acknowledgements here. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly finding it challenging to balance economic and environmental performance particularly those that face competitive, regulatory and community pressure. With the increasing pressures for environmental sustainability, this calls for the new formulation of strategies by the manufacturers in order to minimize their products and services negative impact on the environment. Hence, Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) continues to be an important research agenda among the researchers. In Palestine, green issues are new and still developing. Constant study is needed (...) to fully understand and update information regarding this area. Objective: The aim of this paper is to explore the views and level of acceptance of GHRM practices among manufacturing firms in Palestine. Results: Through the use of e-mail survey, 121 responses were obtained to generate the results of the study. The result showed GHRM practices have been practiced to somewhat to a greater extent a firms in Palestine. Findings can be extended to study on the issues in further. Academicians and practitioners can apply this result to their research and business strategies on how to improve sustainable performance and to effectively implement GHRM practices. (shrink)

We consider how an epistemic network might self-assemble from the ritualization of the individual decisions of simple heterogeneous agents. In such evolved social networks, inquirers may be significantly more successful than they could be investigating nature on their own. The evolved network may also dramatically lower the epistemic risk faced by even the most talented inquirers. We consider networks that self-assemble in the context of both perfect and imperfect communication and compare the behaviour of inquirers in each. This provides a (...) step in bringing together two new and developing research programs, the theory of self-assembling games and the theory of network epistemology. (shrink)

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer. He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of (...) being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases of telling lies from cases of telling the truth. (shrink)

The article offers a reconstruction of John Rawls views on political legitimacy, from A Theory of Justice to his late writings on political liberalism. It argues that Rawls had three conceptions of legitimacy, not two as one might expect based on the distinction between his two major works. Its argument is that the most radical change in Rawls’ thinking about legitimacy occurs in ‘Introduction to the Paperback Edition’ and ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’. Here Rawls assumes that there can (...) be a reasonable pluralism not only of comprehensive doctrines, but also of political liberal conceptions of justice. As a consequence, the standard of political legitimacy is no longer specified as sufficient justice relative to justice as fairness, but instead as sufficient justice relative to a family of political conceptions of justice – a family which in turn is animated by an ideal of public reasoning about constitutional matters and matters of basic justice. The article also shows how Rawls’ late ideal of public reason is grounded in the need for legitimate constitutional government. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kevin Krein’s claim in that the particular value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between an athlete and natural features. He denies that this intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysing ‘intensity’ in sport in terms of the (...) relationship between attention and reflection and the interaction between self and environment. I reply directly to Krein’s rejection of self-competition as based on a mischaracterisation of internal struggle and argue that the weighing of incompatible desires does not involve a fragmented self. I argue that the unique intensity to which Krein refers is strongly comparable to the Kantian conception of the sublime and explore how sublime experience fits Krein’s account and outline some serious problems that such an ideal of experience poses for nature sport. (shrink)

Drawing on the material culture of the Ancient Near East as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, the journey of how material number becomes a conceptual number is traced to address questions of how a particular material form might generate a concept and how concepts might ultimately encompass multiple material forms so that they include but are irreducible to all of them together. Material forms incorporated into the cognitive system affect the content and structure of concepts through their agency and affordances, (...) the capabilities and constraints they provide as the material component of the extended, enactive mind. Material forms give concepts the tangibility that enables them to be literally grasped and manipulated. As they are distributed over multiple material forms, concepts effectively become independent of any of them, yielding the abstract irreducibility that makes a concept like number what it is. Finally, social aspects of material use—collaboration, ordinariness, and time—have important effects on the generation and distribution of concepts. (shrink)

We present counterexamples to the widespread assumption that Moorean sentences cannot be rationally asserted. We then explain why Moorean assertions of the sort we discuss do not incur the irrationality charge. Our argument involves an appeal to the dual-process theory of the mind and a contrast between the conditions for ascribing beliefs to oneself and the conditions for making assertions about independently existing states of affairs. We conclude by contrasting beliefs of the sort we discuss with the structurally similar but (...) rationally impermissible beliefs of certain psychiatric patients. (shrink)

US citizens perceive their society to be one of the most diverse and religiously tolerant in the world today. Yet seemingly intractable religious intolerance and moral conflict abound throughout contemporary US public life - from abortion law battles, same-sex marriage, post-9/11 Islamophobia, public school curriculum controversies, to moral and religious dimensions of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements, and Tea Party populism. Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society develops an approach to democratic discourse and coalition-building across deep (...) moral and religious divisions. Drawing on conflict transformation in peace studies, recent American pragmatist thought, and models of agonistic democracy, Jason Springs argues that, in circumstances riven with conflict between strong religious identities and deep moral and political commitments, productive engagement may depend on thinking creatively about how to constructively utilize conflict and intolerance. The result is an approach oriented by the recognition of conflict as a constituent and life-giving feature of social and political relationships. (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)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally (...) negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

This paper examines the need for static dispositions within the basic ontology of the powers view of properties. To lend some focus, Neil Williams’s well developed case for static dispositions is considered. While his arguments are not necessarily intended to address fundamental ontology, they still provide a useful starting point, a springboard for diving into the deeper metaphysical waters of the dispositionalist approach. Within that ontological context, this paper contends that Williams’s arguments fail to establish the need to posit static (...) dispositions, or at least any sort not already well appreciated by advocates of the powers view. The paper then proceeds to suggest an alternative motivation for positing static dispositions, the success of which depends greatly on which ontological approach to objects is paired with the powers view. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the reality of technical education in Palestine. The analytical descriptive method was used in the study. A questionnaire which consisted of 41 paragraphs was distributed randomly to the technical colleges in Gaza Strip. Random sample of (275) employees of these colleges were used, and the response rate was (74.5%). The results showed a high degree of approval for the dimensions of technical education with a relative weight of 76.07%. The ranking and relative weight was as (...) follows: Technical education institutions: 79.51%, graduates of technical education 75.75%, Labor market and local community 72.96%. The researchers propose a number of recommendations, the most important of which is: the need to pay attention to technical education in line with the National Strategic Plan for Higher Education by moving towards technical education. The importance of offering special courses in all technical education programs in these colleges. The researchers urged more future studies that address the same variables as the current study and apply them to other sectors. (shrink)

Recent scientific approaches to aesthetics include evolutionary theories about the origin of art behavior, psychological investigations into human aesthetic experience and preferences, and neurophysiological explorations of the mechanisms underlying art experience. Critics of these approaches argue that they are ultimately irrelevant to a philosophical aesthetics because they cannot help us understand the distinctive conceptual basis and normativity of our art experience. This criticism may seem plausible given the piecemeal nature of these scientific approaches, but a more comprehensive naturalistic framework can (...) help us understand the conceptual basis and normativity of art. In particular, the ecology of art, an understanding of how individuals interact within particular environments, can help us understand the engineered art niches in which we create and experience art. Each niche is associated with a particular deme, or set of individuals that interact within that niche, and a set of cognitive, epistemic, and pedagogical technologies that form the conceptual basis of a niche-dependent normativity. This is to be contrasted with the niche-independent normativity revealed by many of the scientific approaches. This framework, and the conflicting streams of normativity it reveals, allows us to better understand conflicts in normativity and the implausibility of unequivocal and universal normative principles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from Fred Dretske, L. S. Carrier, John A. Barker, and Robert Nozick, we develop a tracking analysis of knowing according to which a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is, reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. We show that our sensitivity analysis handles numerous Gettier-type cases and lottery problems, blocks pathways leading to skepticism, and validates the (...) epistemic closure thesis that correct inferences from known premises yield knowledge of the conclusions. We discuss the plausible views of Ted Warfield and Branden Fitelson regarding cases of knowledge acquired via inference from false premises, and we show how our sensitivity analysis can account for such cases. We present arguments designed to discredit putative counterexamples to sensitivity analyses recently proffered by Tristan Haze, John Williams and Neil Sinhababu, which involve true statements made by untrustworthy informants and strange clocks that sometimes display the correct time while running backwards. Finally, we show that in virtue of employing the paradox-free subjunctive conditionals codified by Relevance Logic theorists instead of the paradox-laden subjunctive conditionals codified by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Whether explicitly or implicitly, Kant's critical project weighs heavily upon Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. This article argues that we can understand Merleau-Ponty's text as a phenomenological rewriting of the Critique of Pure Reason from within the paradoxical structures of lived experience, effectively merging Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. Although he was influenced by Husserl's and Heidegger's interpretations of Kant's first version of the Transcendental Deduction, Merleau-Ponty develops a unique position between Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger via an embodied and (...) lived synthesis that collapses Kant's distinction between sensibility and the understanding, and that makes sense of temporality and subjectivity as a paradoxical trajectory. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

Experimenters claim some nonhuman mammals have metacognition. If correct, the results indicate some animal minds are more complex than ordinarily presumed. However, some philosophers argue for a deflationary reading of metacognition experiments, suggesting that the results can be explained in first-order terms. We agree with the deflationary interpretation of the data but we argue that the metacognition research forces the need to recognize a heretofore underappreciated feature in the theory of animal minds, which we call Unity. The disparate mental states (...) of an animal must be unified if deflationary accounts of metacognition are to hold and untoward implications avoided. Furthermore, once Unity is acknowledged, the deflationary interpretation of the experiments reveals an elevated moral standing for the nonhumans in question. (shrink)

The sublime is an aspect of experience that has attracted a great deal of scholarship, not only for scholarly reasons but because it connotes aspects of experience not exhausted by what Descartes once called clear distinct perception. That is, the sublime is an experience of the world which involves us in orientating ourselves within it, and this orientation, our human orientation, elevates us in comparison to the non-human world according to traditional accounts of the sublime. The sublime tells us something (...) about our relation to the world rather than anything about the world per se. Nonetheless there is an objective sense of the sublime in that the narratives involved are culturally endorsed rather than invented by an individual. This means that objects can be judged worthy or not of evoking experiences of the sublime. In other words, it is not an idiosyncratic matter. Immanuel Kant’s formulation of this involved explaining how such an experience is possible in terms of his system of the mind. Jane Forsey notes that Kant takes the features of the sublime as given and extrapolates from them certain features of the mind as if any concept of the sublime must implicate the mental architecture of his account (2007). Further to this she argues that in fact the concept of the sublime does implicate a particular system of the mind but neither Kant nor anyone else can successfully formulate it because the concept itself frames certain contradictions. According to Forsey, two consequences follow. First she argues that Kant’s system of the mind does not support the features of the sublime; and secondly that no system could as the very concept is incoherent. If Forsey can show that Kant was mistaken in presenting his account as coherent given his commitments, this would be of interest in its own right. However, her stronger claim is that we cannot separate any concept of the sublime out from Kant’s theoretical underpinnings. That the way the features of the mind are meant to operate in experiences of the sublime are contradictory simply points to the fatal flaws in the whole concept. Her conclusion is that there is no coherent account of the sublime available to us. I will argue that Forsey bases her reasoning on the assumption that a foundational empiricist or direct perception holds; and she interprets Kant’s notions of imagination, understanding and reason as though they are grounded in just such an account of perception. This is revealed in her interpretation of Kant’s phrase “beyond cognition”. Once this foundationalism is replaced with an account of perception more aligned with current research on perception, both philosophical and empirical, then an account of the sublime is available. Further to this however, I argue that what constitutes the narrative of the sublime is historically contingent. Before setting out my arguments, I consider Forsey’s argument in more detail. (shrink)

Neuron diagrams are heavily employed in academic discussions of causation. Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum, however, offer an alternative approach employing vector diagrams, which this paper attempts to develop further. I identify three ways in which dispositionalists have taken the activities of powers to be related: stimulation, mutual manifestation, and contribution combination. While Mumford and Anjum do provide resources for representing contribution combination, which might be sufficient for their particular brand of dispositionalism, I argue that those resources are not (...) flexible enough to further accommodate either stimulation or mutual manifestation. Representational tools are provided to address these limitations, improving the general value of the vector model for dispositionalist approaches to causation. (shrink)

This paper addresses the cultural impact of genomics and the Human Genome Project on human self-understanding. Notably, it addresses the claim made by Francis Collins that the genome is the language of God and the claim made by Max Delbrück that Aristotle must be credited with having predicted DNA as the soul that organises bio-matter. From a continental philosophical perspective I will argue that human existence results from a dialectical interaction between two types of texts: the language of molecular biology (...) and the language of civilisation; the language of the genome and the language of our socio-cultural, symbolic ambiance. Whereas the former ultimately builds on the alphabets of genes and nucleotides, the latter is informed by primordial texts such as the Bible and the Quran. In applied bioethics deliberations on genomics, science is easily framed as liberating and progressive, religious world-views as conservative an... (shrink)

With the release of Laudato Si (2015) Pope Francis has introduced new conceptual language into Catholic social teaching (CST), what he has called "integral ecology." His intent appears to be grounded in the realization that "It is essential to seek comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions with natural systems themselves and with social systems" (LS, no. CXXXVIII). Pope Francis goes on to make the case that ''We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but (...) rather with one complex crisis with isboth social and environmental" (LS, no. CXXXVIII). Consequently, in order to solve this crisis we need to utilize "an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time pro­ tecting nature" (LS, no. CXXXVlll). This perspective represents a major development in CST whereby the encyclical connects the dots between ecology/environment, economics and society, three essential aspects of what many in the environmental community and elsewhere see as in­ dispensable for humanity to achieve a sustainable relationship with the Earth. While this is extremely important for articulating a Catholic vision of sustainability, that is not the direction we take in this article. Rather our intent is to use the concept of integral ecology to do three things:(1) examine a current case in the U.S. that has received signif­ icant media attention as well as notoriety-the water crisis in Flint, Michigan; (2) describe how our recent understanding of the epigenetic impacts of environmental toxins casts a new and ominous light on this crisis and on other instances of environmental toxin exposure, and (3) propose some ideas on how epigenetic research might enlarge our in­ terpretation of basic aspects of CST highlighted in Laudato Si such as human dignity, justice and the common good. (shrink)

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the (...) artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction. (shrink)

At the beginning of the first book of Posterior Analytics, Aristotle‟s feature of demonstrative knowledge involves a certain concept of “necessity”. The traditional interpretation tends to associate this concept with modal necessity, which is found in the Prior Analytics and De interpretatione. The present article aims to show in which way the sixth chapter of book A of Posterior Analytics presupposes a set of essentialist theses that claims to base the necessity of scientific knowledge on predicative relations of essential character. (...) To acknowledge this essentialist background and simultaneously support a modal interpretation of scientific necessity urges us to attribute serious drawbacks to Aristotle‟s theory of demonstration, forcing us to reassess this interpretative tendency. (shrink)

Occasionally, in the introductory philosophy courses I teach, a student will give an interesting argument for non-belief in God. Though I have never seen this argument in print, it seems familiar. Basically, the argument goes like this. Religious belief is largely determined by geography – where you are born and raised largely determines your religious beliefs. But believing something just because of where you are born and raised is not a reliable indication of whether that belief turns out to be (...) true. So, in some sense, you are not justified in your religious beliefs. I will attempt a more rigorous reconstruction of this argument and offer an objection to it. (shrink)

(Report assembled for the Workshop of the AMIA Working Group on Formal Biomedical Knowledge Representation in connection with AMIA Symposium, Washington DC, 2005.) Best practices in ontology building for biomedicine have been frequently discussed in recent years. However there is a range of seemingly disparate views represented by experts in the field. These views not only reflect the different uses to which ontologies are put, but also the experiences and disciplinary background of these experts themselves. We asked six questions related (...) to biomedical ontologies to what we believe is a representative sample of ontologists in the biomedical field and came to a number conclusions which we believe can help provide an insight into the practical problems which ontology builders face today. (shrink)

In recent decades, philosophers of science have devoted considerable efforts to understand what models represent. One popular position is that models represent fictional situations. Another position states that, though models often involve fictional elements, they represent real objects or scenarios. Though these two positions may seem to be incompatible, I believe it is possible to reconcile them. Using a threefold distinction between different signs proposed by Peirce, I develop an argument based on a proposal recently made by Kralemann and Lattman (...) (in Synthese 190:3397–3420, 2013) that shows that the two aforementioned positions can be reconciled by distinguishing different ways in which a model representation can be used. In particular, on the basis of Peirce’s distinction between icons, indices and symbols, I argue that models can sometimes function as icons, sometimes as indexes and sometimes as symbols, depending on the context in which they are considered and the use that they are developed for because they all have iconic, indexical and symbolic features. In addition, I show that conceiving models as signs enables us to develop an account of scientific representation that meets the main desiderata that Shech (in Synthese 192:3463–3485, 2015) presents. (shrink)

A graph-theoretic account of logics is explored based on the general notion of m-graph (that is, a graph where each edge can have a finite sequence of nodes as source). Signatures, interpretation structures and deduction systems are seen as m-graphs. After defining a category freely generated by a m-graph, formulas and expressions in general can be seen as morphisms. Moreover, derivations involving rule instantiation are also morphisms. Soundness and completeness theorems are proved. As a consequence of the generality of the (...) approach our results apply to very different logics encompassing, among others, substructural logics as well as logics with nondeterministic semantics, and subsume all logics endowed with an algebraic semantics. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue (...) that attempts to address the problem of women’s recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women’s achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence. (shrink)

From the exponential function of Euler’s equation to the geometry of a fundamental form, a calculation of the fine-structure constant and its relationship to the proton-electron mass ratio is given. Equations are found for the fundamental constants of the four forces of nature: electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force and the force of gravitation. Symmetry principles are then associated with traditional physical measures.

This article explores a concept of artistic transgression I call aesthetic disobedience that runs parallel to the political concept of civil disobedience. Acts of civil disobedience break some law in order to publicly draw attention to and recommend the reform of a conflict between the commitments of a legal system and some shared commitments of a community. Likewise, acts of aesthetic disobedience break some entrenched artworld norm in order to publicly draw attention to and recommend the reform of a conflict (...) between artworld commitments and some shared commitments of a community. Considering artistic transgressions under the concept of aesthetic disobedience highlights often-overlooked features of modern artworld practices. Most significantly, it draws attention to the deliberative participation of a wide variety of citizens of the artworld, including not just artists and performers but also members of audiences, in the transformation of the rules and boundaries of the artworld itself. (shrink)

The main objective of this project is to provide acoustic assistance to the blind people and also deal with the problems faced by them to walk like the normal human beings. Thus the project aims to develop a device that would serve as a guiding assistance to them. The paper focuses on designing a device for visual impaired (or blind) people that would help them to travel independently and also with more ease. One of the biggest problem that the visual (...) impaired ones face is while travelling because when they walk in the indoors and outdoors they are not well aware of information about their location and orientation with respect to traffic and obstacles on their way unlike the normal beings. The technology proposed in the paper serves as a solution for visual impaired people. The project consists of smart shoe and smart cane (stick) that alerts visually impaired people over obstacles coming between their ways and could help them in walking with less collision. The main objective of this paper is to address a reliable encompassing of a call and a shoe that could communicate with the user through voice alert and pre-coded messages. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse the ideas implicit in the style of exhibition favoured by contemporary galleries and museums, and argue that unless the audience is empowered to ascribe meaning and significance to artwork through critical dialogue, the power not only of the audience is undermined but also of art. We argue that galleries and museums preside over an experience economy devoid of art, unless (i) indeterminacy is understood, (ii) the critical rather than coercive nature of art is facilitated, and (...) (iii) the conditions for inter-subjectivity are met. (shrink)

The paper discusses the epistemological basis for how you know what you are doing intentionally (and why). In particular, it challenges and ulimately rejects the claim made by Sarah K. Paul that such knowledge has an inferential basis.

Analytic philosophers have a tendency to forget that they are human beings, and one of the reasons that P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, has been so influential is that it promises to bring discussions of moral responsibility back down to earth. Strawson encouraged us to “keep before our minds...what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal relationships”, which is, after all, the context in which questions about responsibility arise in the first place. In this (...) essay I explore what we can learn about ordinary interpersonal relationships from three works of literature – Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. My intention is to try to heed Strawson’s advice without imposing upon the data any particular theoretical agenda, and my hope is that the data collected will prove useful for future theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

Constructivist approaches in epistemology and ethics offer a promising account of normativity. But constructivism faces a powerful Schmagency Objection, raised by David Enoch. While Enoch’s objection has been widely discussed in the context of practical norms, no one has yet explored how the Schmagency Objection might undermine epistemic constructivism. In this paper, I rectify that gap. First, I develop the objection against a prominent form of epistemic constructivism, Belief Constitutivism. Belief Constitutivism is susceptible to a Schmagency Objection, I argue, because (...) it locates the source of normativity in the belief rather than the agent. In the final section, I propose a version of epistemic constructivism that locates epistemic normativity as constitutive of agency. I argue that this version has the resources to respond to the Schmagency Objection. (shrink)

We intend to demonstrate that Jesus was a kind of social scientist, not only a prophet, the Cristianity is a way of conceiving and perceiving the world, a cosmology and a state of mind, like many others. To be part of is not to deny other forms os religious experience and manifestation.

In a series of articles, Dan Lopez De Sa and Elia Zardini argue that several theorists have recently employed instances of paradoxical reasoning, while failing to see its problematic nature because it does not immediately (or obviously) yield inconsistency. In contrast, Lopez De Sa and Zardini claim that resultant inconsistency is not a necessary condition for paradoxicality. It is our contention that, even given their broader understanding of paradox, their arguments fail to undermine the instances of reasoning they attack, either (...) because they fail to see everything that is at work in that reasoning, or because they misunderstand what it is that the reasoning aims to show. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO; http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/pr) formally defines and describes taxon-specific and taxon-neutral protein-related entities in three major areas: proteins related by evolution; proteins produced from a given gene; and protein-containing complexes. PRO thus serves as a tool for referencing protein entities at any level of specificity. To enhance this ability, and to facilitate the comparison of such entities described in different resources, we developed a standardized representation of proteoforms using UniProtKB as a sequence reference and PSI-MOD as a post-translational modification (...) reference. We illustrate its use in facilitating an alignment between PRO and Reactome protein entities. We also address issues of scalability, describing our first steps into the use of text mining to identify protein-related entities, the large-scale import of proteoform information from expert curated resources, and our ability to dynamically generate PRO terms. Web views for individual terms are now more informative about closely-related terms, including for example an interactive multiple sequence alignment. Finally, we describe recent improvement in semantic utility, with PRO now represented in OWL and as a SPARQL endpoint. These developments will further support the anticipated growth of PRO and facilitate discoverability of and allow aggregation of data relating to protein entities. (shrink)

After a brief introduction and review of recent literature on microaggressions, a theoretical typology of three sources of social injustice (oppression, dehumanization, and exploitation) contributes to the theorization of the sources of microaggressions. A selected compendium of words and affective phrases generated in classroom exercises illustrates the nature of the experience of the moment of microaggression. Future research on microaggressions as well as evaluation of practice should examine the experience of microaggression, including being subjected to microaggression, initiating such acts, and (...) observing such acts. (shrink)

a translation of A. Schoot "Kivy and Langer on Expressivity in Music".

[This paper was presented at the APA Eastern Division Conference in New York City, January 2024] -/- Can one reasonably doubt that one is voluntarily making a commitment, even when one is doing so? Given that one voluntarily makes a commitment if and only if one (personally) knows that one is doing so, the answer appears to be “No.” After all, knowing implies justifiably believing, and it seems impossible that one could (synchronically and from a single personal perspective) reasonably doubt (...) what one justifiably believes. Indeed, assuming that one reasonably doubts that P only if one has sufficient evidence to believe that not-P, traditional epistemologists may hold that such “epistemic ambivalence” entails one’s believing a contradiction, while some Bayesians should hold that it entails violating “probabilism” (the norm that credences must conform to the axioms of probability). However, I argue that in at least some cases of romantic commitment-making, such ambivalence may not only be epistemically permissible, but even required, and perhaps best dealt with pragmatically. (shrink)

Deafferented subjects, while lacking proprioceptive awareness of much of their bodies, are nevertheless able to use their bodies in basic action. Sustained visual contact with the body parts of which they are no longer proprioceptively aware enables them to move these parts in a controlled way. This might be taken to straightforwardly show that proprioceptive awareness is inessential to bodily action. I, however, argue that this is not the case. Proprioceptive awareness figures essentially in our self-conscious unity as practical subjects. (...) Recognizing this allows us to better understand the nature of the impairment with which deafferented subjects live. (shrink)

This paper considers the importance of play as a conventional space for hypothetical self-expression and self-trial, its importance for determination of identity, and for development of self-possibilities. Expanding such possibilities in play enables challenging of socially entrenched assumptions concerning possible and appropriate identities. Discussion is extended to the contexts of gender performance (drag) and sport-play. It is argued that play proceeds on the basis of a fundamental pretence of reality that must be taken seriously by its participants; this discussion includes (...) considerations of serious and ironical play, “playing-at”, and travesty. (shrink)

It is a commonsense thesis that unactualized possibilities are not parts of actuality. To keep his modal realism in line with this thesis, David Lewis employed his indexical account of the term “actual.” I argue that the addition of counterpart theory to Lewis’s modal realism undermines his strategy for respecting the commonsense thesis. The case made here also reveals a problem for Lewis’s attempt to avoid haecceitism.