Scientific journal presented by Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, Ukraine, Melitopol. Main points: 1. Actual Problems of Modern Philosophy 2. Researches in Philosophy connected with natural components, sociological aspects and self - identity development.

From the very beginning of ancient Greek philosophy up to the present day a puzzling correlation is found between rationality and reality. In this study this relation is examined with emphasis on the philosophical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas. A comparison is made with the virtual reality created by computers and actual reality of our universe. The view expressed in the scientific neopositivism of Jordan and Mach is found to be an adequate approach to avoid contradictions in the (...) interpretation of modern physics. A challenging hypothesis is made by updating the Laplacian Demon by a powerful creative intellect in line with Judeo-Christian tradition. With this hypothesis a new light is shed on several fundamental issues in modern science. (shrink)

We can ask, (1) given the state of the universe at the big bang, what is the probability that the universe would have ended up in its current actual state? What is the probability distribution for the possible states the universe could have evolved into? We can ask, (2) given the current actual state of the universe, what is the probability the big bang would have been in the state it was? What is the (...) probability distribution over different possible states at the big bang? Both the Fine-Tuning argument and the Anthropic argument are confused versions of (2). This settles the issues once and for all. (shrink)

The article explores similarities between the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Aristippus, focusing in particular on play and eudaimonism. The main thesis is that both authors encourage the cultivation of a playful mindset, defined in the paper as the “ludic self”, which operates as a strategy for leading a flourishing life. By shaping a fluid, unstructured identity, the ludic self promotes negative subtraction from the structuring power of social nexus and proactive adaptation to shifting circumstances. Furthermore, some aspects of these philosophies (...) present an inter-disciplinary convergence with scientific findings from the psycho-biology of play, concerned with the mobilization of cathected energies and the prevention, or resolution, of addictive states. These promising connections with the fields of psychology and biology also represent an original contribution in respect to the existing debates within Zhuangzi studies, and scholarship on the Cyrenaics. From a methodological point of view, the article pursues what Rorty defines as a “rational reconstruction”, which involves a re-interpretation of past philosophies in light of present debates, ideas and vocabularies with the aim of engaging a trans-cultural, trans-historical dialogue. The value of this operation relies upon the universality of human experience, which always allows re-interpretation and re-actualization of past philosophies as a dialogical exercise of questioning otherness within a hermeneutic framework. (shrink)

The Perennial Philosophy centres around what is said to be a recurring mystical insight: that our inherent nature is actually pure, unconditioned consciousness, identical to the ground of all being. Perennial Idealism, the name I give to a metaphysical system I have been building, extrapolates from the Perennial Philosophy to explain how the world could be configured if it were in fact true. Among the most serious challenges faced is that of articulating and defending the very notion that our world (...) is grounded in universal consciousness. This chapter further develops a line of reply to what I think are four major objections to the idea that universal consciousness grounds all being. I call these the Thales Objection, the Problem of the One and the Many, the Self-defeating Objection, and the Power Challenge. (shrink)

We face grave global problems. One might think universities are doing all they can to help solve these problems. But universities, in successfully pursuing scientific knowledge and technological know-how in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living, have actually made possible the genesis of all our current global problems. Modern science and technology have led to modern industry and agriculture, modern medicine and hygiene, modern armaments, which in turn have led to much that (...) is good, but also to habitat destruction, extinction of species, population growth, the lethal character of modern war, and the impending disasters of climate change. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that they put problems of living at the heart of the academic enterprise and take, as their basic task, to help humanity learn how to make progress towards as good a world as possible. (shrink)

Synthetic biology aims to synthesize novel biological systems or redesign existing ones. The field has raised numerous philosophical questions, but most especially what is novel to this field. In this article I argue for a novel take, since the dominant ways to understand synthetic biology’s specificity each face problems. Inspired by the examination of the work of a number of chemists, I argue that synthetic biology differentiates itself by a new regime of articulation, i.e. a new way of articulating the (...) questions and phenomena it wants to address. Instead of describing actual existing biological systems, the field aims to describe biological possibilities. In the second part I corroborate this hypothesis through a comparison between early research in the field of the origins of life and contemporary synthetic biologists, who are not so much interested in the historical origin of life on Earth, but rather in a universal biology of the possible origins of any life whatsoever. (shrink)

_One of the strongest arguments against hate speech legislation is the so-called Argument from Political Speech. This argument problematizes the restrictions that might be placed on political opinions or political critique when these opinions are expressed in a way which can be interpreted as ‘hateful’ towards minority groups. One of the strongest free speech scholars opposing hate speech legislation is Ronald Dworkin, who stresses that having restrictions on hate speech is, in fact, illegitimate in a liberal democracy. The right to (...) express oneself freely concerning any political decision is, according to Dworkin, a core democratic principle; it is what self-governance – and hence liberal democracies – are built upon. Dworkin and many other free speech scholars based in the United States see hate speech legislation as a threat to expressing oneself freely and critically. I argue that Dworkin and other US-based free speech scholars tend to overlook actual hate speech legislation in countries where such laws have been implemented and have functioned for decades. Furthermore, I argue that the real threat against political speech lies not in hate speech legislation but rather outside of the law, namely, in private institutions such as universities and museums. Restrictions on political speech in various societal circumstances have been on the rise over the last decades – first and foremost in the US. I analyse why these restrictions on political speech are more widespread in the only Western country without laws against hate speech than they are in countries with implemented hate speech laws._ _Keywords_: political speech, hate speech, hate speech legislation, private institu-tions, universities, USA. (shrink)

Whitehead claims there is only one type of individual in the universe—the actual entity—but there are necessarily multiple tokens of this type. This turns out to be paradoxical. Nevertheless, a type of individuality that is necessarily plural because, for each token, relations to other tokens are constitutive is something familiar from ordinary language, everyday politics, and, not least, 19th century German social thought. Whitehead’s actual entity generalizes the notion of species-being we find in Fichte, Feuerbach, and Marx. (...) The rationale for the concept of species-being brings to light important social and political implications of Whitehead’s cosmology. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the relationship between correcting the deviations in the measurement of performance and achieving the objectives of control and the performance of the job at the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip. To achieve the objectives of the research, the researchers used the descriptive analytical approach to collect information. The questionnaire consisted of (20) statements 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 and 276 responses were retrieved with a recovery rate of 88.1%. The Statistical Analysis Program (SPSS) was used to enter, process, and analyze the data. The results of the study showed a positive relationship between correcting deviations in performance measurement and achieving the control objectives represented by the functional performance in the Islamic University from the point of view of the members (senior management, faculty and their assistants, and the administrative board), where the relative weight of all the paragraphs was (74.25%). The study recommended the need to ensure that the actual performance of the planned performance is matched and decisions are taken to correct the serious deviations and take the necessary measures in terms of retraining and change in regulations, wages and bonuses and punishment of the culprit, neglect and negligence by mistake. (shrink)

Apparency and actuality are discussed with respect to science, genetics, evolution, cognition and perception. Rules for a (sub)set of actual/allowable sets of entities and objects from a total set that is based on differences and contrasts extracted from perceptual experience of the world elucidate tenable combinations/recombinations from a total of the transparent(history/past dependant) and the apparent as they can be construed to comprise the actual/real faces of perception. The elements of dreams, language, symbolisms, abstractions are proposed to encompass (...) to encompass a total set of plausible apparencies. Nature from which both internal and external life is mirrored at the simplest structural level is propose to be constructed similarly-to physically possess also concepts and abstractions as states that reflect differences/combinations/recombinations parametrically that are emerged from the parameters associated with particular circumstances. This view is dependant upon, for its' conceptual soundness, a total construction of the world that descends, rather than ascends, in structural complexity and diversity and which is innately divided and compartmentalized in sequence from a more complex uniquely existing state describable singularly as a place of force and proximities form which all processes ensue. Integration of sound, light, into sensory experience and language is proposed to be a natural process of the accomplishment of new proximities/states from total apparent plausibility’s (past and actual combined) verses the actually(past and present) existing. Two potential important aspects of this scheme exist with regards to evolution theory: 1) a very relative dynamic state of change and emergence is plausible 2) a consistent identity of objects and entities is resolvable that is not based on apparent observations or partial history of events but on a set of total states and processes occurred during the progression to an actual condition. This is suggested to be unique for each and every actual situation as an identifier and is proposed to account for allowances with respect to new potentials. "Self" in this sense can assume more involved relations with self more than with the more distant, hence alien, otherwise arrived at proximal components, components of the environment, inert or otherwise. An example is presented with respect to solar energies and their toxicity to cause disturbances/disease upon internal exposure-as an unnaturally arrived imbalance/proximity between the transparent (history dependant) and the apparent-together comprising, in this situation, a disturbed actual state that can encompass also distortions in the perception of time. Time is proposed to be delineated as a contrast of proximal and distal factors mutually involved with both transparent (genealogically) oriented parameters, and empirically apparent factors that together comprise the actual, as well as those more immediate proximal and distal components(e.g. solar radiation, light-the less structured ambient verse those elements that comprise visual perceptions) as they influence the senses. Each entity species in this scheme possesses its’ own characteristic sense of time along with contemporary factors that influence the perception of time state, state of health and disturbance. (shrink)

In their seeking of simplicity, scientists fall into the error of Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." They mistake their abstract concepts describing reality for reality itself--the map for the territory. This leads to dogmatic overstatements, paradoxes, and mysteries such as the deep incompatibility of our two most fundamental physical theories--quantum mechanics and general relativity. To avoid such errors, we should evoke Whitehead's conception of the universe as a universe-in-process, where physical relations perpetually beget new physical relations. Today, the (...) most promising interpretations of quantum mechanics exemplify this Whiteheadian idea, formalizing physical systems, and the universe itself, as ongoing histories of actualizations of potential states, where actual states and potential states exist in mutually implicative relation as two separate categories of reality—an idea first proposed by Aristotle and rehabilitated by Heisenberg. In these interpretations, the classical conception of a history as a derivative story about fundamental physical objects is reversed: the classical physical object becomes the derivative story about fundamental histories of quantum states. The consistent histories interpretation of Robert Griffiths and the decoherent histories interpretation of Roland Omnès are cardinal examples of this approach to quantum mechanics. Another example, the relational realist interpretation, begins with the decoherent histories approach and formalizes it explicitly as a Whiteheadian interpretation, taking his “algebraic method” and applying it to quantum mechanics via algebraic topology. This branch of mathematics can be thought of as a “de-concretized” geometry in that it focuses only on the logical relations among objects and regions (and relations of these relations) rather than the fixed magnitudes of lines, planes, and other such rigid intervals. It has all the robust logical structure of geometry yet allows for an elasticity of relations that makes topological mathematical structures inherently immune misplaced concretization. (shrink)

I shall argue that you can substantially refute the most persuasive variety of solipsism by taking its most plausible version seriously, and then showing that it is not rational to hold, once one understands the nature of actualist metaphysical commitments.1 In the first section, I argue that the only viable form of solipsism involves de dicto self-reference. In the second, I argue that this position involves a claim of contingent identity, for which some actual worlds are those where solipsism (...) is not the case. The argument turns on a conception of metaphysics that involves the study of the universal features of actually possible worlds (i.e., realistic necessity). _*Draft. Acknowledgements welcome, but please do not cite.*_. (shrink)

The study aims to investigate how prior experience of interlocutors interacts with actual situational context in intercultural interactions when the latter is represented by a well-known frame: getting acquainted with others. It attempts to demonstrate how the cultural frame of the target language is broken up and substituted with an emergent frame that is co-constructed from elements from prior experience with the target language, the first language and the actual situational experience. Getting acquainted with others is a closed (...) social situation, a cultural frame in which interlocutors usually have to follow a behavior pattern dictated by the requirements of the socio-cultural background in a given speech community. There is a ‘skeleton’ of these ‘getting to know you’ procedures that can be considered universal but is substantiated differently in every language. In each conversation in any language, ‘flesh’ is added to the ‘skeleton’ in a dynamic and co-constructed manner. However, there is a difference between how this happens in L1 and in intercultural interactions. While in L1 the ‘flesh’ on the skeleton is predetermined to a significant extent by requirements of core common ground in the given language, in intercultural encounters this ‘flesh building’ process in the target language is not set but is co-constructed by the interlocutors as emergent common ground relying on their prior experience with their own L1 culture, limited experience with the target culture and the assessment of the actual situational context. In this study the co-construction process, i.e. emergent common ground will be analyzed by examining the use of formulaic language and freely generated language in several discourse segments. (shrink)

The well-known Principle of Plenitude has it that everything that exists in some possible world exists in the actual world. I argue for an amended version of this principle: If there’s a possible world in which something lacks some positive property, then there’s an object in the actual world that lacks that property. That is, all positive universally held properties in the actual world are necessarily universally held. This rules out that for some positive property, everything in (...) the actual world merely happens to have it. After having presented and defended the argument, I show that it has a wide range of corollaries, such as that there are mereologically simple and composite things, physical and non-physical things, caused and uncaused things, and contingent and necessarily existing things. The argument has three premises. The first premise is the thesis that there are no things that do not exist. The second premise is a Fregean theory of linguistic meaning. According to the third premise, two meanings coincide if and only if their reference sets coincide. The notion of a reference set is defined in the paper. (shrink)

From the perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness elaborated and reported recently on the basis of the last discoveries of the quantum mechanics and astrophysics, the meeting horizon between some ancient coherent empirical models of the humanity and our modern scientific results is analyzed. These results are discussed in terms of information, as a central axis relating the universe, the human and inter-humanity connections, and consciousness as an informational tool for the exploration of the reality. Bringing into discussion (...) the relevant recent discoveries of quantum mechanics (Higgs’ boson, disembodiment of information from the physical particles), and matter/information properties near the black holes, it is reinforced the concept of information as one of the fundamental constituent of matter and of our universe, showing that information is actually the base fabric of matter structures, living structures and universe. The huge quantity of dynamic information engaged in the living structures, particularly in the human organism, necessary to maintain the life’s functions and to allow the adaptation requirements, differentiates the living from non-living entities. It is shown that consciousness, human and universe cannot be really understood if it is not introduced on the panoramic scene a new player – dark matter, with more than 20% contribution, besides more than 70% dark energy and only 5% observable matter from the matter total quantity. It is shown also that the Informational Model of Consciousness, consisting in an architecture of seven cognitive centers, converges with the ancient models of chakras, of etheric body and aura concepts, with dual Taoist concepts of universe and human body, contributing with answers to the “mind-body”, “nature or nurture” problems and even to Qualia “hard” problem, and supporting the Jung’s concepts on the mind. Finally, some questions are addressed to the quantum mechanics, concerning the retro-causal effect and non-locality principle. (shrink)

Contemporary reluctance to consider any complicity between philosophy and religion has led to an inability to consider, in Hegel studies, how the revelatory agency of the Absolute necessarily complements the narrative of human reason. According to Hegel, reason alone can do no more than end in the endless limitations of actuality, in the infinite approximations of a moral summum bonum and in the ad infinitum strivings for concrete political freedom. Recognizing where revelatory agency occurs in Hegel’s Science allows us to (...) recognize the Idea’s freedom in the worldly, human expressions of art, religion and philosophy, in their philosophical study within the state University. Without such recognition, both Left and Right fields of Hegel interpretation tend to evaluate the success (or failure) of his philosophy based on inflated, unrealistic expectations of what is meant by “actuality.”. (shrink)

This thesis develops a detailed account of the emergence of for all practical purposes continuous, quasi-classical world histories from the discontinuous, stochastic micro dynamics of Minimal Bohmian Mechanics (MBM). MBM is a non-relativistic quantum theory. It results from excising the guiding equation from standard Bohmian Mechanics (BM) and reinterpreting the quantum equilibrium hypothesis as a stochastic guidance law for the random actualization of configurations of Bohmian particles. On MBM, there are no continuous trajectories linking up individual configurations. Instead, individual configurations (...) are actualized independently of each other, carving out the decoherence-induced branching structure of the universal wave function. Yet, by contrast to the Everett interpretation, branches of the universal wave function are not actualized in parallel, i.e. all at the same time. Rather, world branches, on MBM, are actualized sequentially. -/- For an introduction to MBM, the transition from BM to MBM is described, and their empirical equivalence is established. I present the conditions under which MBM can be classified as a primitive ontology (PO) theory, regarded as crucial for the acceptance of a theory as Bohmian by many proponents of BM. While rendering MBM compatible with the PO approach, it must not fall prey to the problem of communication, arising from the two-space reading of BM. -/- The issue of temporal solipsism, identified by Bell as a serious problem for his “Everett (?) theory” – the historic predecessor of MBM – is discussed. I argue that Barbour’s time capsule approach does not provide a satisfactory solution. In particular, his adopting a more than minimal psychophysical parallelism between brain processes and experience of macroscopic change is argued to be reasonable in light of our current best neuroscience, yet problematic for theories relying solely on time capsules, understood as highly structured, individual, internally static configurations. As a solution, I introduce worlds, and world histories, as key concepts in providing a link between MBM’s micro dynamics and macroscopic phenomena. Worlds, other than time capsules, are coarse-grained regions in phase- or configuration space, defined as sets of possible micro states satisfying a relation of sufficient similarity from a macroscopic perspective, with respect to a given micro state. Hence, worlds may overlap. -/- I argue that worlds thus construed are a reasonable option for replacing the disjoint macro regions of phase space, resulting from the usual way of partitioning phase space in the standard framework of Boltzmannian statistical mechanics. This move solves the issue of discontinuous change of macro variables upon the micro state crossing the boundary between different macro regions. -/- I adapt this move for MBM’s discontinuous micro dynamics in configuration space. Issues revolving around the microscopic-macroscopic distinction, particle identity, impenetrability and haecceity in light of the desideratum of particle number conservation, etc., are discussed. I provide a detailed explanation of how overlapping worlds in MBM form world histories, thereby linking up macroscopically distinct worlds. Thus, the problem of temporal solipsism is resolved in a way that is compatible with a more than minimal psychophysical parallelism. (shrink)

The seventeenth century was an important period in the conceptual development of the notion of the infinite. In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647)—Galileo’s successor in the chair of mathematics in Florence—communicated his proof of a solid of infinite length but finite volume. Many of the leading metaphysicians of the time, notably Spinoza and Leibniz, came out in defense of actual infinity, rejecting the Aristotelian ban on it, which had been almost universally accepted for two millennia. Though it would be another (...) two centuries before the notion of the actually infinite was rehabilitated in mathematics by Dedekind and Cantor (Cauchy and Weierstrass still considered it mere paradox), their impenitent advocacy of the concept had significant reverberations in both philosophy and mathematics. In this essay, I will attempt to clarify one thread in the development of the notion of the infinite. In the first part, I study Spinoza’s discussion and endorsement, in the Letter on the Infinite (Ep. 12), of Hasdai Crescas’ (c. 1340-1410/11) crucial amendment to a traditional proof of the existence of God (“the cosmological proof” ), in which he insightfully points out that the proof does not require the Aristotelian ban on actual infinity. In the second and last part, I examine the claim, advanced by Crescas and Spinoza, that God has infinitely many attributes, and explore the reasoning that motivated both philosophers to make such a claim. Similarities between Spinoza and Crescas, which suggest the latter’s influence on the former, can be discerned in several other important issues, such as necessitarianism, the view that we are compelled to assert or reject a belief by its representational content, the enigmatic notion of amor Dei intellectualis, and the view of punishment as a natural consequent of sin. Here, I will restrict myself to the issue of the infinite, clearly a substantial topic in itself. (shrink)

While I was working about some basic physical phenomena, I discovered some geometric relations that also interest mathematics. In this work, I applied the rules I have been proven to P=NP? problem over impossibility of perpendicularity in the universe. It also brings out extremely interesting results out like imaginary numbers which are known as real numbers currently. Also it seems that Euclidean Geometry is impossible. The actual geometry is Riemann Geometry and complex numbers are real.

La cobertura universal de salud está en el centro de la acción actual para fortalecer los sistemas de salud y mejorar el nivel y la distribución de la salud y los servicios de salud. Este documento es el informe fi nal del Grupo Consultivo de la OMS sobre la Equidad y Cobertura Universal de Salud. Aquí se abordan los temas clave de la justicia (fairness) y la equidad que surgen en el camino hacia la cobertura universal de salud. Por (...) lo tanto, el informe es pertinente para cada agente que infl uye en ese camino y en particular para los gobiernos, ya que se encargan de supervisar y guiar el progreso hacia la cobertura universal de salud. (shrink)

The consciousness of sense-certainty proves itself to be dialectical. It starts out with the certainty that its object is a singular immediate being. But it is just this ‘singular immediate being’ that turns around into its opposite to become a universal – i.e. it is true not only for a single but all individual objects since everything is a ‘singular immediate being’. ‘Every individual is different’ because each has free will and is independent of others. If this is universally true (...) then it dialectically turns around to its opposite and becomes ‘everyone is the same.’ This is called “negative movement” or dialectical because each side of the individual-universal relation negates itself to become the other. Immediate consciousness is called ego. The consciousness of immediate sense-certainty is not aware that ego is related to the object which it considers as immediately being. The admission of relationship cancels immediacy because a relation is something that mediates between two things that unites them, i.e. changes them from two independent beings into a unity or oneness. This change is negation, thus the many-ness is negated to become one-ness or unity as a relation. Of course the many-ness is not destroyed in a relation, or the relationship itself could not exist as such. This is the nature of negation – it does not annihilate but sublimates; unity implies that two or more things have been united, i.e. the explicit multiplicity is sublimated (becomes implicit) in the concept of unity. The change in going from one moment to another in this movement or process is called experience (as discussed in the November 2011 issue). [1] Taken together these experiences of consciousness are called its history. It is not a history of the world, or the development of consciousness through historical time. It is simply the experience or change due to the movement of thought explained previously – involving the purely philosophical, logical or conceptual events. The series of these experiences is called its history. (shrink)

Moral error theory is a meta-ethical view that discusses how one makes an error when making a moral judgment or claim. The error resides in the fact that the moral values about which the judgments are made, do not exist in the natural fabric of the world. In the first section of this article, I shall discuss about the moral error theory itself and the claims that it makes. Since the moral error theory in a structured form first came from (...) the philosopher J.L. Mackie, I shall discuss his standard account in the second section and show how this standard account has been misconceived over the time. The third section sets up a base of the view that I seek to endorse in this article, showing what is actually meant by an action being „objectively good or bad‟. The fourth section seeks a critical examination of the contemporary moral error theories and discusses the issues that arise while these theories answer the „now what‟ question. Section five enlists various contemporary objections to the moral error theory which ultimately undermine the arguments made by error theorists. Since the error theory only considers true what is out there in the world, it poses a „correspondence threat‟ to the error theory which is discussed in the sixth section. The seventh section comprises a defense of the formal objections made against the error theory and shows how the formal objection stands by undermining the error theorists‟ view. The main aim of this article is to provide a critical examination of the moral error theory and show how it provides an implausible account of how morality is to be viewed. (shrink)

One of the common claims of the eternalists is that the "actual" infinite is possible and the universe is eternal. They are trying to refute the Kalam argument. What I wanted to show in this paper is that the "actual" infinite is impossible for logical reasons, and I have shown further that infinity has an effect and application over time, and that there is no way to deny the beginning of the universe for existence. The paper (...) points out the problems of infinity and points to the beginning of the universe. (shrink)

Cloud computing is considered as a new type of technology, in fact, it is an extension of the information technology's developments which are based on the pooling of resources and infrastructure to provide services depend on using the cloud, in the sense that instead of these services and resources exist on local servers or personal devices, they are gathered in the cloud and be shared on the Internet. This technology has achieved an economic success no one can deny it and (...) resorting to use it has many advantages, today it becomes known and recognized and begins to invade the libraries' area and imposes itself day by day because of the benefits afforded by using applications that have the ability to change the nature of library's services through the web hosting services which can be accessed via any internet connected device. And actually, libraries started using services provided by this technology especially in the field of digitization, indexing, supply, storage and the service of sharing and exchanging information resources in the virtual environment. For this, there is a need to conduct scientific research to find out librarians' trends and motivations about the use of cloud computing in their field of work. Where this research examines the librarians' trends towards the use of cloud computing according to the technology acceptance model (TAM). The study depended on descriptive analytical method using a questionnaire tool, and it has included all the libraries of Mentouri-Constantine1, libraries of university Abdelhamid Mehri-Constantine2, libraries of university Constantine 3, and libraries of Emir Abdelkader university of the Islamic science. And it reached a set of results including: that cloud computing is not used in a very large proportion by librarians, and they haven't a good cognitive level of its services, but in return, an interest was found by them to the cloud as a technology helps the office work implementation and the performance efficiency lifting and appreciates library services. (shrink)

Aiming at the problems of college students’ lack of in-depth understanding of the connotation of Chinese excellent traditional culture and the urgent need for improvement, this paper takes the construction of the Chinese Excellent Cultural Inheritance and Development Project of Faculty of Chinese Language and Culture of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies as an example, proposes the construction path of the cultural education project in universities, and summarizes the actual effect and experience.

The scope of Platonism is extended by introducing the concept of a “Platonic computer” which is incorporated in metacomputics. The theoretical framework of metacomputics postulates that a Platonic computer exists in the realm of Forms and is made by, of, with, and from metaconsciousness. Metaconsciousness is defined as the “power to conceive, to perceive, and to be self-aware” and is the formless, con-tentless infinite potentiality. Metacomputics models how metaconsciousness generates the perceived actualities including abstract entities and physical and nonphysical realities. (...) It is postulated that this is achieved via digital computation using the Platonic computer. The introduction of a Platonic computer into the realm of Forms thus bridges the “inverse explanatory gap” and therefore solves the “inverse hard problem of consciousness” in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The concept of expression has always held an important place in Fernando Gil’s thought. The author’s reflection on the idea of expression is well reflected among his writings – either in his early essays or throughout his entire work –, attaining a special focus in the lectures that he gave at Johns Hopkins University during the years of 2002, 2003 and 2004. Actually, these lectures represent the strongest testimony of the relevancy given by Fernando Gil to this concept. However, despite (...) being a concept which crosses all his work, clearly having a central place in his thought, Fernando Gil never got to write a systematic theory on the concept of expression. Thus, closely following the author’s works, the main purpose of this study is to suggest a personal vision of what could have been Fernando Gil’s theory on expression. Combining some of the main ideas of Johns Hopkins lectures to some fundamental notions of Fernando Gil’s thought, we will try to show that Fernando Gil’s theory on expression is a theory on the ordination of thought, on cognitive construction and, above all, a theory on the elevation of thought to what shall be considered its higher modality, the aesthetical thought. In fact, our major hypothesis is that Fernando Gil’s theory on expression is not only a cognitive theory but also an aesthetical one. As such, its major guidelines shall be: to explain the adequacy of expression to its objects; to show how expression evolves according to the cognitive development of the subject; and, finally, to explain and to justify the elevation of thought to universality, harmony and beauty. (shrink)

The paper grasps and outlines the concepts and practices of library marketing as well as generally the marketing of non-profit institutions or organizations, conceptually defined as symbolic marketing- However, what is termed here as symbolic should not be understood as a "weaker " version of marketing, but as the proper way in which marketing perspectives can be actually implemented in such institutions; that is, as a practice which concerns and mobilizes all services and activities of such institutions. The paper also (...) presents the factual initiatives which have been going on for years - quite successfully - in the "Lucian B/aga'' Central University Library, Cluj- Napoca. Romania, especially around the library's periodical, the review Philobiblon. and on the basis of which recent 'projects " can also be conceived more consistently. (shrink)

We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe-as-a-whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if (...) we redefine God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications. (shrink)

The field of value alignment, or more broadly machine ethics, is becoming increasingly important as artificial intelligence developments accelerate. By ‘alignment’ we mean giving a generally intelligent software system the capability to act in ways that are beneficial, or at least minimally harmful, to humans. There are a large number of techniques that are being experimented with, but this work often fails to specify what values exactly we should be aligning. When making a decision, an agent is supposed to maximize (...) the expected utility of its value function. Classically, this has been referred to as happiness, but this is just one of many things that people value. -/- In order to resolve this issue, we need to determine a set of human values that represent humanity's interests. Although this problem might seem intractable, research shows that people of various cultures and religions actually share more in common than they realize. In this book we review world religions, moral philosophy and evolutionary psychology to elucidate a common set of shared values. We then show how these values can be used to address the alignment problem and conclude with problems and goals for future research. -/- The key audience for this book will be researchers in the field of ethics and artificial intelligence who are interested in, or working on this problem. These people will come from various professions and include philosophers, computer programmers and psychologists, as the problem itself is multi-disciplinary. (shrink)

This article examines the plausibility of regarding altruism in terms of universal friendship. Section 1 frames the question around Aristotle’s ground-breaking philosophy of friendship. For Aristotle, most friendships exist for selfish reasons, motivated by a desire either for pleasure(playmates) or profit (workmates); relatively few friendships are genuine, being motivated by a desire for shared virtue (soulmates). In contrast to this negative answer to the main question, Section 2 examines a possible religious basis for affirming altruism, arising out of the so-called (...) “love command” – the biblical maxim that we ought to love others as we love ourselves. Many theologians have cited this maxim to justify altruism, with some (such as Aelred of Rievaulx) explicitly portraying it as a form of friendship. Section 3 examines Kant’s view of friendship, arguing that, although at first his position seems disappointingly limited, it actually captures the essence of the only possible form of friendship that could be regarded as a universal ideal without imposing unrealistic expectations onto friends. The article concludes in section 4 by offering a new, Kant-inspired interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the GoodSamaritan: Jesus’ appeal to the love command does enjoin friendship, but not as altruism; rather, love requires a selective form of friendship that is closer to Kant’s position. (shrink)

intro to Part 1 - -/- Most people disliked mathematics when they were at school and they were absolutely correct to do so. This is because maths as we know it is severely incomplete. No matter how elaborated and complicated mathematical equations become, in today's world they're based on 1+1=2. This certainly conforms to the world our physical senses perceive and to the world scientific instruments detect. It has been of immeasurable value to all knowledge throughout history and has elevated (...) science to the lofty status it enjoys. Science is now striving towards Unification - where the subatomic realm, all matter, energy, forces, space and time will be seen as entangled parts of one universe. While 1+1=2 has been vital in getting humanity to this point, it's time to suppress our attachments to the past and realize that whereas 1+1 will always equal 2, it's also capable of equalling the 1 which represents unification. -/- intro to Part 2 -/- b) Division by zero is accepted, in Newtonian maths, to be impossible. But we can regard division by zero as division by nothing i.e. division that has no effect. In this case, 1 divided by 0 is 1. However, to a physicist there is no such thing as nothing (even empty space contains energy). What could the something called 0 actually be? It could be a binary digit. If we use the base of ten (for simplicity) and attach one and zero to it as exponents, we get 10^1 divided by 10^0 = 10^1. If we then cancel 10 from each factor in the expression, we get 1 divided by 0 = 1. At the start of the paragraph, this was referred to as division by nothing. Then 0 was called a binary digit and division by nothing became division by something. The 1 that the division equals is the unified field of space-time. Division by 0 is impossible in Newtonian maths because the result can be infinity. But the word “infinity” can, as the last section of this book shows, apply to the unified field of spacetime. So division by zero is not impossible because it results in the universe, which is obviously possible … a possibility that has always been, and always will be, realized. -/- intro to Part 3 -/- If quantum entanglement has existed in the entire universe forever, everything would be everywhere and everywhen. Space, time and 5th-dimensional hyperspace would not be restricted to certain parts of the Mobius Universe but would exist in every particle. Past, present and future would not exist as the distinct periods which everyday life assumes. All instants of all periods would exist eternally, permitting time travel to any point in the past and to any point in the future. Entanglement may be created by simply zipping along at close to the speed of light - “Quantum entanglement of moving bodies” by Robert M. Gingrich and Christoph Adami in Physical Review Letters 89, 270402 (issue of 30 December 2002) – which might be achieved, according to this book, by warping space so it’s either a fraction of the 90 degrees allowing instantaneous travel or almost at 270 degrees to space as we know it. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is on Kant and on a text which has often been drawn upon when talking about the present situation of philosophy at university, namely his 'The Conflict of the Faculties' of 1798. Kant’s claims, though not applicable to the contemporary situation directly, can indeed be worked out in a way which can assign a distinct and clearly identifiable role for university-based philosophy. I need to emphasize, though, that I am not suggesting that this is the (...) only way Kant’s thoughts in this respect can be adapted to and utilized for such an account. Quite the contrary, Kant’s text offers a manifold of highly important options here. In my article I will seek to establish the following claims: a) Kant, in his later years, which therefore amounts to something like his “mature” position, subscribed to a conception of a public use of reason which mainly referred to the Faculties of Philosophy at universities. b) Kant’s dismissal of philosophy according to the school conception of it must not be taken as a dismissal of academic philosophy altogether. Philosophy practiced at university by professionals is vital for Kant to build philosophy as a fully worked out discipline and to answer questions revolving around the issue of the compatibility of the theoretical standpoint and Kant’s own moral theory. c) Neither a) nor b) can be immediately applied to the contemporary situation we find ourselves in. Combining elements of a) and b), however, a possible route for the actualization of Kant’s ideas may open up. At least one of the functions for which university-based philosophy is uniquely qualified is the assessment of the implications of progress in the natural sciences for the conception of a moral standpoint in general, and as such for a core element of our self-understanding as rational beings. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that the past must be finite in duration because otherwise reaching the present moment would have involved something impossible, namely, the sequential occurrence of an actual infinity of events. In reply, some philosophers have objected that there can be nothing amiss in such an occurrence, since actually infinite sequences are ‘traversed’ all the time in nature, for example, whenever an object moves from one location in space to another. This essay focuses on one of the (...) two available replies to this objection, namely, the claim that actual infinities are not traversed in nature because space, time, and other continuous wholes divide into parts only in so far as we divide them in thought, and thus divide into only a finite number of parts. I grant that this reply succeeds in blunting the anti-finitist objection, but I argue that it also subverts the very argument against an eternal past that it was intended to save. (shrink)

Information Theory, Evolution and The Origin ofLife: The Origin and Evolution of Life as a Digital Message: How Life Resembles a Computer, Second Edition. Hu- bert P. Yockey, 2005, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 400 pages, index; hardcover, US $60.00; ISBN: 0-521-80293-8. The reason that there are principles of biology that cannot be derived from the laws of physics and chemistry lies simply in the fact that the genetic information content of the genome for constructing even the simplest organisms is much (...) larger than the information content of these laws. Yockey in his previous book (1992, 335) In this new book, Information Theory, Evolution and The Origin ofLife, Hubert Yockey points out that the digital, segregated, and linear character of the genetic information system has a fundamental significance. If inheritance would blend and not segregate, Darwinian evolution would not occur. If inheritance would be analog, instead of digital, evolution would be also impossible, because it would be impossible to remove the effect of noise. In this way, life is guided by information, and so information is a central concept in molecular biology. The author presents a picture of how the main concepts of the genetic code were developed. He was able to show that despite Francis Crick's belief that the Central Dogma is only a hypothesis, the Central Dogma of Francis Crick is a mathematical consequence of the redundant nature of the genetic code. The redundancy arises from the fact that the DNA and mRNA alphabet is formed by triplets of 4 nucleotides, and so the number of letters (triplets) is 64, whereas the proteome alphabet has only 20 letters (20 amino acids), and so the translation from the larger alphabet to the smaller one is necessarily redundant. Except for Tryptohan and Methionine, all amino acids are coded by more than one triplet, therefore, it is undecidable which source code letter was actually sent from mRNA. This proof has a corollary telling that there are no such mathematical constraints for protein-protein communication. With this clarification, Yockey contributes to diminishing the widespread confusion related to such a central concept like the Central Dogma. Thus the Central Dogma prohibits the origin of life "proteins first." Proteins can not be generated by "self-organization." Understanding this property of the Central Dogma will have a serious impact on research on the origin of life. (shrink)

Some philosophers contend that the past must be finite in duration, because otherwise reaching the present would have involved the sequential occurrence of an actual infinity of events, which they regard as impossible. I recently developed a new objection to this finitist argument, to which Andrew Ter Ern Loke and Travis Dumsday have replied. Here I respond to the three main points raised in their replies.

Amid the wide variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics, the notion of a fully coherent ontological interpretation has seen a promising evolution over the last few decades. Despite this progress, however, the old dualistic categorical constraints of subjectivity and objectivity, correlate with the metrically restricted definition of local and global, have remained largely in place – a reflection of the broader, persistent inheritance of these comfortable strictures throughout the evolution of modern science. If one traces this inheritance back to its (...) ancient roots in Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that the coherence, scientific utility, and historical durability of the various natural philosophies that followed have been directly proportional to their commitment, tacit or explicit, to object-oriented realism. As Simondon might put it, it is a commitment to the primacy of individuated substance over the process of individuation. For Whitehead, it is the misplaced assimilation of becoming to being, of potentiality to actuality. Quantum mechanics has challenged this commitment with a combined breadth and depth of force that far exceeds any other theory in the history of science. The theory’s objectively demonstrable empirical application is manifest only by way of a fundamentally subjective, context-dependent mechanism of measurement. More compelling still, actual system states are always actualizations of locally contextualized yet globally conditioned potential system states, such that “globally objective” reality is no longer merely the object of local measurement, but also its product. Thus, any coherent, ontological interpretation of quantum theory must include a conceptual framework by which objectivity and subjectivity, actuality and potentiality, global and local, being and becoming, individuated fact and process of individuation, are no longer understood as merely epistemic, mutually exclusive category pairs descriptive of an already extant, closed reality – but rather as mutually implicative ontological categories explicative of an ontogenetic, open reality-in-process. (shrink)

In order to describe my findings/conclusions systematically, a new semantic system (i.e., a new language) has to be intentionally defined by the present article. Humans are limited in what they know by the technical limitation of their cortical language network. A reality is a situation model (SM). For example, the conventionally-called “physical reality” around my conventionally-called “physical body” is actually a “geometric” SM of my brain. The universe is an autonomous objective parallel computing automaton which evolves by itself automatically/unintentionally (...) – wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can be explained under this “first-order” SM of my brain. Each elementary particle (as a building block of the universe) is an autonomous mathematical entity itself (i.e., a thing in itself). If we are happy to accept randomness, it is obviously possible that all other worlds in the many-worlds interpretation do not exist objectively. The conventionally-called “space” does not exist objectively. “Time” and “matter” are not physical. Consciousness is the subjective-form (aka quale) of the mathematical models (of the objective universe) which are intracorporeally/subjectively used by the control logic of a Turing machine’s program objectively-fatedly. A Turing machine’s consciousness or deliberate decisions/choices should not be able to actually/objectively change/control/drive the (autonomous or objectively-fated) world line of any elementary particle within this world. Besides the Schrodinger equation (or its real-world counterpart) which is a valid/correct/factual causality of the universe, every other causality (of the universe) is either invalid/incorrect/counterfactual or can be proved by deductive inference based on the Schrodinger equation only. If the “loop quantum gravity” theory is correct, time/space does not actually/objectively exist in the objective-evolution of the objective-reality, or in other words, we should not use the subjective/mental concept of “time”, “state” or “space” to describe/imagine the objective-evolution of the universe. (shrink)

‘Substance’ (substantia, zelfstandigheid) is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate -- that there is only one, unique substance -- God (or Nature) -- and that all other things are (...) merely modes or states of God. Some of Spinoza’s readers understood these claims as committing him to the view that only God truly exists, and while this interpretation is not groundless, we will later see that this enticing and bold reading of Spinoza as an ‘acosmist’ comes at the expense of another audacious claim Spinoza advances, i.e., that God/Nature is absolutely and actually infinite. But before we reach this last conclusion, we have a long way to go. So, let me first provide an overview of our plan. In the first section of this paper we will examine Spinoza’s definitions of ‘substance’ and ‘God’ at the opening of his magnum opus, the Ethics. Following a preliminary clarification of these two terms and their relations to the other key terms defined at the beginning of the Ethics, we will briefly address the Aristotelian and Cartesian background of Spinoza’s discussion of substance. In the second section, we will study the properties of the fundamental binary relations pertaining to Spinoza’s substance: inherence, conception, and causation. The third section will be dedicated to a clarification of Spinoza’s claim that God, the unique substance, is absolutely infinite. This essential feature of Spinoza’s substance has been largely neglected in recent Anglo-American scholarship, a neglect which has brought about an unfortunate tendency to domesticate Spinoza’s metaphysics to more contemporary views. The fourth section will study the nature of Spinoza’s monism. It will discuss and criticize the interesting yet controversial views of the eminent Spinoza scholar, Martial Gueroult, about the plurality of substances in the beginning of the Ethics; address Spinoza’s claim in Letter 50 that, strictly speaking, it is improper to describe God as “one”; and, finally, evaluate Spinoza’s kind of monism against the distinction between existence and priority monism recently introduced into the contemporary philosophical literature. The fifth and final section will explain the nature, reality, and manner of existence of modes. We therefore have an ambitious plan; let’s get down to business. (shrink)

If one wishes to understand what money is, to whom should one turn as the most reliable source of knowledge? Of course, economists propose themselves as the experts on the matter. Who, if not those who study in- terest rates, prices and exchanges could know more about the nature of money? Yet, with a few exceptions, those philosophers in the burgeoning field of social ontology who ask ‘what is money?’ (or, for that matter, ‘what is a marriage?, ‘what is ownership?’, (...) ‘what is a cocktail party?’, etc.) tend to ignore what past and present social scientists maintain on these issues. John Searle comes to mind as having such an insulated approach. Since The Construction of Social Reality, Searle has repeatedly claimed to have found no adequate definition of institutions on the part of those scholars who are the most concerned with them. Understanding Institutions leaves a different impression about the state of the art. In this elegant book, Francesco Guala shows that social scien- tists, economists in particular, can actually be trusted in how they under- stand the notions which they apply. Guala finds in game theory the relevant conceptual framework in which to explore the nature of institutions. Fol- lowing David Hume, David Lewis, and Edna Ullmann-Margalit, he defends a view, termed the rule-in-equilibrium account, which conceives institutions as solutions to coordination problems. For example, to determine what a marriage is, we must look at the range of coordination dilemmas which married couples have resolved: Who cooks? Who picks up the children f rom school? Who washes the dishes? etc. Likewise, the institution of own- ership states who will make use of what? The highway code indicates which side of the road to drive on. Cocktail parties? I gather they specify when to entertain and who to bond with. (shrink)

A Boltzmann Brain, haphazardly formed through the unlikely but still possible random assembly of physical particles, is a conscious brain having experiences just like an ordinary person. The skeptical possibility of being a Boltzmann Brain is an especially gripping one: scientific evidence suggests our actual universe’s full history may ultimately contain countless short-lived Boltzmann Brains with experiences just like yours or mine. I propose a solution to the skeptical challenge posed by these countless actual Boltzmann Brains. My (...) key idea is roughly this: the skeptical argument that you’re one of the Boltzmann Brains requires you to make a statistical inference, but the Principle of Total Evidence blocks us from making the inference. I discuss how my solution contrasts with a recent suggestion, made by Sean Carroll and David Chalmers, for how to address the skeptical challenge posed by Boltzmann Brains. And I discuss how my solution handles certain relevant concerns about what to do when we have higher-order evidence indicating that our first-order evidence is misleading. (shrink)

It is not by thinking that we create worlds. It is by understanding the world that we learn to think. Cosmovision is a term that should mean a set of foundations from which emerges a systemic understanding of the Universe, its components as life, the world we live in, nature, human phenomena, and their relationships. It is, therefore, a field of analytical philosophy fed by the sciences, whose objective is this aggregated and epistemologically sustainable knowledge about everything that we (...) are and contain, that surrounds us, and that relates to us in any way. It is something as old as human thought, and, in addition to using elements of scientific cosmology, it encompasses everything in philosophy and science that refers to the universe and life. A cosmovision is not a set of ideas, hypotheses, and assumptions but a system based on observation, analysis, evidence, and demonstration. No cosmovision intends to define, establish, or propose but only to understand, analyse, and interpret. Each of us builds and transports his cosmovision throughout life, without establishing forms, as a background for our thinking and behaviour. Linguistically, the term “cosmovision” would derive from the German, equivalent to the concept of “ Weltanschauung,” as used by several philosophers. However, this linguistic relationship is not applicable because it contradicts what we propose as a cosmovision. This German word refers to a pre-logical or proto- experimental vision of reality, with an intuitive context and far from critical knowledge still non-existent at the time of its formulation. Undoubtedly, cosmovisions, in the sense in which we understand them, house and use these proto-experimental or pre-logical elements that include history, the collective unconscious, and all the archetypes we carry. However, in the concept that we apply here, the cosmovision goes far beyond this content, firstly by constantly submitting it to present critical thinking, and finally by making the analytic experience ( and not the thought itself or intuition) its actual universe. António Lopes expose the breadth of this content: -/- "Cosmovisions are not the product of thought. They do not spring from the simple desire to know. The apprehension of reality is an important moment in its configuration, but, nevertheless, it is only one. It comes from the vital conduct, from the experience of life's evaluation, and from the structure of our psychic totality. The elevation of life to consciousness in the knowledge of reality, in the valuation, and in the volitional reality is the slow and arduous work that humanity has done in the development of the conceptions of life. (W. Dilthey, 1992 [1911]: 120)”(1) -/- In this work, we seek to outline a cosmovision based on the realities that science offers today. We do not propose, at any time, to do science; or theorise philosophy, but we will always seek to be supported by them or, at least, protected by them from the cognitive distortions that we usually carry. ________________________________________________ (1) Lopes , Antonio – “ Weltanschauung (Cosmovision)” (2009 ) in Carlos Ceia's E-Dictionary of Literary Terms. -/- . (shrink)

Should we think of our universe as law-governed and “clockwork”-like or as disorderly and “soup”-like? Alternatively, should we consciously and intentionally synthesize these two extreme pictures? More concretely, how deterministic are the postulated causes and how rigid are the modeled properties of the best statistical methodologies used in the biological and behavioral sciences? The charge of this entry is to explore thinking about causation in the temporal evolution of biological and behavioral systems. Regression analysis and path analysis are simply (...) explicated with reference to a thought experiment of painting three universes (clockwork, soup, and conscious) useful for imagining our actual universe. Attention to historical, structural, and mechanistic explanatory perspectives broadens the palette of methodologies available for analyzing determinism in, and explanation of, biological and behavioral systems. Each justified methodology provides a partial perspective on complex reality. Is a total explanation of any system ever possible, and what would it require? (shrink)

Leibniz said that the universe, if God-created, would exist at a unique, conjoint, physical maximum: Of all possible worlds, it would be richest in phenomena, but its richness would arise from the simplest physical laws and initial conditions. Using concepts of ‘‘variety’’ and algorithmic informational complexity, Leibniz’ claim can be reframed as a testable theory. This theory predicts that the laws and conditions of the actual universe should be simpler, and the universe richer in phenomena, than (...) the presence of observers would require. Tegmark has shown that inhabitants of an infinite multiverse would likely observe simple laws and conditions, but also phenomenal richness just great enough to explain their existence. Empirical observations fit the claim of divine choice better than the claim of an infinite multiverse. The future of the universe, including its future information-processing capacity, is predicted to be endless. -/- . (shrink)

Kant’s Formula of Universal Law (FUL) is generally believed to require you to act only on the basis of maxims that you can will without contradiction to become universal laws. In “Contradiction and Kant’s Formula of Universal Law” (2017), I have proposed to read the FUL instead as requiring that, for any maxim on which you act, you can will two things simultaneously, without volitional self-contradiction: (1) willing the maxim as your own action principle and (2) willing that it become (...) a universal law. In the present essay, I reply to comments by Mark Timmons, Michael Walschots, Paola Romero, and Stefano Lo Re. In response to their comments concerning the application of the FUL, I expand the interpretive framework of the Volitional Self-Contradiction Interpretation. I argue that Kant also constructs the diagnostic volitional self-contradiction as a contradiction between (1) willing a tested maxim to become a universal law and (2) willing what humans, qua finite rational beings, necessarily will, namely the means to their actual and possible future ends. I also clarify how the two ways in which Kant specifies the test are related. Furthermore, I clarify the relation between the Volitional Self-Contradiction interpretation and other interpretations of the FUL, in particular the ‘Practical Contradiction’ and ‘Logical Contradiction’ interpretations, as well as its difference from the Golden Rule. I also address the objection that the volitional self-contradiction is superfluous, clarify the relation between the Formula of Universal Law and the Formula of the Law of Nature, and explain why the will of an immoral agent does not contain a volitional self-contradiction of the type at issue. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates that which can only be known with the following criteria of knowledge: (i) it is unchangeable; (ii) it cannot be mistaken; (iii) it is identical with its object. It begins by addressing the following questions: what can and cannot exist in solely this sense? Can anything exist in this sense? A further thesis it explores is that the split between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge which has given rise to the unexplained and inexplicable (...) residues in the solutions to epistemological problems which have been propounded by Western philosophers. These residues have been a breeding ground for a skepticism which casts doubt on the validity of the philosophic enterprise. It is hoped that this thesis might play some role in indicating a pathway through which faith in the philosophic enterprise may be restored. The approach taken is multi-leveled, at once transcen¬dental, metaphysical, phenomenological and empirical. It is transcendental in that the question is always ‘how is knowledge possible?’ It is metaphysical in that the focal point is always that which is, and not that which seems to be. It is phenomenological in that it is confined to the data of consciousness and makes no attempt to go beyond consciousness. It is empirical in that the final court of appeal for any argument is always pure experience. It is demonstrated that, given the separation of the subject knower from the object of knowledge, knowledge is an impossibility. Separatist views of knowledge are taken up and analyzed, among which are: knowledge as caused by objects; knowledge as the knowledge of an object; knowledge as the correspondence between ideas and objects; knowledge as an act; knowledge as a possession. All these views leave untouched the basic questions: what is knowledge? How is the object of knowledge known? How can knowledge arise in the first place? The existence of the object is then shown to be purely dependent on the existence of the subject, and vice versa. An analysis of experience reveals that no difference between subject and object is ever detected and detectable. The breakdown of experience into subjects and objects is shown to be a purely theoretical interpretation of experience, unjustified and unjustifiable in actual experience. It is finally shown that it is impossible to legitimize ideas of difference, either from the world of objects or from the mind of the subject knower. That there can be an appearance of plurality is demonstrated to rest upon the reality of space and time, existences which prove to be purely ideal. A re-integration of subject and object into the experience from which they have been dirempted provides an explanation of the possibility of know¬ledge, knowledge which is at once certain and of the real. An application of the perspective of non-dualism is suggested to offer philosophic solutions to such epistemological impasses as the relation of language and meaning and the universal and the particular. The relevance of an epistemological inquiry for action is indicated in such a way as to bring knowledge and existence into harmony with each other. The broader aim of the dissertation is to legitimize the philosophic enterprise as a pathway to unchangeable, unmistakable, and unitary knowledge. (shrink)

Schools, colleges, and universities have become homogenizing systems that are almost exclusively focused on imposing a pre-ordered curricula through exams and grades or tight research lines. In the process, they are killing passion, creativity, and individuals’ potential and skills. Ultimately, schools and academia make up a system that serves a collective machinery but suffocates individual growth. This state of affairs is not a necessary evil. Learning, discovering and teaching can be a natural, spontaneous and luminous expressions of a free and (...) progressive growth if they are allowed to be practiced in an appropriate environment. This is a ‘manifesto’ for a Free-Progress-Education (FPE) paradigm according to which the best way of learning, acquiring knowledge, and doing research comes through a process of free self-directed learning, and a progress of self-unfoldment and self-discovery, that must be guided from within. In schools, colleges, universities and beyond. A FPE learning centre would be expected to foster curiosity, intuition, self-directed-learning in diversity, and, especially, wholesome respect for the practice of complete and responsible freedom of individual expression.FPE goes beyond the standard paradigm of unschooling or the pedagogical approach of democratic schools since it includes self-directed-education that can also work in high schools, colleges, universities, and research centres. It iAfter a brief introductory presentation, a personal preamble of the author describes his experiences with institutionalized learning from childhood to the doctoral dissertation and in a high school as a teacher. Then, the roots of the stagnant state of education will be investigated which is still based on an industrial and mechanistic mindset, and is perceived with increasing dissatisfaction. While analysing the detrimental effects that a managerial and industrial mentality has had on the education and intellectual growth of several generations, we will take as an example the deficiencies of the so-called big science, i.e. of the modern, large-scale scientific initiatives. Surveying past and present learning approaches such as the interesting renaissance of homeschooling and welcoming new trends such as unschooling or democratic education, the second part of this book looks beyond these paradigms searching for a wider spirit of education. It is emphasized that no reform is possible inside the current school and university paradigm, because it is in its essence an authoritarian system that won't allow itself to be dismantled from within. The last part of this book focuses upon a brief set of alternative proposals, which aim at overcoming the centuries-old shortcomings of the present educational system, by favouring intrinsic over extrinsic motivation. Preliminary practical ideas are put forward on what a free-progress learning community might look like, and what the first steps for its realization might be. It is explained there why it is only through a change from the ground up that the certificate-oriented educational system can transform itself into a project-oriented, self-organized, competence-portfolio based one, with no exams, grades, degrees, or other administrative trammels. At the same time, it must be made clear that the ultimate aim of doing away with the present system of assessment criteria would be to install a much deeper and articulated paradigm shift than some superficial reform and even beyond the actually undeveloped democratic education concept which still falls short beyond high-school level. What is visualized is an evolutionary pedagogical perspective, compared to the conventional one, and presented as the necessary condition for a 'Copernican approach' to education. Only after that perspective has been realized can new competences, curiosity, intuition, and real forms of creative learning return to flourish in schools and academia. (shrink)

The standard view of academic freedom and free speech is that they play complementary roles in universities. Academic freedom protects academic discourse, while other public discourse in universities is protected by free speech. Here I challenge this view, broadly, on the grounds that free speech in universities sometimes undermines academic practices. One defense of the standard view, in the face of this worry, says that campus free speech actually furthers the university’s academic aims. Another says that universities have a secondary (...) democratic function, which cannot be fulfilled without free speech on campus. I identify shortcomings in both types of arguments. (shrink)

My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by (...) its ability to explain some important but otherwise recondite features of aesthetic practice and, more importantly, by allowing us to ground the normativity of aesthetic judgement in the familiar normativity of practice. It also offers a more systematic way of understanding the rivalry between the ideals of aesthetic universality and diversity. (shrink)