Philosophie stellt den Bezug zur Weisheit bereits in ihrem Namen (philo-sophia) her. So selbstverständlich dies ist, so spannungsgeladen ist deren Verhältnis. Denn Philosophie und Weisheit sind Korrespondenz- und Reibungsbegriffe gleichermaßen. Es mag daher auf den ersten Blick verwundern oder eben nicht, dass sich seit der Neuzeit der bis dahin konstitutive Zusammenhang von Philosophie und Weisheit zunehmend auflöst bis dahin, dass es die Philosophie seit dem 19. Jahrhundert weit von sich weist, mit Weisheit überhaupt in einen Zusammenhang gebracht zu werden (1.) (...) Unter den Bedingungen der Moderne ist es daher schwierig, über historische Aussagen hinaus Auskunft über das zu geben, was mit Weisheit aus Sicht der Philosophie gemeint ist und wie sie philosophisch zu verstehen ist. -/- Dieser misslichen Situation ist nur dadurch zu entgehen, dass man versucht, die innere Logik dieses Auflösungsprozesses zu rekonstruieren, um die Möglichkeiten einer heutigen Rede von Weisheit auszuloten. Bei diesem philosophiegeschichtlichen Rekonstruktionsversuch zeigt sich, dass Weisheit und Vernunft eine Symbiose eingegangen sind. Zum Wesen der Vernunft gehört es, kohärente Ordnungen zu erkennen und ggf. Ordnungen allererst zu stiften, wobei von Ordnung immer dann gesprochen werden kann, wenn Differentes zu einer Einheit verbunden ist. In der Geschichte der Philosophie wird Weisheit, Vernunft und Geordnetheit von drei Vernunftinstanzen ausgesagt: von Gott (als absoluter Weisheit), von der Welt (als objektiv gewordener Weisheit oder kosmischer Weisheit) und vom Menschen (als subjektiv-endlicher Weisheit). Weisheit wird diesen Instanzen deshalb zugeschrieben, weil sie – wenngleich in je unterschiedlicher Weise – über Vernunft verfügen, die wir immer dort vermuten, wo wir begründet eine Ordnung im Sinne einer Einheit von Differentem unterstellen können. Weisheit ist mithin eine Syntheseleistung. Und Aufgabe des Weisen ist es, Ordnung zu stiften (2.). -/- Der Auflösungsprozess von Philosophie und Weisheit erweist sich auf diesem Hintergrund nicht als zufälliger Betriebsunfall der Philosophiegeschichte, sondern folgt einer Logik, die sich aus den wandelnden Inbeziehungsetzungen der drei Vernunft- und Weisheitsinstanzen ergibt. In der Antike kommt dem Kosmos als Weisheitsinstanz der Primat zu; im Mittelalter der absoluten Weisheit Gottes und in der Neuzeit dem endlichen Vernunftsubjekt. Sein sich zunehmend steigernder Anspruch auf Freiheit jedoch, der sich als philosophiegeschichtlich-neuzeitlicher Reflex auf einen „Betriebsunfall“ des Spätmittelalters, die Übersteigerung des Theorems der Allmacht Gottes, lesen lässt, verträgt sich schlussendlich nicht einmal mehr mit der Bindung an irgendein Weisheitsideal (3.). Soll Weisheit in diesem „Kommerzium der Freiheit“ (Hermann Krings) als Orientierungsgröße noch eine Chance haben, dann muss sie als Kompetenz bestimmt werden, das unter Freiheitsbedingungen fast Unmögliche zu leisten, nämlich Ordnung und Ordnungen aus Freiheit zu stiften: „Sapientis est ordinare!“. (shrink)

I develop a distinction between two types of psychological hedonism. Inferential hedonism (or “I-hedonism”) holds that each person only has ultimate desires regarding his or her own hedonic states (pleasure and pain). Reinforcement hedonism (or “R–hedonism”) holds that each person's ultimate desires, whatever their contents are, are differentially reinforced in that person’s cognitive system only by virtue of their association with hedonic states. I’ll argue that accepting R-hedonism and rejecting I-hedonism provides a conciliatory position on the traditional altruism debate, and (...) that it coheres well with the neuroscientist Anthony Dickinson’s theory about the evolutionary function of hedonic states, the “hedonic interface theory.” Finally, I’ll defend R-hedonism from potential objections. (shrink)

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

There are extensive discussions of the 5D AdS metric that arises naturally from a metric that accounts for the A-series, the B-series, and x^a; black holes, including their information, entropy, temperature, energy, and energy density; the Big Bang; the finitude of singularities here; inflation; AdS/CFT and dS; symmetry groups of this theory of gravity not including and including those of the standard model, with evaluations of how integrated and how plausible they are; how the theory of quantum gravity here gives (...) general relativity in one limit and quantum mechanics in another limit; and much more. -/- Of particular interest is the physics based argument for the continuation of awareness after death, which starts on about page 196 and spans several pages. (shrink)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers includes a relatively short but comprehensive discussion with the AI Claude 3.5 Sonnet on how the CQ impacts various theories of consciousness, including Materialism, Dualism, Idealism, and 14 others. (shrink)

Traditional encryption is safe but slows data recovery, especially for keyword searches. Secure, fine-grained access control and quick keyword searches over encrypted data are possible using attribute-based keyword search (ABKS). This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. After a thorough investigation, the article shows how these methods may boost cloud storage system performance, security, and (...) usability. Tests show that improved ABKS speeds up search searches and lowers storage costs, making it a viable cloud storage alternative. (shrink)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers addresses the question of why is there something rather than nothing, at length, and gives a radical new answer. It has to do with the fact in CQ that, while blackness is contingently possible, █ is necessarily actual, as it was in this sentence. (shrink)

This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. After a thorough investigation, the article shows how these methods may boost cloud storage system performance, security, and usability. Tests show that improved ABKS speeds up search searches and lowers storage costs, making it a viable cloud storage alternative. Exploring sophisticated machine learning algorithms for predictive search improvements (...) a. (shrink)

Cloud storage's scalability, accessibility, and affordability have made it essential in the digital age. Data security and privacy remain a major issue due to the large volume of sensitive data kept on cloud services. Traditional encryption is safe but slows data recovery, especially for keyword searches. Secure, fine-grained access control and quick keyword searches over encrypted data are possible using attribute-based keyword search (ABKS). This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security in cloud storage systems. We (...) examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. (shrink)

That every expression of language that is {true on the basis of its meaning expressed using language} must have a connection by truth preserving operations to its {meaning expressed using language} is a tautology. The accurate model of the actual world is expressed using formal language and formalized natural language.

In this article, robust evidence is provided showing that an individual’s moral character can contribute to the aesthetic quality of their appearance, as well as being beautiful or ugly itself. It is argued that this evidence supports two main conclusions. First, moral beauty and ugliness reside on the inside, and beauty and ugliness are not perception-dependent as a result; and, second, aesthetic perception is affected by moral information, and thus moral beauty and ugliness are on the outside as well.

Pada musim semi, entah kenapa, tidak banyak ikan. Karena tangkapannya sangat tidak stabil, Pekakak mulai berpikir. Lalu membuat beberapa rencana. Dengan otoritas komandonya, dia memanggil Bangau: – Ini adalah musim penangkapan ikan yang sangat sulit. Jika kita ingin kenyang, kita harus membuat usaha patungan. Bangau mengangguk, menambahkan: - Saya setuju; mari kita beternak ikan kakap putih dan ikan mas krusia. Jenis ini berumur panjang dan sangat produktif. Pekakak dan Bangau sepakat untuk berbagi tugas beternak, dan tidak ada diskriminasi yang diizinkan. (...) Namun imbalannya berbeda: Pekakak bertanggung jawab untuk ikan kakap putih dan, dengan demikian, dapat memiliki lebih banyak ikan kakap putih, sedangkan Bangau mendapat ikan mas krusia. Siapapun yang memelihara ikan mana yang lebih banyak akan menikmati 80% dari panen akhir ikan tersebut. Keduanya akan mengevaluasi dan membagi produk ternak pada akhir musim beternak. Ini berarti mengantongi sendiri ikan hasil usaha patungan untuk diri sendiri itu dilarang. (shrink)

Suatu pagi di musim panas, desa burung diselimuti keheningan. Semua orang sibuk mendengarkan pengembara baru. Burung pengembara ini berasal dari keluarga yang tidak jelas; bulunya berwarna-warni, gerak-geriknya lucu, dan ilmunya baru. Dia bercerita seolah-olah sedang memberi ceramah, tepat sekali, warga desa memanggilnya burung Guru – orang yang menjawab setiap pertanyaan aneh warga desa yang rajin belajar. Burung pelatuk telah belajar menangkap cacing di sore hari, sehingga mereka tidak perlu bangun pagi. Burung pipit sekarang tahu cara mencuri beras dari gudang saat (...) sawah mulai kering. Bulbul, sementara itu, telah mengambil kesempatan berkumpul untuk memamerkan kecantikan dan fashion mereka… . (shrink)

Pekakak selama ini tinggal di gua galiannya sendiri di tepi kolam, tapi sekarang dia memutuskan bahwa dia membutuhkan rumah baru. Dia melakukan tur keliling desa untuk melihat bagaimana burung-burung lain membangun rumah mereka. Dia mengunjungi Tuan Pipit, yang tinggal di pohon pinus yang bersiul. Bagian depan bangunannya tampak indah, dan lokasinya yang tinggi memberikan ventilasi yang baik. Tapi, semakin lama dia menginap, dia jadi semakin pusing. Hembusan angin apa pun yang menerpa membuat seluruh struktur bangunan bergetar seolah-olah akan hancur berantakan.

The problem considered in this chapter emerges from the tension we find when looking at the design and architecture of chatbots on the one hand and their conversational aptitude on the other. In the way that LLM chatbots are designed and built, we have good reason to suppose they don't possess second-order capacities such as intention, belief or knowledge. Yet theories of conversation make great use of second-order capacities of speakers and their audiences to explain how aspects of interaction succeed. (...) As we can all bear witness to now though, at the point of use chatbots appear capable of performing language tasks at a level close to that of humans. This creates a tension when we consider something like, for example, the classic Gricean theory of implicature. On a broad summary of this type of account, to utter p and implicate q requires the reflexive occurrence of an audience supposing a speaker believes that q, and the speaker believing that their audience can determine they believe it when they utter p. So taken at face value, if a chatbot doesn’t have the capacity for belief, then either in their role as speaker or audience, they would not seem capable of either generating or comprehending implicatures. Yet on the surface it does seem that chatbots are capable of dealing with (some) implicatures, and as such it raises questions about how we should then correlate this with what we think occurs in cases of implicature with chatbots. (shrink)

This publication forms a basis for the interdisciplinary development of a certification system for artificial intelligence. In view of the rapid development of artificial intelligence with disruptive and lasting consequences for the economy, society, and everyday life, it highlights the resulting challenges that can be tackled only through interdisciplinary dialogue between IT, law, philosophy, and ethics. As a result of this interdisciplinary exchange, it also defines six AI-specific audit areas for trustworthy use of artificial intelligence. They comprise fairness, transparency, autonomy (...) and control, data protection as well as security and reliability while addressing ethical and legal requirements. The latter are further substantiated with the aim of operationalizability. (shrink)

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is best understood as one type of a broader notion, which I call institutional legitimacy. An institution is legitimate in my sense when it has the right to function. The right to function correlates to a duty of non-interference. Understanding legitimacy in this way favorably contrasts with legitimacy understood in the traditional way, as the right to rule correlating to a duty of obedience. It helps unify our discourses of legitimacy across a wider range of practices, especially including (...) the many evaluations we increasingly make of international institutions of various sorts, but also including domestic institutions. (shrink)

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

Our findings reveal that implementing accelerated computing can achieve substantial improvements, often reducing computation times by more than 60% compared to traditional sequential methods. This paper details the experimental setup, including algorithm selection and parallelization techniques, and discusses the role of memory bandwidth and latency in achieving optimal performance. Based on the analysis, we propose a streamlined methodology to guide the deployment of accelerated computing frameworks in various industries. Concluding with a discussion on future directions, we highlight potential advancements in (...) hardware architectures and software optimizations that could further augment computational efficiency and scalability in accelerated computing. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to 18 of the essays on panpsychism in this issue. Along the way, I sketch out what a post-Galilean science of consciousness, one in which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, might look like.

The essays collected in this special issue explore what legitimacy means for actors and institutions that do not function like traditional states but nevertheless wield significant power in the global realm. They are connected by the idea that the specific purposes of non-state actors and the contexts in which they operate shape what it means for them to be legitimate and so shape the standards of justification that they have to meet. In this introduction, we develop this guiding methodology further (...) and show how the special issue’s individual contributions apply it to their cases. In the first section, we provide a sketch of our purpose-dependent theory of legitimacy beyond the state. We then highlight two features of the institutional context beyond the state that set it apart from the domestic case: problems of feasibility and the structure of international law. (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers alike debate whether various systems such as plants and bacteria exercise cognition. One strategy for resolving such debates is to ground claims about nonhuman cognition in evidence from mathematical models of cognitive capacities. In this article, I show that proponents of this strategy face two major challenges: demarcating phenomenological models from process models and overcoming underdetermination by model fit. I argue that even if the demarcation problem is resolved, fitting a process model to behavioral data is, on (...) its own, not strong evidence for any cognitive process, let alone processes shared with humans. (shrink)

Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy (...) have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy. (shrink)

This book delves into esoteric knowledge, describing the structure of the universe (Brahmanda or Cosmic Egg) as a series of astral biospheres. These biospheres, or lokas, are linked to spiritual consciousness and degrees of divine bliss (Ananda). Advanced spiritual figures, such as Rishis and Mahatmas, can navigate these realms and help others evolve. The article presents a detailed comparison between “Puranic Hinduism” and “Sanatana Dharma”, specifically addressing their differences in cosmogenesis and spiritual evolution. The difference between the cosmogenesis of Puranic (...) Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma is that while the former is founded on the concept of Trimurti as taught by the Puranas, the latter is a Manu-centric and Guru-centric spiritual system. This has a lot of significance concerning the rituals and the social order they have produced. Here, the Cosmic Purusha is identifiable with Manu, not with Trimurti or the God of Abrahamic religions, because of their different spiritual status in the cosmological hierarchy. (shrink)

There is a history of thinking that photographs provide a special kind of access to the objects depicted in them, beyond the access that would be provided by a painting or drawing. What is included in the photograph does not depend on the photographer’s beliefs about what is in front of the camera. This feature leads Kendall Walton to argue that photographs literally allow us to see the objects which appear in them. Current generative algorithms produce images in response to (...) users’ text prompts. Depending on the parameters, the output can resemble specific people or things which are named in the prompt. This resemblance does not depend on the user’s beliefs, so generated images are in this sense like photographs. Given this parallel, how should we think about AI-generated images? (shrink)

The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of it offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” (Stanford 2001, (...) p. S12). This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it – like the other forms of underdetermination that he criticizes – merely recapitulates familiar philosophical conundra. (shrink)

I argue that legitimacy discourses serve a gatekeeping function. They give practitioners telic standards for riding herd on social practices, ensuring that minimally acceptable versions of the practice are implemented. Such a function is a necessary part of implementing formalized social practices, especially including law. This gatekeeping account shows that political philosophers have misunderstood legitimacy; it is not secondary to justice and only necessary because we cannot agree about justice. Instead, it is a necessary feature of actual human social practices, (...) which must be implemented via practitioners' discretion in changing contexts. (shrink)

Searle claims that his theory of institutional reality is particularly suitable as a theoretical scheme of individuation for work in the social sciences. We argue that this is not the case. The first problem with regulatory individuation is due to the familiar fact that institutional judgments have constrained revisability criteria. The second problem with regulatory individuation is due to the fact that institutions amend their declarative judgments based on the inferential (syntactic) properties of the judgments and in response to regulatory (...) pressure, and not based on descriptive (semantic) properties and in response to matters of descriptive adequacy. These two problems imply that ‘regulatory kinds' (countries, borders, kings) will almost inevitably be disjunctive kinds that are ill-suited for scientific theorizing. This also explains why the law often makes odd pronouncements, e.g. calling ketchup a vegetable, considering an arm bent fifteen degrees to be straight, and not admitting that Somaliland is a country. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Publikation dient als Grundlage für die interdisziplinäre Entwicklung einer Zertifizierung von Künstlicher Intelligenz. Angesichts der rasanten Entwicklung von Künstlicher Intelligenz mit disruptiven und nachhaltigen Folgen für Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Alltagsleben verdeutlicht sie, dass sich die hieraus ergebenden Herausforderungen nur im interdisziplinären Dialog von Informatik, Rechtswissenschaften, Philosophie und Ethik bewältigen lassen. Als Ergebnis dieses interdisziplinären Austauschs definiert sie zudem sechs KI-spezifische Handlungsfelder für den vertrauensvollen Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz: Sie umfassen Fairness, Transparenz, Autonomie und Kontrolle, Datenschutz sowie Sicherheit und (...) Verlässlichkeit und adressieren dabei ethische und rechtliche Anforderungen. Letztere werden mit dem Ziel der Operationalisierbarkeit weiter konkretisiert. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Freedom and Resentment”, de P. F. Strawson. Publicado originalmente em Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 48, 1960. Republicado em Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 2-28]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250.

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Social Morality and Individual Ideal”. Publicado originalmente em Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. XXXVI, n. 136, p. 1-17, Jan. 1961. Republicado em: STRAWSON, P. F. Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 26-44]. ]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da (...) UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250. (shrink)

Financial literacy is becoming a pivotal skill in navigating the marketplaces within the predominant rising digital branches of trading domains; however, there remains a concerning gap in the purchasing behavior of adolescents, who are its primary users. With this in mind, the main objective of our research is to determine whether there is a relationship between a student's level of financial literacy and their online purchase decision-making. The researchers employed an explanatory mixed approach and purposive sampling to identify respondents from (...) Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. A 5-point Likert scale survey was utilized to collect data from 66 respondents, followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 selected participants. The results showed a moderately positive correlation between a student's financial literacy and online purchase decisions, as determined by the Pearson correlation coefficient. Thus, the thematic analysis revealed that respondents generally have good financial literacy, emphasizing factors like pricing, online reviews, and product ratings when making digital marketplace decisions. However, there are notable gaps in their understanding of basic financial concepts and their ability to apply them in real-life situations. To effectively enhance students’ financial literacy and online purchasing decisions, a holistic approach is necessary, including targeted interventions, practical applications, and continuous adaptation to evolving consumer behaviors. Educational institutions, policymakers, and stakeholders should work together to create comprehensive programs that provide students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to negotiate real-world financial situations and make sound judgments in the digital commerce ecosystem. By emphasizing practical learning, key financial concepts, and trustbuilding approaches, educators may empower students to become responsible consumers capable of managing their resources successfully and ethically. (shrink)

Institutions undertake a huge variety of constitutive purposes. One of the roles of legitimacy is to protect and promote an institution’s pursuit of its purpose; state legitimacy is generally understood as the right to rule, for example. When considering legitimacy beyond the state, we have to take account of how differences in purposes change legitimacy. I focus in particular on how differences in purpose matter for the stringency of the standards that an institution must meet in order to be legitimate. (...) An important characteristic of an institution’s purpose is its deontic status, i.e. whether it is morally impermissible, merely permissible, or mandatory. Although this matters, it does so in some non-obvious ways; the mere fact of a morally impermissible purpose is not necessarily delegitimating, for example. I also consider the problem of conflicting, multiple, and contested institutional purposes, and the different theoretical roles for institutional purpose. Understanding how differences in purpose matter for an institution’s legitimacy is one part of the broader project of theorizing institutional legitimacy in the many contexts beyond the traditional context of the state. (shrink)

Some philosophers understand natural kinds to be the categories which are constraints on enquiry. In order to elaborate the metaphysics appropriate to such an account, I consider the complicated history of scurvy, citrus, and vitamin C. It may be tempting to understand these categories in a shallow way (as mere property clusters) or in a deep way (as fundamental properties). Neither approach is adequate, and the case instead calls for middle-range ontology: starting from categories which we identify in the world (...) and elaborating their structure, but not pretending to jump ahead to a complete story about fundamental being. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

How should we respond to the humanity of others? Should we care for others’ well-being? Respect them as autonomous agents? Largely neglected is an answer we can find in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism: we should love all. This paper argues that an ideal of love for all can be understood apart from its more typical religious contexts and moreover provides a unified and illuminating account of the the nature and grounds of morality. I defend a novel (...) account of love for all that avoids serious worries about the incoherence or impossibility of loving everyone. Doing so requires countenancing a neglected form of love. Love admits as its object not just individual entities like people and groups; we can also bear a love for the Fs in general---for all the Joneses, all the philosophers, or even all the human beings. I go on to argue that while it is possible for ordinary agents like us to love all, we shouldn't. Instead, we should approximate love for all. The minimal approximation of love for all is, surprisingly, respect; I derive the basic, structural features of deontological ethics (including anti-paternalism and anti-aggregation) from the ideal of loving all. (NB: This paper used to be titled "Ethics in the Shadow of Love" and has been cited as an unpublished manuscript under that title.). (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

I argue for a new conception of practical authority based on an analysis of the relationship between authority and subject. Commands entail a demand for practical deference, which establishes a relationship of hierarchy and vulnerability that involves a variety of signals and commitments. In order for these signals and commitments to be justified, the subject must be under a preexisting duty, the authority’s commands must take precedence over the subject’s judgment regarding fulfillment of that duty, the authority must accept the (...) position and responsibilities of command, and the authority must be sufficiently trustworthy relative to how vulnerable the subject makes herself by deferring. This results in an instrumentalist conception of practical authority that can be favorably compared to Joseph Raz’s famous service conception. The relational conception’s main advantage is that it focuses on the authority as much as the subject, requiring that the authority accept responsibility for the relationship and be sufficiently trustworthy. (shrink)

The Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) account of natural kinds has become popular since it was proposed by Richard Boyd in the late 1980s. Although it is often taken as a defining natural kinds as such, it is easy enough to see that something's being a natural kind is neither necessary nor sufficient for its being an HPC. This paper argues that it is better not to understand HPCs as defining what it is to be a natural kind but instead as (...) providing the ontological realization of (some) natural kinds. (shrink)

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

Getting a graduate education is one of the most important parts of a professional in a field. It allows them to climb higher in the professional rankings or even get higher pay for their academic work. All graduate students are adults and self-directed due to their past experiences in work or practice. However, when the pandemic hit the world, these self-directed learners were not spared from shutting of schools. In the Philippines, most graduate schools deliver their lessons through the traditional (...) mode or face-to-face until the pandemic that they shifted in the emerging online learning modality. Using the mixed method of quantitative and qualitative type of study the researchers were able to gather 419 graduate students from various regions of the archipelago to take part in the study. The researchers found out that upon experiencing the benefits of online learning, graduate students want to continue this modality even in the future. More than a third of the respondents also claimed that they want the blended or hybrid type of graduate studies as opposed to going back to the more traditional face-to-face classes. The reasons for these can vary on each learner’s situation. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and (...) so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist in some respects and about some theories. It will not be a sweeping antirealism about all or most of science. (shrink)

Many critics, Descartes himself included, have seen Hobbes as uncharitable or even incoherent in his Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy. I argue that when understood within the wider context of his views of the late 1630s and early 1640s, Hobbes's Objections are coherent and reflect his goal of providing an epistemology consistent with a mechanical philosophy. I demonstrate the importance of this epistemology for understanding his Fourth Objection concerning the nature of the wax and contend that Hobbes's brief (...) claims in that Objection are best understood as a summary of the mechanism for scientific knowledge found in his broader work. Far from displaying his confusion, Hobbes's Fourth Objection in fact pinpoints a key weakness of Descartes's faculty psychology: its unintelligibility within a mechanical philosophy. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do livro "Ceticismo e naturalismo: algumas variedades", Strawson, P. F. . São Leopoldo, RS: Editora da Unisinos, 2008, 114 p. Coleção: Ideias. ISBN: 9788574313214. Capítulo 1 - Ceticismo, naturalismo e argumentos transcendentais 1. Notas introdutórias; 2. Ceticismo tradicional; 3. Hume: Razão e Natureza; 4. Hume e Wittgenstein; 5. “Apenas relacionar”: O papel dos argumentos transcendentais; 6. Três citações; 7. Historicismo: e o passado.

Homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) are offered as a way of understanding natural kinds, especially biological species. I review the HPC approach and then discuss an objection by Ereshefsky and Matthen, to the effect that an HPC qua cluster seems ill-fitted as a description of a polymorphic species. The standard response by champions of the HPC approach is to say that all members of a polymorphic species have things in common, namely dispositions or conditional properties. I argue that this response fails. (...) Instances of an HPC kind need not all be similar in their exhibited properties. Instead, HPCs should instead be understood as unified by the underlying causal mechanism that maintains them. The causal mechanism can both produce and explain some systematic differences between a kind’s members. An HPC kind is best understood not as a single cluster of properties maintained in stasis by causal forces, but as a complex of related property clusters kept in relation by an underlying causal process. This approach requires recognizing that taxonomic systems serve both explanatory and inductive purposes. (shrink)

P. F. Strawson; II*—Scruton and Wright on Anti-Realism Etc., Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 15–22, https://doi.