The poem is about my PhD experience. The title and parts of the themes are derived from an incident in the Bible (Acts 19:13-20). In order to provide a deeper meaning to my story, I have deployed a biblical allusion which connects with the story of the sons of Sceva, who made unsuccessful attempts to exorcise a man from Ephesus. They failed primarily because they operated not in the spirit but in the flesh.

In 1984 the author published From Knowledge to Wisdom, a book that argued that a revolution in academia is urgently needed, so that problems of living, including global problems, are put at the heart of the enterprise, and the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, and not just acquire knowledge. Every discipline and aspect of academia needs to change, and the whole way in which academia is related to the rest of the social world. Universities (...) devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how betray reason and, as a result, betray humanity. As a result of becoming more intellectually rigorous, academic inquiry becomes of far greater benefit to humanity. If the revolution argued for all those years ago had been taken up and put into academic practice, we might now live in a much more hopeful world than the one that confronts us. Humanity might have begun to learn how to solve global problems; the Amazon rain forests might not face destruction; we might not be faced with mass extinction of species; Brexit might not have been voted for in the UK in 2016, and Trump might not have been elected President in the USA. An account is given of work published by the author during the years 1972 to 2021 that expounds and develops the argument. The conclusion is that we urgently need to create a high-profile campaign devoted to transforming universities in the way required so that humanity may learn how to make social progress towards a better, wiser, more civilized, enlightened world. (shrink)

Universities today betray both reason and humanity. They are still dominated by the idea, inherited from the past, that the best way the academic enterprise can help promote human welfare is, in the first instance, to pursue the intellectual aim of acquiring knowledge. First, knowledge and technological know-how are to be acquired; then, secondarily, they can be applied to help solve social problems. But academic inquiry conducted in this way – knowledge-inquiry as it may be called – violates the most (...) elementary rules of reason that one can think of and, as a result, betrays the interests of humanity. We need a revolution in academia, one which puts problems of living at the heart of academic inquiry, and takes the basic aim to be to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge, but much else besides. (shrink)

This article discusses the category of foreigner in the context of academia. In the first part I explore this category and its philosophical significance. A quick look at the literature reveals that this category needs more attention in analyses of dimensions of privilege and disadvantage. Foreignness has peculiarities that demarcate it from other categories of identity, and it intersects with them in complicated ways. Devoting more attention to it would enable addressing issues affecting foreigners in academia that go (...) commonly unnoticed. In the second part of the article I argue that current efforts to make academia a more inclusive environment should address the disadvantages that many foreign academics face. I focus on two senses of foreigner: working and living in a country that is not your country of origin, and being a nonnative speaker of the language in which you work. (shrink)

In this book I show that science suffers from a damaging but rarely noticed methodological disease, which I call rationalistic neurosis. It is not just the natural sciences which suffer from this condition. The contagion has spread to the social sciences, to philosophy, to the humanities more generally, and to education. The whole academic enterprise, indeed, suffers from versions of the disease. It has extraordinarily damaging long-term consequences. For it has the effect of preventing us from developing traditions and institutions (...) of learning rationally devoted to helping us learn how to make progress towards a wiser, more civilized world. On our fragile earth, overcrowded, fraught with injustice, inequality and conflict, menaced by unprecedented and terrifying technological and industrial means for change and destruction, we urgently need to acquire a little more wisdom and civilization if we are to avoid repeating horrors of the kind suffered by so many during the 20th century (and already suffered by many in the first few years of the 21st century). We can ill afford to have in our hands instruments of learning botched and bungled from the standpoint of helping us learn how to live more wisely. It may seem scarcely credible that something as important as our institutions of learning can suffer from wholesale, structural defects. Why has this not been noticed before? Why have not armies of scientists and scholars appreciated the point and, long ago, put the matter right? The answer will emerge as my argument unfolds. I will show that one of the most damaging features of rationalistic neurosis is that it has built-in methodological and institutional mechanisms which effectively conceal that anything is wrong. But there is also an immediately obvious reason: specialization, and the resulting fragmentation of academia, has resulted in a situation in which hardly anyone takes responsibility for the overall ideals, the overall aims and methods, of academic inquiry. Academics, these days, are specialists, furiously trying to keep abreast of developments in their own specialist fields. They have no time, and no inducement, to lift their eyes from their particular disciplines, and look at the whole endeavour. Science has long been under attack, at least since the Romantic movement. Blake objected to “Single vision & Newton’s sleep” and declared that “Art is the Tree of Life... Science is the Tree of Death”. Keats lamented that science will “clip an Angel’s wings” and “unweave a rainbow”. Whereas the Enlightenment had valued science and reason as tools for the liberation of humanity, Romanticism found science and reason oppressive and destructive, and instead valued art, imagination, inspiration, individual genius, emotional and motivational honesty rather than careful attention to objective fact. Much subsequent opposition to science stems from, or echoes, the Romantic opposition of Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and many others. There is the movement Isaiah Berlin has described as the “Counter-Enlightenment” (Berlin, 1979, ch. 1). There is existentialism, with its denunciation of the tyranny of reason, its passionate affirmation of the value and centrality of irrationality in human life, from Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Heidegger and Sartre (see, for example, Barrett, 1962). There is the attack on Enlightenment ideals concerning science and reason undertaken by the Frankfurt school, by postmodernists and others, from Horkheimer and Adorno to Lyotard, Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, MacIntyre and Rorty (see Gascardi, 1999). The soul-destroying consequences of valuing science and reason too highly is a persistent theme in literature: it is to be found in the works of writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Max Frisch, Y. Zamyatin. There is persistent opposition to modern science and technology, and to scientific rationality, often associated with the Romantic wing of the green movement, and given expression in such popular books as Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends, Berman’s The Reenchantment of the World and Appleyard’s Understanding the Present. There is the feminist critique of science and conceptions of science: see, for example, Fox Keller (1984) and Harding (1986). And there are the corrosive implications of the so-called “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge, and of the work of social constructivist historians of science, which depict scientific knowledge as a belief system alongside many other such conflicting systems, having no more right to claim to constitute knowledge of the truth than these rivals, the scientific view of the world being no more than an elaborate myth, a social construct (see Barnes and Bloor, 1981; Bloor, 1991; Barnes, Bloor and Henry, 1996; Shapin and Schaffer, 1985; Shapin, 1994; Pickering, 1984; Latour, 1987). This latter literature has provoked a counter-attack by scientists, historians and philosophers of science seeking to defend science and traditional conceptions of scientific rationality: see Gross and Levitt (1994), Gross, Levitt and Lewis (1996), and Koertge (1998). This debate between critics and defenders of science came abruptly to public attention with the publication of Alan Sokal’s brilliant hoax article ‘Transgressing the boundaries’ in a special issue of the cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996 entitled Science Wars: see Sokal and Bricmont (1998). What does this book have to contribute, given the above avalanche of criticism of science? The criticisms of science developed in this book are diametrically opposed to the above, in so far as the above criticisms oppose scientific rationality, seek to diminish or restrict its influence, or hold that it is unattainable. My central point is that we suffer, not from too much scientific rationality, but from not enough. What is generally taken to constitute scientific rationality is actually nothing of the kind. It is rationalistic neurosis, a characteristic, influential and damaging kind of irrationality masquerading as rationality. Science is damaged by being trapped within a widely upheld but severely defective philosophy of science; free science from this defective philosophy, provide it with a more intellectually rigorous philosophy, and it will flourish in both intellectual and humanitarian terms. And more generally, as we shall see, academic inquiry as a whole is damaged by being trapped within an intellectually defective philosophy of inquiry; free it from this defective philosophy, from its rationalistic neurosis, and it will flourish in intellectual and human terms. It is not reason that is damaging, but defective pretensions to reason — rationalistic neurosis —masquerading as reason. Thus what I seek to do here is the exact opposite of what all those who oppose science and scientific rationality do. I shall argue that Reason, the authentic article, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science, can have profoundly liberating and enriching consequences for all worthwhile, problematic aspects of life, and thus deserves to enter into every aspect of life. The bare bones of the argument of this book can be stated quite simply like this. Science cannot proceed without making the substantial metaphysical assumption that the universe is physically comprehensible (to some extent at least). But this conflicts with the orthodox view that in science everything is assessed impartially with respect to evidence, nothing being permanently assumed independently of evidence. So the metaphysical assumption of comprehensibility is repressed. Science pretends that no such assumption is made. But this damages science. For the assumption is substantial, influential and highly problematic. It needs to be made explicit within science so that it can be critically scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and considered. Pretending the assumption is not being made undermines the intellectual rigour of science, its intellectual value and success. And it does not stop there. For science also makes value assumptions. Quite properly, science is concerned to discover that which is of value. New factual knowledge devoid of all value (whether intellectual or practical) does not contribute to science. But the orthodox view of science holds that values have no place within science. As in the case of metaphysics, here too, science pretends that values have no role to play within the intellectual domain of science. And this damages science. For values are, if anything, even more influential and problematic than metaphysics (in influencing the direction of research). Here too, values need to be made explicit within science so that they can be scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and assessed. Pretending that values play no role within the intellectual domain damages science; both the intellectual and the practical aspects of science are adversely affected. Science fails to pursue those avenues of research that lie in the best interests of humanity. And it goes further. Science is pursued in a social, cultural, economic and political context. It is a part of various social, economic and political projects which seek to achieve diverse human objectives. But the idea that science is an integral part of humanitarian or political enterprises with political ends clashes, once again, with the official view of science that the aim of science is to improve factual knowledge. The political objectives of science are repressed. And, once again, this damages science. For, of course, the political objectives of science, like all our political objectives, are profoundly problematic. These need to be made explicit so that they can be scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and considered. The pretence that science does not have this political dimension once again undermines the intellectual rigour of science, and its human value. It lays science open to becoming a part of economic, corporate and political enterprises that are not in the best interests of humanity. The upshot of the line of argument just indicated is that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of science, and of academic inquiry more generally. Natural science needs to change; its relationship with the rest of academic inquiry, with social inquiry and the humanities, needs to change; and most importantly and dramatically, academic inquiry as a whole needs to change. The basic task of the academic enterprise needs to become to help humanity learn how to tackle its problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways than at present. We need to put the intellectual tasks of articulating our problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible and actual actions, at the heart of academic inquiry. The basic task needs to be to help humanity learn a bit more wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. Natural science, despite its flaws, has massively increased our knowledge and technological know-how. This in turn has led to a massive and sometimes terrifying increase in our power to act. Often this unprecedented power to act is used for human good, as in medicine or agriculture. But it is also used to cause harm, whether unintentionally (initially at least) as when industrialization and modern agriculture lead to global warming, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, or intentionally, as when the technology of war is used by governments and terrorists to maim and kill. Before the advent of modern science, when we lacked the means to do too much damage to ourselves and the planet, lack of wisdom did not matter too much. Now, with our unprecedented powers to act, bequeathed to us by science, lack of wisdom has become a menace. This is the crisis behind all the other current global crises: science without wisdom. In these circumstances, to continue to pursue knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from a more fundamental quest for wisdom can only deepen the crisis. As a matter of urgency, we need to free science and academia of their neuroses; we need to bring about a revolution in the academic enterprise so that the basic aim becomes to promote wisdom by intellectual and educational means. At present science and the humanities betray both reason and humanity. The argument of this book, which I have just summarized, begins with a discussion of the philosophical and methodological problems that beset theoretical physics. At once, many of those who are concerned about moral, political and environmental issues that plague our world today, will feel impatient. What have the methodological problems of theoretical physics to do with third world poverty, war and the threat of war, pollution, extinction of species, the menace of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear armaments? I can only plead with such a reader: patience. The root cause of the sickness of our times does indeed lie, I claim, with a methodological sickness of natural science or, even more specifically, of physical science. What makes the modern world so utterly different from all previous ages is our possession of modern science and technology. This is the instrument that has changed the conditions of human life almost beyond all recognition, and put unprecedented, and sometimes terrifying, powers into our hands. One should not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that a part of our problem may lie with this instrument, this engine, of rapid change. We see, here, too, the way in which intellectual specialization, referred to above, has effectively concealed from view the nature and extent of the problem that confronts us. The argument that I shall develop in what follows begins with physics, with problems concerning the aims and methods of physics. But it then leaps to social science, to philosophy, to the humanities, to education, to psychotherapy, and to politics: in the end there is scarcely an aspect of modern life that is not touched and, potentially, affected by the argument. How many academic experts are prepared to follow, to take seriously, an argument that ranges so recklessly across such a wide range of academic disciplines? How many non-academic non-experts? But just this is what the argument and message of this book requires. I hope that the reader will endure with patience the somewhat esoteric discussion concerning the aims and methods of physics pursued in chapter one. This may not seem to have anything much to do with the urgent problems of our times, but it does. This is in part how the intellectual disaster I seek to expose in this book conceals itself from view: it buries itself in the obscure, recondite field of the philosophy of physics. Those who devote their lives to the philosophy of physics are, by and large, too myopic to see how their specialized field of study has anything to do with the great and dreadful humanitarian problems and disasters of our age; and those who are above all concerned with these humanitarian disasters have no time at all for abstruse issues concerning the aims and methods of physics. And so the connection is never made. As it happens, the methodological neurosis of physics, with which we begin in chapter one, is actually a quite simple matter to grasp. It does not require any real knowledge of physics to understand. Indeed, physicists and philosophers of physics are much more likely to find the argument difficult to follow than are non-experts. We non-scientists can stand back and see the whole wood; scientists, trained to think in terms of the current orthodox conception of science, trapped in the thickets of research, will find this much harder to do. In an attempt to take this peculiar circumstance into account, I have arranged the exposition as follows. In chapter one I give a simple exposition of the case for declaring natural science to suffer from what I call "rationalistic neurosis"; this avoids all technicalities, and goes straight to the heart of the matter. In the appendix I tackle a host of more technical objections that may be made to the elementary argument of chapter one. So, those experts in the fields of the philosophy of physics and philosophy of science who find the argument of chapter one naïve and unconvincing, should consult the appendix before tossing the book away in disgust. I write in the hope that there will be a few who will not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that the question of how we are to go about learning how to live in wiser and more civilized ways might have something to learn from scientific learning, and will take the trouble to pursue the line of argument traced out in this book. I write in the hope that these few will grasp just how desperate our situation is, how urgent the need to change the status quo, and will do everything in their power to alert others to the need to heal the methodological sickness from which our institutions and traditions of learning at present suffer. To begin with, we need a campaigning organization, modelled perhaps on "Friends of the Earth", which might be called something like "Friends of Wisdom". (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that politically motivated cognition leads progressive individuals to form beliefs that underestimate real differences between social groups and to process information selectively to support these beliefs and an egalitarian outlook. I contend that this tendency, which I shall call ‘egalitarian confirmation bias’, is often ‘Mandevillian’ in nature. That is, while it is epistemically problematic in one’s own cognition, it often has effects that significantly improve other people’s truth tracking, especially that of stigmatized individuals in (...) class='Hi'>academia. Due to its Mandevillian character, egalitarian confirmation bias isn’t only epistemically but also ethically beneficial, as it helps decrease social injustice. Moreover, since egalitarian confirmation bias has Mandevillian effects especially in academia, and since progressives are particularly likely to display the bias, there is an epistemic reason for maintaining the often-noted political majority of progressives in academia. That is, while many researchers hold that diversity in academia is epistemically beneficial because it helps reduce bias, I argue that precisely because political diversity would help reduce egalitarian confirmation bias, it would in fact in one important sense be epistemically costly. (shrink)

Private funding of life sciences has been extensively criticized as lacking objectivity (e.g., Bekelman et al. 2003). However, it is also important to point out that public funding of life sciences faces many objections. In order to improve the system of publicly funded life sciences and its ability to respond to global health challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, we should focus on several aspects. First of all, providing existential stability for researchers, in turn, could result in the decrease of (...) academic misconduct. Secondly, COVID-19 vaccines come from all parts of the world and have to be distributed throughout the world, which is a strong argument in favor of the positive stimulation of global science conducted at less-known research institutions and throughout all countries. This brings us to the quest of working on epistemic decolonization and inclusion in contrast to the current elitist paradigm in science. Finally, publicly funded research, which is at the moment mainly focused on foundational questions, should also be extended to applied ones. Public funding of applied research would lead to its development independently of private financial interests. (shrink)

At present universities are devoted to the acquisition of specialized knowledge and technological know-how. They fail to do what they most need to do: help the public acquire a good understanding of what our problems are, what needs to be done to solve them. Universities do not even conceive of their task in that way. The result is that the public, by and large, fails to appreciate just how serious the problems that face us are, and so fails to put (...) pressure on governments to act in the ways that are required. -/- Modern science and technology make possible modern industry and agriculture, modern power production and travel, modern hygiene and medicine, modern armaments: these in turn have led to much that is of great benefit, but also to the global problems that threaten our future. Science divorced from the capacity to solve problems of living wisely is a disaster. It is that disaster that academia, as at present constituted, is designed to produce – and has produced: the modern world. We have to learn how to solve the grave global problems that confront us. That in turn requires that our institutions of learning – our schools and universities – are designed and devoted to the job. At present they are not. In giving priority to the pursuit of knowledge, they fail to do what most needs to be done and, even worse, are the source of our problems. It is absolutely vital, for the future of humanity, that universities are transformed radically so that they give absolute priority to the all-important task of helping the public come to understand what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. And as a result get governments to act. -/- The book demonstrates that universities as at present constituted violate reason and, as a result, betray humanity. Cure universities of their structural irrationality, and they would come actively to promote actions required to solve global problems, and help humanity make progress toward a better world. The book spells out in detail the changes that need to be made to academic inquiry, why they need to be made, and how they would enable universities to empower humanity to solve current global problems. (shrink)

If a robot sends a deceptive signal to a human user, is this always and everywhere an unethical act, or might it sometimes be ethically desirable? Building upon previous work in robot ethics, this article tries to clarify and refine our understanding of the ethics of robotic deception. It does so by making three arguments. First, it argues that we need to distinguish between three main forms of robotic deception (external state deception; superficial state deception; and hidden state deception) in (...) order to think clearly about its ethics. Second, it argues that the second type of deception – superficial state deception – is not best thought of as a form of deception, even though it is frequently criticised as such. And third, it argues that the third type of deception is best understood as a form of betrayal because doing so captures the unique ethical harm to which it gives rise, and justifies special ethical protections against its use. (shrink)

I argue that while every betrayal is a breach of trust, not every breach of trust is a betrayal. I defend a conception of trust as primarily a feature of behaviour (i.e. trusting behaviour) and only secondarily a feature of a mental attitude. So it is possible to have the attitude of distrust towards someone while still trusting them in the way you behave. This makes sense of the possibility of Judas Iscariot breaching Jesus’ trust, and so betraying him, even (...) though Jesus presumably knew that Judas would do just that. This conception of trust may be spelt out in terms of making oneself reliant on somebody in a collaboration with them. Such collaborations include relationships like friendships and love affairs, as well as political activities or defending one’s country against aggression. I argue that only when these collaborations involve a commitment to loyalty is a breach of trust a betrayal. And loyalty is a feature of those collaborations or relationships that exclude others – us/them collaborations. (shrink)

A concept of Pagan Theology has been producing a number of discussions throughout the last decade and particularly in the last few years both inside and outside Pagan community. In this paper, the author analyzes three aspects of the phenomenon of Pagan Theology and discussions emerged around it. The first aspect is the genesis of the idea of Pagan Theology. It includes an examination of academic and religious roots of this research programme. The second aspect is a view on Pagan (...) Theology from the perspective of the academia. While for some scholars Pagan Theology appears to be a legitimate field of study and/or research programme in Pagan Studies, others describe it is an attempt of Pagan intervention in the academia. Finally, the third aspect is a discussion on Pagan Theology emerged among Pagans, whose reflections of this topic are very ambiguous too. In spite of this fact, the author concludes that the idea of Pagan Theology was a necessary stage of development, both in the conceptualization of contemporary Paganism itself and in Pagan Studies at the same time. (shrink)

Remarks on method in the history of Chinese philosophy for analytic philosophy. (Published in a Chinese Translation.).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society” A great deal of harm is being done by belief in the virtuousness of work. — Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” We are committed to (...) doing academia in particular ways, and not in others. — Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective I had decided that becoming a university professor might be a good fit; friends and colleagues had suggested that I would be valuable to a university, so I prepared for a restructuring of my family life.1 I read Tokarczyk and Fay’s Working-Class Women in the Academy and Babcock and Laschever’s Women Don’t Ask to gather understandings of the milieu I was entering. I now see that my preparations had not shined sufficient light on the social and structural factors that organize the contemporary university.... As it turns out, the restructuring of our lives within the working conditions, priorities, and rationalities of this professional milieu triggered unanticipated and painful effects.... Had Mountz published her article “Women on the Edge” before I decided on a career migration into the university system and, had I been fortunate enough to discover it, I would have made other career choices.2 1. The authors, who describe themselves as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective, indicate their personal narratives in this text using italics. 2. Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds., Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Bisaillon et al. 131 Introduction: Personal, Professional, and Political We are seven women who met at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance, Switzerland, in July 2017, where we had been selected to spend a few months as research fellows. This competitively awarded opportunity is open to persons fluent in English, from graduate students to senior scholars, with or without academic appointment, whose scholarship advances knowledge about the ethical, legal, and social implications of health and biotechnologies.3 When we found ourselves on the shores of Lake Leman with the gift of time, we began opening up to each other in unexpected, compelling ways. Whatever our vantage point in the hierarchy of the university system, we discovered that there was remarkable overlap in our experiences as women in academia. When we began writing, our authoring team was composed of two graduate students, four faculty members at the assistant professor rank, and one full professor, residing in Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our plural subject position led us to underexplored and imaginative responses to broader social issues, which we share in this article as the “Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective.” We analyze our experiences from our standpoint as women health researchers laboring in the academy. Our similarities and differences were exciting entry points for discussion and analysis: we are all of eastern or western European descent. We have different countries of birth, mother tongues, ages, disciplinary training and career trajectories, relationships to chronic illness and disability, marital status, and experiences with parenthood. We bring the troubles and contradictions we experience as academics into conversation with each other. We seek to productively illustrate and emphasize that the tensions we see around us, and also feel within us, arise as a result of how the academic system is organized, produced, and sustained across time, place, and space. Press, 2003); Alison Mountz, “Women on the Edge: Workplace Stress at Universities in North America,” The Canadian Geographer 60, no. 2 (2016): 205–18. 3. We experienced this fellowship as a valuable opportunity. But we also recognized that our access to it was mediated by social, economic, or other obligations. As countries in the global north continue to tighten their national border regimes, marginalized academics, especially those from the global South, were less likely to succeed in getting a Swiss visa or securing relevant temporal and economic resources. 132 Bisaillon et al. The promise here, we posit... (shrink)

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive again only after (...) Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity, despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy. (shrink)

The concept of “going native in reverse” reflects the fact that nowadays more and more people involved in new religious movements and esoteric groups participate in academic activities related to the study of religion in general and particularly in the study of their movements. On the one hand, these people bring insider’s perspective in the academia. On the other hand, they bring academic knowledge and critical mind in esoteric community and change it. This situation seems to be a positive (...) tendency in the development of modern spirituality both for insiders and for the society in general, because contemporary knowledge and critical mind can make religious and esoteric currents more subtle and adequate for the modern world. But what is the future of this tendency in regard to an insider/outsider problem? Maybe they can change the academia by bringing new unexpected perspectives in the study of religion and esotericism. However, conservative academic elites can finally reject researchers who try to bring the insider perspective in the academia and even expel them from academic circles. In this case they will turn into a marginal group inside the academia, and for their skeptical colleagues they will remain to be those eccentrics who want “to wear the esoteric and the scholarly hat simultaneously”, as W. J. Hanegraaff put it. On the other hand, such researchers may try to form a new discipline, so to speak an “esoteric divinity” that will fight for the place both in the academia and in the esoteric community in the next decades. However, the esoteric community itself may reject this tendency, because many of its participants today seem to have an inimical attitude toward to rationalism and the academia. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and remedies for this injustice are widely debated. This article adds to the existing debate by arguing that theories of recog- nition can fruitfully contribute to Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and can provide a framework for structural remedy. By pairing Fricker’s theory of hermeneutical injustice with theories of recognition, I bring forward a modest claim and a more radical claim. The first concerns a shift in our vocabulary; recognition theory can give a name (...) to the seriousness of the long-term effects of hermeneutical injustice. The second claim is more radical: thinking of hermeneutical injustice as preventing what I call “self-recogni- tion” provides a structural remedy to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice. Because hermeneutical injustice is first and foremost a structural injustice, I contend that every virtue theory of hermeneutical justice should be complemented by structural remedies in terms of recognition. Finally, what I argue sheds light on the seriousness of cases of exclusion of and discrimination against women in academia and helps to draw our attention to new ways to combat such problems. (shrink)

“What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?” -/- “The monster now becomes more vengeful. He murders Victor’s friend Henry Clerval and his wife Elizabeth on the night of her wedding to Victor, and Victor sets out in pursuit of the friend across the icy Artic regions. The monster is always ahead of him, leaving tell tale marks behind and tantalizing his creator. Victor meets with his death in the pursuit of the monster he (...) had created with a noble objective.” [ http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] . (shrink)

Betrayal is both a “people” problem and a philosopher’s problem. Philosophers should be able to clarify the concept of betrayal, compare and contrast it with other moral concepts, and critically assess betrayal situations. At the practical level people should be able to make honest sense of betrayal and also to temper its consequences: to handle it, not be assaulted by it. What we need is a conceptually clear account of betrayal that differentiates between genuine and merely perceived betrayal, and which (...) also provides systematic guidance for the assessment of alleged betrayal in real life. In what follows I offer an account of betrayal that attempts to meet the two requirements of conceptual clarity and contextual adequacy. There is a great temptation to use the events in Washington of the past few years as the case study for such an analysis, but I believe that, for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of viewing events from “within,” this would only complicate matters rather than clarify them. Rather, I believe that betrayal in literature is fruitful ground for analysis. I have chosen Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for examples of trust and betrayal, because Austen displays the needed complexity and subtlety of human relationships and because she recognizes that violations of trust come in a variety of shades and colors. This particular novel, moreover, not only supplies multiple instances of trusting relationships gone awry, but also a common, detailed, and intelligible landscape within which these relationships exist. Again, however, in order to illuminate betrayal and appropriately assess a purported betrayal, rich examples are not enough. We need a clear concept of betrayal. I will develop this concept by beginning with the related concept of trust. By starting with an explicit definition of trust and using this definition to analyze the various examples Austen provides, betrayal will emerge as but one of two types of violation of trust. This in turn will allow us to distinguish actual from merely “felt” betrayals. I will finally argue that understanding and being sensitive to the other form of violation of trust, which I call abandonment, may be even more significant to our moral life. (shrink)

Academic inquiry, in devoting itself primarily to the pursuit of knowledge, is profoundly and damagingly irrational, in a wholesale, structural fashion, when judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare. Judged from this standpoint, academic inquiry devoted to the pursuit of knowledge violates three of the four most elementary rules of rational problem-solving conceivable. Above all, it fails to give intellectual priority to the tasks of (1) articulating problems of living, including global problems, and (2) proposing and critically (...) assessing possible solutions – possible social actions. This gross, structural irrationality of academic inquiry stems from blunders of the 18th century French Enlightenment. The philosophes had the brilliant idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world, but in implementing this idea they made three disastrous blunders. They got the nature of the progress-achieving methods of science wrong; they failed to generalize these methods properly; and most disastrously, they applied these methods to acquiring knowledge about society, and not directly to solving social problems. These blunders are still inherent in academia today, with dire consequences for the state of the world. All this has been pointed out prominently many times since 1976, but has been ignored. (shrink)

In February 2021, the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, Frédérique Vidal, ordered an inquiry – to be led by the French National Centre for Scientific Research – about the alleged “Islamo-leftism” which, according to her, was corrupting French academia. Vidal's concern was, purportedly, to distinguish “what falls under academic research and what falls under militancy and opinion”. She had in mind, in particular, recent interdisciplinary fields in the social sciences, such as Postcolonial Studies. Her statements caused a (...) controversy in French academia as well as outside. The goal of this paper is to present this controversy and analyse it in light of the philosophical literature on autonomy of, and values in, science. After recalling the political and institutional context of the controversy, I present Vidal’s intervention and various reactions to it, which can roughly be classified pro and contra Vidal's statements. I then provide a philosophical discussion of the controversy, by recalling the philosophical debate to which it is related, and analysing the assumptions, arguments and actions of both camps. I show in particular that a political intervention inside the very production of academic knowledge implies a strong risk of censorship, and that letting academia self-regulate itself with respect to the validation of knowledge remains the best way to go. I conclude with the deeper questions raised by this controversy: the social role of universities, and the institutional aspects of scientific knowledge validation. (shrink)

This article investigates the impact of different emotions on trust decisions taking into account the experience of betrayal. Thus, an experiment was created that included one betrayal group and one control group. Participants in the betrayal group experienced more intense feelings governed by negative emotions than participants in the control group did. Moreover, participants in the betrayal group significantly lowered their trust of another stranger. On the other hand, we found some evidence that neuroticism exaggerated the relationship between experienced betrayal (...) and subsequent trust. (shrink)

[ https://plus.google.com/108060242686103906748/posts/cwvdB6mK3J6 ] The phenomenal description on own thoughts regard me to describe Coleridge, along with William Wordsworth, was instrumental in initiating a poetic revolution in the early nineteenth century which is known as the Romantic Movement. Coleridge invokes the Divine Spirit that blows upon the wild Harp of Time. Time is like the stringed musical instrument on which the Spirit produces sweet harmonious melodies. Coleridge is perhaps best known for his haunting ballad Rime of Ancient Mariner, the dream-like Kubla (...) Khan and the unfinished Christabel, but he wrote several other smaller poems, quite remarkable for their imaginative power. (Edited with own analysis)…[http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] http://www.academia.edu/18834746/LITERATURE_I_DO-_THE_ROMANTICS_AND_SUBJECTIVITY_SAMUEL_TAYLOR_COLERIDGE. (shrink)

"Romanticism, when attains a fullness of complexity..there occurs of the supernatural unique". http://philpapers.org/profile/112741.

This short article is based on my special lecture entitled "Aristotle and the Philosophy of Education" at Tamagawa University Research Institute in Tokyo on September 19, 2015, through a recording of the spoken language transcribed in written form with some corrections. The lecture delivered on that day consists of two parts: referring to historical research and a statistical survey, the first half focuses on uncovering the fact that the philosophy of education has been slighted both in Japanese and Western (...) class='Hi'>academia and that this fact is valid for both Aristotle's and contemporary studies on the philosophy of education; the second half endeavors to describe two possible research projects - namely, a classical-philosophical and interpretative study of Aristotle's philosophy of education and a contemporary-philosophical and Aristotelian study of the philosophy education. Some of these topics have been published but others have not. This short article concerns the first half of the lecture and measures the gap between philosophy and the philosophy of education in Japan through a statistical survey of the largest competitive research funding database in Japan: KAKEN. (shrink)

In this Article I argue that the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens has been eroding since the "events" of October 2000 and that, as a result, Israel, within its rpe-1967 borders, may be moving from a form of democracy that has been termed "ethnic democracy" towards a form of non-democratic state that has been termed "ethnocracy." My argument is based primarily on two legal documents: the new Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, 2003, which denies Palestinian citizens the right (...) to unite with their closest family members who are residents of the Occupied Territories, and the decision of the High Court of Justice that upheld the constitutionality of this law in 2006. Two other developments that seem to support my thesis are analyzed as well: the "events" of October 2000 themselves and the report of the state commission of inquiry that investigated these events, and the plan, advanced by Yvette Lieberman and his political party, "Yisrael Beytenu," to shift the border between Israel and the West Bank westward, depriving tens of thousands of citizen-Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship. (shrink)

Numerous Ukrainian and Eastern European scholars, philosophers, activists, and cultural figures have criticized the contemporary Western academic community for its systematic silencing of Ukrainian voices and promotion of pro-Russian narratives. This article examines the phenomenon of epistemic oppression of Ukrainian voices in contemporary Western academic discourse. It reviews a range of socio-epistemological concepts designed to shed light on this issue, such as “westsplaining”, “epistemic imperialism”, “double colonial optics”, “international imperialist solidarity”, and others. The author argues that philosophical reflection on the (...) problem of epistemic oppression of Ukrainian researchers in Western academia requires drawing upon the works of social epistemologies (particularly anti-, post- and decolonial, and feminist), academic and non-academic strategies of knowing, philosophical and non-philosophical disciplines, and past and present Ukrainian theorizations. Employing the works of social epistemologists such as Han Edgoose, Miranda Fricker, Kristie Dotson, and others, the author proposes the concept of “epistemic sabotage” to analyze experiences of deliberate epistemic oppression. To further develop previously proposed approaches, the author incorporates the intellectual context in which Ukrainian philosophical thought developed in the 20th century. She uses Yuriy Shevelov’s testimony about the formation of Slavic studies in the USA during 1950–1970s as a paradigmatic example of epistemic sabotage. The developed approach aims to demonstrate both systemic and individual dimensions of epistemic oppression. (shrink)

The aim of this research is to examine the public policy influences on academic investigations that contain a substantial convergence among human resource management–industrial relations and corporate social responsibility–stakeholder approach by means of using bibliometric and content analyses of relevant publications in the Scopus and ScienceDirect databases. Totally, 160 publications were subject to bibliometric, cluster, and summative content analyses. In this context, this study claims that public policy in the EU influences academic investigations and scholars. The investigation draws attention to (...) the importance of active participation of different public institutions and key stakeholders (e.g., trade unions, works councils, academic associations) that prepare a basis for collaboration, solidarity, and communication for strengthening EU social model, social dialogue, collective bargaining, and the protection of social rights. The research findings illuminate the fact that European public policies have significant effects on shaping and encouraging investigations that are considered within the scope of IR–HRM and CSR–SA. One of the most crucial recommendations of this study is that the investigations which are out of this framework can be considered quite idealistic. Therefore, researchers may attempt to publish more scientific investigations in frame of IR–HRM and CSR–SA to enhance the comprehensiveness and depth of these two clusters. (shrink)

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in studying academic dependency, towards the paradigm of brokered dependency. Using Chinese academia as an example, I demonstrate how the neocolonial condition of academic dependency is always mediated through blockage-brokerage mechanisms. The two most salient blockage-brokerage mechanisms of dependency in the Chinese context are linguistic barrier and authoritarian malepistemization, and the effects of the latter consist of three layers: institutional, informational and incorporational. On top of their domestic impacts, those mechanisms jointly exacerbate (...) spectacularized postcoloniality in anglophone-hegemonic global academic publishing. The paradigm of brokered dependency not only represents a more nuanced approach to the study of academic dependency, but also underscores the fact that the dismantling of the neocolonial condition cannot be conceived and pursued in isolation from comprehending and confronting the authoritarian condition, especially when the latter pertains under the disguise of anticolonialism. (shrink)

If universities sought to help promote human welfare rationally, they would give intellectual priority to the tasks of articulating problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible actions. Priority would be given to public education about what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. Universities do not remotely proceed in this way. Why not? Because they are dominated by the idea that knowledge must first be acquired; once acquired, it then can be applied (...) to help solve social problems. But this idea violates the most elementary rules of rational problem solving. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, universities today, devoted in the first instance to the pursuit of knowledge, are profoundly and damagingly irrational in a structural way, and it is this structural irrationality of universities that in part accounts for the genesis of global problems that threaten our future, and for our current incapacity to solve them. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in our universities so that they come to pursue the welfare of humanity in a genuinely rational, and active, way, and thus help save humanity from impending disaster. (shrink)

Furthering Western style academic freedom has been challenging, as Arab countries, especially Libya, have known only autocratic regimes throughout their modern existence. Amidst its current political and social upheaval, Libyan society is drifting towards the unknown. The problem addressed in this study is the impact of political change on the state of academia but, more specifically, academic freedom. Since the intervention in Libya by NATO states, many academics have lost their jobs. Some have become refugees outside of Libya as (...) a direct result of the appropriation of most of the governmental posts in the country by religious and political radicals. The research questions reflect ways in which the new inserted de facto leaders of post-transitional Libya have impacted life on Libyan campuses and academic freedom. (shrink)

During the American Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King’s principal arguments reasoned from theological ethics, appealing to natural law, imago Dei, and agape love. Today in the United States, with the prevailing ideal of public reason, such arguments are unacceptable in the public square. In lieu of King’s theological arguments, are there philosophical principles or values adequate to sustain the cause of racial justice, establishing both a secure rational foundation for racial justice and providing sufficient moral incentive for citizens to (...) work self-sacrificially for this cause? I assess the prospects of the major philosophical alternatives, specifically utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, contractarianism, and the anti-theory option. I conclude that each of these approaches fails to provide the necessary conceptual resources to sustain the cause for racial justice. This presents a disconcerting dilemma: either we readmit theological considerations into the public square or surrender hope for the achievement of lasting racial justice in the United States. (shrink)

Recently, social media have circulated a story of a Chinese Ph.D. student who was forced to drop out of his doctorate program after eight years and become a delivery man because he failed to accomplish sufficient publishing records to meet the program’s graduation requirements.

Both professors and institutions of higher education benefit from a vision of academic life that is grounded more firmly in myth than in history. According to the myth created by that traditional vision, scholars pursue research wherever their drive to knowledge takes them, and colleges and universities transmit the fruits of that research to contemporary and future generations as the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Yet the economic and social forces operating on colleges and universities as institutions, as well as (...) on the interests of faculty members within them, are making the myth embodied in the traditional ideal of the academy more and more difficult to sustain. Questions about what an institution of higher education ought to be, about what professors ought to do, and about what relations professors ought to have to the institutions which employ them are being raised and pushed to the fore. These are not theoretical questions, but practical questions of immediate import that must be answered relatively quickly -- and wisely -- if institutions of higher education and professors are not to find themselves inextricably in the grip of forces they cannot change. The myth of disinterested academic research-however beautiful -- and however beneficial -- is under siege. (shrink)

This paper examines the question whether physicians are obligated by their professional ethos to defend a pacifist position. The question is a more concrete and applied formulation of the general thesis that there are what I will call “pacifist professions”: professions whose ethos requires their members to act in a pacifist way. Since the present paper is rather one in applied philosophy than a theoretical one about the foundation of pacifism, it will concentrate on the practical issue of whether and (...) how physicians can execute their profession in or during war. Theoretical questions on the nature and extent of pacifism will be considered only to the extent necessary to treat the main issue. The introductory section will give a short overview of some histori- cal aspects of physicians’ participation in war and show the relevance of the issue with recent examples. The remainder of this section will thus serve to set the stage and to outline the connections between the medical profession and questions of war and peace. The paper will then be divided into three other main parts: the first part will be devoted to defining in a general manner so-called “professional pacifism”. The second part will investigate whether and to what extent the medical profession can be classified as a pacifist profession, and the third part will look at the consequences of such a classification. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is (...) used to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

Metaphysical considerations aside, today’s inheritors of the tradition of natural philosophy are primarily scientists. However, they are oblivious to the human factor involved in science and in seeing how political, religious, and other ideologies contaminate our visions of nature. In general, philosophers observe human (historical, sociological, and psychological) processes within the construction of theories, as well as in the development of scientific activity itself. -/- In our time, feminism—along with accompanying ideas of identity politics under the slogan “diversity, inclusion, equity”—has (...) emerged in science policies. The vast majority of scientists (including myself) are convinced that discrimination is reprehensible. We also believe that all individuals of any sex, race, ethnic group, or ideology should be valued in academia solely based on his or her merits and potential through equality programs. However, as I will show in this article, political indoctrination has inadmissibly undertaken the struggle for equality in academic institutions in Western countries. I argue here that universities and research institutes should be politically free (neutral) to encourage academic freedom. -/- One negative aspect of equality programs is that worldwide, scientists are harassed for expressing opinions related to the “gender” issue. This situation severely restricts scientists’ freedom of expression, even within the limits of the law. Codes of conduct extending beyond legal boundaries are examples of this issue. Scientists who express their views about “gender” are often harassed, bullied, and socially or academically excluded. Thus, we are witnessing a wave of proselytizing in research institutes and science-associated media. Today, there is widespread biased propaganda of “victimhood”. This propaganda proposes positive discrimination and increasing women’s participation in unnatural ways. It also bends the history of science by overvaluing the creations of forgotten women, offering lectures on indoctrination, organizing congresses on gender and science, and persecuting anyone who sees the subject differently. All of this covered by a multitude of associations that financially benefit from these discourses through succulent subsidies of public money. Apparently, feminism is no longer about fighting against discrimination. Instead, it is about imposing an ideology and giving more power to one group of people. Thus, we must ask whether the end justifies the means. (shrink)

Cutting God in Half argues that, in order to tackle climate change, world poverty, extinction of species and our other global problems rather better than we are doing at present we need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more generally. We need to put our problems of living – personal, social, global – at the heart of the academic enterprise. How our human world, imbued with meaning and value, can exist and best flourish embedded in (...) the physical universe is, the book argues, our basic problem. It is our fundamental philosophical problem, our fundamental problem of knowledge and understanding, and our fundamental practical problem of living. It is this problem that we fail, at present, to recognize as fundamental – to our cost. It can be understood to arise as a result of cutting God in half – severing the God of Cosmic Power from the God of Value. The first is Einstein’s God, the underlying unity in the physical universe that determines how events occur. The second is what is of most value associated with human life – and sentient life more generally. Having cut God in half in this way, the problem then becomes to see how the two halves can be put together again. This book tackles outstanding aspects of this problem, and in doing so throws out original ideas about science, education, religion, evolutionary theory, free will, quantum theory, and how we should go about tackling our impending global crises. It transpires that bringing our basic problem into sharp focus has revolutionary implications. It becomes clear how and why many aspects of our social and cultural world urgently need to be transformed. Cutting God in Half is written in a lively, accessible style, and ought to be essential reading for anyone concerned about ultimate questions – the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the future of humanity. (shrink)

For forty years I have argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom. How did I come to argue for such a preposterously gigantic intellectual revolution? It goes back to my childhood. From an early age, I desired passionately to understand the physical universe. Then, around adolescence, my passion became to understand the heart and soul of people via the novel. But I never discovered (...) how to tell stories in order to tell the truth. So, having failed to become a physicist, and failed to become a novelist, I studied philosophy at Manchester University and then, in six weeks of inspiration, discovered that the riddle of the universe is the riddle of our desires. Philosophy should be about how to live, and should not just do conceptual analysis. I struggled to reconcile the two worlds of my childhood ambitions, the physical universe and the human world. I decided they could be reconciled with one another if one regarded the two accounts of them, physics and common sense, as myths, and not as literal truths. But then I discovered Karl Popper: truth is too important to be discarded. I revised my ideas: physics seeks to depict truly only an aspect of all that there is; in addition, there is the aspect of the experiential features of the world as we experience it. I was immensely impressed with Popper’s view that science makes progress, not by verification, but by ferocious attempted falsification of theories. I was impressed, too, with his generalization of this view to form critical rationalism. Then it dawned on me: Popper’s view of science is untenable because it misrepresents the basic aim of science. This is not truth as such; rather it is explanatory truth – truth presupposed to be unified or physically comprehensible. We need, I realized, a new conception of science, called by me aim-oriented empiricism, which acknowledges the real, problematic aims of science, and seeks to improve them. Then, treading along a path parallel to Popper’s, I realized that aim-oriented empiricism can be generalized to form a new conception of rationality, aim-oriented rationality, with implications for all that we do. This led on to a new conception of academic inquiry. From the Enlightenment we have inherited the view that academia, in order to help promote human welfare, must first acquire knowledge. But this is profoundly and damagingly irrational. If academia really does seek to help promote human welfare, then its primary tasks must be to articulate problems of living, and propose and critically assess possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, philosophies of life. The pursuit of knowledge is secondary. Academia needs to promote cooperatively rational problem solving in the social world, and needs to help humanity improve individual and institutional aims by exploiting aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the real progress-achieving methods of science. We might, as a result, get into life some of the progressive success that is such a marked feature of science. Thus began my campaign to promote awareness of the urgent need for a new kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world. (shrink)

In this topical section, we highlight the next step of research on modeling aiming to contribute to the emerging literature that radically refrains from approaching modeling as a scientific endeavor. Modeling surpasses “doing science” because it is frequently incorporated into decision-making processes in politics and management, i.e., areas which are not solely epistemically oriented. We do not refer to the production of models in academia for abstract or imaginary applications in practical fields, but instead highlight the real entwinement of (...) science and policy and the real erosion of their boundaries. Models in decision making – due to their strong entwinement with policy and management – are utilized differently than models in science; they are employed for different purposes and with different constraints. We claim that “being a part of decision-making” implies that models are elements of a very particular situation, in which knowledge about the present and the future is limited but dependence of decisions on the future is distinct. Emphasis on the future indicates that decisions are made about actions that have severe and lasting consequences. In these specific situations, models enable not only the acquisition of knowledge (the primary goal of science) but also enable deciding upon actions that change the course of events. As a result, there are specific ways to construct effective models and justify their results. Although some studies have explored this topic, our understanding of how models contribute to decision making outside of science remains fragmentary. This topical section aims to fill this gap in research and formulate an agenda for additional and more systematic investigations in the field. (shrink)

Are you an Early Career Researcher (ECR) striving for success in academia? If so, I invite you to explore my unconventional path. My journey to success is wandering in mindspongeland with the BMF analytics workhorse [1]. Sounds weird? It is. Sounds unfamiliar? It is. Sounds good? In a strange manner. But unbelievable? Definitely not. I am living proof.

[This is a pre-print; please cite the published version] This paper employs structural topic modeling (STM) to describe the academic philosophy landscape in Brazil. Based on a public national database, a corpus consisting of 12,515 abstracts of monographs defended in philosophy graduate programs between 1991 and 2021 was compiled. The final STM model identified 74 meaningful research topics, clustered into 7 thematic categories. This study discusses the prevalence of the most significant topics and categories, their trends across three decades, and (...) their (positive or negative) association with the supervisor's gender. Results show the first empirical evidence that Brazilian philosophical research exhibits a greater focus on philosophers than on specific themes or problems. Moreover, by visualizing the variations in topic prevalence over time, it was possible to track the rise or decline of the major interest categories and topics. Finally, results also show which topics are more influenced or less influenced by gender. (shrink)

Machine-based automation has long been a key factor in the modern era. However, lately, many people have been shocked by artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as ChatGPT (OpenAI), that can perform tasks previously thought to be human-exclusive. With recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) technologies, AI can generate written content that is similar to human-made products, and this ability has a variety of applications. As the technology of large language models continues to progress by making use of colossal reservoirs (...) of digital information, AI is becoming more capable of recognizing patterns and associations within given contexts, making it especially helpful in assisting with various professional writing tasks [1]. In this paper, we will discuss several key points regarding the current state and future of AI in academia. Furthermore, since in certain aspects, acts can speak louder than words, we will also present some of our hands-on experiences of working with ChatGPT. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism is an ancient concept whose meaning and significance have shifted over the last two millennia. Most recently, cosmopolitanism has been resurrected to mean “world citizenship” – a renunciation of one’s national identity for the sake of the universal human family. While such an endeavor seems as though it should correspond to Catholic social thought, its iterations in academia and elsewhere have resulted in a preoccupation with personal identity and political doctrine rather than love. Cosmopolitanism is complex and harbors (...) many weaknesses in both theory and practice. Considered in relation to universalism in Catholic social thought, one weakness is thrown into specific relief: cosmopolitanism as a personal identity or political doctrine lacks a unified philosophy of the human person. This essay recasts the desire to form solidarity across national boundaries as universalism within Trinitarian anthropology and discusses accompaniment as exemplary of the love this thought system requires. (shrink)

Today, resilience is used in many societal contexts for understanding how things respond to risks and for improving their performance in this regard, having also become a prominent approach for adapting to climate change. Yet, despite the broad appeal of resilience and resilience-based approaches within and outside academia, there are persisting puzzles about how to interpret resilience, its relation to competing concepts and approaches, or its desirability. Some proponents of resilience advise caution with the normative use of the term, (...) noting that resilience is a purely descriptive and ambivalent quality, which can be good in some circumstances but not in others. Critics have also noted that resilience approaches can be technocratic and that they tend to conceal the needs and vulnerabilities of the poor. -/- These examples demonstrate the need for reflecting on the status and significance of a term that is so widely used in academia and across the science-policy divide, but whose meaning and value are so fiercely disputed. Given that resilience is already informing many large-scale and significant societal efforts, they also raise the need to ask under which conditions such efforts could be just. -/- This work uses philosophical perspectives from ethics, metaethics and justice theory for revisiting recent debates on the meaning and normative status of this concept, with special emphasis on understanding the normative guidance that diverse interpretations of resilience can offer and disclosing the implications that this may have for achieving justice in and through resilience-based interventions. (shrink)

Kampus Merdeka was part of the Merdeka Belajar policy released by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) at the end of January 2020. This study focuses on a university program that gave students opportunities to develop skills in accordance with their talents and interests by entering the workforce right away as training for future careers. Until the middle of September 2022, 12 programs had launched. To provide a reliable reference, a comprehensive analysis of the Merdeka Curriculum (...) program was carried out in this work. We took a qualitative approach, conducting observations and interviews with fellow actors as well as a thorough analysis of pertinent databases on the related subjects. We found that active student participation and support from the university are the keys to the success of Kampus Merdeka. Furthermore, serious commitment is needed from all parties to gain a company’s trust. This study is important to gain deep insights into the Kampus Merdeka policy so that the needs of Kurikulum Merdeka can be met effectively. (shrink)

Originally published in PhilosophyNews, July 19, 2022. -/- This new series, What’s Happening in Philosophy (WHiP)-The Philosophers aims to provide a monthly snapshot of various trends and discussions happening across the discipline. -/- In this inaugural post, we begin with a harrowing tale from David Edmonds involving the murder of the German philosopher Moritz Schlick. Schlick was a Vienna Circle guiding spirit and logical positivist thinker. Next up is Steven Nadler’s take on several biographies of the ‘father of modern philosophy’ (...) in his new paper, The Many Lives of René Descartes. Lastly, questions around AI in academia come up in an article from Scientific American. (shrink)

In this paper I critically discuss Miranda Fricker’s ‘trust-based’ view of collective testimony—that is, testimony that comes from a group speaker. At the heart of Fricker’s account is the idea that testimony involves an ‘interpersonal deal of trust’, to which the speaker contributes a commitment to ‘second-personal epistemic trustworthiness’. Appropriating Margaret Gilbert’s concept of joint commitment, Fricker suggests that groups too can make such commitments, and hence that they, like individuals, can ‘enter into the second-personal relations of trust that characterise (...) testimony’ (Fricker 2012: 272). I argue that this choice to appropriate Gilbert’s concept of joint commitment betrays a deep problem in Fricker’s account—a misconstrual of both the object and the subject(s) of the commitment a speaker makes in testifying. After developing this criticism, I outline an alternative way of construing the speaker’s commitment, which can be applied to both collective and individual testimony. (shrink)

The democratic surprises of 2016—Brexit and the Trump phenomenon—fueled by “fake news”, both real and imagined, have come to constitute a centrifugal, nationalistic, even tribal moment in politics. Running counter to the shared postwar narrative of increasing internationalism, these events reignited embers of cultural and moral relativism in academia and public discourse dormant since the culture wars of the 1990s and ‘60s. This counternarrative casts doubt on the value of belief in universal human rights, which many in the humanities (...) and social sciences argue have of late been used as instruments of postcolonial oppression. This book essay introduces three texts written before the dawn of the latest “post-truth” era—The Sociology of Human Rights by Mark Frezzo, The Political Sociology of Human Rights by Kate Nash, and Keeping Faith with Human Rights by Linda Hogan—that address moral skepticism of human rights. Along with these authors, the essay briefly treats human rights’ past and prospects, analogizing it to the waves of feminist thought: in international politics, developing nations first desired a seat at the table and repeal of discriminatory laws and practices; when one-nation-one-vote did not result in equal treatment, the persistence of hierarchy helped developing nations awaken to their own evolving national identities and they wished to be recognized as not only equal, but different and unique. The essay recapitulates and amplifies these authors’ argument that the contemporary challenge for all nations, their citizens, and for the human rights community is to deliberatively decide what values unite these identities beyond simple self-determination and extend them toward the goal of a just global whole. The essay also makes an original contribution in summarizing the initial post-war debate in the United Nations that birthed the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, which has been subject to revisionism and perspectivism typical of cultural and moral relativism. It provides some social scientific, historical, and philosophic grounding for serious conversation of the ideas of truths in politics, and universal, transcultural goods and rights that underpin the authority of the international human rights regime in theory and practice. It does so while recognizing the serious epistemological challenges to this universalist conception, chiefly: how a social construct can be both time-bound human creation and continue to be morally binding across space, time, and the accelerated change global citizens of all corners are experiencing, simultaneously yet in their own way. (shrink)

It is with great enthusiasm that Editora Contemporânea presents "Culture and Identity: Perspectives on the Human Sciences -1st Edition". This book is a profound and thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between culture and identity in contemporary society, offering an innovative look at themes that shape our understanding of the world. Culture and identity play fundamental roles in the complex web of society. More than mere concepts, they are living forces that shape our interactions, perceptions, and the very fabric of society. (...) This book highlights the intrinsic importance of these elements in constructing meanings, and connections and shaping the rich tapestry of human diversity. In an era marked by globalization and interconnectedness, understanding cultural dynamics and the nuances of identity becomes essential. "Culture and Identity: Perspectives in the Humanities" offers crucial insights into meeting contemporary challenges, promoting intercultural dialogues, addressing issues of inclusion, and recognizing the complexities of individual and collective identities. This volume not only critically analyzes cultural and identity issues, but also sheds light on the prospects of humanities research. From investigations into changing identities to analyses of cultural influences on community formation, the contributions in this book pave the way for new approaches and reflections in academia. We express our sincere gratitude to the dedicated contributors who made this first edition possible. Each author has brought a unique and valuable insight, enriching the dialog on culture and identity in the human sciences. Their collective efforts have resulted in a work that inspires and challenges, contributing to a profound understanding of human complexity. We invite readers to delve into the pages of this unique work. Discover the multifaceted perspectives on culture and identity that this book offers. May it inspire reflections, dialogues, and actions that promote a deeper and more inclusive understanding of human diversity. Editora Contemporânea thanks you for joining us on this journey of intellectual exploration and discovery. -/- . (shrink)

In fundamental rights adjudication, should judges defer to the judgment of other decision makers? How can they defer, without betraying the respect that judges ought to accord those rights? How can they refuse to defer, without betraying the respect that judges ought to accord to other decision makers? I argue that only principles of comity justify deference, and their reach is limited. Comity never forbids the judges to take and to act upon a different view of fundamental rights from that (...) of another decision maker. I elaborate this view by reference to the decision of the House of Lords in Adan and Aitseguer [2001] 1 All ER 593. (shrink)