Cover songs are a familiar feature of contemporary popular music. Musicians describe their own performances as covers, and audiences use the category to organize their listening and appreciation. However, until now philosophers have not had much to say about them. This book explores how to think about covers, appreciating covers, and the metaphysics of covers and songs. Along the way, it explores a range of issues raised by covers, from the question of what precisely constitutes a (...) class='Hi'>cover, to the history and taxonomy of the category, the various relationships that hold between songs, performances, and tracks, and the appreciation and evaluation of covers. (shrink)

A recording or performance of a song is a cover if there is an earlier, canonical recording of the song. It can seem intuitive to think that properly appreciating a cover requires considering it in relation to the original, or at least that doing so will yield a deeper appreciation. This intuition is supported by some philosophical accounts of covers. And it is complicated by the possibility of hearing in, whereby one hears elements of the original version in (...) the cover. We argue that it can nevertheless be just as legitimate to consider a cover version on its own as it is to consider it in relation to the earlier recording that it is covering. In some cases, these two modes of appreciation will offer distinct rewards. In other cases, one mode will be substantially more rewarding than the other. The details matter, especially in complicated cases like covers of covers, but neither mode is privileged in principle. (shrink)

Cover versions form a loose but identifiable category of tracks and performances. We distinguish four kinds of covers and argue that they mark important differences in the modes of evaluation that are possible or appropriate for each: mimic covers, which aim merely to echo the canonical track; rendition covers, which change the sound of the canonical track; transformative covers, which diverge so much as to instantiate a distinct, albeit derivative song; and referential covers, which not only instantiate a distinct (...) song, but for which the new song is in part about the original song. In order to allow for the very possibility of transformative and referential covers, we argue that a cover is characterized by relation to a canonical track rather than merely by being a new instance of a song that had been recorded previously. (shrink)

This essay foregrounds “covers” of popular recorded songs as well as male and female desire, in addition to Nietzsche’s interest in composition, together with his rhythmic analysis of Ancient Greek as the basis of what he called the “spirit of music” with respect to tragedy. The language of “sonic branding” allows a discussion of what Günther Anders described as the self-creation of mass consumer but also the ghostly time-space of music in the broadcast world. A brief allusion to Rilke (...) complements a similarly brief reference to Jankelevitch’s “ineffable.”. (shrink)

A one-stop resource on the current developments in word order research, this comprehensive survey provides an up-to-date, critical overview of this widely debated topic, exploring and evaluating research carried out in four major ...

With the increasing degrees A.I.s and machines are applied across different social contexts, the need for implementing ethics in A.I.s is pressing. In this paper, we argue for a pluralist hybrid model for the implementation of moral A.I.s. We first survey current approaches to moral A.I.s and their inherent limitations. Then we propose the pluralist hybrid approach and show how these limitations of moral A.I.s can be partly alleviated by the pluralist hybrid approach. The core ethical decision-making capacity of an (...) A.I. based on the pluralist hybrid approach consists of two systems. The first is a deterministic algorithm system that incorporates different moral rules for making explicit moral decisions. The second is a machine learning system that calculates the value of the variables required by the application of moral principles. The pluralist hybrid system is better than the existing proposals as (i) it better addresses the moral disagreement problem of the top-down approach by including different moral principles, while (ii) it reduces the opacity of ethical decision-making compared with a bottom-up system by implementing explicit moral principles for moral decision making. (shrink)

Among the most popular strategies for justifying political obligations are those that appeal to the principle of fairness. These theories face the challenge, canonically articulated by Robert Nozick, of explaining how it is that persons are obligated to schemes when they receive goods that they do not ask for but cannot reject. John Simmons offers one defense of the principle of fairness, arguing that people could be bound by obligations of fairness if they voluntarily accept goods produced by a cooperative (...) scheme. Simmons, however, thinks that such a theory will do little work in justifying political obligations, since virtually no one voluntarily accepts state goods. This paper attempts to advance just such a theory by arguing that states are in fact genuine cooperative schemes and that Simmons is overly pessimistic in his appraisal of whether the majority of citizens accept the goods provided by their states. (shrink)

Very little attention has been paid towards examining John Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy as a self-standing theory. Nevertheless, it offers a highly original way of thinking about state legitimacy. In this paper, I will offer a sketch of what such an account might look like. At its heart is the idea that the legitimacy of the state resides not in the consent of the governed, nor in the state’s conformity with the appropriate principles of justice, but rather in citizens’ (...) endorsement of the state and its underlying constitutional principles on the basis of their own comprehensive conceptions of justice. Such an account offers a stable middle ground between popular alternatives, and has a way of not just solving, but dissolving, the problem of legitimacy. (shrink)

Winning essay of the American Society for Aesthetics' inaugural Peter Kivy Prize. Extends Kivy's notion of sonic picturing through engagement with recent work in philosophy of perception. Argues that sonic pictures are more widespread and more aesthetically and artistically important than even Kivy envisioned. Topics discussed include: the nature of sonic pictures; the nature of sounds; what we can (and more importantly, cannot) conclude from musical listening; sonic pictures in film; beatboxing as an art of sonic picturing; and cover (...) songs as sonic pictures. To be published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. (shrink)

Issues of academic authorship pose few problems for philosophers or those in the humanities, yet raise a host of issues for medical researchers, engineers and scientists, where multiple authors is the norm and journal articles sometimes list hundreds of authors. At issue here are abstract questions about desert, as well as practical problems regarding the distribution of goods attached to authorship—tenure, prestige, research grants, etc. This paper defends a version of the author/contributor model, where the specific contributions of authors are (...) described in a footnote, against other models of authorial attribution. Such a model offers the best guarantee that authors will get their due, as well as providing the most reliable protection against misconduct and fraud. The paper also arguesthat it is important for this model to be institutionalized across disciplinary boundaries as the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research will inevitably bring discipline-specific authorial norms into conflict. (shrink)

For the political naturalist, skepticism about political obligations only arises because of a basic confusion about the necessity of the state for human well-being. From this perspective, human beings are naturally political animals and cannot flourish outside of political relationships. In this paper, I suggest that this idea can be developed in two basic ways. For the thick naturalist, political institutions are constitutive of the best life. For the thin naturalist, they secure the basic background conditions of peace and stability (...) that are necessary for any minimally decent human life. Both approaches, however, are problematic, and while political institutions might have a special kind of value for human well-being, it is difficult to convert this claim into a justification for political obligations. (shrink)

In this article, we apply the notion of interval neutrosophic sets to ideal theory in BCK/BCI-algebras.

While cosmopolitans are right to think that state sovereignty is derived from individuals, many cosmopolitan accounts can be too demanding in their expectations for illiberal regimes because they do not account for the attitudes of the persons with who will subject to the intervention. These ‘objectivist’ accounts suggest that sovereignty is wholly a matter of a state’s conformity to the objective demands of justice. In contrast, for ‘subjectivist’ accounts, the attitudes of citizens do matter. Subjectivist cosmopolitans do not deny the (...) objective demands of liberal justice, but argue that state sovereignty is at least partly a matter of the subjective attitude of citizens toward their state. This paper will highlight the reasons why such coercive impositions are troubling, and diagnose why objectivist theories characteristically fail to recognize them. It seeks to articulate a moderate kind of subjectivist cosmopolitanism that balances a liberal concern for rights with a worry about the imposition of political institutions or practices on a people that does not accept them. (shrink)

Professionalization, career development prospects, and social value are the three basic components of the status and prospects of community education workers, which influence their choice to continue their careers or not. In China, these problems are complex and lacking in systematic research, and the current situation does not meet the needs of community education. This study interviewed 24 community workers regarding their salaries, working conditions, and training and career advancement opportunities to evaluate this situation in Ningbo City. The findings highlight (...) challenges in the evaluation processes and work motivations of community education workers, including teams without professional knowledge, lack of training opportunities, unsupportive policies, and low salaries. These findings can be used by governments and community workers to find collaborative ways to facilitate community education processes, including the provision of adult education for community educators. New legal policies to raise the status of community educators are also suggested. (shrink)

Consider the concept combination ‘pet human’. In word association experiments, human subjects produce the associate ‘slave’ in relation to this combination. The striking aspect of this associate is that it is not produced as an associate of ‘pet’, or ‘human’ in isolation. In other words, the associate ‘slave’ seems to be emergent. Such emergent associations sometimes have a creative character and cognitive science is largely silent about how we produce them. Departing from a dimensional model of human conceptual space, this (...) article will explore concept combinations, and will argue that emergent associations are a result of abductive reasoning within conceptual space, that is, below the symbolic level of cognition. A tensor-based approach is used to model concept combinations allowing such combinations to be formalized as interacting quantum systems. Free association norm data is used to motivate the underlying basis of the conceptual space. It is shown by analogy how some concept combinations may behave like quantum-entangled particles. Two methods of analysis were presented for empirically validating the presence of non-separable concept combinations in human cognition. One method is based on quantum theory and another based on comparing a joint probability distribution with another distribution based on a separability assumption using a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Although these methods were inconclusive in relation to an empirical study of bi-ambiguous concept combinations, avenues for further refinement of these methods are identified. (shrink)

While virtually everyone recognizes the moral permissibility of whistleblowing under certain circumstances, most theorists offer relatively conservative accounts of when it is allowed, and are reluctant to offer a full recommendation of the practice as an important tool towards addressing ethical failures in the workplace. We think that accounts such as these tend to overestimate the importance of professional or personal obligations, and underestimate the moral obligation to shine light on severe professional malfeasance. Of course, a whistleblower, even an anonymous (...) one, often faces serious threats of retaliation and harm to their professional livelihoods and well-being. To address these challenges we argue in favor of a practice that we will call Preemptive Anonymous Whistleblowing (PAW). Such whistleblowing is preemptive in that a whistleblower provides information about malfeasance to a party in a position to do something about it without first raising the worry to one’s immediate superiors. At first blush, such preemption may seem unsettling, and PAW admittedly raises a number of worrisome issues. We defend PAW, however, as part of a larger argument that whistleblowing is morally required more often than is commonly thought. The availability of PAW as an option provides a method for allaying the concern that whistleblowing can be overly burdensome due to the risks of job and career. Insofar as that concern can be allayed, it is feasible for there to be substantial moral requirements to engage in whistleblowing in cases where severe harms can be prevented. With high enough stakes, there is a moral requirement for whistleblowing. (shrink)

Recent studies show that racism still exists in the American medical profession, the fact of which legitimizes the historically long-legacy of mistrust towards medical profession and health authorities among African Americans. Thus, it was suspected that the participation of black patients in end-of-life care has always been significantly low stemmed primarily from their mistrust of the medical profession. On the other hand, much research finds that there are other reasons than the mistrust which makes African Americans feel reluctant to the (...) end-of-life care, such as cultural-religious difference and genuine misunderstanding of the services. If so, two crucial questions are raised. One is how pervasive or significant the mistrust is, compared to the other factors, when they opt out of the end-of-life care. The other is if there is a remedy or solution to the seemingly broken relationship. While no studies available answer these questions, we have conducted an experiment to explore them. The research was performed at two Philadelphia hospitals of Mercy Health System, and the result shows that Black patients’ mistrust is not too great to overcome and that education can remove the epistemic obstacles as well as overcome the mistrust. (shrink)

Background: In the context of globalization, Vietnamese universities, whose primary function is teaching, there is a need to improve research performance. Methods: Based on SSHPA data, an exclusive database of Vietnamese social sciences and humanities researchers’ productivity, between 2008 and 2019 period, this study analyzes the research output of Vietnamese universities in the field of social sciences and humanities. Results: Vietnamese universities have been steadily producing a high volume of publications in the 2008-2019 period, with a peak of 598 articles (...) in 2019. Moreover, many private universities and institutions are also joining the publication race, pushing competitiveness in the country. Conclusions: Solutions to improve both quantity and quality of Vietnamese universities’ research practice in the context of the industrial revolution 4.0 could be applying international criteria in Vietnamese higher education, developing scientific and critical thinking for general and STEM education, and promoting science communication. (shrink)

This paper introduces the reconstitutor as a comprehensive unit of heredity within the context of evolutionary research. A reconstitutor is the structure resulting from a set of relationships between different elements or processes that are actively involved in the recreation of a specific phenotypic variant in each generation regardless of the biomolecular basis of the elements or whether they stand in a continuous line of ancestry. Firstly, we justify the necessity of introducing the reconstitutor by showing the limitations of other (...) evolutionary conceptions of the unit of heredity, such as the replicator, the reproducer, and the Darwinian individual. We argue that these conceptions are based on the requirement of lineage formation, which we argue to be unnecessary for the existence of evolutionary heredity. In the second part, we introduce the reconstitutor, which we base on the concept of Stability of Traits, and illustrate how it covers cases of hereditary phenomena not covered by the previous accounts. Secondly, we illustrate how the reconstitutor could serve as a platform to rethink ecological inheritance and other forms of inheritance that have been recently introduced under the song/singer model of evolution. (shrink)

The album Echo was produced in a depressed, drug-riddled phase when Tom Petty’s first marriage was ending and his physical condition so degraded that he took to using a cane. Petty filmed no videos, avoided playing the album’s songs on the follow-up tour and reported little memory of its making. The thoughtfulness and self-reflection that traumatic circumstances spur distinguish the album. So too does the tendency to look backwards in times of crisis, whether in hopes of finding solidity in (...) the past or just out of exhausted inability to cope with the present. -/- While melancholically creative, the album might be regarded as an echoing of past musical fragments. The sprightly mix of acoustic and electric guitars, the backing vocal harmonies and the stories of loss in songs such as “Won’t Last Long” and “This One’s for Me” harken to Petty’s albums from the late 80s to mid-90s. “Accused of Love” similarly contains echoes of Petty’s more upbeat work, but with depressing lyrical undertones. The production qualities and lyrics of “Rhino Skin” recollect “Asshole,” a Beck cover from Petty’s previous album. “I Don’t Wanna Fight”—a Heartbreakers performance composed and sung by Mike Campbell—returns to the hard driving rock of Damn the Torpedoes. The lyrics, straight-laced drums and layered drones of electric guitars of “Free Girl Now” go back further to “American Girl,” which itself was influenced by psychedelic music. At the same time, all of this typifies Petty’s oeuvre. Throughout his career, he made music steeped in past rock traditions. He was also a seminal figure in Southern rock, with its emphatically nostalgic character. -/- The crisis that Petty was experiencing echoes throughout the album in more specific ways, with many songs repeating the theme of being up or down, high or low. The theme of fighting or not wanting to has an especially strong echo, showing up in “Swingin’,” “Billy the Kid” and “I Don’t Wanna Fight.” These songs, in turn, exhibit nostalgia for past icons, with protagonists going down hard like Billy the Kid; or going down swinging like Sonny Liston; or again like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Sammy Davis in a punny reference to the swing era. -/- The retrospective feel of the album is one of looking to the past for the sake of self-preservation in the present, along lines discussed by Nietzsche. While symptomatic of illness, Nietzsche maintains this movement “springs from the protective instinct of a degenerating life which tries by all means to sustain itself and to fight for existence.” This seeming denial of growth can, as Nietzsche continues, be “among the greatest conserving and yes-creating forces of life.” Petty clearly associated Echo with personal grief, refusing to listen to it for years. As with many other examples of art, however, the album was also a way of surviving and growing beyond a present trauma, and one more specifically that compelled him to overcome an important part of his past, namely, his wife of 20-plus years. One can speculate that clinging to fragments of the past—musical and otherwise—was a way of coping with a difficult present and a fading past. (shrink)

Markosian presents an argument against certain theories of time based on the aesthetic value of music. He argues that turning a piece of music sideways in time destroys its intrinsic value, which would not be possible if the Spacetime Thesis were true. In this paper I show that sideways music poses no problems for any theory of time by demonstrating that turning a piece of music sideways does not affect its intrinsic value. I do this by appealing to spatial analogies (...) that highlight the similarities between spatial and temporal rotations. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the manner in which Herder’s philosophy of language grounds his approach to hermeneutical issues regarding history, interpretation, and translation. Herder’s approach to the question of language has been repeatedly lauded for its important influence on the later work done by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer, but in this discussion I am going to put him more directly in conversation with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although recent critics have derided Humboldt’s theory as both derivative and wrong, I will (...) argue that we should instead recognize that Humboldt’s philosophy of language represents a significant development of Herder’s thesis. This development is accomplished by way of Humboldt’s application of Kant’s mature theory of reason to a program for comparative linguistics. In Humboldt’s hands, this amounts to a new strain of philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Drunk drivers and other culpably incapacitated wrongdoers are often taken to pose a problem for reasons-responsiveness accounts of moral responsibility. These accounts predicate moral responsibility upon an agent having the capacities to perceive and act upon moral reasons, and the culpably incapacitated wrongdoers lack exactly those capacities at the time of their wrongdoing. Many reasons-responsiveness advocates thus expand their account of responsibility to include a tracing condition: The culpably incapacitated wrongdoer is blameworthy despite his incapacitation precisely because he is responsible (...) for becoming incapacitated. As some skeptics have suggested, it is not clear that we need tracing. Here, however, I make a stronger case against tracing: I show that tracing gets things wrong. I consider a new sort of case, the case of the Odysseus agent, whose incapacitation is non-culpable (sometimes merely permissible and sometimes praiseworthy). Tracing would have us hold responsible and therefore blame unlucky Odysseus agents, Odysseus agents who commit a wrongdoing in the throes of their non-culpably induced incapacitation. But we should not hold these unlucky Odysseus agents responsible for their incapacitated wrongdoing. Because tracing gets these cases wrong, we should reject tracing. (shrink)

Trong 30 năm qua, đặc biệt là những năm gần đây, Việt Nam đã tận dụng thời cơ, thuận lợi, vượt qua nhiều khó khăn; thách thức, thực hiện phát triển bền vững đất nước và đã đạt được những thành tựu to lớn, có ý nghĩa lịch sử. Đất nước đã ra khỏi tình trạng kém phát triển, kinh tế tăng trưởng khá nhanh, đời sống vật chất và tinh thần của người dân được cải thiện. Vị thế của (...) Việt Nam trên trường quốc tế được nâng cao, tạo ra những tiền đề quan trọng để phát triển nhanh, bền vững, nâng cao chất lượng cuộc sống của nhân dân. Tuy nhiên, trong giai đoạn hiện nay, phát triển bền vững Việt Nam đang đứng trước nhiều khó khăn, thách thức lớn có tính chất toàn cầu (khủng hoảng tài chính, năng lượng, vấn đề an ninh lương thực, biến đổi khí hậu,...) cũng như những khó khăn, thách thức chủ quan khác của đất nước (thành tựu đạt được chưa tương xứng với tiềm năng; chất lượng, năng suất, hiệu quả, sức cạnh tranh của nền kinh tế còn thấp; tăng trưởng kinh tế còn dựa nhiều vào các yếu tố phát triển theo chiều rộng, chậm chuyển sang phát triển theo chiều sâu; việc khai thác và sử dụng tài nguyên chưa thật hợp lý và tiết kiệm; các cân đối kinh tế vĩ mô chưa thật vững chắc, bội chi ngân sách, thâm hụt cán cân thương mại còn lớn, lạm phát còn cao; môi trường sinh thái ở nhiều nơi bị ô nhiễm nặng,...). Nhằm cung cấp thêm tài liệu nghiên cứu về vấn đề nêu trên, Nhà xuất bản Chính trị quốc gia - Sự thật xuất bản cuốn sách Bằng chứng cuộc sống - Suy ngẫm về phát triển bền vững Việt Nam của đồng tác giả Bạch Ngọc Chiến và Vương Quân Hoàng. -/- Ngoài phần mở đầu, phụ lục kỹ thuật, tài liệu tham khảo, cuốn sách gồm 5 chương chính: -/- Chương 1. Mạch nguồn; Chương 2. Con người, xã hội và nhà nước; Chương 3. Sức vóc kinh tế; Chương 4. Trí lực quốc dân; Chương 5. Tiến hóa. -/- Với tư duy và phương pháp tiếp cận khoa học, các tác giả dẫn dắt bạn đọc đi từ các quan sát về lịch sử hình thành dân tộc, sự phát triển và hoàn thiện của con người, xã hội, nhà nước trong tiến trình lịch sử đến sự phát triển kinh tế của đất nước ta. Mục tiêu cuối cùng mà các tác giả muốn đề cập là phương pháp và năng lực tổ chức, thiết kế và thực thi những kế hoạch phát triển phù hợp trong điều kiện hạn chế về nguồn lực và đối mặt với những thay đổi của cục diện trong nước và quốc tế. Nội dung cuốn sách cũng giúp làm sáng tỏ nhiều câu hỏi, gợi mở cách nhìn nhận về tương lai phát triển của đất nước. Cuốn sách thể hiện quá trình nghiên cứu công phu, nghiêm túc, nhiều nhận xét có giá trị tham khảo tốt; tuy nhiên có những ý kiến, nhận xét cần tiếp tục được thảo luận. Xin giới thiệu cuốn sách với bạn đọc và mong nhận được ý kiến đóng góp để nội dung cuốn sách được hoàn thiện hơn trong những lần xuất bản sau. -/- Tháng 11 năm 2015 NHÀ XUẤT BẢN CHÍNH TRỊ QUỐC GIA - SỰ THẬT. (shrink)

Hoàn thành nghiên cứu Tiến sĩ ở Bỉ, Vương Quân Hoàng tập trung vào công việc tìm hiểu đặc tính nền kinh tế Việt Nam. Qua công việc, anh có dịp gặp gỡ nhiều bạn trẻ khởi nghiệp, với tư cách là giám khảo cuộc thi Sáng tạo tương lai trong khuôn khổ hành trình Khát vọng Việt do Hội Liên hiệp Thanh niên Việt Nam phối hợp cùng Tập đoàn Trung Nguyên tổ chức.

The cover letter is not the main text destined to be evaluated or published. The content of the cover letter is already overlapped and redundant with the article's abstract. Cover letters look like the ‘misleading’ commercial ads; as good or as bad as they might be, they do not change the inherent value of the advertised product. The significance of a manuscript should be manifest in the 200–300 words of its abstract and alongside the manuscript as a (...) whole. The aim of cover letter to impress editors, recruiters or hiring managers, would give only a false and ephemeral impression because the veritable, lasting, impression is that ulterior impression related to the innate value of the candidate (or the manuscript), not from a cover letter that ends in the trash. (shrink)

This article traces a logical and political thread leading from the theory of revolt in Furio Jesi's 1969 Spartakus to his later work on festivity and the “mythological machine model.” It opens by arguing that the humanist model that frames Jesi's early efforts to disarm the allure of insurgent violence, sacrificial mythology, and Manichaean politics generates insoluble aporias that spur the development of a radically different approach to the study of myth and human nature. Next, it shows how Jesi's studies (...) on festivity from the 1970s redound upon and transform the theory of revolt in Spartakus, bringing this theory more in line with current epochal conditions. In doing so, they presage and lay the groundwork for the theory of destituent power developed in recent decades by Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

This paper argues that, if we believe both in works of music and sets, that the former are the latter. My argument is that such an ontology offers more explanatory power than the alternatives when it comes to explaining why works of music fall under the predicates that they do.

In Heidegger’s Being and Time certain concepts are discussed which are central to the ontological constitution of Dasein. This paper demonstrates the interesting manner in which some of these concepts can be used in a reading of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. A comparative analysis is performed, explicating the relevant Heideggerian terms and then relating them to Eliot’s poem. In this way strong parallels are revealed between the two men’s respective thoughts and distinct modernist sensibilities. Prufrock, (...) the protagonist of the poem, and the world he inhabits illustrate poetically concepts such as authenticity, inauthenticity, the ‘they’, idle talk and angst, which Heidegger develops in Being and Time. (shrink)

Why does Derek Parfit, a philosopher very much associated with the University of Oxford, use pictures of St. Petersburg on the covers of volumes of On What Matters? Perhaps it is because he regards his agony argument as like something from Russian literature. But I can envisage a response to the argument from such literature.

Rừng mang lại những lợi ích rất to lớn và trong hơn một thập kỷ qua, chuyển đổi rừng (forest transition-FT) đã nhận được sự quan tâm rất lớn của các học giả toàn cầu.

Seunghyun Song’s recent article on epistemic repair for Japan’s military sex slavery lays out the case for considering acknowledgment as a form of reparative justice particularly suited to redressing epistemic wrongs. I agree with Song, but press her on the relationship between epistemic repair and reparative justice more generally. I also outline other forms that backward-looking epistemic responsibility might take. Distinguishing between revisionism and denialism, I ask: Should individual agents who’ve publicly made denialist statements about Japan’s military sex slavery be (...) criminally liable? Should their revisionist counterparts be subject to the kind of social sanctions that are associated with present-day cancel culture? (shrink)

By understanding the sense in which Sextus thinks reason is deceptive we may clarify his attitude towards ordinary life. The deception, like that of the Siren's song, is practical rather than epistemic. It is not a matter of leading us to assent to false or unjustified conclusions but is rather a distraction from, or even corruption of, ordinary life.

Structural Realism (SR) is typically rated as a moderate realist doctrine about the ultimate entities of nature described by fundamental physics. Whether it must be extended to the higher-level special sciences is not so clear. In this short paper I argue that there is no need to ‘structuralize’ the special sciences. By mounting concrete examples I show that structural descriptions and structural laws certainly play a role in the special sciences, but that they don’t play any exclusive role nor that (...) they give us any reason to believe that all that there is on the various levels is structure. I fortify my points by arguing that structures are global entities (in order for SR not to collapse into a bundle ontology) and that the assumption of higher-level structures as genuinely global or holistic entities is even more arcane. (shrink)

This paper explores some phenomenological consequences of the ontological affinity between films and pop songs. Given the central place of the recording technology in both films and pop songs, one can wonder whether pop songs can elicit from their listeners the same kind of experience that films elicit from their spectators. In other words, one can wonder whether pop songs encourage us to play a ‘game of make-believe’ analogous to that we play when we engage with (...) films. The main part of the paper is meant to provide a positive answer to this question. The remaining sections illustrate and test the proposed account by contrasting paradigmatic pop songs with borderline cases. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss a few ways in which songs are used, ways in which listeners engage with and find meaning in music. I am most interested in sad songs—those that typically feature narratives about lost love, separation, missed opportunity, regret, hardship, and all manner of heartache. Many of us are drawn to sad songs in moments of emotional distress. The problem is that sad songs do not always make us feel better; to the contrary, (...) they often make us feel worse. So, why do we listen to sad songs? I argue that we seek out sad songs, partly, to intensify distress, which helps us reflect on situations of profound personal significance. (shrink)

This article focuses on the use of one verse from the Biblical Songs of Songs in central passages of Giordano Bruno's first published book on the art of memory. De umbris idearum [On the Shadows of Ideas] not solely aims at improving mnemonic capacities, it also envisages the preconditions and limits of cognition in Bruno's new inifitist cosmology. Taking relevant scholarly literature on the topic as a point of departure, this contribution presents De umbris in the context of (...) Bruno's philosophy in general; it focuses on Bruno's evocation of Origen's commentary on that passage in the Song of Songs. The article analyzes in detail the reasons for Bruno's subversion of the traditional exegetic tradition that was massively influenced by Origen's spiritualized reading of the Song of Songs. Bruno's misappropriation of the Origen's commentary turns out to be a mise en abyme, a mannerist strategy of representation. It not only reflects the very method that underlies Bruno's art of memory, but is also to be understood as a conscious subversion of exegetic traditions in general. (shrink)

A systematic analysis of land use/cover change is so decisive to exactly understand the extent of change and take essential measures to curb down the rate of changes and protect the land cover resources sustainably. This land use/land cover change study was conducted in Agarfa district of Bale zone, Oromia Regional State, Southeastern Ethiopia. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the trends, drivers and its socio-economic and environmental implication in study area. A descriptive research method (...) was employed to achieve the intended objectives of the study. In the three years (1976, 1995, and 2014) Landsat Satellite images and socio-economic survey were the main data sources for this study. ERDAS Imagine and Arch-GIS tools were used to classify and generate land use/land cover maps of the study area. Survey questionnaires, key informant interviews, and field observation were employed to obtain information on drivers and its socio-economic and environmental implication in the district. The results show that the land use/land cover of the study area had changed dramatically during the period of 38 years. A rapid loss of forest land and shrub land cover in the landscape took place between 1976 and 2014. Conversely, agriculture and grazing lands were increased by 30% and 42% respectively at the expense of the lost land use/land cover types. Forest land is the most converted cover type during the entire study period. In the 38 years, forest lands diminished by over 65% of the original forest cover that was existed at the base year (1976). Local climate change, declining agricultural productivity and livestock quantity and quality and scarcity of fuel wood and constructional materials were some of the socio-economic and livelihood impacts of land use and land cover change of the study area. Thus, this finding affords information to land users and policy makers on extent of the change and social forces leading to this changes and its subsequent implication on local socio-economic and environmental conditions of the study area. (shrink)

In their article, “Immigrant legalization: A Dilemma Between Justice and The Rule of Law,” Sarah Song and Irene Bloemraad address rule of law objections to policies that would regularize the status of undocumented immigrants in the United States. On their view, justice requires that liberal democratic states (i.e., states that are committed to individual liberty and universal equality) provide pathways for undocumented immigrants to regularize their status. We do not disagree with Song and Bloemraad’s account: rule of law and regularization (...) policies are not inconsistent, and in fact regularization supports rule of law, when properly understood. Our view is that there needs to be a deeper investigation into the motivations of “rule of law” objections considered in Song and Bloemraad’s account. We argue that the real purpose of these objections is not necessarily to serve as an alternative to the justice-based claims of undocumented immigrants, but as a way to undermine them. On our account, these rule of law objections accomplish this undermining task through the mechanisms of dog whistling, discrediting and distorting, and ostracizing. (shrink)

Qualitative fieldwork research on sensitive topics sometimes requires that interviewees be granted confidentiality and anonymity. When qualitative researchers later publish their findings, they must ensure that any statements obtained during fieldwork interviews cannot be traced back to the interviewees. Given these protections to interviewees, the integrity of the published findings cannot usually be verified or replicated by third parties, and the scholarly community must trust the word of qualitative researchers when they publish their results. This trust is fundamentally abused, however, (...) when researchers publish articles reporting qualitative fieldwork data that they never collected. Using only publicly available information, I argue that a 2017 article in an Elsevier foreign policy and international relations journal presents anonymised fieldwork interviews that could not have occurred as described. As an exercise in post-publication peer review (PPPR), this paper examines the evidence that calls into question the reliability of the putative fieldwork quotations. I show further that the 2017 article is not a unique case. The anonymity and confidentiality protections common in some areas of research create an ethical problem: the protections necessary for obtaining research data can be used as a cover to hide substandard research practices as well as research misconduct. (shrink)

‘Experience is the best teacher’ goes the cliché without ever making clear just want is meant by that slippery first term. ‘Experience is never remembered unaltered’ goes another. Is experience something to be undergone, like a journey, or is it perhaps the relational immediacy between organism and environment? What do we reference when we use the term experience? -/- Martin Jay, renowned intellectual historian from UC Berkeley, here examines these questions in a grand survey of the term’s use throughout the (...) intellectual history of what was once called Western Civilization. Beginning with the ancient Greeks (of course), he reviews the surprising number of variations employed and assumed by philosophers, theologians critical theorists, and right up to the poststructuralists. Jay knows his territory and reading this survey of it — for anyone with any sort of background in the history of philosophy — is often as pleasant as hearing a familiar symphony well-played in a unique way. (shrink)

Trong ghi chép ngắn, chúng tôi đưa sớm ra một số suy nghĩ về việc xây dựng văn hóa phụng sự môi trường, xuất phát từ một góc nhìn gần gũi với hoạt động văn hóa, nghệ thuật. Đó là góc nhìn từ lối sống của một tập hợp, có lẽ hiện nay khá bé, những nhân vật được yêu mến bởi dông đảo công chúng khán giả, thông qua các vai diễn trên màn ảnh. Họ hay được gọi bằng (...) danh xưng rất đặc trưng văn chương, báo chí là những “minh tinh màn bạc”. Những suy nghĩ này có nguồn gốc từ thực tế quan sát được cho thấy, đôi khi những thứ gọi là “lạ đời” chẳng qua chỉ mang ý nghĩa không được số đông thực hành mà thôi. Nó không hoàn toàn mang ý nghĩa sai lạc, hay phản logic, hay trái đạo lý. Thậm chí có thể ngược lại, chưa chắc cái được số đông thực hành có nghĩa là đúng đắn, logic hay hợp đạo lý! (shrink)

Bài viết khám phá các thách thức mà văn hóa tiêu dùng và đề xuất rằng, việc chuyển đổi sang lối sống đơn giản và tiết kiệm trong cuộc cuộc chiến chống biến đổi khí hậu (BĐKH).

Hôm nay, ngày cận kề cuối năm, Tổng cục Thống kê đã công bố số liệu kinh tế ước tính cả năm 2023. Đây là những con số rất nhiều người trông ngóng, bao gồm cả nhà đầu tư, giới kinh doanh, thị trường chứng khoán, và lẽ tự nhiên rất nhiều hộ gia đình ở Việt Nam.