While standard first-order modal logic is quite powerful, it cannot express even very simple sentences like “I could have been taller than I actually am” or “Everyone could have been smarter than they actually are”. These are examples of cross-world predication, whereby objects in one world are related to objects in another world. Extending first-order modal logic to allow for cross-world predication in a motivated way has proven to be notoriously difficult. In this paper, (...) I argue that the standard accounts of cross-world predication all leave something to be desired. I then propose an account of cross-world predication based on quantified hybrid logic and show how it overcomes the limitations of these previous accounts. I will conclude by discussing various philosophical consequences and applications of such an account. (shrink)

This article explains and defends a novel idea about how people can be misled by a discussion topic, even if the discussion itself does not explicitly involve the making of false claims. The crucial aspect of this idea is that people are liable to infer, from the fact that a particular topic is being discussed, that this topic is important. As a result, they may then be led to accept certain beliefs about the state of the world they consider (...) necessary for the topic’s importance. What the article calls “importance misrepresentation” occurs when these beliefs about the state of the world are false or otherwise mistaken. The article explores different ways in which importance misrepresentation can occur, and it uses this idea to help clarify and strengthen some well‐known criticisms of the topic choices of academic philosophers. (shrink)

Divers (2014) argues that a Lewisian theory of modality which includes both counterpart theory and modal realism cannot account for the truth of certain intuitively true modal sentences involving cross-world comparatives. The main purpose of this paper is to defend the Lewisian theory against Divers’s challenge by developing a response strategy based on a degree-theoretic treatment of comparatives and by showing that this treatment is compatible with the theory.

The first section of this paper introduces talk about absolutely everything -- the world as a totality -- as an integral element in the project of natural theology, as it has been presented by Fergus Kerr and Denys Turner respectively. The following section presents talk about the world as a totality of facts as a theme in philosophical logic and outlines a problem it has given rise to there. After confronting the solution originally suggested by Bertrand Russell and (...) defended by David Armstrong, the paper points to key elements of the solution presented by Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I show how Wittgenstein’s answer to the question of unrestricted quantification draws on his notion of showing and the inexpressible. Against this background, the concluding section draws attention to an important difference in ambition between Kerr’s and Turner’s description of the prospects for natural theology. (shrink)

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A (...) unique feature of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

While the process of influence between various cultural and historical traditions in philosophy has been taking place for thousands of years, this inter-cultural interaction is occurring at a more accelerated pace in the information age. While philosophers throughout history have used visual representations to understand philosophical influence and historical origins and the distribution of philosophical ideas and sub-disciplines, this paper stresses the importance of philosophical visualizations to represent the global interactivity of philosophy. It provides various visualizations to represent global philosophical (...) interaction, the penetration of Western philosophical ideas into non-Western philosophical traditions, and the appropriation of non-Western traditions by Western philosophers. Such visualizations are important in the contemporary age to promote regional philosophies, to understand philosophical influence and to understand the promotion of a kind of pluralism which remains engaged with the global world. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

Quantification, Negation, and Focus: Challenges at the Conceptual-Intentional Semantic Interface Tista Bagchi National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies (NISTADS) and the University of Delhi Since the proposal of Logical Form (LF) was put forward by Robert May in his 1977 MIT doctoral dissertation and was subsequently adopted into the overall architecture of language as conceived under Government-Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981), there has been a steady research effort to determine the nature of LF in language in light of (...) structurally diverse languages around the world, which has ultimately contributed to the reinterpretation of LF as a Conceptual-Intentional (C-I) interface level between the computational syntactic component of the faculty of language and one or more interpretive faculties of the human mind. While this has opened up further possibilities of research in phenomena such as quantifier scope and scope interactions between negation, quantification, and focus, it has also given rise to a few real challenges to linguistic theory as well. Some of these are: (i) the split between lexical meaning – a matter supposedly belonging to the phase-wise selection of lexical arrays – and issues of semantic interpretation that arise purely from binding and scope phenomena (Mukherji 2010); (ii) partially relatedly, the level at which theta role assignment can be argued to take place, an issue that is taken up by me in Bagchi (2007); and (iii) how supposedly “pure” scopal phenomena relating to quantifiers, negation, and emphasizing expressions such as only and even (comparable to, e.g., Urdu/Hindi hii and bhii, Bangla –i and –o) also have dimensions of both focus and discourse reference. While recognizing all of these challenges, this talk aims to highlight particularly challenge (iii), both in terms of scholarship in the past and for the rich prospects for research on languages of south Asia with the semantics of quantification, negation, and focus in view. The scholarship of the past that I seek to relate this issue to is where, parallel to (and largely independently of) the research on LF that had been happening, Barwise and Cooper were developing their influential view of noun phrases as generalized quantifiers, culminating in their key 1981 article “Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language” while, independently, McCawley, in his 1981 book Everything that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know about Logic, established through argumentation that all noun phrases semantically behave like generalized quantified expressions (further elaborated by him in the second – 1994 – revised edition of his book). I seek to demonstrate, based on limited data analysis from selected languages of south Asia, that our current understanding of quantification, negation, and focus under the Minimalist view owes something significant to the two major, but now largely marginalized, works of scholarship, and that for the way forward it is essential to adopt a more formal-semantic approach as adopted by them and also by later works such as Denis Bouchard’s (1995) The Semantics of Syntax, Mats Rooth’s work on focus (e.g., Rooth 1996, “Focus” in Shalom Lappin’s Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory), Heim and Kratzer’s Semantics in Generative Grammar (1998), and Yoad Winter’s (2002) Linguistic Inquiry article on semantic number, to cite just a few instances. (shrink)

This paper describes quantificational structures in Greenlandic Eskimo (Kalaallisut), a language where familiar quantificational meanings are expressed in ways that are quite different from English. Evidence from this language thus poses some formidable challenges for cross-linguistic theories of compositional semantics.

This paper is the twin of (Duží and Jespersen, in submission), which provides a logical rule for transparent quantification into hyperprop- ositional contexts de dicto, as in: Mary believes that the Evening Star is a planet; therefore, there is a concept c such that Mary be- lieves that what c conceptualizes is a planet. Here we provide two logical rules for transparent quantification into hyperpropositional contexts de re. (As a by-product, we also offer rules for possible- world (...) propositional contexts.) One rule validates this inference: Mary believes of the Evening Star that it is a planet; therefore, there is an x such that Mary believes of x that it is a planet. The other rule validates this inference: the Evening Star is such that it is believed by Mary to be a planet; therefore, there is an x such that x is believed by Mary to be a planet. Issues unique to the de re variant include partiality and existential presupposition, sub- stitutivity of co-referential (as opposed to co-denoting or synony- mous) terms, anaphora, and active vs. passive voice. The validity of quantifying-in presupposes an extensional logic of hyperinten- sions preserving transparency and compositionality in hyperinten- sional contexts. This requires raising the bar for what qualifies as co-denotation or equivalence in extensional contexts. Our logic is Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic. The syntax of TIL is the typed lambda calculus; its highly expressive semantics is based on a procedural redefinition of, inter alia, functional abstraction and application. The two non-standard features we need are a hyper- intension (called Trivialization) that presents other hyperintensions and a four-place substitution function (called Sub) defined over hy- perintensions. (shrink)

Nobody doubts that culture plays a decisive role in understanding human forms of life. But it is unclear how this decisive role should be integrated into a comprehensive explanatory model of human behaviour that brings together naturalistic and social-scientific perspectives. Cultural difference, cultural learning, cultural determination do not mix well with the factors that are normally given full explanatory value in the more naturalistic approaches to the study of human behaviour. My purpose in this paper is to alert to some (...) of the theoretical vulnerabilities or concerns that the cross-cultural study of mind and behaviour might entail. I classify these theoretical concerns into three, loosely defined, categories: epistemological, ontological and ethical. The first have to do with what in anthropology was once labelled as ‘butterfly collecting’. What kind of supplementary, or additional, general theoretical knowledge do we produce when we add to the research different, particularistic, culturally determined, ways of knowing? Ontological concerns refer to the underlying reality that those ways of knowing are meant to disclose. If there are so many ways of knowing the world, where is the reality to be known? Ethical concerns are those entailed in the forms of ‘othering’ that unqualified cross-cultural research is likely to produce in research participants. (shrink)

Formal semantics has so far focused on three categories of quantifiers, to wit, Q-determiners (e.g. 'every'), Q-adverbs (e.g. 'always'), and Q-auxiliaries (e.g. 'would'). All three can be analyzed in terms of tripartite logical forms (LF). This paper presents evidence from verbs with distributive affixes (Q-verbs), in Kalaallisut, Polish, and Bininj Gun-wok, which cannot be analyzed in terms of tripartite LFs. It is argued that a Q-verb involves discourse reference to a distributive verbal dependency, i.e. an episode-valued function that sends different (...) semantic objects in a contextually salient plural domain to different episodes. (shrink)

The World Economic Forum notes that there is an economic gap between Indonesia and Malaysia every year as seen from GDP per capita. The economic disparity between the two countries caused differences in available employment opportunities. Limited employment opportunities in Indonesia cause an increase in unemployment in Indonesia. The high unemployment rate in West Kalimantan is the main cause of the migration of Indonesians to Malaysia with the aim of carrying out economic and trade activities in the Serikin Market (...) which is located in Sarawak, East Malaysia. The market only takes about 15 minutes from the Jagoi Babang. This study used primary data collected by using in-depth interview and observation techniques which was analyzed qualitatively. The study found that in general the migration patterns of Indonesian traders who traded in the Serikin Market practiced non-permanent mobility patterns. The opportunities of cross-border trade carried out by Indonesian traders are reducing unemployment, facilitating product marketing, increasing income. While the challenges faced are the inadequacy of the road infrastructure, the quality of merchandise that is not good, the unavailability of lodging for Indonesian traders in the border area of Jagoi Babang, shop rental prices are relatively expensive. Basically, this research is to provide empirical data regarding to opportunities and challenges of cross-border traders that will be able to be used for future research related to strategies in managing cross-border trade Hopefully, this research will contribute significantly to generate an effective migration policy in order to minimize transnational crimes. (shrink)

According to Leininger, presentists and growing blockers cannot explain why past and present regularities persist in the future. In order to do so, they would have to appeal to enforcers, such as causation, laws or dispositions. But in a world with no future, these enforcers are powerless and cannot guarantee future regularity. I disagree and argue that Leininger’s coordination problem can be met by distinguishing type- from token-level necessitation. Whereas token-level necessitation is cross-temporal and subject to Leininger’s coordination (...) problem, type-level necessitation is atemporal and immune to the coordination problem. For this solution to work, though, type-level necessitation must be ontologically prior to token-level necessitation. This forces us to adopt a Platonist position according to which universals are transcendent, and not immanent. (shrink)

Nobody doubts that culture plays a decisive role in understanding human forms of life. But it is unclear how this decisive role should be integrated into a comprehensive explanatory model of human behaviour that brings together naturalistic and social-scientific perspectives. Cultural difference, cultural learning, cultural determination do not mix well with the factors that are normally given full explanatory value in the more naturalistic approaches to the study of human behaviour. My purpose in this paper is to alert to some (...) of the theoretical vulnerabilities or concerns that the cross-cultural study of mind and behaviour might entail. I classify these theoretical concerns into three, loosely defined, categories: epistemological, ontological and ethical. The first have to do with what in anthropology was once labelled as ‘butterfly collecting’. What kind of supplementary, or additional, general theoretical knowledge do we produce when we add to the research different, particularistic, culturally determined, ways of knowing? Ontological concerns refer to the underlying reality that those ways of knowing are meant to disclose. If there are so many ways of knowing the world, where is the reality to be known? Ethical concerns are those entailed in the forms of ‘othering’ that unqualified cross-cultural research is likely to produce in research participants. (shrink)

The tenth volume of the Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy focuses on the theme of “transition,” dealing with transitory and intermediary phenomena and practices such as translation, transmission, and transformation. Written in English, German and Japanese, the contributions explore a wide range of topics, crossing disciplinary borders between phenomenology, linguistics, feminism, epistemology, aesthetics, political history, martial arts, spiritual practice and anthropology, and bringing Japanese philosophy into cross-cultural dialogue with other philosophical traditions. As exercises in “thinking in transition,” the essays reveal (...) novel modes of doing philosophy as a way of boundary crossing that takes transition not only as an object of inquiry, but also as a method of philosophical practice itself. (shrink)

I present a new problem for the tense realist concerning the evaluation of cross-temporal claims, such as ‘John is now taller than Michael was in 1984’. Time can play two different roles in the evaluation of an utterance of a sentence: either as an element that completes the content expressed by the utterance (the completion role), or as part of the circumstances against which the content is evaluated (the evaluation role). It is this latter role that time plays in (...) the realist view of tenses. I argue that if the content of a cross-temporal sentence is taken at face value (as an ascription of a crosstemporally instantiated relation), time does not play the evaluation role. Therefore, the world of the tense realist seems to leave no room for cross-temporality. (shrink)

Realists about possible worlds typically identify possible worlds with abstract objects, such as propositions or properties. However, they face a significant objection due to Lewis (1986), to the effect that there is no way to explain how possible worlds-as-abstract objects represent possibilities. In this paper, I describe a response to this objection on behalf of realists. The response is to identify possible worlds with propositions, but to deny that propositions are abstract objects, or indeed objects at all. Instead, I argue (...) that realists should follow Prior (1971) and others in treating higher-order quantification (e.g. quantification into predicate or sentence position) as a genuine form of quantification in its own right, and so in particular, not to be analysed in terms of first-order quantification over abstract objects. I argue that from this ‘higher-orderist’ perspective, there is a relatively straightforward answer to the question of how possible worlds-as-propositions succeed in representing possibilities. (shrink)

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

In a world of ever growing specialization, the idea of a unity of science is commonly discarded, but cooperative work involving cross-disciplinary points of view is encouraged. The aim of this paper is to show with some textual support that Charles S. Peirce not only identified this paradoxical situation a century ago, but he also mapped out some paths for reaching a successful solution. A particular attention is paid to Peirce's classification of the sciences and to his conception (...) of science as a collective and cooperative activity of all those whose lives are animated by the desire to discover the truth. -/- . (shrink)

In the Nintendo game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players move to an uninhabited island and quickly become instrumental to the naming, aesthetic development, and biodiversity of the island. In some ways, the game can foster a love for and curiosity about nature. In other ways, the game reinforces harmful colonialist values and attitudes that are ultimately an obstacle to conservation in the real world. Here I critique the game values relevant to conservation, both the values that benefit and the (...) values that hinder conservation. I discuss possibilities for a future version of the game that reinforces values better aligned with conservation. (shrink)

A rich and multi-stranded sociology of sporting embodiment has begun to emerge in recent years. Calls have been made to analyze more deeply not only the sensory dimensions of lived sporting bodies but also the values prevailing within particular physical–cultural worlds. This article contributes to a small, developing research corpus by employing theoretical perspectives drawn from phenomenological sociology to explore cross-country runners' sensory encounters with the elemental, contoured by the values of the running lifeworlds they inhabit. Autoethnographic and autophenomenographic (...) data were collected via three research projects. Senses of touch still remain under-researched within the sporting sensorium, and here we focus on the “elemental haptics” of earth and air on our cross-country training runs. We also explore the rich, complex somatic experiences afforded by various of these elemental combinations. For runners, as for many sports participants, the haptic emerges as a key aspect of our sensuous running lifeworld. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential of integrating ancient educational principles from diverse eastern cultures into modern AI ethics curricula. It draws on the rich educational traditions of ancient China, India, Arabia, Persia, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, and Korea, highlighting their emphasis on philosophy, ethics, holistic development, and critical thinking. By examining these historical educational systems, the paper establishes a correlation with modern AI ethics principles, advocating for the inclusion of these ancient teachings in current AI development and education. The proposed integration (...) aims to provide a comprehensive education that not only encompasses foundational knowledge but also advanced learning, thereby equipping future AI professionals with the necessary tools to develop AI systems that are ethically responsible, culturally aware, and aligned with human values such as fairness, safety, transparency, and collaboration. This approach not only addresses the AI alignment problem but also fosters cultural harmony and global understanding, which are crucial in an increasingly interconnected world. The paper posits that the wisdom of ancient educational systems, when harmonized with modern AI ethics, can guide the development of AI technologies that are beneficial for humanity, ensuring these advancements are not just technologically sound but also ethically and culturally informed. (shrink)

Different cultures show different understandings of consciousness, soul, and spirit. Native indigenous traditions have recently seen a resurgence of interest and are being used in psychotherapy, mental health counselling, and psychiatry. The main aim of this review is to explore and summarize the native indigenous concepts of consciousness, soul, and spirit. Following a systematic review search, the peer-reviewed literature presenting research from 55 different cultural groups across regions of the world was retrieved. Information relating to native concepts of consciousness, (...) soul, and spirit were excerpted from the sources and contrasted. Contrasting these indigenous concepts revealed important implications for understanding consciousness within a cross-cultural perspective and has practical implications for applied approaches utilizing native indigenous traditions. (shrink)

The work described in this report is motivated by the desire to test the expressive possibilities of action language C+. The Causal Calculator (CCalc) is a system that answers queries about action domains described in a fragment of that language. The Zoo World and the Traffic World have been proposed by Erik Sandewall in his Logic Modelling Workshop—an environment for communicating axiomatizations of action domains of nontrivial size. -/- The Zoo World consists of several cages and the (...) exterior, gates between them, and animals of several species, including humans. Actions in this domain include moving within and between cages, opening and closing gates, and mounting and riding animals. The Traffic World includes vehicles moving continuously between road crossings subject to a number of restrictions, such as speed limits and keeping a fixed safety distance away from other vehicles on the road. We show how to represent the two domains in the input language of CCalc, and how to use CCalc to test these representations. (shrink)

This is a copy of the presentation given at the "Workshop on Agency and Distributed Cognition" at Macquarie University, March 2012. What is noteworthy about this piece of work is that (i) it is a very early foray into the pedagogy, ontology, and epistemology of virtual worlds (it's 2012, way before David Chalmers' book "Reality+" in 2022); and (ii) it was my first foray into "social epistemology" beyond the standard "S knows that p" epistemology, drawing on Vygotskian collaborative approaches to (...) learning and teaching, moving beyond analytic philosophy into educational research. Finally, (iii) there's a hyperlink to the actual virtual world in Unity3D created by a cross-disciplinary team of researchers from Sydney University and Macquarie University for the purposes of teaching scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Reductionists about dispositions must either say the natural properties are all dispositional or individuate properties hyperintensionally. Lewis stands in as an example of the sort of combination I think is incoherent: properties individuated by modal profile + categoricalism.

In Writing the Book of the World, Ted Sider argues that David Lewis’s distinction between those predicates which are ‘perfectly natural’ and those which are not can be extended so that it applies to words of all semantic types. Just as there are perfectly natural predicates, there may be perfectly natural connectives, operators, singular terms and so on. According to Sider, one of our goals as metaphysicians should be to identify the perfectly natural words. Sider claims that there is (...) a perfectly natural first-order quantifier. I argue that this claim is not justified. Quine has shown that we can dispense with first-order quantifiers, by using a family of ‘predicate functors’ instead. I argue that we have no reason to think that it is the first-order quantifiers, rather than Quine’s predicate functors, which are perfectly natural. The discussion of quantification is used to provide some motivation for a general scepticism about Sider’s project. Shamik Dasgupta’s ‘generalism’ and Jason Turner’s critique of ‘ontological nihilism’ are also discussed. (shrink)

This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as biological taxonomy, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and political ecology. We conclude by (...) arguing that a program of ethnoontology provides philosophers both with insights about traditional issues such as debates about natural kinds and with novel strategies for connecting philosophy with pressing global issues such as the conservation of local environments and the self‐determination of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

This study investigated the perception of how methods of entrepreneurial education predict the level of economic security in the Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State. It was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses, tested at a significant level of 0.05. The research design was a survey. The study had 350 participants. A 40-item "Entrepreneurship Education and Economic Security Questionnaire" (EEESQ) was validated by five experts from the University of Calabar and used in data collection. The EEESQ (...) was pilot tested on 30 respondents who were not a part of the study sample. In order to evaluate the consistency of the EEESQ, Cronbach Alpha statistics were used, and they yielded reliability values of 0.84 and 0.80 for the independent and dependent variables, respectively. Three hundred and fifty respondents responded to the instrument, which was administered. In order to find the answers to the study questions and test the hypotheses, data were analyzed using linear regression analysis at the significant level of .05. The study discovered that experiential and transdisciplinary teaching strongly predict economic security. It was recommended that educators at various stages should introduce students to real-world scenarios when teaching entrepreneurship education. (shrink)

The story of incarceration of some members of the society is a topical and current issue that requires urgent attention. The culture of some societies of the world, and in particular the Yala communities of Cross River State of Nigeria, seems to ignore the essence of human equality and dignity. The aim of this article is the documentation of stratification of the Caste practices among the three Yala communities in Cross River State. From this article, it is (...) obvious that for any society to be peaceful, progressive and to realize its full developmental capabilities and potentials, all forms of discriminatory practices must not exist. Nevertheless, where this is an acceptable socio-cultural practice of a people and in the light of present day realities of religious pluralism and globalization, the time has come that the Yala people should not preserve that aspect of culture which hinders its progress. (shrink)

In “Global Knowledge Frameworks and the Tasks of Cross-Cultural Philosophy,” Leigh Jenco searches for the conception of knowledge that best justifies the judgment that one can learn from non-local traditions of philosophy. Jenco considers four conceptions of knowledge, namely, in catchwords, the esoteric, Enlightenment, hermeneutic, and self- transformative conceptions of knowledge, and she defends the latter as more plausible than the former three. In this critical discussion of Jenco’s article, I provide reason to doubt the self-transformative conception, and also (...) advance a fifth, pluralist conception of knowledge that I contend best explains the prospect of learning from traditions other than one’s own. (shrink)

This paper outlines new work in cross-cultural psychology largely drawn from Nisbett, Choi, and Smith (Cognition, 65, 15–32, 1997); Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, Psychological Review, 108(2), 291–310, 2001; Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. New York: Free Press 2003), Ji, Zhang and Nisbett (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 57–65, 2004), Norenzayan (2000) and Peng (Naive Dialecticism and its Effects on Reasoning and Judgement about Contradiction. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (...) 1997) Peng and Nisbett (Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in the Understanding of Physical Causality. Paper presented at the Science and Culture: Proceedings of the Seventh Interdisciplinary Conference on Science and Culture, Frankfort, K. Y. 1996), and Peng, Ames, & Knowles (Culture and Human Inference: Perspectives from three traditions. In: D. Matsumoto (Ed.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (pp. 1–2). Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000). The paper argues that the findings on cultural influences on inference-making have implications for teaching and education generally, and specifically for the debate on conceptions and misconceptions of Asian students studying in western tertiary institutions around the world. The position defended is that, while there seems to be compelling empirical evidence for intercultural differences in thought patterns, these patterns are, for the most part, insignificant in everyday exchanges, though language and culture might subtlety modulate our inference-making at the margins. Linguistic determinism however is not defended. Nonetheless, the evidence provides food for thought, and it needs to inform the recent debates about international students studying overseas. (shrink)

How can a metaphysics of abstract entities be built upon a metaphysics of time? In this paper, I address the question of how to accommodate abstract entities in a presentist world. I consider both the traditional metaontological approach of unrestricted fundamental quantification and then ontological pluralism. I argue that under the former we need to impose two constraints in the characterization of presentism in order to avoid undesired commitments to abstract entities: we have to characterize presentism as a (...) thesis only about the concrete, and we also need to avoid the widely held distinction between tensed and tenseless senses of existence. Under ontological pluralism, instead, I argue that we can naturally accommodate any view of abstract objects in a presentist world. (shrink)

The movement of people from one country to another in search of greener pasture, peaceful settlement and so on, has become very rampant in the world today. These same reasons have triggered internal migrations as well. Lives have been lost in the bid to circumvent immigration laws of countries by immigrants. The current spate of wars, political crises, natural disasters and hunger has led to increase in illegal migration in the world. Nigeria is not left out. We hear (...) of boundary clashes and insurgencies, which have resulted in illegal emigration to other countries basically in search of job opportunities and better living conditions. Nigerians have severally been repatriated from foreign lands. Recently, over five thousand Nigerians were repatriated from Libya. Nigeria has also played host to migrants from neighbouring countries, and has experienced internal migration in several parts of the country. The frequently asked questions are: “what role can religion play in curbing the spate of illegal migration and refugee crises in Cross River State, Nigeria? The research discovered that religion can be a veritable partner to government in resolving this ever-increasing menace that has become an embarrassment to the state and nation. This work adopted qualitative or explorative research method. It employed the content analysis approach in examining available printed materials on the subject matter. In view of its peculiarity, oral interviews were conducted on specific groups and individuals. This work proposes the involvement of religious organisations in preaching and teaching on the dangers of illegal migration, the provision of vocational training for our teaming youth population to reduce emigration, and the provision of counselling and resettlement programmes for the repatriated and those in refugee camps across the country. The work also encourages the government to evolve modalities to curb the spate of violence and bloodshed that has fuelled refugee crises in Cross River State and Nigeria in general. (shrink)

Mobile phones are part of a major growth industry in so-called Third World countries. As in other places, the use of this technology changes communication behaviour. The influence of these changes on indigenous social structures was investigated with a mixed-type questionnaire that targeted parameters such as: in-group vs. out-group communication, involvement with dominant industrial culture and the use of financial resources. Data was collected from indigenous representatives at the United Nations, as well as in Africa from subjects of various (...) cultural backgrounds, and from a control group in Berlin. The results reflect widespread use of mobile phones among indigenous persons, having a segregating effect within the indigenous community, but also enhancing ingroup communication and especially the use of the indigenous language. Mobile phones also facilitate moves from village to town, with the opportunity of frequently communicating with other in-group members. (shrink)

This study assessed school-community relationship and school system effectiveness in secondary schools in Cross River State. Four null hypotheses were formulated accordingly as guide to the study. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. A total of 1,480 academic staff which comprised 271 principals, and 396 vice principals selected through census technique, and 813 teachers selected using simple random sampling technique, were used to elicit data for the study. “School-Community Relationship and Secondary School System Effectiveness Questionnaire (SCRSSSEQ)” was used (...) as instrument for data collection. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while the null hypotheses were all tested at .05 level of significance using Pearson Product Moment Correlation with the aid of SPSS version 21. Findings from the study revealed that: parent-teachers’ relationship, school- community use of resources, school-community communication and school-community collaboration are significantly related to secondary school system effectiveness respectively, in Calabar Municipal Area of Cross River State. It was concluded that generally that school community relationship has significant relationship with school system effectiveness respectively. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended among others that; principals should setup active parents’ teachers’ associations in their schools with leaders of the association comprising of community members and staff of the school. This will serve as a link that binds the school to the community and will create a platform for discussing and settling disputes. (shrink)

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

Born December 2, 1848 in Gilcomston, Aberdeen, Scotland, Mary Mitchell Slessor, a five foot, red haired Scottish Missionary who pioneered her way into the jungles of Africa was undoubtedly one of the most outstanding missionaries who made tremendous contributions to evangelism, charity work, educational and healthcare services and publicized Nigeria in the map of the world. She faced many challenges living with the villagers, and at times, even had to be a peacemaker between tribesmen. Her work and strong personality (...) allowed her to be trusted and accepted by the locals while spreading Christianity in Nigeria, promoting women’s rights, rescuing unwanted children, protecting native children and died on 13 January, 1915 (aged 66) at Use Ikot Oku, Calabar, Nigeria. Beyond contribution to knowledge this brief work is therefore a legacy of Mary Mitchell Slessor’s contributions to the evangelization of Nigeria and Church History. (shrink)

“[…] To alleviate the boredom, after catching a fish, Kingfisher would press all three buttons before swallowing the fish. Pressing the buttons has gradually become somewhat of a new technological ritual.” -/- —In “Innovation”; The Kingfisher Story Collection.

The elderly face very challenging situations due to their mental and physical conditions. Like the other country in the world, Bangladesh Government has enacted laws to protect the elderly rights. However, the law does not seem to represent what the elderly actually needs. Therefore, 385 elderly people, aged between 60 and 90 years were surveyed to understand their expectations from family, society, and government. There were 57.1% men and 42.9% women. Most of the elderly (80%) were educated. Just over (...) half (53.5%) had ordinary mental and physical health, while a quarter (31.4%) had good status. More than half (53%) of the participants required 2000–5000 BDTK (Bangladeshi Taka) equivalent to $20-50 to cover monthly treatment expenditures. The majority (67.3%) felt government Old Age Allowance should be increased to BDT 5,000 ($50). Of 13.8% of individuals experienced harsh discourse from family because of the cost of therapy. However, 16.9% of people choose not to respond to this question. More than half (57.4%) of the respondents’ thought caregivers were insufficient. One-third felt that legislation should be changed to take care of parents (33.5%) and One-third felt that children should take care of more (33.5%). Some (3.6%) thought that children should act as they did in their childhood respectively. Almost half (44.2%) of respondents did not know that the elderly should receive a separate senior citizen card for preferential treatment, yet 51.9% thought this. Some (44.7%) felt the elderly should get priority in any queue and discounts in Bus/Uber/Rickshaw. Results also showed that expectation is more than the service provided. Further, a one-stop elderly care clinic is required to provide integrated care and support for the quality of life of the elderly. (shrink)

Resolving to finish reading a novel, staying true to your punk style, or dedicating your life to an artistic project: these are examples of aesthetic commitments. I develop an account of the nature of such commitments, and I argue that they are significant insofar as they help us manage the temporally extended nature of our aesthetic agency and our relationships with aesthetic objects. At the same time, focusing on aesthetic commitments can give us a better grasp on the nature of (...) aesthetic normativity; this is because, in making aesthetic commitments, we are capable of giving aesthetic concerns the weight of obligation. I argue that appealing to aesthetic commitments allows us to account for the existence of aesthetic obligations as well as their grounding. I conclude by arguing that, although the aesthetic domain is a domain of play and freedom of choice, there is nevertheless an important place in it for both aesthetic commitments and the aesthetic obligations they generate. (shrink)

The study examined disciplinary management in public primary schools and teachers' job effectiveness in Yakurr Local Government Area, Cross River State. Three null hypotheses were formulated accordingly to guide the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Census technique was adopted in selecting the entire population of 98 primary school managers which comprised of 49 head teachers and 49 deputy head teachers across 49 public primary schools available in the area. A questionnaire tagged: "Disciplinary Control in Public (...) Primary Schools and Teachers' Job Effectiveness Questionnaire (DCPPSTJEQ)" designed and administered by the researcher was used as an instrument for data collection. The null hypotheses were all tested at .05 level of significance using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis. Findings from the study revealed that warning, suspension, and dismissal have significant relationships respectively, to primary school teachers' job effectiveness. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended among others that; there should be fairness in the administration of suspension to all teachers through well- documented procedures. (shrink)

Most recent discussions of reasons in art criticism focus on reasons that justify beliefs about the value of artworks. Reviving a long-neglected suggestion from Paul Ziff, I argue that we should focus instead on art-critical reasons that justify actions—namely, particular ways of engaging with artworks. I argue that a focus on practical rather than theoretical reasons yields an understanding of criticism that better fits with our intuitions about the value of reading art criticism, and which makes room for a nuanced (...) distinction between criticism that aims at universality and criticism that is resolutely personal. (shrink)

The following is not a successful skeptical scenario: you think you know you have hands, but maybe you don't! Why is that a failure, when it's far more likely than, say, the evil genius hypothesis? That's the question.<br><br>This is an earlier draft.

This study develops conceptual means in philosophy of agency to better and more systematically address intentional omissions of agents, including those that are about resisting the action not done. I argue that even though philosophy of agency has largely concentrated on the actions of agents, when applying philosophy of action to the social sciences, a full-blown theoretical account of what agents do not do and a non-normative conceptual language of the phenomena in question is needed. Chapter 2 aims to find (...) out what kind of things intentional omissions are. I argue that although intentional omissions are part of our intentional behavior, they are not actions in the sense that the standard account of action assumes. Instead, because intentional omissions are homogenous, continuous, unbounded, indefinite and directly uncountable, they should be thought of as activities instead of performances. This view links the ontology of intentional omissions to the ontology of processes instead of to that of events, and I argue that this kind of ontology accounts for the fluid nature of the agency of alive agents not only instigating but controlling and sustaining their intentional omissions as well. Chapter 3 aims to find out on what conditions is an omission intentional. The aim is to find a naturalized explanation of them that would make it possible to combine psychological perspectives with philosophical ones so that intentional omissions could be treated as something that exist in the world, not just in our philosophical intuitions. I argue that intentional omissions necessarily require the agent’s procedural metacognition concerning the action not done. Based on this metacognition view, a non-normative conceptual typology of not doings is presented. Chapter 4 aims to find out on what conditions is an intentional omissions resistance toward something. The necessary elements of resistance are clarified and I argue that resistant intentional omissions in which the agent does not perform an action out of resistance toward something are a normal part of our everyday agency. The implications of the findings are considered for theories of action, especially when it comes to the belief-desire model that may not be able to fully account for resistant intentional omissions. Chapter 5 aims to find out what conceptual means do we have for talking about not doing something as a form of resistance. I argue that in the social sciences, bioethics and military ethics to not do something out of resistance is taken as something that exists, and as something that has causes and effects. However, concepts such as civil disobedience, conscientious refusing, exit and everyday resistance do not account for the ordinariness of this kind of not doings. Thus, I argue that such concepts are not able to fully cover resistant inaction and philosophy of intentional omissions can be of use not just in the social sciences. Finally, Chapter 6 considers the implications of these findings. The main implication of this study is that our view of social and ethical agency would need to better include intentional not doings, not just the sum of the intentional actions of agents. Another major implication is that agents themselves should be heard when analyzing their intentional omissions in society, because intentional omissions are phenomena that can easily be mixed with the passivities of agents from the perspective of an outside observer. (shrink)

The current debate on literary cognitivism in the philosophy of fiction typically assumes that we can rigorously distinguish between fictional and factual, and focuses on the question of whether and how works of fiction can impart propositional knowledge to the reader. In this paper we suggest that this way of framing the debate may be problematic. We argue that works of fiction almost inevitably include a reference to the real world and that – contrary to what is usually assumed (...) – the exchange between fiction and reality is vivid as well as potentially fruitful. We shed a new light on these complex dynamics by building on the metaphors of trade exchange and smuggling between the two worlds. While the current debate exclusively focuses on cognitively relevant goods that “officially” cross the border through “customs”, as it were, we show that exchanges between fiction and reality run deeper. Indeed, as we show, a substantial part of the cognitive impact that we derive from fiction goes “under the table” and is “smuggled” from fiction to reality. As such, it bypasses the audience’s conscious control, which in turn explains the manipulative force that fiction can exert. Smuggling takes place when cognitively relevant contents are passed on to the reader in subliminal ways, as it happens when they imprint implicit biases or prejudices, shift perspectives or subtly modify habits or patterns of behavior. By elaborating on the metaphors of trade exchange and smuggling, we aim at presenting a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the relations between fiction and reality and on the impact that imagination has on our real-world beliefs. (shrink)

Hegel's reading of Hafez as part of his Berlin aesthetics lectures. The jargon of the prosaic world -/- This essay deals with Hegel's reading (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831) of Hafez' poetry (Moḥammad Schams ad-Din Hafez Schirazi, around 1315 - 1390) during his lectures on the Aesthetics or Philosophy of Art at the University of Berlin (1820/21; 1823; 1826; 1828/29). Hegel's writings, Lectures on Aesthetics, were published from his remains by Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802 - 1873) in (...) three volumes (1835 - 1838) and in a second edition from 1842 onwards. The posthumously published writings of Hegel are, considering the preserved archive material and the unreliable editing work by Hotho, a thoroughly complex research topic. Therefore, this problem area also forms the starting point of the present analysis of Hegel's reading of Hafez. -/- Within the framework of this essay, Hegel's categories of historical frameworks (Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art), especially that of the "Symbolic Art", are examined in his lectures on Aesthetics . This will do in three steps: starting with the current state of research, problematizing of Hegelian concepts in his Lectures on Aesthetics like "oriental Pantheism" or Vorkunst, ("the threshold of art" or "praeambula": T. M. Knox' translation, 1975, part I); extending the discussion by focusing on similarities and differences between Hegel's reading of Goethe (part II) and Hegel's reading of Hafez (part III) in his Berlin Aesthetics Lectures of the 1820's. For this purpose, material from Goethe's literary remains (II), as well as a masterpiece of Dutch painters van Eyck analyzed by Hegel (Ghent Altarpiece) during his lectures (III), will be included in the analysis and explored from an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective. In doing so, Goethe's “Space of Experience and Horizon of Expectation” (Koselleck) in imitating Arabic script and calligraphy (II) is linked to Hegel's reading of Hafez during his Berlin lectures on aesthetics (III). Thus, a dialogue of cultures unfolds between poetry and philosophy. The main questions are: How does the German philosopher Hegel interpret and receive Hafiz's poetry in the context of German idealist philosophy as a topic of his lectures on aesthetics? What epistemological aspects can be gained from Hegel's reading of Hafez for a cultural studies analysis, especially regarding the history of the ideas? In addition to analyzing the historical aspects, the aim is also to uncover new perspectives in order to look with Hafez and Rumi at Hegel's problem child of ‘history’. Of particular interest are epistemological aspects and problems of reception and translation studies in sense of interdisciplinary and intercultural research (e. g. connected/entangled histories; boundary objects). Interculturality is understood in the context of the present essay as a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework in the sense of entangled histories research work interwoven with communication, aesthetic and cultural techniques approaches or resilience studies in a historical perspective. (shrink)

Cross-cultural comparisons face several methodological challenges. In an attempt at resolving some such challenges, Nathan Sivin has developed the framework of “cultural manifolds.” This framework includes all the pertinent dimensions of a complex phenomenon and the interactions that make all of these aspects into a single whole. In engaging with this framework, Anna Akasoy illustrates that the phenomena used in comparative approaches to cultural and intellectual history need to be subjected to a continuous change of perspectives. Writing about comparative (...) history, Warwick Anderson directs attention to an articulation between synchronic and diachronic modes of inquiry. In addition, he asks: If comparative studies require a number of collaborators, how does one coordinate the various contributors? And how does one ensure that the comparison is between separate entities, without mutual historical entanglement? Finally, how does comparative history stack up against more dynamic approaches, such as connected, transnational, and postcolonial histories? Gérard Colas, for his part, claims that comparisons cannot allow one to move away from the dominant Euroamerican conceptual framework. Should this indeed be the case, we should search for better ways of facilitating a “mutual pollination” between philosophies. Finally, Edmond Eh first asserts that Sivin fails to recognize the difference between comparisons within cultures and comparisons between cultures. He then argues that the application of generalism is limited to comparisons of historical nature. (shrink)

Jan Westerhoff defends an account of thoroughgoing non-foundationalism that he calls “irrealism,” which is implicitly modeled on a Madhyamaka Buddhist view. In this paper, I begin by raising worries about the irrealist’s account of human cognition as taking place in a brain-based representational interface. Next, I pose first-order and higher-order challenges to how the irrealist—who defends a kind of global error theory—can sensibly accommodate an unlocalized appearance-reality distinction, both metaphysically and epistemologically. Finally, although Westerhoff insists that irrealism itself is not (...) an ontological theory and that the irrealist’s rejection of absolutely general quantification precludes his commitment to any ultimately true theories, I propose strategies inspired by the Svātantrika commentarial tradition of Madhyamaka for how the irrealist might develop a lightweight account of unrestricted quantification that could be used to advance a lightweight ultimately true theory. This, I suggest, may allow the irrealist to (i) preserve a commitment to an unlocalized appearance-reality distinction, (ii) underwrite a distinction between ordinary veridical states and metaphysically accurate epistemic states, and (iii) provide an explanation for the massive error that he claims characterizes ordinary cognition. (shrink)