Gamification can be a useful tool when engaging young students with science. When designing a new game, it is pivotal that a featured storytelling element can draw students' attention while providing an enjoyable experience. However, building such an insightful science dissemination narrative from scratch is often challenging. As real-life situations are frequently more appealing to students, adding alternative history elements can be helpful when designing such a game. In this paper, we present a novel educational framework to design an educational, (...) science-based storytelling activity using the history of science and alternative hypothesis as ground tools for its inception. By analysing student's feedback when playing a science-based game with a historic episode outline, they report that their learning experience was fun and relatable, matching their scientific performance during the game. (shrink)

Does consciousness survive bodily death? This question remains a profound, perennial mystery. Although scientific studies have focused on out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs), there is scant evidence to support the claim that consciousness survives death. Many speculative theories state that consciousness moves through various afterlife realities. Tantalizing clues are found in world religion, esoteric philosophy, extrasensory perception, hypnotic regression, and scientific experimentation. At the present time, there is an abundance of theoretical scholarly discourse on the topic of “survival.” (...) After 60 years of NDE research, common ground has been established from NDEers’ anecdotal evidence and perceptual experiences. (shrink)

The reviewed book, titled “The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya” (Raveh, D., & Coquereau-Saouma, E. (Eds.). 2023) (the/this book hereafter), edited by Daniel Raveh and Elise Coquereau-Saouma, is part of the Routledge Hindu Studies Series in collaboration with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. This series aims to foster dialogue between Hindu traditions and modern research trends. The editors deserve commendation for adding value to the series and contributing significantly to debates in Indian philosophy, particularly regarding Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s (...) philosophy (KCB thereafter). This book brings together scholars who have carefully looked at KCB’s big ideas, giving us clear and deep insights into his philosophy. This review carefully examines each chapter, simplifying the book’s content and ensuring that no significant details are overlooked. Our aim is to motivate readers to delve into KCB’s broader body of work and, more specifically, this book, which greatly enriches our understanding of his worldview. In harmony with the book’s flow, we delve into the current trends in Indian philosophy, giving special attention to situating KCB’s philosophy within this context, as discussed by the contributors. Additionally, we seek to clarify any misunderstandings surrounding this field, aiding aspiring researchers in tackling the intricate intellectual challenges within modern Indian philosophy—an endeavor certainly worth pursuing. (shrink)

Many individuals have experienced a transformation of their spirituality after a near-death experience (NDE). Some of these near-death experiencers (NDErs) have reported an incongruous spiritual experience (ISE) during their NDEs. An incongruous spiritual experience occurs when NDErs perceive certain communications and/or visions that are incompatible or inconsistent with their previous religious/spiritual beliefs. In the present study the researcher examined NDE and ISE-related phenomena utilizing the qualitative techniques of heuristic analysis. An initial pool of 84 survey participants completed Greyson's NDE Scale (...) and a questionnaire developed by the researcher to measure various elements of an incongruous spiritual experience. Subsequently, eight participants were interviewed utilizing Moustakas's heuristic analysis to investigate their NDE/ISE-related experiences. The results indicated that each participant altered or changed their religious/spiritual beliefs after coping with varying intensities of cognitive dissonance. Therefore, it was concluded that the participants' reports of incongruous elements during their NDEs were spiritually transformative. (shrink)

This articles presents the creation of the world and of man, and especially the relation between God and His creation. In the act of creation, God Shows His love for man. The man is the companion of God and the continuer of creation.This article presents the creation of man and alienation from God by sin and has the following themes: The image of God and man's relationship with God, Man's ikeness to God. Man was created as being different from the (...) angels and animals, Man's fall into sin and the consequences of sin. We can see the following aspects of the sin: origin, universality and consequences of original sin: alteration of the image of God, which means the darkening of the mind, weakening the will and hardning of feeling. The state of man as the slave of sin and of passions has a sole consequence: death. (shrink)

Over the past 2500 years, the concept of free will has been debated by some of the most brilliant minds in ancient and modern history. This paper discusses landmark theories by five well-known philosophers. There are several definitions of free-will. Sometimes, it is described as an innate characteristic possessed by human beings. In juxtaposition, causal determinism states that free will is limited or does not exist. Philosophical arguments are presented by: Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, and Hegel. Plato offers a dual (...) theory offering limited support for free will. Leibnitz includes theological tenets to make the case for predetermined outcomes. Hobbes and Hume contend that moral beliefs and ethical standards are conditions that support causal determinism. Hegel’s treatise on “freeing of the Will” aligns with Taoist philosophy and links the evolution of the universe to human spiritual development toward self-realization. (shrink)

Many similarities and correspondences are found in Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) and Hindu mysticism (Vedanta-Advaita). In both traditions, the ultimate goal is to experience communion with a Divine Source. To reach this level of transcendence, each system speaks of an individualized soul with three characteristics that merge with a Godhead. Through deep meditative practices, the soul experiences a divine influx of the Infinite. The Hindu Upanishads and the Jewish Zohar speak of similar methodologies for achieving a mystical experience. Vedantin Adi Shankara (...) and Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia created esoteric systems for advancing mystical practices. Additionally, metaphysical beliefs on Being and Non-Being are comparable in both traditions. The cyclical nature of universes and transmigration of souls offer a unified theory of microcosm and macrocosm. Throughout the centuries, spiritual leaders contributed new knowledge to cosmology, esoteric interpretations, and daily practices for attaining higher consciousness. The contextual evolution of Vedanta and Kabbalah has been corroborated and finds support in modern scholarly discourse. Conclusions are offered on the benefits of mystical experiences including assimilation of wisdom, achieving transcendence, and living in a continual state of illumination. (shrink)

In "New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis", Freud discusses his views on mysticism and psychoanalysis. The concept of mysticism has changed throughout the ages. In ancient times, a mystic was one who communed with God. In Freud's world, the word mysticism became an all-inclusive word describing paranormal phenomenon occurring outside the laws of nature and science. Accordingly, science tended to dismiss or ignore mystical ideas because they were viewed as superstitious, irrational and nonsensical. -/- .

This paper focuses on the understanding that Dzogchen experience is a Theophanic Manifestation.

This paper focuses on the relationship of language within the awareness field.

Abstract: Plato finds that the necessity for society and the state resides in human nature itself. No one is sufficient in himself; everyone needs the aid of others in order to live life worthy of man. Hence man must live with others in society in order to make use of them both materially and morally. So from the moment society arises out of necessity of meeting the needs of man, the members which make up society must be organised into different (...) classes according to the diversity of works to be performed. This paper examines the Plato’s ideal state and criticisms of democracy and tries to prove that it is relevant in Nigeria’s present democratic scenario. The paper will show how significant they are to abate Nigerian democratic corruption and some of his suggestions for good governance could be utilized to address the problem of present day democracy in Nigeria. (shrink)

How the universe came to be what it is now is a key philosophical question. The hypothesis that it came from nothing or śūnya (as proposed by Stephen Hawking, among others) proves to be dissembling, since the quantum vacuum can hardly be considered a void (śūnya). In modern science, it is generally assumed that matter existed before the universe came to be. Modern science hypothesizes that the manifestation of life on earth is nothing but a mere increment in the complexity (...) of matter – and hence is an outcome of evolution of matter (chemical evolution) following the Big Bang. After the manifestation of life, modern science believed that chemical evolution transformed itself into biological evolution, which then had caused the entire biodiversity on our planet. In the framework of materialism, the major attention is to find general organizational laws stimulated by physical sciences, ignoring the uniqueness of life. The main goal of materialism is to reduce consciousness to natural processes, which in turn can be translated into the language of math, physics, and chemistry. Following this approach, scientists have made several attempts to deny the living organism of its veracity as an immortal soul, in favor of genes, molecules, atoms, and so on. However, advancement in various fields of biology has repeatedly given rise to questions against such a denial and has supplied more and more evidence against the completely misleading ideological imposition that living entities are particular states of matter. In the recent past, however, the realization has arisen that cognitive nature of life at all levels has begun presenting significant challenges to the views of materialism in biology and has created a more receptive environment for the soul hypothesis (Shanta BN. Commun Integr Biol 8(5):e1085138, 2015). Therefore, instead of adjudicating different aprioristic claims, the development of an authentic theory of origin of life and universe needs both proper scientific knowledge and the appropriate tools of philosophical analysis of life. This talk will highlight the uniqueness of biological systems that offers a considerable challenge to the mainstream materialism and proposes the Vedāntic philosophical view as a viable alternative for development of a theory worthy of origin of life and universe. (shrink)

Santiago Ramón y Cajal practice what became neuroscience in the remote town of Ayerbe, Aragón Spain. He struggled to travel to conferences in northern Europe to share his remarkable discovery.

The main objective of this project is to provide acoustic assistance to the blind people and also deal with the problems faced by them to walk like the normal human beings. Thus the project aims to develop a device that would serve as a guiding assistance to them. The paper focuses on designing a device for visual impaired (or blind) people that would help them to travel independently and also with more ease. One of the biggest problem that the visual (...) impaired ones face is while travelling because when they walk in the indoors and outdoors they are not well aware of information about their location and orientation with respect to traffic and obstacles on their way unlike the normal beings. The technology proposed in the paper serves as a solution for visual impaired people. The project consists of smart shoe and smart cane (stick) that alerts visually impaired people over obstacles coming between their ways and could help them in walking with less collision. The main objective of this paper is to address a reliable encompassing of a call and a shoe that could communicate with the user through voice alert and pre-coded messages. (shrink)

El artículo intenta recuperar la figura de Dora Benjamin como referente de la crítica social, reconstruyendo las huellas de aquello que el silencio de su imagen posibilita interpretar.

Being adorned with virtues is one of the most important fundamental issues in the field of Farabi's philosophy, especially in his civil and political thought. The most important of these virtues is the virtue of political socialization. Sociability or socialization means the conformity of a person with group and social values, norms and attitudes, in this way a person first gets to know the ways of collective life and acceptance of others. One of the sub-branches of socialization is its political (...) type, i.e. political socialization, which deals with the relationship between the government and the people for the transfer of political culture from one generation to another in the form of political standards and norms to direct the intellectual path of the individual and the society under the government. In Farabi's philosophy, socialization is a virtue in which a person is educated for his duties, rights and roles, including his political role in society. In this essay, an attempt has been made to describe the purpose of political socialization and political socialization education in Farabi's philosophy with a descriptive-analytical method. The purpose of teaching political socialization; To make people aware of politics and the importance of its vital role in the world and in their country, in such a way that they pay attention to it, and by gaining insight into the proper political way, they strive to elevate their thoughts and in their political actions as well. He should behave in a way that brings the greatest good to himself and the people of the country, this method creates conditions for the continuation of political life and value system, creating justice, forming a utopia, teaching rational principles, actions and moral properties in the direction of progress towards perfection in relation to It becomes happiness. As a result, it should be said that; One of the prerequisites for motivating the members of Madinah Fahleh to move towards happiness is to encourage them to learn their civic duties. (shrink)

This paper responds to a piece of dialogue from Flora Nwapa’s novel Women are Different, in which Comfort mockingly says, “They took up the job voluntarily. Now you will soon tell us that they are celibate because of us.” There are two different interpretations of the use of “because,” and the claim is obviously false on only one of these.

"Paraconsistent Belief Revision Based on a Formal Consistency Operator" delves into Belief Revision—a significant area of research in Formal Philosophy that uses logic to model the ways in which human and artificial agents modify their beliefs in response to new information and examines how these changes can be considered rational. -/- Originally authored as a PhD thesis (previously published in Portuguese), this work provides a novel epistemic interpretation of Paraconsistency through Paraconsistent Belief Revision systems. It explores the concept of paraconsistency (...) from the standpoint of epistemic attitudes of acceptance and rejection. -/- This work challenges the traditional notion that accepting a new belief requires retracting its negation from the current epistemic state. The author contends that such reflexive retraction goes against the principle of informational economy, which is a crucial aspect of rationality in the context of belief change. Consequently, the phenomenon of paraconsistency is further examined from this fresh perspective of belief change, shedding light on the complexities of the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs). These LFIs provide the foundational logic, offering a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing paraconsistent principles within belief revision systems. -/- This thesis was supervised by Marcelo Esteban Coniglio and co-supervised by Márcio Moretto Ribeiro, as part of Rafael Rodrigues Testa's doctoral studies at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s mention of the term “phenomenology” in his writings from the middle period has long been regarded as puzzling by interpreters. It is striking to see him concerned with that philosophical approach, generally regarded as foreign to the tradition of Russell and Frege, in which Wittgenstein’s thought is commonly taken to have primarily developed. On the basis of partially unpublished material from Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, the thesis provides a reconstruction of the rationale and fate of his conception of phenomenology, which he (...) advances after his return to Cambridge in 1929. On the one hand, that conception is tributary to his longstanding task to philosophically clarify the workings of language. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s concern with phenomenology develops against the background of his reconsideration of the resources for clarification provided by his early philosophy. His 1929 paper “Some Remarks on Logical Form” is elucidatory in this respect. The paper expresses a dissatisfaction with the Tractarian account of logical grammar and pleas for a “logical investigation of the phenomena themselves”. That plea echoes Wittgenstein’s notion of a “phenomenological language” in the manuscripts from the same period. The thesis addresses the intricacies of that notion and the reasons for Wittgenstein’s coming to criticize it. By contrast to the prevalent view in the literature, it turns out that he did not fully endorse for a definite period, and then suddenly abandoned, the idea of phenomenological language. Wittgenstein rather attempts to develop a viable means of clarification and of philosophical expression through phenomenological language, while critically exploring the assumptions and implications of that attempt at the very same time. (shrink)

Premio Norman Sverdlin. An award to the best PhD Dissertation in Philosophy.

Stephen Davies taught philosophy at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. His research specialty is the philosophy of art. He is a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics. His books include Definitions of Art (Cornell UP, 1991), Musical Meaning and Expression (Cornell UP, 1994), Musical Works and Performances (Clarendon, 2001), Themes in the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2003), Philosophical Perspectives on Art (OUP, 2007), Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2011), The Artful (...) Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution (OUP, 2012), The Philosophy of Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 second ed.), and Adornment: What Self-decorations Tells Us about Who We Are, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). (shrink)

The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how mind and matter relate. The proposed solution herein is a variant of panpsychism – the theory that all (pan) has minds (psyche) – that we name pansentient monism. By defining the suffix 'psyche' of panpsychism, i.e. by analysing what 'mind' is (Chapter 1), we thereby initiate the effacement of the distinction between mind and matter, and thus advance a monism. We thereafter critically examine the (...) prevalent view, antithetical to a pansentient monism, that mind is not identical to matter but emergent therefrom (Chapter 2). This anti-emergentist critique acts also as a fortification of the Genetic Argument for panpsychism: if mind is not emergent (nor distinct) from matter, mind must always have existed with matter. But what is 'matter'? Chapter 3 investigates what we understand by 'matter', or 'the physical', and exposes it as a highly deficient concept and percept that in concreto points to its identity with that denoted by 'mind'. This also acts as a fortification of the Abstraction Argument for panpsychism, employing a new taxonomy of physicalism and a new taxonomy of the varieties of abstraction. Thus do we reach a monism that is a parsimonious psycho-physical identity theory. But here we face what can be called The Identity Problem for Panpsychism: if our panpsychism is a psycho-physical identity theory, how can it respond to the powerful objections that beset the identity theory of the twentieth century? In Chapter 4 it will be argued that, like emergentism, this psycho-neural identity theory presupposed a deficient concept of 'matter', down to which mind was reduced away, let alone identified. But to identify down phenomena to what is actually an abstraction is to commit failure of explanation. When the theory is amended accordingly, we move from a psycho-neural identity theory to a genuine psycho-physical identity theory that as such can overcome the aforementioned identity problem. Furthermore, as Chapter 5 clarifies, our pansentient monism has, in addition to parsimony, the explanatory power to resolve the problem of mental causation that afflicts both the reductive physicalism of psycho-neural identity theory and the non-reductive physicalism of emergentism, by genuinely identifying physical and mental causation. Jaegwon Kim considers the place of consciousness in a physical world and the nature of mental causation to be the two key components of the mind-matter problem. Through the critical analysis of our prosaic understanding of mind and matter in this thesis, which incorporates the thought of both classical and contemporary thinkers through a novel fusion, it is hoped that both components are addressed and redressed. That is to say that I present this pansentient monism as a plausible, parsimonious, explanatory, and thus, I think, powerful position towards this ever-perplexing mind-matter mystery. -/- [This thesis was passed in January 2019 with viva examination from Galen Strawson and Joel Krueger. (shrink)

By reference to Newmanian principles and ethics of higher education the article seeks to argue that generation of knowledge and intellectual advances cannot be simply left to the whims of the violence market forces, student satisfaction surveys and metrics of completion rates. Rather, it is argued, that it involves a critical engagement in a political moment of recurring internal and external self-examination generating a critique of supervision as an original contribution to the body of human knowledge.

(Spanish) RESUMEN: La libertad absoluta postulada por Viktor Emil Frankl y Jean-Paul Sartre, la Shoah y la creencia en un dios omnipotente, bueno y justo parecen contradecirse. La pregunta por el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas del Holocausto (la verdadera catástrofe, el mayor crimen contra la humanidad), simbolizado por Auschwitz, y como punto de inflexión en la historia, es terriblemente dolorosa y parece no tener una respuesta filosófica ni teológica. A mi juicio, es importantísimo distinguir entre las víctimas inocentes (...) de la Shoah que perecieron y las víctimas inocentes que sufrieron un verdadero infierno y perdieron a sus seres queridos, pero que lograron sobrevivir. Ambas son víctimas, por supuesto, pero así como encontrarle un posible sentido al sufrimiento de las víctimas masacradas y gaseadas podría suponer un insulto a su sufrimiento y agonía –en especial, al horror que sufrieron los niños–, el horrible sufrimiento de los supervivientes pudo dar, tal vez, de alguna manera, un sentido a sus vidas después de la liberación de los campos de concentración y exterminio, ya fuera como voz, como protesta o como simple supervivencia. Frankl apuesta por un sentido último (que abraza el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas), y Sartre, aunque parezca no apostar por sentido alguno, volcó su vida al compromiso político después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y ello parece vislumbrar una minúscula pizca de sentido después de la barbarie. La filosofía de Frankl es un sí a la vida incluso en las situaciones más extremas, un grito casi nietzscheano que exalta el valor de la vida más allá de cualquier sufrimiento. Frankl, padre de la logoterapia y superviviente del Holocausto, abre una puerta a Dios al hablar de un dios inconsciente, una dimensión suprahumana y una fe incondicional, y define la religión como espiritualidad y como la búsqueda del hombre por el sentido último. Según Frankl, la libertad no se contradice con Dios, y la religión existe no a raíz de la barbarie, sino a pesar de la barbarie. El existencialismo sartreano es una filosofía de la libertad radical y de la responsabilidad. El hombre está condenado a ser libre. El ser humano es un ser en el que la existencia precede a la esencia. Somos totalmente responsables de lo que somos. Sartre afirma que la libertad humana es incompatible con Dios. En un mundo sin Dios, la moral la construyen los hombres, con sus propias decisiones y sus acciones, y la existencia y el sufrimiento de las víctimas no tienen sentido alguno. Sartre define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, angustia y contingencia. Frankl define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, espiritualidad y búsqueda de sentido. Con esta tesis me propongo entrar en la resbaladiza dimensión del dolor, la desesperación, el sentido y sinsentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas (teniendo presente los horrores de Auschwitz, que en teología y filosofía ha simbolizado desde la liberación de los campos la muerte de Dios y la muerte de la moral). Es verdad que no solo los hombres, mujeres y niños judíos fueron víctimas de la barbarie alemana, pero, como reza el mensaje de Elie Wiesel en la exposición permanente del Block 27 del Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". La Shoah no es un episodio dentro de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sino un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad, y es una catástrofe que nos concierne a todos, hombres y mujeres judíos y no judíos, religiosos e irreligiosos, creyentes e increyentes, como seres libres, responsables y morales que somos –o que deberíamos ser. Muchas de las víctimas del Holocausto, en medio de la desesperación, entraron en las cámaras de gas orando, aferrándose a la esperanza de que ese final espeluznante no era un punto final. Con esta tesis no me propongo de ninguna manera responder a la eterna pregunta de si Dios existe o no, sino que propongo interpretar ese grito hacia Dios como un desesperado anhelo de esperanza. También me propongo encontrar una coherencia en las posturas de estos dos grandes pensadores para quienes la libertad y la responsabilidad definen al hombre: Frankl (quien apuesta por una dimensión suprahumana donde existe un sentido último en el que el sufrimiento de las víctimas tiene que tener algún sentido, aunque ese sentido sea completamente incomprensible en la dimensión humana) y Sartre (el existencialista ateo por excelencia, para quien el mundo, la existencia y el sufrimiento son absolutamente contingentes). En el primer capítulo expongo la logoterapia y el existencialismo sartreano: describo las tres dimensiones del hombre y las tres búsquedas de sentido propuestas por Frankl, y expongo las cinco consecuencias de "l'existence précède l'essence", centrándome en la libertad y la responsabilidad, y hablo del suicidio. El segundo capítulo está dedicado al dios inconsciente frankleano, la dimensión suprahumana, la búsqueda por el sentido último y la fe incondicional. En el tercer capítulo ilustro la libertad sin Dios sartreana, la ontología sartreana, el ateísmo sartreano y el humanismo sartreano, y hablo sobre la responsabilidad, la mauvaise foi, la contingencia, la situation y la angustia. El cuarto capítulo es necesariamente histórico (sin dejar de ser filosófico): me pregunto por la muerte de Dios después de Auschwitz, argumento y defiendo la unicidad del Holocausto (la Shoah es un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad), describo las masacres antes de los campos de exterminio (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), el gigantesco complejo de Auschwitz (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), reflexiono sobre Dios y el mal (centrándome en los niños de Auschwitz), describo los días de Frankl en Auschwitz, hablo de Dios como esperanza, de la inmortalidad y la escatología, de la crueldad de Dios, de la relación entre el cristianismo y el antisemitismo, del islam y el antisemitismo, critico el silencio de Dios, hablo de la muerte de Dios y del juicio contra Dios. En el quinto capítulo expongo la moral frankleana (una moral que atañe al hombre y no a Dios), basándome en su teoría del amor y en su única obra de teatro (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), y la moral sartreana (una moral que atañe a una humanidad sin Dios), recordando a Dostoyevsky, analizando la famosa cita de Garcin en Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", criticando el marxismo de Sartre y cuestionando (con la mirada de Frankl y Sartre) el verso de Brecht "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; al final del capítulo incluyo una reflexión propia y las críticas frankleana y sartreana sobre la impunidad de los verdugos y colaboradores después del Holocausto (con el permiso de Dios). Después de la Conclusión, añado un Apéndice sobre las vidas de Frankl y Sartre, para poder entender mejor su obra. PALABRAS CLAVE: logoterapia, existencialismo sartreano, búsqueda de sentido, libertad, responsabilidad, moral, angustia, sufrimiento, supervivientes, víctimas, contingencia, espiritualidad, religión, Dios, esperanza, antisemitismo, culpa, Auschwitz, Holocausto, Shoah. /// (English) ABSTRACT: The absolute freedom defended by Viktor Emil Frankl and Jean-Paul Sartre, the Shoah and the belief in an omnipotent, benevolent and just God seem to contradict each other. The question of the meaning of the victims' suffering of the Holocaust (the true catastrophe, the biggest crime against humanity), simbolised by Auschwitz and as a turning point in History, is terribly painful and doesn't seem to have an answer. In my opinion, it's crucial to distinguish between the innocent victims of the Shoah who perished and the innocent victims who sufferend a real hell and lost their loved ones, but managed to survive. Both are victims, of course, but just as finding a possible meaning to the suffering of the massacred and gassed victims could result in an insult to their suffering and agony –especially to the horror that the children suffered– the gigantic suffering of the survivors could, maybe, somehow, give a meaning to their lives after the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps, either as a voice, as a protest, or as a simple survival. Frankl believes in an ultimate meaning (that embraces the meaning of the victims' suffering), and Sartre, even if it appears not to embrace any meaning, turned his life to political engagement after War World II, and that attitude seems to give a tiny glimpse of meaning after the barbarity. Frankl's philosophy says yes to life even in the most extreme situations, and it's a Nietzschean-like scream that exalts the value of life beyond any monstrous suffering. Frankl, the father of logotherapy and a Holocaust survivor, opens a door to God when he talks about an unconscious God, a supra-human dimension and an unconditional faith; he defines religion as spirituality and as man's search for ultimate meaning. According to Frankl, freedom is not contradictory with God, and religion exists not because of the barbarity but in spite of the barbarity. Sartrean existentialism is a philosophy of radical freedom and responsibility. Men are condemned to be free. We are beings where the existence precedes the essence. We are completely responsible of what we are. Sartre argues that human freedom is incompatible with God. In a godless world, morality is constructed by people, with their own choices and actions, and human existence and the suffering of the victims don't have any meaning. Sartre defines man as freedom, responsibility, Angst and contingency. Frankl defines man as freedom, responsibility, spirituality and search for meaning. With this dissertation I attempt to enter in the slippery dimension of the pain, despair, meaning and meaninglessness of the victims' suffering (having in mind the horrors of Auschwitz, that in theology and in philosophy have simbolised, since the liberation of the camps, the death of God and the death of morality). It's true that not only Jewish men, women and children were victims of the German barbarity, but, as Elie Wiesel's message from the permanent exhibition from Block 27 of the Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum reads: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". The Shoah is not an episode inside War World II, but a turning point in the history of humankind, and a catastrophe that embraces us all, Jewish and not not Jewish men and women, religious and not religious, believers and not believers, as the free, responsible and moral beings that we all are –or that we should be. A lot of the victims, in the midst of their desperation, entered into the gas chambers praying, holding to the hope that their horrifying end was not the ultimate end. With this dissertation I do not attempt to answer the eternal question of the existence of God, rather, I will try to interpret that scream to God as a longing for hope. I also intend to find a coherence between the thought of these two great thinkers for whom freedom and responsibilty define man: Frankl (who argues that there is a suprahuman dimension where an ultimate meaning exists and where the victims' suffering has to have a meaning, even if this meaning is completely incomprehensible in the human dimension) and Sartre (the atheist existentialist par excellence, for whom the world, human existence and suffering are absolutely contingent). In the first chapter I expose logotherapy and Sartrean existentialism: I describe the three dimensions of man, the three searches for meaning, the five consequences of "l'existence précède l'essence" and I speak about suicide. The second chapter delves into the unconscious God, the supra-human dimension, the ultimate meaning and the unconditional faith. In the third chapter I expose the freedom without God defended by Sartre, Sartre's ontology, Sartre's atheism, Sartre's humanism, and his ideas about responsibility, mauvaise foi, contingency, situation, and Angst. The fourth chapter is necessarily historical (while being philosophical too): I wonder about the death of God after Auschwitz, I argue and defend the uniqueness of the Holocaust (the Shoah is a turning point in the history of humankind), I describe the massacres before the extermination camps (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), the gigantic Auschwitz camp complex (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), I reflect on God and evil (focusing on the children of Auschwitz), I describe Frankl's days in Auschwitz, I talk about God as hope, about immortality and escathology, I discuss God's cruelty, the relationship between Christianity and antisemitism and Islam and antisemitism, I question the silence of God, and I talk about the death of God and about the trial against God. In the fifth chapter I talk about the Franklean morality (a morality that concerns man and not God), on the basis of his love theory and his only work of theater (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), and the Sartrean morality (a morality that concerns a humanity without God), remembering Dostoyevsky, analysing Garcin's famous quote in Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", crticizing Sartre's marxism and questioning (with Frankl's and Sartre's eyes) Brecht's verse "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; at the end of the chapter I include my own reflection (and Frankl and Sartre's critique) about the impunity of the executioners and collaborators after the Holocaust (with God's permission). After the Conclusion, I add an Appendix about the lives of Frankl and Sartre, which helps understanding better their work. KEYWORDS: logotherapy, existentialism, search for meaning, freedom, responsibility, morality, Angst, suffering, survivors, victims, contingency, spirituality, religion, God, hope, antisemitism, guilt, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Shoah. (shrink)

Kate A. Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, where she has been teaching since 2013. Before that, she was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows (2011–2013), did her graduate work at MIT (2006–2011), and was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne (2001–2005), where she studied philosophy, logic, and computer science. Her current research is primarily in moral, feminist, and social philosophy. She is the author of two books, including (...) her first book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and her latest book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. Manne has also published a number of scholarly papers about the foundations of morality, and she regularly writes opinion pieces, essays, and reviews in venues—including The New York Times, The Boston Review, the Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. (shrink)

Iemand die uiteindelijk voor de PhD-positie wordt gekozen, moet in staat zijn om alle vakjes aan te kruisen. Maar één ding is vrijwel zeker: van een promovendus die de functie aanvaardt, wordt zelden verwacht dat zij het basisidee voor het onderzoek, de opzet, de methodologie of iets anders heeft bedacht. Men hoeft alleen maar trainable te zijn. Tijdens de jaren "onder contract" zal de kandidaat immers waarschijnlijk niet worden aangemoedigd om een eigen intellectueel pad te ontwikkelen, of om een nieuwe (...) en interessante richting in het onderzoeksveld uit te stippelen. In plaats daarvan zal van de kandidaat naar alle waarschijnlijkheid worden verwacht dat zij de ideeën van de promotor napraat en vaak zelfs volledig overneemt. (shrink)

This PhD thesis is a careful discussion of Aristotle's Metaphysics VII (Zeta) almost line by line (or at least argument by argument). It might be interesting to know that a revised and shortened version of it was published as a book in Portuguese, "As Noções Aristotélicas de Substância e Essência", Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2008. Actually, I believe the original version of the PhD thesis has been superseded by the book.

This PhD dissertation examines the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the most general and most widely used framework for understanding social evolution, W. D. Hamilton's theory of kin selection. While the core idea is intuitive enough (when organisms share genes, they sometimes have an evolutionary incentive to help one another), its apparent simplicity masks a host of conceptual subtleties, and the theory has proved a perennial source of controversy in evolutionary biology. To move towards a resolution of these controversies, we (...) need a careful and rigorous analysis of the philosophical foundations of the theory. My aim in this work is to provide such an analysis. I begin with an examination of the concepts behavioural ecologists employ to describe and classify types of social behaviour. I stress the need to distinguish concepts that are often conflated: for example, we need to distinguish simple cooperation from collaboration in collective tasks, behaviours from strategies, and control from manipulation and coercion. I proceed from here to the formal representation of kin selection via George R. Price’s covariance selection mathematics. I address a number of interpretative issues the Price formalism raises, including the vexed question of whether kin selection theory is ‘formally equivalent’ to multi-level selection theory. In the second half of the dissertation, I assess the uses and limits of Hamilton’s rule for the evolution of social behaviour; I provide a precise statement of the conditions under which the rival neighbour-modulated fitness and inclusive fitness approaches in contemporary kin selection theory are equivalent (and describe cases in which they are not); and I criticize recent formal attempts to establish the controversial claim that kin selection leads to organisms behaving as if maximizing their inclusive fitness. (shrink)

The PhD thesis advances a new approach to vagueness as dispersion, comparing it with the main philosophical theories of vagueness in the analytic tradition.

PhD Researcher Md Mahmudul Hoque (Moni) brings stories of working children from Dhaka. Calling for government, agencies, businesses to further immediate protection for the poor and vulnerable.

In Nwapa’s novel, Dora and Rose are both confronted with the rituals of Tunde, but engage with them in different ways. I attempt a somewhat pained contrast: Dora’s way is closer to that of the functionalist participant observer, whereas Rose’s way is closer to that of earlier armchair anthropologists who sought the origins of rituals. I also note a puzzle to do with literary realism.

This is the PhD dissertation, written under supervision of Professor Jerzy Słupecki, published in the book: U.Wybraniec-Skardowska i Grzegorz Bryll "Z badań nad teorią zdań odrzuconych" ( "Studies of theory of rejected sentences"), Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej w Opolu, Seria B: Studia i Monografie nr 22, pp. 5-131. It is the first, original publication on the theory of rejected sentences on which are based, among other, papers: "Theory of rejected propositions. I"and "Theory of rejected propositions II" with Jerzy Słupecki (...) and Grzegorz Bryll. -/- -/- . (shrink)

This is my Cambridge PhD thesis, written under the supervision of Hugh Mellor and Richard Healey, and examined by Mary Hesse and Simon Blackburn. It addresses what it takes to be the core of the problem of single case probability, namely, the interpretation of claims such as ‘It is probable that P’ (where the probabilistic component occurs as a sentential or propositional operator). I argue that claims of this form are not genuinely truth-apt, and that such operators modify the force, (...) rather than the sense, of sentences or propositions to which they attach. In contemporary terms, I thus defend a version of what Yalcin (2012) has called ‘credal expressivism’. Some of the core arguments were later published in the following papers: (i) ‘Does “Probably” modify sense?’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61(1983), 396–408 and (ii) 'Mellor, chance and the single case', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35(1984), 11-23. Other arguments, including an attempt at the Frege-Geach problem, form the basis of an unpublished piece 'The use of force in a theory of meaning' (1983), accessible at PhilPapers. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Scholes’s question of whether The Freewoman, The New Freewoman, and The Egoist, all of which were edited by Dora Marsden, were one journal or three.

The PhD thesis explores the philosophy of sex and raises questions about sexuality and moral concerns through a Foucauldian Perspective. There is a discussion on basic concepts like power, knowledge, discourse, freedom and self. It focuses on establishing Foucault as a distinctive philosopher who sets morals as an agenda of alteration. There is an attempt not only to analyse but also to engage with Foucauldian methodology. Thus, in addition to methodological issues in Foucault’s philosophy and history, the thesis also maps (...) the case of the LGBT movement in the Indian context while referring to the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality in India. (shrink)

These PhD Dissertation published as a book is a research on Metaphysics about the problem of Multiplicity explained by its principles on the grounds of Aristotle's Metaphysics focused on substance and metaphysical thought of Aquinas. According to Aquinas the multitude of forms are the cause of multiplicity of beings. Super Boethium De Trinitate has an importan treatment of matter and form as causes of substantial identity, of substance's non-being and something else and be a this. Therefore the multiplicity of beings (...) is not explained only by virtue of the diversity of matter or by virtue of the susceptive subject. The main cause is the division of forms. (shrink)

To support my Phd theses and results of my grant research in 1999, I asked 1) prominent chemist Antonín Holý, author of substances to treat hepatitis and HIV, about the indivisibility of the art and science (published in Slovak Narodna Obroda and Czech blisty,cz), 2) the distinguished economist William Baumol about the alternative activities (published in Slovak Nove Slovo, Czech Respekt and blisty.cz), 3) Nobel Laureate Clive Granger about the significance of the economics (published in 2004 in Czech weekly Tyden). (...) The interviews were exhibited in Holland Park, W8 6LU, The Ice House between 18. Oct - 3. Nov. 2013. (shrink)

The present PhD thesis is concerned with the question whether good reasoning requires that the subject has some cognitive grip on the relation between premises and conclusion. One consideration in favor of such a requirement goes as follows: In order for my belief-formation to be an instance of reasoning, and not merely a causally related sequence of beliefs, the process must be guided by my endorsement of a rule of reasoning. Therefore I must have justified beliefs about the relation between (...) my premises and my conclusion. -/- The rationality of a belief often depends on whether it is rightly connected to other beliefs, or more generally to other mental states —the states capable of providing a reason to holding the belief in question. For instance, some rational beliefs are connected to other beliefs by being inferred from them. It is often accepted that the connection implies that the subject in some sense ‘takes the mental states in question to be reason-providing’. But views on how exactly this is to be understood differ widely. They range from interpretations according to which ‘taking a mental state to be reason-providing’ imposes a mere causal sustaining relation between belief and reason-providing state to interpretations according to which one ‘takes a mental state to be reason-providing’ only if one believes that the state is reason-providing. The most common worry about the latter view is that it faces a vicious regress. In this thesis a different but in some respects similar interpretation of ‘taking something as reason-providing’ is given. It is argued to consist of a disposition to react in certain ways to information that challenges the reason-providing capacity of the allegedly reason-providing state. For instance, that one has inferred A from B partly consists in being disposed to suspend judgment about A if one obtains a reason to believe that B does not render A probable. The account is defended against regress-objections and the suspicion of explanatory circularity. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

This book is a PhD dissertation and a very personal book at the same time. It asks the question whether society can and should be a point of orientation ("Bezugspunkt") for the human individual. Please note, that this cannot be a scientific book: If sociology is defined as society observed by society (or by sociologists, who are the agents of society), society observed by a single person (and for the aim of this single person) cannot be scientific. This is also (...) true if the researcher adheres to reason and scientific methodology: observations and understanding created by the human individual for its own private purposes simply are not scientific because they lack universality. "Bezugspunkt Gesellschaft" studies a number of different strains of sociology (and their scientific representatives, e.g. Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Ralf Dahrendorf, Norbert Elias, Berger/Luckmann) in order to find out what it is that sociology studies? Is sociology the study of a society of human beings? Or is it true that society does not consist of human beings, but, as Luhmann claims, of acts of communication? Or is it true, as Bourdieu claims, that society consists of the instances of freedom abandoned half willingly, half out of habitude, by human individuals like in the case of a coffeehouse waiter who over time has just given up the idea that he could be anything else than a coffeehouse waiter. This book was inspired by a deconstructivist method of analysis in the field of literary theory where researchers state that it is of no interest what the author of a book wanted to say. Instead we should treat the work of literature as if the society of the author's epoch had written it. This theoretical "murder" of the human being in the form of the authors of works of literature in literary theory might have its analogy in sociology: Maybe sociology is also, like literary theory, not about people? However, if sociology is not about people - what can sociology teach us, us people? The book looks at different concepts of society throughout history, starting from the ancient concept that society is community, or that it is a circle of friendships, to more modern and dystopian concepts like that society is some kind of unhuman society. The book ends with the "Balzac machine", representing the incredibly talented and prolific French author Honoré de Balzac as a person who was an expert in the study of society and entirely blind to the phenomenon of society at the same time. The paradox of Balzac manifested itself in the fact that he literally worked himself to death in an attempt to gain society's recognition. (shrink)

The paper contains some algebraic results on several varieties of algebras having an (interlaced) bilattice reduct. Some of these algebras have already been studied in the literature (for instance bilattices with conflation, introduced by M. Fit- ting), while others arose from the algebraic study of O. Arieli and A. Avron’s bilattice logics developed in the third author’s PhD dissertation. We extend the representation theorem for bounded interlaced bilattices (proved, among others, by A. Avron) to un- bounded bilattices and prove analogous (...) representation theorems for the other classes of bilattices considered. We use these results to establish categorical equivalences between these structures and well-known varieties of lattices. (shrink)

The novel begins as follows:"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his (...) absence."Murdoch's novel The Bell is about Imber Court. It is a small Anglican religious community of lay people whose lives were transformed, not just by the arrival of a couple of dissimilar visitors, not just by the arrival of a new bell to be installed at Imber Abbey located beyond the lake, but more significantly by the discovery of a centuries-old bell the story of which is engulfed in a terrible legend. (shrink)

A researcher at the Yale Modernism Lab, Elyse Graham, raises the question of why the early twentieth century literary review The Egoist had such troubling selling, despite its stellar contributors. She puts the blame on regulars Dora Marsden and Richard Aldington. I offer an alternative hypothesis.

Katzav and Vaesen have argued that control by analytic philosophers of key journals, philosophy departments and at least one funding body plays a substantial role in explaining the emergence of analytic philosophy into dominance in the Anglophone world and the corresponding decline of speculative philosophy. They also argued that this use of control suggests a characterisation of analytic philosophy as, at the institutional level, a sectarian form of critical philosophy. I test these hypotheses against data about philosophy job hires at (...) key philosophy departments in the USA during the period 1930-1979, and against data about PhD completions during the period 1956-1965. I argue, further, that Katzav and Vaesen’s hypotheses can fully explain the data and are more fully able to do so than are some other key accounts of the emergence of analytic philosophy in the USA. (shrink)

This is PhD thesis submitted to Institute Philosophy of Russian Academy of Science in March 2021.

At the heart of chemistry lies the periodic system of chemical elements. Despite being the cornerstone of modern chemistry, the overall structure of the periodic system has never been fully understood from an atomic physics point of view. Group-theoretical models have been proposed instead, but they suffer from several limitations. Among others, the identification of the correct symmetry group and its decomposition into subgroups has remained a problem to this day. In an effort to deepen our limited understanding of the (...) periodic law, we have extended the traditional Lie algebraic framework to account for the peculiar degeneracy structure of the periodic system. Starting from the four-dimensional hidden symmetry and accidental degeneracy of the hydrogen atom, as first revealed by Fock in 1935, our research has mainly focussed on the way this SO(4) symmetry of the Coulomb potential gets broken in the periodic system as a consequence of the transformation of the hydrogenic (n, l) filling order to the Madelung (n+l, n) order due to electronic repulsions, relativistic effects and spin-orbit couplings. In this PhD dissertation, a new left-step format of the periodic table is first proposed on the basis of the Madelung rule. Following the particle physics tradition, the chemical elements are then considered as various states of some 'atomic matter', which is described by a non-compact spectrum-generating dynamical Lie group. The chemical elements are shown to form a basis for a single infinite-dimensional degeneracy space of the SO(4,2) ⊗ SU(2) group. An explanation for the period doubling is then proposed in terms of a particular symmetry breaking of the SO(4,2) group to the anti de Sitter SO(3,2) group. The Madelung rule is rationalised on the basis of nonlinear Lie algebras which reflect the screening of the Coulomb hole. This opens new perspectives for a symmetry-based understanding of how the periodic law emerges from its quantum mechanical foundations, and holds the future promise of complementing our current phenomenological approach by a direct atomic physics approach. (shrink)