Usually technological innovation and artistic work are seen as very distinctive practices, and innovation of technologies is understood in terms of design and human intention. Moreover, thinking about technological innovation is usually categorized as “technical” and disconnected from thinking about culture and the social. Drawing on work by Dewey, Heidegger, Latour, and Wittgenstein and responding to academic discourses about craft and design, ethics and responsible innovation, transdisciplinarity, and participation, this essay questions these assumptions and examines what kind of knowledge (...) and practices are involved in art and technological innovation. It argues that technological innovation is indeed “technical”, but, if conceptualized as techne, can be understood as art and performance. It is argued that in practice, innovative techne is not only connected to episteme as theoretical knowledge but also has the mode of poiesis: it is not just the outcome of human design and intention but rather involves a performative process in which there is a “dialogue” between form and matter and between creator and environment in which humans and non-humans participate. Moreover, this art is embedded in broader cultural patterns and grammars—ultimately a ‘form of life’—that shape and make possible the innovation. In that sense, there is no gap between science and society—a gap that is often assumed in STS and in, for instance, discourse on responsible innovation. It is concluded that technology and art were only relatively recently and unfortunately divorced, conceptually, but that in practices and performances they were always linked. If we understand technological innovation as a poetic, participative, and performative process, then bringing together technological innovation and artistic practices should not be seen as a marginal or luxury project but instead as one that is central, necessary, and vital for cultural-technological change. This conceptualization supports not only a different approach to innovation but has also social-transformative potential and has implications for ethics of technology and responsible innovation. (shrink)

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz (...) and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

It is argued, on the basis of ideas derived from Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Husserl's Logical Investigations, that the formal comprehends more than the logical. More specifically: that there exist certain formal-ontological constants (part, whole, overlapping, etc.) which do not fall within the province of logic. A two-dimensional directly depicting language is developed for the representation of the constants of formal ontology, and means are provided for the extension of this language to enable the representation of certain materially necessary relations. The (...) paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between formal logic, formal ontology, and mathematics. (shrink)

Trust is a topic of longstanding philosophical interest. It is indispensable to every kind of coordinated human activity, from sport to scientific research. Even more, trust is necessary for the successful dissemination of knowledge, and by extension, for nearly any form of practical deliberation and planning. Without trust, we could achieve few of our goals and would know very little. Despite trust’s fundamental importance in human life, there is substantial philosophical disagreement about what trust is, and further, how (...) trusting is normatively constrained and best theorized about in relation to other things we value. This entry is divided into three sections, which explore key (and sometimes interconnected) ethical and epistemological themes in the philosophy of trust: (1) The Nature of Trust; (2) The Normativity of Trust, and (3) The Value of Trust. (shrink)

Few notions are more central to Aquinas’s thought than those of matter and form. Although he invokes these notions in a number of different contexts, and puts them to a number of different uses, he always assumes that in their primary or basic sense they are correlative both with each other and with the notion of a “hylomorphic compound”—that is, a compound of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Thus, matter is an entity that can have (...) form, form is an entity that can be had by matter, and a hylomorphic compound is an entity that exists when the potentiality of some matter to have form is actualized.1 What is more, Aquinas assumes that the matter of a hylomorphic compound explains certain of its general characteristics, whereas its form explains certain of its more specific characteristics. Thus, the matter of a bronze statue explains the fact that it is bronze, whereas its form explains the fact that it is a statue. Again, the matter of a human being explains the fact that it is a material object, whereas its form explains the specific type of material object it is (namely, human). My aim in this chapter is to provide a systematic introduction to Aquinas’s primary or basic notions of matter and form. To accomplish this aim, I focus on the two main theoretical contexts in which he deploys them—namely, his theory of change and his theory of individuation. In both contexts, as we shall see, Aquinas appeals to matter and form to account for relations of sameness and difference holding between distinct individuals. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that by abstracting from a specific mythical historical- stylistic context and “ideation” of the notion of the Proto-Slavic deities Perun and Veles, especially in Croatian tradition, symbolic archetypes and abstract notions of form and primordial matter (materia prima) can be extracted from mythical content. We refer to mythical texts and contents according to the reconstructions and materials brought by Radoslav Katičić, and comparative analysis by Mislav Ježić. We distinguish form (1) as that (...) in which identity and possibility of a thing consists, (2) as the reasonableness of judgment and the form of existence, and (3) as the specific structure of a thing, which unites its parts and aspects as a whole and constitutes its internal necessity. These formative notions are relativized and nullified in Veles’ appearances, in which the archetypal notion of primordial matter is encoded. Examples of Platō’s dialogues historically confirm certain aspects of decoding myth as constitutive of philosophy. The above approach also opens a view of the roots of Croatian philosophical thought, which in its genesis can be traced back to Proto-Slavic mythical archetypes. With the implementation of Christianity, the questions of identity, reason and the structure of the whole are raised radically and sharply, as shown by the text of Trpimir’s grant (852). (shrink)

In this work, I discuss the role of Husserl’s phenomenology in Paolo Parrini’s positive philosophy. In the first section, I highlight the presence of both empiricist and constructivist elements in Parrini’s anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist conception of knowledge. In the second section, I stress Parrini’s acknowledgement of the crucial role of phenomenology in investigating the empirical basis of knowledge, thanks to its analysis of the relationship between form and matter of cognition. In the third section, I point (...) out some lines of development of the phenomenological form of empirical realism as revealed in Parrini’s reflection, through a comparison of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, Mary Hesse’s network model and the tradition of neutral monism. (shrink)

In this chapter, which is purely exegetical, I suggest that close attention to the legacy of Anscombe’s mentor Wittgenstein can shed some unaccustomed light both on the idiosyncratic form of inquiry in her book Intention and on some of the particular conclusions found in that book. In the first part, I point to a methodological parallel between Wittgenstein’s post-1945 investigations into the nature of everyday psychological concepts and Anscombe’s treatment of the concept of intention. In the second part, the (...) Wittgensteinian provenance of Anscombe’s logical category ‘knowledge without observation’ is exhibited, and her extension of what falls under this form of knowledge (from Wittgenstein’s case of knowing the arrangement of one’s limbs, to matters concerning intention as well) is outlined. This extension will require a twist in how the intentional form of such knowledge is regarded as corrigible. Finally, I identify the odd form of knowledge just explicated with ‘practical knowledge’ as Anscombe sees it, and try to show that some puzzles revolving around her invocation of Theophrastus’ principle and Aquinas’ view of the causal power of practical knowledge may be resolved thereby. (shrink)

If language and thought are to be taken as objective, they must respond to how the world is. I propose to explain this responsiveness in terms of conditions of correction, more precisely, by taking thoughts and linguistic utterances to be assessible as true or false. Furthermore, the paper is committed to a form of quietism according to which the very same thing that can be (truly) thought or expressed is the case: ‘soft facts’ as opposed to hard, free-standing facts, (...) independent of any possible rational activity of grasping them. (shrink)

Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is interesting but peculiar and can seem implausible. He denies that we can know by introspection that we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But he allows that we can know by introspection what we think, feel, and experience. We consider two puzzles. The first puzzle, PUZZLE 1, is interpretive. Is there a way of understanding Dretske’s theory on which the knowledge affirmed by its positive side is different than the knowledge denied by its (...) negative side? The second puzzle, PUZZLE 2, is substantive. Each of the following theses has some prima facie plausibility: there is introspective knowledge of thoughts, knowledge requires evidence, and there are no experiences of thoughts. It is unclear, though, that these claims form a consistent set. These puzzles are not unrelated. Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is a potential solution to PUZZLE 2 in that Dretske’s theory is meant to show how,, and can all be true. We provide a solution to PUZZLE 1 by appeal to Dretske’s early work in the philosophy of language on contrastive focus. We then distinguish between “Closure” and “Transmissibility”, and raise and answer a worry to the effect that Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge runs counter to Transmissibility. These results help to secure Dretske’s theory as a viable solution to PUZZLE 2. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s ‘Faith and Knowledge’ presents an account of the complex relationship between religion and technoscience that disrupts their traditional boundaries by uncovering both an irreducible faith at the heart of science and an irreducible mechanicity at the heart of religion. In this paper, I focus on the latter, arguing that emphases in Derrida’s text on both the ‘sources’ of religion and its interaction with modern technologies underemphasize the ways in which a general ‘mechanicity’ is present throughout religion. There (...) is no faith, I contend, that is not in some way materially constituted according to a mechanicity operative not only at its origin but continuously and in ever-changing forms, and not only in its interactions with other fields and institutions but within its own structure and daily life. By closely examining ‘Faith and Knowledge’—along with examples from his essay ‘A Silkworm of One’s Own’ and Michael Naas’s Miracle and Machine—I argue that more attention should be paid to the mechanisms, both human and non-human, that populate and perform religion in its factical life. Mechanical bodies and practices are enlisted by religious traditions in order that these traditions continue to exist by continually reconstituting themselves in, for example, the repetitive use of religious objects or the vocal recitation of creeds. Such mechanical acts of religion are not ultimately opposed to the faithful experience that is often taken to be the wellspring of religious life; on the contrary, they are the conditions for the possibility of this experience. (shrink)

In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig?s advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent evaluation and informant-suggestion, and (...) brings the results to bear on an important debate about the application conditions of the concept of knowledge?the debate between contextualists and their rivals. (shrink)

This dissertation articulates our human capacity to judge as a capacity for knowledge, specifically for empirical knowledge, and for knowledge of itself as such. I interpret and draw on the account of such knowledge presented by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, situate this account historically, and relate it to relevant contemporary debates. The first chapter motivates my project by assessing the insights and shortcomings of Cartesian epistemology. I argue that while Descartes draws on the essential self-consciousness (...) of judgement to show that the cogito is knowledge, he fails, by his own standards, to secure this status for any judgement beyond the cogito. I conclude that self-consciousness alone is empty, but that, since we can judge beyond the cogito, judgement can be given content from elsewhere. The next chapter evaluates the empiricist doctrine that operations of the senses by themselves give content to judgement and can vindicate it as empirical knowledge. I contend that Kant deepens Hume’s finding, that empiricism fails to enable us to explain empirical knowledge, into the more radical insight that empiricism fails to enable us to understand the senses as providing any content. I conclude that the senses alone are blind and that our account of empirical knowledge must privilege neither sensory givenness nor intellectual self-consciousness. The third chapter contrasts two readings of Kant on the cooperation between sensibility and understanding in empirical knowledge. I argue, against many Kantians, that the Transcendental Deduction shows that instead of understanding this cooperation compositionally – so that operations of sensibility are intelligible independently of acts of the understanding – we must conceive of it hylomorphically – so that the operations of sensibility and understanding constitute the mutually dependent matter and form of empirical knowing respectively. The final chapter substantiates this hylomorphism by explicating the form of knowledge as synthesis. Following Kant, I argue that inference is a species of synthesis and provide a synthetic explanation of inference. The resulting account simultaneously illustrates synthesis, addresses a prominent contemporary problem regarding the nature of inference, and explains how our capacity to know provides not just isolated glimpses of empirical reality, but a unified conception of it. (shrink)

While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them, we stand to become not more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquility of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield (...) know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice. (shrink)

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

In elite sport, the advantages demonstrated by expert performers over novices are sometimes due in part to their superior physical fitness or to their greater technical precision in executing specialist motor skills. However at the very highest levels, all competitors typically share extraordinary physical capacities and have supremely well-honed techniques. Among the extra factors which can differentiate between the best performers, psychological skills are paramount. These range from the capacities to cope under pressure and to bounce back from setbacks, to (...) the knowledge of themselves, opponents, and the domain, which experts access and apply in performance. In the companion chapter on breadth and depth of knowledge in expert sport (see Chapter 11), we discussed the forms or kinds of knowledge deployed by elite athletes, and described some lines of research which seek to tap and study such expert knowledge (McPherson & MacMahon, 2008; McRobert, Ward, Eccles & Williams, 2011). In this chapter we focus more directly on questions about methods for measuring or more accurately assessing expert knowledge, in particular addressing a wider range of methods to help us understand what experts know. Suggesting that sport researchers can productively adopt and adapt existing qualitative methodologies for integration with more standard quantitative methods, we introduce and survey a number of areas of qualitative research in psychology. (shrink)

In this work, I discuss the role of Husserl’s phenomenology in Paolo Parrini’s philosophical view. In the first section, I highlight the presence of both empiricist and constructivist elements in Parrini’s anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist conception of knowledge. In the second section, I stress Parrini’s acknowledgement of the crucial role of phenomenology in investigating the empirical basis of knowledge, thanks to its analysis of the relationship between form and matter of cognition. In the third section, I point (...) at some lines of development of phenomenology that are revealed by Parrini’s reflection, through the comparison between Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, Mary Hesse’s network model, and the tradition of neutral monism. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the epistemology developed by Richard Burthogge, the lesser-known seventeenth-century English philosopher, and author, among other works, of Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism, anticipating (relatively speaking) Kant’s idealism. At the same time, some (...) interesting implications for the issue of self-interpretation and self-identity can be derived from his account of the mind. At the core of Burthogge’s epistemological position is a remarkable idea of structural and functional similarity between the three human cognitive faculties, that is between reasoning, sensation and imagination. Accordingly, every cognition, intellectual as well as sensuous, contains in its structure an object-directed operation of apprehending and thus can be viewed as an intentional act in a broad sense of the term. An immediate consequence of this claim for both mind and object is that they cannot be reduced to a pure stream of sense data, but on the contrary are to be considered ontologically independent from the content of a cognitive act. Furthermore, an object of cognition is never presented to the mind directly, as it is in itself, but always under the modus concipiendi, a particular form or manner of conceiving, specific to human cognitive powers due to their internal structure. As a result, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that it is impossible to know reality in itself, and in situating human consciousness as if in between two unknowable spheres: the external and internal one. Since these restrictions are imposed not only on external, but also on internal cognition, that is on self-knowledge, they lead to considerable difficulties regarding the mind’s identity. Basically, two principal strategies to address this issue are available in the post-Cartesian framework of seeing the mind as an ontologically independent entity, and both of them appear to be ineffective when employed in Burthogge’s epistemology. First, the mind identity can be grounded in some extra-mental factors, preferably in matter. However, with no access to the external world in itself, and with the scope of knowledge restricted to mental phenomena, the mind’s identity cannot be defined in terms of relationship with the reality of which it knows nothing except that it exits. The second option is to explain personal identity by referring it to the intrinsic properties of the mind. Nevertheless, this strategy also faces insuperable obstacles, and for the same reasons as the former does. Since self-knowledge is no exception to the structural-functional principles imposed on cognition, the mind can also be known only under the subjective conditions of conceiving. It is, therefore, just as unknowable in itself as the external things are. The main purpose of the paper is to explore this aspect of Burthogge’s philosophy. (shrink)

The deterministic or probabilistic laws of our representations and our science do not link what “is” to what “will be” but what “I know” to what “I could know”. Consistency is not a predicate on the physical laws of the world but on the logical laws of Meaning. If you cannot convince yourself of that. If you want to believe that the Softmatter of the Meaning cannot be more consistent than the Hardmatter of the physical world. Think again ... ...and (...) try to answer this question : Why would it be less unlikely for a physical world to evolve from the big bang to individuated knowing persons than for an amorphous interdependence to assemble (logically) individuated representations of the world ? (shrink)

Saul Kripke once noted that there is a tight connection between computation and de re knowledge of whatever the computation acts upon. For example, the Euclidean algorithm can produce knowledge of which number is the greatest common divisor of two numbers. Arguably, algorithms operate directly on syntactic items, such as strings, and on numbers and the like only via how the numbers are represented. So we broach matters of notation. The purpose of this article is to explore the (...) relationship between the notations acceptable for computation, the usual idealizations involved in theories of computability, flowing from Alan Turing’s monumental work, and de re propositional attitudes toward numbers and other mathematical objects. (shrink)

Is knowledge necessary or sufficient or both necessary and sufficient for acceptable practical reasoning and rational action? Several authors (e.g., Williamson, Hawthorne, and Stanley) have recently argued that the answer to these questions is positive. In this paper I present several objections against this view (both in its basic form as well in more developed forms). I also offer a sketch of an alternative view: What matters for the acceptability of practical reasoning in at least many cases (and (...) in all the cases discussed by the defenders of a strong link between knowledge and practical reasoning) is not so much knowledge but expected utility. (shrink)

This article focuses on the imposition of modern education upon the foraging Raute people and the ways in which this project has been both reluctantly accepted and actively resisted by the Raute. The Nepalese government established schools for Raute children as part of the nation-state development policy. However, it has refused to incorporate their cultural values, traditions, customs and language into the school curriculum. This paper argues that in attempting to create forms of domination through the educational process the state (...) fosters inequality. Such an arrangement is met with everyday forms of resistance through non-collective and unorganised behaviour of Raute children at school. The Raute’s silent reaction against the government policies typifies the cultural disposition and ethos of the Raute community. This paper is based on research methods that include observation, interviews, informal discussions and document analysis, and outlines the interconnections between family, social class, students and state agency as they relate to education. In particular, it explores the Raute’s own narratives, perspectives and reactions with regard to their educational processes. This case study is presented in an effort to better understand the relations between resistance and reproduction of knowledge in foraging societies. (shrink)

Are games essentially a form of make-believe, or essentially an act of struggling against obstacles? There have been several attempts to reduce one of these accounts to the other. Kendall Walton has argued for the primacy of the make-believe account of games. Even when we are struggling against obstacles in games, says Walton, we are engaged in a form of make-believe: we are making believe that these lines are real obstacles, that these points really matter. Bernard Suits (...) has argued for the primacy of the account of games as struggling against obstacles. Even when we are making believe in games, says Suits, we are still engaged in act act of struggling against obstacles. Usually we are struggling to keep the narrative going. I argue that Walton's and Suits' reductive attempts are both wrong: that there are two distinct activities, of making-believe and struggling against obstacles, neither of which is wholly reducible to a subset of the other. Importantly, in many games we are engaged in both making-believe and struggling against obstacles. But there are some games that are pure struggle with no make-believe (like games of real survival in the real wilderness). And there are games of pure make-believe, in which there are no obstacles or struggle. (shrink)

As there is currently a neo-Aristotelian revival currently taking place within contemporary metaphysics and dispositions, or causal powers are now being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, more attention is beginning to be paid to a central Aristotelian concern: the metaphysics of substantial unity, and the doctrine of hylomorphism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of hylomorphism present in the contemporary literature and argue that not only does each engender unique conceptual difficulties, but neither adequately captures the (...) metaphysics of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Thus both strands of contemporary hylomorphism, I argue, fundamentally misunderstand what substantial unity amounts to in the hylomorphic framework – namely, the metaphysical inseparability of matter and form. (shrink)

I develop the relatively familiar idea of a variety of forms of knowledge —not just propositional knowledge but also knowledge -how and experiential knowledge —and show how this variety can be used to make interesting sense of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy, and in particular their ethics. I then add to this threefold analysis of knowledge a less familiar fourth variety, objectual knowledge, and suggest that this is also interesting and important in the understanding of (...) Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

This paper revisits the “Hwang case,” which shook Korean society and the world of stem cell research in 2005 with the fraudulent claim of creating patient-specific embryonic stem cells. My goal is to overcome a human-centered, Korea-oriented narrative, by illustrating how materials can have an integral role in the construction and judgment of fraud. To this end, I pay attention to Woo Suk Hwang’s lab at Seoul National University as a whole, including human and nonhuman agents, that functioned as what (...) I call sociomaterial technology, and Gerald P. Schatten at the University of Pittsburgh, Hwang’s collaborator, who played a crucial role in demonstrating the potency of this technology to the members of the scientific community. By recasting the whole event as the “case of Hwang and Schatten,” I argue that fraud is, like all knowledge claims, a sociotechnical construct, and that matters of fraud are locally judged. Fraud leaves its mark on materials, but I show that material evidence alone never tells the whole story and instead can be used to limit the range of responsibility. (shrink)

The materialist approach to the body is often, if not always understood in ‘mechanistic’ terms, as the view in which the properties unique to organic, living embodied agents are reduced to or described in terms of properties that characterize matter as a whole, which allow of mechanistic explanation. Indeed, from Hobbes and Descartes in the 17th century to the popularity of automata such as Vaucanson’s in the 18th century, this vision of things would seem to be correct. In this (...) paper I aim to correct this inaccurate vision of materialism. On the contrary, the materialist project on closer consideration reveals itself to be, significantly if not exclusively, (a) a body of theories specifically focused on the contribution that ‘biology’ or rather ‘natural history’ and physiology make to metaphysical debates, (b) much more intimately connected to what we now call ‘vitalism’ (a case in point is the presence of Théophile de Bordeu, a prominent Montpellier physician and theorist of vitalism, as a fictional character and spokesman of materialism, in Diderot’s novel D’Alembert’s Dream), and ultimately (c) an anti-mechanistic doctrine which focuses on the unique properties of organic beings. To establish this revised vision of materialism I examine philosophical texts such as La Mettrie’s Man a Machine and Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream; medical entries in the Encyclopédie by physicians such as Ménuret and Fouquet; and clandestine combinations of all such sources (Fontenelle, Gaultier and others). (shrink)

This is an updated and expanded version of my book “Our Incorrigible Ontological Relations and Categories of Being”, originally published in 2017. The subject matter of this version includes other innate a priori constituents of knowledge. Among the main conclusions arrived is that reality is para-rational in nature. The work can thus be said to be about the role in cognition of innate information of the sensorial and of the structure of the non-sensorial rational aspect of a para-rational (...) reality. This augmented version preserves the previous content of the former book, but also addresses the innate a priori forms with which the intellect responds to sensorial activation and represents to itself the sensorily given -that is, what acts in our senses- and the forms with which it represents or makes patent to itself the things in the world which do not act on our sensory organs, such as the feeling brought forth by beauty or the emotion of the sublime in mystical experiences, and how these too, constitute a limit to possible knowledge. As the former version it refers to the innate a priori information about reality in itself, with which the intellect makes possible its cognition, yet also constrains our possible knowledge of what there is to the rational aspect of what exists. As shown in this work, the information they provide, no matter the extent of empirical data, does not suffice to explain reality, which makes necessary to presuppose the existence of, either a higher order of reality beyond the rational cognitive reach, or that the nature of what is judged rational reality be a mere aspect of what there is. In other words, that mankind is doomed to have a mere glimpse of what exists and its nature, and totally unable to attain an ultimate explanation of reality. August 16, 2023 . (shrink)

If science disputes the validity or authenticity of religious knowledge it is because both the scientist and the rational man assume that every object of knowledge there is or can be exists as a material percept in time and space. If we assume that knowledge of material objects is definite knowledge – an assumption itself suspect considering that the latest WMAP data indicates that 95.4% of the total matter in our universe is dark matter (...) and dark energy – all scientific knowledge (confined as it is to knowledge of 4.6% of the visible universe) is definite knowledge; but because it’s knowledge is confined to a miniscule fraction of all knowledge there is or can be had in our material universe, it can scarcely be said – as Sir Bertrand Russell claims – that all definite knowledge is scientific knowledge. There are other reasons why all definite knowledge is not in the domain of science. Parts of the universe are; the universe as a whole isn’t. The sentient body is; the Self that is clothed by that body isn’t. Analysis of both these wholes reveals the possibility of the existence of a third entity that is beyond scientific knowledge. This humanity calls God. A detailed investigation not conducted but outlined here reveals that (a) Russell’s claim that science holds a monopoly of definite knowledge is false: he probably meant that science has a monopoly of objectively verifiable knowledge; (b) as objective verifiability is contingent upon objectively real existence, science’s monopoly is over entities that are objectively real; (c) all objects of knowledge are not material objects in time and space: there are objects that, because they are not percepts, are not objectively verifiable. There is nothing indefinite about knowledge of such entities. There is nothing subjective about the knowledge of such entities either: so it is not open to science to dismiss knowledge of such entities as subjective, arising from the state of mind of the observer. Space and time are aspects of objective reality and not of subjective reality. The second part of this paper briefly examines the nature of dimensions. Space, time and Self consciousness are three types of dimensions considered. The third part of this paper speaks of a concept called immutable wholes. This is a logical culmination of the paper because dimensions are the state-giving norms of the wholes that these dimensions define and characterize. Spiritual seekers make these entities (sub specie aeternitatis) objects of their realization. Such entities as the Universe as a Whole, the Self, and God belong to this class of existents. If Universe as a Whole {not parts of it (study of which is in the domain of science), no matter how large those parts are, but the whole. Only a true seeker can tell science why the whole ≠ sum of all its parts – but that would be the subject of another paper}. (shrink)

This chapter has four central aims. First, in §1, I distinguish two ideas within epistemology that sometimes travel under the name ‘contextualism’ — the ‘situational contextualist’ idea that an individual’s context, especially their social context, can make for a difference in what they know, and the ‘linguistic contextualist’ idea that discourse using the word ‘knows’ and its cognates is context-sensitive, expressing dif- ferent contents in different conversational contexts. -/- Second, in §2, I situate contextualism with respect to several influential ideas (...) in feminist epistemology. These ideas are thoroughgoingly contextualist in the situational sense; I’ll explore the prospects for linguistic contextualist analogues or implementations of them. Simple connections between these feminist ideas and linguistic contextualism will prove elusive, but more subtle ones are possible, and sometimes attractive. -/- §3 considers the degree to which contextual epistemic parameters are determined interpersonally, as opposed to individualistically. Should contextualists hold that speakers can individually determine the contextual parameters that influence the truth- conditions of their utterances? Or are they fixed at a broader social level? I’ll rehearse some influential reasons to opt for the latter, more social, form of contextualism. -/- In §4 I discuss the practical and moral significance of speakers’ choices of epistemic parameters, given contextualism. For example, I’ll consider how standards-raising can be used to discredit evidential sources, with an eye towards the social and moral consequences of such moves. (shrink)

Peter Fitzpatrick’s writings prove once and for all that it is possible for a law professor to write in beautiful English. His work also proves once and for all that the dominating tradition of Anglo-American legal philosophy and of law teaching has been barking up the wrong tree: namely, that the philosopher and professional law teachers can understand justice as nested in empty forms, better known as rules, doctrines, principles, policies, and other standards. The more rigorous our analysis or decomposition (...) of the forms, we have believed, the more closely do we access the identity of laws. Justice has been assumed to be a matter of intellectually accessing such analysed forms. Fitzpatrick’s articles and books embody an implicit critique of the analytic view of law and of justice. My entry point into this critique is his preoccupation with Jacques Derrida’s theory of laws as universals and with Derrida’s theory of justice as an inaccessible immediacy or presence in context-specific or concrete experienced events. Each event is experienced in an official’s decision. Such a decision represents what Derrida, Fitzpatrick, and Hegel call ‘individuality’. -/- Derrida’s theory of law presents a conundrum. Derrida misses the possibility that law may exist by virtue of its content rather than its form. Derrida misses this possibility because, heavily influenced by Kant (in Derrida’s theory of law), Derrida associates law with universals. This is so because Kant (and Derrida) are preoccupied with the identity of what counts as a law (lois) rather than with a law’s legitimacy. A universal cannot exist unless it is legitimate, and it is legitimate, I claim, by virtue of its content. In his association of law with universals, Derrida presupposes that legal knowledge exists with reference to a territorial-like boundary. The forms are represented or signified by signs (signifiers) within a boundary of the ultimate form (the state, the nation, or humanity). This ultimate form as a universal, like the discrete rules or forms, lacks socially contingent content. A boundary separates knowable universals from the unknowable world on the exteriority of the boundary. The unknowable world is constituted by concrete events experienced in context-specific circumstances. In his legal theory Derrida hones in upon the decision as the experienced event. In a decision, one is present or immediate with the event. Derrida considers such immediacy as justice. The immediacy, however, can only be represented as a sign (sometimes called a signifier). The sign, in turn, represents an empty signified or form, according to Derrida. Because the immediacy remains a representation rather than a presentation of the experienced event, laws as universals cannot be just. The rupture between the inaccessible immediacy of a decision on the one hand and the represented empty forms on the other is critical to Derrida’s theory of law. -/- I claim that this rupture permeates Derrida’s writings about law because Derrida possesses a territorial-like sense of legal knowledge. I shall argue to this effect as follows. In the first section I shall explain the importance of Fitzpatrick’s exposure of the vacuity of the foundation of the system or structure of universals. In the second section I shall flesh out two elements of Derrida’s legal theory: law as form and the ipseity or concrete event that the form excludes from law. This takes me to the third section, where I shall elaborate how Derrida’s legal theory presupposes knowledge as territorial. I shall argue in the final section that this very sense of territorial knowledge prevents justice from accessing law and law from accessing justice. I conclude with the hint of a very different sense of law, one that draws from experiential knowledge in contradistinction to territorial knowledge. (shrink)

The challenge posed by legal indeterminacy to legal legitimacy has generally been considered from points of view internal to the law and its application. But what becomes of legal legitimacy when the legal status of a given norm is itself a matter of contestation? This article, the first extended scholarly treatment of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s new definition of antisemitism, pursues this question by examining recent applications of the IHRA definition within the UK following its adoption by (...) the British government in 2016. Instead of focusing on this definition’s substantive content, I show how the document reaches beyond its self-described status as a “non-legally binding working definition” and comes to function as what I call a quasi-law, in which capacity it exercises the de facto authority of the law, without having acquired legal legitimacy. Broadly, this work elucidates the role of speech codes in restricting freedom of expression within liberal states. (shrink)

Freedom is generated in at least two distinct ways: as the ability to avoid perceived dangers and pursue perceived goods, and even to pursue complicated plans in those directions, freedom evolves. But as a social and political matter, freedom seems more subject to human will. The best social institutions -- the kind that serve to encourage or constrain freedom of choice -- also appear to be evolutionary products in some sense. Can there be too much freedom? Of course there (...) can. No constraint at all would guarantee personal and social disaster. Individual activity can pose serious dangers to nature and to culture. But how may we ensure that the constraints we may chose to impose our ones that are good for us? What we need to do is to find, as consistently as possible with the necessity that human individuals be able to use their local perception of local opportunity in pursuit of their own interests, a framework that emerges out of human practice; we should take advantage of lessons learned about evolution: those strategies work that are in tune with the forces at work within the niche. In our attempts to solve social problems, we can't afford to take our eyes off the characteristics of the individuals that make up the social world we hope to change. And in my view, here as elsewhere, the smallest intervention is likely to be the best. (shrink)

The question of what ontological insights can be gained from the knowledge of physics (keyword: ontic structural realism) cannot obviously be separated from the view of physics as a science from an epistemological perspective. This is also visible in the debate about 'scientific realism'. This debate makes it evident, in the form of the importance of perception as a criterion for the assertion of existence in relation to the 'theoretical entities' of physics, that epistemology itself is 'ontologically laden'. (...) This is in the form of the assumption that things (or entities) in themselves exist as such and such determined ones (independent of cognition, autonomously). This ontological assumption is not only the basis of our naïve understanding of cognition, but also its indispensable premise, insofar as this understanding is a fundamentally passive, 'receptive' one. Accordingly, just as 'perception' is the foundation, ('objective') description is the aim of cognition, that which cognition is about. In this sense, our idea of cognition and our idea of the things are inseparably linked. Without the ontological premise mentioned we just would not know what cognition is, but it is basically just a kind of image that we have in our minds (an assumption that helps us understand 'cognition'). Epistemology not only shares this basic assumption (which it also shares with metaphysics), but it revolves (unlike metaphysics) entirely around it by making the idea and demand of 'certainty' a condition of 'real' knowledge. As 'certainty' is a subjective criterion this entails the 'remodelling' of the real, holistic cognitive situation (to which metaphysics adheres) into a linear subject-object-relation (which results in the strict 'transcendence' of the objects). And it also establishes, due to its 'expertise' in matters of cognition, the 'primacy of epistemology' over all other sciences. Now, on closer inspection, however, the expertise of epistemology seems not all that dependable, because it basically consists only of paradigms which, from the point of view of the holism of the real cognitive situation itself, are nothing more than relatively simplistic interpretations of this situation. However, we do not yet know what another conception of cognition might look like (which is not surprising given the high rank of the phenomenon of cognition in the hierarchy of phenomena according to their complexity). 'Certainty' as a criterion of cognition is thus excluded from the outset, and thus the linear relational model of cognition appears as what it is, a gross distortion of the real, holistic cognitive situation. The significance of this argumentation with regard to physics is that the linear epistemological model of cognition itself is a major obstacle to an adequate epistemological understanding of physics. This is because it is fixed 'a priori' to an object-related concept of cognition, and to 'description' as the only mode of ('real') cognition. But physics (without questioning our naïve notion of cognition on the level of epistemology) simply works past it and its basic assumptions. Its cognitive concept (alias heuristic) is fundamentally different from that of metaphysics. The acceptance of the real, holistic cognitive situation is, in my opinion, the condition for an adequate understanding of physics' heuristic access to objects, its transcendental, generalizing cognitive concept, as well as its ontological relevance and dimension of its own. (shrink)

One of the challenges in secondary schools today is infringements on students’ rights, in a tortious way that may also constitute breach of the Child’s Right Act of 2003 in Nigeria. These breach on rights usually come through the administration of corporal punishments on students, and mainly because the school heads see themselves as loco parentis of the students who can, therefore, enforce any form of punishment on them in the school. This study investigated knowledge, attitude, and infringement (...) of tort law among public secondary school heads on students in Osun State. All the students in Osun State public secondary schools and 723 heads constituted the population. A sample of 54 school heads and 180 students were selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. Two instruments were designed to elicit responses from the respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the research questions raised for the study. The results showed that school heads do not have adequate knowledge of tort law and that both the school heads and students have poor attitude toward it tort law. The study recommends that short term training on student’s right, how they can be legally protected and tort law be organised for school heads. (shrink)

This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change (...) in the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being. (shrink)

I argue for an account of the vulnerability of trust, as a product of our need for secure social attachments to individuals and to a group. This account seeks to explain why it is true that, when we trust or distrust someone, we are susceptible to being betrayed by them, rather than merely disappointed or frustrated in our goals. What we are concerned about in matters of trust is, at the basic level, whether we matter, in a non-instrumental way, (...) to that individual, or to the group of which they are a member. We have this concern as a result of a drive to form secure social attachments. This makes us vulnerable in the characteristic way of being susceptible to betrayal, because how the other acts in such matters can demonstrate our lack of worth to them, or to the group, thereby threatening the security of our attachment, and eliciting the reactive attitudes characteristic of betrayal. (shrink)

The central question of this article is how to combine counterfactual theories of knowledge with the notion of actuality. It is argued that the straightforward combination of these two elements leads to problems, viz. the problem of easy knowledge and the problem of missing knowledge. In other words, there is overgeneration of knowledge and there is undergeneration of knowledge. The combination of these problems cannot be solved by appealing to methods by which beliefs are formed. (...) An alternative solution is put forward. The key is to rethink the closeness relation that is at the heart of counterfactual theories of knowledge. (shrink)

This essay presents a point of view for looking at `free will', with the purpose of interpreting where exactly the freedom lies. For, freedom is what we mean by it. It compares the exercise of free will with the making of inferences, which usually is predominantly inductive in nature. The making of inference and the exercise of free will, both draw upon psychological resources that define our ‘selves’. I examine the constitution of the self of an individual, especially the involvement (...) of personal beliefs, personal memories, affects, emotions, and the hugely important psychological value-system, all of which distinguish the self of one individual from that of another. The foundational position that adopted in this essay is that all psychological processes are correlated with corresponding ones involving large scale neural aggregates in the brain, communicating with one another through wavelike modes of excitation and de-excitation. Of central relevance is the value-network around which the affect system is organized, the latter, in turn, being the axis around which is assembled the self, with all its emotional correlates. The self is a complex system. I include a brief outline of what complexity consists of. In reality all systems are complex, for complexity is ubiquitous, and certain parts of nature appear to us to be ‘simple’ only in certain specific contexts. It is in this background that the issue of determinism is viewed in this essay. Instead of looking at determinism as a grand principle entrenched in nature independent of our interpretation of it, I look at our ability to explain and to predict events and phenomena around us, which is made possible by the existence of causal links running in a complex course that set up correlations between diverse parts of nature, in this way putting the stamp of necessity on these events. However, the complexity of systems limits our ability to explain and to predict to within certain horizons defined by contexts. Our ability to explain and predict in matters relating to acts of free will is similarly limited by the operations of the self that remain hidden from our own awareness. The aspects of necessity and determinism appear to us in the form of reason and rationality that explain and predict only within a limited horizon, while the rest depends on the complex operation of self-linked psychological resources, where the latter appear as contingent in the context of the exercise of free will. The hallmark of complex systems is the existence of amplifying factors that operate as destabilizing ones, along with inhibiting or stabilizing factors as well that generally limit the destabilizing influences to local occurrences, while preserving the global integrity of a system. This complex interplay of destabilizing and stabilizing influences lead to the possibility of an enormous number of distinct modes of behavior that appear as emergent phenomena in complex systems. Looking at the particular case of the self of an individual that guide her actions and thoughts, it is the operation of our emotions, built around the psychological value-system, that provide for the amplifying and inhibiting factors mentioned above. The operation of these self-linked factors stamps our actions and thoughts as contingent ones that do not fit with our concepts of reason and rationality. And this is what provides the basis of our idea of free will. Free will is not ‘free’ in virtue of exemption from causal links running through all our self-based processes - ones that remain hidden from our awareness, but is free of what is perceived to be ‘reason and rationality’ based on knowledge and the common pool of beliefs and principles associated with a shared world-view. When we speak of the choice involved in an act of exercise of free will what we actually refer to is the commonly observed fact that various different individuals of a similar disposition respond differently when placed under similar circumstances. In other words, free will is ‘free’ precisely because it is not subject to constraints of a commonly accepted and shared set of principles, beliefs, and values. While it is possible that, in an exercise of free will, the self-linked psychological resources are brought into action when a number of alternatives are presented to the self by the operation of the ingredients of a commonly shared world-view, it seems likely that, that set of alternatives is not of primary relevance in the final response that the mind produces, since the latter is primarily a product of the operation of the self-based psychological resources. What is of greater relevance here is the operation of emotion-driven processes, guided by the psychological value-system based on the activity of the so-called reward-punishment network in the brain. These processes lead the individual to a response that appears to be free from the shackles of determinism precisely because their mechanisms, which are hidden from us, do not conform to commonly accepted and shared rules and principles. In contrast, inductive inference is a process that is based on the ‘cognitive face’ of self, where the self-based psychological resources play a supportive role to the commonly shared world-view of an individual. There is never any freedom from the all-pervading causal links representing correlations among all objects, entities, and events in nature. In the midst of all this, the closest thing to freedom that we can have in our life comes with self-examination and self-improvement. The possibility of self-examination appears in the form of specific conjunctions between our complex self-processes and the ceaseless changes of scenario in our external world. This actually makes the emergent phenomenon of self-examination a matter of chance, but one that keeps on appearing again and again in our life. Once realized, self examination creates possibilities that would not be there in the absence of it, and these possibilities include the enhancement of further self-enrichment and further diversity in the exercise of our free will. (shrink)

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In (...) the first part of this paper I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the paper I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non- evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions – our expressive knowledge - may fit this bill. (shrink)

The Found and the Made: science, reason, and the reality of nature is a critical study of the role of abstraction and mathematical modeling in science, and how these affect the relationship of science and society to nature. This is a précis of the book, which questions the bias inherited from our religious and classical roots: that physical reality must be well defined, passive, and inert—a matter of divine or human specification. Determinism, time-reversibility, and isolated systems are persisting artifacts (...) of such a view, along with the notion that nature can be definitively grasped in a ‘theory of everything.’ However, if nature is autonomous in the way that organisms are (and mechanisms are not) it can be expected to self-organize in ways that elude mechanist treatment. Science could advance by taking a more self-reflective stance, acknowledging its role as a form of human cognition and examining the role of its practices and tacit assumptions in producing knowledge. Specifically, it could extend concepts of agency to non-living systems, in order to better explore self-organization in the cosmos at large. Such a shift in thinking might encourage society to extend to nature its natural legal rights. -/- . (shrink)

Devin Henry offers a comprehensive study of Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of substantial generation. In particular, he argues that, in Generation of Animals, Aristotle defends a view that Henry calls “reproductive hylomorphism” : an application of the hylomorphic model of substantial generation to the central case of the generation of animals. In this review, I explain Henry's view and offer some criticisms of his two-stage model of reproductive hylomorphism that distinguishes embryogenesis from morphogenesis.

Quassim Cassam offers a conception of ways of knowing which he argues is preferable to rival accounts such as the account we find in Williamson. The correct way to think about ways of knowing matters for philosophers, such as Cassam and Williamson, who want to understand knowledge itself in terms of ways of knowing. So is Cassam right that his conception of ways of knowing is preferable to Williamson's? The discussion to follow is irenic in spirit: I will argue (...) that in fact Cassam and Williamson don't offer competing accounts of the same phenomenon, but consistent accounts of subtly different phenomena. It is then open that ways of knowing in both senses are relevant to elucidating knowledge itself. (shrink)

Identity politics is commonly criticized as endangering democracy by undermining community, rational communication, and solidarity. Drawing on both radical democratic theory and standpoint theory, this article posits the opposite thesis: identity politics is pivotal for the democratization of democracy. Democratization through identity politics is achieved by disrupting hegemonic discourse and is, therefore, a matter of power, while such forms of power politics are reasonable when following minority standpoints generated through identity politics. The article develops this approach by connecting radical (...) democratic theories with standpoint theories and highlighting their commonalities and potential for mutual enhancement. Standpoint theory allows us to substantiate and reconcile two initially contradictory claims: particular minority standpoints are necessary to criticize the prevailing discursive and institutional orders, and these standpoints stem from intersubjective reason and embody ‘strong objectivity.’ This discussion presents a new perspective on the tension between particularity and universality, as well as the relationship between power and reason in democracy. Democratization is an oscillation between these polarities, and political theory should not aim to resolve this tension but to recognize and articulate it. Such recognition might involve elevating knowledge emerging from oppressed groups and exercising epistemic modesty when assessing specific forms of identity politics. (shrink)

This article argues that the Indian philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo espoused a sophisticated form of cosmopsychism that has great contemporary relevance. After first discussing Aurobindo’s prescient reflections on the “central problem of consciousness” and his arguments against materialist reductionism, I explain how he developed a panentheistic philosophy of “realistic Adwaita” on the basis of his own spiritual experiences and his intensive study of the Vedāntic scriptures. He derived from this realistic Advaita philosophy a highly original doctrine of evolutionary cosmopsychism, according (...) to which the Divine Saccidānanda is “involved” in everything in the universe and gradually manifests itself at each stage of the evolutionary process from matter to life to mind, and ultimately, to Supermind—the final stage that is yet to come, upon the attainment of which we will attain knowledge of our true divine nature as Saccidānanda. I then reconstruct Aurobindo’s novel solution to the individuation problem, according to which the Divine Saccidānanda individuates into various distinct consciousnesses by playfully limiting itself through a process of “exclusive concentration.” Finally, I highlight the continued relevance of Aurobindo’s evolutionary cosmopsychism by bringing him into conversation with Itay Shani, a contemporary proponent of cosmopsychism. (shrink)

First published in 1949 expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. Reichenbach, with Rudolph Carnap, founded logical positivism, a form of epistemofogy that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths.

A condensed summary of the adventures of ideas (1990-2020). Methodology of evolutionary-phenomenological constitution of Consciousness. Vector (BeVector) of Consciousness. Consciousness is a qualitative vector quantity. Vector of Consciousness as a synthesizing category, eidos-prototecton, intentional meta-observer. The development of the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Brentano, Husserl, Bergson, Florensky, Losev, Mamardashvili, Nalimov. Dialectic of Eidos and Logos. "Curve line" of the Consciousness Vector from space and time. The lower and upper sides of the "abyss of being". The existential tension of (...) being. Five reference “points” (existential-extremum) - world events in the evolution of Consciousness from “homo habilis” to “homo sapiens sapiens”. “Prometheus Effect". Inversion and reversion of Сonsciousness. "Open" and "closed" Сonsciousness. Consciousness and Self-Consciousness. Protogeometer: fall in the future, in the "EgoLand". The problem of justification/substantiation of mathematics (knowledge) is an ontological problem. The crisis of ontology and ontological limits of cognition. Ontological structure of space. The project of constructive dialectic ontology. The methodology of dialectical-ontological construction (modeling): conceptual-figure synthesis, total unification of matter, coincidence of ontological opposites, primordial Meta-Axioma and Superprinciple, vector (bivector) of the absolute state (states) of matter (absolute forms of existence). The ontological "celestial triangle" (Plato). Ontological invariants of the Universum and their ontological paths. Ontological and gnoseological dimensions of space. Triune (ontological) space of nine gnoseological dimensions: absolute rest (linear state, "Continuum")+ absolute motion (absolute vortex, "Discretuum") + absolute becoming (absolute wave, "Dis-Continuum"). Primordial generating structure: ontological framework, ontological carcass and ontological foundation. Ontological (structural, cosmic) memory - the semantic core of the conceptual construction of the Universum being as an eternal process of generation of new meanings and structures. Consciousness is an absolute (unconditional) attractor of meanings, a univalent phenomenon of ontological memory, which manifests itself at a certain level of the Universum being. Ontological space-MatterMemory-Ontological time (S-MM-T). Ontological Rhythm and Cycle. The nature and structure of ontological time. Natural (absolute) determinism. (shrink)

The urgent call by UNESCO to scale up interventions for the achievement of sustainable development goals motivated this study to assess the level and association of teachers' (n =107) and students' (n = 342) knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (KAB) regarding education for sustainable development, focusing on Pili (Canarium ovatum). This is a subset of a larger project that involves Pili to contextualize learning and instructional materials. The researchers used a descriptive cross-sectional survey approach and distributed a questionnaire through Google (...) Forms. KAB levels were categorized into poor, moderate, and high using descriptive data analysis, and their association with one another was determined by using Pearson's Chi- square. The findings indicated that, although the associations among the KAB of teachers were distinct from those of the students, they both perceived that possessing favorable knowledge and attitudes was insufficient to generate positive behaviors. Thus, the efforts to increase teachers' and students' motivation and involvement and to help them carry out favorable behaviors toward sustainable development were imperative. Given this, identifying the barriers to converting knowledge and attitudes into behaviors and considering the factors that involved the association of KAB in promoting sustainable development, particularly in education, were recommended. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a new philosophical interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid, dually centered on the queens of Olympus and Carthage. More specifically, I show how the philosopher-poet Virgil deploys Dido’s Junonian furor as the Aristotelian matter of the unjust Roman imperium, the feminist counterforce to the patriarchal force disguised as peaceful order. The first section explores Virgil’s political and biographical background for the raw materials for a feminist, anti-imperial political philosophy. The second section, following Marilynn Desmond, situates the (...) continuing misogynist condemnation of Virgil’s two goddess-queens in the context of their honored centrality in Roman and Carthaginian culture. The third section reinterprets Virgil’s goddess-queens as agents of furor as (apparently mad) feminist counterforce to the (actually mad) unjust force of the Roman empire and its agents Jupiter and Aeneas. The fourth section translates these poetic philosophical interpretations into prose, arguing that Dido’s Junonian furor is the Aristotelian matter constituting the unjust forms of Roman imperium. And the conclusion applies the latter analysis to Hardt and Negri’s Empire, suggesting Dido as a model for the “multitude” in the fight against the imperial injustice of today’s globalized empire. (shrink)