The major competing statistical paradigms share a common remarkable but unremarked thread: in many of their inferential applications, different probability interpretations are combined. How this plays out in different theories of inference depends on the type of question asked. We distinguish four question types: confirmation, evidence, decision, and prediction. We show that Bayesian confirmation theory mixes what are intuitively “subjective” and “objective” interpretations of probability, whereas the likelihood-based account of evidence melds three conceptions of what constitutes an “objective” probability.

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and use ontologies and (...) terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

The authority to use force, including lethal force is a defining feature of the police profession. The emergence and incorporation of the Miranda doctrine in our criminal law, and its attached misconceptions made it inevitable to determine the understandings of the Philippine law enforcers. There is a limited number of research studies conducted that are connected with the PNP. This implies demand studies centralizing on the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda Warnings in effecting the arrest of suspected (...) criminals. The study is a quantitative analysis of the relationship between the individual, situational, and organizational predictors to the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda Warnings among PNP personnel particularly the Police Patrol Personnel assigned as Beat Patrol Personnel, Compact Personnel, and Arresting Officers, during police-civilian encounters. Utilizing Google survey forms as the primary tool to gather and evaluate data, the self-constructed survey to be utilized is anchored on the Deference Exchange Theory, Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) approach, and the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS). The findings of this study imply that factors affecting the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda warnings significantly influence the enhancement of law enforcement interventions. From the results of the study, it may be concluded that the factors affecting the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda warnings are more likely to contribute interventions to the Philippine National Police, as an organization, a significant enhancement in law enforcement. Recommendations were proposed based on the findings and conclusion of this study. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are proposed for the PNP leadership to provide written policy to be used as operational guidelines for all PNP personnel during the conduct of arrest of suspected criminals: (a) When conducting police operations and apprehending criminal suspects, male police officers shall use reasonable force; (b) Continuous education and training for law enforcement personnel; (c) Active aggression coupled with the present ability to carry out the threat or assault, which reasonably indicates that an assault or injury to a person appears imminent by crime suspects should be physically restrained with force”; (d) To be quick to use physical force in situations where the incident is critical and dangerous; (e) The arresting police officer informs the suspect that he/she has the right to remain silent”; and (f) The Arresting Police Officer informs. (shrink)

BioPortal is a Web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies developed in OWL, RDF(S), OBO format, Protégé frames, and Rich Release Format. BioPortal functionality, driven by a service-oriented architecture, includes the ability to browse, search and visualize ontologies (Figure 1). The Web interface also facilitates community-based participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content.

To improve oneself and grow professionally, career development has been found to be crucial, as it serves as a roadmap for the professional growth of employees. However, a barrier, known as the glass ceiling, hinders the progress of employees, especially those in the LGBTQIA+ community. This study explores the impact of the glass ceiling on the career development of selected LGBTQIA+ individuals, shedding light on the barriers faced by this community in the workplace. The researchers used a qualitative multiple-case study (...) and selected ten (10) LGBTQIA+ participants from large enterprises via the judgmental sampling technique. Through thematic analysis, psychological impact, workplace discomfort, lack of recognition, and career progress challenges emerged as the impacts of the glass ceiling on the participants. Strategies for overcoming glass ceiling barriers, such as resilience, self-reflection, and community support, are identified. Thus, the study found that glass ceilings are really evident in the context of businesses. With this, the proposed advocacy plan in the study suggests interventions like workplace inclusion training, mentorship networks, and seminars on employee rights. Furthermore, it emphasizes the call for ongoing research and advocacy efforts to dismantle barriers and cultivate workplaces that not only embrace diversity but also provide equitable opportunities for career growth. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Examining the status of cacao production, challenges, and prospects of cacao farmersin Zamboanga del Norte province were done in this study. The investigation revealed that cacaofarming was practiced by males (244 or 65.10%) and female cacao farmers (34%) who areprimarily married with secondary educational backgrounds. Most cacao farmers were theirproductive age ranging from 50-59 years old (42.93%), 40-49 years old (34.4%). However,fewer young people engaged in cacao farming aged below 40 years old (7.46%). The primaryoccupation of the respondents was farming (...) (86.13%), tilling their owned land (84.53%), andwith an average annual income below 60,000 pesos (50.40%). The average farm size was at 1-3hectares (80.00%), having a plain (40.27%) to rolling topography (47.47%) planted with UF 18(50.13%) and BR 25 (49.87%) varieties of cacao. Intercropping was observed (99.20%) withcoconut (79.20%) and banana (14.67%) planted along with cacao. Pest infestation of stem borer(59.73%) and bugs (22.67%) were observed at a low level (79.20%) and controlled usingLamdacyhalothrin (86.40%) as a chemical spray. Moreover, cacao diseases in farms were at alow incidence level (74.13%), with vascular streak dieback (53.06%) as the most commondisease among farms, and the method of controlling the spread was using chemicals (53.60%)and synthetic pesticides (100%) as a spray. Farms established 2 years from sowing (90.13%)observed farm management practices such as weeding twice a year (45.33%), fertilizerapplication 4 times a year (88.00%) using 1-3 bags per hectare (85.06%). Cacao trees produced0.50-1.50 (50.00%) of seeds per tree. Cacao products are sold in dried form (60.98%) withprices ranging from 81-100/kilogram through cooperative (100%). Farmers faced numerouschallenges, the most significant of which were the high cost of routine maintenance (such ascleaning/brushing) and shortage of laborers. The accessibility from the farm to the market roadwas also seen as a challenge among them. The province's cacao agricultural stakeholdersextended to support services to farmers such as free planting materials, credit assistance, cacaoproduction seminars, and post-harvest facilities, which were all considered valuable to farmersin addressing the challenges they faced on cacao farming and production. (shrink)

The world of entrepreneurship has historically been linked with taking risks and the potential for significant rewards. However, there persists a notable gender imbalance in the entrepreneurial landscape, wherein women entrepreneurs remain a minority. Women navigating the entrepreneurial path encounter distinct challenges, setting their experiences apart from their male counterparts. In Balayan, Batangas, despite strides towards gender equality, women entrepreneurs continue to face challenges in the entrepreneurial landscape. This qualitative study delves into the experiences of 10 successful female entrepreneurs who (...) met specific criteria. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews are conducted, exploring various aspects of participants' experiences and revealing their motivations, achievements, challenges, and strategies. Thematic analysis reveals the connection between familial, community-driven, and personal motivations that drive these entrepreneurs forward. Despite facing obstacles such as financial constraints and gender biases, they prioritize financial gains and personal growth. With resilience, innovation, and dedication, these women overcome challenges and achieve success, utilizing support networks and online marketing strategies to their advantage. Recommendations include empowering women in entrepreneurship, strengthening support networks, introducing tailored financial literacy programs, and advocating against gender biases. Implement skill development initiatives and provide specialized education in online marketing. Engage in policy advocacy, celebrate success stories, and continuously research challenges and successes. Foster collaborative partnerships between businesses, educational institutions, and communities, and advocate for increased funding opportunities for sustainable growth. This research emphasizes the strength and capabilities of women entrepreneurs in Balayan, Batangas, affirming that "pink doesn't mean weak.". (shrink)

Successful teamwork doesn't work overnight, what makes teamwork potent is team building. (Plagiarism) According to Abdullah, et. al., (2022) team building training can improve group cohesiveness or the quality of sticking together or unity teamwork more likely to be higher with a significant score difference. This study used mixed methods both qualitative and quantitative data collection, and an analysis method to answer the research method, random sampling is named as such because the data set is chosen via random selection, where (...) every member of the population has an equal probability of being selected (Tao, 2023). The respondents were 100 restaurant employees and 10 managers from the chosen restaurant in Malolos City in Bulacan. The subcategories of team building, including activities, communication, skills, personality, problem-solving, and values, have all received a consensus of strong agreement, with weighted averages falling within the range of 3.26 to 3.44. This level of agreement aligns with the scores for motivation at 3.43 and productivity at 3.38. These values have been calculated by determining the mean, which spans from 3.25 to 4.00. The advantages of team building that is being observed by the managers is to create familiarity and teamwork among the employees, to improve the quality of service and the quality of the food especially the respondents are in the food service sector, development, and training for the employees to achieve the establishments’ goal and lastly rebuilding and build a relationship with one employee to another. However, for the disadvantages, it costs a lot of money to conduct team building in the management. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected. Despite the fact that there is a low correlation between teambuilding activities and motivation and employee productivity, there is still a significant relationship between the variables. (shrink)

Due to the emergence of ICT in ELT sector, seasoned English teachers find it resistant to such a shift despite having a positive attitude towards its use. This quasi-experimental study aimed to examine the extent to which seasoned English language teachers developed their ICT skills through a Service-Learning Activity (SLA). Using a one-group pre- and post-test design, this study collected the data through a modified Needs Assessment Survey (NAS) distributed to fourteen purposively selected participants. It was administered to examine what (...) professional ICT development would greatly benefit them. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and themes according to the Service-Learning Activity (SLA) topics. A Post Evaluation Survey (PES) was administered, and its result was compared to the initial test. The results showed that the seasoned teachers gained significant learning gains in terms of (1) sharing of knowledge from other teachers; (2) being encouraged to use ICT tools; (3) training opportunities; (4) working with other colleagues; and 5) attending professional workshops which include SLA. However, this study unveiled that the English teachers had no significant difference in perceptions regarding the roles of computers in teaching before and after the intervention. Limitations and recommendations for future studies were discussed. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie distinguished himself in twentieth-century philosophy by presenting an important objection to the traditional free will explanation for why God would allow evil: If evil is due to the free choice of creatures, why wouldn’t an omnipotent God simply create free creatures who would choose better? Alvin Plantinga, in turn, distinguished himself with his critique of Mackie. Plantinga’s main point is that Mackie made a mistake in assuming that it is within the power of omnipotence fully to create (...) just any possible world. However, Mackie made a second questionable assumption which Plantinga does not critique, and which I aim to clarify in this article. Mackie assumes that a God, as construed by classical theistic belief, who could create either of two people—one of whom would freely choose right and the other of whom would freely choose wrong—must create the one who would freely choose right. This assumption motivates Plantinga’s own account of trans-world depravity, which suggests that every free creature God might have created would have sinned had God created them. I consider Plantinga’s suggestion highly improbable. More importantly, under Mackie’s assumption, if there is at least one possible creature who would choose rightly, then there is no possibility of God ever allowing any other creature to sin, which would seem to be incompatible with their having any free will. -/- This version of the paper does have the same pagination as the published version. Permission has been granted from the Editor of Philosophia Christi to upload this contribution according to Philosophy Documentation Center terms of use. Learn more about the Journal by going to wwwepsociety. org/philchristi. (shrink)

Digital humanities research has developed haphazardly, with substantive contributions in some disciplines and only superficial uses in others. It has made almost no inroads in philosophy; for example, of the nearly two million articles, chapters, and books housed at philpapers.org, only sixteen pop up when one searches for ‘digital humanities’. In order to make progress in this field, we demonstrate that a hypothesis-driven method, applied by experts in data-collection, -aggregation, -analysis, and -visualization, yields philosophical fruits. “Call no one happy until (...) they are dead.” “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.” These ancient norms still inform how we speak of the dead. From their beginnings in the nineteenth century, modern obituaries have been both practical and honorary. They are written with two aims: to pay respect to the deceased and to inspire the living to follow in their footsteps. The obituary of William Custis of Virginia exemplifies these aims, say that “it is due to his memory publicly to record his virtues,” and that “There is in the life a noble, independent and honest man, something so worthy of imitation, something that so strongly commends itself to the approbation of the virtuous mind, that his name should not be left to oblivion” (Daily National Intelligencer, 18 November 1838). Likewise, philosophers have emphasized that we can determine what counts as a virtue for a given type of person in a given community by analyzing what people say about the dead (Zagzebski, L. Virtues of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 135). By adhering to norms of praise, admiration, and respect, obituaries reveal what counts as a virtue, value, or constituent of wellbeing (VVC) for a particular type of person in a particular community. -/- One way to explore this insight would be to close-read a small number of obituaries of people from intersecting demographics, crossing dimensions such as gender, age, race, class, educational attainment, veteran status, religion, and location. Another, which we demonstrate in this chapter, is to harness digital humanities resources to distance-read a much larger number of obituaries, extracting both demographic meta-data and first-order content expressive of VVC. We then analyze and visualize this information to establish the structures of VVC associated with different types of people in different communities, arguing that data-science measures such as eigenvector centrality can be used to identify cardinal virtues. We also explain the rudiments of our text- and meta-data mining, our method of aggregating and comparing texts, and our visualization techniques. In so doing, we pave the way for researchers in philosophy and related fields to generate similar analyses and visualizations. (shrink)

This is the first chapter of Mark Julyan's 'History of the Heavens' which, as a whole, focuses on the many different interpretational problems that emerge within the controversial and previously unavailable appendix to Kant's 'Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens'. The first chapter makes the contention that we should interpret J.L. Austin's curious and otherwise eccentric capitalization of the font in the word KANT (twice on pp.2-3) of his 'How to do Things with Words' (1962), through pp.13-14 (...) of the 'Elementum: eine Vorarbeit zum Griechischen und Lateinischen Thesaurus' of Hermann Diels (1899), where Diels describes the Thesaurus of the font based on Aristotle's description of ancient atomism (twice in the Metaphysics and Gen et Corr). This, alongside a play on the words of the name Bernard de Fontenelle and the provocative nature of Austin's obviously false statements regarding Kant, suggest he had seen Kant's astonishingly scandalous opening statement to the appendix; and that he was making a cryptic, but nonetheless fairly tangible reference to it, by means of showing us How To Do Things With Words by embodying a witticism ass encryption, an instance of his theory into his text. (shrink)

Hume's Treatise arguments concerning space, time, and geometry, especially ones involving his denial of infinite divisibility; have suffered harsh criticism. I show that in the section "Of the ideas of space and time," Hume gives important characterizations of his skeptical approach, in some respects Pyrrhonian, that will be developed in the rest of the Treatise. When that approach is better understood, the force of Hume's arguments can be appreciated, and the influential criticisms of them can be seen to miss the (...) mark. (shrink)

Consistent materialists are almost bound to suggest that , if it exists at all, is no more than epiphenomenal. A correct understanding of the real requires that everything we do and say is no more than a product of whatever processes are best described by physics, without any privileged place, person, time or scale of action. Consciousness is a myth, or at least a figment. Plotinus was no materialist: for him, it is Soul and Intellect that are more real than (...) the phenomena we misdescribe as material. Nor does he suppose that consciousness depends on language (as Stoics and modern materialists have sometimes said): wordless experience is actually superior. And much of what counts towards our present consciousness is to be discarded. It is better not to remember most of what now seems more significant to us; better to discard images; better that the intellect be than , losing any sense of separation between subject and object. The goal of the Plotinian intellectual is to join , but it is a mark of the good dancer that she is not conscious of what she does. There is therefore a strange confluence between Plotinus and modern materialists: our experience at least is transitory, deceitful, epiphenomenal, and is to be encountered when we have shed our illusions. (shrink)

Adequate epistemic justification is best conceived as the appearance, over time, of knowledge to the subject. ‘Appearance’ is intended literally, not as a synonym for belief. It is argued through consideration of examples that this account gets the extension of ‘adequately justified belief’ at least roughly correct. A more theoretical reason is then offered to regard justification as the appearance of knowledge: If we have a knowledge norm for assertion, we do our best to comply with this norm when we (...) express as assertions only beliefs that appear to us to be knowledge. If we are doing our best, there is little point in further sanctions. So a norm of knowledge for assertion would lead to a secondary norm of justified belief as the appearance of knowledge, marking a point at which our assertions may be corrected but should not be blamed. (shrink)

People often assume that everyone can be divided by sex/gender (that is, by physical and social characteristics having to do with maleness and femaleness) into two tidy categories: male and female. Careful thought, however, leads us to reject that simple ‘binary’ picture, since not all people fall precisely into one group or the other. But if we do not think of sex/gender in terms of those two categories, how else might we think of it? Here I consider four distinct models; (...) each model correctly captures some features of sex/gender, and so each is appropriate in some contexts. But the first three models are inadequate when tough questions arise, like whether trans women should be admitted as students at a women’s college or when it is appropriate for intersex athletes to compete in women’s athletic events. (‘Trans’ refers to the wide range of people who have an atypical gender identity for someone of their birth-assigned sex, and ‘intersex’ refers to people whose bodies naturally develop with markedly different physical sex characteristics than are paradigmatic of either men or women.) Such questions of inclusion and exclusion matter enormously to the people whose lives are affected by them, but ordinary notions of sex/gender offer few answers. The fourth model I describe is especially designed to make those hard decisions easier by providing a process to clarify what matters. (shrink)

Here we focus on two questions: What is the proper semantics for deontic modal expressions in English? And what is the connection between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons? Our contribution towards thinking about the first, which makes up the bulk of our paper, considers a representative sample of recent challenges to a Kratzer-style formal semantics for modal expressions, as well as the rival views—Fabrizio Cariani’s contrastivism, John MacFarlane’s relativism, and Mark Schroeder’s ambiguity theory—those challenges are thought to (...) motivate. These include the Professor Procrastinate challenge to Inheritance (the principle that ‘If ought p and p entails q, then ought q), as well as Parfit’s miners puzzle regarding information-sensitive deontic modals. Here we argue that a Kratzer-style view is able to meet all of the challenges we’ll consider. In addition, we’ll identify challenges for each of those rival views. Our overall conclusion is that a Kratzer-style semantics remains the one to beat. With this assumption in place, we then ask how we should understand the relationship between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons. Should, for example, we hold that the truth of such a statement entails the existence of a normative reason for some agent to comply? Here we argue that, in many cases, acceptance of Kratzer’s semantics for deontic modals leaves open for substantive normative theorizing the question of whether an agent has a normative reason to comply with what she ought to do. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

Over one hundred years ago, the Supreme Court emphatically declared that deportation proceedings are civil, not criminal, in nature. As a result, none of the nearly 400,000 individuals who were deported last year enjoyed any of the constitutional protections afforded to criminal defendants under the Sixth or Eighth Amendments. Among those 400,000 were numerous detained juveniles and mentally ill individuals who, as a result of the civil designation, had no right to appointed counsel. These individuals were thus forced to navigate (...) the labyrinth of immigration law alone. Others were lawful permanent residents who had pled guilty to minor offenses upon the correct advice of counsel that they could not be deported. These individuals later became subject to deportation when Congress retroactively changed the law, unbound by the criminal prohibition against ex post facto laws. The dichotomy between the gravity of the liberty interest at stake in these proceedings––a lifetime of exile from homes and families in the United States––and the relative dearth of procedural protections afforded respondents, has always been intuitively unjust to some. However, over the past twenty years, as immigration and criminal law have become intertwined as never before, the intuitive sense of many has matured into a scholarly movement exploring the criminalization of immigration law. This movement has taken aim at the incoherence of deportation’s civil designation. Until recently, however, there was little reason to think the Supreme Court would wade into the waters of the resurgent debate over the nature of deportation proceedings. In Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. 1473 (2010), however, the Court surprised almost everyone as it went to great length to chronicle the criminalization of immigration law and ultimately concluded that deportation is - uniquely difficult to classify. The immediate impact of the Padilla decision is the critical recognition that criminal defendants have a right to be advised by their attorneys if a plea they are contemplating will result in deportation. However, I argue, that in time Padilla may come to stand for something much more significant in immigration jurisprudence. When we read Padilla in the context of the Supreme Court’s evolving immigration jurisprudence, there is good reason to believe that Padilla is a critical pivot point for the Court. Padilla marks the beginning of a significant reconceptualization of the nature of deportation toward the realization that it is neither truly civil nor criminal. Rather, deportation is different. It is a unique legal animal that lives in the crease between the civil and criminal labels. This article explores the evolving arch of Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding the quasi-criminal nature of deportation proceedings and articulates a principled mechanism by which the scope of respondents’ rights can be defined under this new framework. (shrink)

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research (ISR), at Phenikaa University. ISR has for seven years now the place where the co-founders of this portal have been working and producing publications. A special event occurs now as the Current Conservation magazine publishes a new writing piece by our member, Dr Minh-Hoang Nguyen.

Le Père Ignace Carbonnelle, l'un des principaux fondateurs de la Société scientifique de Bruxelles en 1875 et son secrétaire général depuis cette époque, décède inopinément en 1889 après une quin­zaine d'années durant lesquelles il fut «l'homme fort» de ladite Société. Aussitôt, la Revue des questions scienti­fiques annonce la triste nouvelle, promettant, pour un prochain numéro, une étude détaillée de sa vie et de son œuvre. Elle ne paraîtra jamais, de sorte que sa mort ne fut pas saluée avec l'ampleur qu'on (...) était en droit d'attendre. Et pour cause ! Au ter­me d'une enquête digne d'un roman policier, cette étude révèle que Rome, agacée par l'atomisme de Carbonnelle, profita de sa mort pour rappeler à l'ordre la Société en l'invitant à marcher dans les pas de l'Aquinate. En réponse à cette pressante invi­tation et par un excès de zèle non requis, la Société élut comme président le célèbre thomiste français Edmond Domet de Vor­ges, cependant que le mathématicien Paul Mansion s'attacha d'établir, à partir des publications de Pierre Duhem prônant un retour à une physique des qualités, que la Société se conformait bien, mais à sa manière, aux injonctions romaines. ––– Fr. Ignace Carbonnelle, who founded the Brussels Scientific Society in 1875 and was from this date onwards her Secretary General, passed away suddenly in 1889, after fifteen years during which he was the leading figure of the aforementioned Society. “La Revue des Question scientifique” announced the sad news but promised that their next publication would include a detailed article on the great man and his works. Sadly this article never appeared, meaning that the passing of Fr. Carbonnelle was not marked with the importance which we might have otherwise expected. For what reason, you may well ask? After a detailed investigation, worthy of Agatha Christie herself, it would appear that Rome had been rather alarmed by the “atomism” present in Fr. Carbonnelle's reflections, and had taken the opportunity of his death to invite the Scientific Society to opinions more in line with those of St Thomas. In response to this firmly worded invitation, and with overzealous spontaneity, the Society elected the celebrated French Thomiste Edmond Domet de Vorges as their new President. At the same time the mathematician Paul Mansion relied on the publications of Pierre Duhem, which advocated a stronger adhesion to a physics of an object's qualities, to establish that the Society was, in fact, well aligned with the desires of Rome. (shrink)

The term ‘Continental philosophy’ designates not philosophy on the continent of Europe as a whole, but rather a selective slice of Franco-German philosophy. Through a critical analysis of the arguments advanced by Otto Neurath, the paper addresses the issue of why Austrian philosophers in particular are not counted in the pantheon of Continental philosophers. Austrian philosophy is marked by the predominance of philosophical analysis and of the philosophy of science. The paper concludes that it is not Austria which is the (...) special case when seen against the background of contemporary mainstream philosophy, but rather Germany and France. (shrink)

This chapter elaborates and develops the thesis originally put forward by Mary Morgan (2005) that some mathematical models may surprise us, but that none of them can completely confound us, i.e. let us unable to produce an ex post theoretical understanding of the outcome of the model calculations. This chapter intends to object and demonstrate that what is certainly true of classical mathematical models is however not true of pluri-formalized simulations with multiple axiomatic bases. This chapter thus proposes to show (...) that - and why - some of these computational simulations that are now booming in the sciences not only surprise us but also confound us. To do so, it shows too that it is needed to elaborate and articulate with some new precision the concept of weak emergence initially due, for its part, to Mark A. Bedau (1997). (shrink)

It is claimed that the notion of reflexive pronoun involves, in indo-european and amerindian languages, a name or a morphological mark related to the expression of an inalienable relationship.

This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition is (...) for her credence in this proposition to be above a certain threshold, a threshold that varies depending on pragmatic factors. We show that while this account of belief can provide an elegant explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, it is not alone in doing so, for an alternative account of belief, which we call the reasoning disposition account, can do so as well. And the latter account, we argue, is far more plausible than pragmatic credal reductivism, since it accords far better with a number of claims about belief that are very hard to deny. (shrink)

Extensive scientific, philosophical and artistic activities were carried out in the Islamic World’s various science and civilization centers during the early Middle Ages. In these centers, noteworthy works of mathematics, astronomy, geography, medicine, pharmacology, optics, botany, chemistry and other fields of science, which would later determine improvement paths for these fields, were created. Abu al-Izz Ismail ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari (12th-13th centuries), was a magnificent Muslim scientist known for his work named The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Kitab fi (...) ma‘rifati’l-hiyal al-handasiyya) and he was born in geography where many scientists were trained. He contributed to the development of science and civilization, the joint legacy of humanity and demonstrated his true capability and success in the field of ilm al-hiyal (the scientific field which addresses the information and practices regarding mechanical technology and engineering in Islamic science history). From this perspective, it is evident that al-Jazari had a wide field of interest, made his mark in the age he lived in with his brave and innovative ideas, and was a wise engineer. al-Jazari’s detailed descriptions and explanations of water clocks, oil lamp clocks and water pumping machines, as well as their construction, were astounding. In addition, al-Jazari’s studies on metal casting techniques, cone valves, wheel balance and the real-world use of aspiration tubes are important in contemporary engineering studies. When all these are considered, it becomes clear that his designation as the “Leonardo da Vinci of the Islamic World” is not a coincidence. Many studies on al-Jazari’s scientific legacy have been conducted in various parts of the world. There are various manuscripts of his aforementioned book. Based on these manuscripts, the work has been -fully or partially- translated into many languages, including Turkish. The German and English translations served as a basis for studies on al-Jazari in other languages. In recent years, studies conducted on al-Jazari in Türkiye (books, articles, domestic and international symposiums, congresses etc.) have demonstrated his brilliance and competence as a scientist. Furthermore, studies on al-Jazari are still ongoing in Türkiye. As for Russia, the scientific legacy of the scientists raised in the Islamic World such as Avicenna, al-Farabi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, al-Battani, al-Kashi, Abd al-Rahman al-Khazini, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was researched within the scope of a special plan and program. Depending on the relevant studies, al-Jazari and his work drew attention as well. A small portion of the aforementioned Russian studies is known in Türkiye. It is safe to assume that al-Jazari studies in Russia are virtually unknown in Türkiye. The present study primarily aims to contribute to the literature on the scientific legacy of al-Jazari, a Middle Age Islamic scientist best known for his famous work in the mechanical field. More specifically, the present study aims to: 1) to identify the studies on al-Jazari in Russia, and in the former USSR countries, where academic studies are still in Russian after the Soviet Union period, to create a chronological biography and to set forth their compilation; in other words, to create a bibliography which includes Russian studies on al-Jazari; 2) to provide information on the structure and content of the studies in question, to detect the methodological issues encountered in these works, and make solution recommendations to solve these issues; 3) to contribute to continuing and future studies in Türkiye on al-Jazari in terms of source and material index. In conclusion, it should be stated that comparative reading was conducted centered on The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Kitab fi ma‘rifati’l-hiyal al-handasiyya). It should also be noted that Russian popular internet publications (which are not based on academic research and are created/reproduced for commercial and personal purposes) were excluded from the assessment. (shrink)

Following the publication of his magnum opus L’être et l’événement (Being and Event) in 1988, Alain Badiou has been acclaimed as one of France’s greatest living philosophers. Since then, he has released a dozen books, including Manifesto for Philosophy, Conditions, Metapolitics and Logiques des mondes (Logics of Worlds), many of which are now available in English translation. Badiou writes on an extraordinary array of topics, and his work has already had an impact upon studies in the history of philosophy, the (...) history and philosophy of science, political philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and ontology. This volume takes up the challenge of explicating, extending and, in many places, criticising Badiou’s stunningly original theses. Above all, the essays collected here put Badiou’s concepts to the test in a confrontation with the four great headings that he himself has identified as essential to our humanity: science, love, art and politics. Many of the contributors have already been recognised as outstanding translators of and commentators on Badiou’s work; they appear here with fresh voices also destined to make a mark. (shrink)

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

The Situationist International (1957-1972) was a small group of communist revolutionaries, originally organised out of the West European artistic avant-garde of the 1950s. The focus of my thesis is to explain how the Situationist International (SI) became a group able to exert a considerable influence on the ultra-left criticism that emerged during and in the wake of the May movement in France in 1968. My wager is that the pivotal period of the group is to be found between 1960 and (...) 1963, a period marked by the split of 1962. Often this is described as the transition of the group from being more concerned with art to being more concerned with politics, but as I will argue this definitional shorthand elides the significance of the Situationist critique of art, philosophy and politics. The two axes of my thesis are as follows. First, that the significant minority in the group which carried out the break of 1962, identified a homology between the earlier Situationist critique of art — embodied in the Situationist ‘hypothesis of the construction of situations’ — and Marx’s critique and supersession of the radical milieu of philosophy from which he emerged in the mid- 1840s. This homology was summarised in the expression of the Situationist project as the ‘supersession of art’ (dépassement de l’art). Secondly, this homology was practically embodied in the resolution of the debates over the role of art in the elaboration of the Situationist hypothesis, which had been ongoing since 1957. However, it was the SI’s encounter with the ultra-left group Socialisme ou Barbarie that would prove decisive. Via Guy Debord’s membership, the group was exposed to both the idea of a more general revolutionary criticism, but also ultimately what was identified as the insufficiently criticised ‘political militancy’ of this group. Indeed, in the ‘political alienation’ found in Socialisme ou Barbarie, a further homology was established between the alienation of the political and artistic avant-gardes. This identity would prove crucial to the further elaboration of the concept of ‘spectacle’. By way of an examination of the peculiar and enigmatic ‘Hamburg Theses’ of 1961, and the relationship between these ‘Theses’ and the Situationist criticism of art and politics worked out over the first five years of the group, I will argue that the break in 1962 should be conceived as one against politics as much as art (rather than just the latter, as it is more often represented). Additionally, I will outline how the SI, through the paradoxical reassertion of their artistic origins, attempted to synthesise their criticism of art with the recovery of the work of Marx beyond its mutilation as Marxism. Indeed, it was the synthesis of these critiques that enabled the considerable development of the concept of ‘spectacle’, opening the way to the unique influence the SI exerted in the re-emergence of a revolutionary movement at the end of the 1960s. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent contributions to the hate speech literature – by Steven Heyman and Jeremy Waldron – which seek a justification for the legal restriction of hate speech in an account of the way that hate speech infringes against people’s dignity. These analyses look beyond the first-order hurts and disadvantages suffered by the immediate targets of hate speech, and consider the prospect of hate speech sustaining complex social structures whose wide-scale operations lower the social status of members of (...) targeted groups. In Heyman’s and Waldron’s accounts we find plausible insights into the nature of identity-based social hierarchies, and the harms that redound to subordinated people under the operations of such hierarchies. I argue, however, that both analyses are unsuccessful as justifications for the restriction of hate speech, because they do not ultimately provide reason to think that hate speech is responsible for creating or sustaining identity-based social hierarchies. (shrink)

In disagreements about trivial matters, it often seems appropriate for disputing parties to adopt a ‘middle ground’ view about the disputed matter. But in disputes about more substantial controversies (e.g. in ethics, religion, or politics) this sort of doxastic conduct can seem viciously acquiescent. How should we distinguish between the two kinds of cases, and thereby account for our divergent intuitions about how we ought to respond to them? One possibility is to say that ceding ground in a trivial dispute (...) is appropriate because the disputing parties are usually epistemic peers within the relevant domain, whereas in a more substantial disagreement the disputing parties rarely, if ever, qualify as epistemic peers, and so ‘sticking to one’s guns’ is usually the appropriate doxastic response. My aim in this paper is to explain why this way of drawing the desired distinction is ultimately problematic, even if it seems promising at first blush. (shrink)

In recent work Mary Kate McGowan presents an account of oppressive speech inspired by David Lewis's analysis of conversational kinematics. Speech can effect identity-based oppression, she argues, by altering 'the conversational score', which is to say, roughly, that it can introduce presuppositions and expectations into a conversation, and thus determine what sort of subsequent conversational 'moves' are apt, correct, felicitous, etc., in a manner that oppresses members of a certain group (e.g. because the suppositions and expectations derogate or demean members (...) of that group). In keeping with the Lewisian picture, McGowan stresses the asymmetric pliability of conversational scores. She argues that it is easier to introduce (for example) sexist presuppositions and expectations into a conversation than it is to remove them. Responding to a sexist remark, she thus suggests, is like trying to "unring a bell". I begin by situating McGowan's work in the wider literature on speech and social hierarchy, and explaining how her account of oppressive speech improves upon the work of others in its explication of the relationship between individuals' verbal conduct and structurally oppressive social arrangements. I then propose an explanation and supportive elaboration of McGowan's claims about the asymmetric pliability of conversations involving identity-oppressive speech. Rather than regarding such asymmetry as a sui generis phenomenon, I show how we can understand it as a consequence of a more general asymmetry between making things salient and un-salient in speech, and I show how this asymmetry also operates in various cases that interested Lewis. (shrink)

Ever since Frege, propositions have played a central role in philosophy of language. Propositions are generally conceived as abstract objects that have truth conditions essentially and fulfill both the role of the meaning of sentences and of the objects or content of propositional attitudes. More recently, the abstract conception of propositions has given rise to serious dissatisfaction among a number of philosophers, who have instead proposed a conception of propositional content based on cognitive acts (Hanks, Moltmann, Soames). This approach is (...) not entirely new, though, but has important precedents in early analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The aim of this volume is bring together some of the most important texts from the relevant historical literature and new contributions from contemporary proponents of act-based conceptions of propositional content. (shrink)

Are the sculpture and the mass of gold which permanently makes it up one object or two? In this article, we argue that the monist, who answers ‘one object’, cannot accommodate the asymmetry of material constitution. To say ‘the mass of gold materially constitutes the sculpture, whereas the sculpture does not materially constitute the mass of gold’, the monist must treat ‘materially constitutes’ as an Abelardian predicate, whose denotation is sensitive to the linguistic context in which it appears. We motivate (...) this approach in terms of modal analyses of material constitution, but argue that ultimately it fails. The monist must instead accept a deflationary, symmetrical use of ‘materially constitutes’. We argue that this is a serious cost for her approach. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in (...) the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

Temporal Changes in Ovarian Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone mRNA Levels by Gonadotropins in the Rat Sung Ho Lee, Eun-Seob Song, Sun Kyeong Yu, Changmee Kim, Dae Kee Lee, Wan Sung Choi l and Kyungjin Kim* Department of Molecular Biofogy and SRC for Cell Differentiation, Seoul National University, Seoul 150-742, Korea; IDepartment of Anatomy, College of Medicine, Gyeongsanf; National University, Chinju 660-280, Korea (Recei·. cd on December 29, 1993) The present study examines whether gonadotropins are involved in the regulation of ovarian GnRH gene (...) expression and how ovarian GnRH gene expression temporalJy correlates with alterations in hypothalamic GnRH, pituitary LH~ gene expression in respons to gonadotropins. Hypothalamic and ovarian GnRH mRNA and pituitary LH~ mRNA levels were determined by respective RNA-blot hybridizations, and ovarian GnRH and estradiol contents and serum LH levels were measured by respective radioimmunoassays. Three animal models such as 1) PMSG-treated, 2) PMSG and heG-treated immature rats and 3) proestrous stage of adult rats were used. Immature rats (25-days old) were administered with PMSG (10 iu) at 10:00 hand 48 h later with heG (10 iu) to induce ovulation. In the PMSG-injected model, hypothalamic GnRH mRNA levels were markedly augmented about 9-fold at 50 h, and pituitary LH mRNA 3-fold at 52 h after PMSG administration. Serum LH levels were increased to the preovulatory surge levels at 56 h, and ovarian GnRH mRNA levels were augmented 4-fold at 60 h after PMSG injection. Administration of heG also induced a marked enhancement in ovarian GnRH mRNA levels in comparison to the values shown in both intact and PMSGtreated rats at 52 hand 54 h, respectively. In the proestrous stage of normal adult rats, pituitary LH~ mRNA levels were peaked at 16:00 h. The preovulatory LH surge was evident at 4 h before increment in ovarian GnRH mRNA levels as shown in PMSG-treated rats. The present study clearly showed the sequential increase in hypothalamic GnRH mRNA, pituitary LH~ mRNA and ovarian GnRH mRNA levels, indicating that ovarian GnRH may play a possible role in the control of follicular maturation and the ovulation process. (shrink)

We offer a critical evaluation of a recent proposal of E. Tal and J. Comesa\~na on the topic of when evidence of evidence constitutes evidence. After establishing that attempts of L. Moretti and W. Roche to discredit the proposal miss their mark, we fashion another, which does not.

The phenomenon of disagreement has recently been brought into focus by the debate between contextualists and relativist invariantists about epistemic expressions such as ‘might’, ‘probably’, indicative conditionals, and the deontic ‘ought’. Against the orthodox contextualist view, it has been argued that an invariantist account can better explain apparent disagreements across contexts by appeal to the incompatibility of the propositions expressed in those contexts. This paper introduces an important and underappreciated phenomenon associated with epistemic expressions — a phenomenon that we call (...) reversibility. We argue that the invariantist account of disagreement is incompatible with reversibility, and we go on to show that reversible sentences cast doubt on the putative data about disagreement, even without assuming invariantism. Our argument therefore undermines much of the motivation for invariantism, and provides a new source for constraints on the proper explanation of purported data about disagreement. (shrink)

A religious and philosophical treatise called Works of love was written by Kierkegaard in 1847 under Kierkegaard’s name. It’s a Christian book and not pseudonomical writing like his early writings. R. Gregor Smith notes that Kierkegaard’s study of love reaches to the heart of Christian thought. Indeed, it discusses the matter of Love in his different senses: self-love, love for the neighbour and love for God. So, it focuses on the relation between the self and the others. In Works of (...) Love, he sets up a contrast between the natural loves like erotic love (Elskov) and friendship (Venskab) on one hand, and the love for God and neighbour on the other hand. There is an evident tension between the different attitudes that Kierkegaard expresses in that writing with regard to preferential love. That why, perhaps, a great critics Løgstrup judges Works of Love to be “a brilliantly thought out system of safeguards against being forced into a close relationship with other people1”. In this article, I offer a brief account of some Kierkegaard’s key concerns about love: its’s preferential love and its being a form of self-love. I will discuss the means of preferential love which presents romantic love and friendship. This is, according to Kierkegaard, a real form of selfishness. Christian love is expressed in the Divine Commandment: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” as Matthew said (22:39), so Kierkegaard shows that “Christian love teaches us to love all people, unconditionally all” (1995, 49). That words “shall” is the “very mark of Christian love” because that love is the duty to love neighbour, any neighbour as one loves oneself. Why does Kierkegaard separate two kinds of love? Is it so different? Preferential love is excluded from the category of neighbourly love because it is understood by the poet. That is to say that preferential love is only showing by the poet way. Therefore, erotic love and friendship aren’t dismissed altogether but only as long as they are understood in the pagan way, or more clearly as a poet manner. (shrink)

Ontology, since Aristotle, has been conceived as a sort of highly general physics, a science of the types of entities in reality, of the objects, properties, categories and relations which make up the world. At the same time ontology has been for some two thousand years a speculative enterprise. It has rested methodologically on introspection and on the construction and analysis of elaborate world-models and of abstract formal-ontological theories. In the work of Quine and others this ontological theorizing in abstract (...) fashion about the world was supplemented by the study, based on the use of logical methods, of the ontological commitments or presuppositions embodied in scientific theories. In recent years both types of ontological study have found application in the world of information systems, for example in the construction of frameworks for knowledge representation and in database design and translation. As ontology is in this way drawn closer to the domain of real-world applications, the question arises as to whether it is possible to use empirical methods in studying ontological theories. More specifically: can we use empirical methods to test the ontological theories embodied in human cognition? We set forth the outlines of a framework for the formulation and testing of such theories as they relate to the specific domain of geographic objects and categories. (shrink)

Philosophers often talk about the things we say, or believe, or think, or mean. The things are often called ‘propositions’. A proposition is what one believes, or thinks, or means when one believes, thinks, or means something. Talk about propositions is ubiquitous when philosophers turn their gaze to language, meaning and thought. But what are propositions? Is there a single class of things that serve as the objects of belief, the bearers of truth, and the meanings of utterances? How do (...) our utterances express propositions? Under what conditions do two speakers say the same thing, and what (if anything) does this tell us about the nature of propositions? There is no consensus on these questions—or even on whether propositions should be treated as things at all. During the second Propositions and Same-Saying workshop, which took place on July 19–21 2010 at the University of Sydney, philosophers debated these (and related) questions. The workshop covered topics in the philosophy of language, perception, and metaphysics. The present volume contains revised and expanded versions of the papers presented at the workshop. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

The set of symbols of success is a set of cultural determinants of activity and their functioning is connected with the fundamental functions of culture as a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of life. The relevance of considering the symbolization of success in modern cinema is due to several factors. First, according to the majority of art historians and film theorists, cinema remains the leading, most widespread form of art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. If we understand art (...) as a figurative comprehension of reality, its process and result, which is expressed in works, then the symbolization of success in cinema can be considered one of the most common practices for representing the determinants of activity through a figurative comprehension of reality. An analysis of this process in modern cinematography reveals the mechanisms of functioning of one of the elements of the totality of joint life programs as a segment of modern culture, limited by the boundaries of film communication. Secondly, the development of cinematography largely determines the fundamental changes in the culture of the 20th century. and there is no reason to believe that its influence is diminishing in recent times. Consequently, modern cinema remains one of the most important areas of cultural life, the study of which allows expanding scientific understanding of the patterns of changes taking place in culture. Thirdly, the development of information and communication technologies at the end of the 20th century. led to the fact that the value complexes of traditional cultures of different peoples of the world and expansive global neoplasms of a supranational nature (mass, elite, corporate, fandom, etc.) are simultaneously transmitted into the space of personal culture. Cinema in the new conditions only strengthened its position as the leading relay of value complexes. The special socio-forming qualities of cinema were noted both by its pioneers (L. Delluk, A. Dovzhenko, Ch. Chaplin, S. Eisenstein, etc.), scientists (B. Balash, V. A. Gottwald, E. M. Samuylenko, etc.) , and the ideologists of cultural revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century. G. Turner, in particular, drew attention to the fact that “to achieve control over the everyday representation of the world for a nation means to acquire strong power over the representation of individuals about themselves and about each other”, referring to the threat to the integrity and coherence of an individual’s understanding of the world under the pressure of foreign cultural domination over film communication. In this regard, the search for ways to relevantly measure the trends in the development of modern culture by marking in cinema the cultural determinants of activity, which are the symbols of success, seems to be an urgent theoretical and scientific-practical task, the solution of which expands the predictive potential of culture and its projective possibilities. (shrink)

Maimonides’ Latin translation of Moreh Nevukhim | Guide for the Perplexed, was the most influential Jewish work in the last millennia (Di Segni, 2019; Rubio, 2006; Wohlman, 1988, 1995; Kohler, 2017). It marked the beginning of scholasticism, a daughter of Judaism raised by Jewish thinkers, according to historian Heinrich Graetz (Geschichte der Juden, L. 6, Leipzig 1861, p. xii). Printed by Gutenberg's first mechanical press, its influence in the West went as far as the Fifth Lateran Council (1512 — 1517) (...) "where scholars were encouraged to remove the difficulties which seemed to divide the whole of theology and philosophy (Leibniz, Théodicée, 11)." For centuries, the Guide revolutionized the curriculum of school instruction by reintegrating the natural laws of thought in the sphere of faith (the fourth of which became Leibniz’ Principle of sufficient reason). This complete collection of notes expounds the ideas of the Guide and features all the passages selected and rewritten by Leibniz. This first complete annotated bilingual translation of the original manuscripts in Latin serves as an entry point to the faith in conformity with Reason. This complete collection of notes expounds the ideas of the Guide as selected and rewritten by Leibniz, the famous mathematician inventor of computer arithmetic, considered the last universal genius. The first complete bilingual translation in three centuries features on the front cover Rembrandt's Philosopher in meditation, and a recommendation from Leibniz's himself on the back: "Rabbi Maimonides' excellent book, A Guide for the Perplexed, is more philosophical than I imagined and worthy of careful reading." According to Malbim’s translator, Noah Rosenbloom, the book’s epigraph indicates that nineteenth-century Rabbi Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, also known as Malbim, was familiar with Leibniz’ Theodicy. In Leibniz’ anthology of the Guide, the reader can get a detailed glimpse of Leibniz' impressions of Maimonides. The Foreword by Leibniz' translator Lloyd Strickland suggests that there were sympathies and perhaps even overlaps between the thoughts of both universal luminaries. -/- . (shrink)

In a world that is overflowing with journals and other outlets for scientific publication, the appearance of any new periodical requires some justification. There are already more journals than we can read and more conferences than we can attend. In the case of applied Ontology, we believe that the creation of anew journal not only is completely justifiable, it is downright exciting. For too long, workers in computer science have assumed that content comes for free. “Theory” in computer science has (...) always meant the theory of processes and of computation. We measure the complexity of computer programs in terms of how long it takes machines to execute them, not in terms of how long it takes people to understand and to represent the data on which those programs might operate. We typically describe computer code in terms of algorithms that operate on formal parameters, often without pausing to discuss where the data that might satisfy those parameters come from. This journal was founded on the premise that workers in computer science, informatics, and information science are overdue in paying as much attention to contents as they do to algorithms. (shrink)

When it comes to evaluating reductive hypotheses in metaphysics, supervenience arguments are the tools of the trade. Jaegwon Kim and Frank Jackson have argued, respectively, that strong and global supervenience are sufficient for reduction, and others have argued that supervenience theses stand in need of the kind of explanation that reductive hypotheses are particularly suited to provide. Simon Blackburn's arguments about what he claims are the specifically problematic features of the supervenience of the moral on the natural have also been (...) influential. But most discussions of these arguments have proceeded under the strong and restrictive assumptions of the S5 modal logic. In this paper we aim to remedy that defect, by illustrating in an accessible way what happens to these arguments under relaxed assumptions and why. The occasion is recent work by Ralph Wedgwood, who seeks to defend non-reductive accounts of moral and mental properties together with strong supervenience, but to evade both the arguments of Kim and Jackson and the explanatory challenge by accepting only the weaker, B, modal logic. In addition to drawing general lessons about what happens to supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions, our goal is therefore to shed some light on both the virtues and costs of Wedgwood's proposal. (shrink)