Are animals moral agents? In this article, a theologian and an anthropologist unite to bring the resources of each field to bear on this question. Alas, not all interdisciplinary conversations end harmoniously, and after much discussion the two authors find themselves in substantial disagreement over the answer. The article is therefore presented in two halves, one for each side of the argument. As well as presenting two different positions, our hope is that this article clarifies the different understandings of morality (...) in our respective fields and will help to offset confusion in interdisciplinary dialogue. In what follows, we each present our case. In the first section, Adam Willows argues that moral activity necessarily involves the use of reason, symbolic thought, and language and is on that basis an exclusively human affair. In the second, Marcus Baynes-Rock discusses his experience of relationality with other creatures; a relationality which, he argues, creates a shared understanding of obligations which are characteristically moral. (shrink)

Gibson defined affordances as action possibilities directly offered to an animal by the environment. Ambitiously, affordances are meant to show the inadequacy of the subjective-objective dichotomy in the study of cognition. Armed with similar concerns, some neo-Gibsonians recently thought of affordances as latent dispositions existing independently of individual organisms or whole species. It is no coincidence that critics had, on several occasions, objected that this theoretical stance dramatically neglects the role of the perceiver in the emergence of affordances. In this (...) paper, we provide a phenomenological characterization of the perceiver’s role in affordance perception. Specifically, we borrow from Husserlian phenomenology to characterize two features of affordance perception that can enrich our understanding of the individual’s engagement with the environment, namely, its affective and temporal aspects. Taking an everyday activity such as rock climbing as a case example, we show that phenomenological investigations, if not misinterpreted as mere introspection, can represent an ally for ecological psychologists. (shrink)

This chapter presents an overview of the life, work, and philosophical contributions of Śāntarakṣita (c. 725–788), who is known for his synthesis of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka with elements of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition of logic and epistemology. His two most important independent treatises, the Compendium of True Principles (Tattvasaṃgraha) and the Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra), are characterized by an emphasis on the indispensable role of rational analysis on the Buddhist path as well as serious and systematic engagement with competing Buddhist (...) and non-Buddhist schools of thought. Śāntarakṣita employs a pedagogical-rhetorical device of provisionally adopting what he deems to be successively more rational views to reject less rational ones. Using this approach, in the Ornament of the Middle Way, he recommends a gradual path to arrive at an understanding of the Madhyamaka ultimate truth by incorporating Yogācāra idealist ontology into his presentation of conventional truth. In this same text, he presents an influential iteration of the neither-one-nor-many argument for the Madhyamaka ultimate truth, the emptiness of intrinsic nature—i.e., the universal negation of ontologically independent being—leaving a lasting and significant impact on both Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

Gracyk, Kania, and Davies all agree that the rock tradition is distinctive for the central place that it gives to the appreciation of recorded tracks. But we should not be led by those arguments to conclude that the central position of the recorded track makes such appreciation the exclusive interest in rock. I argue that both songwriting and live performance are also central to the rock tradition by showing that the practice of recording tracks admits of a (...) diversity of goals and aims that is not exhausted by a concern for track construction. (shrink)

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has argued that rock and roll happens from the neck down. In this contribution to The Rolling Stones and Philosophy, edited by Luke Dick and George Reisch, I draw on neuroscience to argue that, in the parlance of John Stuart Mill, rock and roll is both a higher and a lower pleasure.

In the popular press and the halls of politics, controversies over evolution are increasingly strident these days. Hegel is relevant in this connection, even though he rejected the theories of evolution he knew about, because he wanted rational understanding but without claims to intelligent design. He is reported to have said that nature has no history, but a closer examination will show that his ideaqs are more nuanced and that there is more room for darwinian ideas than one might expect, (...) though not enough to allow the full Darwinian contingency of form. (shrink)

The “Problem of the Rock” (PoR) is a famous objection to Higher-Order (HO) theories of consciousness. According to PoR, the HO theorists’ claim that a mental state is conscious iff there is a higher-order mental state about it implies that a rock is also conscious iff there is a higher-order mental state about it. In this paper I show that this argument confuses two grammatically distinct attributions of consciousness, and that if the consequent equivocation fallacy is avoided, PoR (...) is either a straw man argument or has an unproblematic conclusion. (shrink)

This reflection on the Petrine Ministry is being made freely available to students during this ongoing pandemic of COVID 19. This very brief essay seeks to understand the meaning of the title of the eponymous novel by Graham Greene.

In his book "The Structure of Behavior", the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty proposes a solution to the mind-body problem. Merleau-Ponty argues that there is a nested hierarchy of three orders—the physical order, the biological order, and the mental order—in which each lower order composes each higher order. Through the structuration or organization of a lower order, a higher order is created. Merleau-Ponty’s solution is promising, but it leaves an explanatory chasm between the biological order and the mental order that cannot be (...) crossed without introducing an intermediary order. I propose just that: the addition of a fourth order—the computational order—to bridge the chasm. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design princi- ples in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground segmentation, (...) while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal com- parison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

Millikan’s (1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. MIT Press) selected effects theory of functions states that functions are effects for which the ancestors of a trait were selected for. As the function is an effect a thing’s ancestors produced, only things that are reproductions in some sense can have functions. Against this reproduction requirement, Garson (2019. What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter. Cambridge University Press) argues that not only processes of differential reproduction but (...) also processes of differential persistence can lead to new functions. Since such “persistence functions” have the same explanatory power as traditional selected effects functions, selected effects theorists should include them in their theory. In this paper, I will defend Millikan’s theory against this argument. I will show that the proponents of the generalized theory have yet to provide a working notion of populations that avoids a liberality problem. Further, I will argue that persistence functions are at best a marginal case of functions due to their restricted explanatory power. (shrink)

To most of us – believers and non-believers alike – the possibility of a perfect God co-existing with the kinds of evil that we see calls out for explanation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the belief that God must have justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see has been a perennial feature of theistic thought. Recently, however, a growing number of authors have argued that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the existence of gratuitous (...) evil. Given powerful, millenia-long sensibilities about power and love and justice, it isn’t hard to find that suggestion simply incredible. Nonetheless, in this paper I will argue that the most prominent theistic alternatives to what has seemed incredible to most of us throughout most of history are themselves patently unacceptable for the theist as well. On any of the most widely accepted accounts of how God could have justifying reasons for permitting some evils, God’s existence means that we have justifying reasons for perpetrating and allowing every evil that we see. That's hard to swallow too. If I’m right about all of this, then two competing outcomes seem to present themselves as a possible result. On the one hand, for the theist, the apparently outrageous suggestion that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with gratuitous evil no longer looks like it faces a formidable, hard-to-resist alternative. On the other hand, some like me might think that my arguments go no distance at all towards dispelling the incredibility of the gratuitous evil nouvelle vague. On this line, theism may seem now to be between the rock and the hard place: it seems hard to make sense of the existence of a perfect God whether or not He has justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see. (shrink)

This paper suggests that there are three kinds of meaning: Everyday, Cosmic, and Ultimate. Everyday meaning refers to the value and significance in our everyday lives, including values such as beauty, morality, and truth, and the significance of engagement with them. Cosmic meaning refers to our meaningful role in the cosmos: to the significance and value of our cosmic niche, to the purposes of the cosmos and our place in it. Ultimate meaning is the end-regarding justifying reason, the valued end, (...) or the point of leading a life at all. It is here argued that procreating can be a deep source of Everyday meaning, and perhaps Cosmic meaning. But nothing can provide us with Ultimate meaning. The implications this may have for procreative ethics is considered. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume are written by scholars from a wide range of disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy and psychology). The papers ostensibly address how to evaluate rock art, but can also be read in the context of offering support for the affirmative in the debate regarding whether aesthetics is a cross-cultural discipline. Two alternative conceptions of the aesthetic provide the underlying antithesis and thesis respectively to all papers. The antithesis holds that the aesthetic pertains to (...) a conception of art that is an historical artefact of eighteenth century Europe. Most of the writers refer to this idea of art in terms of the object of a disinterested gaze (a second-hand reading of Kant), or as ‘art-for-art’s-sake’. The thesis of all papers, be it explicit or implicit, is that the aesthetic is a certain human predisposition or capacity to imbue physical properties with meaning and value; to link the sensuous with the semantic; to find meaning in form (Lamarque pp.27-8, Morphy pp.54, 59.). Some authors extend this beyond the artefact to the perception of nature (see the papers of Heyd, Ogawa, Stone). (shrink)

Theory of rock music with texts from St. Augustine, Cicero, Arnold Schonberg, Hugo Riemann, Robert Schumann.

Hume maintained that, philosophically speaking, there is no difference between exiting a room out of the first-floor window and using the door. Nevertheless, Hume’s reason and common sense prevailed over his scepticism and he advocated that we should always use the door. However, we are currently living in a world that is more seriously committed to the Humean philosophy of empiricism than he was himself and thus the potential to act inappropriately is an ever-present potential. In this paper, I explore (...) how Hume’s two versions of causality have detrimentally affected our ability both to arrive at and to use research to improve human well-being. I illustrate my argument with an example of what I think is an incorrect yet supposedly scientifically sound assumption: that absenteeism causes poor school attainment. Instead I make the interdisciplinary argument that absenteeism is better understood as an aggravating symptom of a number of other causes of poor attainment, such as poverty and individual psychological factors. I suggest that an instrumental, punitive policy against parents whose children tend to be absent from school may be ineffectual or even counterproductive if the objective is to improve the well-being of those children. To support my argument, I introduce the critical realist idea of transfactuality. Using the example of research into moon rocks, I show how mainstream science uses transfactuality despite its empiricist aversion to it. I also suggest that it is our honesty, integrity, and stoicism that lead us to the extreme overthrow of reason and common sense that we see today in many of the UK’s social policies; an overthrow that Hume himself did not achieve. Metaphorically speaking, British professionals, stoically and honestly believing in the ability of their trusted research correlations to guide their action, are exiting out of the first-floor window rather than using the door. This is a significant barrier to our ability to devise and implement social policy. (shrink)

The paper presents a truth-maker semantics for Strict/Tolerant Logic (ST), which is the currently most popular logic among advocates of the non-transitive approach to paradoxes. Besides being interesting in itself, the truth-maker presentation of ST offers a new perspective on the recently discovered hierarchy of meta-inferences that, according to some, generalizes the idea behind ST. While fascinating from a mathematical perspective, there is no agreement on the philosophical significance of this hierarchy. I aim to show that there is no clear (...) philosophical significance of meta-inferences above the first level. (shrink)

Among the terrestrial species, the majority 332 species is represented by small Volant and non Volant species belonging to the orders Vandeleuria is a small genus of rodent also known long-tailed climbing mouse. Vandeleuria Nilagirica is a Subspecies of Vandelueuria Olaracia species is divided by geographical variations and morphological characterized described namely dumeticola Hodgson, Nilagirica Jerodon, Spandicea Ryley, Rubida Thomas, Modesta Thomas, and Nolthenii Phillips as its Sub Species and the synonymized wrought on Ryley with the nominate sub species (...) and Provensis Hodgson, badius Blyth and marica Thomas with dumesticola Hodgson (V.V Agarwal and Chakraborty 1980). Vandeleuria nilagirica is longer tails, arboreal,It is very shy Nocturnal and omnivore, feeding is usually the spruce leaves and small flower sand buds of small plants that includes small insects also. IUCN status of this species is Endangered. This species is Endamic to the tropical forest along the Northern Western Ghats, Nilgiri Hills (Musses & Carleton 2005). Species altitudinal range is 900 to 2100 M. Theses are found in mountainous areas where there is no hassle. It is Listed as a under scheduled ‘V’ of the Indian wild life Act. As compared to other zones, the frequency of occurrence of F. pennanti and B. bandicota was found to be very low at all the localities in southeastern Rajasthan. Some of the hills have been afforested and the plantations have a very low herbaceous ground cover. This may be one of the reasons of low occurrence of the long-tailed tree mouse, Vandeleuriaoleracea. Suncus stoliczkanus, the Anderson’s shrew was found to be absent in this zone (Ishwar prakash & Himmat Singh 2001). In Thar desert Maximum number of Vandeleuria oleracea 66.6% Species Was observed ( Prakash I,PratapSingh 2005) .Human Disturbance, floods, habitat loss & degradation found to be major threat to these species. This small mammal is plays in important role in the Environment. (shrink)

Very plausibly, nothing can be a genuine computing system unless it meets an input-sensitivity requirement. Otherwise all sorts of objects, such as rocks or pails of water, can count as performing computations, even such as might suffice for mentality—thus threatening computationalism about the mind with panpsychism. Maudlin in J Philos 86:407–432, ( 1989 ) and Bishop ( 2002a , b ) have argued, however, that such a requirement creates difficulties for computationalism about conscious experience, putting it in conflict with the (...) very intuitive thesis that conscious experience supervenes on physical activity. Klein in Synthese 165:141–153, ( 2008 ) proposes a way for computationalists about experience to avoid panpsychism while still respecting the supervenience of experience on activity. I argue that his attempt to save computational theories of experience from Maudlin’s and Bishop’s critique fails. (shrink)

More than thirty-five years after its first release in 1971, Don McLean’s “American Pie” still resonates deeply with music listeners and consumers of popular culture. In a 2001 public poll sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America, McLean’s eight-and-a-half-minute masterpiece was ranked number 5 among the 365 “most memorable” songs of the twentieth century. In 2002, the song was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1997, Garth brooks performed “American Pie” (...) at a concert in Central Park, and in 2000, pop icon Madonna performed her own version of “American Pie” on the soundtrack of her movie The Next Best Thing. In 1999, American Pie became the title of a popular – and irreverently comical – coming-of-age movie starring Jason Biggs (the movie American Pie was followed by American Pie 2 in 2001, American Wedding in 2003, and American Pie Present – Band Camp in 2005). Like the movie to which it lent its name, the song “American Pie” presents a coming-of-age narrative; and, also like the movie, the song appealed strongly and immediately to its contemporary audience. Three months after its release in November of 1971, the song reached the number one slot on the charts in January of 1972, and it remained in the Top 40 for a total of seventeen weeks (longer than any other single during the year of 1972). Unlike the movie, however, the song “American Pie” is highly nuanced and sophisticated, containing multiple allusions and layers of meaning which challenge and heighten our understanding of rock ’n’ roll music and the possibility of self-reflection and self-critique in popular culture. (shrink)

We review some of the major accounts in the current epistemology of modality and identify some shared issues that plague all of them. In order to provide insight into the nature of modal statements in science, philosophy, and beyond, a satisfactory epistemology of modality would need to be suitably applicable to practical and theoretical contexts by limited beings. However, many epistemologies of modality seem to work only when we have access to the kind of knowledge that is at least currently (...) beyond our reach. Or, in the extreme case, it is argued that even if we knew all the relevant information about the respective domain – or even the entire state of the world – there would still remain a special class of modal truths that would be left unaccounted for. Neither picture bodes well for practical applicability, nor for the philosophical justification of these epistemologies. This is especially the case as we hold that one of the main motivations for modal inquiry typically arises in cases of imperfect information and limited cognitive resources. We close by providing a partial remedy to the situation by suggesting an overall framework of relative modality (RM) that can be used to both unify some existing modal epistemologies and, at the same time, make them more metaphysically modest. (shrink)

The geology of Khanozai area is comprised of Indian Platform Sediments, the Suture Zone and Flysch Zone. The Khanozai Ophiolite Complex is a fragment of Zhob Valley ophiolites is marking the Suture Zone in the area and consists of mantle peridotite overlain by crustal ultramafic to mafic cumulate which is underlain by metamorphic sole rocks and mélange. The crustal section of the ophiolite comprises of both ultramafic to mafic cumulates. Ultramafic cumulates comprise repeated successions of dunite, pyroxenite and wehrlite while (...) mafic cumulates consist of foliated to layered gabbros. The Khanozai gabbros cover about 60% area of the crustal plutonic rocks and have a lower transitional contact with the ultramafic cumulates. The gabbros (sensu lato) are classified as olivine gabbro, gabbronorite, olivine gabbronorite, norite and gabbro. The mineralogy of the gabbros indicates that they have both primitive and evolved components. The geochemistry indicates that the Khanozai gabbros are tholeiitic in nature and comprise both cumulate and non-cumulate mineral phases with olivine, pyroxenes and plagioclase being involved in fractionation. The cyclic series of ultramafic cumulates and gabbros has a different order, thickness, and structure in the crustal part of ophiolite and this possibly results from a variable supply of different magma compositions to the chamber. The structure of Khanozai Ophiolite’ crustal section, with a well-developed plutonic sequence and absence of sheeted dyke indicate that these rocks may have formed in a tectonic setting with a slow spreading rate over different periods of time as a consequence of episodic low magma supply rates. These gabbros may have formed in a similar manner to the Semail Ophiolite’ gabbros and imply that a well-developed ophiolitic sequence is rarely formed in a tectonic setting where the spreading and magma supply rates are not balanced. (shrink)

O fenômeno de aceleração social, intimamente ligado a nossa modernização tecnológica e os sistemas políticos e sociais que adotamos, vem sendo alvo de questionamentos por parte da teoria crítica por diversos filósofos e sociólogos, principalmente em relação a se tal "aceleração" seja algo que, possa ser justificável pelo bem comum da sociedade. De fato, as rápidas mudanças que ocorreram no último século causaram uma tremenda mudança em nossos estilos-de-vida, e na maneira como experienciamos o mundo. Que a nossa sociedade mudou (...) e continua a mudar é um fato evidente quando olhamos criticamente para o passado e presente, e comparamos diferentes épocas da história humana. Neste ensaio tentaremos explorar algumas possíveis hipóteses que fundamentem o comportamento aceleracionista em certos fatores e mecanismo biológicos que caracterizam os sistemas de motivação e saciação humanos. Também tentaremos mostrar como certos fenômenos sociais podem auxiliar em fortalecer este tipo de comportamento, e suas possíveis origens evolutivas. Este estudo tem como objetivo principal fundamentar a Tese Aceleracionista em evidências neurofisiológicas, cognitivo-comportamentais, evolutivas e sociais. Palavras-chave: aceleração; recompensa; saciação; ciências cognitivas; teoria dos gêneros. (shrink)

God is dead, but, contrary to Nietzsche’s diagnosis, ‘we’ didn’t kill him; he died of cancer. This perhaps crudely cold and off-putting opening does not refer to a naively metaphorically constituted transcendental abstraction, but to a spatio-temporally situated rock legend, Ronnie James Dio. This study aims at contributing to the burgeoning research field of memory and collective identity by providing a sociosemiotic account of the formation of collective narrative identity. By drawing on the three major categories whereby collective memory (...) is formed, that is artifacts, processes, places, as well as on the three key sociosemiotic metafunctions which are responsible for shaping a cultural event as sign system, the pursued interpretive route seeks to effectively contextualize how collective memory is fleshed out situationally in the context of Dio’s memorial. At the same time, by expanding the interpretive canvass to incorporate phenomenological perspectives on the mode of formation of collective memory, the offered analytic is intent on tracing invisible structures that point to operative mechanisms beyond the formal constraints of a sociosemiotic reading. Both phenomenological and sociosemiotic approaches are reinscribed within an overarching narrativity paradigm, wherein their relative merits in addressing the scrutinized phenomenon are discussed in an attempt to formulate a hybrid sociosemiotic phenomenological perspective of memorial events. (shrink)

The American rock band KISS is notorious. Its notoriety derives not only from the band’s otherworldly costumes (except for of course during the unmasked period), the fact that they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their numerous hit records or the amazing stage theatrics and pyrotechnics of their live shows. It’s also related to the band’s constantly changing makeup (and I don’t mean the kind on their faces!). Of the four members, only Paul Stanley (...) and Gene Simmons were fixtures. With so many changes to the band’s composition, has KISS always remained the same band? Some see this head-scratcher as roughly similar to a conundrum in philosophical metaphysics (that’s the area of philosophy addressing problems of existence): the puzzle of Theseus’s ship. (shrink)

During the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, USA/Turtle Island, a group of military veterans knelt in front of Oceti Sakowin Elders asking forgiveness for centuries of settler colonial military ventures in Oceti Sakowin Territory. Leonard Crow Dog forgave them and immediately demanded respect for Native Nations throughout the U.S. Lacking such respect, he said, Native people will cease paying taxes. Crow Dog’s post-forgiveness remarks speak to the political context of the military veterans’ request: They seek collective forgiveness amidst (...) ongoing occupation and harms committed by the collective they represent. In this chapter, I examine this case study and argue that ongoing harm undermines requests for forgiveness on behalf of collectives. I look to the work of Glen Coultard, Waziyatawin, and Leanne Simpson to consider what a responsible request for collective forgiveness would entail. (shrink)

Kathryn Gines's book details Hannah Arendt 's racial and conceptual biases against Black people in the US and post-colonial Africa. Gines makes original and significant contributions to feminist philosophy by applying various feminist and anticolonial strategies, including standpoint theory and multidirectionality, to Arendt 's political essays and concepts. Feminist critiques of Arendt in general and racial critiques of "Reflections on Little Rock" in particular are not new; however, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a novel and comprehensive racial (...) critique of Arendt 's major writings. Gines offers a "sustained analysis of Arendt 's treatment of the Black experience in the United States", as well as racial violence within the contexts of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and French and British imperialism and colonialism. In this review I will offer an overview of the book as a whole, before evaluating the extent of Gines's critique as it pertains to Arendt 's misguided judgments and her theory of judgment. (shrink)

What are we to make of the cultural nonconformity of hardcore/punks? Is there any ethical value in the pursuit of cultural nonconformity? Distinct moral justifications can be teased from the lyrics of the hardcore/punk bands that we have grown up with and still love. The best explanation of what makes cultural nonconformity morally valuable, we believe, comes from John Stuart Mill: that it opens up new cultural space to oneself and to others, permitting "new and original experiments of living.".

An educator, to climb up into academic ranking must take a longer route of getting formal education such as master’s or doctorate. In this paper, the authors discuss their journey, challenges, and aspirations in taking post-graduate studies like the Doctor of Education (EdD). Using autoethnography as the research design, which allow writers to narrate their personal experiences and used thematic analysis to analyze them. The authors experienced hardship in finding universities that would fit to their need especially that one of (...) them graduated with a non-thesis master’s degree. The other author, who is overseas found it also difficult to look for a university that would accept his situation and could offer flexibility in attending the classes due to the time zone difference and workday schedule. While both authors are enrolled in private education financing the studies could be a burden to one of the authors, so he sought support from his employer and agreed to render a service after, while the other one can cover the fees from his overseas job. (shrink)

In perceptual experience we are directed towards objects in a way that establishes a real relation between a mental act and its target. In reading works of fiction we enjoy experiences which manifest certain internal similarities to such relational acts, but which lack objects. The substitution theory of art attempts to provide a reason why we seek out such experiences and the artifacts which they generate. Briefly, we seek out works of art because we enjoy the physiology and the phenomenology (...) of, for example, the experience of love or mountain climbing, and works of art serve as props for the promotion of substitutes for the corresponding genuine feelings. Art arose, or came to be separated out from other, related phenomena, through the discovery that the experience of substitute emotions can be pleasurable. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

If one can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners, one can surely judge a society by how it treats cognitively- and learning-impaired children. In the United States children with physical and cognitive impairments are subjected to higher rates of corporal punishment than are non-disabled children. Children with disabilities make up just over 13% of the student population in the U.S. yet make up over 18% of those children who receive corporal punishment. Autistic children are among the most (...) likely to receive corporal punishment. -/- Although they may deny or redescribe particular instances of corporal punishment or their use of restraints, educators defend such actions as legitimate punishment. In this paper, I assess the logic underlying the use of restraints and corporal punishment on autistic children by educators. The rationalizations for the corporal punishment or restraint of autistics stems from the educator’s desire to control the autistic children so as to end typical autistic behaviors such as rocking, repetitive verbalizations, or “flapping” but also the autistic child’s non-affective responses such as not appearing to feel remorse or shame or the absence of a verbal acknowledgement of remorse or shame. The educators assume that the autistic’s failure to exhibit the desired responses is evidence of the autistic’s moral incorrigibility and is, therefore, evidence of the appropriateness of corporal punishment. But this assumption of the incorrigibility of the autistic child is questionable. -/- Indeed accepting this incorrigibility assumption reveals two important problems. First, instructors using physical punishment on autistic children do not understand autism. Second, they are not working with a tenable conception of punishment. Any action undertaken to induce socially acceptable behaviors (whether it be the end of autistic acts or responses such as remorse) is to fail to understand what the legitimate punishment of children is about. (shrink)

Background: Arthritis is very common but is not well understood. Actually, “arthritis” is not a single disease; it is an informal way of referring to joint pain or joint disease. There are more than 100 different types of arthritis and related conditions. People of all ages, sexes and races can and do have arthritis, and it is the leading cause of disability in America. More than 50 million adults and 300,000 children have some type of arthritis. It is most common (...) among women and occurs more frequently as people get older. Common arthritis joint symptoms include swelling, pain, stiffness and decreased range of motion. Symptoms may come and go. They can be mild, moderate or severe. They may stay about the same for years, but may progress or get worse over time. Severe arthritis can result in chronic pain, inability to do daily activities and make it difficult to walk or climb stairs. Arthritis can cause permanent joint changes. These changes may be visible, such as knobby finger joints, but often the damage can only be seen on X-ray. Some types of arthritis also affect the heart, eyes, lungs, kidneys and skin as well as the joints. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment and give the appropriate method of treatment through several tips that concern the disease and how to treat it and we will see it through the application on the expert system. Methods: in this paper the design of the proposed Expert System which was produced to help Orthopedist in diagnosing Arthritis disease through its symptoms such as: pain on pressure in a joint , Inflammation indicated by joint swelling, Stiffness especially in the morning , Loss of flexibility of joint, Limited, joint movement, Deformity of the joints , Weight loss and fatigue , Non-specific fever and Crepitus. The proposed expert system presents an overview about Arthritis disease is given, the cause of diseases is outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. SL5 Object Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed Arthritis disease diagnosis expert system was evaluated by Orthopedics students and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The Proposed expert system is very useful for Orthopedist, patients with arthritis and newly graduated Orthopedics students. (shrink)

Living agency is subject to a normative dimension (good-bad, adaptive-maladaptive) that is absent from other types of interaction. We review current and historical attempts to naturalize normativity from an organism-centered perspective, identifying two central problems and their solution: (1) How to define the topology of the viability space so as to include a sense of gradation that permits reversible failure, and (2) how to relate both the processes that establish norms and those that result in norm-following behavior. We present a (...) minimal metabolic system that is coupled to a gradient-climbing chemotactic mechanism. Studying the relationship between metabolic dynamics and environmental resource conditions, we identify an emergent viable region and a precarious region where the system tends to die unless environmental conditions change. We introduce the concept of normative field as the change of environmental conditions required to bring the system back to its viable region. Norm-following, or normative action, is defined as the course of behavior whose effect is positively correlated with the normative field. We close with a discussion of the limitations and extensions of our model and some final reflections on the nature of norms and teleology in agency. (shrink)

The 2015 Nepal earthquake and avalanche on Mount Everest generated one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters in modern times, bringing to media attention the physical-cultural world of high-altitude climbing. Contributing to the current sociological concern with embodiment, here we investigate the lived experience and social ‘production’ of endurance in this sociologically under-researched physical-cultural world. Via a phenomenological-sociological framework, we analyse endurance as cognitively, corporeally and interactionally lived and communicated, in the form of ‘endurance work’. Data emanate from in-depth interviews (...) with 18 high-altitude mountaineers, ten of whom experienced the 2015 avalanche. The article responds to Shilling’s (2016) call to address an important lacuna identified in sociological work: the need to investigate the embodied importance of cognition in the incorporation of culture. The concept of endurance work provides a powerful exemplar of this cognitive-corporeal nexus at work as a physical-culturally shaped, embodied practice and mode-of-thinking in the social world of high-altitude climbing. (shrink)

Experiences, by definition, have phenomenal character. But many experiences have a specific type of phenomenal character: presentational character. While both visual experience and conscious thought make us aware of their objects, only in visual experience do objects seem present before the mind and available for direct access. I argue that Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness have a particularly steep hill to climb in accommodating presentational character.

In the small but growing literature on the philosophy of country music, the question of how we ought to understand the genre’s notion of authenticity has emerged as one of the central questions. Many country music scholars argue that authenticity claims track attributions of cultural standing or artistic self-expression. However, careful attention to the history of the genre reveals that these claims are simply factually wrong. On the basis of this, we have grounds for dismissing these attributions. Here, I argue (...) for an alternative model of authenticity in which we take claims about the relative authenticity of country music to be evidence of ‘country’ being a dual character concept in the same way that it has been suggested of punk rock and hip-hop. Authentic country music is country music that embodies the core value commitments of the genre. These values form the basis of country artists’ and audiences’ practical identities. Part of country music’s aesthetic practice is that audiences reconnect with, reify, and revise this common practical identity through identification with artists and works that manifest these values. We should then think of authenticity discourse within country music as a kind of game within the genre’s practice of shaping and maintaining this practical identity. (shrink)

On 4th of August 2020, the Lebanese capital and port city, Beirut, was rocked by a massive explosion that has killed hundreds and injured thousands more, ravaging the heart of the city’s nearby downtown business district and neighbouring housing areas, where more than 750,000 people live. The waterfront neighbourhood and a number of dense residential neighbourhoods in the city’s eastern part were essentially flattened. Lebanese Government officials believe that the blast was caused by around 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored (...) near the city’s cargo port without proper control for six years. -/- The disaster devastating Beirut’s port and city shows the latent danger of safe storage of potentially dangerous goods in modern ports, particularly ones located close to the heart of the city. The huge blast tore through major grain silos, stoking fears of shortages in a nation that imports nearly all its food and is already reeling from economic crisis. As the WFP (World Food Programme) said in a statement: the blast will “exacerbate the grim economic and food-security situation.” The Beirut blast also reminds us of the importance of ports in the contemporary globalized world. It calls our attention to safety and security, of governance and collaboration between port and city or region and of accessibility to the hinterland. What do local governments and port cities need to do to enhance the safety and security issues in port terminals? Or, to put it differently, how do we reconcile this challenge between the ports we need to feed us, serve us, provide us with medicines, equipment, etc. and the ports that threatens us? (shrink)

Commentators have often been puzzled by the structure of the Symposium; in particular, it is unclear what the relationship is between Socrates’ speech and that of the other symposiasts. This chapter seeks to make a contribution to that debate by highlighting parallels between the first four speeches of the Symposium and the goals of the early education in the Republic. In both dialogues, I contend, we see Plato concerned with educating people through (a) activating and cultivating spirited motivations, (b) becoming (...) lawful and taking virtue as a goal, (c) harmonizing the opposing forces in their soul, and (d) minimizing the appetites and making them orderly. While these are familiar points from the moral education of the Republic, I argue that they also map onto the first four speeches of the Symposium respectively. Because in the Republic this moral education is necessary to make progress on the epistemic ascent, we can speculate that there is a similar point to be made in the Symposium – without first training our character adequately, we will not be able to climb the ladder of love. While the positive effects of Eros described in the early speeches of the Symposium are only imitations of the ideal education regime of Kallipolis, they nevertheless improve one’s character in such a way that better prepares the soul for philosophy. Finally, I argue that the importance of this moral education is dramatized at the end of the Symposium through Agathon’s amicable refutation by Socrates on the one hand, and the drunken entrance of Alcibiades on the other. Agathon shows potential for philosophy whereas Alcibiades is the exemplar of what happens when somebody comes to philosophy without a harmonized soul. (shrink)

Van Inwagen proposes that besides simples only living organisms exist as composite objects. This paper suggests expanding van Inwagen’s ontology by also accepting composite objects in the case that physical bonding occurs (plus some extra conditions). Such objects are not living organ-isms but rather physical bodies. They include (approximately) the complete realm of inanimate ordinary objects, like rocks and tables, as well as inanimate scientific objects, like atoms and mol-ecules, the latter filling the ontological gap between simples and organisms in (...) van Inwagen’s origi-nal picture. We thus propose a compositional pluralism claiming that composition arises if and on-ly if bonding or life occurs. (shrink)

Widespread causal overdetermination is often levied as an objection to nonreductive theories of minds and objects. In response, nonreductive metaphysicians have argued that the type of overdetermination generated by their theories is different from the sorts of coincidental cases involving multiple rock-throwers, and thus not problematic. This paper pushes back. I argue that attention to differences between types of overdetermination discharges very few explanatory burdens, and that overdetermination is a bigger problem for the nonreductive metaphysician than previously thought.

In perceptual experience we are directed towards objects in a way which establishes a real relation between a mental act and its target. In reading works of fiction we enjoy experiences which manifest certain internal similarities to such relational acts, but which lack objects. The substitution theory of art attempts to provide a reason why we seek out such experiences and the artifacts which they generate. Briefly, we seek out works of art because we enjoy the physiology and the phenomenology (...) of, for example, the experience of love or mountain climbing, and works of art serve as props for the promotion of substitutes for the corresponding genuine feelings. Art arose, or came to be separated out from other, related phenomena, through the discovery that the experience of substitute emotions can be pleasurable. (shrink)

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

When do several objects compose a further object? The last twenty years have seen a great deal of discussion of this question. According to the most popular view on the market, there is a physical object composed of your brain and Jeremy Bentham’s body. According to the second-most popular view on the market, there are no such objects as human brains or human bodies, and there are also no atoms, rocks, tables, or stars. And according to the third-ranked view, there (...) are human bodies, but still no brains, atoms, rocks, tables, or stars. Although it’s pleasant to have so many crazy-sounding views around, I think it would also be nice to have a commonsense option available. The aim of this paper is to offer such an option. The approach I offer begins by considering a mereological question other than the standard one that has been the focus of most discussions in the literature. I try to show that the road to mereological sanity begins with giving the most straightforward and commonsensical answer to this other question, and then extending that answer to further questions about the mereology of physical objects. On the approach I am recommending, it turns out that all of the mereological properties and relations of physical objects are determined by their spatial properties and relations. (shrink)

According to commonsense psychology, one is conscious of everything that one pays attention to, but one does not pay attention to all the things that one is conscious of. Recent lines of research purport to show that commonsense is mistaken on both of these points: Mack and Rock (1998) tell us that attention is necessary for consciousness, while Kentridge and Heywood (2001) claim that consciousness is not necessary for attention. If these lines of research were successful they would have (...) important implications regarding the prospects of using attention research to inform us about consciousness. The present essay shows that these lines of research are not successful, and that the commonsense picture of the relationship between attention and consciousness can be. (shrink)

There’s a general assumption that teleology and function do not exist in inanimate nature. Throughout biology, it is generally taken as granted that teleology (or teleonomy) and functions are not only unique to life, but perhaps even a defining quality of life. For many, it’s obvious that rocks, water, and the like, are not teleological, nor could they possibly have stand-alone functions. This idea - that teleology and function are unique to life - is the target of this paper. I (...) begin with an overview of McShea’s field theoretic account of teleology. I start with the field theoretic account because it presents a promising analysis of teleological systems. It is promising because, in not making any assumptions about life’s special status in teleological systems, it avoids counterexamples that have problematized other accounts. I then consider some of the prominent efforts that have been made to attempt to avoid ascribing functions or teleology to some form of inanimate nature. In my assessment, none of the efforts are successful. I conclude by offering mineral evolution as a case study to show how inanimate nature can be both teleological and functional. The evolution of mineral species reveals that teleology and function extend to inanimate nature, and that teleology and function come in degrees. (shrink)

The thesis deals with the concept of truth and the paradoxes of truth. Philosophical theories usually consider the concept of truth from a wider perspective. They are concerned with questions such as - Is there any connection between the truth and the world? And, if there is - What is the nature of the connection? Contrary to these theories, this analysis is of a logical nature. It deals with the internal semantic structure of language, the mutual semantic connection of sentences, (...) above all the connection of sentences that speak about the truth of other sentences and sentences whose truth they speak about. Truth paradoxes show that there is a problem in our basic understanding of the language meaning and they are a test for any proposed solution. It is important to make a distinction between the normative and analytical aspect of the solution. The former tries to ensure that paradoxes will not emerge. The latter tries to explain paradoxes. Of course, the practical aspect of the solution is also important. It tries to ensure a good framework for logical foundations of knowledge, for related problems in Artificial Intelligence and for the analysis of the natural language. Tarski’s analysis emphasized the T-scheme as the basic intuitive principle for the concept of truth, but it also showed its inconsistency with the classical logic. Tarski’s solution is to preserve the classical logic and to restrict the scheme: we can talk about the truth of sentences of a language only inside another essentially richer metalanguage. This solution is in harmony with the idea of reflexivity of thinking and it has become very fertile for mathematics and science in general. But it has normative nature | truth paradoxes are avoided in a way that in such frame we cannot even express paradoxical sentences. It is also too restrictive because, for the same reason we cannot express a situation in which there is a circular reference of some sentences to other sentences, no matter how common and harmless such a situation may be. Kripke showed that there is no natural restriction to the T-scheme and we have to accept it. But then we must also accept the riskiness of sentences | the possibility that under some circumstances a sentence does not have the classical truth value but it is undetermined. This leads to languages with three-valued semantics. Kripke did not give any definite model, but he gave a theoretical frame for investigations of various models | each fixed point in each three-valued semantics can be a model for the concept of truth. The solutions also have normative nature | we can express the paradoxical sentences, but we escape a contradiction by declaring them undetermined. Such a solution could become an analytical solution only if we provide the analysis that would show in a substantial way that it is the solution that models the concept of truth. Kripke took some steps in the direction of finding an analytical solution. He preferred the strong Kleene three-valued semantics for which he wrote it was "appropriate" but did not explain why it was appropriate. One reason for such a choice is probably that Kripke finds paradoxical sentences meaningful. This eliminates the weak Kleene three valued semantics which corresponds to the idea that paradoxical sentences are meaningless, and thus indeterminate. Another reason could be that the strong Kleene three valued semantics has the so-called investigative interpretation. According to this interpretation, this semantics corresponds to the classical determination of truth, whereby all sentences that do not have an already determined value are temporarily considered indeterminate. When we determine the truth value of these sentences, then we can also determine the truth value of the sentences that are composed of them. Kripke supplemented this investigative interpretation with an intuition about learning the concept of truth. That intuition deals with how we can teach someone who is a competent user of an initial language (without the predicate of truth T) to use sentences that contain the predicate T. That person knows which sentences of the initial language are true and which are not. We give her the rule to assign the T attribute to the former and deny that attribute to the latter. In that way, some new sentences that contain the predicate of truth, and which were indeterminate until then, become determinate. So the person gets a new set of true and false sentences with which he continues the procedure. This intuition leads directly to the smallest fixed point of strong Kleene semantics as an analytically acceptable model for the logical notion of truth. However, since this process is usually saturated only on some transfinite ordinal, this intuition, by climbing on ordinals, increasingly becomes a metaphor. This thesis is an attempt to give an analytical solution to truth paradoxes. It gives an analysis of why and how some sentences lack the classical truth value. The starting point is basic intuition according to which paradoxical sentences are meaningful (because we understand what they are talking about well, moreover we use it for determining their truth values), but they witness the failure of the classical procedure of determining their truth value in some "extreme" circumstances. Paradoxes emerge because the classical procedure of the truth value determination does not always give a classically supposed (and expected) answer. The analysis shows that such an assumption is an unjustified generalization from common situations to all situations. We can accept the classical procedure of the truth value determination and consequently the internal semantic structure of the language, but we must reject the universality of the exterior assumption of a successful ending of the procedure. The consciousness of this transforms paradoxes to normal situations inherent to the classical procedure. Some sentences, although meaningful, when we evaluate them according to the classical truth conditions, the classical conditions do not assign them a unique value. We can assign to them the third value, \undetermined", as a sign of definitive failure of the classical procedure. An analysis of the propagation of the failure in the structure of sentences gives exactly the strong Kleene three-valued semantics, not as an investigative procedure, as it occurs in Kripke, but as the classical truth determination procedure accompanied by the propagation of its own failure. An analysis of the circularities in the determination of the classical truth value gives the criterion of when the classical procedure succeeds and when it fails, when the sentences will have the classical truth value and when they will not. It turns out that the truth values of sentences thus obtained give exactly the largest intrinsic fixed point of the strong Kleene three-valued semantics. In that way, the argumentation is given for that choice among all fixed points of all monotone three-valued semantics for the model of the logical concept of truth. An immediate mathematical description of the fixed point is given, too. It has also been shown how this language can be semantically completed to the classical language which in many respects appears a natural completion of the process of thinking about the truth values of the sentences of a given language. Thus the final model is a language that has one interpretation and two systems of sentence truth evaluation, primary and final evaluation. The language through the symbol T speaks of its primary truth valuation, which is precisely the largest intrinsic fixed point of the strong Kleene three valued semantics. Its final truth valuation is the semantic completion of the first in such a way that all sentences that are not true in the primary valuation are false in the final valuation. (shrink)

"Any man-any artist, as Nietzsche or Cezanne would say- climbs the stairway in the tower of his perfection at the cost of a struggle with a deunde-not with an angel, as some have maintained, or with his muse. This fundamental distinction must be kept in mind if the root of a work of art is to be grasped." -Frederico Garcia Lorca.