The aim of this dissertation is to convince you that time passes. It is commonly held that a belief in time’s passage is in conflict with relativistic physics and that our phenomenology as of passage is not sufficient reason for us to believe in it. I argue that both of these views are false. Along the way I offer a typology and critique of the existing accounts of passage. I offer my own view of passage, the process view, which requires (...) that we be relationalists about time. I make the case that there is strong reason to endorse relationalism. -/- In Chapter 1, I outline the most common positions in temporal ontology (presentism, eternalism, growing block theory, and the moving spotlight view), which are each committed to two theses: an ontological thesis about what exists, and a second thesis about whether the world is static or dynamic. I argue that the ontological theses are either trivial, not meaningful, or beg the question. I then try to recast the ontological theses in terms of truthmaking, which I argue also fails to generate a substantive dispute. I ultimately argue that the best way to salvage the debate over temporal ontology is to understand it as a debate about the second theses, that is, about whether or not time passes. -/- In Chapter 2, I turn to trying to spell out what temporal passage is supposed to be. I give a typology of the existing accounts of passage in the literature, and give some critique of each. I then try to offer my own account of what passage is: passage is to be identified with change, which is to be understood, not as the standard ‘at-at change’, but in terms of a primitive which I call process. Finally, I note that my account of passage requires relationalism to get off the ground. -/- In Chapter 3, I ask whether we should be substantivalists or relationalists about time, independent of our views on passage. I begin with an overview of the historical debate, focusing heavily on Newton, Leibniz, and the 20th century turn to considering “spacetime” as one entity (rather than treating space and time as two separate entities). I give an overview of the ways in which substantivalism and relationalism are characterized in contemporary debate, and show that it is more difficult than it seems at first pass to parse out what substantivalism is supposed to be. I offer three plausible versions of substantivalism, and characterize relationalism as the denial of all three. I then provide a critical discussion of five major arguments for or against substantivalism, and conclude that there is strong reason to accept relationalism. -/- In Chapter 4, I turn to the question of whether or not we should take our phenomenology as of passage seriously. The dynamic theorist demands an error theory from the static theorist: how is it that we experience temporal passage if there is no such thing? The most common static theorist response to the demand is to say that our experiences as of passage should be considered illusory, either as a cognitive-perceptual illusion akin to illusions of apparent motion, or as a consequence of our (false) view of ourselves as enduring selves against a changing background. I show that these accounts fail because they end up presupposing dynamicity in their quest to show that reality is static, because illusions require dynamicity to get off the ground. I then turn to another common static theorist response to the demand, which is to argue that the phenomenal reality of passage cannot (or should not) tell us anything about the physical reality of passage. One version of this move appeals to the absence of temporal passage in the formulations of the laws of physics; I show that this reasoning relies on an incorrect identification of passage with a privileged property of presentness. Another version argues that because our phenomenology is notoriously subject to a variety of interfering conditions, it is unreliable as a basis for theorizing. I respond that we do not require complete reliability from our evidence in order to use it to build a view, either in science or in philosophy. I conclude that we must take our phenomenology seriously after all, and that it gives us good reason for thinking that temporal passage is a real feature of the world. -/- In Chapter 5, I summarize the work I have done and try to tie up some loose ends by exploring consequences for ontology in light of the process view. I finish with a discussion of what we should do when science and philosophy seem to conflict. (shrink)

Our culture is conflicted about morally judging and condemning. We can't avoid it altogether, yet many layfolk today are loathe to do it for reasons neither they nor philosophers well understand. Their resistance is often confused (by themselves and by theorists) with some species of antiobjectivism. But unlike a nonobjectivist, most people think that (a) for us to judge and condemn is generally (objectively) morally wrong , yet (b) for God to do so is (objectively) proper, and (c) so too (...) for certain persons in certain relations (e.g., self-condemnation, parental child rearing.) Certainly, religious (e.g., Christian) critics of judging and condemning without doubting the objective truth of their tradition's core moral teachings. Most puzzling is that (a) merely judging and condemning in one's heart may be improper, and (b) someone else with no more evidence or expertise might properly judge and condemn the same action. The answer is in condemning's complex structure of presuppostions. Condemning and judging are acts, and attitudes initiated by the act. Condemnation is motivated by two judgments presumed to justify it, a criticism of a target, and a judgment that the criticism justifies some negative response toward the target. Unlike nonpunitive penalties, punishments are motivated and explained by condemnation. Condemnation is an act of a hostile will, wishing some evil for its target, not (just) as a means to some good. Its root is in damning, an act akin to cursing. It declares a degraded status. The hostility makes it harder to justify condemnation than criticism, and punishment than nonpunitive penalties. Condemning claims objectivity and authority. It involves reflexive evaluation, regarding itself justified, approving its hostile feelings toward the target. Condemners presume themselves entitled to sit in judgment, pass judgment, and cast the condemned down. Those presumptions inhere in sitting in judgment, assuming jurisdiction. Unlike mathematical or scientific judgments, passing moral judgment seems to be a political act subject to extraepistemic constraints. "Who are you to judge?" may properly challenge your right to pass judgment. (shrink)

Manifold expressions of a particular critique appear throughout Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus: for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms faith is categorically not a first immediacy, and it is certainly not the first immediate, the annulment of which concludes the first movement of Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms make it clear that he holds the Hegelian dogmaticians responsible for the promulgation of this misconception, but when Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are consulted another transgressor emerges: the renowned anti-idealist F.D.E. Schleiermacher. I address the extent (...) to which this particular indictment is justified; over-against Gerhard Schreiber, I argue that this characterization of Schleiermacher’s view of religion is indeed a de facto critique. I begin by presenting and demonstrating the ubiquity of the phenomenon at the heart of Schleiermacher’s conception of perfect God-consciousness, then proceed to apply criticisms raised by Kierkegaardian pseudonyms Judge William, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus, supplemented with concerns raised by Kierkegaard himself, in order to demonstrate that these criticisms do indeed apply to and problematize Schleiermacher’s view. (shrink)

The identity "relation" is misconceived since the syntax of "=" is misconceived as a relative term. Actually, "=" is syncategorematic; it forms (true) sentences with a nonpredicative syntax from pairs of (coreferring) flanking names, much as "&" forms (true) conjunctive sentences from pairs of (true) flanking sentences. In the conaming structure, nothing is predicated of the subject, other than, implicitly, its being so conamed. An identity sentence has both an objectual reading as a necessity about what is named, and also (...) a metalinguistic reading as a contingency about the names. Either way the claim about the subject referent has no extralinguistic content. The necessity of alteridentity (non-self-identity) statements is "lexical", due to contingencies of the names' reference, much like the necessity of analytic statements, due to contingencies of the predicates' sense, and unlike the necessity of logical truths (e.g., self-identities) whose truth is secured by syntax alone. Both alter-identity and analytic sentences are readable as objectual necessities and metalinguistic contingencies. Epistemically, alter-identity statements are not essentially unlike analyticities. "Greece is Hellas"/"g=h" and "Greeks are Hellenes"/"(x)(Gx<=>Hx)" are equally (un)informative; so too for "Azure is cobalt"/"a=c" and "Everything azure is cobalt"/"(x)(Ax<=>Cx)". The real epistemic contrast is between proper names (terms without predicative sense) and terms with a predicative sense (names and predicates of properties). Proper names refer to concrete objects, property names refer to abstract objects. That contrast is metaphysical and thus epistemic. (shrink)

Suppose one has a system, the infinite set of positive integers, P, and one wants to study the characteristics of a subset (or subsystem) of that system, the infinite subset of odd positives, O, relative to the overall system. In mathematics, this is done by pairing off each odd with a positive, using a function such as O=2P+1. This puts the odds in a one-to-one correspondence with the positives, thereby, showing that the subset of odds and the original set of (...) positives are the same size, or have the same cardinality. This counter-intuitive result ignores the “natural” relationship of one odd for every two positives in the sequence of positive integers, which would suggest that O is one-half the size of P. However, in the set of axioms that constitute mathematics, it is considered valid. Fair enough. In the physical universe (i.e., the starting system), though, relationships between entities matter. In biochemistry, if you start with an organism, say a rat, and you want to study its heart, you can do this by removing some heart cells and studying them in isolation in a cell culture system. But, the results often differ compared to what occurs in the intact animal because studying the isolated cultured cells ignores the relationships in the intact body between the cells, the rest of the heart tissue and the rest of the rat. In chemistry, if a copper atom were studied in isolation, it would never be known that copper atoms in bulk can conduct electricity because the atoms share their electrons. In physics, the relationships between inertial reference frames in relativity, and observer and observed in quantum physics can't be ignored. Relationships matter in the physical world, but the mathematics of infinite sets is still used to describe it. Does this matter? It seems to, at least in physics. Infinities cause numerous problems in theoretical physics such as non-renormalizability and problems in unifying quantum mehanics and general relativity . This suggests that the pairing off method and the mathematics of infinite sets based on it are analogous to a cell culture system or studying a copper atom in isolation if they are used in studying the physical universe because they ignore the inherent relationships between entities. In the real, physical world, the natural, inherent, relationships between entities can't be ignored. Said another way, the set of axioms that constitute abstract mathematics may be similar but not identical to the set of physical axioms by which the real, physical universe runs. This suggests that the results from abstract mathematics about infinities may not apply to or should be modified for use in physics. (shrink)

Analyticity is a bogus explanatory concept, and is so even granting genuine synonomy. Definitions can't explain the truth of a statement, let alone its necessity and/or our a priori knowledge of it. The illusion of an explanation is revealed by exposing diverse confusions: e.g., between nominal, conceptual and real definitions, and correspondingly between notational, conceptual, and objectual readings of alleged analytic truths, and between speaking a language and operating a calculus. The putative explananda of analyticity are (alleged) truths about essential (...) properties. Real definitions (a la Socrates) are the (alleged) explananda, not the explanans of analyticity. Their truth can be explained neither by conceptual definitions (a la Kant), nor by nominal definitions (a la Frege). The Quinean assault on synonomy is unsuccessful and in any case misplaced, because analyticity turns on the explanatory import of synonomy, not its existence. Synonym substitution in a logical truth cannot yield a necessary truth for it doesn't preserve logical form. Self-identity statements (for properties and/or individuals) differ in logical form from alter-identity statements. (shrink)

Post-Fregean theorists use 'quotation' to denote indifferently both colloquially called quotations (repetitions of prior utterances) and what I call 'displays': 'Rot' means red. Colloquially, quotation is a strictly historical property, not semantic or syntactic. Displays are semantically and syntactically distinctive sentential elements. Most displays are not quotations. Pure echo quotations (Cosmological arguments involve "an unnecessary shuffle") aren't displays. Frege-inspired formal languages stipulate that enquotation forms a singular term referring to the enquoted expression (type). Formalist enquotations differ semantically and syntactically from (...) natural language displays. Call them autonomes, and mark them with stars: *Rot* means red. In formal languages, an unenstarred expression has only one meaning, and an autonome has only one meaning viz., a name (or indexical) designating the unenstarred expression (type). Stars have semantic content and can’t disambiguate. Display punctuation only disambiguates; it says only: This material is displayed. Displays have a semantic function; their marks don't.nDisplays are not terms or lexical items. Displays are objects incorporable into utterances. Such incorporation enables them to be linguistically appropriated much as we appropriate speech-external objects by extrasentential supplementation (e.g., gesturing) to identify the extension of a term by ostending the object -- but now without any extrasentential supplement. Displays are always adjunctive to an (implicit or explicit) ostensionable term, a term whose extension is identifiable by ostending an object. The display-ostensionable term extension relations are various. A display may (1) be the term's referent, or (2) represent the term's extension by (a) replicating or (b) instantiating or (c) expressing the term's referent, or (e) instantiating the property the term predicates. (shrink)

A resolution to the Russell Paradox is presented that is similar to Russell's “theory of types” method but is instead based on the definition of why a thing exists as described in previous work by this author. In that work, it was proposed that a thing exists if it is a grouping tying "stuff" together into a new unit whole. In tying stuff together, this grouping defines what is contained within the new existent entity. A corollary is that a thing, (...) such as a set, does not exist until after the stuff is tied together, or said another way, until what is contained within is completely defined. A second corollary is that after a grouping defining what is contained within is present and the thing exists, if one then alters what is tied together (e.g., alters what is contained within), the first existent entity is destroyed and a different existent entity is created. A third corollary is that a thing exists only where and when its grouping exists. Based on this, the Russell Paradox's set R of all sets that aren't members of themselves does not even exist until after the list of the elements it contains (e.g. the list of all sets that aren't members of themselves) is defined. Once this list of elements is completely defined, R then springs into existence. Therefore, because it doesn't exist until after its list of elements is defined, R obviously can't be in this list of elements and, thus, cannot be a member of itself; so, the paradox is resolved. This same type of reasoning is then applied to Godel's first Incompleteness Theorem. Briefly, while writing a Godel Sentence, one makes reference to a future, not yet completed and not yet existent sentence, G, that claims its unprovability. However, only once the sentence is finished does it become a new unit whole and existent entity called sentence G. If one then goes back in and replaces the reference to the future sentence with the future sentence itself, a totally different sentence, G1, is created. This new sentence G1 does not assert its unprovability. An objection might be that all the possibly infinite number of possible G-type sentences or their corresponding Godel numbers already exist somehow, so one doesn't have to worry about references to future sentences and springing into existence. But, if so, where do they exist? If they exist in a Platonic realm, where is this realm? If they exist pre-formed in the mind, this would seem to require a possibly infinite-sized brain to hold all these sentences. This is not the case. What does exist in the mind is the system for creating G-type sentences and their corresponding numbers. This mental system for making a G-type sentence is not the same as the G-type sentence itself just as an assembly line is not the same as a finished car. In conclusion, a new resolution of the Russell Paradox and some issues with proofs of Godel's First Incompleteness Theorem are described. (shrink)

Philippe Huneman has recently questioned the widespread application of mechanistic models of scientific explanation based on the existence of structural explanations, i.e. explanations that account for the phenomenon to be explained in virtue of the mathematical properties of the system where the phenomenon obtains, rather than in terms of the mechanisms that causally produce the phenomenon. Structural explanations are very diverse, including cases like explanations in terms of bowtie structures, in terms of the topological properties of the system, or in (...) terms of equilibrium. The role of mathematics in bowtie structured systems and in topologically constrained systems has recently been examined in different papers. However, the specific role that mathematical properties play in equilibrium explanations requires further examination, as different authors defend different interpretations, some of them closer to the new-mechanistic approach than to the structural model advocated by Huneman. In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the explanatory role that mathematics play in Blaser and Kirschner’s nested equilibrium model of the stability of persistent long-term human-microbe associations. We argue that their model is explanatory because: i) it provides a mathematical structure in the form of a set of differential equations that together satisfy an ESS; ii) that the nested nature of the ESSs makes the explanation of host-microbe persistent associations robust to any perturbation; iii) that this is so because the properties of the ESS directly mirror the properties of the biological system in a non-causal way. The combination of these three theses make equilibrium explanations look more similar to structural explanations than to causal-mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

As in many other fields of practical ethics, virtue ethics is increasingly of interest within nursing ethics. Nevertheless, the virtue ethics literature in nursing ethics remains relatively small and underdeveloped. This article aims to categorize which broad theoretical approaches to virtue have been taken, to undertake some initial comparative assessment of their relative merits given the peculiar ethical dilemmas facing nurse practitioners, and to highlight the prob- lem areas for virtue ethics in the nursing context. We find the most common (...) approaches fall into care approaches grounded in sentimentalist or feminist ethics, eudaimonist approaches grounded in neo-Aristotelianism, and those grounded in MacIntyre’s practice theory. Our initial assessment is that the eudaimonist approach fares best in terms of merit and relative to criticisms of virtue ethics. But an outstanding issue concerns the motivational psychology of virtuous nursing and whether virtue ethical accounts of right action are self-effacing, i.e. justify an act on grounds that cannot function as the agent’s reason for doing it if she is to act well. One of us, Newham, believes that a virtue consequentialist approach is the best response to these issues. Some form of pluralistic theory, such as Christine Swanton’s, may be needed to explain the many competing values and goods involved in ethical nursing. (shrink)

Objective We reviewed human–robot interaction (HRI) participatory design (PD) research with older adults. The goal was to identify methods used, determine their value for design of robots with older adults, and provide guidance for best practices. Background Assistive robots may promote aging-in-place and quality of life for older adults. However, the robots must be designed to meet older adults’ specific needs and preferences. PD and other user-centered methods may be used to engage older adults in the robot development process to (...) accommodate their needs and preferences and to assure usability of emergent assistive robots. Method This targeted review of HRI PD studies with older adults draws on a detailed review of 26 articles. Our assessment focused on the HRI methods and their utility for use with older adults who have a range of needs and capabilities. Results Our review highlighted the importance of using mixed methods and including multiple stakeholders throughout the design process. These approaches can encourage mutual learning (to improve design by developers and to increase acceptance by users). We identified key phases used in HRI PD workshops (e.g., initial interview phase, series of focus groups phase, and presentation phase). These approaches can provide inspiration for future efforts. Conclusion HRI PD strategies can support designers in developing assistive robots that meet older adults’ needs, capabilities, and preferences to promote acceptance. More HRI research is needed to understand potential implications for aging-in-place. PD methods provide a promising approach. (shrink)

Consider an infinite set of discrete, finite-sized solid balls (i.e., elements) extending in all directions forever. Here, infinite set is not meant so much in the abstract, mathematical sense but in more of a physical sense where the balls have physical size and physical location-type relationships with their neighbors. In this sense, the set is used as an analogy for our possibly infinite physical universe. Two observers are viewing this set. One observer is internal to the set and is of (...) the same finite size scale as the ball elements. Another observer is external to the set and is infinite in size relative to the balls and observer within the set. This observer is of the same size scale as the set as a whole. What do these sets look like to the two observers? The finite-sized (relative to the balls inside the set) observer within the set would view the set as a space composed of discrete, finite-sized objects. The external infinite-sized (relative to the inside the set) observer would view the very same set as a continuous space and would see no distinct elements within the set. How does this relate to us? First, the differing views of set N as being composed of a discrete versus continuous space may be related to the differing views of spacetime as discrete and continuous. Second, the perspective of the observer would have an impact on the assignment of a cardinality to an infinite set. (shrink)

Rogier van der Weyden'in bu olağanüstü eseri, Yüce İsa'nın acılı veda anını derinlemesine işleyerek bize büyük bir ruhani derinlik sunuyor. Ressamın bu eseri hayata geçirirken duyduğu büyük acı ve ruhsal derinlik, onun sanatının kalbinde yatan insanlık ve inanç temasını güçlendiriyor. O dönemin zenginleri arasında büyük ün kazanmasının ardında yatan şey, bu eserin sanatın sınırlarını aşan etkileyici gücüdür. Ancak şüphesiz ki, bu eser insanlık için yaratılırken, hangi inançtan olursa olsun herkese dokunan bir acıyı da temsil ediyor. -/- Ressamın duygularını ve detayları (...) bu denli etkileyici bir şekilde aktarması, bu eserin günümüzde bile büyük bir hayranlıkla karşılanmasına yol açıyor. Van der Weyden'in tablosu, insanlık tarihinde derin izler bırakan evrensel bir sanat eseri olarak kabul ediliyor. Bu çeviriyi yaparken dönemin koşullarını ve sanatın gücünü daha iyi anladım. Vikipedi gibi kaynaklardan bilgi çevirirken, yabancı dillerdeki bilgilere olan erişimin önemini bir kez daha kavradım ve bu eseri Türkçe konuşanlarla buluşturmanın değerini anladım. -/- Umarım bu eser, okuyuculara van der Weyden'in sanatının derinliğini ve insanlık hikayesinin evrenselliğini anlatırken ilham verir ve onları düşündürür. Sanatın gücü ve insanın duygusal derinlikleri konusundaki bu yolculuk, hepimizi daha iyi bir anlayışa ve içsel bir zenginliğe yönlendirebilir. -/- --- -/- Rogier van der Weyden's extraordinary work offers us profound spiritual depth by delving deeply into the poignant farewell moment of Jesus Christ. The profound sorrow and spiritual depth felt by the painter while creating this work strengthen the theme of humanity and faith at the heart of his art. The impressive power of this work, which transcends the boundaries of art, lies behind the great fame it achieved among the elites of its time. However, unquestionably, this work also represents a universal sorrow that resonates with people of all beliefs. -/- The painter's ability to convey emotions and details in such a compelling manner has led to enduring admiration for this work even in contemporary times. Van der Weyden's painting is recognized as a universal masterpiece that has left deep imprints on the history of humanity. Translating this text has deepened my understanding of the conditions of the time and the power of art. It has also reinforced the importance of accessing information from sources like Wikipedia in foreign languages, and I have come to appreciate the value of bringing this work to Turkish-speaking audiences. -/- I hope this work inspires readers by revealing the depth of van der Weyden's art and the universality of the human story, prompting them to reflect. This journey into the power of art and the emotional depths of humanity can lead us all to greater understanding and inner richness. (shrink)

Forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are already being deployed into clinical settings and research into its future healthcare uses is accelerating. Despite this trajectory, more research is needed regarding the impacts on patients of increasing AI decision making. In particular, the impersonal nature of AI means that its deployment in highly sensitive contexts-of-use, such as in healthcare, raises issues associated with patients’ perceptions of (un) dignified treatment. We explore this issue through an experimental vignette study comparing individuals’ perceptions of being (...) treated in a dignified and respectful way in various healthcare decision contexts. Participants were subject to a 2 (human or AI decision maker) x 2 (positive or negative decision outcome) x 2 (diagnostic or resource allocation healthcare scenario) factorial design. We found evidence of a “human bias” (i.e., a preference for human over AI decision makers) and an “outcome bias” (i.e., a preference for positive over negative outcomes). However, we found that for perceptions of respectful and dignified interpersonal treatment, it matters more who makes the decisions in diagnostic cases and it matters more what the outcomes are for resource allocation cases. We also found that humans were consistently viewed as appropriate decision makers and AI was viewed as dehumanizing, and that participants perceived they were treated better when subject to diagnostic as opposed to resource allocation decisions. Thematic coding of open-ended text responses supported these results. We also outline the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)

-/- 在一系列《全球研究报告》的调研过程中,我们一直希望对亚洲地区的研究现状进行一个描述,不仅限于中国、日本和韩国这些持续发展且颇受关注的国家。 -/- 这份《全球研究报告》调查了被称为南亚和东亚（S&E Asia）的地区,包括东盟集团及更广泛的地区。 .

Este capítulo examina una posible preocupación filosófica especializada por la técnica en la práctica filosófica colombiana. Se argumenta, según las fuentes consultadas: una génesis, un desarrollo; con unas rupturas, continuidades y una consolidación reciente de una comunidad académica en el asunto. Este hecho cultural se registra en un corpus documental compuesto por artículos de revistas especializadas de filosofía, obras de filósofos colombianos, memorias de congresos nacionales de filosofía en los que registran coloquios y ponencias en esta materia, en los currículos (...) de los programas de filosofía, tanto en pregrado como posgrado, en los que aparecen cátedras en filosofía de la técnica o tecnologías, y proyectos de investigación con tesis en esta especialidad. Estas y otras prácticas académicas permiten concluir de la existencia de una discusión filosófica de la técnica; similar a lo que sucede en otros países de Iberoamérica y a nivel mundial. Para desglosar tal conjetura en este apartado se precisa cómo surge la deliberación de la técnica en la tradición filosófica. Luego, se examina cómo emerge el tema en el contexto filosófico colombiano, y puntualiza la obra de Danilo Cruz Vélez en torno a una filosofía de la técnica. Finalmente, se llegará a unas conclusiones parciales que demuestren los aportes de la comunidad filosófica colombiana en dicha temática. La demostración de la hipótesis se sustenta teórica y metodológicamente con dos criterios: uno hermenéutico, con técnicas de interpretación filológica, histórica, filosófica y otro bibliométrico, los cuales permiten una reconstrucción, síntesis, análisis e interpretación de las deliberaciones del tema, desde 1964 al 2018. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s writings and lectures during the first half of the 1930s play a crucial role in any interpretation of the relationship between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations . G. E. Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s Cambridge lectures, 1930-1933, offer us a remarkably careful and conscientious record of what Wittgenstein said at the time, and are much more detailed and reliable than previously published notes from those lectures. The co-authors are currently editing these notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures for a book to (...) be published by Cambridge University Press. We describe the materials that make up Moore’s notes, explain their unique value, review the principal editorial challenges that these materials present, and provide a brief outline of our editorial project. (shrink)

Aristotle's Poetics has been the basis for theories of entertainment for over 2,000 years. But the general approach it uses has led to a number of gaps, contradictions, and difficulties in predicting the success of books, plays, movies, and entertainment as a whole, so much so that sayings like "there are no rules, but you break them at your peril," and "in Hollywood, nobody knows anything" have become widespread and accepted. -/- However, it turns out that a model of entertainment (...) that defines literary conventions by the pleasurable feelings they release in the brain, and then equates them with outside experiences that people subconsciously attach to the literary work, in the same way that we can be conditioned to feel love when we view our wedding rings, can actually resolve almost every seeming contradiction in Aristotle's ideas and traditional theories of storytelling when compared to real-world results. -/- Furthermore, this approach can be extended to the other major forms of art, including painting, music and even video games, leading to a "Non-Aristotelian" theory that modifies the fundamental aspects of each of these fields, but in a natural and necessary way, which strengthens both our understanding and our ability to predict the success or failure of art in the future. -/- My work as a vlogger and writer, mostly done via my Youtube channel "StoryBrain," has been viewed over 6 million times, and written about in MovieMaker magazine, Creative Screenwriting magazine, on the front page of major sites like Reddit, Roger Ebert online, and in international newspapers like the Sydney Morning-Herald in Australia and Fotogramas in Spain. My work is also the subject of a chapter of the currently-in-release book "Neuro-Design," by Kogan Page publishing, called "The Neuro Movie Analyst." This paper is a detailed introduction to the theory of Emotional Indiscretion which I have talked about in my work. (shrink)

'PERHAPS WHAT is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express)', wrote Wittgenstein, 'is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning'. Wittgenstein's remark is a useful reminder to all who attempt to write about the nature and the value of art, for there our powers of expression often seem inadequate to the phenomena we aim to describe. In such cases it is natural to direct attention to the 'background' of aesthetic experience itself. In (...) consequence, many philosophical elucidations of art works will make good sense only to whose who are already engaged with them on their own terms—engaged with their distinctive character and forms. That this is so is perhaps most evident when the philosopher's target is the art of music. Roger Scruton's latest contribution to philosophical aesthetics, The Aesthetics of MusIc, is guided by a deep appreciation of the background of musical experience and he often allows music to speak for itself, through musical example and illustration. This study is exceptionally, if not uniquely, informed by a wide and thorough acquaintance with its subject matter, and it is commendably replete with references to, andmusic examples illustrating specific compositions. (shrink)

[Sensation, Causality, and Attention: Roger Bacon and Peter Olivi] This paper investigates what conditions are to be met for sensory perception to occur. It introduces two diff erent theories of perception that were held by two medieval Franciscan thinkers — namely, Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292) and Peter Olivi (ca. 1248–1298). Bacon analyses especially the causal relation between the object and the sensory organ in his doctrine of the multiplication of species. In his view, a necessary condition of perception is (...) the reception of the species in a fully disposed sensory organ. On the contrary, Olivi stresses the active role of the sensory power. A necessary condition of sensation is the aspectus — i.e. the focus of our power’s attention on the object. Furthermore, the paper investigates whether and how each of the two thinkers can deal with the arguments proposed by his opponent — namely whether Bacon’s theory is able to explain attention and what the causal role of the object in Olivi’s theory is. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

TRANSPORTE DE GAMETAS, FERTILIZAÇÃO E SEGMENTAÇÃO -/- • _____OBJETIVO -/- O entendimento do desenvolvimento embrionário nos estágios iniciais, desde a deposição dos espermatozoides na fêmea, passando pela fertilização deste no ovócito e na formação do zigoto, é de suma importância para diferenciar especialistas em reprodução e manejo reprodutivo no mercado de trabalho e, também, durante a vida acadêmica. Compreender os processos que levam à formação do zigoto na fêmea é essencial para avaliar a capacidade reprodutiva dos animais e, mediante técnicas, (...) avaliar o trato reprodutivo da fêmea e o desenvolvimento do embrião até a formação do feto e, por fim, em um novo animal sadio na propriedade. Com esse trabalho, o estudante de veterinária ou zootecnia, que deseja se aprofundar na fisiologia da reprodução animal, identificará os mecanismos que são envolvidos no transporte dos gametas, bem como os processos que estes últimos devem completar para alcançar a fertilização e para desencadear as divisões iniciais do embrião. -/- • _____INTRODUÇÃO -/- A fertilização ou fecundação é o processo pelo qual os gametas masculino (espermatozoide) e feminino (ovócito) se fundem para gerar um novo indivíduo. Seu êxito depende da culminação adequada dos diferentes processos que devem sofrer os gametas durante sua maduração e percurso; do transporte oportuno destes no trato reprodutivo da fêmea, assim como de uma série de adaptações dos órgãos genitais internos da mãe. A segmentação refere-se às primeiras divisões celulares do embrião. -/- • _____TRANSPORTE DO OVÓCITO -/- O ovócito que é liberado na ovulação, e que se encontra coberto pelas células do cumulus (figura 1), é capturado pela fímbria do infundíbulo ao aderir aos cílios. Esse processo é altamente eficaz, inclusive em espécies onde os ovários possuem várias formações globosas, por exemplo nas porcas, onde os ovidutos capturam entre 95 e 100% dos ovócitos que são ovulados. As contrações das camadas musculares do oviduto e o movimento intenso dos cílios da mucosa faz com que as secreções fluam em direção ao útero, transportando assim o complexo cumulus-ovócito. Esse transporte é relativamente rápido até alcançar a junção da ampola com o istmo (que é considerado o local de fertilização do espermatozoide e ovócito) a partir do qual se torna lento. Devido a fêmea estar em estro, o processo está sob controle endócrino, isto é, controle hormonal através do estradiol. Nas fêmeas domésticas, ao contrário das mulheres, o transporte ao longo do oviduto é extremamente eficiente, pois os embriões passam para o útero sem dificuldade, de modo que gestações ectópicas (tubárias ou em cavidade) são quase inexistentes. A égua, frequentemente, retém por muito tempo os ovócitos não fertilizados no oviduto, provavelmente devido a não secreção de substâncias (como a prostaglandina E) que poderiam favorecer sua passagem, como se propõe que aconteça com os embriões. A figura 2 apresenta um ovócito com suas respectivas estruturas. Figura 1: ovócitos de uma vaca madurados in vitro. Nota-se as células do cumulus que os recobre. -/- Figura 2: estruturas do ovócito de uma ovelha que se encontra na etapa de ovócito secundário, depois da ovulação. Elaborado pelo autor. • _____TRANSPORTE ESPERMÁTICO -/- Para que os espermatozoides sejam capazes de fertilizar o ovócito, deverão sofrer uma série de mudanças bioquímicas e morfológicas ao longo de sua passagem pelo aparelho reprodutor tanto masculino como feminino. Uma vez produzidos na parede do túbulo seminífero, os espermatozoides são liberados em direção ao lúmen tubular e transportados passivamente para uma estrutura ramificada conhecida como rede testicular (rete testis). Dessa rede são conduzidos em direção ao epidídimo passando através de 10 a 20 ductos eferentes localizados no polo superior do testículo. O epidídimo é dividido em três seções denominadas cabeça, corpo e cauda; é constituído por um só ducto longo e tortuoso que continua com o canal deferente. Ao final desemboca nas ampolas seminais, no ducto ejaculatório e na uretra. As funções do epidídimo são as de maduração, transporte e armazenamento dos espermatozoides. O transporte através do epidídimo é lento, aproximadamente de 10 dias em touros, e segue sendo passivo. Os espermatozoides tomados da cabeça do epidídimo são ainda imaturos e incapazes de fertilizar, enquanto os armazenados na cauda são completamente maduros. Durante o trânsito pelo epidídimo os espermatozoides adquirem motilidade e o potencial para fertilizar, o acrossomo é remodelado e a gota citoplasmática migra para o flagelo e é liberada. Quando um macho ejacula com muita frequência, é possível observar espermatozoides com gota citoplasmática no sêmen, já que não há tempo suficiente para que completem sua maduração. Os espermatozoides são expulsados fora do organismo durante a cópula, na masturbação ou em emissões espontâneas. Na ejaculação, os espermatozoides que se encontram suspensos nos fluidos do testículo e do epidídimo, misturam-se ao chegar na uretra com as secreções das glândulas acessórias para formar o sêmen. Essas secreções denominadas plasma seminal, proporcionam substâncias para manter o metabolismo energético das células espermáticas, e integram suas membranas elementos que impedem uma capacitação prematura. Durante a cópula, o sêmen é depositado na vagina ou no útero, variando entre as espécies (tabela 1). Na monta natural, geralmente, o serviço ocorre no momento propício, já que está definido pela fase do ciclo estral em que a fêmea é receptiva ao macho. No entanto, na inseminação artificial, é o macho que deverá determinar o momento ideal, e para isso é importante considerar a vida média dos gametas, ao qual é muito curta no caso dos ovócitos (tabela 1). -/- Tabela 1: local de depósito do sêmen, volume da ejaculação e vida média dos gametas. Espécie Local de deposição Volume (ml) Velocidade de ejaculação Vida média do ovócito Vida média do espermatozoide Bovinos Intravaginal 2 1 – 3 seg 8 h 30 – 48 h Caninos Intravaginal 2 – 30 (10 média) 6 – 45 min 48 – 72 h 9 – 11 d Equinos Intrauterina 50 – 200 20 – 60 seg 6 – 8 h 72 – 120 h Humanos Intravaginal 3 - - 5 – 6 d Ovinos Intravaginal 1 1 – 2 seg 16 – 24 h 30 – 48 h Suínos Intrauterina 200 – 400 5 – 20 min 8 – 10 h 24 – 48 h Onde d = dias; h = horas. A vida fértil do ovócito é muito curta, portanto, o momento do serviço é de grande importância para obter altos índices de fertilização. -/- Independentemente do local em que os espermatozoides sejam depositados no aparelho reprodutor feminino, serão expostos às secreções genitais e sofrem uma série de mudanças em seu trajeto até o local de fertilização antes de penetrar no ovócito. Nas espécies em que o sêmen é depositado na parte cranial da vagina, uma parte do mesmo penetra através da cérvix, enquanto outra parte é eliminada do aparelho genital da fêmea, em pouco tempo, através do fluxo retrógrado. O meio vaginal não é adequado e imobiliza os espermatozoides em pouco tempo, pelo qual deverão entrar no útero onde o ambiente é mais propício. O transporte espermático na fêmea é o resultado da alta contratilidade, do movimento ciliar e o fluido do aparelho genital durante o estro, ao qual está sob controle endócrino e do sistema nervoso. Esse transporte é favorecido pelas características especiais do muco estral, cujas moléculas formam uma espécie de canais que facilitam a passagem dos espermatozoides. Pelo contrário, durante a fase lútea seu transporte é dificultado. Além do meio vaginal, a cérvix também atua como barreira natural para limitar a passagem dos espermatozoides, diminuindo assim a possibilidade de polispermia. Funciona, também, como um filtro que seleciona os espermatozoides aptos dos que não o são, uma vez que somente os primeiros possuem uma motilidade vigorosa que lhes permite passar pelo muco altamente hidratado. Na vaca a cérvix é considerada como um reservatório espermático. Quando atravessam a cérvix, os espermatozoides seguem sua deslocação tanto por movimento próprio como pelas contrações uterinas e tubárias. Nas espécies em que o local de depósito do sêmen do macho na fêmea é intrauterino, como equinos, a principal barreira que os espermatozoides enfrentam é a união ou junção útero-tubárica. A união entre o útero e o oviduto (istmo do oviduto) serve como reservatório funcional dos espermatozoides nas espécies domésticas. Poucos minutos depois da cópula, é possível encontrar alguns espermatozoides no oviduto, que é conhecido como fase de transporte rápido. No entanto, esses espermato-zoides não são os que participam do processo de fertilização e podem apresentar certas anormalidades. Existe um segundo tipo de transporte denominado fase sustentada, a qual consiste na migração prolongada dos espermatozoides em direção as partes mais craniais do aparelho genital feminino, que conduzem à colonização do reservatório funcional e na liberação gradual dos espermatozoides dos reservatórios espermáticos, incluindo este último. O reservatório do istmo fornece aos espermatozoides um ambiente propício, protegendo-os contra a fagocitose, prolongando assim a sua viabilidade. Aqui os esper-matozoides permanecem aderidos a superfície das células ciliadas do epitélio até a finalização de sua capacitação, depois da qual são liberados quando alteram seu padrão de motilidade flagelada, fenômeno conhecido como hipermotilidade, e migram em ondas em direção ao local da fertilização. Dos milhões de espermatozoides ejaculados, somente alguns milhares alcançarão o istmo do oviduto e um número sumamente pequeno será encontrado nas imediações do ovócito no momento da fertilização. -/- • _____CAPACITAÇÃO ESPERMÁTICA E REAÇÃO ACROSSÔMICA -/- A capacitação é um processo gradual e essencial para a fertilização. Os espermato-zoides devem passar por um dado tempo de “incubação” no aparelho genital da fêmea e sofrer uma série de mudanças antes de serem capazes de fecundar o ovócito. A capacita-ção dos espermatozoides começa quando eles entram em contato com as secreções do aparelho genital da fêmea e termina no istmo do oviduto. Durante esse percurso a superfície da cabeça do espermatozoide se modifica já que algumas moléculas como o colesterol são removidas da membrana plasmática, aumentando sua fluidez e alterando suas propriedades bioquímicas. Entre outras coisas, essa reorganização dos lipídios facilita a entrada de cálcio extracelular pelos canais iônicos e ocasiona a desestabilização da membrana, tornando-a mais fusogênica. Também são eliminados outros fatores (conhecidos genericamente como fatores descapacitantes) que expõem receptores membranais indispensáveis para a realização da união entre o espermatozoide e o ovócito durante a fertilização. Os espermatozoides capacitados apresentam um padrão de hipermotilidade e uma maior atividade metabólica, características que devem obter para que sejam capazes de penetrar as camadas do ovócito. A capacitação é necessária para que ocorra a reação acrossômica. A reação acrossomal ou acrossômica (RA) é um fenômeno de exocitose que é desencadeada pela ligação entre as proteínas e receptores localizados na membrana do espermatozoide e a zona pelúcida do ovócito (figura 3). Envolve a fusão da membrana plasmática do espermatozoide com a membrana externa de seu acrossomo; formando, assim, pequenas vesículas, cujo conteúdo de enzimas hidrolíticas, como a hialuronidase e a acrosina, é liberado em direção ao seu exterior, facilitando a penetração da zona pelúcida. A adesão do espermatozoide à zona pelúcida é específica da espécie e depende de glicoproteínas presentes na membrana dos ovócitos maduros; a cabeça do espermatozoide se une com essas glicoproteínas mediante receptores específicos e atravessam em direção oblíqua a zona pelúcida até chegar ao espaço perivitelino. Nos mamíferos, particularmente em roedores e nos humanos, algumas dessas glicoproteínas são conhecidas como ZP1, ZP2 e ZP3. Pensa-se que a união da membrana espermática a esta última é o que desencadeia a reação acrossomal. Posteriormente, as vilosidades do ovócito entram em contato com o espermatozoide e a membrana presente na secreção equatorial da cabeça do espermatozoide, que tem proteínas fusogênicas específicas, une-se a membrana plasmática do ovócito, fusionando-se e permitindo a entrada do núcleo espermático ao citoplasma (figura 4). A capacitação dos espermatozoides é fundamental para o êxito da fertilização, uma vez que apenas os aptos estarão perfeitos e íntegros para que a união e percepção das glicoproteínas presentes nos mesmos possam ocorrer de forma ideal para a penetração deste no ovócito, fertilizá-lo e formar um zigoto. Figura 3: estrutura do espermatozoide. Nota: a membrana é acrossomal e não acrossonal. Elaborado pelo autor. -/- Figura 4: eventos que ocorrem durante a fertilização. A – depois de passar através das células do cumulus, o espermatozoide entra em contato com a zona pelúcida, onde receptores da membrana plasmática reconhecem as proteínas da zona pelúcida; B – é desencadeada, então, a reação acrossomal; C – para que o espermatozoide penetre na zona pelúcida; D – ao atravessar a zona pelúcida e entrar no espaço perivitelino, a cabeça do espermatozoide entra em contato com a membrana vitelina; ambas membranas se fusionam graças ao reconhecimento de proteínas fusogênicas que estão no segmento equatorial. E – ocorre, então, que o núcleo do espermatozoide penetra no citoplasma do ovócito; uma das consequências da fusão da membrana com a cabeça do espermatozoide é a reação cortical, em que os grânulos corticais do ovócito liberam seu conteúdo em direção ao espaço perivitelino, o que resulta na alteração da estrutura da zona pelúcida e da membrana vitelina para bloquear a polispermia. Elaborado pelo autor. • _____CONSEQUÊNCIAS DA PENETRAÇÃO -/- Bloqueio da polispermia -/- A fusão das membranas dos gametas durante a penetração permite a entrada da fosfolipase C zeta (PLCζ) – fator solúvel que provém do espermatozoide – que desencadeia liberação e oscilações de Ca2+ no retículo endoplasmático. Isso, por sua vez, provoca a migração e fusão dos grânulos corticais, com a consequente liberação de enzimas, que mudam tanto a estrutura da zona pelúcida (por exemplo a inativação de ZP3), como a da membrana vitelina. Desse modo, impede-se que outros espermatozoides as penetrem, evitando assim a polispermia (figura 5). -/- Figura 5: os grânulos corticais que encontram-se na periferia do citoplasma, debaixo da superfície da membrana do ovócito, migram e fusionam-se sobre a mesma, liberando seu conteúdo no espaço perivitelino imediatamente depois da penetração do espermatozoide. A – como conse-quência, tanto a membrana vitelina como a zona pelúcida são modificadas, impedindo a entrada de mais espermatozoides, o que evita a polispermia. B – o ovócito retoma, então, sua segunda divisão meiótica, que ocasiona a expulsão do segundo corpúsculo polar, e na formação dos pronúcleos feminino e masculino. C – continuando, os pronúcleos migram, suas membranas se dissolvem e os cromossomos de ambos se condensam e se unem. Completa-se, assim, a singamia e forma-se, então, o zigoto. Elaborado pelo autor baseado nos livros de embriologia e fisiologia da reprodução conforme vida bibliografia. -/- Ativação do ovócito e formação de pronúcleos -/- Na maioria das fêmeas domésticas, com exceção da cadela, o ovócito encontra-se suspenso na metáfase II da segunda meiose no momento da ovulação. A entrada da PLCζ do espermatozoide no citoplasma do ovócito, e a consequente liberação de Ca2+, faz com que o ovócito se ative, terminando a segunda divisão meiótica e expulse o segundo corpo polar. Posteriormente, o material nuclear do ovócito se reorganiza para formar o pronú-cleo feminino. Entretanto, a membrana nuclear do espermatozoide se dissolve, a cromatina descondensa-se, as protaminas são substituídas por histonas, e se forma uma nova membrana nuclear, dando lugar ao pronúcleo masculino. -/- Singamia -/- Uma vez que os pronúcleos feminino e masculino são formados, migram para o centro do ovócito, aproximam-se, suas membranas se dispersam e os cromossomos paternos e maternos se associam, com o qual recupera a condição diploide e dá origem ao zigoto (figura 5). -/- • _____DESENVOLVIMENTO EMBRIONÁRIO -/- Poucas horas após a fertilização ocorre a primeira divisão do zigoto em duas, depois em 4, 8, 16 e 32 células, denominadas blastômeros. Essas divisões mitóticas são conhecidas como divisões de segmentação ou clivagem (figura 6), uma vez que são realizadas sem aumento do citoplasma, de modo que com cada divisão os blastômeros se tornam menores. A partir das 16 células o embrião se chama mórula, e é visto como uma massa celular compacta. A compactação deve-se a informação de proteínas de ligação entre os blastômeros. O embrião acumula líquido em seu interior, formando uma cavidade denominada blastocele. Esse processo é conhecido como blastulação; o embrião, assim, passa a ser chamado de blastocisto. Nessa etapa é possível diferenciar duas populações de células embrionárias: a massa celular interna, embrioblasto ou botão embrionário (que dará origem ao embrião), e a massa celular externa, células superficiais ou trofoblasto, do qual se originam a maioria das membranas fetais. Ao continuar a multiplicação das células e a acumulação de líquido, o blastocisto aumenta de tamanho, convertendo-se em blastocisto expandido. A zona pelúcida torna-se mais fina e, finalmente, o embrião eclode; isto é, o embrião é liberado da zona pelúcida. -/- • _____FERTILIZAÇÕES ATÍPICAS -/- Polispermia -/- É a penetração de dois ou mais espermatozoides no óvulo. Esta condição é letal nos mamíferos, já que o número cromossômico desse zigoto é maior que 2n, o envelheci-mento do ovócito da porca, como consequência do serviço tardio, favorece a apresentação da polispermia, por isso, é comum ver números de nascimentos de média de 10 a 12 leitões por parição nessa espécie. Nas aves, no entanto, a penetração de mais de um espermatozoide é normal, embora apenas um pronúcleo masculino se formará, fundindo-se com o feminino. -/- Figura 6: etapas do processo de segmentação/clivagem. Fonte: aula de reprodução da professora Domenica Palomaris, UFT. -/- Ginogênese -/- É o desenvolvimento de um embrião a partir de um óvulo normal fecundado por um espermatozoide, mas sem a fusão dos cromossomos masculinos com os da fêmea. A função do espermatozoide, nesse caso, é a de ativação do ovócito para que este inicie seu desenvolvimento, mas não há fusão com o núcleo do espermatozoide. Ocorre em plantas, em nematódeos e em algumas espécies de peixes, por exemplo a Poecilia formosa, espécie em que os ovócitos das fêmeas são ativados por machos de outra espécie relacio-nada. -/- Partenogênese -/- Consiste no desenvolvimento do embrião sem a participação do espermatozoide. Ocorre em alguns insetos, o zangão, por exemplo, é partenogenético. Também pode apresentar-se em perus, cujos embriões são machos e, geralmente, morrem antes da eclosão. -/- • _____GÊMEOS -/- Existem dois tipos de gêmeos: idênticos ou monozigóticos e os não idênticos ou dizigóticos. -/- Idênticos ou monozigóticos -/- Originam-se do mesmo zigoto, sendo assim, possuem o mesmo genótipo e um fenótipo similar e, portanto, são do mesmo sexo. Em laboratório é possível gerá-los ao seccionar uma mórula em duas ou mais partes, por meio de um micromanipulador. Uma vez que possuem o mesmo genótipo, os produtos resultantes são clones. -/- Não idênticos ou dizigóticos -/- Provêm da fertilização de dois óvulos distintos por espermatozoides diferentes. Possuem, portanto, genótipos e fenótipos diferentes, e podem ser de sexo diferente. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS -/- ALBERTS, Bruce et al. Biologia molecular da célula. Artmed Editora, 2010. AUSTIN, Colin Russell; SHORT, Roger Valentine. Reproduction in Mammals, Book I: Germ Cells and Fertilization. 1982. BEARDEN, Henry Joe et al. Reproducción animal aplicada. México: Manual Moderno, 1982. BOSCH, P.; WRIGHT JR, R. W. The oviductal sperm reservoir in domestic mammals. Archivos de medicina veterinaria, v. 37, n. 2, p. 95-105, 2005. CAPALLEJAS, Roberto Brito; RODRÍGUEZ, Lourdes Tagle. Fisiología de la reproducción animal: con elementos de biotecnología. Editorial Félix Varela, 2010. CROXATTO, Horacio B. Physiology of gamete and embryo transport through the fallopian tube. Reproductive biomedicine online, v. 4, n. 2, p. 160-169, 2002. CUPPS, Perry T. (Ed.). Reproduction in domestic animals. Elsevier, 1991. DIEDRICH, Smidt et al. Endocrinología y Fisiología de la Reproducción de los Animales Zootécnicos. 1972. DUKES, Henry Hugh; SWENSON, Melvin J.; REECE, William O. Dukes fisiologia dos animais domésticos. Editora Guanabara Koogan, 1996. FERREIRA, A. de M. Reprodução da fêmea bovina: fisiologia aplicada e problemas mais comuns (causas e tratamentos). Juiz de Fora: Minas Gerais–Brasil, p. 422, 2010. HAFEZ, Elsayed Saad Eldin; HAFEZ, Bahaa. Reprodução animal. São Paulo: Manole, 2004. HUNTER, Ronald Henry Fraser. The Fallopian tubes in domestic mammals: how vital is their physiological activity?. Reproduction Nutrition Development, v. 45, n. 3, p. 281-290, 2005. HUNTER, R. H. F.; RODRIGUEZ‐MARTINEZ, H. Capacitation of mammalian spermatozoa in vivo, with a specific focus on events in the Fallopian tubes. Molecular Reproduction and Development: Incorporating Gamete Research, v. 67, n. 2, p. 243-250, 2004. GALINA, Carlos; VALENCIA, Javier. Reproducción de los animales domésticos. 2006. HOPPER, Richard M. (Ed.). Bovine reproduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. HYTTEL, Poul; SINOWATZ, Fred; VEJLSTED, Morten. Embriologia veterinária. Elsevier Brasil, 2012. KÖLLE, Sabine; REESE, Sven; KUMMER, Wolfgang. New aspects of gamete transport, fertilization, and embryonic development in the oviduct gained by means of live cell imaging. Theriogenology, v. 73, n. 6, p. 786-795, 2010. MCKINNON, Angus O. et al. (Ed.). Equine reproduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. OLIVERA, Martha et al. El espermatozoide, desde la eyaculación hasta la fertilización. Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Pecuarias, v. 19, n. 4, p. 426-436, 2006. PLANT, Tony M.; ZELEZNIK, Anthony J. (Ed.). Knobil and Neill's physiology of reproduction. New York: Academic Press, 2014. RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ, Heriberto. Role of the oviduct in sperm capacitation. Theriogenology, v. 68, p. S138-S146, 2007. SAAVEDRA LEOS, María Dolores. Estudio de la composición de los gránulos corticales y del oolema de ovocitos porcinos y bovinos madurados y fecundados in vitro. Proyecto de investigación:, 2010. SENGER, Phillip L. et al. Pathways to pregnancy and parturition. Current Conceptions, Inc, 2004. SUAREZ, Susan S. The oviductal sperm reservoir in mammals: mechanisms of formation. Biology of Reproduction, v. 58, n. 5, p. 1105-1107, 1998. VALENCIA MÉNDEZ, Javier de J. Fisiología de la reproducción porcina. 1986. -/- FIXAÇÃO DO ASSUNTO -/- 1. Defina e diferencie fertilização e segmentação. -/- 2. Disserte sobre o transporte do ovócito. Por que no istmo o transporte do ovócito se torna lento? -/- 3. Fale sobre a eficiência do transporte do gameta no trato genital da fêmea e sobre a retenção de ovócitos pela égua. -/- 4. Defina as células do cumulus e explique seu papel sobre o ovócito. -/- 5. Quais as estruturas que compõem o ovócito? Qual a função de cada uma? -/- 6. Todos os ovócitos das fêmeas domésticas são iguais? Justifique. -/- 7. Disserte sobre o papel dos hormônios e das secreções sobre o transporte do ovócito no trato genital da fêmea. -/- 8. Disserte sobre o transporte do espermatozoide. Por que há transporte rápido e lento dos espermatozoides? -/- 9. Fale sobre o local de deposição do sêmen nas espécies domésticas e como esse influen-cia na eficiência da reprodução. -/- 10. Por que a vida média do espermatozoide canino é maior que as outras espécies? -/- 11. Quais as mudanças que os espermatozoides precisam sofrer para conseguir êxito na fertilização e por quê? -/- 12. Defina fase de transporte rápido, fase sustentada e hipermotilidade. Qual a importân-cia de cada um? -/- 13. Como ocorre a reação acrossômica? -/- 14. O que é polispermia e como ocorre seu bloqueio? 15. Como ocorre a ativação do ovócito e como se formam os pronúcleos? -/- 16. O que é e qual a importância da singamia? -/- 17. Disserte sobre as divisões de segmentação e qual a importância destas para o êxito da reprodução. -/- 18. Defina e diferencia mórula e blastocisto. -/- 19. Defina e diferencie ginogênese e partenogênese. -/- 20. Qual o papel endócrino e quais hormônios e enzimas atuam sobre o transporte de gametas, sobre a fertilização e sobre a segmentação? (shrink)

"...T S Eliot was unimpressed by Freud. Eliot preferred the more approachable Roger Vittoz. It was only Scofield Thayer, who in his prolonged therapy with Sigmund Freud can be said to have brought anything Freudian in the classically psychoanalytic sense to Modernism." This is from the review. The review of the book is contrarian as the book under review is. The salient points of the book are interrogated in this review.

Extreme Permissivism is the view that a body of evidence could rationally permit both the attitude of belief and disbelief towards a proposition. This paper puts forward a new argument against Extreme Permissivism, which improves on a similar style of argument due to Roger White (2005, 2014). White’s argument is built around the principle that the support relation between evidence and a hypothesis is objective: so that if evidence E makes it rational for an agent to believe a hypothesis (...) H, then E makes it rational to believe H, for all agents. In this paper, I construct a new argument against Extreme Permissivism that appeals to a logically weaker, less demanding view about evidential support, Relational Objectivity: whether a body of evidence E is more likely if H is true than if H is false is an objective matter and does not depend on how any agent interprets the relationship between E and H. Relational Objectivity is solely concerned with the conditional probabilities called likelihoods and does not put substantive constraints on an agent’s prior and posterior credences. For this reason, the presented argument avoids the standard permissivist criticism levelled against White’s argument. (shrink)

MICHELLE MARDER KAMHI offers an in-depth response to The Aesthetics Symposium. In addition to answering many of the contributors’ objections to What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand, she offers a critique of their own theses—in particular, Barry Vacker’s claim that chaos theory is implicit in Rand’s aesthetics, Jeff Riggenbach’s argument that much of Rand’s theory was anticipated by Susanne Langer and Stephen Pepper, and Roger Bissell’s suggestion that the concept of a microcosm be applied to (...) Rand’s view of the function of art. (shrink)

The Uniqueness Thesis (U), according to Richard Feldman and Roger White, says that for a given set of evidence E and a proposition P, only one doxastic attitude about P is rational given E. Luis Rosa has recently provided two counterexamples against U which are supposed to show that even if there is a sense in which choosing between two doxastic attitudes is arbitrary, both options are equally and maximally rational. Both counterexamples work by exploiting the idea that ‘ought (...) implies can’ and trying to spell out situations in which some inferences are beyond the capabilities of some reasoners. I argue that on a descriptive account of doxastic rationality, questions of whether ‘epistemic ought implies can’ can be bracketed and that at least one of the inferential moves that Rosa describes in his cases is irrational. I further argue that a descriptive account of doxastic rationality is the appropriate notion of rationality that is to be considered when evaluating U. If my argument for a descriptive account of rationality is successful, then we have reason to revise our use of the term rationality to fit this descriptive understanding. (shrink)

The analysis of the moral doctrines contained in the Moralis philosophia of Roger Bacon reveals the central place reserved to the vice of anger. Bacon considers it a very serious sin, which goes against the human nature and makes many devastating effects on individuals and their social relations. Bacon’s moral doctrines are based on a source that has been recently rediscovered, Seneca’s De ira. Bacon is one of the first authors to quote extensively that work. Bacon’s enthusiasm for the (...) Latin philosopher is the result of his conviction of the superiority of pagan philosophers over the Christians, especially in the field of ethics. The knowledge of the ancients, which is necessary for the life of individuals and for the proper function of institutions, is a duty for Christian thinkers. (shrink)

Evidentialists say that a necessary condition of sound epistemic reasoning is that our beliefs reflect only our evidence. This thesis arguably conflicts with standard Bayesianism, due to the importance of prior probabilities in the latter. Some evidentialists have responded by modelling belief-states using imprecise probabilities (Joyce 2005). However, Roger White (2010) and Aron Vallinder (2018) argue that this Imprecise Bayesianism is incompatible with evidentialism due to “inertia”, where Imprecise Bayesian agents become stuck in a state of ambivalence towards hypotheses. (...) Additionally, escapes from inertia apparently only create further conflicts with evidentialism. This dilemma gives a reason for evidentialist imprecise probabilists to look for alternatives without inertia. I shall argue that Henry E. Kyburg’s approach offers an evidentialist-friendly imprecise probability theory without inertia, and that its relevant anti-inertia features are independently justified. I also connect the traditional epistemological debates concerning the “ethics of belief” more systematically with formal epistemology than has been hitherto done. (shrink)

Many epistemologists hold that an agent can come to justifiably believe that p is true by seeing that it appears that p is true, without having any antecedent reason to believe that visual impressions are generally reliable. Certain reliabilists think this, at least if the agent’s vision is generally reliable. And it is a central tenet of dogmatism (as described by James Pryor) that this is possible. Against these positions it has been argued (e.g. by Stewart Cohen and Roger (...) White) that this violates some principles from probabilistic learning theory. To see the problem, let’s note what the dogmatist thinks we can learn by paying attention to how things appear. (The reliabilist says the same things, but we’ll focus on the dogmatist.). (shrink)

Table of contents for MONSTERS AND PHILOSOPHY, edited by Charles T. Wolfe (London 2005) -/- List of Contributors iii Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix -/- Introduction xi Charles T. Wolfe The Riddle of the Sphinx: Aristotle, Penelope, and 1 Empedocles Johannes Fritsche Science as a Cure for Fear: The Status of Monsters in 21 Lucretius Morgan Meis Nature and its Monsters During the Renaissance: 37 Montaigne and Vanini Tristan Dagron Conjoined Twins and the Limits of our Reason 61 Annie (...) Bitbol-Hespériès Degeneration and Hybridism in the Early Modern Species 109 Debate: Towards the Philosophical Roots of the Creation-Evolution Controversy Justin E. H. Smith Leibniz on the Unicorn and Various other Curiosities 131 Roger Ariew The Creativity of God and the Order of Nature: 153 Anatomizing Monsters in the Early Eighteenth Century Anita Guerrini The Status of Anomalies in the Philosophy of Diderot 169 Annie Ibrahim The Materialist Denial of Monsters 187 Charles T. Wolfe Cerebral Assymetry, Monstrosities and Hegel. 205 On the Situation of the Life Sciences in 1800 Michael Hagner The Lady Knight of the Perilous Place 217 Elfriede Jelinek Monster: More than a Word. . . From Portent to Anomaly, 231 the Extraordinary Career of Monsters Beate Ochsner Index 281 . (shrink)

Background: how mind functions is subject to continuing scientific discussion. A simplistic approach says that, since no convincing way has been found to model subjective experience, mind cannot exist. A second holds that, since mind cannot be described by classical physics, it must be described by quantum physics. Another perspective concerns mind's hypothesized ability to interact with the world of quanta: it should be responsible for reduction of quantum wave packets; physics producing 'Objective Reduction' is postulated to form the basis (...) for mind-matter interactions. This presentation describes results derived from a new approach to these problems. It is based on well-established biology involving physics not previously applied to the fields of mind, or consciousness studies, that of critical feedback instability. -/- Methods: 'self-organized criticality' in complexity biology places system loci of control at critical instabilities, physical properties of which, including information properties, are presented. Their elucidation shows that they can model hitherto unexplained properties of experience. -/- Results: All results depend on physical properties of critical instabilities. First, at least one feed-back or feed-forward loop must have feedback gain, g = 1: information flows round the loop impress perfect images of system states back on themselves: they represent processes of perfect self-observation. This annihilates system quanta: system excitations are instability fluctuations, which cannot be quantized. Major results follow: -/- 1. Information vectors representing criticality states must include at least one attached information loop denoting self-observation. -/- 2. Such loop structures are attributed a function, 'registering the state's own existence', explaining -/- a. Subjective 'awareness of one's own presence' -/- b. How content-free states of awareness can be remembered (Jon Shear) -/- c. Subjective experience of time duration (Immanuel Kant) -/- d. The 'witness' property of experience – often mentioned by athletes 'in the zone' -/- e. The natural association between consciousness and intelligence -/- This novel, physically and biologically sound approach seems to satisfactorily model subjectivity. -/- Further significant results follow: -/- 1. Registration of external information in excited states of systems at criticality reduces external wave-packets: the new model exhibits 'Objective Reduction' of wave packets. -/- 2. High internal coherence (postulated by Domash & Penrose) leading to a. Non-separable information vector bundles. b. Non-reductive states (Chalmers's criterion for experience). -/- 3. Information that is: a. encoded in coherence negentropy; b. non-digitizable, and therefore c. computationally without digital equivalent (posited by Penrose). -/- Discussion and Conclusions: instability physics implies anharmonic motion, preventing excitation quantization, and totally different from the quantum physics of simple harmonic motion at stability. Instability excitations are different from anything hitherto conceived in information science. They can model aspects of mind never previously treated, including genuine subjectivity, objective reduction of wave-packets, and inter alia all properties given above. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was (...) Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva), we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna (kumarajiva) with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.]. (shrink)

Antes de entrar cuidadosamente no estudo de cada filósofo, em suas respectivas ordens cronológicas, é necessário dar um panorama geral sobre eles, permitindo, de relance, a localização deles em tempos históricos e a associação de seus nomes com sua teoria ou tema central. l. OS FILÓSOFOS PRÉ-SOCRÁTICOS - No sétimo século antes de Jesus Cristo, nasce o primeiro filósofo grego: Tales de Mileto2 . Ele e os seguintes filósofos jônicos (Anaximandro: Ἀναξίμανδρος: 3 610-546 a.C.) e Anaxímenes: (Άναξιμένης: 586-524 a.C.) tentaram (...) expressar/elucidar o que é a arché, ou constitutivo fundamental do Universo. 4 Também sobressaem as teorias de Pitágoras (Ὁ Πυθαγόρας: 570 a.C.- 495 a.C.), completas de misticismo e Matemática; a de Heráclito (Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος: 540-470 a.C.), o filósofo do devir e o de seu oponente, Parmênides (Παρμενίδης: 530-460 a.C.), que elucida a primeira teoria do ser, e para qual é alcunhado como o iniciador da Metafísica. Anaxágoras (Ἀναξαγόρας: 500 a.C.- 428 a.C.) esboça uma teoria sobre o Nous, o espírito divino. Por outro lado, Demócrito (Δημόκριτος: Grécia: 460-370 a.C.) e Empédocles (Ἐμπεδοκλῆς: 490 a.C.-430 a.C.) insistem no materialismo. Em contrapartida, os sofistas (Parmênides, Cálicles (Καλλικλῆς: personagem platônico cuja existência é duvidosa) e Górgias (Γοργίας: 485 a.C.-380 a.C.)) gozam das suas aptidões à dialética, e colocam o relativismo como uma posição filosófica. Sócrates será o inimigo mais temível dessa posição. Este é o começo do movimento filosófico de Atenas, que culmina nos séculos quinto e quarto, tal qual, posteriormente, veremos. 2. O APOGEU GREGO – Sócrates (Σωκράτης: 469 a.C.-399 a.C.), Platão (Πλάτων: 428/427- 348/347 a.C.) e Aristóteles (Ἀριστοτέλης: 384 a.C.-322 a.C.) formam o triunvirato dos grandes filósofos gregos. O primeiro (Sócrates), com seu método "maiêutico" e sua teoria do conceito; o segundo (Platão), com sua teoria das ideias e seu estilo literário (dialogista); e o terceiro (Aristóteles), com a estruturação dos principais ramos filosóficos, como a Lógica, a Metafísica, a Ética, a Psicologia racional e a Política; todos eles elevaram a Filosofia para um posto de primeira ordem. Doravante, todos os filósofos tornam-se credores das contribuições desses gênios. Em certos autores, é clara a influência de Platão ou de Aristóteles. Sendo que, ambos os filósofos, tiveram influência absoluta de Sócrates, uma vez que Platão fora seu discípulo, e Aristóteles discípulo de Platão. A Idade Média, por exemplo, foi toda ela, em sua gênese e desenvolvimento, alicerçada no pensamento e nas ideias platônicas; tal era histórica é caracterizada pela luta em favor de um ou de outro autor; o platonismo tomou precedência nos primeiros séculos do cristianismo; somente após o décimo século Aristóteles foi redescoberto. 3. A FILOSOFIA CRISTÃ MEDIEVAL - Santo Agostinho (354 a.C.-430 a.C.) se destaca, no quinto século, com sua teoria da iluminação e a aplicação da teoria platônica ao Cristianismo. No século XIII, São Tomás de Aquino (1225-1274), sintetiza Aristóteles com o Cristianismo. Os dois autores formam o núcleo da filosofia cristã em seus respectivos séculos. A escolástica teve seu tempo de decadência. Se mencionam, principalmente, dois autores: João Duns Escoto (1266-1308) e Guilherme de Ockham (1285-1347). O primeiro é o "Doutor Sutil ", e o segundo cai em um fideísmo e um nominalismo, para todos os conceitos criticáveis. Em uma segunda parte, tentaremos explicar os respectivos pensamentos dos autores mencionados, e outros que pertencem ao mesmo tempo, antigos e medievais. Naquela época, a Filosofia era puramente realista, aplicada ao mundo e ao homem. Somente na Idade Moderna, a Filosofia assumirá o problema do conhecimento como a base e o começo de todo filosofar. 4. A FILOSOFIA RACIONALISTA (MODERNA) - Na Idade Moderna, sobressai o racionalismo de Descartes (1596-1650) prolongado, então, com Malebranche (1638-1715) (ocasionalismo), Espinosa (1632 -1677) (panteísmo) e Leibniz (1646-1716) (teoria das mônadas). Estamos nos séculos XVII e XVIII. A atenção será focada nas disputas filosóficas da corrente empirista contra a racionalista. 5. A FILOSOFIA EMPIRISTA – O empirismo é florescido, principalmente, na Inglaterra. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), primeiro, e depois Locke (1632-1704) com sua rejeição de ideias inatas, Berkeley (1685-1753) com postura e ideias paradoxais, também idealistas e Hume (1711-1776), com suas famosas críticas contra o princípio da causalidade e o conceito de substância, são os principais autores. 6. KANT E OS IDEALISTAS ALEMÃES - Como a tentativa de sintetizar o racionalismo e empirismo, está a teoria de Kant (1724-1804), no século XVIII. Para o seu gênio seguido pelos três idealistas alemães mais importantes: Fichte (1762-1814) (idealismo subjetivo), Schelling (1775-1854) (idealismo objetivo) e Hegel (1770-1831) (idealismo absoluto). Esses Autores representam o ápice da especulação filosófica. A análise, a profundidade, a complexidade da expressão e o espírito sistemático são as características do gênio alemão idealista. 7. OS FILÓSOFOS DO SÉCULO XIX - Antes de tudo, é necessário mencionar, no século dezenove, aos dois grandes críticos de Hegel, que são Kierkegaard (1813-1855) (precursor do existencialismo) e Marx (1818-1883) (com seu materialismo dialético). O próximo é outro casal: Nietzsche (1844-1900) (teoria do Super-homem) e Schopenhauer (1788-1860) (com seu absoluto pessimismo). Comte (1798-1857) com sua doutrina positivista, completará o quadro desses filósofos. Numa outra oportunidade, vamos desmembrar sobre o pensamento e principais ideias acerca desses autores. 8. OS FILÓSOFOS DO SÉCULO XX - Antes de tudo, há um autor que iluminou a filosofia do século XX: Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), fundador do método fenomenológico. Em seguida, existem dois fluxos que são derivados diretamente de Husserl, a saber, o existencialismo e a axiologia. Dentro da corrente axiológica, estudaremos Scheler (1874-2928). Por outro lado, o existencialismo tem quatro autores principais; dois são alemães: Heidegger (1889-1976) e Jaspers (1883-1969); e os demais são franceses: Sartre (1905-1980) e Marcel (1889-1973). Heidegger insiste em que seu tema tratado em sua filosofia não é a unicidade do homem, mas o ser em geral. Jaspers é famoso por seu conceito de transcendência (Deus). Sartre é um antiteísta sincero, e seu existencialismo é definido como um pensamento que assume todas as consequências da negação de Deus. Em contraste, Gabriel Marcel é um filósofo Católico, que conseguiu uma análise profunda das situações humanas, que aparecem em íntima concordância com as verdades cristãs. Vamos terminar com Russell (1872-1970), autor básico do positivismo lógico. Cronologia de filósofos e suas escolas até nossos dias ➢ Filosofia Antiga - Escola naturalista da Jônia: Tales, Anaximandro e Anaxímenes; - Escola matemática da Itália: Pitágoras e os pitagóricos; - Escola idealista de Eléia: Xenófanes (570-475 a.C.), Parmênides, Zenão (490/85-420 a.C.) e Meliso (h.443); - Escola empirista: Heráclito, Empédocles e Anaxágoras; - Escola atomista de Abdera: Leucipo (h.437) e Demócrito; - Escolas de Atenas: - Sofistas: Protágoras (480-410), Górgias (484-375?); Sócrates, Platão e Aristóteles; - Pirronismo: Pirro (h.365-h.275); - Estoicismo: Zenão de Cítio (359/33-262) e Crisipo (281/77-208); - Epicurismo: Epicuro (341-270); - Nova Academia: Arcesilau (315-241) e Carnéades (214-129); Romanos: Sêneca (4 a.C.-65 d.C.), Marco Aurélio (121-180) e Cícero (106-43). - Escola greco-judia: Fílon de Alexandria (25 a.C.-50 d.C.); - Neoplatonismo: Plotino (204/5-270), Porfirio (h.233-304), Jâmblico (h.250-330) e Proclo (h.411-485). ➢ Filosofia patrística - Apologistas: São Justino (100/10-165), Ireneu de Lyon (h.140-h.l 77) e Atenágoras (fines s. II); - Alexandrinos: São Clemente (h.145/50-215) e Orígenes (h.185-255); - Africanos: Tertuliano (h.160-230), Arnóbio (h.260-h.327) e Lactâncio (nascido h. 250); - Gregos: São Basílio (h.330-379), São Gregório de Nazianzo (330-390), São Gregório de Níssa (330-390) e Pseudo-Dionísio (h.500); - Latinos: São Hilário (h.315-367), Santo Ambrósio (333-397) e Santo Agostinho; - Outros: Claudiano (+h.473), Boécio (480-524), São Isidoro (h.560-633) e Beda (672/3-735). ➢ Filosofia Medieval/Escolástica - Judeus: Isaac Israeli (+h.940), Salomão Ibn Gabirol (h.l020-p.l058) e Maimônides (1135- 1204); - Árabes: Alquindi (h. 796-874), Al-Farabi (870-950), Avicena (980-1037), Algazali (1058- 1111) e Averróis (1126-1198); - Escola palatina: Alcuíno de Iorque (730/5-804), Rábano Mauro (h.784-856), Escoto Erígena (h.810-h.870) e Papa Silvestre II (+1003); - Dialéticos: Santo Anselmo (1033/4-1109) e Pedro Abelardo (1079-1142); - Tradutores: Domingo Gundisalvo (meados s. XII), Gerardo de Cremona (h. 1114-1187); - Enciclopedistas: Teodorico de Chartres (+1155), Hugo de São Vitor (+1141) e Vicente de Beauvais (+1264); - Universidades: Guilherme de Auvergne (1180- 1249) e Sigerio de Brabante (+h.l284); - Dominicanos: São Alberto Magno (1206-1280) e Santo Tomás de Aquino; - Franciscanos: Alexandre de Hales (1170/80-1245), São Boaventura (1217-1274), Roger Bacon (h.1210/14-1292), João Duns Escoto, Raimundo Lulio (1235-1315) e Guilherme de Ockham (h.1285-1349). ➢ Filosofia Moderna - Humanistas Renascentistas: Ficino (1433-1499), Erasmo (1467-1536), Maquiavel (1469- 1527), Thomas More (1480-1535), Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) e Giordano Bruno (1548- 1600); - Racionalismo: Descartes, Malebranche, Espinosa e Leibniz; - Empiristas: Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Locke, Berkeley e Hume; - Escola escocesa: Thomas Reid (1710-1796); Iluministas: Voltaire (1694-1778), Condillac (1715-1757), Diderot (1713-1784) e J. J. Rousseau (1712-1778). - Idealismo transcendental: Kant; - Idealismo subjetivo: Fichte; - Idealismo objetivo: Schelling; - Idealismo absoluto: Hegel; - Pessimismo: Schopenhauer; - Ecletismo: Cousin (1792-1867); - Positivismo: A. Comte, J. S. Mill (1806-1873) e H. Spencer (1820-1900); - Socialismo: H. Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Ch. Fourier (1772-1837) e K. Marx; - Vitalismo: Nietzsche e W. Dilthey (1833-1912). ➢ Filosofia Contemporânea - Intucionismo: H. Bergson (1859-1941); - Pragmatismo: Ch. S. Peirce (1839-1914), W. James (1842-1910) e J. Dewey (1859-1952); - Fenomenologia: Husserl, Scheler, N. Hartmann (1882-1950) e M. Merleau-Ponty (1908- 1961); - Existencialismo: Jaspers, Heidegger, Marcel e Sartre; - Atomismo lógico: B. Russell (1872-1970) e L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951); - Positivismo lógico: M. Schlick (1882-1936), R. Carnap (1891-1970 ) e A. J. Ayer (1910- 1990). - Filosofia analítica: J. L. Austin (1911-1960), G. Ryle (1900-1976), W.V.O. Quine (1908- 2000), P. F. Strawson (1919-2003) e H. Putnam (1926-); - Hermenêutica: H. G. Gadamer (1900-2002), P. Ricoeur (1913-2007) e J. Habermas (1929-). - Estruturalismo e pós-estruturalismo: F. de Saussure (1857-1913), C. Lévi-Strauss (1908- 2009) e M. Foucault (1926-1984). - Filosofia pós-moderna: J. F. Lyotard (1924-1999), G. Deleuze (1925-1995), J. Derrida (1930- 2004), R. Rorty (1931-2007) e G. Vattimo (1936-). - Comunitaristas: A. Maclntyre (1929-), Ch. Taylor (1931-). REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS CHAUÍ, M. Iniciação à Filosofia. Vol. Único. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Ática, 2013. 460 p. SANTOS, R. dos. Filosofia: Uma breve introdução. 1ª ed. Pelotas: Dissertativo Incipiens, 2014. 108 p. . Rua do Riachuelo, 303, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ Casa Histórica de Osório CEP: 20230-011 E-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Is vision merely a state of the beholder’s sensory organ which can be explained as an immediate effect caused by external sensible objects? Or is it rather a successive process in which the observer actively scanning the surrounding environment plays a major part? These two general attitudes towards visual perception were both developed already by ancient thinkers. The former is embraced by natural philosophers (e.g., atomists and Aristotelians) and is often labelled “intromissionist”, based on their assumption that vision is an (...) outcome of the causal influence exerted by an external object upon a sensory organ receiving an entity from the object. The latter attitude to vision as a successive process is rather linked to the “extramissionist” theories of the proponents of geometrical optics (such as Euclid or Ptolemy) who suggest that an entity – a visual ray – is sent forth from the eyes to the object. The present paper focuses on the contributions to this ancient controversy proposed by some 13th-century Latin thinkers. [...]. (shrink)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, a (...) fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)

A psychological study of thought and language which takes an exposition of scientific linquistics as a point of departure.

There is no doubt that custard apple diseases are among the important reasons that destroy the Custard Apple plant and its agricultural crops. This leads to obvious damage to these plants and they become inedible. Discovering these diseases is a good step to provide the appropriate and correct treatment. Determining the treatment with high accuracy depends on the method used to correctly diagnose the disease, expert systems can greatly help in avoiding damage to these plants. The expert system correctly diagnoses (...) Custard Apple disease to make it easier for farmers to find the right treatment based on the appropriate diagnosis. Objectives: A specialized syllable language system was established for the diagnosis of Custard Apple plant disease. (shrink)

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a social movement which encourages people to do as much good as they can when helping others, given limited money, time, effort, and other resources. This paper first identifies a minimal philosophical view that underpins this movement, and then argues that there is an analogous minimal philosophical view which might underpin Effective Justice, a possible social movement that would encourage promoting justice most effectively, given limited resources. The latter minimal view reflects an insight about justice, and our (...) non-diminishing moral reason to promote more of it, that surprisingly has gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed. The Effective Altruism movement has led many to reconsider how best to help others, but relatively little attention has been paid to the differences in degrees of cost-effectiveness of activities designed to decrease injustice. This paper therefore not only furthers philosophical understanding of justice, but has potentially major practical implications. (shrink)

Analyses of quotation have assumed that quotations are referring expressions while disagreeing over details. That assumption is unnecessary and unacceptable in its implications. It entails a quasi-Parmenidean impossibility of meaningfully denying the meaningfulness or referential function of anything uttered, for it implies that: 'Kqxf' is not a meaningful expression 'The' is not a referring expression are, if meaningful, false. It also implies that ill formed constructions like: 'The' is 'the' are well formed tautologies. Such sentences make apparent the need for (...) what is commonly explicit, a genuine referring expression, a noun phrase, usually a description, to which the quotation is appositional. A quotation is not itself a word, though it may contain such. The markers signal that the enquoted material is like a sentence-embedded color patch, material displayed to facilitate reference to something identifiable by/with it specified by the noun phrase it subserves. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

critical analyses of the arguments and attitudes favoring the various popular datings of the inception of a human being's life.

Talking about objects requires talking with objects, presenting objects in speech to identify a term's referent. I say This figure is a circle while handing you a ring. The ring is a prop, a perceptual object referenced by an extra-sentential event to identify the extension of a term, its director ('This figure'). Props operate in speech acts and their products, not in sentences. Intra-sentential objects we talk with are displays. Displayed objects needn't be words but must be like words, perceptually, (...) reproductively, and syntactically. Displays are presented by their syntactical position, as terms, with a term-like function. Semantically they are props. The O in FOD (This figure O is a circle) is a prop-like referent, not a term. The O in OD (O is a circle) may be that of FOD, but that display may have semantically and syntactically diverse directors, and without a specific one OD has no determinate sense Describing the display of quotations demands distinguishing displays from quotations. Quotations are repetitions of something said. Displays are perceptual objects, linguistic and non-linguistic, reproductions and originals, presented in sentences to identify a referent. Display markers are disambiguators that say: Read this as a prop. They may mark direct speech from indirect speech. Markers of quotation say: Someone said this. That historical claim is outside a sentence's propositional content. Those marks don't say: This is a display. They do make it true. Calling displays quotations muddies the study of speaking with speech. Calling both displays and intranyms quotations muddies the study of meaning and truth. Intranyms are terms, consisting of an expression flanked by lines, that denote that interior expression. Intranyms are created by stipulation to formalize a metalanguage. Formalization of a metalanguage replaces displays with intranyms. Formalized metalanguages lack the logical form and subject matter of our natural metalanguage. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty suggests in his Nature lectures that myth provides the best way into thinking the relation of strange kinship between humanity and animality. He goes on to refigure Husserl’s paradigm of the two hands touching to extend beyond merely human-to-human relations, invoking in the process the myth of Narcissus. By carefully examining Merleau-Ponty’s late refiguration of that paradigm, alongside the revised conception of narcissism that it helps him to develop, we find that while human-animal empathy is made possible by a (...) ground of intercorporeal kinship, human-animal estrangement makes possible the emergence of an ethical relation to other animals, contingent upon the sublimation of animal desire. Holding human-animal kinship and estrangement in tension reveals a nascent ideal present implicitly in the early stages of childhood development: a vision of the possibility of interspecies harmony, rooted in the bodily reciprocity that drives the process of self-maturation. (shrink)

Antithetical desires displayed throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship indicate the disjunctive assumption that the individual exists either in a state of increasing autonomy, expressed negatively as striving for freedom from divine constraint, or in a state of self-annihilating submission, expressed positively in terms of kenotic unification. Proximity to the divine thereby entails forfeiture of individuality, contrary to the explicit aim of Kierkegaard’s authorial project, and aversion to materiality. This essay enunciates the conflict (I), traces the crescendo of loss that births the pseudonymous (...) authorship and ends in realized longing for death (II), and approaches a more holistic vision of psycho-spiritual development (III). (shrink)

A lengthy inventory of misreadings and other errors in Phillip Abbott's critique of recent essays on abortion by analytic philosophers.

Critical analysis of Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision.

The Socratic Paradox (that only Socrates is wise, and only because only he recognizes our lack of wisdom) is explained, elaborated and defended. His philosophical scepticism is distinguished from others (Pyrrhonian, Cartesian, Humean, Kripkean Wittgenstein, etc.): the doubt concerns our understanding of our beliefs, not our justification for them; the doubt is a posteriori and inductive, not a priori. Post-Socratic philosophy confirms this scepticism: contra-Descartes, our ideas are not transparent to us; contra-Verificationism, no criterion distinguishes sense from nonsense. The import (...) of this scepticism for professional ethicists is examined. (shrink)

The ontological paradigms of Schelling and the late Merleau-Ponty bear striking resemblances to Spinoza’s ontology. Both were developed in response to transcendental models of a Cartesian mold, resisting tendencies to exalt the human ego to the neglect or the detriment of the more-than-human world. As such, thinkers with environmental concerns have sought to derive favorable ethical prescriptions on their basis. We begin by discerning a deadlock between two such thinkers: Ted Toadvine and Sean McGrath. With ecological responsibility in mind, both (...) actually resist Spinozist reduction of the human being to the status of a mere mode among modes. But despite having the same general aim, they end up endorsing contrary practical conclusions. Our objective is to pinpoint the reasons behind this deadlock, indicative of two strands of post-Spinozist environmental thought which stand in tension, and to begin to propose an integrative way forward. The ethical weight afforded by Toadvine to the notion of resistance in the work of the late Merleau-Ponty, namely nature’s resistance to harmonizing, unifying pretensions, invites inquiry into two Merleau-Pontean notions he does not address: the barbarian principle, and the proposal to “Do a Psychoanalysis of Nature.” We trace these to their origins in the works of Schelling’s middle period, arguing that the Schellingian location of resistance in Spirit’s dark ground—alternately conceived as primordial Dionysiac madness, bottled-up within the substratum of consciousness—lends to an understanding of the human, and human responsibility, that harbors favorable implications for environmental ethics. (shrink)