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

This article discusses on land, landless and confiscation in Nepal during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal.

This paper explain about the mythical realities in Danuwar society of Nepal.

This article explore music and globalisation of Gandharva of Nepal.

This paper focuses on reciprocity among the nomadic hunter-gatherer Rāute and sedentary groups, ie farmers and artisans. The Rāute’s reciprocal relation depends on social contracts, trust, territorial relations and residential propinquity. These facets of reciprocity can be accepted, denied or even cancelled. I argue that the Rāute are economically prosperous because of their regular exchange of woodenwares for grains and other necessary items, though they refrain from storing resources, earning cash incomes, and eschew agricultural production and animal husbandry. Sharing, exchange, (...) gift and counter-gift engagements are obligatory or compulsory, free and voluntary, ensuring their reciprocity with neighbouring populations – which has been regulated by seasonality, foraging and population density around the vicinities of their camps. Qualitative research was employed, with informal interviews, observations, personal accounts, audio and video recording, as well as field diaries. (shrink)

The study investigates the Bachelor of Science in Exercise and Sports Science (BSESS) program curriculum within Region III, specifically studying its alignment with the Commission on Higher Education Memorandum Order (CMO) No. 81, series of 2017, to distinguish potential curriculum and policy developments that backing life-wide learning and student employability. The research identifies existing gaps in career alignment, stakeholder engagement, graduate employability preparation, and policies supporting lifelong learning within the curriculum. Through multiple case study design, it explores curricular practices, instructional (...) strategies, student engagement, and assessment methods at two state universities, emphasizing their unique approaches to practical learning, community involvement, and stakeholder collaboration. Findings reveal significant areas such as institutional support, curricular planning, and stakeholder engagement, underscoring variations in each institution’s strategies to address community needs, facilitate student-centered learning, and prepare graduates for the sports and fitness industry. The two institutions demonstrate strong commitment to curriculum implementation through initiatives like experiential learning and community engagement, although with distinct approaches influenced by local demands. Challenges highlighted include infrastructure limitations, stakeholder involvement irregularities, and the need for enhanced policy support. Future directions for the BSESS program involve expanding student engagement through global internships, certification programs, and partnerships with local government units (LGUs) to foster community-based health initiatives, while ongoing curriculum reviews ensure alignment with industry demands and societal needs. (shrink)

American philosopher Zhu Dien • Ba Tele that for granted with a series of related discussion, and while there are of a fixed body of the material. Bate Le read de Beauvoir's "Second Sex" that this is not Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" women's issues or situations in the application. De Beauvoir said that consciousness exists in which a person's body, and in the cultural vein, the participation in the formation of a person's gender. Ba Tele think understanding the philosophy of (...) Sartre's body, in many ways we can improve the appreciation of Beauvoir thought, and concluded that she is a thinker with originality. (shrink)

The purpose of the following text is to give readers a general introduction to Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, which is considered here to be a cybernetic and epistemological account of concept-forming and concept-sharing through conversational discourse and practice. While Pask devoted three lengthy tomes to articulate the theory and its applications, I believe it is necessary to give readers who are interested in conversation theory a general introduction to what I believe are the key features of his work in this (...) area. I argue that conversation theory should be considered an inferential account of the theory of concepts rather than a representational account, by virtue of Pask’s argument that a concept must be a process that involves many other concepts. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compile a selection of the various formalisms found in conversation theory to introduce readers to Pask's discursive algebra. In this way, the text demonstrates how concept sharing and concept formation by means of the interaction of two participants may be formalized. The approach taken in this study is to examine the formal notation system used by Pask and demonstrate how such formalisms may be used to represent concept sharing and concept formation through conversation. (...) The compilation of the discursive algebra using the framework provided by conversation theory could potentially be used as an auxiliary framework to study conversational interactions in multi-agent systems theory. (shrink)

This three-part paper presents Gordon Pask’s conversation theory (CT) and interaction of actors theory (IA) and outlines ways to apply these cybernetic approaches to designing technologies and scenarios for both formal and informal learning. The first part of the paper covers concepts central to CT and IA, explaining the relationship between conceptual and mechanical operators, and machines mediating informal and formal learning. The second part of the paper applies visual representations of CT and IA to understanding the use of Pask’s (...) course assembly systems (CASTE and THOUGHTSTICKER), created between the late 1960s and the 1980s, and the ThoughtShuffler search interface, created in the 2010s. The third part proposes two pathways for design based on CT and IA: firstly, the potential for designers and observers to reformulate the qualities of tools and learning scenarios to augment human thinking and collective action; and secondly, the possibility to create tools with malleable interfaces that allow users to become intermediaries rather than consumers of knowledge. (shrink)

Recent research in science indicates that we are living in a fine-tuned universe. Only a very small parameter space of universal fundamental constants in Physics is congenial for the existence of life. Moreover, recent studies in Biological evolution also reveal that fine-tuning did exist in the evolution. It seems that we are so lucky to exist as all universal fundamental constants and life-permitting factors really fall into such a very small life-allowing region. This problem is known as the fine-tuning problem. (...) Does this phenomenon need an explanation? Can the fine-tuning problem point to the existence of God? Modern Science invokes the idea of multiverse to address the fine-tuning problem. Some scientists suggest that each universe in a set of infinitely many universes contains a typical set of fundamental constants. We should not be surprised why our universe is fine-tuned because we would not exist if the constants are not the life-allowed values. Some suggest that the existence of God can explain this fine-tuning problem. The naturalistic multiverse theory and the existence of God are the two most robust proposals to address the fine-tuning problem. Moreover, some argue that the fine-tuning problem is not real because we are just subject to observational selection effect. In this thesis, I will provide a comprehensive discussion on the fine-tuning phenomena in our universe. In particular, I will use the confirmation principle and the inference to the best explanation simultaneously to evaluate different hypotheses in a more systematic way and give some of the new and updated scientific and philosophical arguments to respond to the recent criticisms of the fine-tuning arguments. I conclude that the theistic hypothesis is the best among all to address the fine-tuning problem. (shrink)

In this paper, we attempt to de-naturalize the prevailing economistic imaginary of work that Max Weber and later commentators described as ‘protestant work ethic,’ epitomized in the figure of homo economicus. We do so by contrasting it with the imaginary of skillful work that can be found in vignettes about artisans in the Zhuangzi. We argue that there are interesting contrasts between these views concerning 1) direct goal achievement vs. indirect goal achievement through the cultivation of skills; 2) the hierarchization (...) of mental versus physical dimensions of work; 3) the crafting of non-dominating relationships between the working subject, their object, and their instruments of work, which leads to questions about the sustainability of these relationships; and 4) the relationship between work and well-being, which the Daoist texts conceptualize in a much more holistic, but also more presentist way than Western economic rationality. We conclude by pointing out the relevance of these differences for several contemporary debates about work, by denaturalizing a dominant imaginary of work, by distinguishing different forms of work, by suggesting a different relation between work and nature, and by raising questions about the desirability of the automation of work. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag setzt sich mit der unterrichtspraktischen Frage nach der Einführung und Vertiefung von Begriffsverständnissen im Philosophie- und Ethikunterricht auseinander. Als Ausgangspunkt dient dazu Sistermanns Bonbonmodell. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass dieses Modell sowie die Leitidee der Problemorientierung erweitert werden sollten, so man dem Anspruch einer Vermittlung tiefgehender Begriffsverständnisse gerecht werden will. Um eine solche Erweiterung vorzuschlagen, werden erstens ein lernproduktorientiertes Lehr-Lern-Modell aus der Physikdidaktik und zweitens lernpsychologische Grundlagen, die als Darstellungsebenenwechsel in der Mathematikdidaktik Anwendung finden, hinzugezogen.

Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur, ninth Sikh Guru, fell as a martyr to the freedom of consciousness and belief. The Guru's great sacrifice was to vindicate the people's right to profess and practice their faith. It meant the assertion of the principle of justice for which the ruling Mughal rulers of the day had very scant regard. For this reason, the life, career, and teachings of Guru Tegh Bahadur are of immense significance even in contemporary times, when the forces (...) of hate, fanaticism, and tyranny are still very dominant and assertive. (shrink)

Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji fell as a martyr to the freedom of consciousness and belief, under the orders of Aurangzeb, a ruler, who with his puritanical views had an attitude of narrow exclusiveness in the matters of religion. Sikhism, of which Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji was the Ninth Apostle, has all through upheld the spiritual approach in matters of faith, and its message has been free from the rancour of any kind against any set of beliefs. The great (...) sacrifice made by Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji to vindicate the right of the people to profess and practise the faith, meant, in fact, the assertion of the principle of justice for which the ruling Mughal rulers of the day had very scant regard. For this reason, the life, career, and teachings of Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib are of immense significance even in contemporary times, when the forces of hate, fanaticism, and tyranny are still very dominant and assertive. -/- Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji was a multifaceted genius. He was not only a martyr and a prophet but was also a great poet. In addition to his 57 Salokas, 59 of his other compositions (Sabads), written in 15 Raagas (measures) are included in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. His hymns deal with the pathos of the human predicament. Though he articulates on the unreality of human passions and possessions, yet his hymns have been a source of spiritual succour and solace to millions of people in their hours of personal grief and affliction. He brightens our awareness of the ephemerality of the material phenomena, however instead of creating a sense of despair and depression, elevates the human mind and imbues it with the hope which permeates the cosmos. He fortifies our faith in human nature and makes it possible for us to rise above the irritants of the immediate problems of existence and keep our attention focussed on the everlasting and eternal. (shrink)

Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur, ninth Sikh Guru, fell as a martyr to the freedom of consciousness and belief [1]. The Guru's great sacrifice was to vindicate the people's right to profess and practice their faith. It meant the assertion of the principle of justice for which the ruling Mughal rulers of the day had very scant regard. For this reason, the life, career, and teachings of Guru Tegh Bahadur are of immense significance even in contemporary times, when the (...) forces of hate, fanaticism, and tyranny are still very dominant and assertive. Guru Tegh Bahadur, a multifaceted genius, Guru and martyr, was also a great poet. He authored 57 Salokas, and 59 other compositions (Shabads). These hymns, written in 15 Raagas (measures) are enshrined in Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) [2-4], the sacred scripture of the Sikhs. In his hymns, though he articulates [5] on the unreality of human passions and possessions, yet his hymns have been a source of spiritual succour and solace to millions of people in their hours of personal grief and affliction. Through his hymns, he brightens our awareness of the transience of the material phenomena. However, instead of creating a sense of despair and depression, he elevates the human mind and imbues it with hope. Thereby he makes it possible for us to rise above the irritants of the immediate problems of existence and keep our attention focused on the everlasting and eternal. Guru Tegh Bahadur [1-18] inherited his vision or worldview from his predecessor Gurus. He stood [1] for the same system of moral, social, and spiritual values as emphasized by the previous Gurus. Still, his compositions have an identity of their own. As a whole, his hymns present a central, unifying theme: a coherent and dynamic vision of humans, their predicament as a part of nature, the way out of this predicament, and the resultant awareness of the unique spiritual nature that is within them. In this way, the Guru helps humans redefine their relationship with the world and grow spiritually. Guru Tegh Bahadur's poetry seeks to redeem life from meaninglessness and fear, to enlarge and enliven humans' consciousness, and to open their inward eye to the glory of all-redeeming, ever-existent Truth. In this article, a few of his views on the various aspects of life are being reported. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the reception of Avicenna’s well-known “flying man” thought experiment in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin philosophy. The central claim is that the argumentative role of the thought experiment changed radically in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The earlier authors—Dominicus Gundissalinus, William of Auvergne, Peter of Spain, and John of la Rochelle—understood it as an ontological proof for the existence and/or the nature of the soul. By contrast, Matthew of Aquasparta and Vital du Four used the flying (...) man as an argument for the soul’s ability to be directly aware of itself. A detailed analysis of the views of these authors shows interesting philosophical differences between them and reveals how one of the crucial premises of the original thought experiment—namely that the flying man is unaware of his body—loses its importance due to the changes in the argumentative role that is assigned to it. The most radical example of a new way of understanding bodily self-awareness is Peter Olivi’s so-called ‘man before the creation.’. (shrink)

The human mind possesses matchless creativity and extensive capacity to create its own reality. It has a remarkable capability for contemplation, reflection and even manipulation. Sadly, the excellent human mind has been polluted by the rituals, dogmas, and deceptions of cultures, religions and politics. Its fickleness leads to its being held captive by maya (material world). In his hymns, Guru Tegh Bahadur enunciates that the fickleness of the mind is the primary cause of unhappiness and failure in achieving our (...) prescribed life goals. The Guru urges that a human being can restrain and channelize one's mental energies, by diverting one's mind from its animalistic tendencies and turning it to the mind's innate longing for spiritual enlightenment. He asserts that with the continual longing for the Divine Grace and having a compassionate and contented attitude, one can achieve the goal of harnessing one's mind. (shrink)

Purpose. The author believes that the main topic of philosophical studies of Heraclitus was not nature, not dialectics, and not political philosophy; he was engaged in the development of philosophical anthropology, and all other questions raised by him were subordinated to it to one degree or another. It is anthropology that is the most "dark" part of the teachings of this philosopher, therefore the purpose of this article is to identify the hidden anthropological message of Heraclitus. In case of success, (...) it will become clear what made him "darken". Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the anthropological understanding of fragments of Heraclitus’ texts presented in a historical and philosophical context. Originality. The philosophical concept of Heraclitus is still a mystery for researchers of his work. The author of the article proposed such a variant of interpretation, within the framework of which different elements of this concept fit into a consistent model. Conclusions. The article proves that although the anthropological turn in philosophy is traditionally associated with the activities of the sophists and Socrates, the previous philosophical thought was also not devoid of anthropological ideas. Moreover, pre-Socratic philosophers posed problems, the interpretation of which brought the doctrine of man to the level of high-order abstractions, while surprisingly preserving the concreteness of the life-meaning questions that confront him. And one of the brightest representatives of pre-Socratic anthropology was Heraclitus of Ephesus. Religion was the motivator that made him study the world, man, and society. The doctrine of the Logos developed by Heraclitus had a tremendous impact on Plato and Philo of Alexandria, and through them on the author of the Fourth Gospel, who begins his story with a "Greek" rethinking of the mystery of the Incarnation. If Heraclitus claimed that a person carries a particle of the Logos, then John proclaimed that the Logos itself incorporated a particle of man. Despite all the differences between these approaches, each of them postulated the cosmic significance of human existence, which means that it brought anthropology to the ontological level. (shrink)

The paper aims at reconstructing the fundamentals of the sophistic anthropology. Contrary to the recognized view of the humanistic shift which took place in the sophistic thought, there is evidence that the sophists were continuously concerned with the problems of philosophy of nature. The difference between the sophists and their Presocratic predecessors was that their criticism of the philosophical tradition and the transformative answers given to the old questions were the basis and the starting point of the " ethical " (...) and " rhetorical " part of their intellectual activity. This natu-ralistic perspective is reflected in their research in the field of medicine and biology, in the discussion about " the human nature " , and in their interest in the individual physiological and mental conditions, which determine the state of the human body and the behaviour of a man. The sophists pioneered in linguistic, rhetorical, and philological studies. To enhance the power of persuasion, they investigated how various mental conditions influenced cognitive processes and physiological reactions. Thus they started a thorough examination of the human psyche, initiating the field of psychology. (shrink)

Although there are several monistic and dualistic approaches to the mind-body problem on the basis of classical or quantum mechanics, thus far no consensus exists about a solution. Recently, the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) has been developed: this corresponds with a fundamentally new disciplinary matrix for the study of physical reality. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the mind-body problem within this newly developed disciplinary matrix. The main finding is that the idea of a duality of body (...) and mind has to be rejected as an incomplete representation of reality: in the universe of the EPT, man hás to be a trinity of body, spirit and soul, where ‘body’, ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ are names for distinct physical things. The mind is then a mere idea that arises from (self-)experience, but without onto-logical connotation. In addition a mechanism for mental causation, which implies a principle of choice, is rigorously formulated. The main conclusion is that a fundamentally new physicalist approach to the mind-body problem, according to which man has a free will, has been formulated strictly within the language of the EPT. Further physical research is then required to describe how the interaction between body, spirit and soul is to be understood in terms of fundamental interactions. In addition, further philosophical-theological research has to establish whether the presently discussed trinity and the trinities of body, spirit and soul mentioned in the Bible and the Vedic texts are one and the same thing. -/- Edit: a revised version of this preprint has been published as a book chapter. (shrink)

In the period after the First World War when the various national-ideological “truths” that led to it were not well resolved which resulted in the Second World War, one of the greatest world crises occurs. In those turbulent times, one philosopher renounces his national identity (changes his religion and name), wanting not to save himself from an evil world that is emerging but to join the creation of a completely new world – the world of modern logic. This man is (...) Alfred Tarski, whom many recognize as “the man who defined truth”, linking him to the formulation of the distinction between object and metalanguage. In the paper, I argue with historians of philosophy who claim that this distinction was first set by the logician and philosopher of the Lvov-Warsaw school Stanislaw Leśniewski (whose Tarski was the only doctoral student) accusing Tarski of violating professional laws without attributing the authorship of this distinction to Leśniewski. I show that this is not true and I cite the places where Tarski clearly emphasizes Leśniewski ‘s contribution. (shrink)

Tản mạn về Kinh tế Việt Nam ngày thu Hà Nội.

The paper focuses on how the field of philosophical thinking and especially philosophical anthropology critically copes with the issue of understanding of man in a new state of the natural and human world, which scientists in the field of natural sciences called the Anthropocene. The new perspective of man as a geobiophysical force which has the ability to change the environment to such an extent that it becomes a threat to the global environment brings new ways of thinking about man. (...) Not only thinkers from the humanities and social sciences but also naturalists, express the urgent need to change the traditional anthropological discourse. The paper aims to capture the issue of man in the Anthropocene through the basic aspects that are most discussed in the works of authors focused on this issue. (shrink)

This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political (...) and forensic discourses and dialogs) and 20 legal cases, the book analyzes the explicit and implicit types of straw man, shows how to assess the correctness of a quote or a report, and illustrates the arguments that can be used for supporting an interpretation and defending against a distortion. The tools of argumentation theory, a discipline aimed at investigating the uses of arguments by combining insights from pragmatics, logic, and communication, are applied to provide an original account of interpretation and reporting, and to describe and illustrate tactics and procedures that can be used and implemented for practical purposes.. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political communication, communication in general, argumentation theory, rhetoric and pragmatics, as well as to people working in public speech, speech writing, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

The Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) was the first stable, long-lasting and politically powerful Chinese empire. This meant a formative period during which the administrative structure and political and cultural patterns that were largely followed by subsequent Chinese dynasties were established. Additionally, the conception of the world was developed and systematized which influenced not only the traditional but also the contemporary Chinese understanding of the world. Although it is a key period of Chinese history, the philosophy of the (...) Han dynasty, and thus its conception of the world, has not been sufficiently explored. As a contribution to the understanding of the thought of the period, this paper examines the philosophical reflection on the world focusing on the key texts of the Western Han period. The aim of this paper is to present the basic features of the conception of the world and to provide a hermeneutic framework for their explanation. It will be shown that the conception of the world in the philosophy of the Western Han dynasty is based on the conception of order and the categorical apparatus that supports it, which is the theory of correlativity, the principles of accumulation and radial order. This understanding of the world will have implications for the new place and role of man, his relationship with other living beings, as well as the ontological status of human work. Namely, man is assigned the role of the one who "completes" natural processes through moral and any other correct action, which opens up the possibility of realization "of great peace." This conception of the world manifests the language of incorporation and accommodation typical of the Han dynasty period, and can be understood as a result of the historical and social circumstances and cultural and philosophical tendencies of the first stable empire. (shrink)

This paper suggests that time travelling scenarios commonly depicted in science fiction introduce problems and dangers for the time traveller. If time travel takes time, then time travellers risk collision with past objects, relocation to distant parts of the universe, and time travel-specific injuries. I propose several models of time travel that avoid the dangers and risks of time travel taking time, and that introduce new questions about the relationship between time travel and spatial location.

Resenha do livro: "Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man" é uma obra de Seyyed H. Nasr que examina a crise espiritual enfrentada pelo ser humano moderno em relação à natureza. Nasr aborda a crescente desconexão entre o homem e a natureza devido à visão mecanicista predominante na sociedade moderna. O livro propõe uma visão alternativa que busca restaurar a harmonia entre o homem e a natureza. Com sua abordagem interdisciplinar, o livro desafia as concepções convencionais e convida (...) os leitores a refletir sobre a crise espiritual contemporânea e a buscar uma reconciliação significativa com o mundo natural. É uma leitura indispensável para quem se interessa por filosofia, ciência e meio ambiente. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy is organized around an exclusive disjunction of dignity or price, equality or equivalence. In his 1797 Doctrine of Right, however, Kant places enslaved black people on the wrong side of this disjunction when he speculates that their status as currency may offer insight into the origins of money. Recent work in black studies has begun to speculate on the link between blackness and money in modernity, and this paper draws attention to Kant’s role as an unlikely (...) and unwitting precursor for monetary theories of blackness. Precisely in his attempt to secure the priceless and unconditional character of freedom and dignity, it argues, Kant ends up demonstrating the positional value of both. (shrink)

This article wants to analyze how Man Rayin his photographs, engages a poetry of silenceusing this medium as a poetic communication technology. To understand the functioning of this poetic language, we will adopt the Groupe μ analysis method (both the General Rhetoricand the Treatise on the Visual Sign). Whereas the language is manifold as the forms of representation, and it present in all media, whatever the lack of speech -silence -would find its richest form in both directions through the metaphors (...) and metonymy engaged in metasememes of the photos studied. (shrink)

A common and enduring early modern intuition is that materialists reduce organisms in general and human beings in particular to automata. Wasn’t a famous book of the time entitled L’Homme-Machine? In fact, the machine is employed as an analogy, and there was a specifically materialist form of embodiment, in which the body is not reduced to an inanimate machine, but is conceived as an affective, flesh-and-blood entity. We discuss how mechanist and vitalist models of organism exist in a more complementary (...) relation than hitherto imagined, with conceptions of embodiment resulting from experimental physiology. From La Mettrie to Bernard, mechanism, body and embodiment are constantly overlapping, modifying and overdetermining one another; embodiment came to be scientifically addressed under the successive figures of vie organique and then milieu intérieur, thereby overcoming the often lamented divide between scientific image and living experience. (shrink)

In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In this paper I intend to show that there is much more to this title than merely its familiar ring. If subjected to a comparative analysis, multiple correspondences between (...) movie and memoirs can be brought to the fore. Taken together, these documents shed an intriguing light on the vicissitudes of budding life sciences research during the post-war era. I will focus my comparative analysis on issues still relevant today, such as dual use, the handling of sensitive scientific information and, finally, on the interwovenness of science and warfare. Thus, I will explain how science autobiographies on the one hand and genres of the imagination on the other may deepen our comprehension of tensions and dilemmas of life sciences research then and now. For that reason, science autobiographies can provide valuable input for teaching philosophy and history of science to science students. (shrink)

This essay is on Man's limitations as per his perceptions of his reality, given his physiology and given his mind's attributes. Of course, not many people think or care much about this matter, moving on through their daily chores, doing, serving, and buying their specific necessities for life. That fact does not change the truth that what all human beings experience, feel, endure and remember as their reality is a vastly complex fabrication woven by our minds, ultimately creating, designing a (...) cohering ‘reality’ that makes our ‘reality’ recognizable enough such that, as stated, we can go on ignoring the unreality of our reality and get on with the necessities for our daily sustenance. -/- Thus, each day, we believe in all that we did, spoke, and in the ways, we acted and interacted with whomsoever we performed and interacted with. We live each day believing, feeling, experiencing ‘our consciousness’ as being real; believing our memories are real; believing in all that we experience, witnessed, and/or participated in specific events. Now the point here is this; rare is the Man who pauses a while, contemplating the truth of all his beliefs, considering the vastness of the falsities of much of these beliefs. And, apart from such a few introspective, the fact of the matter is most human beings live and die believing they have genuinely experienced the entirety of all that they have experienced, considering, in effect, the entire film of their life was ‘real.’ . (shrink)

The discourses of Antillanité and Créolité are both based on the absence of women. This is more important in the discourse of Créolité since it silences the grandmothers, great aunts and village midwives who are the transmitters of folk tales, folk medicines and oral culture. In the struggle for recognition between Caribbean males and western males folk medicine may be too closely associated with the denigrated female role to be considered a suitable inclusion into modern development.

The ecofeminist argument for veganism is powerful. Meat consumption is a deeply gendered act that is closely tied to the systematic objectification of women and nonhuman animals. I worry, however, that presenting veganism as "the" moral ideal might reinforce rather than alleviate the disordered status quo in gendered eating, further disadvantaging women in patriarchal power structures. In this chapter, I advocate a feminist account of ethical eating that treats dietary choices as moral choices insofar as they constitute an integral part (...) of our relationships to ourselves and to others. I believe that we should think of dietary choices in Aristotelian moral terms as a mean relative to us, falling on a continuum between the vice of doing injustice to ourselves, on the one hand, and the vice of doing injustice to others, on the other. On this view, what it is moral to eat for individuals is not a fixed ideal, but rather depends on particulars of our physiological, psychological, economic, cultural, and relational situations. (shrink)

The film A Serious Man cinematically deconstructs the life of a mid-twentieth century, mid-western American physics professor named Larry Gopnik. As it happens, Larry is up for tenure with a wife who is about to leave him, an unemployed brother who sleeps on his couch, and two self-obsessed teenage children. The film presents a Job-like theodicy in which the mysteries of quantum physics are haunted both by questions of good and evil as well as the spectre of an un-named God, (...) reverently referred to as Hashem. The following paper examines the broader set of philosophical, theological and ethical concerns which arise from the film’s themes, using it to illustrate those concerns. Just as Newtonian physics underwrote Kant’s evocation of the image of starry skies above and moral law within, quantum physics underwrites a new set of ethical anxieties, which the film narrates as a key facet of contemporary western culture’s postmodern re-enchantment. Although some, such as Slavoj Zizek, see this as a positively charged opportunity to rethink metaphysics and ethics, the film leaves the audience with more sinister conclusions. (shrink)

Latin commentators came across the « Third Man » in Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi. The way they dealt with the argument is a fair illustration of how they were both faithful to the text and innovative in their understanding of its most challenging issues. Besides providing a detailed survey of all manuscript sources, the introductory essay shows that Latin interpretation originates from a mistake in Boethius’ translation which radically transformed the argument. The edition makes available for the first time a considerable (...) amount of new documentary evidence which made it possible to solve the riddle of the Latin « Third Man ». (shrink)

A chronological presentation on man's religious beliefs focusing on Christianity and its early adversaries. From the Egyptian Pharaohs, Pagan Greek Gods, to various early Christian sects, this book establishes the similarities of faith.

As indicated in the title this article is a brief description of the body, soul and spirit of man, based on the divine revelations received by the Austrian mystic Jakob Lorber between 1840 and 1864. While it is common knowledge that man has a body and a soul, very little is known about the spirit in man which is the primary source of knowledge and power, penetrating both the soul and body.

Today we find philosophical naturalists and Christian theists both expressing an interest in virtue epistemology, while starting out from vastly different assumptions. What can be done to increase fruitful dialogue among these divergent groups of virtue-theoretic thinkers? The primary aim of this paper is to uncover more substantial common ground for dialogue by wielding a double-edged critique of certain assumptions shared by 'scientific' and 'theistic' externalisms, assumptions that undermine proper attention to epistemic agency and responsibility. I employ a responsibilist virtue (...) epistemology to this end, utilizing it most extensively in critique of Alvin Plantinga's "Warranted Christian Belief". Epistemological externalism presages, I also argue, a new demarcation problem, but a secondary aim of the paper is to suggest reasons to think that 'responsibilist externalism,' especially as glossed in virtue-theoretic terms, provides its proponents with the ability to adequately address this problem as we find it represented in a potent thought-experiment developed by Barry Stroud. (shrink)

Architecture and human-built structures are embedded with speciesist practices of domination over the environment, where humans are considered special and superior to other species. This (hu)man exceptionalism has driven architecture and the built environment to be conceived in opposition to ‘nature’, dominating natural terrains and consequently displacing or instrumentalizing the many other species that are given little to no ethical consideration. This way of intervening in the world is leading to the existential questions that must be posed given our global (...) climate crisis. A reframing of human intervention as ‘built environment’ placed in opposition to the ‘natural environment’ of supposedly passive nature, is urgently needed. The motivation for this paper is rooted in a deep concern for the role of humans in the climate crisis and a realization that architecture as a discipline is complicit in elevating the human category above all other beings in nature. There are biases embedded in the practices and teaching of architecture that need to be interrogated and reflected upon, starting with the role models and ideals that we unwittingly operate within. To contextualize the idea of human exceptionalism in architecture, we will explore deep-seeded ideals in architecture linked to the concept of Rectitude as a form of ‘rightness’ -or correct- mode of intervening in the world, conceptualized by Western men as a human-centric practice distinct from nature-made. Supported by Ecofeminist thought, the aim is to open alternative models for world-building and housing humans on earth living in its sixth extinction. (shrink)

Pietro Piovani is a philosopher who is still, unjustly, little known. Here we set out to investigate the absence of foundation as a crossroads in contemporary philosophy and to evaluate the new contribution of Piovani’s reflection. In our study, we analysed mainly the works of the past twenty years and especially Principi di una filosofia della morale (1972) and Oggettivazione etica e assenzialismo(1980). The basic option in Piovani’s thinking is that, given the finite nature of the individual, as the willing (...) who was not self-willed, man no longer needs any foundation. In fact, the contemporary individual is more unfounded than ever, having to constantly base himself on and interact with a reality that is ever changing. Piovani reaches the height of his critical foundation by stating that, forced to stabilise his own instability, man must base his existence on an absence. Here, Piovani, through the "non self-willed willing", eradicates the assumptions of modern thought, and captures the beginning of existence in the experience of limitation and finiteness. Man, who is based on de-ontology, on de-esse, is a sign of a dissatisfaction that asks to be satisfied, of an inadequacy. This study highlights how Piovani’s thinking, having abandoned the perspectives of Western ontology, proposes a new reflection on the positivity of the inadequate where absence is heralded as the greatest energy force of life. Philosophy, therefore, has a future only as negative philosophy. -/- -/- . (shrink)

Whether Albert Camus’s “existentialist” thought expresses an “ethics” is a subject of disagreement among commentators. Yet, there can be no reading of Camus’s philosophical and literary works without recognizing that he was engaged in the post-WW2 period with two basic questions: How must we think? What must we do? If his thought presents us with an ethics, even if not systematic, it seems to be present in his ideas of “remaking” both man and world that are central to his The (...) Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. Curiously, however, this apparent recommendation is ambiguous for the fact that while Camus proposes as much he does so “comme si,” i.e., form a perspective of “as if.” A clarification of this qualification is presented here in the light of the fact that Camus rejects any nihilist project that countenances either suicide or murder. Thereby one may argue that Camus indeed has an ethics that remains pertinent to today. (shrink)

This paper, "The Ecological Pathology of Man," is an expanded excerpt from the author's book, "The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil." ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶ When taken as a serious and dispassionate object of study from the standpoint of the science of pathology, the human species is easily recognized as a global pathogen. Incontrovertible evidence on all sides tells us this, and yet we have steadfastly avoided an honest look in the mirror. We so often choose—willfully and with strong convictions (...) sustained by homocentric prejudice—to hide the facts from ourselves, and to proceed with untroubled ignorance to overlook the worldwide human and natural devastation for which our species is responsible. (shrink)

This piece continues ideas developed in my essay, Mind Matters, through responding to the critique of that essay by Peter K. Manning. Manning cannot conceive that human conduct involves full-bodied semiosis rather than disembodied conceptualism, and that the study of human signification requires a full-bodied understanding. The ancient Greek root phren, basis for the concept of phronesis, is rooted in the heart-lungs-solar plexus basis of bodily awareness, and provides a metaphor for a discussion of bio-developmental, biosemiotic capacities as crucial for (...) human culture. Manning’s use of Wittgenstein is contrasted with the outlook of Charles Peirce. The intense attunement to and reverence for animals and plants in hunter-gatherer peoples is more than some conceptual collective representations system or interaction order or psychological belief system, explainable by Durkheim or Goffman, or Jung’s universal structure of the “collective unconscious,” or by neural net theory. It exemplifies how those peoples are in real learning relationships to the instinctive intelligence of their habitats, deep learning expressed not only in trial-and-error experience but also in the sense of wonder, communicated in ritual life. Mind is found literally in those transactions, not in isolate brains or disembodied conceptualism. (shrink)

This is a review of the biopic of the great mathematician Ramanujan, 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'(2016).