The problem of evil is one of the most significant challenges to theism and Christianity in particular, asking why there seems to be so much evil if an omnibenevolent (all good), loving God exists. The problem of evil, as posed by many atheists and agnostics today, (following Epicurus) often asserts that the following premises cannot all be true: 1. God exists, and is omnipotent (all-powerful) 2. God exists, and is omnibenevolent (all-good) 3. God exists, and is omniscient (all-knowing) 4. Evil (...) exists Christian thinkers over the past two thousand years have given various responses to the problem of evil in the form of various theodicies, or attempts to explain why evil exists (or appears to exist) given the existence of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God. This document serves as a brief overview of different theodicies offered by Christian thinkers throughout history. (shrink)

This work deals with problems involving infinities and infinitesimals. It explores the ideas behind zero, its relationship to ontological nothingness, finititude (such as finite numbers and quantities), and the infinite. The idea of infinity and zero are closely related, despite what many perceive as an intuitive inverse relationship. The symbol 0 generally refers to nothingness, whereas the symbol infinity refers to ``so much'' that it cannot be quantified or captured. The notion of finititude rests somewhere between complete nothingness and something (...) having no end. -/- My concern is that many of the philosophers arguing for or against the ontology (or possibility) of an actual infinite set are unaware or unfamiliar with the mathematical literature attempting to clearly and rigorously define these terms. I believe it is a mistake to leave mathematicians out of this conversation, as analysts in particular have defined (and used) infinity in a way that is relevant to the ongoing debate between philosophers. -/- For this paper, I have selected examples from Principles of Analysis by Walter Rudin, which has become a standard text for Real Analysis classes taken by pure mathematicians and engineers. I will also restrict the scope of examples to Euclidean spaces for simplicity. Finally, I will be using addition, + and multiplication * in their usual way. (shrink)

Linear Algebra is an extremely important field that extends everyday concepts about geometry and algebra into higher spaces. This text serves as a gentle motivating introduction to the principles (and philosophy) behind linear algebra. This is aimed at undergraduate students taking a linear algebra class - in particular engineering students who are expected to understand and use linear algebra to build and design things, however it may also prove helpful for philosophy majors and anyone else interested in the ideas behind (...) linear algebra. Linear algebra is used extensively in statistics, mechanical engineering, circuit theory, signal processing, economics and data science/machine learning. I have found in my teaching career that students tend to struggle the most with motivating the "why" behind the abstract concepts discussed in linear algebra. This can be difficult for professors to understand because we are so used to using the language of linear algebra we take for granted why these questions are important in the first place. In other words, we may understand the “why” (after years of using these tools), but our students may not. This text seeks to explain this “why” in an accessible, engaging way. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss five meta-ethical challenges to Naturalistic Moral Realism, which includes secular moral codes such as Secular Humanism that, in my view, naturalists need to address to keep their commitment to moral realism from looking like special pleading. The five challenges are as follows: 1. The Ontological Problem (OP): How do such moral principles exist? 2. The Epistemic Problem (EP): How does our moral sense/intuition track such principles? 3. The Influence Problem (IP): What authority does the existence (...) of such principles have to supervene on our behavior? 4. The Axiological Problem (AP): What entities have moral value and deserve moral consideration? 5. Methodological Problem (MP): How do we go about arbitrating between moral claims when they conflict? (shrink)

In this essay, I will explain why Methodological Naturalism (MN) fails as a demarcating criteria for science. I will argue that MN is not precise enough to be useful for demarcation, unable to follow the evidence where it leads, not theologically neutral (despite its stated goals as such), and difficult to justify (and currently unjustified) as an ontological or epistemic principle.

In this article, I will discuss some of the arguments for and against the existence of God, in particular the monotheistic God believed in the Abramahamic religions (Judiasm, Islam, and Christianity) as well as Babism, the Bahai Faith, and Sikhism. Arguments for the existence of God try to argue that either God exists (based on other things people agree with) or that belief in God is reasonable. Arguments against the existence of God try to argue that the existence of God (...) leads to some contradiction or other absurdity. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualism involves general mistrust of scholars, academics, and ex- perts, often as pretentious or power-motivated. While scholars have described currents of anti-intellectualism in American public life, evangelical Christianity, in responses to COVID, and rural identity, to my knowledge none have looked at how anti-intellectualism specifically manifests in the New Atheism movement. In this work, we explore the way anti-intellectualism is commonly found and expressed in New Atheism and the modern Skeptical Movement, including scientific skepticism more generally.

In this article, I define a cultural epistemology as a set of socially reinforced assumptions about how knowledge and truth are produced. Unlike a philosophical epistemology, a cultural epistemology is largely the product of culture and largely invisible. As products of culture, cultural epistemology are relatively unquestioned and, in many cases, philosophically unsophisticated. There are three common types of cultural epistemologies, influenced by who holds power in a given society: an epistemological monarchy, an epistemological oligarchy and an epistemological democracy. A (...) given cultural epistemology subsequently influences the legitimacy of culture and government itself. I argue argue that Americans tend to hold an "epistemological democracy" with two distinct facets: a trust in consensus, linked to living in a democratic republic, and a trust in their own self-interest, linked to market economics and capitalism more generally. These two facets combine, interact, and even oppose each other to legitimize and challenge American culture and its political and economic systems. (shrink)

For years, the European world saw millions of swans, and all of them without exception were white. If inductive reasoning is valid, one may conclude that all swans are white. However, this would be incorrect: in 1667 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh observed black swans in Australia, falsifying the hypothesis that all swans are white. While often used as a cautionary tale for the use of induction, such as with Popper’s falsification principle, I want to explore a slightly different idea: (...) does the existence of fabricated or otherwise failed accounts of Black swans give me a reason to ignore future arguments or doubt their existence? I argue that while faulty or fabricated reports do not give us a logical reason to reject a claim, they can give us a practical one for refusing to consider future arguments. This practical vs logical distinction gives an inductive reason for believing that future arguments will be invalid, but keeps one from being able to necessarily deny the claim in question without further argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to criticize the notion that consensus is an epistemology. While I have never seen it explicitly claimed that “consensus is an epistemology,” I have nonetheless seen it implied in many scholarly (and layperson) articles. This occurs whenever articles cite, “a majority of scholars agree that…” or “most scientists/researchers think…” In our democratic, individualistic society, we put a value on high value votes and the quantification of majority viewpoints, whether it be in political polls (due to (...) living in a democracy), online on websites with ranking or voting systems such as Reddit, YouTube, or Instagram. The danger here is we may defer too much to the consensus view without appropriate justification. I will give several reasons why we should be skeptical of appeals to consensus (including a consensus of experts), which include its non-obvious link to ontology, the fact that consensus changes, and a lack of specificity of who counts as an ``expert,'' the lack of specificity on how to handle consensus (if it does occur), and epistemic undercutting defeaters from evolutionary epistemology. While an appeal to consensus may not tell us much about whether a theory is true, they can give us practical or pragmatic reasons for trusting a position. (shrink)

The way citizens regard and treat one another in everyday life, even when they are not engaged in straightforwardly “political” activities, matters for achieving democratic ideals. This claim provokes an underexamined unease in many. Here I articulate these concerns, which I argue are prompted by the approaches most often associated with these issues. Such theories, like democratic communitarianism, require problematic sorts of unity in everyday social life. To avoid these difficulties, I offer an alternative, called procedural democratic informal politics, which (...) allows democrats to evaluate everyday life without demanding questionable forms of unity within it. (shrink)

It is argued that logic, and in particular mathematical logic, should play a key role in the undergraduate curriculum for students in the computing fields, which include electrical engineering (EE), computer engineering (CE), and computer science (CS). This is based on 1) the history of the field of computing and its close ties with logic, 2) empirical results showing that students with better logical thinking skills perform better in tasks such as programming and mathematics, and 3) the skills students are (...) expected to have in the job market. Further, we believe teaching logic to students explicitly will improve student retention, especially involving underrepresented minorities. Though this work focuses specifically on the computing fields, these results demonstrate the importance of logic education to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a brief overview of ideas from Reformed Epistemology, and the relationship between faith, evidence, and belief. I discuss what makes belief in God rationally warranted, and how reformed epistemology strikes a middle ground between fideism and evidentialism. In effect, reformed epistemology avoids the fideist idea that belief in God must be taken on "blind faith," but also avoids some of the epistemic issues present in evidentialism, such as its self-referential incoherence. The reformed epistemologist says belief (...) in God is rational, but not for the reasons demanded by evidentialists. (shrink)

These three volumes, entitled Essays On Values, bring together fortyone recent articles by researchers at the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). They are a small sample of everything that, in the last four years, the Institute’s researchers have published, in English, in indexed journals and collections of essays with peer review. As a whole, they reflect very well the research work that is done at IFILNOVA. Section I. of Volume 1 gathers six articles that deal directly with the question “what (...) are values?”, the question that guides all the work of the institute’s different laboratories and research groups. The first article, by Susana Cadilha and Vítor Guerreiro, results from work developed in the Laboratory of Ethics and Political Philosophy (EPLab); the second, by João Constâncio, from the Lisbon Nietzsche Group; the third, by Alexandra Dias Fortes, from the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group; the third and fifth, by Nuno Fonseca, and Maria Filomena Molder, from the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Group of the Laboratory of Culture and Value (CultureLab); the last, by Erich H. Rast, from the Philosophy of Language and Argumentation Theory Group and the Lisbon Mind, Cognition & Knowledge Group of the Laboratory of Argumentation, Cognition, and Language (ArgLab). Section II. brings together three articles by members of the Lisbon Nietzsche Group. Since 2010, the Lisbon Nietzsche Group has completed several funded projects, and has established itself as a leading international research group on Nietzsche’s thought. The three articles demonstrate the crucial importance of the question of values in Nietzsche’s work, always thought from the perspective of the possibility of a “transvaluation of all values”. Maria João Mayer Branco’s article focuses on the value of introspection, and how Nietzsche anticipates Wittgenstein’s “expressivist” view of the “the Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’” and the impossibility of private languages. Marta Faustino’s article considers the theme of affirmation and the value of life through the interpretation of Nietzsche’s reflection on truthfulness, intellectual honesty and courage in the light of Michel Foucault’s work on parrhesia. Pietro Gori’s article studies how Nietzsche creates a new anthropological ideal based on his enquiry into the values of the “good European”. The area of Wittgenstein studies has had a strong influence on the institute since the time when it was a philosophy of language institute. The Wittgensteinian distinction between facts and values was decisive in defining the question of values as the central issue of IFILNOVA’s research project, replacing the focus on philosophy of language. More recently, the focus of research at the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group has been on epistemic values, in particular in their connection with the question of religious belief. In Section III., Nuno Venturinha’s article examines, in the light of an epistemological standpoint, the way Wittgenstein thinks about the possibility of translation. Robert Vinten’s article argues that Wittgenstein’s thought contains elements for a critique of the concept of justice and of the liberal political visions of both Richard Rorty and Chantal Mouffe, despite the fact that both have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein. Benedetta Zavatta’s article questions the value of mythology by thinking of it as a disease of language – not only in Wittgenstein, but also in a whole philosophical tradition that preceded him. The existence of a research group in ancient philosophy is a recent but very promising development in the life of IFILNOVA. Section IV. includes two articles by members of the group. Paulo Alexandre Lima’s article considers the critique of misology and the value of discourse in Plato’s Phaedo. Hélder Telo’s article examines the pedagogical and protreptic value of imperfection in Plato’s work. (shrink)

Western, secularized capitalism appraises the “worth” of a worker through a wage, a numerical value assumed to reflect the value of one’s time (in the case of hourly jobs) or contribution (in the case of salary or commision-based work). Computers and AI models are capable of matching and even exceeding human performance on a variety of tasks such as mathematical computation, handwritten digit recognition, and even complex tasks such as playing the game Go. Furthermore, they can work around the clock (...) with no need for sleep, healthcare, or even a salary. As a result, computers are more “valuable” than humans under capitalism because they are more productive (in terms of quantity and, in many cases, quality of work). Combined with an erosion of the religious idea of explicit human worth or dignity, other humans are seen as mere means to the ends of those powerful enough to exploit them. Any hope of reducing inequality or promoting justice must come from an explicit belief in the “value” of human life independent of his or her ability to produce. (shrink)

This study investigated changes in the prevalence of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ≥19-year-old population in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2019 and 2020 was included. The histories of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts were compared between the 2019 and 2020 cohorts using multiple logistic regression analysis with complex sampling. The prevalence of depression was not significantly different between the 2019 and 2020 groups (4.1% vs. 4.5%, p = 0.326). The prevalence (...) of stress and suicide attempts was also not significantly different between groups (all p > 0.05). The rates of depression, stress, and suicide attempts were not associated with the 2020 group compared to the 2019 group (all p > 0.05). The 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2020 group indicated a higher rate of depression (diagnosed by physicians) than the 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2019 group (adjusted odds ratio = 1.58, 95% confidence intervals = 1.00–2.50, p = 0.049). The risks of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts were not related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Korean adults. A young adult population demonstrated an increased risk of depression associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

So-called ‘distinctively mathematical explanations’ (DMEs) are said to explain physical phenomena, not in terms of contingent causal laws, but rather in terms of mathematical necessities that constrain the physical system in question. Lange argues that the existence of four or more equilibrium positions of any double pendulum has a DME. Here we refute both Lange’s claim itself and a strengthened and extended version of the claim that would pertain to any n-tuple pendulum system on the ground that such explanations are (...) actually causal explanations in disguise and their associated modal conditionals are not general enough to explain the said features of such dynamical systems. We argue and show that if circumscribing the antecedent for a necessarily true conditional in such explanations involves making a causal analysis of the problem, then the resulting explanation is not distinctively mathematical or non-causal. Our argument generalises to other dynamical systems that may have purported DMEs analogous to the one proposed by Lange, and even to some other counterfactual accounts of non-causal explanation given by Reutlinger and Rice. (shrink)

Those who want to deny the ‘ought implies can’ principle often turn to weakened views to explain ‘ought implies can’ phenomena. The two most common versions of such views are that ‘ought’ presupposes ‘can’, and that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. This paper will reject both views, and in doing so, present a case against any pragmatic view of ‘ought implies can’. Unlike much of the literature, I won't rely on counterexamples, but instead will argue that each of these views fails (...) on its own terms. ‘Ought’ and ‘can’ do not obey the negation test for presupposition, and they do not obey the calculability or the cancelability tests for conversational implicature. I diagnose these failures as partly a result of the importance of the contrapositive of ‘ought implies can’. I end with a final argument emphasizing the role the principle plays in moral thinking, and the fact that no pragmatic account can do it justice. (shrink)

As touch remains commonly defined by the closeness it physically implies and it rhetorically evokes, the mere notion of distant touch and of distal haptic perception seems peculiar. But Aristotle’s perspective, which I wish to take as a point of departure, is firm: we perceive the objects of touch, the hot and the cold, the hard and the soft, the curved and the sharp, through other things: δι' ἑτέρων. In this article, I would like to explore this ἕτερος by showing (...) how the otherness of perception always implies an intermediary, a middle point (μέσος), i.e. an other not so other, an other that is able to translate the much more distant otherness of the perceived object. To explore these forgotten layers of alterity that fall into what we commonly conceive of as the impalpable emptiness of distance, I propose to study the idea of distant touch from the perspective of phenomenological aesthetics. In order to do so, I will first examine some aspects of the Husserlian account of perception and will then focus on the phenomenology of distant touch in Alejandra Costamagna’s novel El Sistema del Tacto [The System of Touch] (2018). (shrink)

Một nghiên cứu mới trên Nature Communications cảnh báo rằng nông nghiệp mật độ cao và biến đổi khí hậu đang gia tăng sự suy giảm toàn cầu của các loài chim. Số loài chim bị tuyệt chủng ước lên tới 1430, gấp đôi so với suy đoán trước đây.

Cơ sở lý luận về vai trò kinh tế của nhà nước.

I explain and criticize a theory of beliefs and of belief sentences offered by Graeme Forbes. My main criticism will be directed at Forbes' idea that, as a matter of the semantic rules of belief reporting -- as a matter of the meaning of belief ascriptions -- to get at the subject's way of thinking in an attitude ascription, we must use expressions that are "linguistic counterparts" of the subject's expressions. I think we often do something like that, but that (...) we have other, equally good methods of getting at ways of thinking; so what is wanted is a more inclusive characterization of the rules of belief reporting by which we manage to do it -- a characterization more along the lines of: anything goes. (shrink)

Many philosophers have held that we cannot say what it is like to be a bat as they present a fundamentally alien form of life. Another view held by some philosophers, bat scientists, and even many laypersons is that echolocation is, somehow, at least in part, a kind of visual experience. Either way, bat echolocation is taken to be something very mysterious and exotic. I utilize empirical and intuitive considerations to support an alternative view making a much more mundane contention (...) about bat phenomenology: echolocatory experience probably just has an auditory character. These points also call for further reflection on our intuitions about animal consciousness and standard arguments for the explanatory gap. (shrink)

This paper offers a social phenomenological reading of the globally binding practice of 'social distancing' in light of the precautionary measures against the spreading of the Covid-19 virus. Amid speculation about the far-reaching effects of temporarily applicable measures and foresights about the advent of an ethos that has been heralded by the media as the 'new normal', the ubiquitous phenomenon of social distancing calls for a fundamental ontological elucidation. The purported hermeneutic that is situated in the broader place branding and (...) experiential marketing literatures places Covid-19 in the shoes of Being, and, therefore, imagines how Being would behave ontologically if it were a virus. By positing that the virus does operate like Being, five these are formulated as experiential interpretive categories with regard to the ontological status of Covid-19. The adopted approach makes the following contributions to the extant literature: First, it addresses a wholly new phenomenon in place branding, namely a pre-branded place that is non-negotiable, globally applicable and seemingly equivalent to pure void. Second, it advances the application of phenomenological research in experiential consumption by highlighting the aptness of the so far peripheral (in the marketing discipline) strand of Heideggerian fundamental ontology. Third, it expands the notion of place in the place branding literature, by showing how spatialization is the outcome of temporalization, in line with the adopted phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

Problems in normative ethics paradigmatically concern what it is obligatory or permissible for an individual to do. Yet sometimes, each of us ought to do something individually in virtue of what we ought to do together. Unfortunately, traversing these two different levels at which a moral obligation can arise – individual and collective – is fraught with difficulties that easily lure us into conclusions muddying our understanding of collective obligations. This paper seeks to clearly lay out a systematic problem central (...) to the relation between collective and individual duties in view of alleviating some such confusion and facilitating more concerted attempts at resolving it: Collective duties require individuals to act in order for the collective duty to be fulfilled. Yet typically, a collective duty does not entail any one set of individual duties that would prescribe such contributory actions: The work we need to do in order to fulfil a duty can be allocated differently to the individuals collectively bearing it. Much like in matters of distributive justice, then, deriving individual duties from a collective one requires us to employ a distributive scheme, which raises separate normative concerns that have rarely taken centre stage in the debate so far. (shrink)

The so-called materially valid inferences have come to new prominence through the work of Robert Brandom. This paper introduces a fragment of a logic of concepts that does not reduce concepts to their extensions. Concept logic and ist semantics allow us to represent the conceptual knowledge used in material inferences and thus suggests a way to deal with them.

Nghiên cứu khoa học là một trong hai tiêu chí chính để đánh giá chất lượng của nhà trường trong việc nâng cao, đảm bảo chất lượng của quá trình đào tạo. Bài viết chia sẻ kinh nghiệm về một số lỗi hay thách thức thường gặp của các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ trong các trường đại học và cao đẳng hiện nay ở Việt Nam của TS. Trương Đình Thăng, thành viên Hội đồng biên tập của Vietnam Journal of (...) Education. (shrink)

If asked to explain why the Golds’ treatment of other colors in Red Rising is wrong, it is tempting to say something like “they are all human beings, and it is wrong to treat humans in this way!” In this essay, I’ll argue that this simple answer is considerably complicated by the fact that the different colors might not be members of the same biological species, and it is in fact unclear whether any of them are the same species as (...) current humans. Explaining why exactly this is so will lead us to an exploration the long-running debate in biology and philosophy over what exactly it means for two organisms to be “members of the same species.” I’ll begin by discussing the biological essentialism of Aristotle and his followers, who held that an individual organism’s species was determined by essence. One can easily imagine that the Golds might find this attractive, since it would suggest that their “superior” mental and physical capacities made them a different (and probably “higher”) species of humanity than the other colors. Unfortunately for Aristotle, this turns out to be inconsistent with Charles Darwin’s account of evolution by natural selection. This development has led many modern biologists and philosophers of biology to conceptualize species not as an abstract “form” that serves to classify organisms, but rather as a concrete collection of organisms relatively close to each other in space and time. In contrast to biological essentialism, this view of “species as concrete individual” might seem to support the Reds’ claim to the “same species” as the Gold, since they are both part of the same overarching society. Next, I’ll consider how we might tell where one species “ends” and another one “begins.” As it turns out, biologists have many ways of answering his question, each of which makes different judgments about the species of Red Rising’s characters. So, for example, the “Biological Species Concept” bases judgements about species membership on the ability to produce fertile offspring. This concept is far from perfect, however, for reasons that Red Rising makes clear: it doesn’t deal clearly with cases where reproduction is possible but very difficult (a Red and a Gold having a child) or for organisms that do not reproduce sexually (such as Pinks). I’ll then explore a few prominent alternatives to BSC, including both genetically and ecologically based species concepts, and consider their consequences for the society of Red Rising. I’ll conclude by advocating for a “pluralism” about species membership, and will suggest that the people of Red Rising (as well as in the real world) should beware of basing arguments for moral or political equality on the all-too-slippery notion of “shared humanity.” Instead, they should focus on the qualities that make the lives of the individuals (regardless of their species) worth caring about, such as their shared desires to avoid suffering and to lead fulfilling, meaningful lives. (shrink)

Kant maintains that the only thing that is good in itself, and therefore good without limitation or qualification, is a good will. This is an objectionable claim in support of a controversial position. The problem is not just that the good will is not the only thing that is good in itself, which indeed it is not, but more importantly, that the good will is not so much a thing that is good in itself as it is the good kind (...) of a thing that is otherwise neither good nor bad in itself. The goodness of a good will is no more intrinsic than the goodness of a good act, good outcome, good attitude, good character, or good person. Nor is it even any more so than something as commonplace as a good laugh or a good cup of coffee. A good will, whatever else it may be, is a will that is good, much like how a good act is an act that is good, a good outcome is an outcome that is good, and so on with the other examples, not one of which is good for any reason other than the goodness predicated of the corresponding subject. This paper thus challenges Kant’s position on ontological grounds. It questions the validity of claiming intrinsic goodness for a complex construct whose goodness is, in fact, extrinsic to its substance. The objection is not that the good will might not turn out to be good after all, which is impossible by definition, designation, or stipulation, but that its goodness is axiomatic and derivative rather than intrinsic or fundamental. (shrink)

Sự tiến bộ nhanh chóng của các nền tảng Công nghệ Thông tin (CNTT) và ngôn ngữ lập trình đã làm thay đổi hình thái vận động và phát triển của xã hội loài người. Không gian mạng và các tiện ích đi kèm ngày càng được mở rộng, dẫn đến sự chuyển dịch dần từ đời sống trong thế giới thực sang đời sống trong thế giới ảo (còn gọi là không gian mạng hay không gian số). Sự mở (...) rộng và phát triển của các Mô hình Xử lý Ngôn ngữ Tự nhiên (Natural Language Processing – NLP) và Mô hình Ngôn ngữ Lớn (Large Language Model – LLM) thể hiện những đặc điểm giống con người về lập luận, nhận thức, sự chú ý và sáng tạo đã giúp con người vượt qua rào cản về khả năng vận hành. Đi kèm với các tiềm năng to lớn của AI là những lỗ hổng bảo mật mới và các rủi ro về an ninh thông tin phức tạp hơn. Khi xã hội vẫn đang cố gắng chuyển mình sang giai đoạn mới để có thể thích ứng với sự biến đổi công nghệ, cuộc cách mạng AI lại tiếp tục diễn ra đòi hỏi chúng ta phải suy nghĩ lại quỹ đạo của quá trình chuyển đổi xã hội vì nó có thể làm trầm trọng hơn các rủi ro an ninh thông tin được trình bày ở trên. Cụ thể, xã hội cần tiến hóa như thế nào để có thể bắt kịp với sự biến đổi mang tính đột phá tạo ra bởi làn sóng công nghệ AI hiện nay? Làm sao để quản lý và tận dụng sức mạnh của chúng trong khi vẫn đảm bảo được an ninh thông tin khi không gian và thời gian sống trong thế giới ảo của chúng ta ngày càng tăng? Phần một của bài viết sẽ bàn về các vấn đề và rủi ro ảnh hưởng đến an ninh thông tin trong kỷ nguyên AI, cũng như là vai trò, lợi thế, và cơ hội của việc vận dụng AI cho mục đích đảm bảo an ninh thông tin. (shrink)

Trong mọi hình thái kinh tế - xã hội, kiến trúc thượng tầng đều do cơ sở hạ tầng tương ứng với nó sinh ra, hay nói cách khác, mỗi kiến trúc thượng tầng đều được hình thành trên một cơ sở hạ tầng nhất định. Cơ sở hạ tầng là tổng hợp các quan hệ sản xuất hợp thành kết cấu kinh tế của một xã hội nhất định.

In our everyday interaction with the environment, we often perceive objects and spaces as opportunities to feel, maintain, enhance, and change our affective states and processes. The concept of affective affordance was coined to accommodate this aspect of ordinary perception and the many ways in which we rely on the material environment to regulate our emo- tions. One natural way to think of affective affordances in emotion regulation is to interpret them as tools for regulating felt affective states. We argue (...) that this way of conceiving of affective affordances is too restrictive. By analyzing the role of expressive properties of objects and spaces in emotion regulation, we show that our environment does not need to elicit felt affective states to regulate our emotions. Thus, we revise the concept of affective affordance to accommodate these cases. This revised concept explains more with less. Hence, it should be preferred in wide-reaching philosophical projects that aim to explain human affectivity as a situated phenomenon. (shrink)

Tháng đầu năm 2024 chứng kiến mức tăng rất đáng kể số lượt download chương trình máy tính bayesvl của AISDL chạy trên R và Stan. Đồ thị của RDocumentation (CRAN) dưới đây cho thấy hình ảnh bước nhảy khi có dữ liệu của tháng 1-2024.

Trong bài viết này chúng tôi trình bày thông tin đại cương về vai trò của nickel trong công nghiệp chế tạo giữa bối cảnh yêu cầu bảo vệ môi sinh trong đại nghị sự mục tiêu phát triển bền vững (SDG) của Liên Hợp Quốc ngày một cấp bách, đối diện với nguy cơ không thể hoàn thành. Các thông tin tóm lược ở đây được dẫn chiếu tới một số nhỏ các tài liệu tham khảo chính và không (...) thể đảm bảo tính trọn vẹn trong khuôn khổ một bài báo nhỏ. Những vấn đề đặt ra có tính tổng quát cho quan hệ môi sinh với việc khai khoáng, tách và tinh chế nickel nói chung trên thế giới. Vì thế, có thể thông tin trong bài không hoàn toàn trùng khớp với tình hình cụ thể của một địa phương trên trái đất, do đặc điểm địa lý, địa chất và kinh tế-công nghệ khác biệt. Bài viết tập trung xoay quanh nguyên lý quan hệ kinh tế-môi trường và ý nghĩa thực tiễn của cụm từ “bền vững” trong bối cảnh cụ thể của công nghiệp nickel. (shrink)

Douglas Portmore has recently argued in this journal for a "promising result" – that combining teleological ethics with "evaluator relativism" about the good allows an ethical theory to account for deontological intuitions while "accommodat[ing] the compelling idea that it is always permissible to bring about the best available state of affairs." I show that this result is false. It follows from the indexical semantics of evaluator relativism that Portmore's compelling idea is false. I also try to explain what might have (...) led to this misunderstanding. (shrink)

Trong lượt cập nhật gần nhất, dữ liệu CRAN cho biết, trong tháng 9-2023, tổng số lượt downloads của chương trình bayesvl của AISDL (chạy trên R và Stan [1]) đạt 241, tăng +24,9% so với tháng trước (193), và tương đương thống kê của tháng 5-2023 (246).

It is often said that the world is explained by laws of nature together with initial conditions. But does that mean initial conditions don’t require further explanation? And does the explanatory role played by initial conditions entail or require that time has a preferred direction? This chapter looks at the use of the ‘initialness defence’ in physics, the idea that initial conditions are intrinsically special in that they don’t require further explanation, unlike the state of the world at other times. (...) Such defences commonly assume a primitive directionality of time to distinguish between initial and final conditions. Using the case study of the time-asymmetry of thermodynamics and the so-called ‘past hypothesis’ — the hypothesis that the early universe was in a state of very low entropy —, I outline and support a deflationary account of the initialness defence that does not pre- suppose a basic directionality of time, and argue that there is a relevant explanatory asymmetry between initial conditions and the state of systems at other times only if certain causal conditions are satisfied. Hence, the initialness defence is available to those who reject a fundamental direction of time. (shrink)

When it comes to explaining someone’s puzzling, objectionable, or otherwise problematic behavior, one type of explanation occasionally employed in the service of doing so is as follows: “That’s just so-and-so being so-and-so.” But what, exactly, do explanations of the type “That’s just so-and-so being so-and-so” mean? More specifically, in what way, if any, is it meaningful or informative to say such things? And what is the precise function of such explanations of someone’s behavior? Is it merely to present what one (...) takes to be the underlying causes of the behavior, or something beyond that? In what follows, I lay out a few possibilities—basic possibilities, to be precise, given philosophy’s keen interest in fundamentals—with respect to the various meanings, functions, and moral implications of explanations of the type “That’s just so-and-so being so-and-so.” While doing so, I apply these basic possibilities to three tokens of this kind of explanation: “That’s just Manny being Manny” (in reference to Manny Ramirez, the former professional baseball player), “That’s just Charlie being Charlie” (in reference to Charlie Rose, the former television host), and “That’s just Trump being Trump” (in reference to Donald Trump, the current President of the United States). (shrink)

Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation of the (...) CoD, and an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature. (shrink)

Our main aims in this paper is to discuss and criticise the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified (a thesis we label Standard Phenomenal Conservatism). This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, we embed it, first, in a (...) probabilistic framework in which updating on new evidence happens by Bayesian conditionalization, and second, a framework in which updating happens by Jeffrey conditionalization. We spell out problems for both views, and then generalize some of these to non-probabilistic frameworks. The main theme of our discussion is that the epistemic import of a seeming (or experience) should depend on its content in a plethora of ways that phenomenal conservatism is insensitive to. (shrink)

The Golden Rule is (roughly) as follows: treat others as you would have others treat you. Philosophical reactions to it vary; it has both supporters and detractors. In any case, almost nobody who things critically about morality takes the literal version of the Golden Rule seriously, since there are just too many problems with it. To demonstrate this, I will look at a literal version of the Golden Rule espoused by John C. Maxwell, a well-known and influential motivational speaker, and (...) briefly discuss some of the obvious problems that it faces. I will then examine a more sophisticated version of the Golden Rule espoused by philosopher Harry Gensler. While able to overcome some of the problems of the literal Golden Rule, Gensler's version nevertheless shares a common difficulty with it: in both cases, the moral agent is asked to imagine themselves in the place of another. Maxwell things this is easily done, and Gensler asks for vividness and accuracy in this act of imagination. I wish to show that any version of the Golden Rule that takes seriously the need to imagine oneself in the place of another is to ask one to do the impossible, so any versions of the Golden Rule that require this should be rejected. (shrink)

MỘT SỐ QUÁ TRÌNH NGẪU NHIÊN CÓ BƯỚC NHẢY -/- Hoàng Thị Phương Thảo -/- Luận án Tiến sỹ -/- TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KHOA HỌC TỰ NHIÊN ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI -/- Hà Nội - 2015 .

A survey of the similarities and differences between BFO and DOLCE, and of the mutual interactions between Nicola Guarino and Barry Smith.

This paper analyzes the determinants of women’s representation on boards of directors based on a panel of all privately owned or listed Danish firms with at least 50 employees observed during the period 1998–2010. We focus on the directors who are not elected by the employees and test three hypotheses on female board representation that we denote the female-led hypothesis, the tokenism hypothesis, and the pipeline hypothesis, respectively. We find evidence rejecting the female-led hypothesis. Firms with a female chairperson on (...) the board of directors tend to have significantly fewer other non-employee-elected female board members. We also find clear evidence of a tokenism behavior in Danish companies. The likelihood of enlarging the share of non-employee-elected female board members is significantly smaller if one, two, or more women have sat on the board of directors. Finally, the pipeline hypothesis is partly confirmed. The relation between the female pipeline of potentially qualified directors and female directors is weaker than the similar relation for males. Our findings offer insights to policy makers interested in promoting gender diversity within boardrooms. Our empirical evidence suggests that an important way to increase the female proportion of non-employee-elected board members is that more women reach top executive positions. (shrink)

It is very well known that from the late-1960s onwards Feyerabend began to radically challenge some deeply-held ideas about the history and methodology of the sciences. It is equally well known that, from around the same period, he also began to radically challenge wider claims about the value and place of the sciences within modern societies, for instance by calling for the separation of science and the state and by questioning the idea that the sciences served to liberate and ameliorate (...) human societies. But what is less known is how, if at all, these two sets of challenges were connected, and why Feyerabend felt it important to raise them at all. In this chapter, my aim is to explore these issues by considering why Feyerabend used radical strategies to challenge the authority of science, and what purpose, if any, they were supposed to serve. Why, for instance, did Feyerabend defend alternative medicine, psychical abilities, astrology, magic and witchcraft and why did he argue that ‘Western science’ is complicit in environmental destruction, intellectual imperialism, social oppression, and spiritual destitution. Located in their historical and political context, such defences and arguments seem peculiar, not least because science was recognised not only as a central site of the intellectual and ideological competition between the West and the Soviet Union, but also because Western victory in that site was considered inevitable. What, then, did Feyerabend think he was trying to achieve by raising radical challenges to a central component of the cultural and intellectual prestige of the Western world grounded in appeals to practices and traditions which most would regard as eccentric at best and absurd at worst? My suggestion is that Feyerabend was making a subtler point than one might suppose. For the purpose of these radical challenges was to determine if the members of Western societies would in fact honour the epistemic standards – of tolerance, critical enquiry – which were identified as being characteristic of science and definitive of the social and political values of Western liberal democracy. I suggest that Feyerabend was trying to demonstrate that scientists were, too often, guilty of the same intolerant and dogmatic attitudes which were, according to prevailing propaganda, the property of illiberal totalitarian societies. Science does not reflect the superior epistemic and political values of Western societies but are, in fact, reflective of the same vices ascribed to the Soviet Union. If that is the case, then the sciences are not symbols of our epistemic and political values, but quite the reverse, hence Feyerabend’s talk of the ‘dogmatic’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘ratiofascist’ nature of modern science. But there is a positive upshot to Feyerabend’s challenge. For even if the sciences do not yet reflect the epistemic and political values of liberal democratic Western societies, they might yet be reformed so that they are. And there is a parallel between Feyerabend’s strategy and that of many of the other radicals of the time – student activists, environmentalists, and pacifists – namely to test the commitment to tolerance and deliberative debate of the establishment by asking it to seriously engage with ideas and convictions opposed to its own. For both science and society can become ‘tyrannical’ through the same means: by exempting themselves from critical scrutiny, by promoting self-serving ‘myths’ about themselves, and by derogating and excluding alternatives, including the ‘outsider’ perspectives they offer. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Feyerabend is distinctive in virtue of his willingness to offer radical criticisms of the authority of science such that it can fulfil its legitimate ideological role – namely, of symbolising and instantiating our core epistemic and political values – such that we can offer a sincere and meaningful answer to Feyerabend’s question ‘what’s so great about science?’. (shrink)

Enactivists often defend the following two claims: Successful interactions are not driven and explained by the interactors’ ability to mindread. And the mechanisms enabling 2nd personal social cognition and those enabling 3rd personal social cognition are distinct. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are false. With regard to I argue that enactivists fail to provide a plausible alternative to traditional accounts of social cognition in interaction. I examine and reject Hanne De Jaegher’s view according to which (...) interaction is “constitutive” for social interaction. Furthermore, I critically discuss Shaun Gallagher’s and Daniel Hutto’s views according to which social interactions are exclusively driven by low level cognitive mechanisms such as “gaze following” and “emotion detection”. Concerning, I rely on data from so called “spontaneous response” false belief tasks to show that interactive and observational paradigms require the same “social-cognitive” interpretation. (shrink)

Abstract: In chapter 15 of A Materialist Theory of the Mind, D.M.Armstrong offers an account of what he calls “the biological value of introspection”, namely, that “without information…about the current state of our minds, purposive trains mental activity would be impossible.” This paper examines and assesses Armstrong’s “Just-so story about introspective consciousness”—as W.G.Lycan later called it. One moral will be that appreciating this aspect of Armstrong’s view blurs the difference between his own perceptual model of introspection, and the anti-perceptual models (...) advanced by such critics as Sydney Shoemaker . (shrink)