In their recent article, Graber and Golemon (_Sophia_ 1–18, 2019 ) argue that any attempted evolutionary debunking of naturalism faces a dilemma. First, in order to be evolutionarily plausible, the skeptical implications must not be too broad. Second, in order to constitute a genuine challenge to scientific realism, the skeptical implications must not be too narrow. Graber and Golemon further develop an evolutionary debunking argument that avoids both horns of this dilemma. De Ray (_Erkenntnis_ 1–21, 2020 ) criticizes Graber and (...) Golemon’s debunking argument then develops his own, competing debunking argument. We first respond to de Ray’s criticisms by showing how Graber and Golemon’s argument can be extended so as to avoid de Ray’s critique. We then show that de Ray’s argument debunking argument is impaled by both horns of Graber and Golemon’s dilemma. The ultimate result will be both a better understanding of the desiderata and the argumentative contours of a successful evolutionary debunking argument. (shrink)

Abstract: Smoke detectors are critical devices for early fire detection and life-saving interventions. This research paper explores the application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in smoke detection systems. The study aims to develop a robust and accurate smoke detection model using ANNs. Surprisingly, the results indicate a 100% accuracy rate, suggesting promising potential for ANNs in enhancing smoke detection technology. However, this paper acknowledges the need for a comprehensive evaluation beyond accuracy. It discusses potential challenges, such as overfitting, dataset size, (...) and class imbalance, and presents strategies employed to address these issues. Additionally, the paper emphasizes the importance of alternative evaluation metrics, including precision, recall, and F1-score, to assess the model's performance comprehensively. Detailed information regarding the model architecture, data preprocessing, and hyperparameter tuning is provided to enhance the reproducibility of the research. The study also discusses ethical considerations and the implications of false positives and false negatives in smoke detection applications. While achieving 100% accuracy is a notable accomplishment, this paper calls for cautious interpretation and further validation in real-world settings. It concludes by highlighting areas for future research and improvement in smoke detection technology, emphasizing the need for practical deployment and the reduction of false alarms. (shrink)

“What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?” -/- “The monster now becomes more vengeful. He murders Victor’s friend Henry Clerval and his wife Elizabeth on the night of her wedding to Victor, and Victor sets out in pursuit of the friend across the icy Artic regions. The monster is always ahead of him, leaving tell tale marks behind and tantalizing his creator. Victor meets with his death in the pursuit of the monster he (...) had created with a noble objective.” [ http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] . (shrink)

( http://philpapers.org/profile/112741 )"Let generation know to procure the love, the concept, knowledge and ideas with thoughts they are acquiring on versatile English Language, instead of making themselves to be felt dealing with only burden." -/- I too realize, -/- "Literature is not merely going through a book, It is the moment of definition of per feeling that : I am acquiring through an imagery.".

David Lewis (1974, 1994/1999) proposed to reduce the facts about mental representation to facts about sensory evidence, dispositions to act, and rationality. Recently, Robert Williams (2020) and Adam Pautz (2021) have taken up and developed Lewis’s project in sophisticated and novel ways. In this paper, we aim to present, clarify, and ultimately object to the core thesis that they all build their own views around. The different sophisticated developments and defenses notwithstanding, we think the core thesis is vulnerable. We pose (...) a dilemma by considering the two sides of a current epistemological controversy over the relation between evidence and rational belief: permissivism vs. uniqueness. As we argue, the prospects for the Lewisian project look dim when either supposition is clearly made. (shrink)

Credences are beliefs about evidential probabilities. We give the view an assessment-sensitive formulation, show how it evades the standard objections, and give several arguments in support.

"Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn: And Lip to Lip it murmur'd-"While you live Drink!-for once dead you never shall return." " [http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] .

Propositions are the things we believe, intend, desire, and so on, but discussions are often less precise than they could be and an important driver of this deficiency has been a focus on the objects but a neglect of the attitudinal relations we bear to them. In what follows, we will offer some thoughts on what it means for a proposition to be the object of an attitude and we will argue that an important part of the story lies with (...) the attitude relations rather than the propositions. As we will see there are infinitely many relations we might bear to a proposition, but the propositional attitude relations are special amongst them. Accounting for what makes them special will be an important component in the discussion that follows. We will argue that once one appreciates certain facts about propositional attitude relations, various claims that metaphysicians often make regarding propositions themselves begin to look undermotivated. In fact, many views on the metaphysical nature of propositions come to look like plausible candidates for being that to which our propositional attitudes relate us. As will emerge, we will see that the principle role of propositions in the theory of mind is simply to keep track of how our attitudinal states represent things as being. But, we argue, in order to do this work, very few constraints must be placed on the nature of propositions themselves. In particular, contra much of the recent work on the metaphysics of propositions, they need not represent nor must they be structured. In light of these observations, we conclude by sketching our own favored minimalist view of propositions. (shrink)

For the Intentionalist, utterance content is wholly determined by a speaker’s meaning-intentions; the sentence uttered serves merely to facilitate the audience’s recovering these intentions. We argue that Intentionalists ought to be Particularists, holding that the only “principles” of meaning recovery needed are those governing inferences to the best explanation; “principles” that are both defeasible and, in a sense to be elaborated, variable. We discuss some ways in which some theorists have erred in trying to tame the “wild west” of pragmatics (...) and context-sensitivity -- including recent work that makes essential appeal to the information structure of a discourse -- and in so doing, offer a general recipe for defending the Particularist picture of utterance content and its recovery that we favor. (shrink)

This book shows, "Nothing is permanent in this World" consisting of true events in span of life when matches with Classical Literature of reality against illusions..

In performing an act of assertion we are sometimes responsible for more than the content of the literal meaning of the words we have used, sometimes less. A recently popular research program seeks to explain certain of the commitments we make in speech in terms of responsiveness to the conversational subject matter. We raise some issues for this view with the aim of providing a more general account of linguistic commitment: one that is grounded in a more general action‐theoretic notion (...) of responsibility. (shrink)

One of the standard approaches to the metaphysics of personal identity has some counter-intuitive ethical consequences when combined with maximising consequentialism and a plausible doctrine about aggregation of consequences. This metaphysical doctrine is the so-called ‘multiple occupancy’ approach to puzzles about fission and fusion. It gives rise to a new version of the ‘utility monster’ problem, particularly difficult problems about infinite utility, and a new version of a Parfit-style ‘repugnant conclusion’. While the article focuses on maximising consequentialism for simplicity, the (...) problems demonstrated apply more widely to a range of ethical views, especially flavours of consequentialism. This article demonstrates how these problems arise, and discusses a number of options available in the light of these problems for a consequentialist tempted by a multiple occupancy metaphysics. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the final proof with Greek mathematics and the possibility of intermediates in the Phaedo. The final proof in Plato’s Phaedo depends on a claim at 105c6, that μονάς, ‘unit’, generates περιττός ‘odd’ in number. So, ψυχή ‘soul’ generates ζωή ‘life’ in a body, at 105c10-11. Yet commentators disagree how to understand these mathematical terms and their relation to the soul in Plato’s arguments. The Greek mathematicians understood odd numbers in one of two ways: either that which is (...) not divisible into two equal parts, or that which differs from an even number by a unit. Plato uses the second way in the final proof. This paper argues that a proper understanding of these mathematical terms within Greek mathematics shows that the argument for the final proof is better than previously thought. Such an interpretation of the final proof lends credence to Platonic intermediates. (shrink)

Drawing on work on modularity of mind and evolutionary psychology, I explore how evolutionary theory may support a return to classical artistic standards (the new classicism). At the same time, I argue for much that is admirable in the avant garde. I connect this question to the theory of epistemology and aesthetic biases, suggesting that aesthetics embody evolved knowledge.

This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food security" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through which non-scientific notions become (...) part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process. (shrink)

THE IMMORTAL FLY: ETERNAL WHISPERS. WHO IS SHE? Author: Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri. Hello, Recently my book named, ‘The Immortal Fly: Eternal Whispers : Based On True Events of a Family' been published from Partridge (USA) In Association with Penguin Random House (UK) and achieved a separate Google identity. -/- As being # the author of the book, I thought to define self in the book what is definition of 'Depression'. I wanted to explain self in many ways, but the best (...) quotation appeared to me : “My life will end someday, but it will end at my convenience.’’ -/- ***** I am missing "her". By now, years passed without 'her' . Even though, unlike before, everything is becoming to be more scattered, gloomy and desolate. She is no-where whom I share my feelings. Even now, when I do close my eyes, I can visualize the same that I had left years since on 7th February, 2019 at 8.20 A.M. in the hospital struggling a continuous period of fifty days : on the fifty one day, my father said, ”The End of our Fifty Years relationship has been completed with the Fifty Days”….’Whoever’ she was to others , but she is our legend…To me, she is ‘My Ma’. -/- The story could begin, 'I failed preciously on success of my life.' Simplicity, Innocence, Belief, Faith and Personality met unknowingly with filthy waves skillfully immersed in Betray, Sorcery, Jealousy, Greediness, Revenge, Lie... ‘’ ******* The Daughter writes, “I had asked Ma many times, but her ‘impenetrable personality’ and dynamic words to everyone with a tinge of smile as reflected on her face, she was reluctant to continue her conversation with me. I had thought, hence, I must not be indefinite on my spoken words. Who shall I blame!” Based on true story of a family came from South Calcutta (India) to a suburb, on staying at home of the Daughter’s maternal grandmother’s house, this book reveals in facts and true events how Destiny had unknowingly ‘further’ played an abominable role to Fate of The Daughter, when eventually one day on 7th February, 2019 everything was finished within 8.20A.M. The Daughter is, therefore, left alone on terrestrial with immortal words as written in her Diary, ‘Eternal Whispers’: “My words to self that I am to fulfill my Ma’s - wish. ’’ ‘’ -/- • Keywords: 1. Diary and True Events 2. The Chaotic Society 3. Fatality 4. Of A-Family 5. Science , Philosophy and Literature 6. Severe Depression 7. Medical Journey. -/- The Alternative Title of the Book: The Greatest Mistake or Fortune:: The book is mainly carrying with intense words of a journey of the relationship between a Mother with her Daughter has left readers in an abrupt situation where ,perhaps, I can define "Man is the innocent creature with 'his' personality under circumstances..." -/- . (shrink)

It has recently been argued that our use of vague language poses an intractable problem for any account of content and communication on which (i) the things we assert are propositions and (ii) understanding an assertion requires recognizing which proposition the speaker asserted. John MacFarlane has argued that this problem concerning vague language is itself a species of an even more general problem for such traditional accounts – the problem posed by “felicitous” underspecification. Repurposing certain ideas from Allan Gibbard, MacFarlane (...) offers a novel theory of vagueness, plan-expressivism, as an account that can handle both vagueness and such underspecification in communication. -/- In this paper, I argue that despite its many virtues, plan-expressivism fails as a general account of meaning and communication. In particular, I show that when it comes to the problem of felicitous underspecification, plan-expressivism fares no better than the more traditional accounts of content and communication it is intended to replace. Along the way, I argue that the problem of felicitous underspecification puts considerable pressure on an assumption that is at the core of both plan-expressivism and the accounts of its more traditionalist rivals - namely, that in cases of successful linguistic communication, we must always be able to find something -- whether a propositional content or a conversational update -- that the speaker is intending to share with her audience. (shrink)

According to the classical account, propositions are sui generis, abstract, intrinsically-representational entities and our cognitive attitudes, and the token states within us that realize those attitudes, represent as they do in virtue of their propositional objects. In light of a desire to explain how it could be that propositions represent, much of the recent literature on propositions has pressured various aspects of this account. In place of the classical account, revisionists have aimed to understand propositions in terms of more familiar (...) entities such as facts, types of mental or linguistic acts, and even properties. But we think that the metaphysical story about propositions is much simpler than either the classical theorist or the revisionist would have you believe. In what follows, we argue that a proper understanding of the nature of our cognitive relations to propositions shows that the question of whether propositions themselves represent is, at best, a distraction. We will argue that once this distraction is removed, the possibility of a very pleasing, minimalist story of propositions emerges; a story that appeals only to assumptions that are shared by all theorists in the relevant debate. (shrink)

This work in metaphysics adheres to the critical demands of Immanuel Kant for what Kant would call a science of metaphysics, in that it consits strictly of a priori principles that, while from pure reason, can help make sense of our phenomenal world (Kant's criterion for objective validity). The work has an Appendix quoting Kant's most relevant remarks with regard to a science, and offers parallel quotes from David Hume's "Treatise of Human Nature". The work advances the explanation of a (...) causal process that accounts for the origination of the universals: space, time, mass (or substance), and mind (or consciousness), and it necessitates the existence of God as Absolute Being and Absolute Mind. Hegel's 'Science of Logic' is quoted wherein Hegel makes an analogous claim. The causal process is defined with both a definite beginning and a definite end and agreement can be found with the statement found in the book of Revelation, final chapter: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." The statement suggests a movement that is not in conflict with the science, and seems to reflect Hegel's own thoughts. The science does not conflict with, but it further finds agreement with the science of big bang cosmology, but it goes further in necessitating a 'singularity' at the beginning of time. The causal process defined has a Formative Phase and a Creative Phase, with the former preceding the big bang and the latter following after the big bang. (shrink)

Justificationism is the epistemology that enjoins us to choose our beliefs according to this principle: choose all and only those beliefs and at an appropriate degree of confidence that one can justify, either by an intellectual certificate or empirical warrant. My article argues that most forms of justificationism require the truth of doxastic voluntarism, the doctrine that one may choose ones specific beliefs. However, since belief is involuntary, justificationism is severely undermined. Justificationism as stated couldn’t be practised; since believing is (...) not something we can do at will as a basic action. Although devastating to any subjectivist justificationism, it does not undermine our ability to cultivate, through long-term choices, the most rational attitude in the search for truth and the growth of knowledge. A major rival of subjective justiticationism (SJ) is critical rationalism (CR). CR is the doctrine that progress in the growth of knowledge occurs through the unrelenting criticism of competing unjustified conjectural attempts to solve problems. The objective methods and standards involved in CR are unaffected because following (or not) an objective method is something we can do at will. (shrink)

The answer given to 'the problem of evil' in the Bible that apologists, theologians, and philosophers have not recognized or understood, having sought for answers to the problem outside the sacred texts wherein alone the unequivoval answer can be found, if only one puts together the relevant texts, as for instance, the book of Job, the book of Isaiah concerning prophecies related to the return of Christ, the book of Ezekiel, the 24th chapter of Matthew, certain passages from the letters (...) of Paul, and the book of Reveation. The central theme in this work is that evil exists now not by reason of God's presence, but by reason of God's absence. We have been left to our own devices. The reason for this is very clear in these texts, and the work spells this out in no uncertain terms, and once this reason is made fully apparent, and undeniable, it will leave no viable excuse for anyone to reject the return of the King of kings, and His eternal rule over all as the Prince of peace. (shrink)

Your belief that Obama is a Democrat would not be the belief that it is if it did not represent Obama, nor would the pain in your ankle be the state that it is if, say, it felt like an itch. Accordingly, it is tempting to hold that phenomenal and representational properties are essential to the mental states that have them. But, as several theorists have forcefully argued (including Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, 1982)) this attractive idea is seemingly in (...) tension with another equally attractive thesis, namely, the token-identity thesis; the thesis according to which every mental state token is identical with some or other token physical state. In this paper, we show that these seemingly incontrovertible essentialist intuitions are in fact compatible with “token physicalism” regarding the mental. Given a suitably plentitudinous ontology of objects, we argue that there are physical things with which our token mental states can be identified. This is preferable to existing views that give up the essentiality claims or simply reject the token-identity thesis. (shrink)

In ‘What Reference Has to Tell Us about Meaning’, Stephen Schiffer argues that many of the objects of our beliefs, and the contents of our assertoric speech acts, have what he calls the relativity feature. A proposition has the relativity feature just in case it is an object-dependent proposition ‘the entertainment of which requires different people, or the same person at different times or places, to think of [the relevant object] in different ways’ (129). But as no Fregean or Russellian (...) proposition can possibly have such a feature, we must either (i) give up on these traditional theories of propositional content in favor of an account that can allow for the relativity feature, or else (ii) explain why the things we believe, and say, oftentimes seem to have this feature even though they, in fact, do not. Schiffer pursues the former option; in this essay, I pursue the latter. (shrink)

Using an interdisciplinary approach to reading Plato's Apology of Socrates, I argue that the counter penalty offered by Socrates, what is commonly translated as maintenance in the Prytaneion, was a literary addition from Plato, resembling comic topoi from Aristophanes. I begin with the accounts we have from Plato and Xenophon, then analyze the culture and context of the Prytaneion. Given the evidence, I provide arguments for why the historical Socrates wouldn't respond with sitēsis in the Prytaneion. I suggest that Plato (...) borrows the grammatical phrase from Aristophanes' Knights. (shrink)

Confirmation and falsification are different strategies for testing theories and characterizing the outcomes of those tests. Roughly speaking, confirmation is the act of using evidence or reason to verify or certify that a statement is true, definite, or approximately true, whereas falsification is the act of classifying a statement as false in the light of observation reports. After expounding the intellectual history behind confirmation and falsificationism, reaching back to Plato and Aristotle, I survey some of the main controversial issues and (...) arguments that pertain to the choice between these strategies: the Raven Paradox, the Duhem/Quine problem and the Grue Paradox. Finally, I outline an evolutionary criticism of inductive Bayesian approaches based on my assumption of doxastic involuntarism. (shrink)

In a work entitled On the Generation of Animals, Aristotle remarks that “intellect (nous) alone enters from outside (thurathen)”. Interpretations of this passage as dualistic dominate the history of ideas and allow for a joining together of Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine on the soul. This, however, pulls against the well-known Aristotelian position that soul and body are intertwined and interdependent. The most influential interpretations thereby misrepresent Aristotle’s view on soul and lack any real engagement with his embryology. This paper seeks (...) to extract the account of intellect (nous) in Aristotelian embryology from this interpretative background and place it within the context of his mature biological thought. A clear account of the actual import of this statement in its relevant context is given before explaining how it has been misunderstood by various interpretative traditions. The paper finishes by touching on how early commentary by Christian writers, freed as it was from the imperative to synthesise Greek philosophy, differed from those that came after. While realising that Aristotle’s position would not aid them in their explanations of the soul’s survival after death, their engagement with Aristotle’s science allowed for other aspects of theology concerning the fittingness of soul to body. (shrink)

"Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."Satyajit Ray Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia 2015 .

It is facile and factually incorrect to represent suicide terrorists as simply seeking mass destruction, as demented or believing that they will be rewarded by "seventy-two virgins in paradise". In my book The Myth of the Closed Mind: Understanding How and Why People are Rational I felt it was important to deal with the issue of terrorism by consulting explanatory theories of human behaviour and the substantial research on the strategic pattern of terrorist incidents over the decades, led principally by (...) Professor Robert Pape of Chicago University. -/- To defeat your enemy, you must first understand him. Strangely, we must first grant that, though morally depraved, terrorists are rational: they concoct and execute detailed plans with definite strategic goals in mind. Only once we have granted the terrorist a rational mind can we, in the end, create peace. My argument is that while religion may have a small role in terrorism, it is principally politics, or the logic of territorial control, that is the key to understanding the threat we face. -/- This extract from my book is principally about Al Qaeda, but a similar analysis applies to ISIS, the current greatest threat to our peace in the west. -/- The strategic goal of Al Qaeda was simply to repulse what they saw as foreign intervention. ISIS has the same goal, but in order to continue its growth as a state in the sense of a monopoly of coercion over a given geographical area. -/- ISIS, a rogue state that arose in ungoverned space created unintentionally by foreign intervention in Iraq, is now lashing out at foreign governments that have severely shrunk the territory ISIS occupies. Before October 2015, ISIS confined its terrorism to the goal of extending its territory in Iraq and Syria, and there were no significant ISIS-led or inspired suicide terrorist attacks outside Iraq and Syria. But now, as their territory collapses, they are attacking the countries that have strangled their control of territory in Iraq and Syria: the coalition of western governments – Britain, Belgium, Canada, France, Morocco, Turkey, Russia, the U.S.A. and others – exactly the countries that have recently seen an explosion of suicide terrorism. (shrink)

The ‘psychologist’s green thumb’ refers to the argument that an experimenter needs an indeterminate set of skills to successfully replicate an effect. This argument is sometimes invoked by psychological researchers to explain away failures of independent replication attempts of their work. In this paper, I assess the psychologist’s green thumb as a candidate explanation for individual replication failure and argue that it is potentially costly for psychology as a field. I also present other, more likely reasons for these replication failures. (...) I conclude that appealing to a psychologist’s green thumb is not a convincing explanation for replication failure. (shrink)

I argue that Carl Jung's theory of archetypes is incompatible with the darwinian theory of evolution.

Discussions of patient-centred care and patient autonomy in bioethics have tended to focus on the decision-making context and the process of obtaining informed consent, leaving open the question of how patients ought to be counselled in the daily maintenance of their health and management of chronic disease. Patient activation is an increasingly prominent counselling approach and measurement tool that aims to improve patients’ confidence and skills in managing their own health conditions. The strategy, which has received little conceptual or ethical (...) analysis, raises important questions about how clinicians ought to foster confidence and a sense of control in their patients without exposing them to blame, stigma and other harms. In this paper, we describe patient activation, discuss its relationship to personal responsibility, autonomy and health disparities, and make recommendations regarding its use and measurement. (shrink)

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) is considered the founder of modern philosophy. Profoundly influenced by the new physics and astronomy of Kepler and Galileo, Descartes was a scientist and mathematician whose most long-lasting contributions in science were the invention of Cartesian coordinates, the application of algebra to geometry, and the discovery of the law of refraction, what we now call Snell’s law.His most important books on philosophy were The discourse on method(1637) and The meditations(1642). Descartes’ writings display an exemplary degree (...) of clarity and an aversion to pedantry. I explore Descartes' break with Aristotle, but also shine a light on the intellectual continuity Descartes had with Aristotle's thought. I also draw attention to some overlooked but interesting possibilities for an experimental test of a dualistic theory of mind. (shrink)

[ https://plus.google.com/108060242686103906748/posts/cwvdB6mK3J6 ]"As Literature germinates within me, my words are-“Literature is something, that I need to be acclaimed for, I need to know more...it’s my life that has given me birth, my way of thoughts that I am visualizing in the perspective of all dimensions, my frailties, my faults...my every comprehensive discussion even after my death, my spiritualism, my haunting towards the ecology of the cosmic world, and the way that I have brought up at my elbows to enhance myself (...) more in the bloom of dissolved doomed tragedy of a human life! It is indeed ravenous…but we the beings to run through this midst of life, as I need to pace up with at every inception and the idealistic phenomenal moments…!”. . (http://philpapers.org/profile/112741.). (shrink)

The traditional conception of knowledge is justified, true belief. If one looks at a modern textbook on epistemology, the great bulk of questions with which it deals are to do with personal knowledge, as embodied in beliefs and the proper experiences that someone ought to have had in order to have the right (or justification) to know. I intend to argue that due to the explosive growth of knowledge whose domain is “outside the head”, this conception has outlived its relevance. (...) -/- On the other hand, Karl Popper’s (1934) Falsificationism, with its emphasis on the objective character of knowledge, is not only a sounder, but also a more appropriate theory of knowledge for understanding the nature and growth of civilization. Later, Popper (1945) generalized this approach to obtain critical rationalism, in which all claims to knowledge, whether scientific or otherwise, are understood as objective solutions to objective problems and can be evaluated by other non-observational - types of criticism. I will first argue that Popper’s methodology is quite suited to the view that knowledge is an objective autonomous product and then adduce his theory of world 3, an ontology that neatly wraps up various considerations. World 3 is the domain of abstract products of the human mind that now have a life of their own, outside of human heads: theories, arguments, problems, plans, etc. I then adduce some other arguments for the autonomous quality of knowledge. (shrink)

[ https://plus.google.com/108060242686103906748/posts/cwvdB6mK3J6 ] The phenomenal description on own thoughts regard me to describe Coleridge, along with William Wordsworth, was instrumental in initiating a poetic revolution in the early nineteenth century which is known as the Romantic Movement. Coleridge invokes the Divine Spirit that blows upon the wild Harp of Time. Time is like the stringed musical instrument on which the Spirit produces sweet harmonious melodies. Coleridge is perhaps best known for his haunting ballad Rime of Ancient Mariner, the dream-like Kubla (...) Khan and the unfinished Christabel, but he wrote several other smaller poems, quite remarkable for their imaginative power. (Edited with own analysis)…[http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] http://www.academia.edu/18834746/LITERATURE_I_DO-_THE_ROMANTICS_AND_SUBJECTIVITY_SAMUEL_TAYLOR_COLER IDGE. (shrink)

A brief intellectual biography of Sir Karl Popper.

Publishers are signing transformative agreements with different research institutions and funding bodies across the world. These agreements establish that the institution or funder makes a block payment in exchange for an annual quota of OA papers allowing their affiliated authors to publish OA in an agreed list of journals, at no extra cost to the individual author. This is a step towards the transformation of these journals into a Gold (commercial) Open Access regime. -/- In January 2023, the members of (...) the OA working group contacted the editors of the 27 journals listed as relevant for the field of philosophy of science on the website of the Philosophy of Science Association. We asked the editors-in-chief two questions: 1) Did your publishers discuss any plans to transition to gold open access exclusively with you? If so, how would it work? 2) If the publishers did contact you regarding this matter, what is your view on the project? -/- We collected 22 answers. The executive summary is: 10 of the 27 journals have started the transition to Gold Open Access, although many editors are not aware of this shift, but they wouldn’t support it, and many are actively against it. (shrink)

A brief survey of British philosophy of education.

A science of metaphysics adhering to Immanuel Kant's critical demands as set forth in his "Critique of Pure Reason", and "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic...." The work includes an Appendix that quotes Kant's most relevant remarks in this regard, along with his criterion for objective validity that, given the technical jargon, can be next to impossible to interpret even for those most familiar with Kant. The Appendix allows Kant to interpret himself, the point being that many secondary works enter into (...) conflict with Kant. This can be seen most notably with respect to the somewhat understandable notion that Kant was opposed to speculative metaphysics; but Kant's criterion for objective validity undermines this closed-to-speculative-metaphysics interpretation. As a science in the Kantian sense this work (in this latest edition there is a 2/3 page abstract diagram of the science that makes it more conceptually clear) offers an opportunity for those inclined to shy away from speculative metaphysics to reexamine their interpretations. The objectives are as Kant mentions in the introduction to his CPR: God, Freedom, and Immortality; and that these problems can be dealt with rationally can be seen in this work; and without fear of violating Kant's justifiable strictures, the main one being that where anything offered in the name of pure reason is concerned, it must be such that it helps us to make sense of our phenomenal world. And as to Kant's prerequisite: "How are synthetic cognitions, a priori possible?" I refer to my essay "Beyond Kant and Hegel ..." in "The Review of Metaphysics", March 2013. The premise advanced in the essay is the same as in this booklet. This first part forms the groundwork for the second part, "Rational Theism, Part Two: The Problem of Evil, and God's Omnibenevolence (A Biblical Exegesis)," which notwithstanding its title, is philosophically grounded as a dissertation that can stand on its own. This secondary work is not secondary in importance, but primary in that it provides a rational answer to the problem of evil; and that answer can be found in the pages of the Bible. It is an answer that has escaped the notice of theologians and apologists and philosophers who have sought for an answer to the problem outside the sacred texts wherein the sole answer to the problem can be found, at least for anyone who cares to examine the relevant texts with care and attention. In this short work there are over five dozen scriptures taken into account that support the answer given; and the answer is both very clear, and rational. (shrink)

No evangelistic erroneous network of ideas can guarantee the satisfaction of these two demands : (1) propagate the network without revision and (2) completely insulate itself against losses in credibility and adherents through criticism. If a network of ideas is false, or inconsistent or fails to solve its intended problem, or unfeasible, or is too costly in terms of necessarily forsaken goals, its acceptability may be undermined given only true assumptions and valid arguments. People prefer to adopt ideologies that (i) (...) are logically consistent, (ii) are more truth-like and of higher information content than their rivals, (iii) are systematically organised, (iv) solve their problems better than their rivals, (v) do not contain unfeasible demands, and (vi) do not contain uneconomic demands. Truth and validity therefore act as Darwinian-like filters on ideologies. Using Popper's notion of situational analysis and with reference to Darwinian evolution, considered as a special case of the former, and Bartley's theory of comprehensively critical rationalism I argue that a propagandist cannot guarantee his message or his movement from sound criticism. All positions are in a methodological sense open to argument. Moreover, the logic of a propagandist's situation constrains him into making his message and himself open to criticism in order to maximize its chances of being propagated through the population. But he then loses control of the message in two respects. Firstly, his audience are disposed to select from the competing ideas they encounter those that satisfy (i) to (vi) because of man's evolutionary history. Secondly, he cannot guarantee protection from criticism even a privileged section of his message because he cannot predict in a systematic way what logical repercussions each protective reformulation of the ideology will have on other sections of the ideology and what criticism the ideology will encounter. He cannot do the latter because of certain logical properties of theories that endow them with unfathomable depths. Marxism and Freudianism serve as case studies, especially for the analysis of Popper's notion of the immunizing stratagem, a methodological/logical device that is supposed to save theories from criticism. "Immunizing stratagems" either abandon the ideology they are meant to protect or seriously lower its chances of being reproduced. (shrink)

In the film classic Blade Runner, the story explores the notion of personal identity through that of carefully crafted androids. Can an android have a personality; can androids be persons? The title of the original story by Philip K. Dick is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The story suggests that our sense of being a person depends on our having memories that connect us with our childhood. In the movie, the androids are only a couple of years old, but (...) have adult bodies. To complete them as persons they are given simulated memories of childhood. Some psychiatrists have decided that even humans dream only of electric sheep. I explore how Popper’s world 3 can help to defend a notion of personhood that can be used to criticize the thesis that persons are simply complex physical processes and that all their serious life-problems can be conceptualised as a form of physical illness. (shrink)

"Let you see, whether it can help you- on topic of discussion..I cannot claim I am right, but I can suggest you.." LET PEOPLE DECIDE ON THE LANGUAGE, ON TOPIC OF DISCUSSION. ( http://philpapers.org/profile/112741 ).

I propose that meat replacement is to meat, as drag is to gender. Meat replacement has the potential to shake concepts of meat, like drag does for gender. Meat replacements not only mimic meat but disclose how meat itself is performed in carnivorous culture -and show that it may be performed otherwise. My approach is inspired by the show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The argument builds on an imitation of Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity, performed by replacing ‘drag/ gender/ sex/ (...) heterosexism’ terms and relations in Butler’s text with ‘meat replacement/ meat/ species/ carnism’ ones. (shrink)

I propose that the intensification of meat production ironically makes meat concepts available to be populated by plants. I argue that what I call “technologies of effacement” facilitate the intensification of animal farming and slaughter by blocking face-to-face encounters between animals and people (Levinas 1969; Efstathiou 2018, 2019). My previous ethnographic work on animal research identifies technologies of effacement as including (a) architectures and the built environment, (b) entry and exit rules, (c) special garments, (d) naming and labeling procedures, and (...) (e) protocols for handling animals (Efstathiou 2018, 2019). Building on ethnographic research by Dawn Coppin (2003) and Nöellie Vialles (1994), in the United States and France respectively, I propose that (a) Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) buildings, gestation, and farrowing crates; (b) rules for entering and exiting the slaughterhouse; (c) white slaughterhouse garments; (d) unique identification systems; and (e) “trapping” animals before stunning can all operate as technologies of effacement. Though developed to serve other manifest aims, like hygiene, expediency, or safety, these technologies operate to sustain routine, inviting one to look at animals as tokens of a known type while blocking encounters between humans and animals (and also among animals) as radically different, morally significant Others (Efstathiou 2018, 2019). (shrink)

The poem, has also highlighted the theme of isolation. The Darkling Thrush is the symbol of perseverance. Men at times is all by himself. There is none around. The frail, gaunt, aged , weather-beaten bird has stood against all odds. There is an air of self doubt and the poet is in a dilemma how to welcome the advent of a new era. It has endured all the odds of time and is happy today singing its joyful song.

"ON DEMAND OF A PUBLISHING HOUSE IN GERMANY, I WAS ASKED TO WRITE ON SCIENTIFIC METHODS THAT I HAD imbibed ON WRITING THE DOCUMENT" [Thanks to accept my work Christopher Marlowe's Edward The Second from Presidency College,Kolkata of interest to international audience] .

This chapter proposes that encountering the Other through the face can be conditioned by social and built technologies. In “The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights,” Emmanuel Levinas relates his experience as a prisoner of war, held in a forced-labor camp in Nazi Germany. He contrasts being denied his humanity by other humans, “called free” (DF, 152), while being recognized as human—indeed as a friend—by a dog the prisoners named Bobby. The episode suggests that though the concept of the (...) face applies to humans, the face is not enough for facing, at least not in the setting of the camp. By contrast, the prisoners seem able to face and be faced by Bobby, even if Levinas remains inconclusive about whether the face applies to animals elsewhere. It follows that the face is operating less like a property, and more like a capacity, a mode as Levinas calls it. But what conditions encountering an Other in this mode? If the face is neither sufficient for facing, nor prior to it, then what conditions facing (or effacing)? I propose that social structures, techniques, architectures, professional roles, and so on matter in coming to face (or efface) the Other. I conclude this from analyzing human-animal encounters in a scientific space of exception: the animal lab. Building on empirical accounts of animal research, I propose that animal research is populated by what I call “technologies of effacement.” These include: (1) built architectures; (2) entering and exit procedures; (3) protective garments and equipment; (4) identification and labeling techniques; and (5) experimental protocols. These technologies serve other manifest ends, but they operate to condition encounters between humans and animals in the lab: they help block the face of humans and animals. (shrink)