Received traditions of Prajñāpāramitā interpretation embrace a hermeneutic in which truth and falsehood are one and the same. This philosophy has deep roots in Indian Buddhism, and it gained prominence in Europe and her colonies through the writings of D. T. Suzuki and his devotee, Edward Conze. It is relatively easy to show that the “contradictions” that form the main axiom of their reading are the result of misunderstanding the texts they relied on. Having done this I discuss a new (...) way of understanding Prajñāpāramitā which shifts the emphasis towards an epistemological reading along the lines of Sue Hamilton’s epistemic approach to Pāli texts. I show how Prajñāpāramitā makes sense in relation to a particular type of meditation practice that aimed to bring about the cessation of sensory experience leaving the meditator in a state of contentless awareness which early Buddhists called suññatāvihāra, “dwelling in [the] absence [of sensory experience].”. (shrink)

This article investigates the original meaning of dependent arising in the Buddha’s teaching, by focussing on the imasmi" sati formula. Modern scholars such as the Rhys Davidses, K.N. Jayatilleke and Paul Williams have interpreted it as a princi- ple of causation, comparable to a scientific conception of causation. I argue instead that this formula implies that the Buddha held that causation is nothing more than the correlation of causes and effects, and that it commits the Buddha to a Humean regularity (...) thesis about causation. I draw a distinction between the Buddhist and scientific concepts of causation, and then summarise an alternative approach made by more recent scholars such as Sue Hamilton, Noa Ronkin and Eviatar Shulman, who present dependent arising in terms of conditionality in the causal structure of subjective experience. I conclude by presenting the argument that the imasmi" sati formula does not express a principle of causation but is rather a formula for the method of discovering and presenting causation as conditionality in experience. (shrink)

Connections between Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra and Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra suggest a new interpretation of an important passage in the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya or Heart Sutra. I am able to show that the four phrases exemplified by “form is emptiness” were once a reference to the well-known simile, “Form is like an illusion” (rūpam māyopamam). As the Prajñāpāramitā corpus expanded, the simile became a metaphor, “form is illusion”. It was then deliberately altered by exchanging “illusion” for “emptiness”, leading to the familiar phrases. This connection opens the door (...) to reading the Heart Sutra, and the early Prajñāpāramitā sutras more generally, along the lines of Sue Hamilton’s (2000) epistemological approach to the Pāḷi suttas; i.e. as focussed on experience and particularly the meditative experience known in the Pāḷi suttas as dwelling in emptiness (suññatā-vihāra). In this view, the Heart Sutra makes sense on its own terms without having to invoke paradox or mysticism. (shrink)

L’osservazione della natura con l’intento di capire l’origine della varietà di forme e fenomeni in cui si manifesta ha origini remote. All’inizio il rapporto con i fenomeni naturali era dominato da sentimenti quali paura e stupore che conducevano a supporre l’esistenza di entità sfuggenti alla percezione diretta che permeavano gli elementi animandoli. Ecco dunque che la magia rappresenta l’elemento dominante della filosofia naturale primitiva caratterizzata da una unicità degli eventi e dalla impossibilità di capirli e dominarli in quanto frutto della (...) volontà di essenze a noi estranee e non governabili. Con il nascere della civiltà ed il suo progredire il tempo dedicato ai lavori necessari per il sostentamento e la sopravvivenza diminuì e nella ripartizione dei compiti alcuni individui potevano dedicare parte del loro tempo alla osservazione della natura ed alla sua interpretazione in termini non trascendenti. Nella natura, intesa come tutto ciò che ci circonda composto da esseri viventi e da materia inorganica nelle sua varie aggregazioni sulla terra e nel cosmo, ciò che attirò l’attenzione fin dall’inizio furono furono i fenomeni regolari e periodici come i moti della luna, dei pianeti e delle stelle. Nel contempo dopo una spinta iniziale dettata da esigenze pratiche come contare gli oggetti o misurare i campi, la matematica si era sviluppata autonomamente e si rivelò idonea a descrivere in termini quantitativi i moti dei corpi celesti. La terra era al centro dell’universo mentre il moto degli altri corpi celesti risultava da una composizione di moti circolari uniformi. Questa visione geocentrica e pitagorica (armonia delle sfere) dell’universo ha prevalso fino agli albori della scienza moderna, anche se una descrizione eliocentrica, basata su validi argomenti, era stata proposta. Per quanto riguarda la struttura della materia i presocratici avevano già proposto i quattro elementi mentre gli atomisti avevano ricondotto tutto ad entità elementari primigenie, il cui aggregarsi e disgregarsi da luogo a tutti gli stati e le molteplici forme della materia. Queste intuizioni si ritrovano nella fisica moderna che contempla quattro stati di aggregazione, che hanno come unico sostrato comune gli atomi. La fisica moderna nasce con Galileo e Newton, la cui dinamica si sviluppa a partire dalle leggi di Keplero che descrivono il moto dei pianeti nel sistema eliocentrico, per potersi poi applicare ad un qualunque sistema materiale. Pertanto nei due secoli successivi si ritenne che un modello meccanico potesse essere sviluppato per un qualunque sistema fisico e quindi per l’universo intero la cui evoluzione doveva essere matematicamente prevedibile. Per i fenomeni termici tuttavia vennero formulate leggi ad hoc come quelle della termodinamica che mostrano come i processi macroscopici siano irreversibili in contrasto con le leggi della meccanica. Si deve a Boltzmann1 il tentativo di ricondurre la termodinamica alla meccanica per un gran numero di particelle dei cui moti disordinati viene data una lettura di carattere statistico. L’aumento della entropia e la irreversibilità seguono dalla ipotesi di caos molecolare ossia che i moti siano così disordinati che si perde rapidamente memoria dello stato iniziale. L’idea di introdurre una misura di probabilità nel contesto della meccanica sembra antitetica con la natura stessa della teoria rivolta fino ad allora allo studio di sistemi con moti regolari, reversibili e prevedibili individualmente su tempi lunghi. Tuttavia l’analisi probabilistica diventa essenziale per lo studio di sistemi caratterizzati da forti instabilità, e da orbite irregolari per i quali la previsione richiede una conoscenza della condizioni iniziali con precisioni fisicamente non raggiungibili. Combinando la evoluzione deterministica della meccanica di Newton o di Hamilton con la descrizione statistica attraverso una opportuna misura invariante di probabilità nello spazio delle fasi, nasce la teoria dei sistemi dinamici2 che consente di descrivere non solo i sistemi ordinati o i sistemi caotici ma anche tutti quelli che vedono coesistere in diverse proporzioni ordine e caos e che presentano una straordinaria varietà di strutture geometriche e proprietà statistiche, tanto da fornire almeno se non proprio un quadro teorico per lo meno metafore utili per la descrizione dei sistemi complessi. Anche se non c’è unanime consenso ci sembra appropriato definire complessi non tanto sistemi caratterizzati da interazioni non lineari tra i suoi componenti e da proprietà emergenti, che rientrano a pieno titolo nel quadro dei sistemi dinamici, ma piuttosto i sistemi viventi o quelli di vita artificiale che ne condividono le proprietà essenziali3. Tra queste possiamo certamente annoverare la capacità di gestire la informazione e di replicarsi, consentendo tramite un meccanismo di mutazione e selezione di dare origine a strutture di crescente ricchezza strutturale e dotate di capacità cognitive sempre più elaborate. Una teoria dei sistemi complessi non esiste ancora, anche se la teoria degli automi sviluppata da Von Neumann4 e la teoria della evoluzione di Darwin5 ne possono fornire alcuni pilastri importanti. Recentemente la teoria delle reti è stata utilizzata con successo per descrivere le proprietà statistiche delle connessioni tra gli elementi costitutivi (nodi) di un sistema complesso6. Le connessioni che non sono né completamente casuali né completamente gerarchiche, consentono una sufficiente robustezza rispetto a malfunzionamenti o danneggiamenti dei nodi unita a un adeguato livello di organizzazione per consentirne un funzionamento efficiente. Nei sistemi fisici il modello base è un insieme di atomi o molecole interagenti, che danno luogo a strutture diverse quali un gas, un liquido o un cristallo, come risultato di proprietà emergenti. Nello stesso modo per i sistemi complessi possiamo proporre un sistema automi interagenti come modello base. Le molteplici forme che il sistema assume anche in questo caso vanno considerate come proprietà emergenti del medesimo sostrato al mutare delle condizioni esterne e frutto delle i replicazioni, ciascuna delle quali introduce piccole ma significative varianti. Questa è la grande differenza tra un sistema fisico ed un sistema complesso: il primo fissate le condizioni esterne ha sempre le medesime proprietà, il secondo invece cambia con il fluire del tempo perché la sua organizzazione interna muta non solo al cambiare di fattori ambientali ma anche con il succedersi delle generazioni. C’è dunque un flusso di informazione che cresce con il tempo e che consente agli automi costituenti ed alla intera struttura di acquisire nuove capacità. Questo aumento di ordine e ricchezza strutturale avviene naturalmente a spese dell’ambiente circostante, in modo che globalmente i la sua entropia cresce in accordo con la seconda legge della termodinamica. In assenza di una teoria formalizzata paragonabile a quella dei sistemi dinamici, per i sistemi complessi si possono fare osservazioni e misure, sia puntuali sui costituenti elementari e sulle loro connessioni, sia globali sull’intero sistema, oppure costruire modelli suscettibili di essere validati attraverso la simulazione. Se di un sistema si riesce infatti a fornire una descrizione sufficientemente dettagliata, è poi possibile osservare come questo si comporti traducendo le regole in algoritmi e costruendo quindi una versione virtuale, anche se semplificata del sistema stesso. Il passaggio più difficile è il confronto tra il sistema simulato ed il sistema vero, che passa necessariamente attraverso la valutazione di una numero limitato di parametri che ne caratterizzino e proprietà. La codifica del progetto è una proprietà cruciale dei sistemi complessi perché questa si realizza con un dispendio di massa ed energia incomparabilmente più piccolo rispetto a quello necessario per realizzare l’intera struttura; nello stesso tempo apportare piccole modifiche ad un progetto è rapido ed economico. In questo processo che comporta la continua introduzione di varianti si aprono molteplici strade e con lo scorrere del tempo si realizza una storia in modo unico e irripetibile. Anche il susseguirsi di eventi fisici caratterizzati da processi irreversibili e dalla presenza di molteplici biforcazioni da origine ad una storia che non si può percorrere a ritroso, né riprodurre qualora fossimo in grado ripartire dalle stesse condizioni iniziali. Tuttavia esiste una differenza profonda tra la storia di un sistema fisico come il globo terrestre e la storia della vita. La prima registra i molteplici cambiamenti che ha subito la superficie del nostro pianeta ove montagne e mari nascono e scompaiono senza un chiaro disegno soggiacente. La storia della vita è caratterizzata da una progressiva crescita della ricchezza strutturale e funzionale e accompagnata da una crescita della complessità progettuale. La rappresentazione di questa storia prende la forma di un albero con le sue ramificazioni che mostra la continua diversificazione delle strutture e la loro evoluzione verso forme sempre più avanzate. La direzione in cui scorre il tempo è ben definita: le strutture affinano le capacità sensoriali mentre cresce la potenza degli organi che elaborano la informazione. Un sistema complesso è anche caratterizzato da un molteplicità di scale, tanto più alta quanto più si sale sulla scala evolutiva. La ragione è che il procedere verso strutture sempre più elaborate avviene utilizzando altre strutture come mattoni per cui l’immagine che si può fornire è quella di una rete di automi a più strati: partendo dal basso una rete con le sue proprietà emergenti diventa il nodo di una rete di secondo livello, cioè un automa di secondo livello che interagisce con altri automi dello stesso tipo e così via. Nei sistemi inorganici, dove non esiste un progetto, si distinguono di norma solo due livelli, quello dei costituenti elementari e quello su scala macroscopica. I sistemi fisici sono riconducibili a poche leggi universali, che governano i costituenti elementari della materia, ma il passaggio dalla descrizione dalla piccola alla grande scala è impervio e consentito soltanto dalla simulazione numerica, quando ci allontaniamo dalle situazioni più semplici caratterizzate da un equilibrio statistico. I limiti che il disegno riduzionista incontra già per i sistemi fisici diventano decisamente più forti nel caso dei sistemi complessi. (shrink)

I argue that religion knows rapture and philosophy doesn't.

Drawing on recent developments in dialogic approaches to learning and teaching, I examine the roots of dialogic meaning-making as a concept in classroom practices. Developments in the field of dialogic pedagogy are reviewed and the case for dialogic engagement as an approach to classroom interaction is considered. The implications of dialogic classroom approaches are discussed in the context of educational research and classroom practice. Dialogic practice is contrasted with monologic practices as evidenced by the resilient of the IRF as the (...) default discourse structure in classrooms. Recent evidence suggests the IRF is resistant to attempts to introduce interactive approaches to whole class teaching. Discussion of dialogic practice as a vehicle for increasing pupil engagement at a deep level and raising the quality of classroom interaction is illustrated through a consideration of Philosophy for Children, which is identified as a dialogic approach to classroom practice which has transformative potential for children's learning. Philosophy for Children offers an approach to pedagogy which enables teachers to value pupil voice and promote reflective learning. As such it has much to offer the current debate on dialogic teaching and learning. Research evidence suggests it will promote improved pupil outcomes on a range of assessments. (shrink)

Considers Goethe's Italienische Reise in regard to Adorno's notion of "late style," with especial focus on the role of Ovid's poetry in the work.

Relationships with international students can be beneficial to higher education in terms of financial and human resources. For this reason, establishing and maintaining such relationships are usually pre-eminent concerns. In this study, we extended the application of the disconfirmation expectation model by incorporating components from subjective task value to predict the loyalty of international students toward their host countries. On a sample of 410 Vietnamese students enrolled in establishments of higher education in over 15 countries across the globe, we employed (...) structural equation model to construct the conceptual model. Our empirical findings revealed that while the roles of satisfaction and disconfirmation are still important as direct and indirect antecedents of international student loyalty, its most powerful predictors are the three components of subjective task value: attainment, utility and intrinsic. These insights result in a number of implications for actors on the higher ducation scene, such as heads of institutions and policy makers. (shrink)

Many philosophers in the analytic tradition have recently sought to explore the question of the meaning of life. In the first part of this paper I subject two important approaches from this tradition – those of John Cottingham and Susan Wolf - to criticism. I then suggest that Cottingham and Wolf articulate certain assumptions about the meaning of life that are widely shared amongst analytic philosophers. I go on to subject those assumptions to criticism and seek to develop an alternative (...) approach to the question, one that is largely overlooked in the contemporary literature. (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine Iris Murdoch’s views about art. We highlight continuities and differences between her views on art and aesthetics, and those of Plato, Kant, and Freud. We argue that Murdoch’s views about art, though traditionally linked to Plato, are more compatible with Kant’s thought than has been acknowledged—though with his ethics rather than his aesthetics. Murdoch shows Plato’s influence in her idea that beauty is the good in a different guise. However, Murdoch shows a more Kantian than (...) Platonic influence in her suggestion that the experience of beauty can be conducive to virtue, and distances herself from Plato in her claim that the enjoyment, as well as the production, of certain kinds of art can be virtuous. We also argue that her view of bad art as self-consoling fantasy is consonant with Freudian thought. Lastly, we question her view of bad art, specifically concerning her identification of bad art as self-consoling fantasy or entertainment, and her separation of the latter and good art. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible with Happy’s personhood.

This research focuses on Schizophrenia and Clairaudience that is part of doctoral research for a Doctorate of Metaphysical Sciences at the University of Metaphysics. The mental illness known as Schizophrenia has been known for centuries. There are various symptoms associated with this mental illness upon which a diagnosis is based. The exact causes of the mental illness Schizophrenia remain unknown, as does the actual part of the individual which is effect by the illness. The most prominent and definable symptom of (...) Schizophrenia remains to be auditory hallucinations. Another explanation for individual's being able to hear voices, is that of clairaudience, a psychic ability. Clairaudient ability has a positive connotation upon the ability to hear voices, whereas the diagnosis of Schizophrenia is most commonly treated with pharmaceutical drugs to reduce or eliminate symptoms. This paper involves information about Schizophrenia, how it is perceived and treated. It also discusses various views of clairaudience, and how it is effective and manageable. A new approach is required to the medical industry when individuals are being treated for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Zizek's concept of ideology in his work on the Sublime of Ideology. His account on this connotes that people are basing only in the conscious state without considering the unconscious "I." This framework in psychology has led Zizek to relate it in the process of economics which is greatly manifested in the contradictory poles of the oppressor and the oppressed and its relationship to the process of commodities. Looking into this orientation, this leaves the (...) author to incorporate the ideological character of Zizek through the lens of Anti-Terrorism Law which is not seen in the naked eye. (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

Despite distinguishing two very different notions of what time may be, the A and B theories of time inherently share an assumption in definition which has excluded a third field of possible explanation from being recognised and explored. In order to prove this rather grandiose proposition I will introduce a distinction between theories of resulting time and theories of non-resulting time. The clear articulation of why of this distinction is valid will be established by the method of reduction with regards (...) to the construction and evolution of the definition of time in the physics of Aristotle and Einstein. This method reveals precisely the assumption in definition that has been made and carried forth in the defining of time in B theory, and also what has been forgone, being non-resulting theories of time. After such analysis and illustration of the proposed distinction with regards to B theory, it will be obvious that A theories of time dually share the assumption in definition. Thus having established that this distinction is very much real and that nearly all work in the philosophy and physics of time has thus far fallen into theories of resulting time, I will then demonstrate why new theories of non-resulting time could at the very least ‘quasi-solve’ some of the irreconcilable conflictions that have arisen within opposing theories of resulting time, using as example the A theorists/Presentist’s conflict with Special Relativity. (shrink)

The environment can elicit biological responses such as oxidative stress (OS) and inflammation as a consequence of chemical, physical, or psychological changes. As population studies are essential for establishing these environment-organism interactions, biomarkers of OS or inflammation are critical in formulating mechanistic hypotheses. By using examples of stress induced by various mechanisms, we focus on the biomarkers that have been used to assess OS and inflammation in these conditions. We discuss the difference between biomarkers that are the result of a (...) chemical reaction (such as lipid peroxides or oxidized proteins that are a result of the reaction of molecules with reactive oxygen species) and those that represent the biological response to stress, such as the transcription factor NRF2 or inflammation and inflammatory cytokines. The high-throughput and holistic approaches to biomarker discovery used extensively in large-scale molecular epidemiological exposome are also discussed in the context of human exposure to environmental stressors. We propose to consider the role of biomarkers as signs and to distinguish between signs that are just indicators of biological processes and proxies that one can interact with and modify the disease process. (shrink)

In this brief, we argue that there is a diversity of ways in which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals. To do so we describe and assess the four most prominent conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can be found in the rulings concerning Kiko and Tommy, with particular focus on the most recent decision, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc v Lavery.

Recent fndings illustrate how changes in consciousness accommodated by neural correlates and plasticity of the brain advance a model of perceptual change as a function of meditative practice. During the mindbody response neural correlates of changing awareness illustrate how the autonomic nervous system shifts from a sympathetic dominant to a parasympathetic dominant state. Expansion of awareness during the practice of meditation techniques can be linked to the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network of brain regions that is active when the (...) one is not focused on the outside world and the brain is restful yet awake (Chen et al., 2008). A model is presented illustrating the dynamic mindbody response before and after mindfulness meditation, and connections are made with prefrontal cortex activity, the cardiac and respiratory center, the thalamus and amygdala, the DMN and cortical function connectivity. The default status of the DMN changes corresponding to autonomic modulation resulting from meditation practice. (shrink)

This pre-registered study (osf[dot]io/b9g6v) tested the hypothesis that implicit biases towards people with visible facial differences, like scars and palsies, can be reduced through routine exposure to faces bearing such anomalous features. Participants’ implicit biases were measured before and after they completed one of two exposure interventions—to people with facial anomalies, or to people of color (POC). The interventions were delivered remotely using a custom mobile phone application and consisted of two sessions per day over 5 consecutive days. Each session (...) began with exposure to 10 face photographs (anomalous or POC) followed by another person’s face (anomalous or POC) presented alongside a moral exemplar story ostensibly about them. After receiving the anomalous faces intervention, implicit biases against anomalous faces were significantly reduced but implicit biases against POC were not affected. The POC intervention did not have a targeted effect on bias against people of color, instead reducing biases against both people with visible differences and POC. Reductions in implicit biases were positively associated with perspective taking ratings made during the intervention. These findings suggest that exposure to people with facial anomalies, especially exposure that elicits perspective taking, can reduce implicit biases towards them in a targeted fashion. (shrink)

We are currently witnessing a renewal of broad public interest in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton – justly famed as an American founder. This volume examines the possible present-day significance of the man, noting that this is not the first revival of interest in the statesman. Hamilton was a major background figure in the GOP politics of the Gilded Age, with the powerful US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. drawing on Hamilton to inspire a new, (...) assertive American role in the world. Hamilton was first prominent as a soldier and aide to General Washington, and believed in centralization of power in the federal government and an energetic presidency. He founded the American financial system as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and was a great moving force of America’s first nationalist-conservative party – the Federalists. As shown here, close scholarly attention to Lodge’s biography brings out the darker sides of the celebrated hero. Hamilton’s deeper conviction was the need of an elitist “aristocratic republic,” and he was an advocate of military-commercial empire. The Gilded Age Hamilton revival helped inspire the Spanish-American war of 1898 and an American overseas empire. This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to look at the differential (as in interventionist) readings undertaken by speculative realists (A school of contemporary thought reacting against post-Kantian 'Correlationism') Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier, with the former concentrating on reading Schelling's naturalism relating to reason, while the latter claiming the constancy of thought's connection to thought. For Brassier, thought must be transcendentally separate from nature, or what he calls 'exteriority', and Grant insists on nature's thinking as plain nature. This doesn't (...) mean 'interiority' is given weight in Grant's thought, but, on the contrary isn't a concern, as for him, the limiting factor of thinking (dichotomy in subject-object relationality) is the regionality of a particular identity attempting to grasp nature's infintude. Brassier maintains scientific statements as capable of supplying reasons for believing in the possibilities of determining thought's tracking and missing nature. He accomplishes this by clarifying notions of concept and distinguishing objects from concepts. This alien-ness of thought generates the possibilities of questioning the human production as against nature. This cardinal issue tries to answer the repercussions probably generated in the wake of either apathetic aspects of mind or the deepest powers of speculation. Not only that, a simultaneous questioning of the legitimacy of ontology and epistemology in the natural world is encountered. Grant advocates the objectifying of the self to grasp the productivity of self's thinking, but at the same time considering objectifying as an ongoing process, a kind of 'becoming'. In other words, it is the questioning of the limits of 'being' in the creation of episteme that takes precedence in Grant. Brassier on the other hand is concerned with the doing away of the dichotomy of being and thinking of meaning. This tension raises the issue of nature philosophy in a duel of 'eliminativism' and 'materialism', between the extent that calls for grounding nature without reliance on a structure undermining the discovery of contemporary science or supporting an anthropic view. (shrink)

La sincronicità, è “la simultaneità di un certo stato psichico con uno o più eventi esterni che paiono paralleli significativi della condizione momentaneamente soggettiva” (Jung, 1952). C.G.Jung e il fisico quantistico premio Nobel, W. Pauli, ci introducono con tale concettualizzazione in un mondo, nel quale ciò che è interno e ciò che è esterno a noi non è così nettamente definito, mondo nel quale le “coincidenze” non sono più tali, ma rivestono un significato ed un’importanza per la nostra psiche, per (...) la nostra vita. Se un bambino mentre gioca sulla riva di un fiume, vi cade e rischia di venire trascinato dalla corrente, e nello stesso momento sua madre dall’altra parte della città è preda di un’angoscia che l’attanaglia e grida: “il mio bambino!”, siamo in presenza di un evento sincronistico, nel senso della definizione di Jung sopracitata. Noi crediamo, sulla scia di Jung e Pauli che la sincronicità possa essere un possibile principio esplicativo della realtà da affiancare alla causalità, per Pauli vi sono nella realtà sia elementi razionali sia irrazionali ed è quindi impossibile per la fisica dire l’ultima parola sulla realtà, visto che quest’ultima è così complessa. L’attuazione dei fenomeni sincronistici è fuori dalla portata di qualsiasi tipo di previsione razionale, l’evento sincronistico non è riproducibile ed è in qualche modo l’emblema dell’aspetto non razionale della realtà, e come detto, insieme alla più consueta logica causalistica, (ad esempio, una mela su un albero quando è matura può anche cadere), danno una visione più completa della realtà. E questa visione più completa era l’intento di Jung nell’approcciare questi fenomeni: “Cercare di aprire una via verso “l’animazione della materia” a partire dall’assunzione che “ciò che esiste sia dotato di senso”…” ( Pauli e Jung 1992, lettera n.59 di Jung, p. 100). (shrink)

The article argues for the variant ‘tractabimus’ in Book 8, ch. 1 of Augustine’s De Trinitate as opposed to the reading ‘tractavimus’ adopted in the Corpus Christianorum edition, and explains the implications of this variant for the understanding of the overall structure of the work.

The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of New Realism in its opposition and reaction to Postmodernism. An analysis of the implications of both philosophical approaches in diverse fields will be offered, from epistemology, to politics, to ethics. Ethical new realism is presented as particularly promising and important to the future of philosophy.

In this pages the author suggests a spiritual interpretation of Jungian epistemology as a way towards authenticity. He also argues that Martin Heidegger's philosophy and panpsychism can confirm the possibility offered by Jung - with his alchemical - archetypical description of human nature - to achieve a deeper and more authentic awareness of our existence.

Paolo Barbò da Soncino conosciuto anche come il „Soncinas" (Soncinate) fu un domenicano italiano, filosofo e teologo tomista. Visse durante il periodo del rinascimento italiano nel XV secolo tra Bologna e Milano, morto a Cremona nel 1495. La suo apiù importante opera è proprio il commento alla Metafisica di Aristotele (Acutissimae quaestiones metaphysicales, 1 ed. Venezia 1498) che rappresenta una particolare sintesi del commentatore arabo Averrè, Tommaso d'Aquino, Erveo Natale († 1323) e Giovanni Capreolo († 1444). L'opera filosofica del Soncinate (...) era spesso discusso tra il XVI e XVII secolo. Il libro offre la prima biografia scientifica dell'autore in italiano, e l'edizione critica del suo commento al IV libro della Metafica di Aristotele in latino. -/- Paolo Barbò da Soncino called "Soncinas" was an Italian Dominican, Thomist philosopher and theologian. His life and work fall within the ambit of Italian Renaissance Thomism of the fifteenth century, between Bologna and Milano, died in 1495 in Cremona. His principal work, the exposition of Aristotle's Metaphysics, (Acutissimae quaestiones metaphysicales 1 ed. Venice 1498) proceeds from a particular synthesis of the Arabic commentator Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323), and John Capreolus (d. 1444). Soncinas' work and position were frequently discussed from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. This study offers the first scientific biography, description and analysis of the method, sources and doctrine of Soncinas, in particular the critical Latin edition of the 4th book of his Acutissimae Quaestiones Metaphysicales (the exposition of Aristotle's Metaphysics). (shrink)

I consider James Hamilton’s discussion of what I term the complete autonomy thesis, according to which no theatrical performance is a performance of some other work. While agreeing with Hamilton that theatrical performances are often artworks in their own right and that theatrical performance is not a derivative or subsidiary art form, I argue that the complete autonomy thesis overshoots the evidence. Some theatrical performances are autonomous, but many belong to an established tradition of close adherence to the (...) texts of dramatic literature. In such cases, we should say both that the performance itself is an artwork and that it is a performance of some literary work. I suggest that this way of understanding things promotes appreciation of both performances themselves and the dramatic works of literature that are employed in their creation. (shrink)

This PhD dissertation examines the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the most general and most widely used framework for understanding social evolution, W. D. Hamilton's theory of kin selection. While the core idea is intuitive enough (when organisms share genes, they sometimes have an evolutionary incentive to help one another), its apparent simplicity masks a host of conceptual subtleties, and the theory has proved a perennial source of controversy in evolutionary biology. To move towards a resolution of these controversies, (...) we need a careful and rigorous analysis of the philosophical foundations of the theory. My aim in this work is to provide such an analysis. I begin with an examination of the concepts behavioural ecologists employ to describe and classify types of social behaviour. I stress the need to distinguish concepts that are often conflated: for example, we need to distinguish simple cooperation from collaboration in collective tasks, behaviours from strategies, and control from manipulation and coercion. I proceed from here to the formal representation of kin selection via George R. Price’s covariance selection mathematics. I address a number of interpretative issues the Price formalism raises, including the vexed question of whether kin selection theory is ‘formally equivalent’ to multi-level selection theory. In the second half of the dissertation, I assess the uses and limits of Hamilton’s rule for the evolution of social behaviour; I provide a precise statement of the conditions under which the rival neighbour-modulated fitness and inclusive fitness approaches in contemporary kin selection theory are equivalent (and describe cases in which they are not); and I criticize recent formal attempts to establish the controversial claim that kin selection leads to organisms behaving as if maximizing their inclusive fitness. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile critics and defenders of inclusive fitness by constructing a synthesis that does justice to the insights of both. I argue that criticisms of the regression-based version of Hamilton’s rule, although they undermine its use for predictive purposes, do not undermine its use as an organizing framework for social evolution research. I argue that the assumptions underlying the concept of inclusive fitness, conceived as a causal property of an individual organism, are unlikely to be exactly (...) true in real populations, but they are approximately true given a specific type of weak selection that Hamilton took, on independent grounds, to be responsible for the cumulative assembly of complex adaptation. Finally, I reflect on the uses and limitations of “design thinking” in social evolution research. The debate about the foundations of inclusive fitness theory that has followed in the wake of Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson’s (1) critique has been remarkably polarizing. After several rounds of rebuttals and replies, there is still little evidence of any serious reconciliation between the theory’s critics (2-10) and its defenders (11-24). It doesn’t have to be this way. I believe that, on the main points of disagreement, it is possible to find a way forward that does justice to the insights of both camps. My aim in this paper is to find that way forward. (shrink)

It is discerned what light can bring the recent historical reconstructions of maxwellian optics and electromagnetism unification on the following philosophical/methodological questions. I. Why should one believe that Nature is ultimately simple and that unified theories are more likely to be true? II. What does it mean to say that a theory is unified? III. Why theory unification should be an epistemic virtue? To answer the questions posed genesis and development of Maxwellian electrodynamics are elucidated. It is enunciated that the (...) Maxwellian Revolution is a far more complicated phenomenon than it may be seen in the light of Kuhnian and Lakatosian epistemological models. Correspondingly it is maintained that maxwellian electrodynamics was elaborated in the course of the old pre-maxwellian programmes’ reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampére-Weber, the wave theory of Young-Fresnel and Faraday’s programme. To compare the different theoretical schemes springing from the different language games James Maxwell had constructed a peculiar neutral language. Initially it had encompassed the incompressible fluid models; eventually – the vortices ones. The three programmes’ encounter engendered the construction of the hybrid theory at first with an irregular set of theoretical schemes. However, step by step, on revealing and gradual eliminating the contradictions between the programmes involved, the hybrid set is “put into order” (Maxwell’s term). A hierarchy of theoretical schemes starting from ingenious crossbreeds (the displacement current) and up to usual hybrids is set up. After the displacement current construction the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes begins that marks the commencement of theoretical schemes of optics, electricity and magnetism real unification. Maxwell’s programme surpassed that of Ampére-Weber because it did absorb the ideas of the Ampére-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Young-Fresnel and Faraday properly co-ordinating them with each other. But the opposite statement is not true. The Ampére-Weber programme did not assimilate the propositions of the Maxwellian programme. Maxwell’s victory over his rivals became possible because the gist of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked in the light of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and Sir William Hamilton. Maxwell did put forward as basic synthetic principles the ideas that radically differed from that of Ampére-Weber approach by their open, flexible and contra-ontological, genuinly epistemological, Kantian character. For Maxwell, ether was not the ultimate building block of physical reality, from which all the charges and fields should be constructed. “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices”, etc. were contrived analogies for Maxwell, capable only to direct the researcher at the “right” mathematical relations. Key words: J.C. Maxwell, unification of optics and electromagnetism, I. Kant, T. Reid, W. Hamilton . (shrink)

Maxwellian electrodynamics genesis is considered in the light of the author’s theory change model previously tried on the Copernican and the Einstein revolutions. It is shown that in the case considered a genuine new theory is constructed as a result of the old pre-maxwellian programmes reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampere-Weber, the wave theory of Fresnel and Young and Faraday’s programme. The “neutral language” constructed for the comparison of the consequences of the theories from these programmes consisted in the language of (...) hydrodynamics with its rich content of analogous models ranging from the uncompressible fluid up to molecular vortices. The programmes’ meeting led to construction of the whole hierarchy of crossbred objects beginning from the displacement current and up to common hybrids. After that the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes began that marked the beginning of theoretical schemes of optics and electromagnetism unification. Maxwell’s programme did assimilate some ideas of the Ampere-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Fresnel and Faraday; and the significance of this fact for further methodology of scientific research programmes development is discussed. It is argued that the core of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked through the prism of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and William Hamilton. All these enabled Maxwell to start to unify not only optics and electromagnetism, but British and continental research traditions as well. Maxwell’s programme did supersede the Ampere-Weber one because Maxwell did put forward as a synthetic principle the idea, that differed from that of Ampere-Weber by its flexible and contra-ontological, strictly epistemological, Kantian character. For Maxwell, ether was not the last building block of physical reality, from which fields and charges should be constructed . “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices” were only analogies for Maxwell, capable to direct the researcher on the “right” mathematical relations. From the “representational” point of view all this hydrodynamical models were doomed to failure efforts to describe what can not be described in principle – things in themselves, the “nature” of electrical and magnetic phenomena. On the contrary, Maxwell aimed his programme to find empirically meaningful mathematical relations between the electrodynamics basic objects, i.e. the creation of inter - coordinated electromagnetic field equations system. Namely the application of this epistemology enabled Hermann von Helmholtz and his pupil Heinrich Hertz to arrive at such a version of Maxwell’s theory that served a heuristical basis for the radiowaves discovery. (shrink)

In his last book, Le complexe des trois singes. Essai sur l’animalité humaine (2017), the French philosopher Étienne Bimbenet accuses “sensocentric” (« pathocentristes ») animal ethics of committing a performative contradiction: according to Bimbenet, these theories of animal rights — among which he focuses on the case of Zoopolis (2011) by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka — would undermine themselves by means of declaring reason a “non-essential” feature of human beings, while at the same time those theories themselves can only (...) be understood as a highly rational human endeavour. As we will try to point out, the alleged performative contradiction does not actually take place. First of all, Donaldson and Kymlicka only describe reason as “non essential” when it comes to describing moral patients, not moral agents, and particularly not moral theoreticians. In the second place, Zoopolis presents itself explicitly as an effort in “articulating moral reasons” — not as a renouncement of reason as such. (shrink)

From mitochondria to meerkats, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. In the early 1960s W. D. Hamilton changed the way we think about how such behaviour evolves. He introduced three key innovations - now known as Hamilton's rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness - and his pioneering work kick-started a research program now known as social evolution theory. This is a book about the philosophical foundations and future prospects of that program. [Note: only (...) the Introduction is available to download.]. (shrink)

Genocide remembrance is a complex epistemological/ethical achievement, whereby survivors and descendants give meaning to the past in the quest for both personal-historical and social-historical truth. This paper offers an argument of epistemic injustice specifically as it occurs in relation to practices of (individual and collective) genocide remembrance. In particular, I argue that under conditions of genocide denialism, understood as collective genocide misremembrance and memory distortion, genocide survivors and descendants are confronted with hermeneutical oppression. Drawing on Sue Campbell’s relational, reconstructive account (...) of remembering, I argue that genocide denialism involves disrespectful challenges to memory, which systematically misrecognize rememberers. Adopting the case of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, I discuss two interrelated mechanisms through which this can happen: i) through the systematic portrayal of survivors and descendants as vicious rememberers, and ii) through distortions of the very concept of ‘genocide’. Based on this, I show how hermeneutical and testimonial injustice are crucially interrelated when it comes to “contested” memories of historical injustice and the biographical testimony it gives rise to. (shrink)

My main aim is to clarify what we mean by ‘look’ sentences such as (1) below – ones that we use to talk about visual experience: -/- (1) The ball looked red to Sue -/- This is to help better understand a part of natural language that has so far resisted treatment, and also to help better understand the nature of visual experience. -/- By appealing to general linguistic principles I argue for the following account. First, we use (1) to (...) talk about an event. Second, we use the verb ‘look’ to specify the kind of event about which we are talking – it is a looking event. Third, we use the subject ‘the ball’ to specify a stimulus of the event – something that looks some way in the event. Fourth, we use the adjunct ‘to Sue’ to specify an experiencer of the event – someone to whom things look some way in the event. Finally, we use the complement ‘red’ to specify a way of the event – a way in which the event occurs (I take ways of occurring to be properties of events). Which way do we use ‘red’ in (1) to specify? I argue: the maximally specific way w such that the following is generically true: looking events whose stimulus is red occur in way w (it is important that this is understood generically: this is what does much of the work in explaining our use of (1) and other ‘look’ sentences). Putting this together, what we mean by (1) is: there was a looking event whose stimulus was the ball, whose experiencer was Sue, and which occurred in the maximally specific way that looking events occur when their stimulus is red. -/- This account of how we use ‘red’ in (1) is one of the most interesting aspects of my thesis. It extends to an account of how we use ‘proud’ in ‘John walks proud’, ‘as if he is American’ in ‘John talks as if he is American’, ‘like a duck’ in ‘John sounds like a duck’, and so on. In each case we use the expression in question to specify a way: the maximally specific way proud people walk, the maximally specific way American people talk, and so on. So the study of ‘look’ sentences has much to tell us about the functioning of many other English language constructions, and suggests that ways have a significant role to play in the semantics of natural language – a fact that has not yet been sufficiently recognised by linguists or philosophers of language. -/- My thesis also has implications for the philosophy of perception. One of the central questions about perception is: What is the nature of visual experience? What is it, for example, for a ball to look red to Sue? My thesis offers an answer: What it is for the ball to look red to Sue is for whatever it is that we mean by ‘The ball looks red to Sue’ to be the case, and what we mean by ‘The ball looks red to Sue’ is that there is a looking event whose stimulus is the ball, whose experiencer is Sue, and which is occurring in a certain way. It thus delivers an adverbial account of visual experience, one that has the resources to better deal with problems that are traditionally thought to be decisive against adverbial accounts. (shrink)

Parts of the genome of a single individual can have conflicting interests, depending on which parent they were inherited from. One mechanism by which these conflicts are expressed in some taxa, including mammals, is genomic imprinting, which modulates the level of expression of some genes depending on their parent of origin. Imprinted gene expression is known to affect body size, brain size, and the relative development of various tissues in mammals. A high fraction of imprinted gene expression occurs in the (...) brain. Biologists including Hamilton, Trivers and Haig have proposed that this may explain some intrapersonal conflict in humans. This speculation amounts to an inference from conflict within the genome to conflict within the brain or mind. This is a provocative proposal, which deserves serious attention. In this paper I assess aspects of Haig’s version of the proposal. I argue, first, that the notion that intragenomic conflict predicts personal inconsistency should be rejected. Second, while it is unlikely that it credibly predicts sub-personal agents representing conflicting genetic interests, it is plausible that it predicts that the division of cognitive labour could be exploited to turn sub-systems into proxies for conflicting interests. (shrink)

Following the seminal work of Ingvar (1985. “Memory for the future”: An essay on the temporal organization of conscious awareness. Human Neurobiology, 4, 127–136), Suddendorf (1994. The discovery of the fourth dimension: Mental time travel and human evolution. Master’s thesis. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand), and Tulving (1985. Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 26, 1–12), exploration of the ability to anticipate and prepare for future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty has grown into a thriving research (...) enterprise. A fundamental tenet of this line of inquiry is that future-oriented mental time travel, in most of its presentations, is underwritten by a property or an extension of episodic recollection. However, a careful conceptual analysis of exactly how episodic memory functions in this capacity has yet to be undertaken. In this paper I conduct such an analysis. Based on conceptual, phenomenological, and empirical considerations,I conclude that the autonoetic component of episodic memory, not episodic memory per se, is the causally determinative factor enabling an individual to project him or herself into a personal future. (shrink)

In a study drawing from both evolutionary biology and the social sciences, evidence and argument is assembled in support of the comprehensive appli- cation of selfish gene theory to the human population. With a focus on genes giving rise to characteristically-human cooperation (“cooperative genes”) in- volving language and theory of mind, one may situate a whole range of pat- terned behaviour—including celibacy and even slavery—otherwise seeming to present insuperable difficulties. Crucially, the behaviour which tends to propa- gate the cooperative genes (...) may be “at cost” to the genes of some who may be party to the cooperation itself. Explanatory insights are provided by Trivers’ parent-offspring conflict theory, Lack’s principle, and Hamilton’s kin selec- tion mechanism. A primary observation is that cooperation using language and theory of mind is itself interdependent with full human conceptualization of a world of objects and of themselves as embodied beings. Human capaci- ties inhering in, or arising out of, the ability to cooperate are also responsible for a vitally important long-term process, the domestication of animals and p- lants. The approach illuminates the difference between animal and human sexual behaviour, and the emergence of kinship systems. Again, recent pat- terns of population growth become much more explicable. It is argued that the gene is the single controlling replicator; the notion of the meme as a sec- ond independent replicator is flawed. (shrink)

In order to handle presuppositions in the scope of attitude verbs, the binding theory allows presuppositions triggered in a subject's beliefs to be bound at the matrix level; and it allows presuppositions triggered in non-doxastic attitudes to be bound in the subject's beliefs (Geurts, 1999; Maier, 2015). However, we argue that this leads to serious overgeneration, for example it predicts that the unacceptable `Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that she won't and that only Sue will (...) come to the party' should be equivalent to the acceptable `Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that nobody will come to the party'. This is because the presupposition triggered by `only Sue will come to the party' should be able to be bound at the matrix level. We discuss some responses to this problem, but argue that they all have shortcomings. (shrink)

Microaggressions are seemingly negligible slights that can cause significant damage to frequently targeted members of marginalized groups. Recently, Scott O. Lilienfeld challenged a key platform of the microaggression research project: what’s aggressive about microaggressions? To answer this challenge, Derald Wing Sue, the psychologist who has spearheaded the research on microaggressions, needs to theorize a spectrum of aggression that ranges from intentional assault to unintentional microaggressions. I suggest turning to Bonnie Mann’s “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies” for inspiration. Building from Mann’s (...) richer theoretical framework will allow Sue to answer Lilienfeld’s objection and defend the legitimacy of the concept, ‘microaggression’. (shrink)

Cooperation is rife in the microbial world, yet our best current theories of the evolution of cooperation were developed with multicellular animals in mind. Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is an important case in point: applying the theory in a microbial setting is far from straightforward, as social evolution in microbes has a number of distinctive features that the theory was never intended to capture. In this article, I focus on the conceptual challenges posed by the project of extending (...) Hamilton’s theory to accommodate the effects of gene mobility. I begin by outlining the basics of the theory of inclusive fitness, emphasizing the role that the concept of relatedness is intended to play. I then provide a brief history of this concept, showing how, over the past fifty years, it has departed from the intuitive notion of genealogical kinship to encompass a range of generalized measures of genetic similarity. I proceed to argue that gene mobility forces a further revision of the concept. The reason in short is that, when the genes implicated in producing social behaviour are mobile, we cannot talk of an organism’s genotype simpliciter; we can talk only of an organism’s genotype at a particular stage in its life cycle. We must therefore ask: with respect to which stage(s) in the life cycle should relatedness be evaluated? For instance: is it genetic similarity at the time of social interaction that matters to the evolution of social behaviour, or is it genetic similarity at the time of reproduction? I argue that, strictly speaking, it is neither of these: what really matters to the evolution of social behaviour is diachronic genetic similarity between the producers of fitness benefits at the time they produce them and the recipients of those benefits at the end of their life-cycle. I close by discussing the implications of this result. The main payoff is that it makes room for a possible new mechanism for the evolution of altruism in microbes that does not require correlated interaction among bearers of the genes for altruism. The importance of this mechanism in nature remains an open empirical question. (shrink)

ITA: Quello del “buon europeo” è in Nietzsche un tema significativo, che si presenta originariamente connesso alle riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla cultura europea, arricchendosi col tempo di una portata filosofica che si lega agli obiettivi del suo pensiero maturo. Scopo del presente articolo è di mostrare la genesi e l’evoluzione di tale concetto, a partire dalle sue prime occorrenze in Umano, troppo umano I fino al suo compiuto sviluppo negli scritti del 1885-87. Tale studio permetterà di evidenziare il particolare valore (...) che Nietzsche attribuisce ai “buoni europei”, in quanto promotori dello sviluppo spirituale conseguente alla compiuta liberazione della morale cristiana. ENG: The “good European” is a rich and important topic in Nietzsche. It is first related to Nietzsche’s early reflections on European culture, and during the 1880’s it gains philosophical value, being strictly connected with the purposes of Nietzsche’s mature thought. The aim of this paper is to track the genesis and development of the notion of “good European”, from Human, all too Human I to Nietzsche’s writings from the years 1885-1887. That investigation shall particularly show the meaning and value that Nietzsche attributes to the good Europeans; as for him, they are in fact the leaders of the spiritual development that follows the overcoming of Christian morality. (shrink)

This study is an analysis of the relationship between homo religiosus and the Christian man, as it emerges from Mircea Eliade’s work. His ideas concerning the dialectics sacred-profane are related to homo religiosus, the man of the traditional societies. According to Eliade’s vision, one can use the term homo religiosus only within the context of his universe. Many mythical themes are present in the modern world, but it is difficult to identify them, going through the process of desacralization. The “mythical” (...) elements became Christian from the very beginnings and they are still significant for Christianity which characterizes itself by rendering value to history. The issue that Eliade analyses is whether Christianity can develop the sacred horizon of the archaic societies. As a conclusion of this research, one cannot say that there is a separation of homo religious from Christian man. The reader’s impression is that the scientist refers to Christianity as having lost the real meaning, as it was discovered in its early beginnings. Although the modern man still keeps the Christian elements, is far from what represented the Christian man from his early centuries. However, there are many common points of homo religiosus with the archaic societies. The critics treat the issue from some perspectives which are different from the ideas of the scientist from Chicago: either as being based on the protestant theology of “God’s Death” as the cases of Kenneth Hamilton and J. J. Altizer, either from partial position, the accusations not having a real basis. Dubuisson’s case is this way. This work was meant to be a step of an approach that attempts to discover correspondence between the scientist’s ideas and Christianity. (shrink)

This paper defends hedonic intentionalism, the view that all pleasures, including bodily pleasures, are directed towards objects distinct from themselves. Brentano is the leading proponent of this view. My goal here is to disentangle his significant proposals from the more disputable ones so as to arrive at a hopefully promising version of hedonic intentionalism. I mainly focus on bodily pleasures, which constitute the main troublemakers for hedonic intentionalism. Section 1 introduces the problem raised by bodily pleasures for hedonic intentionalism and (...) some of the main reactions to it. Sections 2 and 3 rebut two main approaches equating bodily pleasures with non- intentional episodes. More precisely, section 2 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be purely non-intentional self-conscious feelings, by relying on Brentano’s objection to Hamilton’s theory of pleasure. Section 3 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be non-intentional sensory qualities by relying on Brentano’s objections to Stumpf’s theory of pleasure. Section 4 develops a brentanian view of the intentionality of bodily pleasures by claiming bodily pleasures are directed at a sui generis class of sensory qualities. Section 5 presents an objection to Brentano’s later theory of pleasure according to which all sensory pleasures are directed at sensing acts. (shrink)