This paper reconstructs Sartre’s account of the “circuit of ipseity” as an integral theory of the experiential, agentive and normative aspects of self-consciousness. At the core of this theory is a conception of human (self-)consciousness as lacking, and the correlation between lacking and ideal. In Section 1, I show how this theory manages to satisfy the apparently incompatible requirements generated by the idea of a pre-reflective cogito. Section 2 discusses practical self-consciousness, in particular the agent’s consciousness of herself as self-determined (...) in the projection and pursuit of ends, and how this is accounted for in Sartre’s theory by the correlation of lack and ideal. Section 3 first clarifies the Sartrean conception of the ideal by comparing it with Korsgaard’s, and then reconstructs Sartre’s account of practical normativity by showing how it can be read as emerging from a critical engagement with Heidegger. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a philosophical analysis of the Hard Problem of consciousness and the implications of conceivability scenarios for current neuroscientific research. In particular, we focus on one of the most prominent neuroscientific theories of consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT). After a brief introduction on IIT, we present Chalmers’ original formulation and propose our own layered view of the hard problem, showing how 2 separate issues can be distinguished. More specifically, we argue that it’s possible to disentangle a (...) core problem of consciousness from a layered hard problem, the latter being essentially connected to Chalmers’ conceivability argument. We then assess the relation between the Hard Problem and IIT, showing how the theory resists conceivability scenarios, and how it is equipped to face up to the hard problem in its broadest acceptation. (shrink)

This study attempts to reconstruct Nietzsche’s reading of Aristotle in the 1860s and 1870s—the years before he left his career as a philologist. Against the popular view that Nietzsche read only one book by Aristotle, namely the Rhetoric, the present study hopes to show that he had direct knowledge of several of Aristotle’s main works, while much of his interest in Aristotle centred on the latter’s account of art. The particular aim of this study is to explore how Nietzsche’s reading (...) of Aristotle contributed to the formation of The Birth of Tragedy. It will show that, although Nietzsche mentions Aristotle in his first book only en passant, his theory of tragedy should be understood against the background of Aristotelian poetics, especially as interpreted by such contemporaries as Jacob Bernays, Joseph Hubert Reinkens, and Gustav Teichmüller. (shrink)

The issue of the use of the Nachlass material has been much debated in Nietzsche scholarship in recent decades. Some insist on the absolute interpretative priority of his published writings over those unpublished and suggest that an extensive engagement with the Nachlass is harmful because it is something Nietzsche rejected. To verify this claim, they appeal to the story of Nietzsche asking his landlord in Sils-Maria to burn some of his notes. Since the notes that were ultimately retrieved are purportedly (...) incorporated into the compilation The Will to Power, the story also leads some to conclude that Nietzsche rejected his project on the will to power. However, the reliability of this story has been questioned. In this manuscript I first present the decisive piece of evidence that will settle the controversy over the story’s authenticity. After showing that it is true that in 1888 Nietzsche wanted some of his notes burned, I address the question of what we can conclude from this story. I argue that it neither suggests the abandonment of the will to power project, nor warrants a devaluation of the Nachlass. Finally, I will discuss the methodological problem of the use of Nietzsche’s Nachlass in general. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a Buddhist treatise from around the fourth century CE there is a very remarkable story which serves as a thought experiment calling us to question the nature of self and the identity of persons. Lost in Sanskrit, the passage is fortunately preserved in a Chinese translation, the Dà zhìdù lùn. We here present the first reliable translation directly from the Classical Chinese, and discuss the philosophical significance of the story in its historical and literary context. We emphasise the (...) philosophical importance of embedding the story in two framing narratives, and demonstrate that the story taps a range of intuitions, and indeed fears, about the survival of the self which have also played a large role in the history of the topic in the West, and which continue to be of great contemporary concern. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly adopted to make decisions in domains such as business, education, health care, and criminal justice. However, such algorithmic decision systems can have prevalent biases against marginalized social groups and undermine social justice. Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is a recent development aiming to make an AI system’s decision processes less opaque and to expose its problematic biases. This paper argues against technical XAI, according to which the detection and interpretation of algorithmic bias can be handled (...) more or less independently by technical experts who specialize in XAI methods. Drawing on resources from feminist epistemology, we show why technical XAI is mistaken. Specifically, we demonstrate that the proper detection of algorithmic bias requires relevant interpretive resources, which can only be made available, in practice, by actively involving a diverse group of stakeholders. Finally, we suggest how feminist theories can help shape integrated XAI: an inclusive social-epistemic process that facilitates the amelioration of algorithmic bias. (shrink)

John Harris recently argues that the moral bioenhancement proposed by Persson and Savulescu can damage moral agency by depriving the recipients of their freedom to fall (freedom to make wrongful choices) and therefore should not be pursued. The link Harris makes between moral agency and the freedom to fall, however, implies that all forms of moral enhancement, including moral education, that aim to make the enhancement recipients less likely to “fall” are detrimental to moral agency. In this paper, I present (...) a new moral agency-based critique against the moral bioenhancement program envisaged by Persson and Savulescu. I argue that the irresistible influences exerted by the bioenhancement program harms our capabilities for conducting accurate self-reflection and forming decisions that truly express our will, which subsequently undermine our moral agency. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a clarification of the long debate on whether enhancement will or will not diminish authenticity. It focuses particularly on accounts provided by Carl Elliott and David DeGrazia. Three clarifications will be presented here. First, most discussants only criticise Elliott’s identity argument and neglect that his conservative position in the use of enhancement can be understood as a concern over social coercion. Second, Elliott’s and DeGrazia’s views can, not only co-exist, but even converge together as an (...) autonomy based theory of authenticity. Third, the current account of autonomy provided by DeGrazia fails to address the importance of rationality and the ability of self-correction, which, as a result impedes the theory to provide a fully developed account for authenticity. In conclusion, a satisfactory account of authenticity cannot focus only on identity or subjective preference. (shrink)

This paper approaches Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness from a mereological perspective. Taking as inspiration Bergson’s idea that pure durée is a multiplicity of interpenetration, I will show, from within Husserlian phenomenology, that the absolute flow can indeed be described as a whole of interpenetrating parts. This mereological perspective will inform my re-consideration of the much-discussed issue of Husserl’s self-criticism concerning the schema of content and apprehension. It will also reveal a fundamental similarity between Husserl’s conception of the absolute flow and (...) Sartre’s conception of lived temporality. This paper consists of four sections. Section 2 presents the basic elements of Husserl’s mereology. Section 3 introduces the difficulty encountered by Husserl’s early account of time that makes use of the schema. I will examine Barry Dainton’s criticism of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness against the background of the older debate between Meinong and Stern, a debate that has informed Husserl’s own account. Section 4 distinguishes two common criticisms of the schema from Husserl’s own self-criticism, which is in turn divided into two steps. It is shown how the second step of this self-criticism implies the interpenetration of the absolute flow and responds to Dainton’s criticism. Finally, Sect. 5 concludes with some comparative remarks. I will show how Husserl’s notion of absolute flow, as mereologically interpreted, anticipates Sartre’s conception of consciousness as self-transcendence, as well as how it accommodates the apparently conflicting mereological intuitions of Aristotle and Bergson. (shrink)

Background: The concept of digital twins has great potential for transforming the existing health care system by making it more personalized. As a convergence of health care, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technologies, personalized health care services that are developed under the concept of digital twins raise a myriad of ethical issues. Although some of the ethical issues are known to researchers working on digital health and personalized medicine, currently, there is no comprehensive review that maps the major ethical (...) risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. Objective: This study aims to fill the research gap by identifying the major ethical risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. We first propose a working definition for digital twins for personalized health care services to facilitate future discussions on the ethical issues related to these emerging digital health services. We then develop a process-oriented ethical map to identify the major ethical risks in each of the different data processing phases. Methods: We resorted to the literature on eHealth, personalized medicine, precision medicine, and information engineering to identify potential issues and developed a process-oriented ethical map to structure the inquiry in a more systematic way. The ethical map allows us to see how each of the major ethical concerns emerges during the process of transforming raw data into valuable information. Developers of a digital twin for personalized health care service may use this map to identify ethical risks during the development stage in a more systematic way and can proactively address them. Results: This paper provides a working definition of digital twins for personalized health care services by identifying 3 features that distinguish the new application from other eHealth services. On the basis of the working definition, this paper further layouts 10 major operational problems and the corresponding ethical risks. Conclusions: It is challenging to address all the major ethical risks that a digital twin for a personalized health care service might encounter proactively without a conceptual map at hand. The process-oriented ethical map we propose here can assist the developers of digital twins for personalized health care services in analyzing ethical risks in a more systematic manner. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 516-531.

The rare but severe cerebral venous thrombosis occurring in some AstraZeneca vaccine recipients has prompted some governments to suspend part of their COVID-19 vaccination programmes. Such suspensions have faced various challenges from both scientific and ethical angles. Most of the criticisms against such suspensions follow a consequentialist approach, arguing that the suspension will lead to more harm than benefits. In this paper, I propose a rights-based argument against the suspension of the vaccine rollouts amid this highly time-sensitive combat of COVID-19. (...) I argue that by suspending a vaccine rollout, a government infringes people's right to take the risks they deem worth taking for their health. I also consider four potential objections to my argument and explain why none of them undermines my argument. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 46 Heft: 1 Seiten: 242-242.

Research has indicated that microRNAs (miRNAs), a special class of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), can perform important roles in different biological and pathological processes. miRNAs’ functions are realized by regulating their respective target genes (targets). It is thus critical to identify and analyze miRNA-target interactions for a better understanding and delineation of miRNAs’ functions. However, conventional knowledge discovery and acquisition methods have many limitations. Fortunately, semantic technologies that are based on domain ontologies can render great assistance in this regard. In our (...) previous investigations, we developed a miRNA domain-specific application ontology, Ontology for MIcroRNA Target (OMIT), to provide the community with common data elements and data exchange standards in the miRNA research. This paper describes (1) our continuing efforts in the OMIT ontology development and (2) the application of the OMIT to enable a semantic approach for knowledge capture of miRNA-target interactions. (shrink)

The Taizhou school of philosophy, followers of Wang Yangming, places significant emphasis on the body, which has led to theoretical challenges concerning the potential dissipation of natural desires. Critics contend that while Taizhou philosophy acknowledges the natural state of human existence, it fails to provide a satisfactory explanation for the existence of evil and tends to overlook the crucial role of deliberate moral practice by idealizing the natural as morally perfect. Drawing on insights from embodied cognition, this article aims to (...) shed light on the nuanced perspectives of Taizhou moral philosophy and address common criticisms regarding its approach to evil and moral practice. I will explore Taizhou’s holistic understanding, which integrates mind and body, self and others, offering fresh insights into the interplay between deliberation and spontaneity within moral practices. As a comparative and interdisciplinary endeavor, this work seeks to bridge the divide between Eastern and Western philosophical traditions and between moral philosophy and empirical science. This article not only aims to enhance our understanding of Taizhou philosophy but also strives to illuminate broader implications for ethical behavior and moral reasoning in a diverse, global context. (shrink)

This article explores the use of model organisms in studying the cognitive phenomenon of decision-making. Drawing on the framework of biological control to develop a skeletal conception of decision-making, we show that two core features of decision-making mechanisms can be identified by studying model organisms, such as E. coli, jellyfish, C. elegans, lamprey, and so on. First, decision mechanisms are distributed and heterarchically structured. Second, they depend heavily on chemical information processing, such as that involving neuromodulators. We end by discussing (...) the implications for studying distinctively human decision-making. (shrink)

In this context, the study explored the relationship between organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour among food manufacturing industries in Malaysia. The study is a descriptive correlational survey research design where data is sourced out from a total of randomly sampled 260 employees. Results revealed that a favourable organizational climate on innovation, proactivity, and risk-taking is prevailing among the companies. A very high level of innovative work behaviour is emanating among the employees on idea exploration, generation, championing, and implementation. (...) Test of differences showed that employee gender, position, unit, and years of service spelt significant differences in the perception of the employees on organizational climate and innovative work behaviour. A meaningful relationship surfaced between organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour, suggesting that for food manufacturing industries to sustain innovative and competitive advantages, there is a need to promote a nurturing and encouraging entrepreneurial organizational climate. Finally, a congruency among the domains of organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour emerged. It suggests that when higher positive organizational climate surfaces, the more likely the employee's manifest innovation work behaviour. This study addressed the gap by providing organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour among food manufacturing industries in Malaysia. (shrink)

Two types of formal models - landscape search tasks and two-armed bandit models - are often used to study the effects that various social factors have on epistemic performance. I argue that they can be understood within a single framework. In this unified framework, I develop a model that may be used to understand the effects of functional and demographic diversity and their interaction. Using the unified model, I find that the benefit of demographic diversity is most pronounced in a (...) functionally homogeneous group, and decreases with the increase of functional diversity. (shrink)

Identification of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) has been significantly improved over the past decade. On the other hand, semantic annotation of ncRNA data is facing critical challenges due to the lack of a comprehensive ontology to serve as common data elements and data exchange standards in the field. We developed the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) to handle this situation. By providing a formally defined ncRNA controlled vocabulary, the NCRO aims to fill a specific and highly needed niche in semantic annotation of (...) large amounts of ncRNA biological and clinical data. (shrink)

In recent years, sequencing technologies have enabled the identification of a wide range of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Unfortunately, annotation and integration of ncRNA data has lagged behind their identification. Given the large quantity of information being obtained in this area, there emerges an urgent need to integrate what is being discovered by a broad range of relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a systematically structured and precisely defined controlled vocabulary for the (...) domain of ncRNAs, thereby facilitating the discovery, curation, analysis, exchange, and reasoning of data about structures of ncRNAs, their molecular and cellular functions, and their impacts upon phenotypes. The goal of NCRO is to serve as a common resource for annotations of diverse research in a way that will significantly enhance integrative and comparative analysis of the myriad resources currently housed in disparate sources. It is our belief that the NCRO ontology can perform an important role in the comprehensive unification of ncRNA biology and, indeed, fill a critical gap in both the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Library and the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) BioPortal. Our initial focus is on the ontological representation of small regulatory ncRNAs, which we see as the first step in providing a resource for the annotation of data about all forms of ncRNAs. (shrink)

Identification of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) has been significantly enhanced due to the rapid advancement in sequencing technologies. On the other hand, semantic annotation of ncRNA data lag behind their identification, and there is a great need to effectively integrate discovery from relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a precisely defined ncRNA controlled vocabulary, which can fill a specific and highly needed niche in unification of ncRNA biology.

Robert Sparrow recently argues that state-driven moral bioenhancement is morally problematic because it inevitably invites moral perfectionism. While sharing Sparrow’s worry about state-driven moral bioenhancement, I argue that his anti-perfectionism argument is too strong to offer useful normative guidance. That is, if we reject state-driven moral bioenhancement because it cannot remain neutral between different conceptions of the good, we might have to conclude that all forms of moral enhancement program ought not be made compulsory, including the least controversial and most (...) popular state-driven program: compulsory (moral) education. -/- In this paper, I argue that instead, the spirit of Sparrow’s worry should be recast in the language of the capability approach – an approach that strives to enhance people’s capabilities to develop their own conceptions of the good by restricting itself from endorsing thick conceptions of the good. The distinction made regarding thick and thin conceptions of the good helps better capture sentiments against state-driven bioenhancement programs without falling prey to the issues I raise against Sparrow’s anti-perfectionist arguments. (shrink)

This paper aims to bridge the relationship between metalinguistic if you like as a non-propositional discourse marker and its conditional counterparts. This paper claims that metalinguistic if you like is polysemous between a hedge that denotes the speaker’s reduced commitment to some aspect of the main clause, and an optional yet potential conditional reading that interlocutors can legitimately draw on in interaction which is brought about due to the ‘if p, q’ sentence form. That is, although the metalinguistic reading is (...) most likely obtained automatically by default, it also carries an available conditional reading that is akin to other metalinguistic conditional clauses such as if you see what I mean. Next, a semantic representation of metalinguistic if you like is developed that takes on board a characterization of conditionality that departs from lexico-grammatical conventions, such that conditionals of the form ‘if p, q’ no longer bear a one-to-one correspondence with “conditional” truth conditions. Employing a radical contextualist semantic framework in which the unit of truth-conditional analysis is not constrained to the sentence form, utterances employing metalinguistic if you like are given a semantic representation such that the if-clause does not contribute propositional content, yet they also maintain their status as conditionals as the sentence form gives rise to a potential conditional secondary meaning. (shrink)

Both Husserl and Sartre speak of quasi-presence in their descriptions of the lived experience of imagination, and for both philosophers, accounting for quasi-presence means developing an account of the hyle proper to imagination. Guided by the perspective of fulfillment, Husserl’s theory of imaginary quasi-presence goes through three stages. Having experimented first with a depiction-model and then a perception-model, Husserl’s mature theory appeals to his innovative conception of inner consciousness. This elegant account nevertheless fails to do justice to the facticity and (...) bodily involvement of our imaginary experience. Sartre’s theory of analogon, based on his conception of imaginary quasi-presence as ‘magical’ self-affection, embodies important insights on these issues. Kinesthetic sensations and feelings are the modes in which we make use of own body to possess and be possessed by the imaginary object, thus lending it a semblance of bodily presence. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Sartre’s theory of selfhood against the background of the contemporary debate between minimal-self theories and narrative-self theories. I argue that Sartre’s theory incorporates both an emphasis on the singular first-person perspective, which is characteristic of minimal-self theories, and an emphasis on the practical intelligibility of experience, which is characteristic of narrative-self theories. The distinctiveness of the Sartrean combination of these motifs consists in its idea of the necessary ideal-relatedness of consciousness. According to Sartre, the logical structure of (...) the pre-reflective cogito requires the haunting presence of an ideal of self-coincidence, which determines for consciousness the meaning of its lived experiences. Consciousness exists as a question to itself due to this ideal-relatedness, and it answers this question by projecting its possibilities as creative and symbolic realizations of this ideal. Establishing the connection between Sartre’s theory of imagination and his theory of selfhood, I suggest that both the ideal and the possibility of consciousness are lived in the manner of the imaginary. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the evolution of Husserl's view on the normativity of logic and the corresponding changes in his phenomenological analysis of judgment. Initially, in the Prolegomena, Husserl claimed that the laws of pure logic are ideal and acquire normative status only as a result of application. Later, however, he revised this position and claimed that the same laws are at once ideal and normative. Sections 1 and 2 present textual evidence for attributing such a change of position (...) to Husserl, which is not generally acknowledged in the literature. Section 3 critically examines Husserl's early position, with specific attention to the model of instantiation. Sections 4–6 identify three key stages in the development of Husserl's theory of judgment that lead to the normative conception of pure logic: (1) the critique of the dissociation of ideal content and assertive force; (2) the rejection of the instantiation model of proposition and the development of a new account in terms of identification; (3) the genetic‐phenomenological interpretation of proposition and the elaboration of the three‐layer structure of pure logic. (shrink)

In post-Gricean pragmatics, communication is said to be successful when a hearer recovers a speaker’s intended message. On this assumption, proposals for ‘what is said’ – the semantic, propositional meaning of a speaker’s utterance – are typically centred around the content the speaker aimed to communicate. However, these proposals tend not to account for the fact that speakers can be deliberately vague, leaving no clear proposition to be recovered, or that a speaker can accept a hearer’s misconstrual even though the (...) speaker didn’t intend it. In such cases, identifying ‘what is said’ is more contentious, even though communication is arguably no less successful. Building on recent interactionist approaches to meaning, this chapter offers a proposal for ‘what is said’ that can account for cases of ‘imperfect’ communication in which the recovery of a speaker’s intention goes awry. This involves taking ‘what is said’ as the co-constructed meaning that the speaker and hearer jointly agree on, giving ‘grounded meanings’ – those mutually and manifestly accepted into the discourse by speaker and hearer – higher precedence in a theory of communication than simply the speaker’s intended meaning. In such cases, rather than speaker and hearer converging at the level of explicit utterance content, communication is expected to be successful as long as the hearer recovers a proposition which is compatible with the speaker’s higher-order discursive goal. The hearer’s uptake is then allowed to override the content of the speaker’s intended meaning in the process of negotiating ‘what is said’. (shrink)

Nhiều cơ sở giáo dục đại học Việt Nam đang tiến hành các chiến lược thu hút sinh viên quốc tế. Một nghiên cứu mới đây đã chỉ ra chiến lược nào trong số đó là hiệu quả hoặc không.

The human faculty of moral judgment is not well suited to address problems, like climate change, that are global in scope and remote in time. Advocates of ‘moral bioenhancement’ have proposed that we should investigate the use of medical technologies to make human beings more trusting and altruistic, and hence more willing to cooperate in efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We survey recent accounts of the proximate and ultimate causes of human cooperation in order to assess the (...) prospects for bioenhancement. We identify a number of issues that are likely to be significant obstacles to effective bioenhancement, as well as areas for future research. (shrink)

Russellian monism – an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (1927/1992) – is roughly the view that the natural sciences can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not about their categorical properties, and, moreover, that our qualia are constituted by categorical properties. Recently, Stoljar (2001a, 2001b), Strawson (2008), Montero (2010, 2015), Alter and Nagasawa (2012), and Chalmers (2015) have attempted to develop this doctrine into a version of physicalism. Russellian monism faces the (...) so-called combination problem, according to which it is difficult to see how categorical properties could collectively constitute qualia. In this paper, I suggest that there is an insufficiently discussed aspect of the combination problem which I call the difference-maker problem. Taking the difference-maker problem into account, I argue that the combination problem – whether or not it can be solved – results in a dilemma for the project of developing Russellian physicalism. That is, Russellian monism is either physicalistically unacceptable or it is implausible; hence, Russellian monism and physicalism are incompatible. (shrink)

From Dialectic to Black Hole, The Definition of Time in Plato’s View.

Various authors have recently expressed doubts about the public relevance of philosophy. These doubts target both academic philosophy in general and particular subfields of philosophy. This paper investigates whether these doubts are justified through two tests in which the lack of public relevance of a philosophical paper is operationalized as the degree to which that paper is isolated. Both tests suggest that academic philosophy in general is more isolated from the broader public than it should be, and confirm the hypothesis (...) that some subfields of philosophy are more isolated than others. We argue that this lack of public relevance is caused by the incentive structure of academic philosophy and discuss a range of individual-level and incentive-level solutions. (shrink)

Alexander Bird (2001; 2002; 2007) offers a powerful argument showing that, regardless of whether necessitarianism or contingentism about laws is true, salt necessarily dissolves in water. The argument is that the same laws of nature that are necessary for the constitution of salt necessitate the solubility of salt. This paper shows that Bird’s argument faces a serious objection if the possibility of emergentism – in particular, C. D. Broad’s account – is taken into account. The idea is (roughly) that some (...) emergent laws in some possible worlds may disrupt the solubility of salt without disrupting its constitution. (shrink)

Ngay khi nước nhà mới giành được độc lập, Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh đã khẳng định với giới công thương kỹ nghệ Việt Nam: “Nền kinh tế quốc dân thịnh vượng nghĩa là các sự kinh doanh của các nhà công nghiệp, thương nghiệp thịnh vượng”.

This paper addresses the issues related to designing and estimating the strength of solid-alloy elements in the deforming broaches of significant diameter (exceeding 150 mm) for the developed process of discrete broaching. The tool limit condition was assessed based on two strength criteria: the specific potential energy of shape change and the maximum tangent stresses. Numerical modeling using the finite element method has made it possible to derive the distribution of equivalent stresses in the tool elements and the contact stresses (...) at the surface of the contact between a solid-alloy insert and the body, which enabled the analysis of tool strength under loading. The simulation was performed under a single normal load, which ensured the versatility of the calculation for any contact pressure values. We have derived formulae to calculate the acceptable contact pressure depending on unit load. The effect of the insert protrusion height over the body on the strength of tool elements has been established. We have derived engineering dependences that determine the required magnitude of insert protrusion over the body depending on the ultimate load. An example of calculating the strength of a prefabricated deforming element in the machining of a sleeve made from gray modified cast iron of hardness HB230 has been considered. Our calculations have shown that the deforming element designed for the new technological process corresponds to the conditions of strength, provided the ratio h1/h=0.15 is maintained (where h1 is the insert height above the body, h is the insert height). The results obtained could be used in engineering calculations when designing the prefabricated tool for discrete deformation, as well as to assess the strength of prefabricated tools, such as cutters, core drills, reamers, when refining external loads. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe four broad ‘meta-methods’ employed in scientific and philosophical research of qualia. These are the theory-centred metamethod, the property-centred meta-method, the argument-centred meta-method, and the event-centred meta-method. Broadly speaking, the theory-centred meta-method is interested in the role of qualia as some theoretical entities picked out by our folk psychological theories; the property-centred meta-method is interested in some metaphysical properties of qualia that we immediately observe through introspection ; the argument-centred meta-method is interested in the role of (...) qualia in some arguments for non-physicalism; the event-centred metamethod is interested in the role of qualia as some natural events whose nature is hidden and must be uncovered empirically. We will argue that the event-centred metamethod is the most promising route to a comprehensive scientific conception of qualia because of the flexibility of ontological and methodological assumptions it can provide. We also reveal the hidden influences of the different meta-methods and in doing so show why consideration of meta-methods has value for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment (...) concerning qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthorne (Philos Perspect 15:361–378, 2001), Smart (J Conscious Stud 11(2):41–50, 2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (The philosophy of mind and cognition, Blackwell, Malden, 2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers’s (The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996) and Seager’s (in: Beckermann A, McLaughlin BP (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences. (shrink)

In this new edition, a hypothesis is put forward for the first time to unify the Big Bang theory and the evolutionary theory by showing both events following the same set of fundamental interrelationships. As the evolution of life is a part of the evolutions of the universe, these two events express many fundamental similarities (this is self-similarity, which means a part of the system is similar to the whole system). Based on the same principle, the evolution of multicellular organisms, (...) social evolution, development of the human body, and human technological development are all a part of the evolution of life. Thus, they all follow the same set of rules that all life follows and, at the fundamental level, the interrelationships that the Big Bang follows. Therefore, all of these events follow the fundamental interrelationships and express fundamental similarities. In other words, all these events are the specific expressions of those fundamental interrelationships – the fundamental mechanism that governs everything in the universe. -/- Upon these interrelationships, new approaches to study social development and technological development are employed. By using the knowledge of the medical sciences, including the structures (anatomy and histology), functions (physiology) and development (embryology) of a human body; knowledge of the evolution of life; and the concept of fundamental interrelationships, we can see the future beyond the horizon. Using the nerve system in parallel as a model, we can comprehensively understand the development of the information revolution. Based upon parallel interrelationships, we can see that the transformation of society due to individuals’ power increase brought by new technologies bears great similarities with the transformation from the solid state of ice to the liquid state of water due the individual molecules’ kinetic energy increase. -/- As the fundamental interrelationships govern social evolution, all events in human civilisation are simply specific expressions of those rules in which significant social events not only changed the course of civilisation but left so many unanswered mysteries: how did the Greeks build such brilliant civilisations; why did the Scientific Revolution originate from the West rather than the East such as in China; why did the Chinese society remain in feudalism for such a long time while the Western society had evolved into a higher level – industrialization and modern society; why did the Chinese civilisation fall from its ancient glory in the modern time but rapidly re-rise again to a super power in the last few decades? All these mysteries remain unanswered because of the lack of fundamental laws of physics and evolutionary biology used in the traditional methodologies of social science. As the fundamental laws of physics are the fundamental mechanism for everything and these mysteries are a part of the evolution of life, the fundamental laws of physics and evolutionary biology are used in tackling these unanswered issues. For example, upon parallel relationship, Chinese civilisation is compared with the transition from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms. From how unicellular organisms aggregate and evolve new rules to organise themselves, we can much better understand how human individuals aggregate to form societies and evolve new cultures to organise themselves in social evolution. Furthermore, transformation from the solid state of ice to the liquid state of water is used to analyze Chinese social evolution. With these approaches the mysteries in Chinese civilisation have been answered. -/- Ultimately, all these discussions in this book have demonstrated that the Interrelationships Model has unified social science with natural science, and furthermore, science with philosophy. This is an important attempt in answering the most fundamental and intriguing question of all – the Theory of Everything. -/- Currently, this book is for FREE download. (shrink)

Darwin’s evolution theory revolutionises our understanding of the biological world. In parallel, this book is a critical breakthrough in scientific philosophy. It revolutionises our understanding of nature, particularly on civilisation, through discovering a fundamental mechanism which not only governs lifeless objects but intelligence-driven civilisation as well. This discovery provides an alternative to challenge the most fundamental issue – “the Theory of Everything”. As this mechanism is the most fundamental level, it is the foundation of similarity, including the amazing similarities between (...) a human body and a society. Upon this theoretical basis, following the rules of this mechanism and using a human body as a model, civilisation is systematically investigated. As such, technological development and its consequential social development are understood from the most fundamental level. As a result, the human future have been successfully predicted and many historical puzzles have been unequivocally solved, such as: why could the ancient Greeks create a brilliant civilisation; why were there so many great thinkers; why did Scientific Revolution and the model of university education originate from Europe rather than from other places; why did the Chinese civilisation remain stagnant when the West was rapidly rising after Scientific Revolution. Finally, one of the long-lasting enigmatic question, “what is beauty”, is unequivocally answered once and for all. It is the expression of one of the fundamental laws of physics but it is not symmetry. (shrink)

In 2010, Christian Wollek published his doctoral thesis Die lateinischen Texte des Schülers Nietzsche. Übersetzung und Kommentar —a German translation of Nietzsche’s Latin writings with an introduction and commentary. This book represents the breadth of Nietzsche’s Latin writings and his vast learning while he was a student at the Naumburg Domgymnasium and Schulpforta. As Wollek tells us in the introduction, LT aims both to highlight the relevance of Nietzsche’s early writings, which he argues have been too often ignored, even in (...) recent scholarship, and to... (shrink)

The disciplinary characterisation (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticised for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this paper, I propose and defend a novel version of DC that can be called a historical (...) paths approach. The idea is (roughly) that metaphysical naturalism can be defined with reference to the historical ideas that current scientific ideas descend from. I argue that it is not rendered implausible by the above problems, and hence that DC is more defensible and attractive than it may first appear. I then argue that the approach also provides a useful framework for the naturalisation of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology. (shrink)

The quest for a unified “Theory of Everything” that explains the fundamental nature of the universe has long been a holy grail for scientists and philosophers, dating back to the ancient Greeks’ search for Arche. -/- So far, the mainstream of research on A Theory of Everything primarily focuses on the lifeless phenomena and laws of physics while ignores the realm of biology. However, a fundamentally different approach to the ToE has been put forward, presenting a viable alternative to address (...) the challenge of a Theory of Everything. This approach does not seek the ultimate “building block” but rather aims to uncover the intangible rules that fundamentally govern everything in the universe, seeking their universality across the vast spectrum, from the minute subatomic world to the mega mass cosmic world and the magical biological world. -/- To address the challenge, a set of the fundamental interrelationships is introduced and represented by a model, the Fundamental Interrelationships Model. This model cohesively represents these fundamental interrelationships, including serial-parallel relationships, transition of state, critical point, continuation-discontinuation, convergence-divergence, contraction-expansion, singularity-plurality, commonality-difference, similarity, symmetry-asymmetry, periodicity, dynamics-stability, order-disorder, limitation-without limitation, hierarchical structure, and cohesive interconnectedness. These interrelationships, found in nature, can be interpreted as the fundamental laws of physics. -/- Built on the foundation of the Fundamental Interrelationships Model, a collection of the well-established laws of physics and theories are represented and unified, including Newton’s three laws of motion, the four laws of thermodynamics, Einstein’s space-time relationship, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Noether’s theorem, Schrodinger’s wave function collapse, chaos theory and complexity theory. The list continues to grow… Based on this model, a groundbreaking research has, for the first time, put forward a new hypothesis that unifies the Big Bang theory with the evolutionary theory, published in a book in 2022. This research unequivocally demonstrates that the evolution of life also follows the fundamental laws of physics, marking a significant stride toward addressing the longstanding challenge of a comprehensive Theory of Everything. -/- Subsequent studies reveal that the evolution of life (including the evolution of multicellularity), embryonic development, evolution of society (civilisation), and the evolution of the universe all adhere to these fundamental interrelationships. These events are specific expressions of the underlying principles of the Fundamental Interrelationships Model. -/- Ultimately, as a truly all-encompassing theory, the Theory of Everything should not only incorporate non-biological events and the laws of physics but also extend to all facets of life. Thus, unlike most existing candidates, the Fundamental Interrelationships Model offers a comprehensive framework, encompassing both non-biological and living phenomena. Therefore, any hypothesis failing to integrate biology and sociology shouldn’t be considered a comprehensive Theory of Everything -/- This article and the subsequent ones are the abstracts derived from the book, Behind Civilisation/civilization (multiple editions), which represents the culmination of decades of research. The book offers a more comprehensive exploration of how fundamental interrelationships govern all aspect of the universe. -/- . (shrink)

Nhiều cơ sở giáo dục đại học Việt Nam đang tiến hành các chiến lược thu hút sinh viên quốc tế. Một nghiên cứu mới đây đã chỉ ra chiến lược nào trong số đó là hiệu quả hoặc không.

Synthetic biology (SynBio) covers two main areas: application engineering, exemplified by metabolic engi- neering, and the design of life from artificial building blocks. As the general public is often reluctant to embrace synthetic approaches, preferring nature to artifice, its immediate future will depend very much on the public’s reaction to the unmet needs created by the pervasive demands of sustainability. On the other hand, this reluctance should not have a negative impact on research that will now take into account the (...) existence of the multiple transitions that cells face over time. The ages of life—birth, development, maturation, senescence and death—reflect specific key transitions and have, until now, rarely been taken into account in SynBio designs. This results in a mismatch between novelty and the very long evolutionary time that led to the existing chassis [remember that this is the common term used to describe the cellular framework as seen by synthetic biologists (de Lorenzo & Danchin, 2008)]. It also implies that, in general, transitions between growth stages will be taken into account with the appro- priate embodiment of highly specific processes. This is particularly important when adapting new models to their host, whether natural or artificial. Adaptation fol- lows two stages, short-term accommodation of new entities and long-term assimilation into the cell as a whole. This requires discrimination between classes of entities. We suggest that proteins playing the essential role of Maxwell’ demons, here named Maxwell’s dis- criminators (MxDs) to refer to their original function, will permit the assimilation and accommodation of artificial constructs. As a consequence, we can foresee that class discrimination, beyond mere recognition, will be implemented in SynBio 2.0, leading to an authentic par- adigm shift (Kuhn, 1996), based on conceptions that embody information as a genuine currency of reality. (shrink)

The most important stage of the sound phenomenon for children covers the time that starts from the mother's womb and continues until the school period. A child starting school (6:5 or 7 years old) is just learning to write. However, he acquired the language/s/ almost entirely thanks to the sound in the mentioned period. In this respect, the processing of language and sound in the brain of newborn babies becomes important. The language acquisition level of newborns may vary in terms (...) of such reasons as genetics, ability, and frequency of exposure, environmental factors, and whether they are physically and mentally healthy or not. This study deals with the question of what kind of a connection is there between the phenomenon of sound, especially the sound of music, and the acquisition of two languages in early childhood. In short, the subjects of language acquisition and musical sound in early childhood have been investigated in the literature with a qualitative method. Another question is how do the two languages acquired in early childhood stay with each other in a developmental relation. In the study, it was understood that there is not a single result from the studies on children grown up monolingual or bilingual in early childhood. The opinion that the sooner one or two languages are learned in early childhood (usually by exposure to the sound) the better the acquisition would be is outweighed, though there are different opinions about the results of the scientists. In addition, since it was concluded that there is a developmentally parallel relationship between the sound of music and the acquisition of language by newborns, it means that ontology gives us the summary of phylogenesis. (shrink)

Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behaviour coming apart from (...) categorical bases is best explained by Dualism. We argue that Monism can explain the apparent possibility as well, if we take metaphysically alien laws — namely, laws whose metaphysical nature is alien to the actual world — into account. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Lewtas [2017] recently articulated an argument claiming that emergent conscious causal powers are impossible. In developing his argument, Lewtas makes several assumptions about emergence, phenomenal consciousness, categorical properties, and causation. We argue that there are plausible alternatives to these assumptions. Thus, the proponent of emergent conscious causal powers can escape Lewtas’s challenge.