For many, anger has been seen as irrationality, even as illness. But it seems that anger-related disorder and its culture-relatedness have not receive much attention in psychiatry. Like backward-looking ressentiment, hwabyeong 火病can be literally translated into anger disorder. In this paper, I examine the notion of anger and culture with the help of considering the case of hwabyeong as a Korean culture-bound syndrome (hereafter, CBS). Drawing on historical changes in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and cases (...) of hwabyeong as CBS, I will argue that the social and cultural aspects of mental disorder are indispensable parts. Additionally, it will be suggested that the rigid distinction between CBS and mental disorders is questionable. First, I begin by examining Jarome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis and Ian Hacking’s social constructionism on mental disorder. Next, given that the illness is common among poor old women who suffered from patriarchal social structures, I question whether hwabyeong is really a culturally specific illness. Moreover, hwabyeong cannot be properly understood without considering unequal power relations and extremely limited ranges of one's agency. Thus, calling it culture- bound may be due to WEIRD-ish (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), culturally stereotypical prejudice as well as misogynic thinking concerning hwabyeong. In present times, it's worth noting that, despite common biases, hwabyeong or han (恨) is no longer solely a Korean phenomenon, thanks to recent societal advancements. In conclusion, I show that curing hwabyeong or anger management is not just medical but sociopolitical matters. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

There is a need recognized by the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research and the National Cancer Institute to advance basic, translational and clinical saliva research. The goal of the Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is to create a data management system and web resource constructed to support human salivaomics research. To maximize the utility of the SKB for retrieval, integration and analysis of data, we have developed the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. This article reviews the informatics advances in saliva (...) diagnostics made possible by the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. (shrink)

The debate between Uniqueness and Permissivism concerns whether a body of evidence sometimes allows multiple doxastic attitudes towards a proposition. An important motivation for Uniqueness is the so-called ‘arbitrariness argument,’ which says that Permissivism leads to some unacceptable arbitrariness with regard to one's beliefs. An influential response to the argument says that the arbitrariness in beliefs can be avoided by invoking epistemic standards. In this paper, I argue that such a response to the arbitrariness argument is unsuccessful. Then I defend (...) a new response: contrary to common conception, the arbitrariness resulted by Permissivism is acceptable. The basic idea is that the arbitrariness resulted by Permissivism is analogous to the arbitrariness in permissive actions and the latter arbitrariness is intuitively acceptable. I answer three possible objections against this analogy, which are all motivated by the thought that beliefs aim at the truth. In addressing the last objection, I draw inspiration from the recent debate on transformative experience. (shrink)

This paper considers meritocracy as a new social problem in Korea that has emerged since the IMF crisis in 1997. Drawing upon Daniel Markovitz’ recent analysis of meritocracy in America, I emphasize the connection between the neoliberalization of society and the popularization of the belief in meritocratic justice. I pay particular attention to the controversy over the conversion of irregular workers at the Incheon International Airport Corporation into regular employees and show that this severe conflict among people who do not (...) belong to the few rich illustrates the deceptive nature of meritocracy. As I argue, it not only widens the wealth gap between the wealthy few and the many poor but also engenders various forms of antagonism in society, transforms humans into a form of capital, incapacitates the register of the societal, and stirs up animosity towards discussions of political correctness. My claim is that while meritocratic rules are essential for a modern democratic and liberal society, they should be regarded as rules subordinate to a higher moral and political principle, such as solidarity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to the Dogmatism Puzzle presented by Gilbert Harman, knowledge induces dogmatism because, if one knows that p, one knows that any evidence against p is misleading and therefore one can ignore it when gaining the evidence in the future. I try to offer a new solution to the puzzle by explaining why the principle is false that evidence known to be misleading can be ignored. I argue that knowing that some evidence is misleading doesn't always damage the credential of (...) the evidence, and therefore it doesn't always entitle one to ignore it. I also explain in what kind of cases and to what degree such knowledge allows one to ignore evidence. Hopefully, through the discussion, we can not only understand better where the dogmatism puzzle goes wrong, but also understand better in what sense rational believers should rely on their evidence and when they can ignore it. (shrink)

It’s widely accepted that higher-order defeaters, i.e., evidence that one’s belief is formed in an epistemically defective way, can defeat doxastic justification. However, it’s yet unclear how exactly such kind of defeat happens. Given that many theories of doxastic justification can be understood as fitting the schema of proper basing on propositional justifiers, we might attempt to explain the defeat either by arguing that a higher-order defeater defeats propositional justification or by arguing that it defeats proper basing. It has been (...) argued that the first attempt is unpromising because a variety of prominent theories of propositional justification don’t imply that we lose propositional justification when gaining higher-order defeaters. This leads some scholars to take the second attempt. In this paper, I criticize this second attempt, and I defend the first attempt by arguing that a theory of propositional justification that requires intellectual responsibility can nicely account for higher-order defeat. My proposal is that we lose doxastic justification when we gain higher-order defeaters because there is no intellectually responsible way for us to maintain our original beliefs due to the defeaters. (shrink)

Vision is an important metaphor in ethical and political questions of knowledge. The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway points out the “perverse” nature of an intrusive, alienating, all-seeing vision (to which we might cry out “stop looking at me!”), but also encourages us to embrace the embodied nature of sight and its promises for genuinely situated knowledge. Current technologies of machine vision – surveillance cameras, drones (for war or recreation), iPhone cameras – are usually construed as instances of the former rather (...) than the latter, and for good reasons. However, although in no way attempting to diminish the real suffering these technologies have brought about in the world, I make the case for understanding technologies of computer vision as material instances of embodied seeing and situated knowing. Furthermore, borrowing from Iris Murdoch’s concept of moral vision, I suggest that these technologies direct our labor towards self-reflection in ethically significant ways. My approach draws upon paradigms in computer vision research, phenomenology, and feminist epistemology. Ultimately, this essay is an argument for directing more philosophical attention from merely criticizing technologies of vision as ethically deficient towards embracing them as complex, methodologically and epistemologically important objects. (shrink)

Richard Foley has presented a puzzle purporting to show that all attempts in trying to find a sufficient condition of rationality are doomed. The puzzle rests on two plausible assumptions. The first is a level-connecting principle: if one rationally believes that one's belief that p is irrational, then one's belief that p is irrational. The second is a claim about a structural feature shared by all promising sufficient conditions of rationality: for any such condition, it is possible that one's belief (...) satisfies it and yet one rationally believes that it doesn’t. With the two assumptions, Foley argues that a sufficient condition of rationality is impossible. I explain how exactly the puzzle goes and I try to offer a solution. If my solution works, all theorists of rationality who accept certain level-connecting principles need to add an extra condition to their favourite rationality-making condition. (shrink)

It has been hypothesized that our believing that, or its seeming to us as though, the world is in some way dynamical partially explains (and perhaps rationalizes) future-bias. Recent work has, in turn, found a correlation between future-bias and near-bias, suggesting that there is a common explanation for both. Call the claim that what partially explains our being both future- and near-biased is our believing/it seeming to us as though the world is dynamical, the dynamical explanation. We empirically test two (...) versions of the dynamical explanation. The first is the moving ego explanation—according to which it is our belief that the ego moves, or our phenomenology as of the ego moving, that jointly (partially) explains future- and near-bias. The second is the moving time explanation—according to which it is our belief that time robustly passes, or our phenomenology as of robust passage, which jointly (partially) explain future- and near-bias. We found no evidence in favour of either explanation. (shrink)

In the discourse on International Justice, traditional frameworks are deeply rooted in 'embodied metaphysics'—a perspective embedded in the tangible experiences of human existence. By contrasting the physical with the digital realms, I suggest that our current global justice systems are ill-equipped to address the complexities of the digital age. Utilizing the metaphor of water to highlight the often-unseen environment shaping justice theories and practices, I argue that International Justice, as conventionally understood, reflects the constraints akin to fish oblivious to the (...) water surrounding them. In digital spaces, individuals are no longer bound by principles of singularity and locality, and instead operate by principles of multiplicity and nonlocality. These metaphysical differences disrupt many theories of global justice assuming singularity and nonlocality. My aim is to encourage scholars and practitioners to 'see water'—to acknowledge and critically reassess the foundational assumptions underlying their theories and practices in an era of digital transformation. (shrink)

This paper examines how stances and understandings pertaining to whether home education is civically legitimate within liberal democratic contexts can depend on how one conceives normative roles of the secular state and the religious neutrality that is commonly associated with it. For the purposes of this paper, home education is understood as a manifestation of an educational philosophy ideologically based on a given conception of the good. -/- Two polar conceptions of secularism, republican and liberal-pluralist, are explored. Republican secularists declare (...) that religious expressions do not belong in the public sphere and justify this exclusion by promoting religious neutrality as an end in itself. But liberal-pluralists claim that religious neutrality is only the means to ensure protection of freedom of conscience and religion, which are moral principles. Each conception is associated with its own stance on whether exemptions or accommodations on account of religious beliefs have special legal standing and thereby warranted. The indeterminate nature of religion and the allegedly biased exclusion of secular beliefs, cited by some when denying religious exemptions, can be overcome by understanding all religious and conscientious beliefs as having equal standing as conceptions of the good. -/- Analysis of court documents from the Uwe Romeike et al asylum case are guided by these understandings, and relationships among themes are explored. -/- In summary, any stance regarding home education may depend on one’s view of secularism, particularly in relation to whether one views religious neutrality as a means to ensure protection of freedom of conscience or an end in itself. (shrink)

Aim: This paper assessed the relationship of the university teachers’ work-life balance with their work commitment in Jimei University Chengyi College in creating dynamics on managing competing demands aligned with personal and professional satisfaction. -/- Methodology: A descriptive research design was used in this study. The research locale is at Jimei University Chengyi College. The purposive sampling technique was used. This study used statistical treatment wherein responses were summarized, classified, and tabulated using statistical treatment such as frequency, percentage, weighted mean, (...) standard deviation and Likert scale. -/- Results: The overall mean of 3.52 shows that the teachers strongly agree that the work-life-school balance is very highly manifested in their lives and that they are able to juggle the different responsibilities in both their personal and professional lives. Teacher’s commitment is shown to a very great extent and is indicative of their commitment being very highly manifested which shows that the teachers are very committed to their task as a teacher. Comparing the assessment of the teacher respondents on their relationship between level of work-life-school balance and work commitment, the R-value indicates a weak positive correlation between the teacher’s level of work-life-school balance and work commitment. -/- Conclusion: Teachers experience feelings of anxiety or depression if the balance between the three aspects of their lives, their work, the school, and their personal lives, is disrupted. They constantly think about many other things about their work and their personal life that ‘easily’ relaxing might not be the easiest thing to do. Teachers strongly agree that the work-life-school balance is very highly manifested in their lives and that they are able to juggle the different responsibilities in both their personal and professional lives. (shrink)

Termed the 'Made-by-Human Hypothesis,' I challenge the commonly accepted notion that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is exclusively crafted by humans, emphasizing its impediment to progress. I argue that influences beyond human agency significantly shape AI's trajectory. Introducing the 'Hybrid Hypothesis,' I suggest that the creation of AI is multi-sourced; methods such as evolutionary algorithms influencing AI originate from diverse sources and yield varied impacts. I argue that the development of AI models will increasingly adopt a 'Human+' hybrid composition, where human expertise (...) merges with AI's intrinsic mechanisms, which themselves are influenced by non-human sources. The Hybrid Hypothesis posits that the origin of AI extends beyond human influence, prompting a thorough exploration of unresolved issues in the field of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The study aims to investigate the effects of the spatial configuration of traditional Vietnamese houses on the design of apartment buildings in Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City, Vietnam. To achieve the objective, the following approaches were implemented. Firstly, the transformation of the socio-economic structure in HCM City, which is a primary factor affecting the development of apartment buildings was examined. Secondly, the well-known space syntax method for analyzing the spatial structure plan was outlined. Thirdly, a survey of traditional houses and (...) apartment buildings from 1960 to 2010 was conducted. Among the various traditional house styles, the Hue traditional garden house, which has primary effects on the modern housing design in HCM City, was selected as a representative sample to compare with apartment units. Lastly, the space syntax method was employed to analyze the spatial structure of the sample of traditional houses and apartment units. The effects of the Hue traditional house’s spatial configuration on apartment buildings were analyzed. The result shows that the spatial configuration of modern apartment buildings and traditional houses have similar characteristics, including having an adaptable natural environment, and they both reflect Vietnamese culture and society. The findings can be applied when predicting development trends for the unit plans of modern apartments in HCM City, Vietnam. (shrink)

There are two kinds of time-bias: near-bias and future-bias. While philosophers typically hold that near-bias is rationally impermissible, many hold that future-bias is rationally permissible. Call this normative hybridism. According to arbitrariness objections, certain patterns of preference are rationally impermissible because they are arbitrary. While arbitrariness objections have been levelled against both near-bias and future-bias, the kind of arbitrariness in question has been different. In this paper we investigate whether there are forms of arbitrariness that are common to both kinds (...) of preferences, and hence whether there are versions of the arbitrariness objection that are objections both to near-bias and future-bias. If there are, then this might go some way towards undermining normative hybridism and to defending a thorough-going time-neutralism. (shrink)

Abstract: Background: Coronary artery disease remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality Worldwide. Previous reviews pointed that nursing interventions are beneficial for coronary artery patients. However, most interventions focused on education and counselling, but not consistent with the outcome set; still did not consider patient’s coronary artery disease risky characteristics. Related studies in China also difficult to find. Therefore this study was conducted to investigate kinds of nursing interventions delivered to coronary artery patients and match them with patient’s risk (...) factors of coronary artery disease. Results of this study were expected to add new knowledge that will alert nurses to consider coronary artery risk factors which in turn might enable the development of appropriate approaches to improve patient’s wellbeing hence reduce frequent coronary artery morbidity and mortality. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective design using clinical case notes was employed. Study was undertaken in coronary care wards at the teaching hospital in China from November 2017 to September 2018. Structured-literature supported self-designed questionnaire was utilized for data collection. Chi square (χ2) test and multivariate logistic regression for adjusted odds ratio with 95% confidence interval were used to compare the relationship among independent (patient’s risk coronary artery disease factors) and dependent (nursing interventions) categorical variables. Ethical permission was granted accordingly. Results: A total of 300 coronary artery patients’ case notes were audited with mean age 63±11.2 years. Of these 175 (58.3%) were males. 126(42%) were smoking and 224(74.7%) were hypertensive. More evidence based nursing interventions than education and counselling were found to be delivered to these patients. “Administer coronary artery disease medication and their instructions” was mostly delivered to many patients 291(97%) while “counsel to cope with stress” was the least one 60 (20.0%). Three of eight nursing interventions delivered significantly matched with three or all of these patient’s coronary artery risk variables (age, smoking, hypertension and diabetes) (p < 0.05 and/or < 0.01) with Adjusted odds ratio (95% CI) within their significant ranges. Conclusion: This study delivers valuable insight that, nurses in the studied teaching hospital delivered beneficial evidence based nursing interventions to patients with coronary artery disease which significantly matched with their risk factors of coronary artery illness. However, care for stress was low hence needs improvement. Furthermore, research is needed to get consistency of nursing interventions with patient’s end point clinical outcomes for further appraisal of nursing efforts in caring CAD patients . (shrink)

The monograph reveals challenging issues of small and medium enterprises development in the European Union and East-Partnership countries. Special attention is paid to a new paradigm of financing investments and fostering innovations at all levels of legal entities including SMEs, enhancing innovative entrepreneurship in conditions of global social and technological challenges as well as determining priority sectors for small and medium enterprises as drivers of economic growth. The authors of the monograph emphasize on such European approaches to financing SMEs as (...) crowd-funding and SME-bonds, analyze experience of applying fiscal instruments to support investment and innovations. The researchers underline the role of social investment as an innovative strategy for European SMEs that could be applied in Ukraine and East-partnership countries, suggest new conceptual approach to the evaluation of innovative business development. They also analyse trends of Ukrainian IT enterprises development in the context of modern information services in a global market. Additional attention is paid to the analysis of SMEs’ entrepreneurial potential in conditions of global social and technological changes, estimation effects of applying electronic governance technologies to provide administrative services by public authorities of various levels of governance. Finally, the researchers disclose economic mentality of legal entities as an informal side of financial assets and substantiate the necessity of creation entrepreneurial universities as drivers of innovative development of economy. The materials of the monograph will be useful to scholars, financial managers of companies, financial analysts, representatives of state bodies who implement the state policy in the field of SMEs development in the East-partnership countries, as well as students of economic universities. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

The behavior of macroeconomic indicators (reflecting the development of both the national economy as a whole and that of individual economic sectors) testifies to the low current efficiency of the functioning of economic entities in the context of economic activities. This in turn necessitates scientific substantiation of developing and introducing theoretical and methodological recommendations to ensure innovative development of the country. One of the most effective ways to practically implement this task is to substantiate methods for quantitative assessment of potential (...) in the context of economic activities. The practical value of applying these methods is that the results of the integrated assessment of potential can be used as a criterion for the priority development of certain economic sectors or economic activities. (shrink)

With the rapid development of information technology, the electricity consumption of Internet Data Centers (IDCs) increases drastically, resulting in considerable carbon emissions that need to be reduced urgently. In addition to the introduction of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), the joint use of the spatial migration capacity of IDC workload and the temporal flexibility of the demand of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCSs) provides an important means to change the carbon footprint of the IDC. In this paper, a sustainability improvement strategy (...) for the IDC carbon emission reduction was developed by coordinating the spatial-temporal dispatch flexibilities of the IDC workload and the EVCS demand. Based on the Minkowski sum algorithm, a generalized flexible load model of the EVCSs, considering traffic flow and Road Impedance (RI) was formulated. The case studies show that the proposed method can effectively increase the renewable energy consumption, reduce the overall carbon emissions of multi-IDCs, reduce the energy cost of the DCO, and utilize the EV dispatching potential. Discussions are also provided on the relationship between workload processing time delay and the renewable energy consumption rate. (shrink)

Whether the hands-on experience of creating inventions can promote Students’ interest in pursuing a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career has not been extensively studied. In a quantitative study, we drew on the attitude-behavior-outcome framework to explore the correlates between hands-on making attitude, epistemic curiosities, and career interest. This study targeted students who joined the selection competition for participating in the International Exhibition of Young Inventors (IEYI) in Taiwan. The objective of the invention exhibition is to encourage young students (...) to make innovative projects by applying STEM knowledge and collaborative design. We collected 220 valid data from participants in the 2021 Taiwan IEYI selection competition and conducted a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. Results indicated that: (1) hands-on making attitude was positively related to two types of epistemic curiosity; (2) interest-type epistemic curiosity (IEC) and deprivation-type epistemic curiosity (DEC) were positively associated with STEM career interest; additionally, DEC had a higher coefficient on STEM career interest than IEC; (3) both types of EC had a mediating role between hands-on making attitude and STEM career interest. It is expected that encouraging students to participate in invention exhibition competitions can raise both types of EC and increase their interest in pursuing STEM careers. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

In an essay recently published in this journal (“Is Safety in Danger?”), Fernando Broncano-Berrocal defends the safety condition on knowledge from a counterexample proposed by Tomas Bogardus (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2012). In this paper, we will define the safety condition, briefly explain the proposed counterexample, and outline Broncano-Berrocal’s defense of the safety condition. We will then raise four objections to Broncano-Berrocal’s defense, four implausible implications of his central claim. In the end, we conclude that Broncano-Berrocal’s defense of the safety (...) condition is unsuccessful, and that the safety condition on knowledge should be rejected. (shrink)

As one of the first readers of this fine collection of chapters in improvisation studies, I’ve been interactively constructing my experiences and interpretations of the chapters as I go along. Engaged reading – like all our characteristic activities – has a substantial improvisatory dimension. Readers are neither passively downloading data transmitted fully formed from the contributors’ minds nor making up whatever we like, projecting our own views onto a blank slate of a book. In forging and sharing here my own (...) idiosyncratic responses, I reach out to other, future readers by welcoming and inviting creative pushback, aiming to open up options, to accept and expand on the rich fare these authors offer us. (shrink)

We provide an intuitive motivation for the hyperreal numbers via electoral axioms. We do so in the form of a Socratic dialogue, in which Protagoras suggests replacing big-oh complexity classes by real numbers, and Socrates asks some troubling questions about what would happen if one tried to do that. The dialogue is followed by an appendix containing additional commentary and a more formal proof.

Ford’s Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room claims that my argument in How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room fails because Searle and I use the terms ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory.

Rather than assume—based on the contents of the Nachlass—that the Eternal Recurrence, in its initial formulation, coheres with the later theoretico-metaphysical sense (i.e., sharing abstract space with the Will to Power) I propose the inverse (contrary to Heidegger, Deleuze, and Nehamas (whose Proustian exegesis (Nietzsche: Life as Literature) I’m obliged to radically extend)); namely, that the rotary cosmology of recurrence, as a literal proposition, is a consequence of the poetic sense of the earlier parable (GS)–which, I find, ultimately prefigures the (...) design of his own virulent relapse into theoria (WP). (shrink)

Some proponents of global justice question that opening borders is an effective strategy to alleviate global poverty and reduce inequalities between countries. This article goes a step further and asks whether an open borders policy is compatible with the objectives of global distributive justice. The latter, it will be argued, entails the ordering of needs, the assignment of priorities and the preference or subordination of some interests over others. In other words, global justice requires the establishment of conditions and restrictions (...) on mobility. On the contrary, open borders claim an unrestricted and unconditional (not unqualified) freedom of movement, limited only by public health considerations, serious threats to national security or democratic institutions, but not by an aspiration for maximizing global redistributive utility. The main point is that not only would freedom of movement be instrumentalized, losing its presumptive moral force, but ultimately open borders as a remedy of global justice are an oxymoron. The article concludes with an alternative defence of freedom of international movement. (shrink)

The virtual has become the latest rostrum for ideological heteronormativity; it increasingly plays host to an insidious rhetoric of unjustifiably fixed and oppositional gender binaries that exhort heterosexuality as a norm. Conservative political and religious groups, as well as consumerist advertising, utilise digital technology to reinforce cast-in-stone and adversarial social perspectives for manipulative and exploitative ends. Contrastingly, the virtual may be mobilised to support and facilitate queering in contemporary societies and may positively counter such fixed ideological heteronormative categories of social (...) life. Crucial in this transformative account of the virtual is the body, which is for Merleau-Ponty the horizon of engagement with the world as a condition for perception and performativity. Queer perspectives may, in turn, overcome the oversight of Merleau-Ponty (as critically suggested by Judith Butler and Iris Marion Young) regarding the specific gendered characteristics of the body itself, and allows for an expanded embodied and queer conceptualisation of the virtual. A transformative vision of the virtual entails therefore a rethinking of our understanding of digital technology through (a) the phenomenology of the body-subject and (b) queer theory. I argue that the idea of the body as entirely discursive or performative (per queer theory) needs to be adjusted by explicating the foundational ontological characteristics of the body-subject’s encounter of the virtual. (shrink)

Materialism in the philosophy of mind — materialismPM — is the view that everything mental is material (or, equivalently, physical). Consciousness — pain, emotional feeling, sensory experience, and so on — certainly exists. So materialismPM is the view that consciousness is wholly material. It has, historically, nothing to do with denial of the existence of consciousness. Its heart is precisely the claim that consciousness — consciousness! — is wholly material. [2] ‘Physicalism’, the view introduced by members of the Vienna Circle (...) in the late 1920s, also has nothing to do with denial of the existence of consciousness. [3] Recently the words ‘materialism’ and ‘physicalism’ have come to be treated as synonymous, and as names for a position in the philosophy of mind that does involve denial of the existence of consciousness. They’ve been used to name a position that (i) directly rejects the heart of materialism (materialismPM) and (ii) is certainly false. This is a pity, because they’re good terms for a view that is very likely true. (shrink)

A short philosophic meditation on contemporary civilization as Plato's cave imploding.

Arakawa and Gins have been fomenting revolution for a long time. In the last twenty years their attention has turned more and more towards architecture and urban planning as a way of reforming our bodily existence. Their proposals enter daily life rather than staying in the isolated sphere of the museum or gallery. These constructions are to be lived in, not contemplated. Will daily life then blunt or sharpen Arakawa and Gins's power to educate and revise our "architectural bodies"?

This essay makes the case for, in the phrase of Angelika Kratzer, packing the fruits of the study of rational decision-making into our semantics for deontic modals—specifically, for parametrizing the truth-condition of a deontic modal to things like decision problems and decision theories. Then it knocks it down. While the fundamental relation of the semantic theory must relate deontic modals to things like decision problems and theories, this semantic relation cannot be intelligibly understood as representing the conditions under which a (...) deontic modal is true. Rather it represents the conditions under which it is accepted by a semantically competent agent. This in turn motivates a reorientation of the whole of semantic theorizing, away from the truth-conditional paradigm, toward a form of Expressivism. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Daniel M. Wegner's line of argument against the causal efficacy of conscious will, as presented in Wegner's book "The Illusion of Conscious Will" (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002). I argue that most of the evidence adduced in the book can be interpreted in ways that do not threaten the efficacy of conscious will. Also, I argue that Wegner's view of conscious will is not an empirical thesis, and that certain views of consciousness and the (...) self are immune to Wegner's line of argument. (shrink)

The secularisation idea is that modernity leaves religion behind. But for Gauchet, modernity just is religion transformed, without remainder. The Axial Age discovery of the inner world of the psyche and its symbolic expressions, was at the same time a growth in understanding of God as creator, transcendent and incommensurable with all of creation. Henceforth, religion would be in the key of personal struggle and symbolic transformation, putting aside heteronomy. Taylor adds a caveat: the self-image of the self-sufficient, autonomous individual (...) subtracted from the canopy of 'higher' mythological entities obscures the basic human need for recognition and identity. This issues in an unhelpful politics of mobilization and manipulation. Likewise, Voegelin sees both liberal modernity and present-day religion as largely gnostic, closed and ideological versions of the traditions. Secular public policy types the religions as sects. But the autonomy of self-determination arises out of religion and a plausible secularisation thesis would see contemporary culture as containing within it the possibility for a secular expression of the authentic religious tradition - including resistance to sect-like religiosity. The revisionist history suggested here entails a rethink of the image of modernity in terms of a complete break with the pre-secular culture and entails a re-positioning of religion within secular society. (shrink)

Bài viết đánh giá các nhân tố tác động đến việc sử dụng QR-Code tại các cửa hàng tạp hóa trên địa bàn TP. Biên Hòa, tỉnh Đồng Nai. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có 3 nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc sử dụng QR Code gồm: Tính dễ dàng thao tác; Tính nhanh chóng tiện lợi; Tính an toàn bảo mật. Từ đó, nghiên cứu kiến nghị đối với các ngân hàng và các tổ chức tín dụng cung (...) cấp dịch vụ QR Code đến người dân sử dụng rộng rãi hơn không chỉ ở khu vực thành thị, cũng như các khu vực nông thôn. [The paper evaluates factors affecting the use of QR-Code at grocery stores in Bien Hoa city, Dong Nai province. Research result points out 3 factors affecting the use of QR Code which are Ease of use; Speed and convenience; Safety and security. From this finding, the study suggests that banks and credit institutions provide QR Code service to people more widely not only in urban areas, but also in rural areas.]. (shrink)

The aim of this commentary is to critically examine Matti Häyry’s article ‘Just Better Utilitarianism’, where he argues that liberal utilitarianism can offer a basis for moral and political choices in bioethics and thus could be helpful in decision-making. This commentary, while generally sympathetic to Häyry’s perspective, argues that Häyry should expand on who belongs to our moral community because, to solve practical ethical issues, we need to determine who (and what) deserves our moral consideration. Challenging Häyry’s principle of actual (...) or prospective existence, this commentary suggests that – at least sometimes – the quality of life of those who will never come into existence matters. In a similar vein, this commentary aims to show that determining how to treat mindless humans such as fetuses might pose difficulties for liberal utilitarianism unless the issue of the boundaries of the moral community is addressed. (shrink)

Those who believe in the simplistic trust model between politics and science unintentionally (or intentionally) omit the fact that there exists something called cultural value systems and norms, which govern the formation, growth and demise of a group. These elements are so critical that by setting them aside, we risk entering total disagreements whenever difficult problems arise. One such serious problem is the climate crisis and the need for building the eleventh cultural value as proposed by Vuong [7]. And this (...) value will complement the progressive value system suggested by Harrison [8]. It is safe to say that besides hard-core sciences, resolving global problems posing existential threats to humankind will certainly require us to deploy our best weapons, and many must come from the social sciences and humanities [9]. Therefore, the future solution to global change problems will have to show us its social heart. (shrink)

Peer commentary on: Goering, S., Klein, E., Dougherty, D. D., & Widge, A. S. (2017). Staying in the loop: Relational agency and identity in next-generation DBS for psychiatry. AJOB Neuroscience, 8(2), 59-70.

This chapter makes the argument for both the practicality and impracticality of philosophy as it relates to liberal education. An exploration of the history of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals that a study of philosophy cultivates a skill set of logic and critical thinking that are crucial for those who study science and mathematics. It also situates philosophy as a unifying discipline for liberal education and STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The study of philosophy also (...) is impractical, as is liberal education, in that it does not prepare students for any specific profession. But it is this impracticality that makes philosophy, and liberal education, central to its identity and value: it creates an individual who is more empathic, open-minded, and self-aware that would not be possible if philosophy and liberal education were subordinated to some practical goal. (shrink)

Rodney Needham bipolarity in a small context.

This paper comments on Gallagher’s recently published direct perception proposal about social cognition [Gallagher, S.. Direct perception in the intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 535–543]. I show that direct perception is in danger of being appropriated by the very cognitivist accounts criticised by Gallagher. Then I argue that the experiential directness of perception in social situations can be understood only in the context of the role of the interaction process in social cognition. I elaborate on the role of social (...) interaction with a discussion of participatory sense-making to show that direct perception, rather than being a perception enriched by mainly individual capacities, can be best understood as an interactional phenomenon. (shrink)

In this paper, the concept of birth affirmation is clarified in both the psychological dimension and the philosophical dimension. In the psychological dimension, we propose two interpretations: 1) Possible world interpretation: Even if I could imagine a possible world in which my ideal was realized or my grave sufferings were resolved, I would never think, at the bottom of my heart, that it would have been better to have been born to that possible world. 2) Anti-antinatalistic interpretation: I would never (...) think, at the bottom of my heart, that it would have been better not to have been born. In the philosophical dimension, we propose the following interpretation: The comparison of betterness or worseness between the actual world and a possible world and between my having been born and my not having been born should be impossible. In the final part of this paper, the differences from other related concepts and frequently asked questions are discussed. (shrink)

In Liberalism without Perfection Jonathan Quong defends a form of political liberalism; that is, a political philosophy that answers ‘no’ to both the following questions: 1. Must liberal political philosophy be based in some particular ideal of what constitutes a valuable or worthwhile human life, or other metaphysical beliefs? 2. Is it permissible for a liberal state to promote or discourage some activities, ideals, or ways of life on grounds relating to their inherent or intrinsic value, or on the basis (...) of other metaphysical claims? In these remarks, I respond to Quong’s arguments against those of his rivals who answer ‘Yes’ to his first question by dint of their comprehensive commitment to an ideal of individual autonomy. One of these, which Quong calls ‘comprehensive antiperfectionism’, answers ‘Yes’ to Question 1 and ‘No’ to Question 2. The other, which answers ‘Yes’ to both, he calls (comprehensive) ‘liberal perfectionism’. Quong poses these positions a dilemma: they cannot consistently be both comprehensive (by retaining their commitment to autonomy) and liberal (by ruling out the sort of coercive interference in people’s choices which is beyond the liberal pale). I argue on the contrary that a comprehensive commitment to autonomy actually demands a general injunction against such coercive interference, because responsibility is an important component of the autonomous life, and coercion always undermines responsibility. So, Quong’s dilemma is unsuccessful. (shrink)

People who have encountered a tragic event and suffered from traumatic experiences can sometimes achieve, in their later lives, an affirmation of having been born to such devastating lives. But what does this “affirmation” exactly mean in such cases? In this paper, I investigate this problem from the viewpoint of philosophy of life’s meaning. Firstly, I distinguish among three types of affirmations: the affirmation of survival, the affirmation of having had traumatic experiences, and the affirmation of the occurrence of a (...) tragic event. Secondly, I discuss the differences between the event that affects only one person and the event that affects many people, and which of the three aforementioned affirmations is the most important to victims. I would like to contribute to the discussion of this topic by analyzing some basic concepts concerning human suffering and despair. (shrink)

This paper discusses the philosophical and logical motivations for rejectivism, primarily by considering a dialogical approach to logic, which is formalized in a Question–Answer Semantics. We develop a generalized account of rejectivism through close consideration of Mark Textor's arguments against rejectivism that the negative expression ‘No’ is never used as an act of rejection and is equivalent with a negative sentence. In doing so, we also shed light upon well-known issues regarding the supposed non-embeddability and non-iterability of force indicators.

If successful scientific inquiry is to be possible, there must be a world that is independent of how we believe it to be, and in which there are kinds and laws; and we must have the sensory apparatus to perceive particular things and events, and the capacity to represent them, to form generalized explanatory conjectures, and check how these conjectures stand up to further experience. Whether these preconditions are met is not a question the sciences can answer; it is specifically (...) philosophical. This is why the myriad forms of scientistic philosophy in vogue today (neurophilosophy, experimental philosophy, naturalized metaphysics, evangelical-atheist reductionism, etc), are all hollow at the core. Does this mean we must return to the old, a priori analytic model? No! What is needed instead is scientific philosophy in the sense Peirce articulated more than a century ago: philosophy motivated by a genuine desire to discover the truth, and relying not solely on reason but also on experience—only not the special, recherché experience required by the sciences, but close attention to aspects of everyday experience so familiar we hardly notice them. (shrink)

Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, “Socrates is running”, you begin by uttering the subject term ("Socrates"), before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding predications in thought also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. (...) I then present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to our latest thinking about propositions. I highlight this by presenting recent accounts of two philosophers with radically different outlooks: Jeffrey King and Peter Hanks. Both their accounts take many of the same things for granted, as the Alberican criticisms make plain. (shrink)