According to the most popular non-skeptical views about intuition, intuitions justify beliefs because they are based on understanding. More precisely: if intuiting that p justifies you in believing that p it does so because your intuition is based on your understanding of the proposition that p. The aim of this paper is to raise some challenges for accounts of intuitive justification along these lines. I pursue this project from a non-skeptical perspective. I argue that there are cases in which intuiting (...) that p justifies you in believing that p, but such that there is no compelling reason to think this is because your intuition is based on your understanding of the proposition that p. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

In a recent opinion paper, it was argued that individuals with multiple retractions or a record of academic misconduct should not serve as editors, including as editors-in-chief, on the editorial boards of scholarly or academic journals. As a first step towards appreciating how such a policy could be applied in practice, the presence of 30 individuals listed on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard on editorial boards was screened. Six cases are highlighted to gain an appreciation of the potential reputational risks that (...) journals and publishers might incur by including individuals with a tainted academic record on editorial boards. Given the reputational, legal and other risks associated with this type of assessment and decision, more formal positioning and guidance are needed by global ethics policy-related bodies such as COPE, the ICMJE, and the CSE, even more so in journals that claim to follow these organizations’ ethical guidelines. (shrink)

Abstract: This research paper presents a novel approach to predict audit risks using a neural network model. The dataset used for this study was obtained from Kaggle and comprises 774 samples with 18 features, including Sector_score, PARA_A, SCORE_A, PARA_B, SCORE_B, TOTAL, numbers, marks, Money_Value, District, Loss, Loss_SCORE, History, History_score, score, and Risk. The proposed neural network architecture consists of three layers, including one input layer, one hidden layer, and one output layer. The neural network model was trained and validated, achieving (...) an impressive accuracy of 100% and an average error of 0.000015, indicating its robust predictive capability. Moreover, we conducted feature importance analysis to identify the most influential features for predicting audit risk. The key features found to be critical for classifying fraudulent activities in audit risk prediction are Sector_score, PARA_A, SCORE_A, PARA_B, SCORE_B, TOTAL, numbers, marks, Money_Value, District, Loss, Loss_SCORE, History, and History_score. This research contributes to the field of audit risk prediction by demonstrating the effectiveness of a neural network-based approach and highlighting the importance of specific features in detecting fraudulent activities. The findings have significant implications for auditors and organizations seeking to enhance their audit risk assessment processes, ultimately leading to improved financial transparency and fraud detection. (shrink)

This paper develops a notion of manipulative gaslighting, which is designed to capture something not captured by epistemic gaslighting, namely the intent to undermine women by denying their testimony about harms done to them by men. Manipulative gaslighting, I propose, consists in getting someone to doubt her testimony by challenging its credibility using two tactics: “sidestepping” and “displacing”. I explain how manipulative gaslighting is distinct from reasonable disagreement, with which it is sometimes confused. I also argue for three further claims: (...) that manipulative gaslighting is a method of enacting misogyny, that it is often a collective phenomenon, and, as collective, qualifies as a mode of psychological oppression. (shrink)

Conscious states—state that there is something it is like to be in—seem both rich or full of detail and ineffable or hard to fully describe or recall. The problem of ineffability, in particular, is a longstanding issue in philosophy that partly motivates the explanatory gap: the belief that consciousness cannot be reduced to underlying physical processes. Here, we provide an information theoretic dynamical systems perspective on the richness and ineffability of consciousness. In our framework, the richness of conscious experience corresponds (...) to the amount of information in a conscious state and ineffability corresponds to the amount of information lost at different stages of processing. We describe how attractor dynamics in working memory would induce impoverished recollections of our original experiences, how the discrete symbolic nature of language is insufficient for describing the rich and high-dimensional structure of experiences, and how similarity in the cognitive function of two individuals relates to improved communicability of their experiences to each other. While our model may not settle all questions relating to the explanatory gap, it makes progress toward a fully physicalist explanation of the richness and ineffability of conscious experience—two important aspects that seem to be part of what makes qualitative character so puzzling. (shrink)

This article constructively retrieves St. Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of retributive justice and provides a defense of what can be called the retributive model of hell. In the first part of this article, we develop the place of retributive punishment in Anselm’s thinking and discuss how and when retributive punishment is a good thing. In the second part, we apply Anselm’s thinking on retributive justice to the problem of hell and provide a defense of how hell, defined as a state (...) of receiving retributive, damnatory, and irreversible punishment, is good. We then address a series of objections. Despite some criticism that both Anselm and the retributive model of hell receive in the contemporary literature, Anselm’s account of retributive justice can make unique and constructive contributions to the contemporary discussion of hell; by retrieving and applying Anselm’s thought to the problem of hell, we intend to kill two birds with one stone. (shrink)

Abstract: Online book review platforms generate vast user data, making accurate rating prediction crucial for personalized recommendations. This research explores neural networks as simple models for predicting book ratings without complex algorithms. Our novel approach uses neural networks to predict ratings solely from user-book interactions, eliminating manual feature engineering. The model processes data, learns patterns, and predicts ratings. We discuss data preprocessing, neural network design, and training techniques. Real-world data experiments show the model's effectiveness, surpassing traditional methods. This research can (...) enhance user experience, book catalog organization, and aid publishers, simplifying recommendation processes and providing tailored suggestions based on user preferences. (shrink)

Friendship is an important bond in the personal and social growth of an individual and plays a prominent role during youth. Most scales to measure it are aimed at children and adolescents but none measure character friendship, a type of selfless friendship with ethical traits an d Aristotelian roots. Therefore, the aim of the research is to design and validate the youth Character Friendship Scale (CFS) in a sample of 1587 young Spanish people. The final version of the CFS is (...) composed of 35 items distributed over three dimensions: "Selfless love and intimacy" (21), "Trust" (7) and "Respect and forgiveness" (7) with ordinal reliability coefficients of 0.94, 0.79 and 0.7 respectively and good model fits (CFI = 0.986; TLI = 0.986; RMSEA = 0.043; SRMR = 0.054; GFI = 0.997). It is concluded that the CFS is a scale with good psychometric properties for measuring character friendship in young adults. The results obtained from its application will lead to a better understanding of the importance of character friendship for the socioemotional development or happiness of young adults and will enable the development of intervention programmes that enhance aspects of friendship such as trust, respect, forgiveness or mutual knowledge, which can facilitate collaborative relationships and contribute to social cohesion. (shrink)

This article makes a case for the capacity of "social practice" accounts of agency and freedom to criticize, resist, and transform systemic forms of power and domination from within the context of religious and political practices and institutions. I first examine criticisms that Michel Foucault's analysis of systemic power results in normative aimlessness, and then I contrast that account with the description of agency and innovative practice that pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom identifies as "expressive freedom." I argue that Brandom can (...) provide a normative trajectory for Foucault's diagnoses of power and domination, helping to resolve its apparent lack of ethical direction. I demonstrate that Foucault, in turn, presents Brandom with insights that might overcome the charges of abstraction and conservatism that his pragmatic inferentialism frequently encounters. The result is a vindication of social practice as an analytical lens for social criticism that is at once both immanent and radical. (shrink)

Motivation serves as a pivotal driver for achieving optimal work performance, especially in the realm of local government operations. Through a qualitative multiple-case study design, the researchers analyzed the pivotal connection between employees' performance and overall organizational success. Thirteen (13) participants from the first-class municipalities in the first district of Batangas were selected using purposive sampling techniques. Face-to-face interviews were conducted to get the opinions of the participants and were subsequently subjected to thematic analysis. The findings highlight the strong connection (...) between motivational tools and employee preferences. Despite the local government's emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, employees exhibit a strong preference for incentives, rewards, and acknowledgment. Advocating for the systematic integration of employee feedback into motivational strategy formulation and the necessity of comprehensive evaluations of existing tools. Additionally, it underscores the importance of cultivating an inclusive environment where employees actively participate in discussions about motivational approaches. By embracing the proposed motivational plan that considers both organizational and employee perspectives, this research seeks to cultivate a culture of heightened productivity and performance enhancement within local government units. (shrink)

A graph-theoretic account of logics is explored based on the general notion of m-graph (that is, a graph where each edge can have a finite sequence of nodes as source). Signatures, interpretation structures and deduction systems are seen as m-graphs. After defining a category freely generated by a m-graph, formulas and expressions in general can be seen as morphisms. Moreover, derivations involving rule instantiation are also morphisms. Soundness and completeness theorems are proved. As a consequence of the generality of the (...) approach our results apply to very different logics encompassing, among others, substructural logics as well as logics with nondeterministic semantics, and subsume all logics endowed with an algebraic semantics. (shrink)

A brief dissertation on what knowledge is.

A surge in post-publication activity related to editing, including by technical editors and copyeditors, is worthy of some discussion. One of these issues involves the issue of 'tortured phrases', which are bizarre terms and phrases in academic papers that replace standard English expressions or jargon. This phenomenon may reveal an attempt to avoid the detection of textual similarity or to masquerade plagiarism, and yet remain undetected by editors, peer reviewers and text editors. Potentially thousands of cases have already been discovered (...) and reported publicly on the post-publication platform PubPeer. In this opinion paper, 35 cases from ranked scholarly journals are presented, mainly the fields of materials, computer and engineering sciences. This collation serves to expand discussion about this integrity-related phenomenon and to increase educational awareness of the topic. (shrink)

Dealing with the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science, this book demonstrates that not only is classical metaphysics not in conflict with the principles of modern experimental science but that, when analogously transferred to the different divisions of modern science, the metaphysical principle of unity makes intelligible all the laws of modern science. This revolutionary book provides the means for reestablishing the unity of science by interpreting the whole of modern experimental science from the perspective of an analogous transfer of (...) the metaphysical principle of unity rather than in terms of efficient causality. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to solve an important scientific problem – further development of the basics of management decisions on the implementation of export-import activities based on the results of enterprise symptomatic diagnostics in disruption conditions of sustainable development of the world economy. The essence of enterprise symptomatic diagnostics in the context of management activity is specified by the results of the critical analysis of the scientific publications. The study of the features of the symptomatic diagnostics process of (...) enterprise export-import activity might become the basis for the development of a comprehensive approach to its implementation, which reveals the interaction of the theoretical, scientific and methodological basis and the targeted direction of managers` actions in the diagnostics process. Generalization of symptomatic complex of export-import activity of enterprises-manufacturers of BOPP films – Terichem Tervakoski, a.s. and Xpro India Ltd, helped to identify issues that are reducing its performance. A set of measures was explored in order to avoid the negative symptoms of export-import activity of Terichem Tervakoski and Xpro India Ltd. The authors revealed some dependency respecting that the more negative symptoms of export-import activity realization lead to decline the efficiency of its implementation. The results of the study might clarify the impact of symptoms on the results of the enterprise export-import performance. Symptomatic diagnostics of enterprise export-import activity is considered as the basis of a sequence of management measures in order to avoid negative symptoms of export-import activity. (shrink)

On what conditions, if it all possible, can Christianity be life-affirming in line with the general schema outlined throughout Nietzsche's wide-ranging corpus? Through a post-modern interpretation of Christ as OverMan of course. Pack your crosses and your pentagrams and buckle up for this visual transmission of my most recent brainchild.

One of the challenges in secondary schools today is infringements on students’ rights, in a tortious way that may also constitute breach of the Child’s Right Act of 2003 in Nigeria. These breach on rights usually come through the administration of corporal punishments on students, and mainly because the school heads see themselves as loco parentis of the students who can, therefore, enforce any form of punishment on them in the school. This study investigated knowledge, attitude, and infringement of tort (...) law among public secondary school heads on students in Osun State. All the students in Osun State public secondary schools and 723 heads constituted the population. A sample of 54 school heads and 180 students were selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. Two instruments were designed to elicit responses from the respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the research questions raised for the study. The results showed that school heads do not have adequate knowledge of tort law and that both the school heads and students have poor attitude toward it tort law. The study recommends that short term training on student’s right, how they can be legally protected and tort law be organised for school heads. (shrink)

Genetics and the biological sciences are the two contemporary scientific fields most readily called to mind in thinking about science and eugenics. Yet the history of another discipline, psychology, is enmeshed more intricately with eugenics than are the histories of either genetics or even the biological sciences more generally. This is true of the history of eugenics in Canada. Moreover, continuities in the roles that psychology plays in how we think about sorts of people and their ability and right to (...) parent make psychology’s eugenic past relevant to reflection on contemporary and ongoing practices and policies. (shrink)

The ji 己self is a site, storehouse, or depot of individuated allotment associated with the possession of things and qualities: wholesome and unwholesome desires (yu 欲) and aversions, emotions such as anxiety, and positive values such as humaneness and reverence. Each person's allotment is unique, and its "contents" are collected, measured, reflected on, and then distributed to others. The Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi each have their own vision for negotiating the space between self and other. Works as seemingly (...) dissimilar as the Analects and Daodejing both agree that positive qualities located within the self should be shared with others, and that the self can be optimized rather than maximized through sharing, emptying, or clearing. Sommer compares the ji self with other terms for body and person current in classical times. This self is strongly individuated, but it exists primarily in relation to other human beings (ren 人 ). These "others" are almost never one's own kind and are usually people who fall outside one's ascribed familial and social relationships. Negotiations between self and other often reflect apprehension regarding degrees of distance, intimacy, worth, recognition, or understanding (zhi 知) between people. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

A Few Notes on Aspect Seein g in Contemporar y Aesthetics In this paper author examines the problem of aspect seeing in reference to works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Virgil C. Aldrich posing the question of whether they are applicable to experience of musical works. Drawing on examples from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, author maintains that hearing a melody as solemn, sad, et cetera is neither universal nor unequivocal. Musical work, author suggests, does not present itself spontaneously to the listener. Conversely (...) it must be sought and found. To speak of aspect hearing or hearing as (as aesthetic hearing) in reference to music, one must seek out those qualities of musical work that are perceptual but also individually grasped in contrast to what is given in experience through acculturation and training. (shrink)

This brief elucidation of two quotes from the Genealogy will be apt for more accessible interpretation following the completion of my next paper. Stay tuned for some hard-fought philosophy.

This article offers a rereading of Monique Wittig's philosophical writing on sex, gender, and sexuality against some of the major criticisms that have led to limited engagement with her work. I argue that reorienting our understanding of Wittig's lesbian-feminism away from notions of sexuality per se enables us to read her in terms of a larger project that takes aim at the primacy of phallocentrism in how we understand subjectivity. In doing so, I establish and situate three themes in her (...) feminism that have remained largely unremarked upon in contemporary philosophical treatments of her work: domination, utopianism, and polysemy. Part of this reorientation also involves taking seriously the place of language in her philosophy and examining the ways in which she textually expresses the “lesbian” in her literature—a facet similarly underexamined. Although the account of Wittig's philosophy given here is by no means definitive, I aim through this preliminary re-evaluation to provide a richer reading of Wittig's work against prevailing criticism, demonstrate her continuing relevance to feminist thought, and present further avenues of investigation. (shrink)

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

What are the implications for human society, and for our institutions of higher learning, of the discovery of a sophisticated extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) operating on and around Earth? This book explores this timely question from a multidisciplinary perspective. It considers scientific, philosophical, theological, and interdisciplinary ways of thinking about the question, and it represents all viewpoints on how likely it is that an ETI is already operating here on Earth. The book’s contributors represent a wide range of academic disciplines in (...) their formal training and later vocations, and, upon reflection on the book’s topic, they articulate a diverse range of insights into how ETI will impact humankind. It is safe to say that any contact or communication with ETI will not be merely a game changer for human society, but it also will be a paradigm changer. It makes sense for human beings to prepare themselves now for this important transition. (shrink)

David Lewis objected to theories that posit necessary connections between distinct entities and to theories that involve a magical grasping of their primitives. In On the Plurality of Worlds, Lewis objected to nondescript ersatzism on these grounds. The literature contains several reconstructions of Lewis’ critique of nondescript ersatzism but none of these interpretations adequately address his main argument because they fail to see that Lewis’ critique is based on broader methodological considerations. I argue that a closer look at his methodology (...) reveals the broader objection he presented against nondescript ersatzism. This objection, I further argue, remains a challenge for the ersatzer who posits structure-less entities as possible worlds. (shrink)

Are materially constituted entities, such as statues and glasses of liquid, something more than their material constituents? The puzzle that frames this paper stems from conflicting answers to this question. At the core of the paper is a distinctive way of thinking about material constitution that posits two concepts of constitution, compositional and ampliative constitution, with the bulk of the discussion devoted to developing distinct analyses for these concepts. Distinguishing these concepts solves our initial puzzle and enriches the space of (...) possibilities for constitution views. (shrink)

The conflation of two fundamentally distinct issues has generated serious confusion in the philosophical and biological literature concerning the units of selection. The question of how a unit of selection of defined, theoretically, is rarely distinguished from the question of how to determine the empirical accuracy of claims--either specific or general--concerning which unit(s) is undergoing selection processes. In this paper, I begin by refining a definition of the unit of selection, first presented in the philosophical literature by William Wimsatt, which (...) is grounded in the structure of natural selection models. I then explore the implications of this structural definition for empirical evaluation of claims about units of selection. I consider criticisms of this view presented by Elliott Sober--criticisms taken by some (for example, Mayo and Gilinsky 1987) to provide definitive damage to the structuralist account. I shall show that Sober has misinterpreted the structuralist views; he knocks down a straw man in order to motivate his own causal account. Furthermore, I shall argue, Sober's causal account is dependent on the structuralist account that he rejects. I conclude by indicating how the refined structural definition can clarify which sorts of empirical evidence could be brought to bear on a controversial case involving units of selection. (shrink)

This paper will consider ethical issues arising from medical tort litigation. I will argue that deep changes are required to ensure fairness in litigation and in order to hold morally responsible those corporations that take unnecessary risks with consumers’ lives.

The article contains a critical analysis of the skeptical solution to the rule- following problem. The skeptical solution denies the existence of “superlative” R-facts that would make statements of the form “P means R by ‘+’ ” true. The role of the sources for the meaning of ‘+’ here is played by the patterns of solidarity behavior of members of some community to which P belongs. The correct use of ‘+’ would be one that is approved by the competent majority (...) of this community, and there can be no other sense in which it would be correct or wrong. Boyd’s hypothesis denies the communal character of the ‘+’ meaning. While there are no “superlative” R-facts, there should be C-facts not about the R as the standard that P or its community follows in their practice of using ‘+’, but about whether they do it correctly. The proof of the Boyd hypothesis is based on the example of an imaginary Ω-community, whose agents use a finite set of simple symbols for the needs of their arithmetic: ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘J’. Each symbol denotes a subset of identical, from the Ω-community point of view, numerical values. The symbol ‘A’ is used, for ex- ample, for a subset of the natural numbers 1, 10, 19, 28, 37, 46, etc.; ‘B’ for 2, 11, 20, 29, 38, 47, etc.; ‘C’ for 3, 12, 21, 30, 39, 48, etc. The Ω-community’s arithmetic uses the only local function ⊕ whose range of values forms a finite set of mathematical propositions {α} that are true. The Ω-community’s arithmetic, like our own, is open to many skeptical challenges. Is there a fact that determines the meaning of ‘⊕’? What do agents do when they calculate with ‘⊕’ (say, solve examples ‘A⊕B = ?’, ‘C⊕E=?’, etc.)? Do they Add, Badd or Dadd? To answer them would require a “superlative” R-fact. For the calculation practice with ‘⊕’, it could be a certain R-fact that determines the only possible order for the sequence of numerals ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘J’ such that {α} is true. An analysis of the calculation practice using the local arithmetic function ⊕ shows that for it there are no such R-facts that would determine the only correct standard R – even if the agents in the Ω-community were trained in such calculations on a full set of cases for the application of that function. However, for such practice there are C-facts (independent in their existence from R-facts) that make it possible to distinguish between what seems to be right and what is right. The solitary agent P and the Ω-community are in the same position regarding the knowledge of C-facts. The Ω-community’s point of view has no advantage in matters of C-facts knowledge over the solitary agent P’s point of view. The Ω-community arithmetic shows that if a solitary agent P had the suitable knowledge of C-facts about the practice of calculations with ‘⊕’, it would allow him/her to disagree with the not correct answers of other members of the community even when they would constitute an absolute majority. (shrink)

Previous work in Game Studies has centered on several loci of investigation in seeking to understand virtual gameworlds. First, researchers have scrutinized the concept of the virtual world itself and how it relates to the idea of “the magic circle”. Second, the field has outlined various forms of experienced “presence”. Third, scholarship has noted that the boundaries between the world of everyday life and virtual worlds are porous, and that this fosters a multiplicity of identities as players identify both with (...) themselves-offline and themselves-in-game. Despite widespread agreement that these topics are targets for research, so far those working on these topics do not have mutually agreed-upon framework. Here we draw upon the work of Alfred Schutz to take up this call. We provide a phenomenological framework which can be used to describe the phenomena of interest to Game Studies, as well as open new avenues of inquiry, in a way acceptable and useful to all. This helps to distinguish the core of the field from the supplemental theoretical and critical commitments which characterize diverse approaches within the field. (shrink)

Watching other people play videogames —a.k.a. ‘spectator gaming’— is a widespread practice. Yet, it is considered by some as an inadequate form of engagement with games. In this paper, I show that the strongest objection to spectator gaming relies on the claim that some properties of videogames are better, if not exclusively, accessible to the player. After that, I propose two replies to this challenge. The first is that ‘secondary players’, i.e., individuals who indirectly take part in the game, can (...) access the relevant properties. The second reply is that even paradigmatic spectators may engage in simulated play, and therefore, access these properties as well. (shrink)

There is a major debate as to whether there are non-causal mathematical explanations of physical facts that show how the facts under question arise from a degree of mathematical necessity considered stronger than that of contingent causal laws. We focus on Marc Lange’s account of distinctively mathematical explanations to argue that purported mathematical explanations are essentially causal explanations in disguise and are no different from ordinary applications of mathematics. This is because these explanations work not by appealing to what the (...) world must be like as a matter of mathematical necessity but by appealing to various contingent causal facts. (shrink)

We describe (essential features and an axiomatization of) a new metamathematical (cognitive) ability, i.e., functional conceptual substratum, used implicitly in the generation of several mathematical proofs and definitions, and playing a fundamental role in Artificial Mathematical Intelligence (or Cognitive-computational metamathematics). Furthermore, we present an initial (first-order) formalization of this mechanism together with its characterizing relation with classic notions like primitive positive definability and Diophantiveness. Additionally, we analyze the semantic variability of functional conceptual substratum when small syntactic modifications are done. Finally, (...) we describe cognitively natural inference rules for (mathematical) definitions inspired by functional conceptual substratum and we show that they are sound and complete w.r.t.\ standard calculi. (shrink)

In this chapter, we introduce the perennial and sometimes sprawling topic of properties, with a brief historical sketch from Ancient to Modern philosophy throughout various cultures and traditions. We argue that the importance of properties can be shown by explaining what explanatory work they can do in philosophical theorising across many areas of philosophy. The chapters in this volume do just that in their specific ways. We also outline the structure of the volume and summarise each Part, first describing the (...) larger context of each Part and then the upshot of each chapter. (shrink)

It is suggested that the relationship between visual attention and conscious visual experience can be simplified by distinguishing different aspects of both visual attention and visual experience. A set of principles is first proposed for any possible taxonomy of the processes involved in visual attention. A particular taxonomy is then put forward that describes five such processes, each with a distinct function and characteristic mode of operation. Based on these, three separate kinds—or possibly grades—of conscious visual experience can be distinguished, (...) each associated with a particular combination of attentional processes. (shrink)

Abstract Most discussions of risk are developed in broadly consequentialist terms, focusing on the outcomes of risks as such. This paper will provide an alternative account of risk from a virtue ethical perspective, shifting the focus to the decision to take the risk. Making ethical decisions about risk is, we will argue, not fundamentally about the actual chain of events that the decision sets in process, but about the reasonableness of the decision to take the risk in the first place. (...) A virtue ethical account of risk is needed because the notion of the ‘reasonableness’ of the decision to take the risk is affected by the complexity of the moral status of particular instances of risk-taking and the risk-taker’s responsiveness to these contextual features. The very idea of ‘reasonable risk’ welcomes judgments about the nature of the risk itself, raises questions about complicity, culpability and responsibility, while at its heart, involves a judgement about the justification of risk which unavoidably focuses our attention on the character of the individuals involved in risk making decisions. Keywords: Risk; ethics; morality; responsibility; virtue; choice; reasons . (shrink)

This capstone project aimed to enhance the operational efficiency of school transactions at Mary Perpetua E. Brioso National High School (MPEBNHS) in response to challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This goal was achieved by developing and implementing the Mobile-Based Selected School Services Application, "iSkulSerb." The development of iSkulSerb followed the systematic approach of Borg and Gall's (1983) Research and Development (R&D) methodology for creating and validating educational products. To ensure the validity and reliability of the application, it underwent rigorous (...) examination by both IT and education experts. Additionally, survey questionnaires were administered during the project's implementation to assess the impact of iSkulSerb's features on school stakeholders. The research findings highlighted positive perceptions and outcomes related to iSkulSerb. Stakeholders demonstrated a favorable acceptance of the application, as evidenced by an overall weighted mean of 4.34. The accessibility of school services saw a substantial improvement, reflected in the weighted mean of 4.37. User-friendliness also received positive feedback, with an overall weighted mean of 4.27. These findings suggest that iSkulSerb effectively addresses the challenges faced by the school, contributing to enhanced operational efficiency and improved stakeholder experiences. Given the demonstrated reliability and efficacy of iSkulSerb, there is a compelling case for its widespread adoption across other public schools within the Schools Division of Masbate Province. The positive reception and success metrics indicate that iSkulSerb can serve as a benchmark for other regional schools. (shrink)

We construct a machine that knows its own code, at the price of not knowing its own factivity.

The emergence of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) from Wuhan city of China engulfed almost the entire world and created a global pandemic. Several countries declared this pandemic as national emergency, forcing millions of people to go into lockdown. This sudden social isolation has caused enormous disruption of daily routine for the global community, especially children. To minimize the transmission of this virus all the educational institutions were closed and moved to online learning to encourage and adhere to social distancing guidelines issued (...) by the authorities from time to time. This abrupt change in the learning environment, restrictions in social interaction and other activities caused unusual situation in the development of child brain. Therefore, it is important and obligatory for the scientific community and healthcare workers to access and analyse the impact of Covid -19 pandemic on the mental health of children. The present article is a case study and was conducted in Doda of Jammu and Kashmir regarding the impact of quarantine on the children. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research (ISR), at Phenikaa University. ISR has for seven years now the place where the co-founders of this portal have been working and producing publications. A special event occurs now as the Current Conservation magazine publishes a new writing piece by our member, Dr Minh-Hoang Nguyen.

ESP: El concepto de alma en las filosofías de Platón y Aristóteles, por la posición que ocupa en sus argumentos relativos a la esclavitud, fue central para la estructura ideológica sobre la que se sostuvo la institución esclavista durante la Colonia. Será importante remitirnos, en un primer momento, al estudio de Erwin Rohde sobre este concepto, para examinar la materialidad del hálito y plantear una relación entre la mirada y la configuración de imaginarios. Posteriormente, examinaremos el lugar que tiene el (...) alma en los argumentos de Platón y Aristóteles en favor de esclavitud, con énfasis en el papel de la mirada, el dominio sobre el cuerpo y la naturaleza de los cuerpos esclavizables. Finalmente, revisaremos en la obra de Frantz Fanon una crítica a la mirada europea y occidental que diseca el cuerpo negro al otorgarle un alma. -/- ENG: The concept of the soul in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, due to the posi-tion it occupies in their arguments concerning slavery, will be central to the ideo-logical structure on which the institution of slavery was sustained during colonial times. It will be important to refer, at first, to Erwin Rohde’s study of this concept, to examine the materiality of the breath and to propose a relationship between the gaze and the configuration of imaginaries. We will then examine the position of the soul in Plato’s and Aristotle’s arguments in favor of slavery, emphasizing the role of the gaze, the dominion over the body, and the nature of enslaved bodies. Finally, we will review in the work of Frantz Fanon a critique of the European and Western gaze that dissects the black body by granting it a soul. (shrink)

Crowdfunding is a way to fund a project by pooling incremental investments from a large number of funders. This can be a great way to fund OA publications, especially for projects that lack traditional funding sources.

La maternidad subrogada es una respuesta técnica ante una dificultad biológica que se puede dar en la reproducción humana. Luego de una introducción, que muestra la problemática que la guerra en Ucrania ha ocasionado en esta materia, se exponen algunas generalidades sobre la maternidad subrogada, su presencia en el mundo y sus costos; así mismo, se reflexiona sobre los problemas éticos, bioéticos y biojurídicos desde las perspectivas biológica, antropológica y jurídica en cada uno de los actores del proceso (madre sustituta, (...) pareja o persona contratante, el embrión resultante y la sociedad). Se concluye que la maternidad subrogada, aunque sea técnicamente posible, no es una solución ética ni bioética para la esterilidad humana porque deja de lado el respeto a la dignidad; es un negocio que incluye explotación de mujeres; impone actuaciones jurídicas que fuerzan la realidad al declarar como derechos lo que no son más que deseos y es causa de varias formas de vulnerabilidad en las personas que intervienen en ella y en la sociedad en su conjunto. (shrink)