The military interventions of March 12, 1971 and September 12, 1980, which took place within a 10-year period, are the most chaotic events of recent Turkish political history. Melih Cevdet Anday’s novel titled Gizli Emir [The Secret Order], which was serialized and published in 1970 just before March 12, made 10-year projections with a highly significant insight and expression of the tragic situations developing in the minds of people through a dystopian fiction novel. The novel reflects the lives of the (...) protagonists who hope for salvation while waiting for a secret order in a chaotic environment, and a uncannily similar event occured right after the novel’s publication. In this study, the period in question and the book were comparatively examined, similar elements were identified, and they were analyzed with regard to the disappointment and frustration caused by September 12 that was awaited like a secret order just as the secret order did. Although the analyses were primarily based on the text, the author’s life and viewpoints were also evaluated, and the findings were analyzed within the framework of the literature–politics relationship. (shrink)

Cinema is not only a space in which directors act with the aim of making art, but they also reflect their own testimonies and political perspectives; this study, which claims to be related to representation strategies that contain various interests and desires; It is of the opinion that different ideological approaches are reflected on the screen by political and cultural elites in line with the construction, legitimacy and movement of identities and images. In this study, which examines the Türkiye’nin Kalbi (...) Ankara movie, which was shot in the intense socio-political atmosphere of the 1930s and was shot to tell Turkey's nationalization process and modernization experience through the capital Ankara; the manifestation of the Turkish nation-building process in cinema is discussed through the relationship between nationalism and cinema. (shrink)

The discourse of ‘the end of ideology’ put forward by Bell in 1960 was centred on the notion that an ideological consensus had been reached, especially in developed countries, and that ideologies were no longer necessary given that economic growth had replaced political growth as the predominant subject of debate. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of real socialism in parallel to the breakup of the USSR, the discourse that liberalism constitutes the dominant and only paradigm (...) rose dramatically in prominence alongside the neoliberal policies implemented following the economic crisis in the 1970s. Undoubtedly, one of the most important works in this trend was the ‘end of history’ thesis put forward by Fukuyama in the 1990s. This study is rooted in the need to reconsider these ‘finalisation’ theses founded on liberalism’s supposed lack of alternatives in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. Offering a critique of historical economic-political liberalism, it aims to demonstrate the failure of these ending theses, both of which are still accepted and promoted by defenders of neoliberalism. This study employs historical and hermeneutic qualitative research methods. Its most important finding is that neoliberalism cannot be both a political and an economic ‘end’. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition is the only CD-ROM to give you instant facsimile and text access to the 20,000 pages of the philosopher's Nachlass as catalogued by Professor von Wright in his 1982 publication The Wittgenstein Papers. -/- The result of 10 years of academic research and editorial work by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen this electronic edition is the first scholarly resource to apply a uniform, well-documented, consistent set of editorial principles to the writings. (...) The CD-ROM is a joint publication between Oxford University Press and the Wittgenstein Archives and is published in Text & Facsimile and Text Only formats. (shrink)

Bài viết xác định các yếu tố có tác động lớn tới rủi ro tài chính tại các doanh nghiệp sản xuất niêm yết trên sàn chứng khoán Việt Nam dựa trên phương pháp chọn biến LASSO và xây dựng mô hình học máy dự báo rủi ro tài chính. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, mô hình LASSO đã xác định 5 chỉ số tài chính ảnh hưởng đến rủi ro tài chính mà các doanh nghiệp rủi ro gặp (...) phải trong suốt 5 năm (2017-2021) gồm: Hệ số khả năng thanh toán ngắn hạn (Tài sản ngắn hạn/Nợ ngắn hạn); Số vòng quay tổng tài sản (Doanh thu thuần/Tổng tài sản); ROA (Lợi nhuận sau thuế/Tổng tài sản); Tỷ lệ Nợ dài hạn trên Tổng tài sản; Tỷ lệ Nợ ngắn hạn trên Tổng nợ phải trả. Mạng nơron nhân tạo (Artificial Neural Network - ANN) cho thấy, Hiệu quả cao nhất trong việc dự đoán tình hình rủi ro tài chính. Từ đó, đề xuất một số giải pháp và chính sách cho các doanh nghiệp. [By LASSO variable selection method and machine learning to predict financial risk, the paper aims to discover factors that have a major impact on financial risk in manufacturing enterprises listed on the Vietnamese stock exchange. Research results indicates that the LASSO model identifies 5 financial indicators affecting financial risks which risky businesses faced during 5 years (2017-2021), they are Short-term solvency ratio (Short-term assets/Short-term liabilities); Total asset turnover (Net revenue/Total assets); ROA (Profit after tax/Total assets); Long-term debt to total asset ratio; Short-term debt to total debt ratio. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) shows the highest efficiency in predicting financial risk. From those finding, the paper proposes some solutions and policies for businesses.]. (shrink)

(This is the prologue to a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) -/- Voters, the population at large, no longer want representation but participation. But how is that achieved? The technological means are certainly there for each one of us to express opinion, bring forth ideas, mobilise groups with common purpose. -/- The growth (...) of the social, political, and professional consciousness has gone beyond the stage of conformism and acceptance. The time is ripe for mechanisms that create profound bottlenecks to be superseded by better means, less procedure, less posturing, full involvement at grass roots. (shrink)

Using a close reading of a single clause and its context in a section in A Pluralist Universe, we see the moral dangers James saw in traditional ontology, in particular its relation to war and peace. This analysis opens up James’s combining the personalist philosophy of his friend Borden Bowne (and others) with the pluralism he developed late in his career. This leads, further, to reflection of James’s performative philosophizing. Finding in James a theory of “pluralistic personalism” gives us a (...) fresh look at the far-reaching power of his basic concepts of moral philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Truth and Falsity Truth and Belief Truth and Correspondence Truth and Coherence Defining and Testing for Truth: Correspondence and Coherence Sources.

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be consistent with the belief that the fudge is really poop. They alieve that it is disgusting, while they believe (...) it is not. This paper investigates laughter from self-proclaimed egalitarian, tolerant folk, in response to oppressive jokes that might fit the alief-model. If I merely alieve the content of a joke at which I laugh, will that constitute morally exculpating reasons for such laughter? And what else might it imply? This paper will provide insights at the intersections of humor studies, ethics, epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind, all while being moderately and appropriately amusing. (shrink)

The idea that humans might one day form persistent and dynamic relationships in professional, social, and even romantic contexts is a longstanding one. However, developments in machine learning and especially natural language processing over the last five years have led to this possibility becoming actualised at a previously unseen scale. Apps like Replika, Xiaoice, and CharacterAI boast many millions of active long-term users, and give rise to emotionally complex experiences. In this paper, I provide an overview of these developments, beginning (...) in Section 1 with historical and technical context. In Section 2, I lay out a basic theoretical framework for classifying human-AI relationships and their specific dynamics. Section 3 turns to ethical issues, with a focus on the core philosophical question of whether human-AI relationships can have similar intrinsic value to that possessed by human-human relationships. Section 4 extends to the discussion of ethical issues to the more empirical matter of harms and benefits of human-AI relationships. The paper concludes by noting potentially instructive parallels between the nascent field of ‘Social AI’ and the recent history of social media. (shrink)

I argue that we can get evidence for the temporal ontology of the universe simply by looking at the time. The argument is an extension of the ‘epistemic objection’ towards Growing Block theories.

Dignity, according to some recent arguments, is a useless concept, giving vague expression to moral intuitions that are better captured by other, better defined concepts. In this paper, I defend the concept of dignity against such skeptical arguments. I begin with a description of the defining features of the Kantian conception of dignity. I then examine one of the strongest arguments against that conception, advanced by Arthur Schopenhauer in On the Basis of Morality. After considering some standard accounts of dignity, (...) showing how they fail adequately to address Schopenhauer’s concern, I propose and defend a new account of dignity, drawing on the ontology of Jean-Luc Nancy. (shrink)

The author argues that there is no such thing as a unique and general taxonomy of non-at-issue contents. Accordingly, we ought to shun large categories such as “conventional implicature”, “F-implicature”, “CI”, “Class B” or the like. As an alternative, we may, first, describe the “semantic profile” of linguistic devices as accurately as possible. Second, we may explicitly tailor our categories to particular theoretical purposes.

Doxastic involuntarists have paid insufficient attention to two debates in contemporary epistemology: the permissivism debate and the debate over norms of assertion and belief. In combination, these debates highlight a conception of belief on which, if you find yourself in what I will call an ‘equipollent case’ with respect to some proposition p, there will be no reason why you can’t believe p at will. While doxastic involuntarism is virtually epistemological orthodoxy, nothing in the entire stock of objections to belief (...) at will blocks this route to doxastic voluntarism. Against the backdrop of the permissivism debate and the literature on norms of belief and assertion, doxastic involuntarism emerges as an article of faith, not the obvious truth it’s usually purported to be. (shrink)

This essay meditates on the short film American Reflexxx and the violent laughter directed at a non-trans woman in public space when she was assumed to be trans. Drawing from work on the ideological and institutional dimensions of transphobia by Talia Bettcher and Viviane Namaste, alongside Sara Ahmed's writing on the cultural politics of disgust, I reverse engineer this specific instance of laughter into a meditation on the social meaning of transphobic laughter in public space. I then look at racialized (...) transphobic laughter directed against Tyra Hunter and Miriam Rivera to emphasize transmisogynist laughter as a denial of contact, intimacy, and care. Building on Kate Manne's work on misogyny, I conclude that a key aspect of transmisogyny is the use of transfeminine people as a source of dehumanized, disavowed, and disposable care and intimacy. Laughter and accompanying violence against trans women serves to reinforce this dynamic. (shrink)

This paper offers a justification of labor rights based on an interpretation of the idea of human dignity. According to the dignitarian approach, we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable capacities of human beings that give rise to their dignity. That dignity is a deontic status in virtue of which people are owed certain forms of respect and concern. Dignity at work involves the treatment of people in accordance to (...) the ideal of solidaristic empowerment as it pertains to their life as workers. This requires that we generate feasible and reasonable social schemes to support each other as we pursue the development and exercise of our valuable capacities to produce in personally and socially beneficial ways. The spectrum of dignitarian justice goes from basic rights to decent working conditions to maximal rights to flourish in working practices that are free from domination, alienation, and exploitation. (shrink)

A conference dinner at a restaurant is a good place for considering the interactions of class, race, economic privilege, professional comportment, and the culturally coded forms of sophistication that have been built into the discipline. Much needs to be changed and a really good place to start is by appreciating these realities.

The role of evolutionary theory at the origin of life is an extensively debated topic. The origin and early development of life is usually separated into a prebiotic phase and a protocellular phase, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most likely, the Last Universal Common Ancestor was subject to Darwinian evolution, but the question remains to what extent Darwinian evolution applies to the prebiotic and protocellular phases. In this review, we reflect on the current status of evolutionary theory (...) in origins of life research by bringing together philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, and empirical research in the origins field. We explore the various ways in which evolutionary theory has been extended beyond biology; we look at how these extensions apply to the prebiotic development of (proto)metabolism; and we investigate how the terminology from evolutionary theory is currently being employed in state-of-the-art origins of life research. In doing so, we identify some of the current obstacles to an evolutionary account of the origins of life, as well as open up new avenues of research. (shrink)

This essay examines the contributions of Greek philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras to the question of the relationship between faith and reason. Although a comprehensive analysis of the entire body of his work is beyond the scope of this project, we will attempt to demonstrate through a selective survey, from the early `On the Absence and Unknowability of God' (1970) to the later `The Effable and the Ineffable' (1999), that he presents a convincing `third way' between rationalism and deism. We (...) will argue that Yannaras accomplishes this by methodologically deconstructing the presuppositions of rationalism and advocating for a more `empirically correct' approach grounded in apophaticism and social verification of knowledge. In doing so, he introduces a paradigm that not only challenges the binary opposition between faith and reason but also establishes a distinctive point of encounter between Orthodox Christian theology and contemporary philosophical discourse. (shrink)

This paper discusses Ernest Sosa's account of knowledge and epistemic normativity. The paper has two main parts. The first part identifies places where Sosa's account requires supplementation if it is going to capture important epistemic phenomena. In particular, additional theoretical resources are needed to explain the way in which epistemic aims are genuinely good aims, and the way in which some forms of reasoning can be epistemically better than others even when they are equally conducive to attaining the truth. The (...) second part focuses on Sosa's claim that there is a kind of belief – judgmental belief – that doesn't merely aim at truth but also aims at aptness, and that this kind of belief is central to our mental lives. The paper raises several concerns about this part of Sosa's account, including the concern that aiming at aptness is overly self-directed, and so is more closely tied to vice than epistemic virtue. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss an abductive argument for the existence of God from the experience of awe at natural beauty. If God's creative work is a viable explanation for why we experience awe at natural beauty, and there is no satisfactory naturalistic explanation for the origins of such experiences, then we have defeasible evidence that God exists. To evaluate the argument's tenability, we assess the merits of the two main theocentric frameworks that can be marshaled to answer the question (...) of why human beings experience awe at natural beauty: (1) taking the experience of natural beauty as resulting from God's design intentions and (2) conceiving experiences of natural beauty as religious experiences in themselves. We argue that the presence of phenomenological content the fine-grainedness of which exceeds our descriptive and conceptual capacities is better accounted for by the latter hypothesis: experiencing natural beauty amounts to experiencing divine attributes. We conclude that the argument's theological premise is tenable and, having previously argued for the empirical premise (Porcher & De Luca-Noronha, 2021), we conclude that awe at natural beauty is best explained by the existence of God. (shrink)

At Plato’s Phaedrus 270c, Socrates asks whether one can know souls without knowing ‘the whole.’ Phaedrus answers that ‘according to Hippocrates’ the same demand on knowing the whole applies to bodies. What parallel is intended between soul-knowledge and body-knowledge and which medical passages illustrate the analogy have been much debated. Three dominant interpretations read ‘the whole’ as respectively (1) environment, (2) kosmos, and (3) individual soul or body; and adduce supporting Hippocratic passages. But none of these interpretations accounts for the (...) Phaedrus’ rhetorical method. A better reading sees the whole as the genos ‘soul,’ as the Phaedrus’ taxonomies divide that genus. (shrink)

This article recapitulates and develops the attempts in the Nietzschean traditions to address and overcome the proliferation of nihilism that Nietzsche predicted to unfold in the next 200 years (WP 2). Nietzsche approached nihilism not merely as a psychology but as a labyrinthic and pervasive historical process whereby the highest values of culture and founding assumptions of philosophical thought prevented the further flourishing of life. Therefore, he thought nihilism had to be encountered and experienced on many, often opposing, fronts to (...) be fully consumed and left behind. Thus, just as Nietzsche captured the subtle reinventions of nihilism in new forms in his time, in the new doers assumed behind new deeds (WP 488), this article focuses on the contemporary tectonic shifts brought by digital technology and challenges subjectivation and narrativization of algorithmic will to power in human-like interfaces such as ChatGPT. Having identified philosophers and himself as the most advanced nihilists in their overvaluation of truth, in the 4th part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche grappled with the difficult, perhaps impossible, temporality of post-nihilistic historicity that oscillates between highest creativity and highest truths, especially in the sections entitled The Shadow and At Noon whereby he explored new temporal techniques to evade the relapses into temporal nihilisms of the notions of linear progress or eternity (TSZ, 4). By drawing on this juncture, this article offers ways to address transfigurations of nihilism behind new technological performances of subjectivity. The article points toward creative temporalities beyond narrativity and subjectivity insofar as the statistical operations and probabilistic estimations of language-models exceed grammatical construction of meaning. This multifaceted application of his thought on the contemporary ontic reality is necessary to perceive our comet's incalculable movement as a veritable ray of sunshine. (shrink)

This article argues that a person’s well-being at a time and the goodness of her life are two distinct values. It is commonly accepted as platitudinous that well-being is what makes a life good for the person who lives it. Even philosophers who distinguish between well-being at a time and the goodness of a life still typically assume that increasing a person’s well-being at some particular moment, all else equal, necessarily improves her life on the whole. I develop a precise (...) statement of this standard assumption, and then show that it is subject to counterexamples. The possibility of such counterexamples depends only on premises similar to those sometimes invoked to argue that a person’s well-being over a long period is not simply the aggregate well-being of the shorter periods that compose the long period. The refutation of the standard assumption linking well-being and life-goodness entails that these are distinct and sometimes divergent values. As an alternative to the standard assumption, it is proposed that well-being is best understood as an ingredient in a good life. (shrink)

This article discusses Rik Peels's response to Williams's argument against voluntary belief. Williams argues that voluntary beliefs must be acquired independently of truth-considerations, so they cannot count as beliefs after all, since beliefs aim at truth. Peels attempted to reply by showing that in cases of self-fulfilling beliefs, a belief can indeed be voluntarily acquired in conditions which retain the necessary truth-orientation. But even if we make two crucial concessions to Peels’s proposal, his argument ultimately fails. The first concession is (...) that beliefs can be weakly voluntary-namely, we can acquire them at will though we do not preserve them at will but on the basis of evidence. Conceding this, however, only lands us in the “acquisition problem”: how a belief can be acquired qua belief when we still do not think we have justification for it. This leads us to the second concession: that knowing in advance that a certain belief is self-fulfilling provides us with such a justification. However, this concession lands us in the ultimate obstacle: that, precisely because such a justification is available both before and at the moment of forming the belief, the cognitive perspective of the subject is identical at both moments, which obscures what it even means to say that at a certain moment she started to have a belief. (shrink)

Although there have never been so many professional philosophers as today, most of the questions discussed by today’s philosophers are of no interest to cultured people at large. Specifically, several scientists have maintained that philosophy has become an irrelevant subject. Thus philosophy is at a crossroads: either to continue on the present line, which relegates it into irrelevance, or to analyse the reasons of the irrelevance and seek an escape. This paper is an attempt to explore the second alternative.

This article’s guiding thesis is that the theory of radical democratic citizenship is built on a tension between a radical, conflictual element and a democratic element. As radical democrats, these philosophers point to the intimate relation between conflict and both emancipation and democracy. But as radical democrats, they also propose different methods that prevent conflict from breaking up the polis—the common ground that makes democratic conflict possible. I look at two radical democrats’ way of dealing with this tension: Chantal Mouffe (...) and Étienne Balibar. My claim is that the former ends up overemphasising the danger of division in her later democratic works and is therefore unable to account for more intense forms of democratic resistance (such as riots). In the work of Balibar, however, we find a way of dealing with this tension. (shrink)

In this paper I consider an argument for the possibility of intending at will, and its relationship to an argument about the possibility of believing at will. I argue that although we have good reason to think we sometimes intend at will, we lack good reason to think this in the case of believing. Instead of believing at will, agents like us often suppose at will.

The primary purpose of depictive works of pornography, we take it, is sexual arousal through sexually explicit representations; what we callprototypical pornography satisfies those aims through the adoption of a ceteris paribus maximally realistic depictive style. Given that the purpose of sexual arousal seems best fulfilled by establishing the most robust connections between the viewer and the depictive subject, we find it curious that not all works of pornography aspire to prototypical status. Accordingly, we target for philosophical scrutiny several non-standard (...) but putatively pornographic forms: Tijuana Bibles, hentai manga, and slash-fiction. We find that works of these genres possess certain depictively or fictively oriented properties that appear at least prima facie incompatible with prototypical pornography, and thereby to pose two pressing questions that anyprima facie viable analysis of pornography must answer: the depiction question and the fiction question. By answering these questions, we can not only arrive at a deeper understanding of the aims of pornography and the reasons for which significant sub-genres of pornography might diverge from the prototypical ideal, but also perhaps better understand what lies at pornography’s edge, and so better understand the ways in which pornography might relate to what lies beyond. (shrink)

In this paper, the Sartrean perspective on freedom is situated with respect to the fact that the price of freedom is at issue nowadays like never before. Of particular note is the way recourse is taken to what one might call a ‘commodification’ of freedom. We are not only asked to consider the value of freedom, but to do so in relative terms. In the process, therefore, the questions concerning freedom take on a different guise. On the one hand, what (...) must one give up or trade for freedom? On the other, wouldn’t one rather wish to exchange freedom in favor of a life apparently more stable, less risky, and less uncertain? Within this framework of understanding freedom, a critical question can be raised from Sartre’s perspective. Can freedom really be now less costly, now more? As if at least certain aspects of human freedom did not involve certain costs that are incurred no matter what one values, and no matter the circumstances? (shrink)

What distinguishes causation from grounding? One suggestion is that causation, but not grounding, occurs over time. Recently, however, counterexamples to this simple temporal criterion have been offered. In this paper, we situate the temporal criterion within a broader framework that focuses on two aspects: locational overlapping in space and time and the presence of intermediaries in space and time. We consider, and reject, the idea that the difference between grounding and causation is that grounding can occur without intermediaries. We go (...) on to use the fact that grounding and causation both involve intermediaries to develop a better temporal criterion for distinguishing causation from grounding. The criterion is this: when a cause and effect are spatially disjoint, there is always a chain of causal intermediaries between the cause and the effect that are extended in time. By contrast, when the grounds and the grounded are spatially disjoint, there is always a chain of grounding intermediaries, but the chain need not be extended in time, it can be purely spatial. The difference between grounding and causation, then, is that causation requires time for chaining in a way that grounding does not. (shrink)

This paper examines the question whether physicians are obligated by their professional ethos to defend a pacifist position. The question is a more concrete and applied formulation of the general thesis that there are what I will call “pacifist professions”: professions whose ethos requires their members to act in a pacifist way. Since the present paper is rather one in applied philosophy than a theoretical one about the foundation of pacifism, it will concentrate on the practical issue of whether and (...) how physicians can execute their profession in or during war. Theoretical questions on the nature and extent of pacifism will be considered only to the extent necessary to treat the main issue. The introductory section will give a short overview of some histori- cal aspects of physicians’ participation in war and show the relevance of the issue with recent examples. The remainder of this section will thus serve to set the stage and to outline the connections between the medical profession and questions of war and peace. The paper will then be divided into three other main parts: the first part will be devoted to defining in a general manner so-called “professional pacifism”. The second part will investigate whether and to what extent the medical profession can be classified as a pacifist profession, and the third part will look at the consequences of such a classification. (shrink)

I begin with an initial sketch of French and Phillips’ brand of naive realism, which appeals to "ways of perceiving". Then I consider two arguments for it: their own argument concerning illusion, and another argument based on what I have called "internal dependence". Next I turn to criticism. I argue that their “quietism” about "ways of perceiving" is unmotivated; there are several possible positive accounts and it is unclear why French and Phillips reject them. I raise three phenomenological problems for (...) the view. Finally, I raise a problem about sensible qualities. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on a certain type of sentence, which I call a borderline contradiction. A borderline contradiction is a sentence of the form F a ∧ ¬F a, for some vague predicate F and some borderline case a of F , or a sentence equivalent to such a sentence. For example, if Jackie is a borderline case of ‘rich’, then ‘Jackie is rich and Jackie isn’t rich’ is a borderline contradiction. Many theories (...) of vague language have entailments about borderline contradictions; correctly describing the behavior of borderline contradictions is one of the many tasks facing anyone offering a theory of vague language. Here, I first briefly review claims made by various theorists about these borderline contradictions, attempting to draw out some predictions about the behavior of ordinary speakers. Second, I present an experiment intended to gather relevant data about the behavior of ordinary speakers. Finally, I discuss the experimental results in light of several different theories of vagueness, to see what explanations are available. My conclusions are necessarily tentative; I do not attempt to use the present experiment to demonstrate that any single theory is incontrovertibly true. Rather, I try to sketch the auxiliary hypotheses that would need to be conjoined to several extant theories of vague language to predict the present result, and offer some considerations regarding the plausibility of these various hypotheses. In the end, I conclude that two of the theories I consider are better-positioned to account for the observed data than are the others. But the field of logically-informed research on people’s actual responses to vague predicates is young; surely as more data come in we will learn a great deal more about which (if any) of these theories best accounts for the behavior of ordinary speakers. (shrink)

I argue that there are some situations in which it is praiseworthy to be motivated only by moral rightness de dicto, even if this results in wrongdoing. I consider a set of cases that are challenging for views that dispute this, prioritising concern for what is morally important in moral evaluation. In these cases, the agent is not concerned about what is morally important, does the wrong thing, but nevertheless seems praiseworthy rather than blameworthy. I argue that the views under (...) discussion cannot accommodate this, and should be amended to recognise that it is often praiseworthy to be motivated to do what is right. (shrink)

Research on concepts has concentrated on the way people apply concepts online, when presented with a stimulus. Just as important, however, is the use of concepts offline, when planning what to do or thinking about what is the case. There is strong evidence that inferences driven by conceptual thought draw heavily on special-purpose resources: sensory, motoric, affective, and evaluative. At the same time, concepts afford general-purpose recombination and support domain-general reasoning processes—phenomena that have long been the focus of philosophers. There (...) is a growing consensus that a theory of concepts must encompass both kinds of process. This book shows how concepts are able to act as an interface between general-purpose reasoning and special-purpose systems. Concept-driven thinking can take advantage of the complementary costs and benefits of each. The book lays out an empirically-based account of the different ways in which thinking with concepts takes us to new conclusions and underpins planning, decision-making, and action. It also spells out three useful implications of the account. First, it allows us to reconstruct the commonplace idea that thinking draws on the meaning of a concept. Second, it offers an insight into how human cognition avoids the frame problem and the complementary, less discussed, ‘if-then problem’ for nested processing dispositions. Third, it shows that metacognition can apply to concepts and concept-driven thinking in various ways. The framework developed in the book elucidates what it is that makes concept-driven thinking an especially powerful cognitive resource. (shrink)

Patterns and pattern ontologies are a powerful way for pragmatists to address metaphysical issues by rejecting a false dichotomy between pluralism and realism. However, there is a common misconception about patterns that I call the philosophically perverse patterns (PPP) problem. Here, critics of patterns invent perverse examples that meet the metaphysical criteria to count as patterns. I defuse this concern by showing how PPP misunderstands what the pragmatist metaphysics of patterns is supposed to accomplish: the bare definition should not rule (...) out, or in, substantive examples of patterns that instead should involve methodological considerations. I use this response to the PPP problem to show how the metaphysical definition of 'pattern' allows the pragmatist to capture the rich intricacies of ontologies in the sciences and yields two illustrative norms by which methodology can be guided in developing or refining ontologies: cohesion and coherence. (shrink)

Does epistemic justification aim at truth? The vast majority of epistemologists instinctively answer 'Yes'; it's the textbook response. Joseph Cruz and John Pollock surprisingly say no. In 'The Chimerical Appeal of Epistemic Externalism' they argue that justification bears no interesting connection to truth; justification does not even aim at truth. 'Truth is not a very interesting part of our best understanding' of justification (C&P 2004, 137); it has no 'connection to the truth.' A 'truth-aimed ... epistemology is not entitled to (...) carry the day' (C&P 2004, 138, emphasis added).Pollock and Cruz's argument for this surprising conclusion is of general interest for it is 'out of step with a very common view on the .. (shrink)

Self-locating attitudes and assertions provide a challenge to the received view of mental and linguistic intentionality. In this paper I try to show that the best way to meet this challenge is to adopt relativistic, centred possible worlds accounts for both belief and communication. First, I argue that self-locating beliefs support a centred account of belief. Second, I argue that self-locating utterances support a complementary centred account of communication. Together, these two claims motivate a unified centred conception of belief and (...) communication. (shrink)

The phenomenon of “dirty hands” is often held to be endemic to political life. Success in politics—it has been argued—requires a willingness to sacrifice our moral principles in order to pursue worthwhile goals. I argue that the tension between morality and politics goes deeper than this. The very existence of “politics” requires that morality is routinely violated because political community, within which political discourse is possible, is based on denying the moral claims of non-members. Political community requires borders and borders (...) require keeping outsiders out. Yet there is no justification that we can provide to someone outside of our political community as to why they are denied membership. The price of political community is therefore the unjust exclusion of others. In a world characterised by the movement of peoples as a result of large-scale and systematic international injustices, this exclusion often involves acts that violate important obligations of compassion and respect. Thus, “we” are the barbarians my title refers to. In order for political community to exist, we must act like barbarians at the gates. A problem of “dirty hands” therefore lies at the very foundation of political community. (shrink)

This paper aims to assess knowledge management maturity at HEI to determine the most effecting variables on knowledge management that enhance the total performance of the organization. This study was applied on Al-Azhar University in Gaza strip, Palestine. This paper depends on Asian productivity organization model that used to assess KM maturity. Second dimension assess high performance was developed by the authors. The controlled sample was (364). Several statistical tools were used for data analysis and hypotheses testing, including reliability Correlation (...) using Cronbach’s alpha, “ANOVA”, Simple Linear Regression and Step Wise Regression. The overall findings of the current study suggest that KMM is suitable for measuring and lead to enhance high performance. KMM assessment shows that the university maturity level is in level three. Findings also support the main hypothesis and it is subhypotheses. The most important factors effecting high performance are: Processes, KM leadership, People, KM Outcomes, Knowledge Process. Furthermore the current study is unique by the virtue of its nature, scope and way of implied investigation, as it is the first study at HEI in Palestine explores the status of KMM using the Asian productivity model. (shrink)

In this topical section, we highlight the next step of research on modeling aiming to contribute to the emerging literature that radically refrains from approaching modeling as a scientific endeavor. Modeling surpasses “doing science” because it is frequently incorporated into decision-making processes in politics and management, i.e., areas which are not solely epistemically oriented. We do not refer to the production of models in academia for abstract or imaginary applications in practical fields, but instead highlight the real entwinement of science (...) and policy and the real erosion of their boundaries. Models in decision making – due to their strong entwinement with policy and management – are utilized differently than models in science; they are employed for different purposes and with different constraints. We claim that “being a part of decision-making” implies that models are elements of a very particular situation, in which knowledge about the present and the future is limited but dependence of decisions on the future is distinct. Emphasis on the future indicates that decisions are made about actions that have severe and lasting consequences. In these specific situations, models enable not only the acquisition of knowledge (the primary goal of science) but also enable deciding upon actions that change the course of events. As a result, there are specific ways to construct effective models and justify their results. Although some studies have explored this topic, our understanding of how models contribute to decision making outside of science remains fragmentary. This topical section aims to fill this gap in research and formulate an agenda for additional and more systematic investigations in the field. (shrink)

This essay conducts a diachronic examination of the thought of W.E.B. Du Bois. In so doing, it reveals a corpus that is marked by a tradition of thinking rarely acknowledged by scholars today: Black nationalism. Du Bois’s early focus on the relationship between racism and imperialism and ideological conflicts with Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey laid the basis for his intellectual maturation around the concept of self-determination. After synthesizing the insights of his former ideological rivals, this essay will show (...) that Du Bois affected a revolution in Black nationalist (and human) thought by making the common humanity and autonomy of African/African-descended peoples (and all colonized people) thinkable through the ideology of Pan-Africanism: a truly universal idea of freedom which was antagonistic to Westernism (Liberal Capitalist and Marxist thought). (shrink)

Many hold that theoretical reasoning aims at truth. In this paper, I ask what it is for reasoning to be thus aim-directed. Standard answers to this question explain reasoning’s aim-directedness in terms of intentions, dispositions, or rule-following. I argue that, while these views contain important insights, they are not satisfactory. As an alternative, I introduce and defend a novel account: reasoning aims at truth in virtue of being the exercise of a distinctive kind of cognitive power, one that, unlike ordinary (...) dispositions, is capable of fully explaining its own exercises. I argue that this account is able to avoid the difficulties plaguing standard accounts of the relevant sort of mental teleology. (shrink)

The aesthetic construction of the world can originally be traced back to the bodily-affective state of being in the surroundings. In this respect, the newly developed aesthetic concept atmosphere enables a new understanding of the interaction between sensation, emotion and the environment, and is therefore of great importance for the development of a contemporary environmental awareness. In reviewing the studies so far, it would be meaningful to further reflect on the following questions: what role does the spiritual dimension play in (...) atmospheric experience? How is it possible for us to be critical of the atmosphere we encounter? How can a bodily-affective approach to the world be opened up by emphasizing atmospheric experience without excluding other legitimate aspects such as value judgments? These issues require re-examination of the current basic approach, according to which, on the one hand, atmospheric experience is largely confined to a pre-reflective level, and, on the other hand, sensation and awareness of atmosphere are viewed as occurring one after another. Practically, in the experience of atmosphere, corporeality and spirituality are not so clearly delineated, based on the fact that sensory recognition of external stimuli always merges with mental actions such as cognition, imagination, beliefs, values, memory and expectation. In this sense, the experience of atmosphere is not a purely biophysiological response at all. Instead, it is largely shaped by spiritual elements and cultural frameworks. The knowledge of traditions, customs, languages, religions, stories, folklore and/or mythology may modify the ordinary perception of things and thus open an unusual way to the atmosphere. The complexity of atmosphere and atmospheric perception reveals a diversity of life experience that can never be thoroughly represented and described, and thus largely opens up new horizons for an interculturally oriented aesthetics. (shrink)