Background independence begins life as an informal property that a physical theory might have, often glossed as 'doesn't posit a fixed spacetime background'. Interest in trying to offer a precise account of background independence has been sparked by the pronouncements of several theorists working on quantum gravity that background independence embodies in some sense an essential discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and a feature we should strive to carry forward to future physical theories. This (...) paper has two goals. The first is to investigate what a world must be like in order to be truly described by a background independent theory given extant accounts of background independence. The second is to argue that there are no non-empirical reasons to be more confident in theories that satisfy extant accounts of background independence than in theories that don't. The paper concludes by drawing a general moral about a way in which focussing primarily on mathematical formulations of our physical theories can adversely affect debates in the metaphysics of physics. (shrink)

Intuitively, a classical field theory is background-in- dependent if the structure required to make sense of its equations is itself subject to dynamical evolution, rather than being imposed ab initio. The aim of this paper is to provide an explication of this intuitive notion. Background-independence is not a not formal property of theories: the question whether a theory is background-independent depends upon how the theory is interpreted. Under the approach proposed here, a theory is fully background-independent (...) relative to an interpretation if each physical possibility corresponds to a distinct spacetime geometry; and it falls short of full background-independence to the extent that this condition fails. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on developmental findings to provide a nuanced understanding of background emotions, particularly those in depression. We demonstrate how they reflect our basic proximity (feeling of interpersonal connectedness) to others and defend both a phenomenological and a functional claim. First, we substantiate a conjecture by Fonagy & Target (International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88(4):917–937, 2007) that an important phenomenological aspect of depression is the experiential recreation of the infantile loss of proximity to significant others. Second, we (...) argue that proximity has a particular cognitive function that allows individuals to morph into a cohesive dyadic system able to carry out distributed emotion regulation. We show that elevated levels of psychological suffering connected to depressive background emotions may be explained not only in terms of a psychological loss, but also as the felt inability to enter into dyadic regulatory relations with others—an experiential constraint that decreases the individual’s ability to adapt to demanding situations. (shrink)

Background theories in science are used both to prove and to disprove that theory choice is underdetermined by data. The alleged proof appeals to the fact that experiments to decide between theories typically require auxiliary assumptions from other theories. If this generates a kind of underdetermination, it shows that standards of scientific inference are fallible and must be appropriately contextualized. The alleged disproof appeals to the possibility of suitable background theories to show that no theory choice can be (...) timelessly or noncontextually underdetermined: Foreground theories might be distinguished against different backgrounds. Philosophers have often replied to such a disproof by focussing their attention not on theories but on Total Sciences. If empirically equivalent Total Sciences were at stake, then there would be no background against which they could be differentiated. I offer several reasons to think that Total Science is a philosophers' fiction. No respectable underdetermination can be based on it. (shrink)

However robust the mind's cognitive strategies of objectifying and rendering in object terms conscious experience, there is nevertheless that which resists object/substantivity categorization: an exteriority that comes out of perception itself and that is here termed the 'background '. In seeking out, in this inquiry, the non- objectified and non-thingness part of the observed world, we must first of all distinguish this background from such misrepresenta- tions as mere 'seeming '. The background -- while not thing-like or (...) detectable as data will be defended as existing concretely and empirically to the observer, notwithstanding our objectifying and substantive way of framing our understanding of the world. It will be shown to have verifiability despite being knowable only from the first-person perspective. The aim is to demonstrate its presence by way of a number of its features, and to show that far from being a mere subjective quality, it stands as real as do spatial objects or whatever arises spatially as a discretizable information source in the empirical world. (shrink)

The background paper provides an introduction to the concept of pandemics and to the ethical and political issues related with pandemic preparedness.

A teaching document I've used in my courses on truth and on incompleteness. Aimed at students who have a good grasp of basic logic, and decent math skills, it attempts to give them the background they need to understand a proper statement of the classic results due to Gödel and Tarski, and sketches their proofs. Topics covered include the notions of language and theory, the basics of formal syntax and arithmetization, formal arithmetic (Q and PA), representability, diagonalization, and the (...) incompleteness and undefinability theorems. (shrink)

This paper argues that explicit reading instruction should be part of lower level undergraduate philosophy courses. Specifically, the paper makes the claim that it is necessary to provide the student with both the relevant background knowledge about a philosophical work and certain metacognitive skills (e.g. their ability to reflect on the learning process) that enrich the reading process and their ability to organize the content of a philosophical text with other aspects of knowledge. A “How to Read Philosophy” handout (...) and student reactions to the handout are provided. (shrink)

Reports of not feeling understood are frequent in testimonies of psychological trauma. I argue that these feelings are not a matter of a cognitive failure but rather an expression of the absence of a more pervasive background feeling of belonging. Contemporary accounts of we-intentionality promise but ultimately fall short in explaining this sense of belonging. Gerda Walther offers an alternative account of communal experiences. Her notion of “habitual unification” can explain the background feelings of belonging that are woven (...) through the individual’s everyday experience of being in a shared world. Having unified with another person, the world feels different. It is now experienced in light of a “we.” This is not only the case in actual, singular person-to-person encounters. Unification with others becomes habitual: it retreats into the background of the individual’s awareness, colouring their experience of the world. Thus sedimented, it forms a background sense of belonging to a shared world. Unification is enabled by experiencing others as being similar in a significant way, such as having the same experiences, values, or basic attitude: in Walther’s words, as being a “human, who also....” This, I shall argue, is impacted through traumatizing experiences. Trauma survivors struggle to experience others as “humans, who also...,” resulting in a failure of unification and thus impeding feelings of belonging. Trauma testimonies also suggest that actively seeking out recognition of similarities and shared aspects of experience may once again enable experiencing others as “humans, who also...,” thus enabling unification and re-establishing a sense of belonging. (shrink)

Our universe seems to be miraculously fine-tuned for life. Multiverse theories have been proposed as an explanation for this on the basis of probabilistic arguments, but various authors have objected that we should consider our total evidence that this universe in particular has life in our inference, which would block the argument. The debate thus crucially hinges on how Bayesian background and evidence are distinguished and on how indexical or demonstrative terms are analysed. The aim of this article is (...) to take a step back and examine these various aspects of Bayesian reasoning and how they affect the arguments. The upshot is that there are reasons to resist the fine-tuning argument for the multiverse, but the “this-universe-objection” is not one of them. (shrink)

This chapter provides the background to the American women philosophers’ works that are introduced and collected in Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers. We describe the institutional context which made these works possible and their methodological and theoretical background. We also provide biographies for their authors.

Panksepp (2001) has kindly provided an unexpected and critical commentary on my article “Feeling as knowing” (published in two parts in Consciousness & Emotion; Jarvilehto, 2000b, and 2001), in which I try to clarify some conceptual problems in emotion research on the basis of the theory of the organism-environment system (Järvilehto, 1998a, b, 1999, 2000a). While I am always grateful for any criticism of my ideas, because it is the only way to develop them further, the commentary does not contain (...) much substantial criticism of my theoretical considerations, but it is rather related to science politics (“Jarvilehto’s holistic approach would … discourage investigators…”; Panksepp, 2001, p. ), and to the problem what kind of theory could be useful in guiding neuroscientific experimental work. The commentary seems to contain also some misunderstanding of my basic ideas, indicating that I didn’t formulate them well enough in the two articles. Therefore, I try to elucidate in this reply somewhat more the background of my approach, and to move the discussion to a more substantial theoretical level. (shrink)

Husserl’s notion of “sense” has often been interpreted through a Fregean lens. I will show that Husserl saw it as an acquaintance with the background or horizon of perceptual objects. He understands reason (Vernunft) as prescribing rules for performance with regard to perceptual objects. Thus Husserl’s view has a wider scope of experience than Kant’s sense of it as a pre-reflective acquaintance with one’s environment. After Ideas I Husserl develops these notions as part of his theory of the intersubjective (...) world. Heidegger takes over the insights of Husserl and brings out the performative turn inherent in phenomenology by critiquing Husserl’s orientation to theoretical perceptual experience. The reference of performative expressions is not determined by the contents but by performance. What is disclosed in the phenomenological notion of sense is the background against which human existence is to be understood. (shrink)

How can people function appropriately and respond normatively in social contexts even if they are not aware of rules governing these contexts? John Searle has rightly criticized a popular way out of this problem by simply asserting that they follow them unconsciously. His alternative explanation is based on his notion of a preintentional, nonrepresentational background. In this paper I criticize this explanation and the underlying account of the background and suggest an alternative explanation of the normativity of elementary (...) social practices and of the background itself. I propose to think of the background as being intentional, but nonconceptual, and of the basic normativity or proto-normativity as being instituted through common sensory-motor-emotional schemata established in the joint interactions of groups. The paper concludes with some reflections on what role this level of collective intentionality and the notion of the background can play in a layered account of the social mind and the ontology of the social world. (shrink)

It is often supposed one can draw a distinction, among the assumptions on which an inference rests, between certain background assumptions and certain more salient, or foregrounded, assumptions. Yet what may such a fore-v-background structure, or such structures, consist it? In particular, how do they relate to consciousness? According to a ‘Boring View’, such structures can be captured by specifying, for the various assumptions of the inference, whether they are phenomenally conscious, or access conscious, or else how easily (...) available they are to such consciousness. According to an ‘Interesting View’, there are fore-v-background structures over and above such classifications. The chapter gestures at reasons for thinking that an Interesting View at least merits exploration. The paper discusses some recent contributions to such a view in analytical philosophy; some remarks in Husserl on what he dubbed the horizonal dimension of acts of consciousness; and psychological work on the role of gist or schema representations in perception and memory. It is proposed that background assumptions can figure in consciousness by being as it were condensed into a consciously, though inattentively, entertained notion of their overall thematic gist, where this thematic gist gives the drift of a possible elucidation of how or why such-and-such salient grounds mean that so-and-so conclusion holds. (shrink)

In philosophy of religion the term of Immanence is mostly applied to GOD in contrast to the divine Transcendence. This relation, as we will see here, it is not far from the truth since one cannot be without the other, however they are not to be put in contrast, but in conjunction. The one-sided insistence on the immanence of God, to the exclusion of His transcendence, leads to Pantheism, just as the one-sided insistence upon His transcendence, to the exclusion of (...) His immanence, leads to Deism. These two can be separated, but the consequences are great for human knowledge and society; it is the two taken together that result in, and are necessary to Theism. But from the least complicated idea that even the name of God is a manifestation of His immanence contrasting with Deus absconditus, whose existence and name cannot be known or thought, theology and religion in general need to regard immanence of God as crucial for the acts of worship. What are the philosophical background for Christian theology to imply the immanence characteristic for God’s existence related to His creation? – This is the main question the present work tries to answer as an overview. (shrink)

According to manipulationist accounts of causal explanation, to explain an event is to show how it could be changed by intervening on its cause. The relevant change must be a ‘serious possibility’ claims Woodward 2003, distinct from mere logical or physical possibility—approximating something I call ‘scientific possibility’. This idea creates significant difficulties: background knowledge is necessary for judgments of possibility. Yet the primary vehicles of explanation in manipulationism are ‘invariant’ generalisations, and these are not well adapted to encoding such (...) knowledge, especially in the social sciences, as some of it is non-causal. Ceteris paribus (CP) laws or generalisations labour under no such difficulty. A survey of research methods such as case and comparative studies, randomised control trials, ethnography, and structural equation modeling, suggests that it would be more difficult and in some instances impossible to try to represent the output of each method in invariant generalisations; and that this is because in each method causal and non-causal background knowledge mesh in a way that cannot easily be accounted for in manipulationist terms. Ceteris paribus-generalisations being superior in this regard, a theory of explanation based on the latter is a better fit for social science. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a basic assumption tacitly shared by many philosophers of mind and language: that whatever can be meant, can be said. It specifically targets John Searle's account of this idea, focusing on his Principle of Expressibility . In the first part of the paper, PE is exposed underlining its analyticity and its relevance for the philosophy of language , mind , society and action . In the critical part, the notion of Background (...) is taken into account in order to re-evaluate two basic distinctions: the one between sentence and utterance meanings , and the one between native and type speakers . PE is reconsidered in the light of the previous arguments as a methodological strategy that does not prevent uses of language from eventual semantic excesses and deficits , and a complementary Principle of Expression Fallibility is finally proposed. (shrink)

Two arguments in Eudemian Ethics 2 that are crucial to Aristotle’s definition of moral virtue as a mean state contain claims that Aristotle says are clear by induction. In these contexts, he explicitly appeals to examples coming from arts and sciences like gymnastic training and medicine for evidence. But Aristotle does not here, or elsewhere (at least in any extant work), including the parallel arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics, actually supply or discuss the evidence that makes these inductive arguments clear. (...) Fortunately, strong support for them can be found in the Hippocratic Corpus, especially in On Ancient Medicine and On Regimen. (shrink)

This brief, reflective research looks analytically at the impact of Greek philosophy on Christianity from three perspectives. They are: 1) the challenge that it presented to Christianity, 2) the signs of syncretism, and 3) Christian differentiation despite assimilation of aspects of Greek philosophy. Though not exhaustive because of its brevity, the study may help with discussions on the backgrounds of Christianity, and also stimulate an interest in the religion, politics, and history of the Levant in the first century.

Scholars have widely assumed that the aspects of Kant’s virtue theory that nod to ancient ethics must be cashed out with reference to Aristotle. Interpreters then worry that Kant's conception of virtue as a “moral strength of will” (Doctrine of Virtue, 6:405) must be tantamount to Aristotle’s notion of “continence” (enkrateia) — the state of a person who knows the good, and acts accordingly, but must overcome strong countervailing impulses in order to do so. The result plays into caricatures of (...) Kantian ethics as valorising a joyless standard of duty, which these Aristotelian-oriented commentators (rightly) wish to resist. However, the worry is misplaced. I show that Kant is not thinking about Aristotle here, but is instead engaged with a specifically Stoic approach to ethics as a dimension of natural teleology. I draw on this context to show that Kant’s virtue-as-strength idea is not marred in the ways it appears to be when read through an Aristotelian lens. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a methodological analysis of the empirical research on the causal effects of trade liberalisation, and assess whether such studies can be of any use for guiding policy prescriptions in real-world economies. The analysis focuses on the mainstream economic research that has been used to support arguments in favour of trade liberalisation during the last decades. Even though there are empirical results that could be taken as valid evidence for a causal connection between free trade and (...) economic gains, none of the existing evidence licences trustworthy inferences about the policy effectiveness of trade liberalisation reforms in real-world cases. There are three aspects of the empirical literature that make it highly problematic for making reliable policy inferences: (a) the criteria used to define the notion of ‘free trade’, (b) the background assumptions embedded in the econometric techniques used for estimating causal effects, and (c) the widespread desire among academic economists to attain scientific results in terms of universally valid generalisations. The analysis exposes a worrisome mismatch between, on the one hand, the research aims and outcomes of scientific economics and, on the other, the kind of evidence that would be useful for guiding actual policy deliberations. (shrink)

Open-content communities that focus on co-creation without requirements for entry have to face the issue of institutional trust in contributors. This research investigates the various ways in which these communities manage this issue. It is shown that communities of open-source software—continue to—rely mainly on hierarchy (reserving write-access for higher echelons), which substitutes (the need for) trust. Encyclopedic communities, though, largely avoid this solution. In the particular case of Wikipedia, which is confronted with persistent vandalism, another arrangement has been pioneered instead. (...) Trust (i.e. full write-access) is ‘backgrounded’ by means of a permanent mobilization of Wikipedians to monitor incoming edits. Computational approaches have been developed for the purpose, yielding both sophisticated monitoring tools that are used by human patrollers, and bots that operate autonomously. Measures of reputation are also under investigation within Wikipedia; their incorporation in monitoring efforts, as an indicator of the trustworthiness of editors, is envisaged. These collective monitoring efforts are interpreted as focusing on avoiding possible damage being inflicted on Wikipedian spaces, thereby being allowed to keep the discretionary powers of editing intact for all users. Further, the essential differences between backgrounding and substituting trust are elaborated. Finally it is argued that the Wikipedian monitoring of new edits, especially by its heavy reliance on computational tools, raises a number of moral questions that need to be answered urgently. (shrink)

Many virtual communities that rely on user-generated content (such as social news sites, citizen journals, and encyclopedias in particular) offer unrestricted and immediate ‘write access’ to every contributor. It is argued that these communities do not just assume that the trust granted by that policy is well-placed; they have developed extensive mechanisms that underpin the trust involved (‘backgrounding’). These target contributors (stipulating legal terms of use and developing etiquette, both underscored by sanctions) as well as the contents contributed by them (...) (patrolling for illegal and/or vandalist content, variously performed by humans and bots; voting schemes). Backgrounding trust is argued to be important since it facilitates the avoidance of bureaucratic measures that may easily cause unrest among community members and chase them away. (shrink)

An appreciation of the "more philosophical" aspects of ancient medical writings casts considerable light on Aristotle's concept of nature, and how he understands nature to differ from art, on the one hand, and spontaneity or luck, on the other. The account of nature, and its comparison with art and spontaneity in Physics II is developed with continual reference to the medical art. The notion of spontaneous remission of disease (without the aid of the medical art) was a controversial subject in (...) the medical literature, and Aristotle's aporia about the notion of spontaneous generation of natural things runs parallel to this controversy. Aristotle's account of spontaneous generation in the Metaphysics and in the Generation of Animals can also be profitably illuminated by looking at the comparison with medicine in detail. The result, hopefully, is a clearer and more consistent picture not only of Aristotle's concepts of nature, art, and spontaneity, but also of the influence of medical writings and concepts on his natural philosophy. Joel Mann has written a commentary on the essay. (shrink)

The existence of big bang relic neutrinos—exact analogues of the big bang relic photons comprising the cosmic microwave background radiation—is a basic prediction of standard cosmology. The standard big bang theory predicts the existence of 1087 neutrinos per flavour in the visible universe. This is an enormous abundance unrivalled by any other known form of matter, falling second only to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photon. Yet, unlike the CMB photon which boasts its first (serendipitous) detection in the (...) 1960s and which has since been observed and its properties measured to a high degree of accuracy in a series of airborne/satellite and ground based experiments, the relic neutrino continues to be elusive in the laboratory. The chief reason for this is of course the feebleness of the weak interaction. At present, the observational evidence for their existence rests entirely on cosmological measurements, such as the light elemental abundances, anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, and the large-scale matter power spectrum. In this paper we argue that Direct Detection of relic neutrino background is indeed impossible by any means, because of two chief reasons: (a) there was no such thing of cosmic singularity, hence the hot big bang/primeval atom model was based on false premises (quantum birth assumption); (b) the neutrino existence itself is not unquestionable, in particular if we consider a realism view of vector potential, A, in classical electrodynamics. (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the phenomenological notion of sense which Husserl calls in Ideen I noematic sense. My reading of Ideen I is based on the interpretation of noema as “object as it is intended”. This notion is developed from “filling sense” in LU. Similar to the Russellian “knowledge by acquaintance”, Husserl means by this notion the direct intuitive acquaintance with an intentional object. However, unlike Russell, Husserl doesn’t restrict this notion to sense data, but extend it (...) to the acquaintance with the perspective way of appearance of an intentional object (Erscheinungsweise, Abschattungen). This is because, unlike Frege, Husserl includes not only intension (Materie), but also illocutionary force (Aktqualität) into his notion of sense (LU, 6. Untersuchung, p. 617). This performative notion of sense requires him to take account of the acquaintance with the background of speech acts as a constitutive part of the broadest notion of sense (Ideen I, p. 233f., 322). If a conjecture e.g. about the back side of a cube: “the back side must be a square”, changes through a perception into a claim about it: “this side is indeed a square”, the change of the illocutionary forces, that is, the “filling sense” of the perception is expressed not by intentional materials (side, square etc.), but by indexicals, modal verbs or tenses, which are understood in a direct acquaintance with the perspective appearance of the cube. Thus, “the changing noematic way of appearance of the whole object as sense” (Husserliana vol. XI, p. 333) is the background or horizon, in implicit acquaintance with which illocutionary forces (Aktqualität in LU, noetischer Charakter in Ideen I) of propositional attitudes towards perceptual objects can be understood. (shrink)

The netherworld marriage or the wedding for dead persons is a folk religious ritual in ancientChina. It is based on ancient Chinese folk belief of afterlife in the netherworld. Through a textual research and investigation based on relevant historical records and other ancient documents, as well as some archeological discoveries, this paper tries to give a brief account of the origin and development of netherworld marriage and its cultural and ideological background in ancient China. It finds that netherworld marriage (...) might originate from human sacrifice in early ancient times, and its name varies in different periods. It has gone through its prevailing in the Tang Dynasty, declining in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and reviving again in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. During the long history, this custom was generally criticized and condemned by orthodoxy Confucian intellectuals, yet it was practiced and sometimes even prevailed among both noble class and common people, due to its deep root in the folk belief. The paper also intends to clarify some misconceptions and misunderstandings concerning the study of this unique cultural phenomenon. (shrink)

This study delves into the intricate relationship between an artist’s background (including nationality and gender) and the popularity of their artworks in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Leveraging statistical methods, including Chi-squared tests and ANOVA, significant correlations between an artist’s nationality, gender, and the popularity of their artworks were identified. Time series analysis further underscored evolving trends in MoMA’s acquisition patterns over the years. The research also utilized a Random Forest classification model to predict artwork (...) popularity, achieving an accuracy rate of 0.75. The findings shed light on the dynamics of art acquisitions and offer implications for diversifying and enhancing museum collections in the future. (shrink)

This 4 slides' presentation is supplementary material for my students who have opted for Virginia Woolf as their Masters' 'special author'. The presentation shows how James' the specious moment and Husserl's the rough now constitute the matrix of modernist literature, especially the fiction of Virginia Woolf. From St. Augustine to Husserl there is a continuum which has to be understood for engaging with the novels of Virginia Woolf.

Logical anti-exceptionalism is the view that logic is not special among the sciences. In particular, anti-exceptionalists claim that logical theory choice is effected on the same bases as any other theory choice procedure, i.e., by abduction, by weighting pros and cons of rival views, and by judging which theory scores best on a given set of parameters. In this paper, we first present the anti-exceptionalists favourite method for logical theory choice. After spotting on important features of the method, we discuss (...) how they lead to trouble when the subject matter of choice is logic itself. The major difficulty we find concerns the role of the logic employed to evaluate theory choice, or, more specifically, the role of the metalanguage employed to run the abductive method. When rival logical theories are being evaluated and compared, we argue, it is difficult not to beg some important questions; the metalanguage introduce biases difficult to avoid. These difficulties seem to be inherent to the method described. We suggest that they put some constraints on the scope of application of the method of abductive theory choice in logic and on the kind of disputes the anti-exceptionalist may plausibly expect to solve with it. We end the paper with some suggestions for how the anti-exceptionalist may address these issues on this front. (shrink)

Introduction: Online eye-tracking has been used in this study to assess the impacts of different cultural backgrounds on information discernment. An online platform called RealEye allowed participants to engage in the eye-tracking study from their personal computer webcams, allowing for higher ecological validity and a closer replication of social media interaction. -/- Methods: The study consisted of two parts with a total of five visuals of social media posts mimicking news posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Participants were asked to (...) view examples of real and fake news taken from a news fact-checking website, Snopes, and their eye movements were recorded during the process. Participants were recruited through Prolific and SONA; the total sample size for study 1.1 was 29 participants, and the total for study 1.2 was 25 participants, after removing poor eye-tracking data. A total of five visual images comprising true and false news were shown to the participant, study 1.1 had three examples and study 1.2 had two examples. There were two main cultural backgrounds in focus: participants born in China or the United Kingdom. -/- Results: Results suggested that participants follow a similar visual pattern of attention to Areas of Interest (AOIs) on the posts, which leads us to believe that due to the global standardisation of popular social media platforms, a bias might have occurred during information discernment. -/- Discussion: It is suggested that regardless of country background, users may have similar eye-tracking results while viewing a social media post because social media platform formats are standardised globally. Further research would recommend looking at language and linguistic traits when seeking differences between country backgrounds during online information discernment. (shrink)

This article aims to describe about the analytical axiology of the political background in ye Tewodros raey historical theatre of Ethiopia. The theatre is the most important of the new generation to teach the Emperor Tewodros II challenges and also great visions of new civilized Ethiopia united. The theatre name also in English vision of Tewodros in Amharic are known ye Tewodros raey. As aspect of axiology have been evaluated the value of vision of Theodros to the audience and (...) the advantages. From the theater an axiology aspect of the political background vision of Theodros that the advantages are to more informative about patriotism, social awareness, concentration, imagination, communication skill, fun, problem solving/conflict resolution, trust, memory, aesthetics appreciation, cooperation/collaboration, empathy and tolerance. These papers have been used document study system as well as have used the qualitative research method to more describe as a theatre reviewing the aspect of axiology philosophical aspects. (shrink)

This paper gives the wider background to the references in Lacan’s work to the life of Angelus Silesius, the pseudonym of Johann Scheffler [1624-1677], and his principle mystical text, the Cherubinische Wandersmann. A text almost certainly written between 1651 and 1653, a period of deeply personal transition and transformation which culminated in his reception into the Catholic Church and his decision to become a Jesuit. It includes a summary of the development of Christian mysticism in the West and the (...) immediate context in which Lacan’s interest in the mystical emerged. This latter included a study of Silesius by Jean Baruzi. While Derrida and others have considered Silesius’ work not truly mystical, this paper argues that this is to over subscribe to a view in which the mystical is reduced to subjective, individual experience. A reading that only became common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

Anton Marty (1847-1914) is known to be the most faithful pupil of Franz Brentano. As a matter of fact, most of his philosophical ideas find their source in the works of his master. Yet, the faithfulness of Marty is not constant. As the rich correspondence between the two thinkers shows, Marty elaborates an original theory of intentionality from ca. 1904 onward. This theory is based on the idea that intentionality is a process of mental assimilation (ideelle Verähnlichung), a process at (...) the core of which lies a sui generis relation of “ideal similitude” holding between a thinking subject and its object. This study spells out the Martyian notion of mental assimilation and traces back Marty’s evolution from his earlier position (prominently described in the recently published Deskriptive Psychologie of 1893-1894) to his final view as it is found in the Untersuchungen of 1908. It turns out that besides Brentano, Husserl is a key figure in that evolution. Such a “genetic”elucidation of Marty’s last theory is required in order to reach the main goal of this paper, namely: the clarification of Marty’s degree of dependence upon Brentano with respect to the theory of intentionality. That being said, we do not merely intend to compare the mature Marty with Brentano: our “genetic” considerations will also allow us to describe the interaction between the two thinkers before 1904. Accordingly, we begin by presenting Brentano’s own position on intentionality in discussing its two currently competing readings, namely the “discontinuist” and the “continuist” one. Against a recent interpretation, we argue that Marty’s endorsement of a “discontinuist” reading is not based on a misunderstanding of Brentano’s position. (shrink)

The short cover-description of the present book tells that "Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was one of the formative philosophers of German idealism, whose great service was in the areas of the philosophy of nature, art, and religion." Those having some familiarity with Schelling, and his influence on American philosophy, indirectly via Coleridge and Carlyle and more directly via Emerson and C. S. Peirce, will perhaps not be surprised to learn that German idealism itself looks somewhat different, understanding Schelling's differences (...) with Kant, Fichte, and Hegel; and while the work under review shows no awareness of the distant American influence of Schelling, or American developments in general (except perhaps in some citations of Arthur Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being), I will take the present opportunity to emphasize connections and possible connections to American philosophy, as allowed by the author's account of Schelling and some further citations. (shrink)

Semantic interoperability can be defined as the ability of two or more computer systems to exchange information in such a way that the meaning of that information can be automatically interpreted by the receiving system accurately enough to produce useful results to the end users of both systems. Several activities are currently being performed by a variety of stakeholders to achieve semantic interoperability in healthcare. Many of these activities are not beneficial, because they place too great a focus on business (...) aspects and not enough on involvement of the right sorts of researchers, in particular those that are able to see how the data and information relate to the entities of concern on the side of the patient. The lack of a central focus on the patient, and the associated focus on ‘concepts’, have spawned a variety of mutually incompatible terminologies exhibiting non-resolvable overlap. The predominance of the healthcare IT industry in the writing and selection of semantic interoperability standards mitigates against the benefits that standards, when well designed, can bring about. (shrink)

The article works out the thesis that to the excessive desire of the powerful for the absolute appropriation/domination it is opposed a not less excessive and absolute desire from people in order not to be appropriated/dominated: two desires of a distinct nature which are neither the desire for the same things nor the desire for different things, but desires in which the act of desiring is different. Taking into account that each desire aims at its absolute effectiveness, each one of (...) them tries to impose itself universally becoming doubly absolute: for one side it is inclined to the absolute domination (the powerful) or to the plain liberty (the people); for the other side, tries to impose itself to the whole political body. Each desire is only sustained by its heterogeneous desire. Each one pursues its own purposes whose realization will be the ruin of all collective life. Good institutions and good laws ensure liberty as long as they are capable to prevent the powerful or the people to consummate its desire or abandon its own desire to assume the other’s. However, having inscribed the order of law in the disorder of dissent, Machiavelli discarded the idea of an institutional order as a defi nitive solution to the disorder of dissent. Consequently, no law or institution is able to defi nitively resist the risk of corruption. This requires a periodic return to the origins: the experience of the constitutive moment of the original violence which, exposing men to risks, restores the initial reputation and strength of States and institutions. -/- O artigo parte da enunciação da tese de que ao desejo desmesurado dos grandes pela apropriação/dominação absoluta opõe-se um desejo não menos desmesurado e absoluto do povo de não sê-lo: dois desejos de natureza diferente que não são nem o desejo das mesmas coisas nem desejo de coisas diferentes, mas desejos cujo ato de desejar é diferente. Considerando que cada desejo visa sua efetividade absoluta, cada um tenta se impor universalmente tornando-se duplamente absoluto: por um lado, tende à dominação total (os grandes) ou à liberdade plena (o povo); por outro, tenta se impor ao conjunto do corpo político. Cada desejo somente se sustenta do desejo que lhe é heterogêneo. Cada um persegue uma fi nalidade própria cuja realização plena será a ruína de toda vida coletiva. Boas instituições e boas leis asseguram a liberdade na medida em que forem capazes de impedir que grandes ou povo consumam seu desejo ou que abandonem seu desejo próprio para assumir o do outro. Contudo, ao inscrever a ordem da lei na desordem dos dissensos, Maquiavel descartou a ideia de uma ordem institucional como solução defi nitiva da desordem dos dissensos. Consequentemente, nenhuma lei ou instituição é capaz de resistir defi nitivamente ao risco da corrupção. Isso obriga ao retorno periódico às origens: a experiência do momento constitutivo da violência originária que, expondo os homens ao risco, restaura o prestígio e vigor iniciais de Estados e instituições. (shrink)

To investigate cultural lifestyle preferences in different cultural contexts, a forced-choice questionnaire was constructed, based on Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgement, an almost forgotten statistical method of 1927, which is a useful tool for assessing groups. This study's questionnaire items targeted job and living conditions in the spectrum from traditional to globalised lifestyles. Subjects were indigenous representatives at the UNO in Geneva, and students in Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa and Germany. The preferences ascertained reflect attitudes on a scale ranging from (...) very traditional to very globalised lifestyles. Although being an uncommon assessment tool, Thurstone's Comparative Judgement indicates to yield highly valid outcomes, as the results of the African university students, though from three different countries, resembled each other, but were complementary to the results of the indigenous representatives, which, in turn, mirrored the Berlin controls' profiles, according to expectations. Findings are discussed in light of the Symbolic Self-Completion Theory. (shrink)

During the century following the Council of Trent, two trends within Catholic religious orders matured: the first consisted in unifying and strengthening the Order’s culture by focussing on one author of reference; the other in elaborating a new way of presenting that author’s doctrines. In the case of the Friars Minor Conventuals, these trends were fostered in the second decade of the seventeenth century by the minister general of the Order, Giacomo Montanari, who promoted the idea that providing the Order (...) with new works featuring innovative didactic characteristics and a renewed defence of the doctrines of John Duns Scotus was a prime way to lead an authentic religious life. Bartolomeo Mastri and Bonaventura Belluto’s “philosophiae cursus ad mentem Scoti” was probably the major result of this impulse. This essay examines the ways in which this process occurred and the outcomes to which it led. (shrink)

An attempt to achieve an overall interpretation of the thinking of Hans Jonas by utilising the notions of life, ambivalence and responsibility.

Purpose – This study aims to examine the observer’s role in “infant psychophysics”. Infant psychophysics was developed because the diagnosis of perceptual deficits should be done as early in a patient’s life as possible, to provide efficacious treatment and thereby reduce potential long-term costs. Infants, however, cannot report their perceptions. Hence, the intensity of a stimulus at which the infant can detect it, the “threshold”, must be inferred from the infant’s behavior, as judged by observers (watchers). But whose abilities are (...) actually being inferred? The answer affects all behavior-based conclusions about infants’ perceptions, including the well-proselytized notion that auditory stimulus-detection thresholds improve rapidly during infancy. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 55 years of infant psychophysics is scrutinized, starting with seminal studies in infant vision, followed by the studies that they inspired in infant hearing. Findings – The inferred stimulus-detection thresholds are those of the infant-plus-watcher and, more broadly, the entire laboratory. The thresholds are therefore tenuous, because infants’ actions may differ with stimulus intensity; expressiveness may differ between infants; different watchers may judge infants differently; etc. Particularly, the watcher’s ability to “read” the infant may improve with the infant’s age, confounding any interpretation of perceptual maturation. Further, the infant’s gaze duration, an assumed cue to stimulus detection, may lengthen or shorten nonlinearly with infant age. Research limitations/implications – Infant psychophysics investigators have neglected the role of the observer, resulting in an accumulation of data that requires substantial re-interpretation. Altogether, infant psychophysics has proven far too resilient for its own good. Originality/value – Infant psychophysics is examined for the first time through second-order cybernetics. The approach reveals serious unresolved issues. (shrink)