The years that followed the fall of the Berlin wall and various authoritarian regimes in different regions of the world, witnessed the growth of a wide literature on democratization, which was influenced more and more by the paradigm of transition and the “consolidation” of democracy. Since then, evaluations as well as perspectives through which were seen various regimes (the new democracies “with problems”) are developed mainly through the theoretical lens of consolidation paradigm, according to which full democratic (...) class='Hi'>consolidation was the endpoint of regime transitions. But it has become clear today that in many countries, in which more than three decades have passed since the fall of authoritarian regimes, the issue of “completion” of democracy in their social and political context is still far from being a happy reality. The purpose of this paper is to criticize both in the theoretical and the empirical level, the concept of “consolidation of democracy”, seeing it as a non-valid concept for the study of democratization. This paper will argue that essentially the concept of consolidation is teleological and problematic in the sense that democracy is seen not as a process but an endpoint product. (shrink)

In science and everyday life, we often infer that something is true because it would explain some set of facts better than any other hypothesis we can think of. But what if we have reason to believe that there is a better way to explain these facts that we just haven't thought of? Wouldn't that undermine our warrant for believing the best available explanation? Many philosophers have assumed that we can solve such underconsideration problems by stipulating that a hypothesis should (...) not only be 'the best' explanation available; rather, it should also be 'good enough'. Unfortunately, however, the only current suggestion for what it might mean to say that an explanation is 'good enough' is, well, not good enough. This paper aims to provide a better account of what is required for an explanatory hypothesis to be considered 'good enough'. In brief, the account holds that a `good enough' hypothesis is one that has gone through a process that I call explanatory consolidation, in which accumulating evidence and failed attempts to formulate better alternatives gradually make it more plausible that the explanation we currently have is better than any other that could be formulated. (shrink)

This article investigates several consequences of a recent trend in philosophy of mind to shift the relata of realization from mental state–physical state to function‐mechanism. It is shown, by applying both frameworks to the neuroscientific case study of memory consolidation, that, although this shift can be used to avoid the immediate antireductionist consequences of the traditional argument from multiple realizability, what is gained is a far more modest form of reductionism than recent philosophical accounts have intimated and neuroscientists themselves (...) have claimed. (shrink)

This essay concerns the causation involved in divine sustenance—the “pressure of the will of God” that continually upholds things in existence and supplies them with their properties and powers. My aim is to consolidate the theological doctrine of sustenance and a metaphysical theory of properties. Towards that end, I develop and motivate two consolidatory proposals, which together secure a more parsimonious theistic ontology and integrate the doctrine of sustenance and a theory of properties in a mutually enhancing way. The bulk (...) of the essay concerns the first proposal, which I explain and motivate in the first three sections. In the last two sections I explain and motivate the second proposal. (shrink)

This book consolidates emerging research on Aristotle's science and ethics in order to explore the extent to which the concepts, methods, and practices he developed for scientific inquiry and explanation are used to investigate moral phenomena. Each chapter shows, in a different way, that Aristotle's ethics is much more like a science than it is typically represented. The upshot of this is twofold. First, uncovering the links between Aristotle's science and ethics promises to open up new and innovative directions for (...) research into his moral philosophy. Second, showing why Aristotle thinks ethics can never be fully assimilated to the model of science will help shed new light on his views about the limits of science. The volume thus promises to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological foundations of Aristotle's ethics. (shrink)

In the consolidated cases Altitude Express v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Although the parties disagree as to the appropriate formulation of a but-for test to determine whether or not there was a discriminatory outcome, all parties do agree to the use of such a test, which asks “whether the evidence (...) shows ‘treatment of a person in a manner which but for that person’s sex would be different.’” City of Los Angeles, Dep’t. of Water and Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 711 (1978). However, but-for tests confuse more than they clarify the inquiry; a discriminatory outcome cannot be explained by appeal to just a discrete characteristic of a particular person. Individuals are not discriminated against because of these characteristics per se. Rather, they are discriminated against because of the social meanings and expectations that attach to these characteristics. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift illustrate the difference between individual-level causation and social explanation in two separate songs, “If I Were a Boy” and “The Man.” The explanation for why the counterfactual ‘male’ Beyoncé and Swift are evaluated differently than their current ‘female’ versions does not lie in individual-level features considered apart from the social world, but in social-level roles and expectations associated with those features. For this reason, a social explanation test—one that asks whether the social meanings of sex characteristics, rather than the characteristics per se, explain the outcome in question—is more suitable for determining whether or not Title VII has been violated. (shrink)

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. These mechanisms (...) include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life sciences were either logical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and as (...) a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse. (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that the legal regulation of lobbying is an important factor for disciplining/curbing the undue (illicit) influence of different interest groups on the political-making process, especially in countries with post-communist and nonconsolidated democracies such as Albania. In three decades of political and economic transition from a one-party communist system to a democratic one and towards a market economy, the democratization of Albania has faced various problems, which have often led to a loss of public (...) confidence in the political class and apathy of citizens towards the political system. In many cases, this has come as a result of the perception or even the disclosure by the media and the public of corruption scandals, political clientelism, or undue influences in the decision-making processes in Albania. Surely, it can be said that political scandals of trading or exercising illicit influences on public officials can affect, as numerous cases have shown, every democratic political system in the world. However, they are more likely to occur in new democracies (post-communist) countries that face weak state structures and a legal environment that is not yet well consolidated and where a culture of informality exists alongside written rules and laws. For this purpose, that of disciplining and controlling the influences that specific interests exert on the decision-making process of governments, legislatures, or other regulatory agencies, a good part of European countries have considered undertaking legal regulatory initiatives for lobbying activity in their environments. (shrink)

Although we may find the concept of anomie in Greek thought, it is since Durkheim that the concept begins to be used specifically as a sociological concept. However, a theory of anomie only becomes consolidated since “Social Structure and Anomie” by Robert K. Merton (Merton 1938). The theory becomes important and conquers its space in the rest of the century as one of the most productive theories about deviance. In this study, based on a contemporary conception of scientific theory, that (...) of the structuralist metatheory, a reconstruction of Merton’s approach is proposed, allowing to make explicit the deep structure of the theory. (shrink)

Are we witnessing progress or regress in the recent increasing popularity and electoral success of populist politicians and parties in consolidated democratic nations? ... Is the innovative use of popular referendum in Great Britain to settle fundamental constitutional questions a progressive or regressive innovation? ... Similarly, is the increasing use of constituent assemblies to change constitutions across the world evidence of progress in democratic constitutionalism, or, a worryingly regressive change back toward unmediated popular majoritarianism? ... This paper reflects on some (...) of the perils and promise of framing such questions with the conceptual couplet of progress and regress. It considers four compelling critiques of the use of ‘progress’ and its cognates in sociopolitical theory, as well as arguing that such concepts are nevertheless ineliminable for our normative theories. The paper concludes by suggesting that we can avoid the most serious problems by employing only conceptions of political progress and regress that are piecemeal, pragmatic, and processual. (shrink)

Much recent discussion has focused on the nature of artifacts, particularly on whether artifacts have essences. While the general consensus is that artifacts are at least intention-dependent, an equally common view is function essentialism about artifacts, the view that artifacts are essentially functional objects and that membership in an artifact kind is determined by a particular, shared function. This paper argues that function essentialism about artifacts is false. First, the two component conditions of function essentialism are given a clear and (...) precise formulation, after which counterexamples are offered to each. Second, ways to handle the counterexamples suggested by Randall Dipert and Simon Evnine are considered and rejected. Third, I then consider the prospects for restricting function essentialism to so-called technical artifacts, as Lynne Baker does, and argue that this, too, fails. This paper thereby consolidates the scattered literature on function essentialism and shows that, despite the seeming plausibility of the thesis, it should be rejected as an account of artifact essences. (shrink)

Kant's radical criticism of the passions has a central but largely overlooked moral-psychological component: for Kant, the passions promote a kind of self-deception he calls ‘rationalizing’. In analysing the connection between passion and rationalizing self-deception, I identify and reconstruct two essential traits of Kant's conception of the passions. I argue (1) that rationalizing self-deception, according to Kant, contributes massively to the emergence and consolidation of passions. It aims to resolve a psychological conflict between passion and moral duty when in (...) fact, it does not resolve but perpetuates this conflict. I then argue (2) that rationalizing does not necessarily aim to devalue moral duty, as Kant seems to suggest in the Groundwork. It can also aim to revalue the ‘counterweight’. By analysing Kant's presentation of several individual passions in the Anthropology, I demonstrate that rationalizing here is concerned with elevating these passions and making them pass as morally (or at least prudentially) justified. (shrink)

Our contention is that while what may be termed woke capitalism is the result of real changes in both the material structure of capitalism and its ideological superstructure, those are not changes pulling in the same direction. The main material development is the consolidation of the shift from a quasi-deterministic to a more pronouncedly probabilistic nexus of class and race. But it is unclear that this makes much difference to the material prospects of the vast majority of people of (...) color or indeed of people in general. Indeed, the racial permeability of the upper classes is accompanied by an increased and inverse racial permeability of the underclass. Diversification is so elite-driven that it is unlikely to proceed beyond the cosmetic, and for that reason it seems that diversification does not necessarily correspond to any major structural changes in the relations between groups of people, whether we consider them as arranged by class, race, or the intersection of the two. It follows that the politics of representation should not be regarded as a vehicle for the agenda of the materialist left. We propose instead a responsive universalist approach—responsive to racism and all other forms of marginalization and different from the homogenizing universalism of class-only politics. (shrink)

As a painfully outdated institution the school is accused of: being alienating, closing itself off to society and to the needs of young people; reproducing social inequality and consolidating existing power relations; demotivating youth; showing a lack of effectiveness and having great difficulty with employability. And last but not least, the school is considered redundant: the school, where learning is bound to time and place, is no longer needed in the digital era of virtual learning environments. The ultimate charge: the (...) school is a product of outdated ways of distributing knowledge and expertise, determined by primitive technologies of the past. Adieu school. This book advocates the acquittal of the school. It argues that many of the allegations against the school are motivated by an age-old fear and even hatred toward one of its radical but essential characteristics: that the school provides ‘free time' and transforms knowledge and skills into 'common goods', and therefore has the potential to give everyone, regardless of background, natural talent or aptitude, the time and space to leave their known environment, rise above themselves and renew (and thus change in unpredictable ways) the world. This defence of the school starts from an investigation of what makes a school a school and pinpoints why the school has value in and of itself. It reveals the various attempts to rob the school of its scholastic character, that is, to tame the school. The ultimate aim is to elaborate a touchstone that helps to defend as well as to re-invent school. -/- Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons are members of the Laboratory for Education and Society, KU Leuven. They share an interest in research on the public dimensions of education and are currently elaborating a philosophy of schooling. (shrink)

Biological atomism postulates that all life is composed of elementary and indivisible vital units. The activity of a living organism is thus conceived as the result of the activities and interactions of its elementary constituents, each of which individually already exhibits all the attributes proper to life. This paper surveys some of the key episodes in the history of biological atomism, and situates cell theory within this tradition. The atomistic foundations of cell theory are subsequently dissected and discussed, together with (...) the theory’s conceptual development and eventual consolidation. This paper then examines the major criticisms that have been waged against cell theory, and argues that these too can be interpreted through the prism of biological atomism as attempts to relocate the true biological atom away from the cell to a level of organization above or below it. Overall, biological atomism provides a useful perspective through which to examine the history and philosophy of cell theory, and it also opens up a new way of thinking about the epistemic decomposition of living organisms that significantly departs from the physicochemical reductionism of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

While Aquinas’s primary notion of truth as adequation is applied to God and man in somewhat different ways, it is apparent that it is not applicable to the angels, at least not in the same way. However, since truth is a transcendental, and as transcendentals are convertible, one may claim that the transcendental systems that apply to various beings differ. In order to consolidate the universality of the transcendental system, the study aims to show the manner truth as adequation can (...) be applied to the angels. (shrink)

Forty years have passed since video-games were first made widely available to the public and subsequently playing games has become a favorite past-time for many. Players continuously engage with dynamic visual displays with success contingent on the time-pressured deployment, and flexible allocation, of attention as well as precise bimanual movements. Evidence to date suggests that both brief and extensive exposure to video-game play can result in a broad range of enhancements to various cognitive faculties that generalize beyond the original context. (...) Despite promise, video-game research is host to a number of methodological issues that require addressing before progress can be made in this area. Here an effort is made to consolidate the past 30 years of literature examining the effects of video-game play on cognitive faculties and, more recently, neural systems. Future work is required to identify the mechanism that allows the act of video-game play to generate such a broad range of generalized enhancements. (shrink)

Judith Butler's contribution to feminist political thought is usually approached in terms of her concept of performativity, according to which gender exists only insofar as it is ritualistically and repetitively performed, creating permanent possibilities for performing gender in new and transgressive ways. In this paper, I argue that Butler's politics of performativity is more fundamentally grounded in the concept of genealogy, which she adapts from Foucault and, ultimately, Nietzsche. Butler understands women to have a genealogy: to be located within a (...) history of overlapping practices and reinterpretations of femininity. This genealogical understanding of femininity allows Butler to propose a coalitional feminist politics, which requires no unity among women but only loosely overlapping connections. For Butler, feminist coalitions should aim to subvert, not consolidate, entrenched norms concerning femininity. Butler has been criticized, however, for failing to explain either how subversive agency is possible or why the subversion of gender norms is desirable. Reviewing these criticisms, I argue that Butler offers a convincing explanation of the possibility of subversive agency, but that the normative dimension of her political thought remains relatively underdeveloped. I explore how the normative aspect of Butler's thought could be strengthened by recasting her notion of genealogy along more thoroughly Nietzschean and materialist lines, in terms of an idea of active and multiple bodily forces. (shrink)

Much has been written about the ethics of eating meat. Far less has been said about the ethics of serving meat. In this paper I argue that we often shouldn’t serve meat, even if it is morally permissible for individuals to purchase and eat meat. Historically, the ethical conversation surrounding meat has been limited to individual diets, meat producers, and government actors. I argue that if we stop the conversation there, then the urgent moral problems associated with industrial animal agriculture (...) will go unsolved. Instead, we must also consider the important but overlooked role that midsized institutions play in addressing major collective problems. I focus mostly on the harms that industrial animal agriculture inflicts on humans, animals, and the environment, but the discussion bears on other global issues like climate change. Institutional choices are an underexplored avenue for driving social change—their power and influence outstrip individual actions, and they can shape behavior in modest ways that promote social goods. Here I highlight the paradigmatic case of catered events and suggest three ways that institutional actors can reduce meat consumption and shape cultural attitudes surrounding meat: large impact decisions, subtly shaping incentives, and consolidating burdens. (shrink)

Until recently, discussion of virtues in the philosophy of mathematics has been fleeting and fragmentary at best. But in the last few years this has begun to change. As virtue theory has grown ever more influential, not just in ethics where virtues may seem most at home, but particularly in epistemology and the philosophy of science, some philosophers have sought to push virtues out into unexpected areas, including mathematics and its philosophy. But there are some mathematicians already there, ready to (...) meet them, who have explicitly invoked virtues in discussing what is necessary for a mathematician to succeed. In both ethics and epistemology, virtue theory tends to emphasize character virtues, the acquired excellences of people. But people are not the only sort of thing whose excellences may be identified as virtues. Theoretical virtues have attracted attention in the philosophy of science as components of an account of theory choice. Within the philosophy of mathematics, and mathematics itself, attention to virtues has emerged from a variety of disparate sources. Theoretical virtues have been put forward both to analyse the practice of proof and to justify axioms; intellectual virtues have found multiple applications in the epistemology of mathematics; and ethical virtues have been offered as a basis for understanding the social utility of mathematical practice. Indeed, some authors have advocated virtue epistemology as the correct epistemology for mathematics (and perhaps even as the basis for progress in the metaphysics of mathematics). This topical collection brings together several of the researchers who have begun to study mathematical practices from a virtue perspective with the intention of consolidating and encouraging this trend. (shrink)

The study of belief is expanding and involves a growing set of disciplines and research areas. These research programs attempt to shed light on the process of believing, understood as a central human cognitive function. Computational systems and, in particular, what we commonly understand as Artificial Intelligence (AI), can provide some insights on how beliefs work as either a linear process or as a complex system. However, the computational approach has undergone some scrutiny, in particular about the differences between what (...) is distinctively human and what can be inferred from AI systems. The present article investigates to what extent recent developments in AI provide new elements to the debate and clarify the process of belief acquisition, consolidation, and recalibration. The article analyses and debates current issues and topics of investigation such as: different models to understand belief, the exploration of belief in an automated reasoning environment, the case of religious beliefs, and future directions of research. (shrink)

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine (...) the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

Cushman, Young, & Greene (2010) urge the consolidation of moral psychology around a dual-system consensus. On this view, a slow, often-overstretched rational system tends to produce consequentialist intuitions and action-tendencies, while a fast, affective system produces virtuous (or vicious) intuitions and action-tendencies that perform well in their habituated ecological niche but sometimes disastrously outside of it. This perspective suggests a habit-corrected-by-reason picture of moral behavior. Recent research, however, has raised questions about the adequacy of dual-process theories of cognition and (...) behavior, which tend to distinguish categorically between fast, affect-laden, automatic, sometimes-unconscious, nearly-incorrigible mental processes and slow, rational, effortful, conscious, corrigible mental processes. Processes of one alleged type often have properties associated with the contrary type. For instance, rational processes can be emotional, and fast thinking can perform logical operations. In addition, the fast-slow binary transforms a continuous temporal scale into a dichotomous one, losing potentially important information along the way. While these problems are beginning to be addressed in some subfields of psychology, moral psychology has yet to grapple with them. In this theoretical paper, we argue that moral psychology needs a framework that accounts for our knowledge of both temporal and spatial (anatomical) dimensions of the brain basis of moral cognition and virtuous decision-making. We argue that methodologies with very fine-grained temporal granularity, such as electroencephalography (EEG), should be used to complement more frequently used methodologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We outline how this might be accomplished using generosity, gratitude, and integrity as a case study. (shrink)

Two systems of belief change based on paraconsistent logics are introduced in this article by means of AGM-like postulates. The first one, AGMp, is defined over any paraconsistent logic which extends classical logic such that the law of excluded middle holds w.r.t. the paraconsistent negation. The second one, AGMo , is specifically designed for paraconsistent logics known as Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs), which have a formal consistency operator that allows to recover all the classical inferences. Besides the three usual (...) operations over belief sets, namely expansion, contraction and revision (which is obtained from contraction by the Levi identity), the underlying paraconsistent logic allows us to define additional operations involving (non-explosive) contradictions. Thus, it is defined external revision (which is obtained from contraction by the reverse Levi identity), consolidation and semi-revision, all of them over belief sets. It is worth noting that the latter operations, introduced by S. Hansson, involve the temporary acceptance of contradictory beliefs, and so they were originally defined only for belief bases. Unlike to previous proposals in the literature, only defined for specific paraconsistent logics, the present approach can be applied to a general class of paraconsistent logics which are supraclassical, thus preserving the spirit of AGM. Moreover, representation theorems w.r.t. constructions based on selection functions are obtained for all the operations. (shrink)

Democracy has been hailed as a global phenomenon and the most popular feature of modern political thought. Several notable efforts have been made by the global community to promote and extend democracy to cover billions of people, with their varying histories, cultures, and disparate levels of affluence. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly resolved to support the efforts of governments to promote and consolidate new or restored democracies. The GA in this regard stated that “democracy is a universal value (...) based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives. Also, while democracies share common features, there is no single model of democracy, and that democracy does not belong to any country or region, reaffirming further the necessity of due respect for sovereignty, the right to self-determination, and territorial integrity. In 2005, the United Nations Democracy Fund was created to implement projects aimed at enhancing democratic practice, promoting human rights, and encouraging participation of all groups in democratic processes. In contrast to its growing popularity, democracy has also been closely looked at with suspicion by experts- academic, political, and otherwise. Skeptics assert that “ the meaning of democracy is contested with no universal definition that is applicable.”. (shrink)

The first part of the paper, “Foyer: feeling, look- ing, between-us” establishes the role of touch in intersubjectivity. Starting with Irigaray’s notion of the entre-nous, the “between-us,” I use touch as an example of deeply intersubjective communi- cation, an attempt to overcome estrangement. The ambiguity of touching, the physical action of touching and the affective reaction of feeling, is central to this. The second section, “Reception: receptivity, orderings of the sensible,” consolidates this experience of intersubjective touching within the confines of (...) the demarcated spatial divisions of the hotel, which leads to insights concerning the physical and psychical architecture of the archetypal hotel. We return to examine the notion of “estrangement,” questioning how and why it is altered by spatial layout and sequencing. In this section I subject the usual discussion of Freud’s unheimlich or “uncanny” to some affective spatial observations, and suggest Caillois’ idea of “psychasthenia” (1987) as a useful supplement to think about touching and feeling in the unhomely home of the hotel. The third section, “Room: the caress,” of Levinas’ notion of the caress and Irigaray’s reading of this, from which I grasp towards an ethical-affective relation of between-ness, as much through non-touching as through physical touching. (shrink)

The present article attempts at combining Big History potential with the potential of Evolutionary Studies in order to achieve the following goals: 1) to apply the historical narrative principle to the description of the star-galaxy era of the cosmic phase of Big History; 2) to analyze both the cosmic history and similarities and differences between evolutionary laws, principles, and mechanisms at various levels and phases of Big History. As far as I know, nobody has approached this task in a systemic (...) way yet. It appears especially important to demonstrate that many evolutionary principles, patterns, regularities, and rules, which we tend to find relevant only for higher levels and main lines of evolution, can be also applied to cosmic evolution. Moreover, almost everything that we know about evolution may be detected in the cosmic history, whereas many of the evolutionary characteristics are already manifested here in a rather clear and salient way. Of course, many of the characteristics are manifested in initial or nonsystematic forms but some features, on the contrary, appear to be more distinct just in the cosmic phase. And at the same time when many characteristics and features which are typical of biological and social evolution unexpectedly reveal their roots or protoforms at earlier phases, one becomes aware that the universal character of evolution is real and it can be detected in a number of manifestations. One should also bear in mind that the origin of galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects is the lengthiest evolutionary process among all evolutionary processes in the Universe. Such an approach opens new perspectives for our understanding of evolution and Big History, of their driving forces, vectors, and trends, it also creates a consolidated field for the multidisciplinary re-search. (shrink)

Disaster response is a highly collaborative and critical process that requires the involvement of multiple emergency responders (ERs), ideally working together under a unified command, to enable a rapid and effective operational response. Following the 9/11 and 11/13 terrorist attacks and the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is apparent that inadequate communication and a lack of interoperability among the ERs engaged on-site can adversely affect disaster response efforts. Within this context, we present a scenario-based terrorism case study to (...) highlight the challenges of operational disaster command and response. In this article, which is based on the French emergency response doctrine, we outline a semantics-based common operational command system that is designed to guarantee an efficient information flow among ERs. Our focus is on offering to all ERs, a real-time operational picture of the situation in order to enable multilevel coordination among firefighters, police, healthcare units, public authorities, and other stakeholders. Our approach consolidates information to promote timely sharing of data among ERs. The proposed system is based on an ontology that has been developed to represent the different types of knowledge on the part of ERs, providing a shared vocabulary that covers a variety of interoperability concerns. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to describe the models and specifics of export-import transactions in the service sector in Ukraine. For this, the essence of the service as an object of export-import operations is characterized, the process of conducting export operations is described, an algorithm for the implementation of export-import operations of services is developed and provided to indicate their features and simplify the implementation procedures for the business of Ukraine. Within the framework of the article, an attempt was (...) made to visualize the models of export and import of services recognized by the World Trade Organization within the framework of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and an algorithm of export-import of services was developed, taking into account the main operations to facilitate the trade process of the national business of Ukraine. Thanks to the author's developments, the process of export-import of services for the domestic manufacturer will become more understandable and transparent, which will provide the opportunity to enter and consolidate international markets, and in the future also increase trade turnover, which, among other things, will contribute to the growth of the country's national economy. The value of the study lies in the author's attempt in one study to outline models of export-import of services, presenting them visually, with a developed algorithm for sellers to simplify the procedure for their registration, taking into account the legal norms of a certain place of their provision. understanding the main models, directly the process of providing and processing operations on export-import services will make it easier for suppliers to work with this product category in world trade. Further research may be aimed at examining the specifics of import-export operations depending on the types of services provided by domestic manufacturers in different countries of the world. -/- Анотація. Метою даного дослідження є опис моделей та специфіки здійснення експортно-імпортних операцій у сфері послуг в Україні. Для цього охарактеризована сутність послуги як об'єкта експортно-імпортних операцій, описано моделі проведення експортно-імпортних операцій, розроблено та наведено алгоритм здійснення експортно-імпортних операцій послуг для зазначення їх особливостей й спрощення процедур здійснення для бізнесу України. У статті зроблено спробу наглядного зображення моделей експорту та імпорту послуг, визнаних Світовою організацію торгівлі у рамках Генеральної угоди з торгівлі послугами, та розроблено алгоритм експорту-імпорту послуг з урахуванням основних операції для полегшення процесу торгівлі національного бізнесу України. Завдяки розробкам автора процес експорту-імпорту послуг для вітчизняного виробника стане більш зрозумілим та прозорим, що надасть можливість виходу на міжнародні ринки та закріплення на них, а в подальшому ще й нарощувати обороти торгівлі, що, у тому числі, буде сприяти росту національної економіки країни. Цінність дослідження полягає у спробі автора в одному дослідженні викласти моделі експорту-імпорту послуг, представивши їх наочно, з розробленим алгоритмом для продавців для спрощення процедури їх оформлення з урахуванням норм законодавства певного місця їх надання. розуміння основних моделей, безпосередньо процесу надання та оформлення операцій з експорту-імпорту послуг полегшить постачальникам роботу з цією категорією продукту у світової торгівлі. Подальші дослідження можуть бути націлені на розгляд особливостей експортно- імпортних операцій в залежності від видів послуг, які надають вітчизняні виробники у різних країнах світу. (shrink)

The essay describes some crucial moments in the intellectual biography of Ralf Dahrendorf and Jürgen Habermas, focusing on their frequent relationships in the first forty years. This research shows that, beyond the many divergences, what linked them in an enduring sodality was a radically democratic orientation that was consolidated in some epochal caesuras of German history: the advent of the Third Reich, the Second World War and the Anglo-American liberal “re-education”, the “normalization” of the Adenauer era, the crisis of democracy (...) and the protest of the “Sixty-eight”. (shrink)

Comparative political thought has long been defined by a major project to widen the horizons of Western thought by attending to non-European and non-western speculative traditions. This chapter explores not only the implications and potentialities of such a move, but also its possible flows. It addresses some of the limits determining the idea of ‘non-Western’ thought across comparative projects, pointing to the internal tensions, accidental assumptions and integral betrayals through which the Western tradition has constituted itself. Our approach here is (...) to expose the contingent roots of the ‘Western referent’ in its problematic association with the idea of Europe, highlighting the way in which ‘orientation’ and ‘Orientalisation’ have helped to consolidate the normative ideal supplied by these two terms. We then proceed to examine a ‘minor tradition’ lying behind the unifying image of the Western canon, where an insight provided by Spinoza’s philosophy supports a critical transition from ‘comparative’ to ‘world’ thought. Functioning not as the synthetic sum of totalising local traditions but the constituent space of a nomadic thinking, ‘world’ thought embodies and valorises difference and production, opening up new possibilities for a synesthetic thought. (shrink)

Post-truth politics has been diagnosed as harmful to both knowledge and democracy. I argue that it can also fundamentally undermine epistemic autonomy in a way that is similar to the manipulative technique known as gaslighting. Using examples from contemporary politics, I identify three categories of post-truth rhetoric: the introduction of counternarratives, the discrediting of critics, and the denial of more or less plain facts. These strategies tend to isolate people epistemically, leaving them disoriented and unable to distinguish between reliable and (...) unreliable sources. Like gaslighting, post-truth politics aims to undermine epistemic autonomy by eroding someone’s self-trust, in order to consolidate power. Shifting the focus to the effects on the victim allows for new insights into the specific harms of post-truth politics. Applying the concept of gaslighting to this domain may also help people recognize a pernicious dynamic that was invisible to them before, giving them an important tool to resist it. (shrink)

Reportedly ever since Pythagoras, but possibly much earlier, humans have been concerned about the way non human animals (henceforward “animals” for convenience) should be treated. By late antiquity all main traditions with regard to this issue had already been established and consolidated, and were only slightly modified during the centuries that followed. Until the nineteenth century philosophers tended to focus primarily on the ontological status of animals, to wit on whether – and to what degree – animals are actually rational (...) beings; accordingly they allowed – or denied – them some kind of moral standing. This modus operandi was for the first time seriously questioned by Jeremy Bentham, who put the issue on a different track. If the question, as Bentham suggested, is not if animals can think or speak, but if they can suffer1, then it seems plausible that moral agents ought to abstain from inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals; in other words, humans might have at least one – even limited – moral duty towards animals. And if this, in turn, is true, then animals should arguably be allowed the commensurate moral right, namely the right not to be inflicted unnecessary pain. Then, if animals possess this right, they could probably possess others, as well. This is how grosso modo the issue of animal rights became a pivotal part of the discussion concerning animal ethics. Bentham himself, of course, wouldn’t have gone that far; to him even the idea of human rights sounded like “simple… rhetorical nonsense upon stilts”.2 It was mostly due to his views, however, that the debate was moved from the way things actually are to the way things should ideally be – thus merging into what, in my view, should always have been: one primarily concerning ethics. (shrink)

This paper develops a mechanistic account of basic mental agency by identifying similarities between two of its major exemplars: endogenous attention and imagination. Five key similarities are identified: i) that both capacities are driven by currently prioritised goals that are either person-level or apt to become person-level. ii) that both deliver their outputs to the working memory iii) that both range across all and only conceptual contents; iv) that both proceed under the guidance of norms and/or habits; and v) that (...) both directly activate rather than inhibit content. These five features are consolidated by proposing that basic mental agency is essentially the power to call for conceptual content and hold it within our working memories. (shrink)

By treating America as a «new» continent «by virtue of its wholly peculiar character in both physical and political respects» Hegel reiterates the increasingly dominant image of America in the Europe of his time. This image crystallized in the context of the consolidation of the colonization process. According to Europeans, the inhabitants of the colonized lands were far less civilized than the inhabitants of Western Europe. Not a few thinkers found the explanation for that cultural difference in the natural (...) differences between the respective geographies, climates and races. In this general framework, Hegel considered the American Indians as people without history; as for the history of America after its conquest and colonization, it is in his eyes nothing other than an episode of the history of Europe itself. Insofar as it is through Europe´s history that human beings have attained self-consciousness of their essence, namely, freedom as autonomy and self-determination, Europe seems to be a non plus ultra of the ideological development of humanity. However, as seen from the perspective of the 21st century, the intellectual and political history of Europe can hardly be identified with the full awareness of the value and dignity of each human being as such. Since the countries of the American continent rely on the principle of civic nationalism and not on that of ethnic na-tionalism, which is typical for Europe, they signify, in this respect, a step forward with regard to the «principle of the European mind». (shrink)

In the predominant pedagogical frameworks of our days, rationalist, voluntarist or sentimentalist reductionisms are seen, from which it is about educating people regardless of their Origin and the singular and unrepeatable originality with which they have been given to existence. Faced with this anthropocentric confinement, Sensitive Education arises so that every person, regardless of their culture and creed, remains sensitive to their Origin and captures their own originality, which in the end is what they must accept and try to manifest (...) with education. When educational systems are not sensitive to the original, they develop falsehood. With the aim of consolidating the validity of the pedagogical-anthropological foundation of Sensitive Education, this study seeks to show how Edith Stein’s argument explains Sensitive Education, although Stein, after her conversion, uses explicitly Christian terminology. Stein’s direct terms serve to describe Education Sensitive to the Holy Spirit, but for those who do not start from a Christian worldview, Education Sensitive to Origin can be a more non-denominational way of approaching the Original. To achieve this objective, an analytical-synthetic methodology has been followed in which essential features of Sensitive Education are proposed and in a hermeneutic manner, arguments are extracted from the writings of Edith Stein that offer support for these essential features. In conclusion, it is sufficiently shown that Edith Stein’s thought provides a pedagogical foundation to Sensitive Education. (shrink)

The correct identification of the abuse of political power during the COVID-19 crisis remains a challenge because officially declaring the pandemic allowed political representatives to exercise additional power disguisable as the maintenance of functioning social order under the principle of preserving humankind. One way to observe the abuse of power in its excess is the degree of compliance exhibited by the people who laid juridical restrictions for the purpose of combating COVID-19. The behaviour of political representatives was evidence of political (...) exceptionalism, for political representatives, as decisive authorities, were the first to disregard measures introduced without suffering negative consequences. Such abuse catalysed the collapse of trust in state communities, but has for its true result the consolidation of the class system in which the ethical value of trust is played out. In this paper, I discuss how the behaviour of state representatives demonstrates the existence of political exceptionalism based on the class system and what this means for the persistence of national trust. (shrink)

Debates in the philosophy of science typically take place around issues such as realism and theory change. Recently, the debate has been reformulated to bring in the role of experiments in the context of theory change. As regards realism, Ian Hacking’s contribution has been to introduce ‘intervention’ as the basis of realism. He also proposed, following Imre Lakatos, to replace the issue of truth with progress and rationality. In this context we examine the case of the vitalism — reductionism debate (...) in biology inspired by the works of Indian physicist-turned-biologist Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), in the early twentieth century. Both camps had their characteristic hardcores. Vitalists led by John S. Burdon-Sanderson and Augustus D. Waller accepted religious metaphysics to support their research programme, which ultimately degenerated. Bose worked more with the ideals of science such as Occam’s razor, large-scale systematization of phenomena and novel prediction. I argue that his religious metaphysics, instead of acting as a protective shield, helped him to consolidate his position and allowed further problem shift resulting in a research programme that involved consciousness too. His research programme remains relevant even today. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to demonstrate how the historical debate between materialism and idealism, in the field of Philosophy, extends, in new clothes, to the field of Quantum Physics characterized by realism and anti-realism. For this, we opted for a debate, also historical, between the realism of Albert Einstein, for whom reality exists regardless of the existence of the knowing subject, and Niels Bohr, for whom we do not have access to the ultimate reality of the matter, unless (...) conditioning it to the existence of an observer endowed with rationality, position adopted in the Interpretation of Complementarity – posture that was expanded in 1935 when Bohr assumed a “relationalist” conception, according to which the quantum state is defined by the relationship between the quantum object and the entire measuring device. This is an extremely important debate, as it further consolidates the results of nascent Quantum Mechanics, guaranteeing Bohr the leadership of the orthodoxy based on the interpretation of complementarity. Here, when dealing with Quantum Theory, we will not make any distinction between the terms Quantum Physics, Quantum Theory or Quantum Mechanics. The entire discussion will be held under the name “Quantum Theory”. Theory that tries to analyze and describe the behavior of physical systems of reduced dimensions, close to the sizes of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. We hope that the reader will appreciate the genius of these two titans in this field of Physics when they magnificently formulate the arguments that support the object of their defenses. (shrink)

For Whitehead and Nishitani, a rethinking of religion necessitates a rethinking of the metaphysics that underlie one’s concept of religion. The dynamism of religion is unveiled only within the metaphysical grounding of an ontology that accommodates the philosophical preference of “becoming” as an ultimate category of reality. The novelty of Whitehead’s theory of religion lies in the process metaphysics that it presupposes. For him, religion, like the whole of reality, is inherently developing and evolving. What Nishitani offers is a rethinking (...) of Western understanding of religion by way of an Asian speculative approach grounded in Zen Buddhism. He argues that Western religion, particularly Christianity and Judaism, has succumbed to the modern predicament of nihilism, or relative nothingness. He radicalizes this same nihility towards absolute nothingness (śūnyatā). For both Whitehead and Nishitani, despite the distortion of religion by religious fundamentalists, genuine religion consolidates and points a society towards its real destiny. However, the realization of religion’s role necessitates reflexivity on its own inherent dynamism. (shrink)

The relationship between knowledge and vision seems really consolidated. It started in ancient Greece and we can found its basis in Plato. The history of logos as reason and as western foundation of culture gives us enormous examples in terms of metaphors and approaches in the knowledge-vision relationship. «I see it» is like «I know it». However if we look at the basis of logos we find the deep meaning of gathering, composition, bond and bind (lèghein), so as to we (...) could choose «to gather» as the best translation of logos (Hoffmann). My aim is to show how this key feature is represented by sounds. To think is to link information, memories and so on and the principal property of sound is union and merger. We can argue for a «sonorous thought» but in reality this property is simply the founding element of thought and reason. In fact if we analyse the limits of our knowledge (Kant, Plessner) we discover the incorrectness of knowledge-vision relationship – like the knowledge-discourse relationship. We should investigate this guideline as the recent research for Covid-19 vaccine has shown. (shrink)

The scenario of Homo sapiens origin/s within Africa has become increasingly complex, with a pan-African perspective currently challenging the long-established single-origin hypothesis. In this paper, we review the lines of evidence employed in support of each model, highlighting inferential limitations and possible terminological misunderstandings. We argue that the metapopulation scenario envisaged by pan-African proponents well describes a mosaic diversification among late Middle Pleistocene groups. However, this does not rule out a major contribution that emerged from a single population where crucial (...) derived features—notably, a globular braincase—appeared as the result of a punctuated, cladogenetic event. Thus, we suggest that a synthesis is possible and propose a scenario that, in our view, better reconciles with consolidated expectations in evolutionary theory. These indicate cladogenesis in allopatry as an ordinary pattern for the origin of a new species, particularly during phases of marked climatic and environmental instability. (shrink)

Citizenship is the right to be a citizen of a social, political, or national community. Aristotle was the philosopher who has been talking about citizenship since ancient times. His thoughts are still historical lessons for the operation of states today. In this article, the author focuses on analyzing basic thoughts on Aristotle's citizenship; which are shown in essential points such as (i) Citizenship is clearly shown in the role of the State, (ii) Right to education, (iii) The right to participate (...) in political affairs, (iv) Citizenship is associated with civic obligations. Thereby, the article draws its historical lesson for the current building of law-governed State in Vietnam in the following aspects: (i) Building a solid-state apparatus with a coherent and unified legal system; (ii) All the State's policies must originate from the Vietnamese practice, ensure the people's mastery and protect the people's legitimate interests; (iii) Consolidating and strengthening the relationship between the State and the people. (shrink)

Philosophy of technology was not initially considered a consolidated field of inquiry. However, under the influence of sociology and pragmatist philosophy, something resembling a consensus has emerged in a field previously marked by a lack of agreement amongst its practitioners. This has given the field a greater sense of structure and yielded interesting research. However, the loss of the earlier “messy” state has resulted in a limitation of the field’s scope and methodology that precludes an encompassing view of the problematic (...) issues inherent in the question of technology. It is argued that the heterodox disunity and diversity of earlier philosophy of technology was not a mark of theoretical immaturity but was necessitated by the field’s complex subject matter. It is further argued that philosophy of technology should return to its pluralistic role as a meta-analytical structure linking insights from different fields of research. (shrink)

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success (...) repeatedly refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science. (shrink)

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

In this article, we explore various arguments against the traditional distinction between episodic and semantic memory based on the metaphysical phenomenon of transitional gradation. Transitional gradation occurs when two candidate kinds A and B grade into one another along a continuum according to their characteristic properties. We review two kinds of arguments—from the gradual semanticization of episodic memories as they are consolidated, and from the composition of episodic memories during storage and recall from semantic memories—that predict the proliferation of such (...) transitional forms. We further explain why the distinction cannot be saved from the challenges of transitional gradation by appealing to distinct underlying memory structures and applying our perspective to the impasse over research into ‘episodic-like’ memory in non-human animals. On the whole, we recommend replacing the distinction with a dynamic life cycle of memory in which a variety of transitional forms will proliferate, and illustrate the utility of this perspective by tying together recent trends in animal episodic memory research and recommending productive future directions. (shrink)

Bioconservative commentators argue that parents should not take steps to modify the genetics of their children even in the name of enhancement because of the damage they predict for values, identities and relationships. Some commentators have even said that adults should not modify themselves through genetic interventions. One commentator worries that genetic modifications chosen by adults for themselves will undermine moral agency, lead to less valuable experiences and fracture people's sense of self. These worries are not justified, however, since the (...) effects of modification will not undo moral agency as such. Adults can still have valuable experiences, even if some prior choices no longer seem meaningful. Changes at the genetic level will not always, either, alienate people from their own sense of self. On the contrary, genetic modifications can help amplify choice, enrich lives and consolidate identities. Ultimately, there is no moral requirement that people value their contingent genetic endowment to the exclusion of changes important to them in their future genetic identities. Through weighing risks and benefits, adults also have the power to consent to—and assume the risks of—genetic modifications for themselves in a way not possible in prenatal genetic interventions. (shrink)