Hoy en día, el fuerte consagramiento y la expansión de la propiedad privada ha llevado al olvido a muchos métodos de gobernar recursos que no están basados en la exclusividad. Frecuentemente se escucha hablar de la propiedad como un derecho de dominio absoluto, algo inviolable que no conlleva obligaciones. Sin embargo, desde los inicios de la historia jurídica podemos observar que los derechos de propiedad han estado habitualmente acompañados de obligaciones y limitaciones, además de un mandato moral solicitando que el (...) manejo de la propiedad sea en vista al bien común. (shrink)

Creativity is often conceived in terms of insight, innovation, and invention realized through technical mastery and skill. Challenging this individualistic model are “inventions” like writing, something that surely gave no clue to the form it would ultimately take—script—or the ways in which it would reorganize behaviors and brains in the cognitive state known as literacy. Here writing is analyzed as a tool used collectively and collaboratively. Collective, collaborative use enabled the tool to become increasingly effective at eliciting specific behavioral and (...) psychological responses. Collective, collaborative use also subjected the tool to the combined force of the individual variability represented by different user and material combinations over time. Combined variability influenced tool form toward features reflecting both the average behavioral, physiological, and psychological capacities of the tool-using community and points of maximal usability. The result offers a new model of creativity, one based not on the individual but on collective, collaborative use and incremental change in behaviors and brains, materially accumulated and redistributed between generations. The model presents aspects of human innovation that escape the individualistic model by focusing on ordinary tool-using behaviors and sustained use within social groups as the critical elements. (shrink)

Common sense has it that some of the greatest achievements that are to our credit are creative, whether artistic or otherwise. But standard theories of achievement and merit struggle to explain them, since the praiseworthiness of creative achievements isn’t grounded in effort, quality of will, disclosing the agent’s values, or even reasons-responsiveness. I argue that it’s distinctive of artistic or quasi-artistic creative activity that it is guided by what I call aspirational aims, which are formulated in terms (...) of evaluative predicates (like painting something “moving” or engineering something “nifty”) whose descriptive realizers are not known in advance. Aesthetic creativity itself fundamentally consists in perceiving or conceiving of some modification of raw material or a medium as promoting or constituting a novel way of realizing the aspirational aim. Creative achievements like poems and paintings are then to our credit in virtue of being exercises of spontaneity that disclose a deep layer of our selves that is manifest in active perception of affordances, showing that there is something beautiful about the way we experience the world, as a Sally Rooney character puts it. As with other creditworthy achievements, what makes them difficult is that simply trying won’t suffice to make success likely – but unlike in many other cases, neither will trying hard, since we have no direct volitional or rational control over perceptual spontaneity. (shrink)

During the two last decades, speeded up by the development of the Internet, several types of commons have been opened up for intellectual resources. In this article their variety is being explored as to the kind of resources and the type of regulation involved. The open source software movement initiated the phenomenon, by creating a copyright-based commons of source code that can be labelled `dynamic': allowing both use and modification of resources. Additionally, such a commons may be (...) either protected from appropriation (by `copyleft' licensing), or unprotected. Around the year 2000, this approach was generalized by the Creative Commons initiative. In the process they added a `static' commons, in which only use of resources is allowed. This mould was applied to the sciences and the humanities in particular, and various Open Access initiatives unfolded. A final aspect of copyright-based commons is the distinction between active and passive commons: while the latter is only a site for obtaining resources, the former is also a site for production of new resources by communities of volunteers (`peer production'). Finally, several patent commons are discussed, which mainly aim at preventing patents blocking the further development of science. Throughout, attention is drawn to interrelationships between the various commons. (shrink)

In this essay we collect and put together a number of ideas relevant to the under- standing of the phenomenon of creativity, confining our considerations mostly to the domain of cognitive psychology while we will, on a few occasions, hint at neuropsy- chological underpinnings as well. In this, we will mostly focus on creativity in science, since creativity in other domains of human endeavor have common links with scientific creativity while differing in numerous other specific respects. We begin by briefly (...) introducing a few basic notions relating to cognition, among which the notion of ‘concepts’ is of basic relevance. The myriads of concepts lodged in our mind constitute a ‘conceptual space’ of an enormously complex structure, where con- cepts are correlated by beliefs that are themselves made up of concepts and are as- sociated with emotions. The conceptual space, moreover, is perpetually in a state of dynamic evolution that is once again of a complex nature. A major component of the dynamic evolution is made up of incessant acts of inference, where an inference occurs essentially by means of a succession of correlations among concepts set up with beliefs and heuristics, the latter being beliefs of a special kind, namely, ones relatively free of emotional associations and possessed of a relatively greater degree of justification. Beliefs, along with heuristics, have been described as the ‘mind’s software’, and con- stitute important cognitive components of the self-linked psychological resources of an individual. The self is the psychological engine driving all our mental and physical activity, and is in a state of ceaseless dynamics resulting from one’s most intimate ex- periences of the world accumulating in the course of one’s journey through life. Many of our psychological resources are of a dual character, having both a self-linked and a shared character, the latter being held in common with larger groups of people and imbibed from cultural inputs. We focus on the privately held self-linked beliefs of an individual, since these are presumably of central relevance in making possible inductive inferences – ones in which there arises a fundamental need of adopting a choice or making a decision. Beliefs, decisions, and inferences, all have the common link to the self of an individual and, in this, are fundamentally analogous to free will, where all of these have an aspect of non-determinism inherent in them. Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially on de- cisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. With this background in place, we briefly sketch the affect theory of decisions. Affect is an innate system of response to perceptual inputs received either from the exter- nal world or from the internal physiological and psychological environment whereby a positive or negative valence gets associated with a perceptual input. Almost every sit- uation faced by an individual, even one experienced tacitly, i.e., without overt aware-ness, elicits an affective response from him, carrying a positive or negative valence that underlies all sorts of decision making, including ones carried out unconsciously in inferential processes. Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that gener- ates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual do- mains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, analogous to the way a complex computer program proceeds through junctures where the program ascertains whether specified conditions are met with by way of generating appropriate numerical values – for instance, the program takes different routes, depending on whether some particular numerical value turns out to be positive or negative. The valence generated by the affect system in the process of adoption of a choice plays a similar role which therefore is of crucial relevance in inferential processes, especially in the exploration of the conceptual space where remote domains need to be linked up – the affect system produces a response along a single value dimension, resembling a number with a sign and a magnitude. While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. A successful access to a remote conceptual domain, necessary for the creative solution of a standing problem or anomaly – one that could not be solved within the limited domain hitherto accessed – requires a phase of relatively slow cumulative search and then, at some stage, a rapid cascading process when a solution is in sight. Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organized criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. In order that inferential access to remote domains may actually be possible, it is necessary that restrictions on the exploration process – necessary for setting the context in ordinary instances of inductive inference – be relaxed and a relatively free exploration in a larger conceptual terrain be made possible. This is achieved by the mind going into the default mode, where external constraints – ones imposed by shared beliefs and modes of exploration – are made inoperative. While explaining all these various aspects of the creative process, we underline the supremely important role that analogy plays in it. Broadly speaking, analogy is in the nature of a heuristic, establishing correlations between concepts. However, analo- gies are very special in that these are particularly effective in establishing correlations among remote concepts, since analogy works without regard to the contiguity of the concepts in the conceptual space. In establishing links between concepts, analogies have the power to light up entire terrains in the conceptual space when a rapid cas- cading of fresh correlations becomes possible. The creative process occurs within the mind of a single individual or of a few closely collaborating individuals, but is then continued by an entire epistemic community, eventually resulting in a conceptual revolution. Such conceptual revolutions make pos- sible the radical revision of scientific theories whereby the scope of an extant theory is broadened and a new theoretical framework makes its appearance. The emerging theory is characterized by a certain degree of incommensurability when compared with the earlier one – a feature that may appear strange at first sight. But incommen- surability does not mean incompatibility and the apparently contrary features of the relation between the successive theories may be traced to the multi-layered structureof the conceptual space where concepts are correlated not by means of single links but by multiple ones, thereby generating multiple layers of correlation, among which some are retained and some created afresh in a conceptual restructuring. We conclude with the observation that creativity occurs on all scales. Analogous to correlations being set up across domains in the conceptual space and new domains being generated, processes with similar features can occur within the confines of a domain where a new layer of inferential links may be generated, connecting up sub- domains. In this context, insight can be looked upon as an instance of creativity within the confines of a domain of a relatively limited extent. (shrink)

[A revised and updated version of an earlier article 'Understanding Creativity: Affect Decision and Inference' (unpublished), posted at PhilArchive in 2021.] -/- This book looks at the creative process in the human mind. -/- Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially (...) on decisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. -/- Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that generates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual domains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, -/- While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. -/- Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organised criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. An instance of self-organised criticality is found in the avalanche set up in a slowly growing sand-pile. (shrink)

Capitalism—as Marx has shown and Schumpeter has reminded us—has always promoted creative destruction practices. What in fact helps capitalism survive is the constant renewal of its products, modes of production, and needs through its own self-destructiveness. Capitalist destruction is a clearing out, a maneuver, a revaluation, and the presupposition for creation, all at once. It is a unification, the embracing of multiple and seemingly incompatible activities whose common component mainly consists in positivity: in their ability to reverse, to beautify (...) destruction and its products. Capitalism's destructiveness gains its “literal meaning” in real space—interestingly involving biological metaphors into its analysis. It then presents itself as regeneration, as a natural, organic condition, and—in its purest manifestation—as life itself. At the antipode of capitalist creative destructions stands yet again a destructive practice, negatively charged and described by an allegoric, historic, frightening name:“vandalism.”. (shrink)

A qualitatively new, much more liberal and efficient organisation of science is proposed and justified in connection with emerging international science structures, such as the European Research Council, and growing debates about further role and development of fundamental science. Although the ideas are expressed in terms of "common sense" arguments accessible to a "general" audience, they are based on the rigorous analysis within the recently advanced "universal concept of complexity", which can be applied, due to its universality, also to science (...) structure itself considered as a complex system. We demonstrate thus the application of this ultimate criterion of completeness of a system of knowledge (and viability of related intelligence) that should be able to derive consistent, provable, and practically relevant conclusions about its own purpose, sense, evolution, and current state. (shrink)

Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing (...) against this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) – all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In doing so, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination and if this relates to doing science. I conclude Whitehead's process philosophy falls short of allowing for the actual creative spontaneity of a dynamic (eternal) present. (shrink)

An argument for the abolition of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and a step into the wild blue yonder – i.e., beyond Open Access (OA) and Creative Commons (CC) protocols. The “Introduction,” prior to “Paralogisms for Artist-scholars” utilizes an almost Pater-esque aesthetic deployment of time-senses and verb tenses that also resembles the doubled subjective states of Derridean exposition, but actually opens on to theologically inflected re-considerations of the generative nature of gramma.

In this article we wish to share the work in which the Group of Peirce Studies of the University of Navarra has been involved since 2007: the study of a very interesting part of the extensive correspondence of Charles S. Peirce, specifically, his European letters. Peirce wrote some of these letters over the course of his five trips to Europe (between 1870 and 1883), and wrote others to the many European scientists and intellectuals he communicated with over the course of (...) his life. The translation of those letters has been an excellent practical example of the creative and abductive nature of translation, as well as of the cooperative character of research. Translating Peirce's letters has allowed us a deep study of some theoretical aspects, and at the same time it has permitted us to work creatively and cooperatively to enrich the common vision of this scientist and philosopher. (shrink)

This contribution aims to explore the historical predecessors of the Five Percenter model of self-realization, as popularized by Hip Hop artists such as Supreme Team, Rakim Allah, Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang Clan, or Sunz of Man. As compared to frequent considerations of the phenomenon as a creative mythological background for a socio-political struggle, Five Percenter teachings shall be discussed as contemporary interpretations of historical models of self-realization in various philosophical, religious, and esoteric systems. By putting the coded system of the (...) tenfold Supreme Mathematics as one of its core teachings in context with the Pythagorean Tetractys, an arrangement of ten points in four lines, the commonalities between the sequence and concepts attributed to the respective numbers will be demonstrated. (shrink)

The task of this dissertation is to explore in detail and on behalf of certain historical examples, Hegel's famous and haunting words about art as a thing of the past. In accordance with Hegel, I argue that a philosophical approach is indeed necessary in order to critically account for the work of Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys, two of the most important European artists around the nineteen sixties, the decade that admittedly hosted the latest art movements. In contrast to Hegel, (...) I claim that art is not a thing of the past. For, an extended concept of art, going at least back to the ancient Greek t3&d12;cn h , techne, gained prominence in the work of two major European twentieth century philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The European artistic heritage, an important part of which was formed by the legacies of Klein and Beuys, engages us today to a reconsideration of Heidegger's and Derrida's writings with the question of art in mind. The example of these thinkers demonstrates that, in the era of absolute spirit, philosophy itself is radically transformed to a less exclusively defined practice, akin, from many points of view, to literature and poetic diction. Thinking of art and philosophy in the limits of what their conceptual designations have traditionally specified, can creatively reform our understanding of them, of their role and of their close relation, while revealing their pertinence to our times. (shrink)

Defenders of intellectual property rights argue that these rights are justified because creators and inventors deserve compensation for their labour, because their ideas and expressions are their personal property and because the total amount of creative work and innovation increases when inventors and creators have a prospect of generating high income through the exploitation of their monopoly rights. This view is not only widely accepted by the general public, but also enforced through a very effective international legal framework. And (...) it is endorsed by most academic researchers and commentators in this field. In this essay, I will show that the classical arguments for the justification of private intellectual property rights can be contested, and that there are many good reasons to abolish intellectual property rights completely in favour of an intellectual commons where every person is allowed to use every cultural expression and invention in whatever way he wishes. I will first give a short overview of the classical arguments for the justification of intellectual property as they are usually stated. We will then discuss the question of whether the creator or inventor deserves his de jure monopoly, by using John Christman’s categories of income and control rights to analyse property rights. The aim here is to show that it does not make sense to create control rights for abstract objects, as they are not scarce, and that there is no logical connection between the surplus which may be generated through income rights and the labour which has been put into a cultural artefact or an invention, and therefore it is not justified to grant monopoly rights on the basis of Lockean natural rights arguments for self-ownership and the just appropriation of worldly resources. As it is possible to reject Christman’s property rights categories, I will then go on to show on the basis of Richard Dawkins’ postulation of the ‘meme’ and Ludwik Fleck’s theory of the ‘thought collective’ that creative processes should be interpreted as interpersonal or collective processes, and therefore it is not justified to grant intellectual property rights to individuals on the basis of the idea that the individual who has put labour into the creative work or the invention should be the one to whom the contents of the work belong exclusively. As it is still possible to postulate the utilitarian argument that intellectual property rights are just because they increase the amount of creative works and inventions, I will argue in the last chapter that, from a libertarian as well as from an egalitarian point of view, the justification of intellectual monopoly rights on utilitarian grounds cannot be maintained. Therefore it is time to abolish the current global intellectual property law regime in favour of an intellectual commons for the good of all human beings and societies. (shrink)

This workbook of "études" offers a collection of experimental texts for communal dialogue and discovery that crosses multiple academic disciplines, including: foundations of physics, metaphysics, theoretical biology, semiotics, cognitive science, linguistics, phenomenology, logic & mathematics, poetry and theology. Each étude probes limits, horizons and boundaries by implicitly bring into relation foundational issues that characterize different academic disciplines or systems of meaning formation. Some formal techniques are deployed the études. Most notable is the use of the “logic of three” to overcome (...) falsely totalizing images and inexorable dualities. This technique involves a particular kind of attunement to the “betweenness” of mediation that is not common in modern science. The attunement draws on the formal and precise movements of analysis in concert with the metaphoric and singular movements of synthesis. (shrink)

This is a creative-commons licensed guide. Its purpose is to provide students with an understanding of some ways in which they might contribute to philosophical conversation. It is also available for free use via my website.

In recent years there has been growing interest in adapting virtue ethics to the ethics of technology. However, it has most typically been invoked to address some particular issue of moral importance, and there is only a limited range of works dealing with the methodological question of how virtue ethics may contribute to this field. My approach in this paper is threefold. I start with a brief discussion of Aristotelian virtue ethics, with a view to constructing a framework in which (...) to then address at least some of the aspects of the growing technicization of life that call for scrutiny. I subsequently proceed further by outlining three possible models of virtue-theoretical analysis within the ethics of technology, giving special attention to those changes in human agency where technicization can be seen to exert a significant influence. Finally, I focus on the third such possibility, the extended virtue model, as a basis for calling for a more inclusive account of moral agency. (shrink)

Capital Redefined presents a unique perspective on the nature of “capital,” departing from the prevailing reductionist accounts. Hosseini and Gills offer an expanded perspective on Marxian value theory by addressing its main limitations and building their own integrative value theory. They argue that the current understanding of “value” must be re-examined and liberated from its subservient ties to capital while acknowledging the ways in which capital appropriates value. This is achieved by differentiating between “fetish value” created by capital and “true (...) value” generated through various commons-based forms of coexistence. The authors propose a defetishization of value by rejecting the commonly accepted idea of its objectivity. They introduce their “commonist value theory,” which redefines capital as both the product and process of perverting the fundamental commoning causes of true value into sources of fetish value. Capital is theorized through a “modular” framework, where multiple intersecting processes constitute a comprehensive power structure, a “value regime,” representing an unprecedented degree of the domination of capital over life. Their theory reconciles two apparently incompatible views on the notion of value. One view encompasses all inputs involved in capitalist value production and conflates intrinsic and commodity values. The other warns against this conflation as it treats capital as an entity tightly associated only with commodity production and wage labor. The authors believe that establishing alternative forms of value creation based on normative principles of living in commons is crucial as an analytical base for criticizing existing power structures and economic systems. The book offers a theoretical foundation for transforming our life worlds toward “post-capitalist” futures. It appeals to scholars and students in various fields, such as political economy, capitalism, and post-capitalist studies, economic and political sociology, globalization, development studies, social ecology, and ecological philosophy. The Open Access version of this book, available at taylorfrancis com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. (shrink)

This is an OER, creative commons textbook for a course on critical thinking, logic, reasoning, and argumentation.

This is an OER creative commons textbook for General Psychology.

이 책자는 형식 논리의 일종인 양상논리에 입문하고 싶으신 분들을 위한 짧은 교재입니다. “양상논리 맛보기” 라는 말마따나, 이 책자는 양상논리에 관심은 있지만 아직 본격적으로 공부를 시작하진 않은 분들께서 ‘맛보기’를 하기에 적합한 안내 책자입니다. 아무쪼록 이 책자가 양상논리를 공부해나가시는데 유용한 첫 발판이 될 수 있기를 바랍니다. / This booklet is a Korean adaptation and translation of Part VIII of forall x: Calgary (Fall 2021 edition), which is intended to be introductory material for modal logic. The original text is based on Robert Trueman's (...) A Modal Logic Primer, which is revised and expanded by Richard Zach and Aaron Thomas-Bolduc in forall x: Calgary. (forall x: Calgary is based on forall x: Cambridge by Tim Button, which is in turn based on forall x by P. D. Magnus, and also includes material from forall x: Lorain County Remix by Cathal Woods and J. Robert Loftis.) This booklet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. (shrink)

During the 2010s, a radical transformation took place in the Spanish philosophical landscape: most philosophy journals started releasing their papers for free under a creative commons licence. Thanks to open access publication, Spanish philosophy has a bigger audience today than never before. Drawing on the authors’ experience as editors of two of these journals, Theoria and Recerca, this paper discusses what made this transformation possible, its consequences for the assessment of the Spanish philosophical output and, finally, how to (...) strengthen Spanish philosophy journals to confront the forthcoming challenges in open access publishing. (shrink)

The paper presents a preliminary estimation of the extent of dissemination of optical texts, ideas, and issues among the masters connected with the Prague faculty of arts in the late 14th and early 15th century. Investigation of this topic, so far rather neglected, is based chiefly on manuscript research. The paper brings evidence that perspectiva was taught in Prague at least since the 1370s. It suggests that investigation of Prague quodlibetal disputations (ca. 1390s – 1410s) and consideration of perspectivist authorities (...) employed in these texts can also shed some light on the issue. However, the paper is mainly devoted to the question on the mechanism of vision disputed by Bohemian arts master John of Borotín (Iohannes de Borotin, 1378 – after 1458) in the quodlibet organised by John Hus in 1411. It is suggested that the single extant exemplar of the question (preserved in the codex Prague, National Library, X.H.18) probably is Borotín’s autograph. The structure and sources of the question are analysed, with the conclusion being that Borotín proposes a compromise between intromission and extramission influenced by John Peckham’s Perspectiva communis. A critical edition of Borotín’s question is appended to the paper. / / / Please note this article is published with Brepols Publishers as a Gold Open Access article under a Creative Commons CC 4.0: BY-NC license. The article is also freely available on the website of Brepols Publishers under this same license. (shrink)

This paper seeks to answer the question: Can contemporary forms of artificial intelligence be creative? To answer this question, I consider three conditions that are commonly taken to be necessary for creativity. These are novelty, value, and agency. I argue that while contemporary AI models may have a claim to novelty and value, they cannot satisfy the kind of agency condition required for creativity. From this discussion, a new condition for creativity emerges. Creativity requires curiosity, a motivation to pursue (...) epistemic goods. I argue that contemporary AI models do not satisfy this new condition. Because they lack both agency and curiosity, it is a mistake to attribute the same sort of creativity to AI that we prize in humans. Finally, I consider the question of whether these AI models stand to make human creativity in the arts and sciences obsolete, despite not being creative themselves. I argue, optimistically, that this is unlikely. (shrink)

This is a textbook for a research methods class in the social sciences. This book is OER and creative commons.

Obóz Kultury 2.0 Mirosław Filiciak, Alek Tarkowski, Agata Jałosińska, Andrzej Klimczuk, Maciej Rynarzewski, Jacek Seweryn, Stunża M., D. Grzegorz, Marcin Wilkowski & Anna Orlik .

IMAGO TEXT 2020 ABSTRACTS -/- (German abstract below) The text presents a structural analysis and a logical theory of creativity. It argues that creativity emerges from the translation between two forms of precision, thus from the ubiquitous transformation between incompatible forms of thought and articulation. This transformation allows for unexpected surpluses and innovations, in conjunction with fallacies, waste and noise. Common myths and misconceptions – i.e. about creativity as a force in dire supply - are debunked, as are mistaken strategies (...) for creativity-enhancement. Instead, suggestions are offered as to how educational institutions can channel and enable ubiquitous energies – instead of investing much resources and effort into their suppression. -/- Der Text präsentiert eine strukturelle Analyse und eine logische Theorie der Kreativität. Er argumentiert, dass Kreativität aus der Übersetzung zwischen zwei Formen der Präzision hervorgeht, aus der allgegenwärtigen Transformation zwischen unvereinbaren Formen des Denkens und der Artikulation, was zu Überschuß und produktiven Abweichungen wie auch Abfall und Fehlschlüssen führt. Verbreitete Mythen und Missverständnisse – etwa zu Kreativität als Mangelware – werden diskutiert sowie Strategien zur Kreativitätsförderung. Es geht um Vorschläge, wie pädagogische Institutionen die stets vorhandenen kreativen Energien kanalisieren und ermöglichen können, anstatt sie mit viel Aufwand zu unterdrücken. (shrink)

Twenty first century is posing unprecedented challenges for the human existence and development. This era has witnessed awesome economic & technological growth, increased connectedness but great poverty, malnutrition, anxiety, mental stress and environmental degradation. Thus, this time depicts great contradiction, uncertainty, and risk. Accordingly, in this era a holistic education system has to deal with the challenges such as population growth, terrorism, environmental degradation, hegemony of machines, mental stress, cultivating creativity, bridging the skill and wisdom gap, and expanding human potential (...) etc. To find a sustainable solution to such challenges, we need to develop a holistic education system which acknowledges various dimension of human being. For this task, this paper will try to highlight some philosophical themes which are commonly suggested by various prominent thinkers such as M.K. Gandhi, R.N. Tagore, J. Krishnamurti, S. Radhakrishnan etc. in India, and J. Dewey, I. Illich, and B. Russell etc. in the west. They have put forward their philosophy to discuss the aims of education which are relevant to this century. In this paper, we will analyze their views from the perspective of the challenges that the twenty-first century world is going to face. Our investigation will analyze agreements and disagreements among the approaches taken by these educators. However, the focus will be on the commonalities, so that we can identify some philosophical themes which can work as the solid foundation for holistic model of education. (shrink)

Make it easy to say 'yes'. The first rule to get your research published is to make life easy for the editor and the reviewers. The task for an author is ultimately a narrative task - to succinctly and engagingly tell the story of what you did, why you did it, what you found, and why we should care - and making it clear why the paper is within the scope of the journal. The more carefully and meticulously a paper (...) is prepared - including spelling, punctuation, grammar, structure, completeness and internal consistency - the more likely it is to be published and the quicker it will appear in print. (shrink)

The current paper investigates two productive morphological processes, namely compounds and portmanteau words (or blends). While compounds, a productive, regular and predicable morphological process, have received much attention in the literature, little attention was paid to portmanteau words, a creative, irregular and unpredictable word formation process. The present paper aims to find the commonalities and differences between these morphological devices, using Rosch et al.’s (1975; 1976) theory of prototypes and basic-level categories to achieve this goal. This theory will also (...) be employed to discuss the literature on the word formation mechanisms under investigation and propose a new categorization approach to these neologisms. The analysis suggests that compounds and blends compare and contrast and that the distinctions between them are blurry. The analysis confirms that a prototypical approach is well suited to compounds and blends in English. This has implications for future research into English word-formation processes in general and compounds and blends precisely. (shrink)

Artificial agents are commonly described by using words that traditionally belong to the semantic field of organisms, particularly of animal and human life. I call this phenomenon the game of semantic extension. However, the semantic extension of words as crucial as “autonomous”, “intelligent”, “creative”, “moral”, and so on, is often perceived as unsatisfactory, which is signalled with the extensive use of inverted commas or other syntactical cues. Such practice, in turn, has provoked harsh criticism that usually refers back to (...) the literal meaning of the words to show their inappropriateness in describing artificial agents. Hence the question: how can we choose our words appropriately and wisely while making sense of artificial agents? After a brief introduction (§1), in §2 I present the starting point of my argument, which consists in the assumption that the dimensions of technology and language are deeply entangled. In §3 I discuss how this assumption impinges on the issue of choosing the right words to talk about artificial agents. §4 is an exposition of the main features of the game of semantic extension, while §5 reviews the related opportunities and risks. Finally, §6 elaborates some practical suggestions on how to play the game well. (shrink)

What makes a person's life meaningful? Thaddeus Metz offers a new answer to an ancient question which has recently returned to the philosophical agenda. He proceeds by examining what, if anything, all the conditions that make a life meaningful have in common. The outcome of this process is a philosophical theory of meaning in life. He starts by evaluating existing theories in terms of the classic triad of the good, the true, and the beautiful. He considers whether meaning in life (...) might be about such principles as fulfilling God's purpose, obtaining reward in an afterlife for having been virtuous, being attracted to what merits attraction, leaving the world a better place, connecting to organic unity, or transcending oneself by connecting to what is extensive. He argues that no extant principle satisfactorily accounts for the three-fold significance of morality, enquiry, and creativity, and that the most promising theory is a fresh one according to which meaning in life is a matter of intelligence contoured toward fundamental conditions of human existence. (shrink)

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

The philosophical “problem of evil” goes back at least as far as Epicurus and has remained a powerful argument against the existence of God in contemporary philosophy. The argument is rooted in apparent contradictions between God’s divine attributes and various conditions of human existence. But these contradictions arise only given certain assumptions of what we should expect both God and the world to be like given God’s existence. In this paper, I argue that we can utilize the work of the (...) 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil to craft a coherent metaphysical picture of God, creation, and suffering which rejects these common assumptions. Further, I contend that this picture very plausibly follows from commonly-accepted tenets of traditional monotheism. Given this, I argue that this Weil-inspired framework provides serious reasons for reframing the problem of evil and its corresponding theodicies by presenting a radically different view of how God must relate to creation. Yet, this picture does not necessarily vindicate the theist. I argue that this picture may leave us with a new question about creation in the face of evil. Namely, is it possible to understand God’s initial creative act as Weil describes it—as an act of love? (shrink)

Recent studies of peacebuilding highlight the importance of attending to people’s local experiences of conflict and cooperation. This trend, however, raises the fundamental questions of how the local is and should be constituted and what the relationship is between institutions and individual actors of peace at the local level of politics. I turn to Hannah Arendt’s thoughts to address these issues. Arendt’s thinking provides a distinctive form of realism that calls for stable institutions but never depletes the spirit of resistance. (...) Peacebuilding guided by this insight seeks to enable parties in conflict to voice their competing opinions by acting agonistically in public and to help them align their disruptive yet creative voices with a desire to establish and sustain common institutions. Thus, Arendt’s thinking not only offers a way to increase sensitivity to local differences but also to provide direction to the politics of resistance. In the end, it offers a balanced insight into peacebuilding and local agency beyond the contemporary liberal and critical approaches to peace. (shrink)

A theory of the structure and cognitive function of the human imagination that attempts to do justice to traditional intuitions about its psychological centrality is developed, largely through a detailed critique of the theory propounded by Colin McGinn. Like McGinn, I eschew the highly deflationary views of imagination, common amongst analytical philosophers, that treat it either as a conceptually incoherent notion, or as psychologically trivial. However, McGinn fails to develop his alternative account satisfactorily because (following Reid, Wittgenstein and Sartre) he (...) draws an excessively sharp, qualitative distinction between imagination and perception, and because of his flawed, empirically ungrounded conception of hallucination. His arguments in defense of these views are rebutted in detail, and the traditional, passive, Cartesian view of visual perception, upon which several of them implicitly rely, is criticized in the light of findings from recent cognitive science and neuroscience. It is also argued that the apparent intuitiveness of the passive view of visual perception is a result of mere historical contingency. An understanding of perception (informed by modern visual science) as an inherently active process enables us to unify our accounts of perception, mental imagery, dreaming, hallucination, creativity, and other aspects of imagination within a single coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)

We can discern two opposing viewpoints regarding synesthesia. According to the first, it is an oddity, an outlier, or a disordered condition. According to the second, synesthesia is pervasive, driving creativity, metaphor, or language itself. Which is it? Ultimately, I favor the first perspective, according to which cross-sensory synesthesia is an outlying condition. But the second perspective is not wholly misguided. My discussion has three lessons. First, synesthesia is just one of a variety of effects in which one sense modality (...) causally impacts and reshapes experience associated with another. These effects are utterly common. However, due to their unfamiliarity, and to their conflict with a widespread conception of the role of the senses in perception and perceptual experience, until recently they have been surprising. Second, synesthesia nevertheless must be distinguished from other inter-modal effects that lead to misperception, such as crossmodal illusions. Third, synesthesia also may be distinguished from the potentially much broader class of synesthetic effects, which could be common across the population and within individuals. (shrink)

Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insist that players obey the rules of a game, we give too much weight to the author’s intent. Others have argued that such obedience to the rules violates the true purpose of games, which is fostering free and creative play. Both of these responses, I argue, misunderstand the nature of games and their rules. The rules do not tell us (...) how to interpret a game; they merely tell us what the game is. And the point of the rules is not always to foster free and creative play. The point can be, instead, to communicate a sculpted form of activity. And in games, as with any form of communication, we need some shared norms to ground communicative stability. Games have what has been called a “prescriptive ontology.” A game is something more than simply a piece of material. It is some material as approached in a certain specified way. These prescriptions help to fix a common object of attention. Games share this prescriptive ontology with more traditional kinds of works. Novels are more than just a set of words on a page; they are those words read in a certain order. Games are more than just some software or cardboard bits; they are those bits interacted with according to certain rules. Part of a game’s essential nature is the prescriptions for how we are to play it. What’s more, we investigate the prescriptive ontology of games, we will uncover at least distinct prescriptive categories of games. Party games prescribe that we encounter the game once; heavy strategy games prescribe we encounter the game many times; and community evolution games prescribe that we encounter the game while embedded in an ongoing community of play. (shrink)

In this paper, i provide an introduction to development ethics and make some observations about integral human development. i argue that although there is very little dialogue between these two traditions, they have a lot of common ground, and can helpfully inform one another. International development ethics is a largely secular field concerned with ethical reflection on the ends and means of development. i discuss four levels of ethical reflection: meta-ethical, normative, practical, or applied, and personal or integral. The first (...) three of these levels are well established in philosophical ethics. i introduce the fourth with the hope of encouraging more discussion of how individuals engaged in the theory and practice of development ethics ought to navigate the various spheres of their own lives. This last stage of ethical reflection and action can benefit greatly from work done in integral human development. Integral human development is integral in at least two ways: development is not simply economic development, but development the whole person, including social, political, creative, spiritual, etc., and development is the development of every person, whether the person is a marginalize peasant or a powerful élite. i explain why this second way of integration is both less discussed and more radical than the first. Resumen En este artículo, ofrezco una introducción a la ética del desarrollo y hago algunas observaciones sobre el desarrollo humano integral. Sostengo que, aunque hay muy poco diálogo entre estas dos tradiciones, tienen mucho terreno común y pueden ayudarse mutuamente. La ética del desarrollo internacional es un campo ampliamente secular que se ocupa de la reflexión ética sobre los fines y los medios de desarrollo. Discuto cuatro niveles de reflexión ética: meta-ético, normativo, práctico, o aplicado, y personal o integral. Los tres primeros de estos niveles están bien establecidos en la ética filosófica. Presento el cuarto con la esperanza de fomentar una mayor discusión sobre cómo los individuos involucrados en la teoría y la práctica de la ética del desarrollo deben navegar por las diversas esferas de sus propias vidas. Esta última etapa de reflexión y acción ética puede beneficiarse enormemente del trabajo realizado en el desarrollo humano integral. El desarrollo humano integral es integral en al menos dos maneras: el desarrollo no es simplemente desarrollo económico, sino el desarrollo de toda la persona, incluyendo social político, creativo, espiritual etc., y el desarrollo es el desarrollo de cada persona, sea la persona un campesino marginado o una de la ponderosa elite. Explico por qué esta segunda forma de integración es menos discutida y más radical que la primera. (shrink)

The topic of the relationship between the organism and its environment runs through the theories of Uexküll, Goldstein and Canguilhem with equal importance. In this work a counterpoint will be established between their theories, in the attempt to assess at which points the melodies are concordant and at which points they are discordant. As fundamental basis to his theory, Uexküll relies on the concept of conformity to a plan, which allows him to account for the congruity and perfect adjustment between (...) organisms and their Umwelten. For Goldstein and Canguilhem, the relationship between an organism and its environment resembles instead a debate or coming to terms, in which the organism, as to ensure the continuity of the state of health, must constantly create norms to maintain a productive relationship with its environment. The pinpointing of these conceptual frameworks allows to lay emphasis on that each theory relies on specific assumptions regarding teleology and sense in organisms, as well as on specific definitions of the concept of life in general. Ultimately, the view that organisms and their environments have an original and common source, a principle, or plan, which must possess all the creative characteristics of life, will be seen as prevailing. (shrink)

In the thick of the global plague, Richard, Justin and Valery agreed to hold a conversation on the topic of poetics, self-understanding, and health. An analysis and discussion of this trinity requires love of poetry and philosophy. Both supreme human practices take common root in mythology and religion, and also share a notorious categorical divide, that of reason against affect. Is this Platonic divide indeed categorical, given both practices rely on language and creativity to compose their meaning? Interestingly, the practice (...) of poetics does not have the reputation for boosting one's health, in the mainstream understanding of that concept. If anything, poetic practice gained notoriety for corrupting one's mind and, possibly, life. Like philosophy? We touched on these and other classical aporia, on the political struggles in American and Australian poetry. Here is a written record of this encounter, countries and miles apart, three persons simply getting to know one another. (shrink)

This paper provides a critique of the contemporary notion of intellectual property based on the consequences of Wittgenstein's “private language argument”. The reticence commonly felt toward recent applications of patent law, e.g., sports moves, is held to expose erroneous metaphysical assumptions inherent in the spirit of current IP legislation. It is argued that the modern conception of intellectual property as a kind of natural right, stems from the mistaken internalist or Augustinian picture of language that Wittgenstein attempted to diffuse. This (...) view becomes persuasive once it is shown that a complete understanding of the argument against private language must include Wittgenstein's investigation of the role of the will in the creative process. It is argued that original thought is not born by decree of the will, but engendered by a public context of meaning and value. What marks a person as a genius is, therefore, according to Wittgenstein, not some sovereign capacity of conceptual world-making, but merely a propitious dose of intellectual courage. (shrink)

Gerontology together with its subfields, such as social gerontology, geragogy, educational gerontology, political gerontology, environmental gerontology, and financial gerontology, is still a relatively new academic discipline that is currently intensively developing, expanding research fields and combining various theoretical and practical perspectives. The interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity of research on ageing and old age, despite its vast thematic, methodological and theoretical diversity, have a common denominator, which is the focus of research work on improving the quality of life of older people. (...) It is the concern for the components of quality of life such as welfare and well-being as well as focus on learning about phenomena conditioning successful ageing that has become motivators and premises hidden or visible in many texts included in the Research Topic “Perspectives and Theories of Social Innovation for Ageing Population.” The Research Topic that we are presenting to our readers is unique not only because of its size but above all because of its novelty and social involvement, visible in the content of individual chapters. The presented collection includes 17 articles prepared in total by 76 authors from the following countries: China, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two journals were combined with this Research Topic: “Frontiers in Public Health” and “Frontiers in Sociology.” The presented Research Topic contains seven types of articles covering: two community case studies, eight original research articles, two perspective articles, one hypothesis and theory paper, one policy and practice review, one methods article, and two book reviews. The rationale to start work on this set of texts was the desire to continue and deepen the research analyses of the editors of this set, which concern the development of social innovations for the ageing population as well as changes of public policy on ageing. This Research Topic deals with topics covering issues such as social learning, intergenerational transmission, senior entrepreneurship, creative content creation by older adults, care services, raising the independence of older people in their living environments, dementia challenges, the image of the older generation in local social policies, new trends in qualitative research on old age, strategies for dealing with chronic diseases, the use of digital tools in health education, the silver economy/longevity economy, age-friendly environments, the diversity of structures and social services, preparation for old age, and food safety. The wide variety of submitted texts shows several selected and, according to the authors, current challenges that contemporary seniors have to face. The articles comprising this Research Topic are organized according to five themes. (shrink)

What can the creation of artificial habitats to replace old-growth forests tell us about the process, value and future of design? This chapter takes a concrete and provocative example and uses it to rethink design as a gradual, ecological action. To illustrate this understanding, the chapter begins with a description of a proposal to provide artificial habitats for wild animals such as birds, bats and invertebrates. The controversial idea to replace rapidly disappearing old-growth trees with artificial structures puts in doubt (...) habitual assumptions about the clients, procedures and goals of design. This example is of relevance to all design because the need to provide artificial habitats to nonhumans will be increasingly common under the influence of such phenomena as global warming or urbanisation. … The invention of artificial structures in place of natural habitats is described in this chapter as an incitement that highlights the need for further research into values, participants and methods of design. This discussion concludes with a proposal for an attitude of modesty in the face of increasingly overwhelming volumes of information as well as in the presence of an even greater ignorance about the futures of nondeterministic, volatile and incompletely controllable natural systems. The dilemma of design in these conditions is in the tension between its remit to act and the uncertainty that inescapably underlies any creative endeavour. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This is a little piece directed at the newcomer to Aristotle, making some general remarks about reading Aristotle at the beginning and end, with sandwiched in between, a brief and much simplified discussion of some common misunderstandings of Aristotle's philosophy, concerning spontaneity, causal indeterminism, freedom-to-do-otherwise, free choice, agent causation, logical determinism, teleological determinism, artistic creativity and freedom (eleutheria).

After coining the term “philopsychy” to describe a “soul-loving” approach to philosophical practice, especially when it welcomes a creative synthesis of philosophy and psychology, this article identifies a system of geometrical figures (or “maps”) that can be used to stimulate reflection on various types of perspectival differences. The maps are part of the author’s previously established mapping methodology, known as the Geometry of Logic. As an illustration of how philosophy can influence the development of psychology, Immanuel Kant’s table of (...) twelve categories and Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types are shown to share a common logical structure. Just as Kant proposes four basic categories, each expressed in terms of three subordinate categories, Jung proposes four basic personality functions, each having three possible manifestations. The concluding section presents four scenarios illustrating how such maps can be used in philosophical counseling sessions to stimulate philopsychic insight. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that a virtual life would be less meaningful (perhaps even meaningless). As virtual reality technologies develop and become more integrated into our everyday lives, this poses a challenge for those that care about meaning in life. In this chapter, it is argued that the common assumption about meaninglessness and virtuality is mistaken. After clarifying the distinction between two different visions of virtual reality, four arguments are presented for thinking that meaning is possible in virtual reality. Following (...) this, four objections are discussed and rebutted. The chapter concludes that we can be cautiously optimistic about the possibility of meaning in virtual worlds. (shrink)

In the eyes of the biologist Jacques Monod, Bergson is “the most illustrious promoter of a metaphysical vitalism” revolting against rationality. This interpretation, not exclusive to Monod, is often accompanied by the accusation that Bergson’s vitalism would be teleological, and maybe even mystical – this last idea being reinforced by the success that Bergson receives among the spiritualists. This understanding of Bergsonian philosophy led to his disrepute among scientists. Even today, despite the renewed interest in Bergson’s reflections on science, he (...) is not considered a philosopher of science. And the popular (textbook) opinion is still that his élan vital is a spiritual principle at the origin of all living things and even of all reality: Bergson is considered a vitalist using biology to develop a spiritualist metaphysics, which makes him acceptable to philosophers but not to scientists. Yet, Bergson’s position is ambiguous. Even though he criticises the intellectualist paradigm of science, which he claims is unable to comprehend the living, and proposes a form of vitalism, the philosophy of Creative Evolution may be regarded as a true philosophy of biology. However, some texts make the status of his vitalism problematic, such as The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, in which the élan vital is integrated into a reflection on the divine. The aim of this paper is to disentangle what, in Bergson, can or cannot be considered as a philosophy relevant to science, by trying to clarify the label ‘vitalist’ that has so commonly been assigned to him, often pejoratively. This will involve examining the link between his vitalism and the spiritualism he has been credited with. Contrary to Olivier Perru who has proposed an excellent analysis of Bergson’s vitalism but focusing only on Creative Evolution, I will study his different works, to show that Bergson’s position shifts according to the subjects under study: before Creative Evolution, Bergson develops a form of spiritualism; in Creative Evolution, he proposes a form of vitalism that may not be clearly related to his spiritualism; finally, I argue that, in The Two Sources, the distinction is not so clear and that his vitalism itself may indeed become spiritualist. His spiritualism transforms according to his works and the meaning of his vitalism changes in return. I hypothesise that Bergson is a vitalist-opportunist: there are several forms of vitalism Bergson, that have neither the same ontological status nor the same function, according to the purpose of the moment. This is not to say that Bergson changes his theory completely. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute a design-focused perspective on the ‘alternative paradigm research’ discussion. To clarify the aspect of ‘design-focus’ that we wish to refer to, we will use the term ‘areas of design practice’ to cover those activities that focus on the conception and production of artefacts, in contrast to the activities of theorizing and writing histories. The literature on academic research in areas of design practice encompasses a board range of subjects and terminology -- it refers to the (...) creative and performing arts, the arts, design, etc., however what we take to be common in the literature is an interest in research involving the creation of original artefacts. In this paper, we cluster together the currently academicized, previously vocational areas. -/- We claim that researchers in different disciplines operate in different research paradigms owing to different worldviews. A worldview is determined by a set of foundational beliefs that are taken on faith, and a research paradigm is defined by axioms and assumptions that are a consequence of that worldview. For example, the scientific view of the world is that it exists independently from the individual and the individual’s thoughts about it; and it is possible to find out objective facts about the world by following certain procedures. This worldview conditions a research paradigm with an ontology of a real external world; that methodologically the data that is collected in procedurally appropriate ways will yield objective facts about that world; and that epistemologically the researcher stands in a disengaged relation to the world that is being investigated. The procedures that are regarded as appropriate within a particular research paradigm form the research models that are acceptable in that paradigm, and these research models determine what one should do in order to extend knowledge in a particular subject. Of course, the scientific worldview is not the only one, and this paper will contrast it to the design worldview as indicating the emergence of a unique research paradigm. -/- The relationship between a community’s worldview and the academic models that it adopts may be functional or dysfunctional. We claim that the relationship in the areas of design practice is often dysfunctional. This is because the academic model has not developed authentically in relation to its fundamental beliefs, but has done so in response to external forces for academicization. When pushed into the academy, areas of design practice did not possess their own academic models that were effectively linked to its worldview. We claim that, as a result, these areas simply co-opted research models from other disciplines. -/- The paper proposes a rationalistic approach for investigating the relationship between worldview and research paradigm -- between fundamental beliefs, theoretical concepts and methodology in research models. The rationalistic approach enables a critique, which reveals that there are indeed problematic issues with adopting academic models from other research paradigms in an uncritical way, and concludes that areas of design practice should be investigated as an example of a distinct worldview. (shrink)

Philosophy is an important relation with education as it gives theoretical ground for its development. Principles and values of life learnt through education and experience gives birth to philosophy. Philosophy lays the foundation of leading one’s life based on principles. Education is the source of learning and philosophy it’s applications in human life. While discussing about the real nature of philosophy in present time, we should have a single criteria as if it to be acceptable to all reasonable people of (...) the world. In defining Positive Philosophy it may be said, The Positive Philosophy is an attempt to achieve an intellectual detachment from all philosophical systems, and not to solve specific philosophical problems, but to become sensitively aware of what it is we do when we philosophize. It is an attitude as well as a methodology for both academician and common person. It make education process positive so that it can make something useful for societal growth and in working process it also make the person sensitive about the societal problems and make them ready to be a part of social change. I am not negating something, here “positive” word is not an antonym but it is an adjective. Where there are merely religious, metaphysical and passive ideologies in our education system, we are not able to have a good and creative education. Positive Philosophy is working on that issues which have some worth for human. It is a process to do something creative. We are using innovative method. An innovator could be rebellion because he breaks the established method, norms and redefines the layer of thought. Innovation not simply implies questioning, reshaping, restricting but also developing through transformation. A teacher can play an important role in promoting this discussion because a teacher has the capacity to influence students with their thoughts and personality and engages them to creative activities. Innovativeness needs to be included in the curriculum. Once one becomes habitual to this attitude he/she will be ready to do some positive or creative. In this paper it is an attempt being made to apply positive philosophy though innovative method in our present education system. -/- . (shrink)