An education for cultural coherence tends to the child’s well-being through identity construction and maintenance. Critics charge that this sort of education will not bode well for the future autonomy of children. I will argue that culturally coherent education, provided there is no coercion, can lend itself to eventual autonomy and may assist minority children in countering the negative stereotypes and discrimination they face in the larger society. Further, I will argue that few individuals actually possess an entirely (...) coherent identity; rather, most of us possess hybrid identities that lend themselves to multiple, not necessarily conflicting allegiances. (shrink)

In this book I offer a critical, comparative and empirically-informed defense of Islamic schools in the West. To do so I elaborate an idealized philosophy of Islamic education, against which I evaluate the situation in three different Western countries. I examine in detail notions of cultural coherence, the scope of parental authority v. a child's interests, as well as the state's role in regulating religious schools. Further, using Catholic schools as an analogous case, I speculate on the likely (...) future of Western Islamic schools. (shrink)

What makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved culturally. We present an evolutionary account that shows this hypothesis to be coherent, plausible, and worthy of further investigation. It has the following steps: (0) in common with other animals, early hominins had significant capacity for social learning; (1) knowledge and skills learned by offspring from their parents began to (...) spread because bearers had more offspring, a process we call CS1 (or Cultural Selection 1); (2) CS1 shaped attentional learning biases; (3) these attentional biases were augmented by explicit learning biases (judgements about what should be copied from whom). Explicit learning biases enabled (4) the high-fidelity, exclusive copying required for fast cultural accumulation of knowledge and skills by a process we call CS2 (or Cultural Selection 2), and (5) the emergence of cognitive processes such as imitation, mindreading and metacognition – ‘cognitive gadgets’ specialised for cultural learning. This self-assembly hypothesis is consistent with archaeological evidence that the stone tools used by early hominins were not dependent on fast, cumulative cultural evolution, and suggests new priorities for research on ‘animal culture’. (shrink)

We provide new findings that add to the growing body of empirical evidence that important epistemic intuitions converge across cultures. Specifically, we selected three recent studies conducted in the US that reported surprising effects of knowledge attribution among English speakers. We translated the vignettes used in those studies into Mandarin Chinese and Korean and then ran the studies with participants in Mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea. We found that, strikingly, all three of the effects first obtained in the US (...) also emerged in the East Asian cultures we studied. Our findings not only cohere with but also provide—at least moderate—support for the existence of extensive convergences of important epistemic intuitions across cultures. (shrink)

Amid the debates over the meaning and usefulness of the word “culture” during the 1980s and 90s, practice theory emerged as a framework for analysis and criticism in cultural anthropology. While theorists have gradually begun to explore practice-oriented frameworks as promising vistas in cultural anthropology and the study of religion, these remain relatively recent developments that stand to be historically explicated and conceptually refined. This article assesses several ways that practice theory has been articulated by some of its (...) chief expositors and critics, and places these developments in conversation with comparable accounts of “social practices” by recent pragmatist philosophers. My aim in generating such a conversation is to illuminate the ways that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work provides important resources for cultural analysis that are already implicit in practice theory, yet either frequently overlooked or dismissed by practice theorists. To demonstrate its relevance for cultural theorists in the study of religion, I show how such a Wittgensteinian understanding of practice theory coheres with, and illuminates, Clifford Geertz’s account of meaning, thick description and religious practices. (shrink)

Cognitive flexibility, the adaptation of representations and responses to new task demands, improves dramatically in early childhood. It is unclear, however, whether flexibility is a coherent, unitary cognitive trait, or is an emergent dimension of task-specific performance that varies across populations with divergent experiences. Three-to 5-year-old English-speaking U.S. children and Tswana-speaking South African children completed two distinct language-processing cognitive flexibility tests: the FIM-Animates, a word-learning test, and the 3DCCS, a rule-switching test. U.S. and South African children did not differ in (...) word-learning flexibility but showed similar age-related increases. In contrast, U.S. preschoolers showed an age-related increase in rule-switching flexibility but South African children did not. Verbal recall explained additional variance in both tests but did not modulate the interaction between population sample (i.e., country) and task. We hypothesize that rule-switching flexibility might be more dependent upon particular kinds of cultural experiences, whereas word-learning flexibility is less cross-culturally variable. (shrink)

Culture as a dynamic system of meaningful relations can naturally accommodate a hermeneutic analysis. In this essay, the notion of Gadamer’s hermeneutics as involving interpretable meaning throughout experiential reality permits a natural concordance with an understanding of culture as meaningful. The Gadamerian idea that prejudices inform the horizons that make our experiences intelligible is applied to the view that culture is both a self-enclosed structure that is given by one’s horizon and one that continuously points past this horizon in genuine (...) dialogue. Nevertheless, in seeing culture as a coherent system that transcends itself, we are consequently faced with a dilemma regarding the evolution of one’s cultural horizons: whether past horizons can survive the creation of novel ones through dialogue. However, this may be resolved through Gadamer’s understanding of the functions of sameness and difference within horizonal evolution, and how these functions feature in the distinction between a shared ontological ground and the horizons through which the ground is interpreted. Ultimately, we showcase how it is noncontradictory to suppose that culture is both self- and other-referential. (shrink)

The present research used archaeological data, i.e., the data obtained from kamekan jar burials in the Mikuni Hills of the northern Kyushu area in the Mid- dle Yayoi period, to test the parochial altruism model. This model argued that out-group hate and in-group favor coevolved via prehistoric intergroup conflicts. If this model is accurate, such an out-group hate and in-group favor could be re- flected in the archaeological remains, such as pottery making; the more frequent intergroup conflicts are and the (...) more each group is opposed, the more independent and coherent each group will be and more evident cultural identity could be estab- lished within each group. We employed an elliptic Fourier analysis for the shapes of kamekan jar burials. We examined whether frequent intergroup conflicts in the period influenced kamekan jar pottery between subareas of the Mikuni Hills. The results suggested that the shapes of kamekan jar burials after the KIIIa type are slightly different between subareas, which is partially consistent with the model. However, the results do not support the model directly. (shrink)

Despite the widespread presence of public arts funding in liberal societies, some liberals find it unjustified. According to the Neutrality Objection, arts funding preferences some ways of life. One way to motivate this challenge is to say that a public goods-styled justification, although it could relieve arts funding of these worries of partiality, cannot be argued for coherently or is, in the end, too susceptible to impressions of partiality. I argue that diversity-based arts funding can overcome this challenge, because it (...) invests in non-excludable infrastructure that fosters cultural literacy. We all have some interest as citizens in living in a society which fosters cultural literacy, seeing as this helps others to understand us, supports us to understand ourselves, and helps alleviate confusion and alienation we feel toward social difference. While some of these benefits can be enjoyed by those who make and consume art, they are also gained by those who don’t, because arts funding affects the makeup of public spaces and the communicative practices we all use to make sense of the world. (shrink)

The point that is stressed by definitions of culture, which rely on its authenticity and considerations that it entails individuality (diversity), is its diversity. Being diverse and acknowledgement of authenticity of the diversity, involves forwardness in itself. Though the acknowledgement of diversity and the impression of integrity formed by the acknowledgement seem to pose a coherence, yet it bears a negative aspect internally. Despite so-called acknowledgement of diversity, coherence and integrity formation seem to be more important. Since (...) class='Hi'>coherence of the integrity is based on measures of the seeking subject, forwardness aims to preserve things that are available or to simply fill the gaps. Hence complexity and diversity bear a negative meaning for available things. Because of centered approach which basically is putting familiar things into a closer circle while putting others aside. It brings concretization to the culture. To the extent of concretization endeavor, it leads us to study culture as belonging to a society (the privatization aim here even breaks down culture to a subculture level). Concretization of culture itself might seem as understanding and acknowledgement of culture, however, the aim for making a definition involves detaching the existent from existence forms and from the environment that it exists in. This article is to discuss, with philosophical terms, how different cultures embrace sincerity in exposing themselves while interacting with other cultures given our definitions of culture and eeking for multiculturalism. Thanks to developments in transportation and means of technology, different cultures and societies meet and interact easily. Though we have a heritage of drawing borders, these borders hardly preserve their existence. The issues under discussion have evolved from the endeavor to build a common identity-culture-society to acknowledgement of diversity and difference. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyse definitions of culture gathered by Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn and published in Culture. A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions in 1952. This article emphasizes a possibility of re-analysing the material collected by these researchers (Kroeber–Kluckhohn Culture Classification, hereinafter referred to as KKCC). The article shows that the KKCC material constitutes a coherent conceptual and theoretical paradigm. This paradigm was subject to contextual, frequential and conceptual (Formal Conceptual Analysis, hereinafter referred (...) to as FCA) analyses. The obtained research results enabled the author to develop a formal concept of culture of KKCC, which could be used as a model for further analysis. The final conclusions are as follows: (1) the notion of "culture" is definable only within the frameworks of a conceptually coherent paradigm; (2) determination of a paradigm requires material repository (resp. text corpus); (3) contextual and frequential analyses enable one to index that kind of repository in order to determine general categories which will be used to develop a formal concept; (4) the formal concept of culture of KKCC constitutes the framework of all possible theoretical analyses concerning the meaning of the notion of "culture" in anthropology; (5) KKCC constitutes a representation of one theory of culture. (shrink)

The main focus of this paper is to explore the role of African myths, folklore and popular wisdom in discovering self-identity, which are arguably deployed in the novels of the Nobel Prize winning African-American writer and thinker, Toni Morrison, who is quite frequently labelled as a mythical symbolist. In Song of Solomon, Morrison stirs together folk and fairy tale, magic and root medicine, history and imagination, flight and naming for a distinctive fictional concoction. In this novel, she shows impact of (...) slavery on the identity of African Americans and suggests how a strong and complete identity can be constructed. Thus Morrison demonstrates that both an understanding of one’s heritage and ancestral past is necessary and helps to unite with own community. So the paper examines the transformation of the character, Milkman, from an unconcerned man into culturally aware African American and how the sources of Myths, folklore and cultures lay the stepping stone for the development of a complete and coherent identity. (shrink)

It does not take much to realize that, concerning the topic of Iran, the lack of response and general confusion from the Left within liberal, Western democracies is deeply symptomatic. That the perplexed responses of liberals seem to be characterized by a fetishization of the Iranian Other, reducing them to an empty screen onto which the liberal ideological subject may project their fantasy, prevents the Left from acknowledging that Iranian ideology functions as an over- identification with many of the excesses (...) which liberal ideology is so used to criticizing. The present work seeks to traverse this fantasy space, explicating the way Iran is considered to the object-cause of liberal desire and the consequences this conception has for the Left’s capacity to coherently respond to the present situation as it unfolds. (shrink)

The nature of “the self” has been one of the central problems in philosophy and more recently in neuroscience. This raises various questions: Can we attribute a self to animals? Do animals and humans share certain aspects of their core selves, yielding a trans-species concept of self? What are the neural processes that underlie a possible trans-species concept of self? What are the developmental aspects and do they result in various levels of self-representation? Drawing on recent literature from both human (...) and animal research, we suggest a trans-species concept of self that is based upon what has been called a “core-self” which can be described by self-related processing as a specific mode of interaction between organism and environment. When we refer to specific neural networks, we will here refer to the underlying system as the “core-SELF.” The core-SELF provides primordial neural coordinates that represent organisms as living creatures—at the lowest level this elaborates interoceptive states along with raw emotional feelings while higher medial cortical levels facilitate affective-cognitive integration . Developmentally, SRP allows stimuli from the environment to be related and linked to organismic needs, signaled and processed within core-self structures within subcorical-cortical midline structures that provide the foundation for epigenetic emergence of ecologically framed, higher idiographic forms of selfhood across different individuals within a species. These functions ultimately operate as a coordinated network. We postulate that core SRP operates automatically, is deeply affective, and is developmentally and epigenetically connected to sensory-motor and higher cognitive abilities. This core-self is mediated by SCMS, embedded in visceral and instinctual representations of the body that are well integrated with basic attentional, emotional and motivational functions that are apparently shared between humans, non-human mammals, and perhaps in a proto-SELF form, other vertebrates. Such a trans-species concept of organismic coherence is thoroughly biological and affective at the lowest levels of a complex neural network, and culturally and ecologically molded at higher levels of neural processing. It allows organisms to selectively adapt to and integrate with physical and social environments. Such a psychobiologically universal, but environmentally diversified, concept may promote novel trans-species studies of the core-self across mammalian species. (shrink)

Central elements of Roman Catholic treatment ethics include: 1) that rejection of treatment with the intent of hastening death (even for a good end) is ethically equivalent to active euthanasia with the same intent; 2) a distinction between morally obligatory “ordinary” treatment and morally optional “extraordinary treatment”; 3) that the quality of the patient’s life is not be a legitimate basis for rejecting treatment; and 4) that extraordinary treatment is not forbidden, but optional, and that it is the patient or (...) the patient’s legal surrogate–not the doctor– who has the right to choose or reject it. Despite these principles, even in a cultural climate fully sympathetic to Catholic treatment ethics, it is appropriate as a legal matter to maintain the doctrine of informed consent under which it is possible for patients or their surrogates to reject life-preserving treatment, including for unethical reasons. It is normally impossible to enforce in practice in the external forum a differentiation between rejection of treatment for ethically acceptable and ethically unacceptable reasons. By contrast, in cases of direct killing, such as assisting suicide, the intent to cause death is unmistakable (as opposed to accepting an increased risk of death as a foreseeable but unintended consequence of pursuing a good end). In a pluralistic society Catholic ethics cannot be legislatively enforced on the ground that they are compelled by Catholic teaching. However, the basic principles of Catholic treatment ethics may be justified based on logic and widely accepted norms of human equality independently of revelation or ecclesiastical authority. Particularly in protecting the right of individuals to choose and obtain life-saving medical treatment regardless of their “quality of life,” and in suicide prevention, secular law can and should be congruent with key aspects of Catholic health care ethics. (shrink)

Emotion recognition systems (ERS) offer the ability to identify the emotions of others, based on an analysis of their facial expressions and regardless of culture, ethnicity, context, gender or social class. By claiming universalism in the expression as well as in the recognition of emotions, we believe that ERS present significant risks of causing great harm to some individuals, in addition to targeting, in some contexts, specific social groups. Drawing on a wide range of multidisciplinary knowledge - including philosophy, psychology, (...) computer science and anthropology - this research project aims to identify the current limitations of ERS and the main risks that their use brings, with the goal of providing a clear and robust analysis of the use of ERS and their contribution to greater social justice. Pointing to technical limitations, we refute, on the one hand, the idea that ERS are able to prove the causal link between specific emotions and specific facial expressions. We support our argument with evidence of the inability of ERS to distinguish facial expressions of emotions from facial expressions as communication signals. On the other hand, due to the contextual and cultural limitations of current ERS, we refute the idea that ERS are able to recognise, with equal performance, the emotions of individuals, regardless of their culture, ethnicity, gender and social class. Our ethical analysis shows that the risks are considerably more numerous and important than the benefits that could be derived from using ERS. However, we have separated out a specific type of ERS, whose use is limited to the field of care, and which shows a remarkable potential to actively participate in social justice, not only by complying with the minimum requirements, but also by meeting the criterion of beneficence. While ERS currently pose significant risks, it is possible to consider the potential for specific types to participate in social justice and provide emotional and psychological support and assistance to certain members of society. (shrink)

The sublime is an aspect of experience that has attracted a great deal of scholarship, not only for scholarly reasons but because it connotes aspects of experience not exhausted by what Descartes once called clear distinct perception. That is, the sublime is an experience of the world which involves us in orientating ourselves within it, and this orientation, our human orientation, elevates us in comparison to the non-human world according to traditional accounts of the sublime. The sublime tells us something (...) about our relation to the world rather than anything about the world per se. Nonetheless there is an objective sense of the sublime in that the narratives involved are culturally endorsed rather than invented by an individual. This means that objects can be judged worthy or not of evoking experiences of the sublime. In other words, it is not an idiosyncratic matter. Immanuel Kant’s formulation of this involved explaining how such an experience is possible in terms of his system of the mind. Jane Forsey notes that Kant takes the features of the sublime as given and extrapolates from them certain features of the mind as if any concept of the sublime must implicate the mental architecture of his account (2007). Further to this she argues that in fact the concept of the sublime does implicate a particular system of the mind but neither Kant nor anyone else can successfully formulate it because the concept itself frames certain contradictions. According to Forsey, two consequences follow. First she argues that Kant’s system of the mind does not support the features of the sublime; and secondly that no system could as the very concept is incoherent. If Forsey can show that Kant was mistaken in presenting his account as coherent given his commitments, this would be of interest in its own right. However, her stronger claim is that we cannot separate any concept of the sublime out from Kant’s theoretical underpinnings. That the way the features of the mind are meant to operate in experiences of the sublime are contradictory simply points to the fatal flaws in the whole concept. Her conclusion is that there is no coherent account of the sublime available to us. I will argue that Forsey bases her reasoning on the assumption that a foundational empiricist or direct perception holds; and she interprets Kant’s notions of imagination, understanding and reason as though they are grounded in just such an account of perception. This is revealed in her interpretation of Kant’s phrase “beyond cognition”. Once this foundationalism is replaced with an account of perception more aligned with current research on perception, both philosophical and empirical, then an account of the sublime is available. Further to this however, I argue that what constitutes the narrative of the sublime is historically contingent. Before setting out my arguments, I consider Forsey’s argument in more detail. (shrink)

Identity in the philosophical literature has until recently be confined mostly to ruminations on the self: as soul in Plato; rationality connected to, but not coterminous with, the body in Descartes; uninterrupted consciousness in Locke; a stream of experiences which a thing has in relation to itself in Hume; an emotive life in Rousseau; as noumenal self about which we can know little in Kant; as will in Schopenhauer; as an elusive but nonspecific something in Wittgenstein; and as the continuous, (...) purposive struggle of creative power against an historically contingent concatenation of social, political, and cultural forces in Nietzsche and Foucault. Yet what follows is not a summary of metaphysics or philosophy of mind. There also is not sufficient space here to examine identity in each of the separate disciplines. Instead, what follows are some prefatory discursive remarks about identity; then, owing to the dominance of psychological theories on identity, a brief overview of some of its salient themes will be adumbrated; this will be followed by a discussion on identity formation and maintenance both in political philosophy and philosophy of education. (shrink)

This paper argues that the recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Oswald Spengler, particularly concerning its warnings of the imminent demise of Western Civilisation, is misplaced. Arguments concerning the accuracy of his predictions or cultural analysis have overlooked the necessity of evaluating the coherence of the philosophical system that Spengler used to generate and justify his speculative declarations. Such an evaluation indicates a number of apparent contradictions at the heart of Spengler’s historical model. The attempt to (...) resolve these contradictions has resulted in a sharp division of interpretation amongst Spengler commentators, into positivist and relativist camps. Neither interpretation, I suggest, is capable of rendering Spengler’s historical system coherent. It is therefore argued that Spengler’s philosophy is fundamentally flawed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

In this essay I take the opportunity to recast some insights from my extensive study over the last decade of Wittgenstein’s remarks on music into a coherent and concise portrayal of Wittgenstein’s philosophical underpinning and upshots pertaining to his perception of the modern music scene in interwar Austria. The gist of the present essay is to show that, for better or for worse, Wittgenstein’s personal taste in music was powered by philosophical reasoning, which was organic to his philosophical development, and (...) that ultimately his philosophical attitude to the music scene of interwar Austria manifests a deeply probing gradation. I are argue that we can distinguish between four varieties of the absurd in the music of interwar Austria, according to Wittgenstein. First is the nonsensical absurd of the incapability of seeing that the nonsensicality of the form of progress is incomprehensible. This category pertains to music which straightforwardly tries to emulate the various maxims and formulations derived from the form of progress. Such nonsensically absurd music typifies progressive Romantic composers such as Richard Strauss, Max Reger, and the early Arnold Schoenberg. Second is the vacuous absurd of the incapability of seeing what the form of progress renders incomprehensible. This category pertains to music which denounces the predominantly nonsensical maxims and formulations of modernity, thus destining itself to keeping on groping for something which it cannot express. Such vacuously absurd music is best exemplified, in Wittgenstein’s mind, by Josef Labor. Third is the philosophical absurd of rendering what is incomprehensible (from the perspective of a cultured person) comprehensible within the same purview. For Wittgenstein, Mahler’s music betokens such incommensurability, evoking a relativist philosophical puzzle: whether cultural progress is real, and it is us who have been left behind, or whether culture has really been vanquished, and we are the only ones left to notice it. The very thought of an artwork of “a totally different sort” remains invariably hypothetical. Fourth is the praxeological absurd of giving rise to an auxiliary, praxeologically dislodged musical language, replacing the transparency of human gesture with exact rules of comprehensibility. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the shunning of the expanse of lived experience in a musical language fit for the meaning-blind would be the inglorious spot assigned to Arnold Schoenberg’s vision of the music of the future. (shrink)

In Rawls’s political liberalism, legitimate exercises of political power must be publicly justifiable to reasonable citizens on grounds each can coherently accept, where citizens count as “reasonable” only if they can accept certain values of public culture. Other citizens have no say in public justification, or no equal say. For Rawls, then, legitimate political power must accord with a subset of cultural values, and can be legitimate even if it is not (equally) justifiable to people who cannot accept them. (...) Does this mean that Rawls permits that such people be dominated? What kind of domination, if any, would this involve, and would it involve “cultural” domination? This chapter takes its lead from these questions. It offers a reading of the role of public justification in political liberalism that foregrounds differences in the discursive standing of reasonable and unreasonable people, and interpret these differences in domination-theoretic terms. I suggest that there is reason to believe that Rawls’s view would subject the unreasonable–a mixed group that also includes respectable people–to forms of discursive and political domination, and this in a manner that attracts the worry that cultural domination is involved. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that Cassirer's methodology is idealistic in regard to validity claims and the structuralist views he holds and at the same time empiric in regard to the facts and genealogy of culture. This perspective is best to be unfolded along Cassirer's model of representation. The author does so by showing that Cassirer's triad of symbolic articulation (expressive, presentational, significative) and the triad of symbolic development (mimetic, analogical, symbolic) form a coherent and exhaustive theory of symbolic formation. (...) In order to defend this view, two main objections from the secondary literature against the consistency of this essential theory piece of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms have to be rejected. (shrink)

The set of symbols of success is a set of cultural determinants of activity and their functioning is connected with the fundamental functions of culture as a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of life. The relevance of considering the symbolization of success in modern cinema is due to several factors. First, according to the majority of art historians and film theorists, cinema remains the leading, most widespread form of art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. If we understand (...) art as a figurative comprehension of reality, its process and result, which is expressed in works, then the symbolization of success in cinema can be considered one of the most common practices for representing the determinants of activity through a figurative comprehension of reality. An analysis of this process in modern cinematography reveals the mechanisms of functioning of one of the elements of the totality of joint life programs as a segment of modern culture, limited by the boundaries of film communication. Secondly, the development of cinematography largely determines the fundamental changes in the culture of the 20th century. and there is no reason to believe that its influence is diminishing in recent times. Consequently, modern cinema remains one of the most important areas of cultural life, the study of which allows expanding scientific understanding of the patterns of changes taking place in culture. Thirdly, the development of information and communication technologies at the end of the 20th century. led to the fact that the value complexes of traditional cultures of different peoples of the world and expansive global neoplasms of a supranational nature (mass, elite, corporate, fandom, etc.) are simultaneously transmitted into the space of personal culture. Cinema in the new conditions only strengthened its position as the leading relay of value complexes. The special socio-forming qualities of cinema were noted both by its pioneers (L. Delluk, A. Dovzhenko, Ch. Chaplin, S. Eisenstein, etc.), scientists (B. Balash, V. A. Gottwald, E. M. Samuylenko, etc.) , and the ideologists of cultural revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century. G. Turner, in particular, drew attention to the fact that “to achieve control over the everyday representation of the world for a nation means to acquire strong power over the representation of individuals about themselves and about each other”, referring to the threat to the integrity and coherence of an individual’s understanding of the world under the pressure of foreign cultural domination over film communication. In this regard, the search for ways to relevantly measure the trends in the development of modern culture by marking in cinema the cultural determinants of activity, which are the symbols of success, seems to be an urgent theoretical and scientific-practical task, the solution of which expands the predictive potential of culture and its projective possibilities. (shrink)

The generalized Darwinian research programme accepts physicalism, but holds that all life is purposive in character. It seeks to understand how and why all purposiveness has evolved in the universe – especially purposiveness associated with what we value most in human life, such as sentience, consciousness, person-to-person understanding, science, art, free¬dom, love. As evolution proceeds, the mechanisms of evolution themselves evolve to take into account the increasingly important role that purposive action can play - especially when quasi-Lamarckian evolution by (...) class='Hi'>cultural means comes into existence. This programme of research brings together, into a coherent field of inquiry, aspects of such diverse fields of research as orthodox Darwinian theory (given its purposive interpretation), the study of animal behaviour, palaeontology, archaeology, history, anthropology, psycho-neurology, artificial intelligence, psychology, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, semantics, history and philosophy of science, and history and philosophy of inquiry more generally (the history and philosophy of ideas and culture). The great advantage of the generalized Darwinian research programme is that it provides a framework for understanding the deeds, achievements and experiences of people in a way that is compatible with the kind of knowledge and understanding achieved in the physical sciences, without being reducible to such knowledge and understanding. It promises to enable us to understand ourselves as a part of the biological domain without our humanity, our distinctive human value, being in any way denied: persons are not reduced to animals, and nor are animals misconceived to be persons. It holds out the hope that we can come to understand the human world as an integral part of the natural world without the meaning and value of the human world being thereby conceptually annihilated. The programme specifies in general terms what we must seek to do in order to develop a coherent understanding of nature and of ourselves which does justice to the character of both. (shrink)

Cross cultural studies have played a pivotal role in elucidating the extent to which behavioral and mental characteristics depend on specific environmental influences. Surprisingly, little field research has been carried out on a fundamentally important perceptual ability, namely the perception of biological motion. In this report, we present details of studies carried out with the help of volunteers from the Mundurucu indigene, a group of people native to Amazonian territories in Brazil. We employed standard biological motion perception tasks inspired (...) by over 30 years of laboratory research, in which observers attempt to decipher the walking direction of point-light (PL) humans and animals. Do our effortless skills at perceiving biological activity from PL animations, as revealed in laboratory settings, generalize to people who have never before seen representational depictions of human and animal activity? The results of our studies provide a clear answer to this important, previously unanswered question. Mundurucu observers readily perceived the coherent, global shape depicted in PL walkers, and experienced the classic inversion effects that are typically found when such stimuli are turned upside down. In addition, their performance was in accord with important recent findings in the literature, in the abundant ease with which they extracted direction information from local motion invariants alone. We conclude that the effortless, veridical perception of PL biological motion is a spontaneous and universal perceptual ability, occurring both inside and outside traditional laboratory environments. (shrink)

This is an introduction to my edited book, the Research Handbook on Liberalism (2024). Some chapters tackle broad, meta-level questions about the coherence and justificatory limits and possibilities of liberalism; others tackle conceptual issues; still others, specific institutional, cultural, historical, and political questions. This introductory chapter is intended to provide a general orientation to these discussions, but also highlight some recurring themes and challenges facing liberalism in an era of rampant inequality, illiberalism, rising autocracies, populism, and massive technological (...) change. I provide a taxonomy of five different kinds of liberalism in play in the field, along with three overarching challenges discussed in the book - the apparent insufficiency, complacency, and self-undermining nature of liberalism. Can contemporary liberalism survive? It can, but not without clearly grasping some of the fundamental challenges it faces today. (shrink)

In his lecture “Philosophy and the Unheard,” Cavell invites us to observe a pervasive analogy between Schoenberg’s idea of the twelve-tone row and Wittgenstein’s idea of grammar, which is supposed to encapsulate an expansive, sweeping philosophical program—Cavell’s own. For Cavell, the analogy evinces not only the kind of reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigation, which is attuned to Wittgenstein’s seemingly paradoxical amalgamation of embrace and resistance in regarding to the conditions of modernity, but also a kind of philosophy of music, which (...) is illuminated by musical procedure. In this essay I probe into Cavell’s analogy, which, I contend, rests on Cavell’s interpretation (contra Von Wright) of Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein. I argue that Cavell delineated the analogy in a way which does not consider a deeply felt gradation in Wittgenstein’s philosophical attitude toward modern music. This ultimately renders Schoenberg’s composition with twelve-tone incommensurate with Wittgenstein’s Spenglerian scheme of musical decline. I also argue that “Schoenbergian unheard” is not analogous to its purported Wittgensteinian counterpart. While the former inheres in comprehensibility—namely, correct, conscious application of the kind of contrived rules that would ensure coherence—the latter inheres in transparency, namely, a familiar physiognomy, which is internally related to the preconditions as well as the lived, embodied realities of musical intelligibility. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the Schoenbergian idea of the row with its unforeseen yet pervasive consequences turns out to be tantamount to an idea of grammar for music for the meaning-blind. I conclude that in this “tale of two unheards,” Cavell invariably remains on the side of Wittgenstein. Philosophy, as it mattered most to him, has no business with music for the meaning-blind. (shrink)

For the purposes of this enquiry—an account of what Equiano’sa modernity was, and which particular historical ‘demarcations’ of modernity provided for an enslaved man to achieve freedom through great fortune and great cunning, I will assume a definition of ‘modernity’ as defined by Kathleen Wilson: “. . . not one moment or age, but a set of relations that are constantly being made and unmade, contested and reconfigured, that nonetheless produce among their contemporaneous witnesses the conviction of historical difference.” By (...) adopting this definition, modernity in the times of Equiano refers to, “the cultural practices and representations that produced certain kinds of subjects and objects of knowledge, upheld widely-shared notions of space and time, or facilitated the formation of cultural identities that resulted in pluralities and contradictions as well as unities and coherences,” which provided for a slave to acquire freedom amidst eighteenth-century imperialism, slave-trade, and emerging abolitionist sentiments within bourgeois culture. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate affinities between Nietzsche’s early philosophy and some aspects of Kant’s moral theory. In so doing, I develop further my reading of Nietzschean wholeness as an ideal that consists in the achievement of cultural—not psychic—integration by pursuing the ennoblement of humanity in oneself and in all. This cultural achievement is equivalent to the procreation of the genius or the perfection of nature. For Nietzsche, the process by means of which we come to realize the (...) genius in ourselves is one in which our true content comes to necessarily govern or guide the shaping of our outer form (or our outward activities). Since this true content turns out to be our autonomy or free agency, I argue that this Nietzschean idea of necessitation parallels in important ways Kant’s notion of normative necessity. In particular, I claim that for Nietzsche the agent’s form becomes necessitated by his content as a result of the agent’s recognition of the duties that befall those who aspire to belong to a genuine culture and his resolve to guide his actions in accordance to them. These duties spring from the idea of humanity, from the image we have of ourselves as endowed with the capacity to be the helmsmen of our lives or to be more than mere animals or automata. The person who takes up this ideal of humanity turns his life into a living unity of content and form by organizing it around an aspect of his being that belongs necessarily, hence more truthfully, to him. He also participates in a collective project (that of the ennoblement of the human being) that can lend a certain coherence and imperishability to his individual life and through which he becomes necessarily connected to everyone else for all eternity. (shrink)

In modern, culturally-heterogeneous societies, inefficiency of communication of important moral concepts is often evidenced by asymmetrical moral judgements and hypocritical behaviour, especially in our increasingly compartmentalised social landscapes [Rozuel 2011]. This raises the question of how to present target audiences with some (perhaps novel) moral concept, like an ethical dimension of one’s ecological attitude, in a way which would resonate with them, and be conducive to a coherent moral stance, decreasing action-observer biases. We analyse this problem by introducing a formal (...) moral inconsistency framework. We consider the ways in which the aforementioned problem might be tackled in existing cognitive science of morality (CSM) nativist frameworks, and, secondly, we investigate it from the perspective of moral learning, finally proposing the notion of moral dimensionality of a representation in the context of model-based reinforcement learning, as a useful conceptual tool for studying the problem. (shrink)

Metaphors establish connection. Root metaphors--patterns of relational imagery in the language and thought of a culture, in which a diverse group of tenors are related to a single indentifiable class of vehicles--play an important role in organizing our thought, and in bringing a coherence to our vision of the world. This is a political function; root metaphors, as philosopher Stephen Pepper discusses them, are most often found in the works of philosophers remembered as political philosophers. ;The second law of (...) thermodynamics--the law of entropy--holds that in any spontaneous process, usable energy becomes unusable energy. It also suggests that improbable order must succumb, through time, to more probable chaos. The law of entropy has enjoyed a popularity as metaphor unusual for such physics esoterica. In the works of Brooks Adams, Henry Adams, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and Thomas Pynchon, the idea of entropy appears as the fundamental, organizing idea for an economic interpretation of history, a philosophy of history, an ecologically enlightened economic theory, and an encyclopedic novel that apotheosizes modern culture. Analysis of how the entropy metaphor is manifest in the works of these thinkers allows us to judge the strengths and weaknesses of entropy as root metaphor. Analysis of its contemporary popularity affords insight into the politics of the day. Ultimately, the entropy root metaphor serves as the foundation of a refurbished "generating substance" world hypothesis, but the root metaphor itself remains equivocal on the important issue of centralized versus decentralized political organization. (shrink)

dolce, the first top-level ontology to be axiomatized, has remained stable for twenty years and today is broadly used in a variety of domains. dolce is inspired by cognitive and linguistic considerations and aims to model a commonsense view of reality, like the one human beings exploit in everyday life in areas as diverse as socio-technical systems, manufacturing, financial transactions and cultural heritage. dolce clearly lists the ontological choices it is based upon, relies on philosophical principles, is richly formalized, (...) and is built according to well-established ontological methodologies, e.g. OntoClean. Because of these features, it has inspired most of the existing top-level ontologies and has been used to develop or improve standards and public domain resources. Being a foundational ontology, dolce is not directly concerned with domain knowledge. Its purpose is to provide the general categories and relations needed to give a coherent view of reality, to integrate domain knowledge, and to mediate across domains. In these 20 years dolce has shown that applied ontologies can be stable and that interoperability across reference and domain ontologies is a reality. This paper briefly introduces the ontology and shows how to use it on a few modeling cases. (shrink)

For a while, life and environment have been regarded as two separate subjects, but recently life and environment are to be seen as different aspects of one single theme. There are able philosophers who maintain the connection of the two but Seokheon Ham is believed to present a more coherent case. To him, integration is not merely a property which is unifying various elements, but it has a deep ontological structure seen in his utterance “there is not a thing in (...) the world which does not have a reason to exist”. He is providing a model of deep integration by equivalently linking life and sense. And he offers apparent arguments of oneness as integration of animates and inanimates, seeds as an example of integration of sense and life, and suffering as a historical integration. But Ham’s arguments will be strengthened by philosophizing the notion of integration. Fortunately, I would suggest that the clue is found in the conception of integration of Zhungyong. I will take the major thrust of the book to be five theses: (1) integration of a thing is the capacity to realize its embedded objective in its interactions with all other things; (2) ‘mind’ denotes the capacity of humans as well as the capacity of all other entities: (3) integration is a capacity not only of humans but also of all other entities; (4) if the evolution demonstrates the history of species as the fittest, then the history expresses the evolution of life forms of intelligence and justice; (5) integration of an entity is a disposition to realize its embedded objective in the context of its interconnections with all others at a particular time and place. The ontology of integration I am submitting may be shown to be an alternative to traditional physicalism. The integrational ontology may be seen as virtuous in that it is coherent with the informational view of the contemporary culture and with the caring need for those who suffer. (shrink)

Our understanding of ourselves and the world as historical has drastically changed since the postwar period, yet this emerging historical sensibility has not been appropriately explained in a coherent theory of history. In this book, Zoltán Simon argues that instead of seeing the past, the present and the future together on a temporal continuum as history, we now expect unprecedented change to happen in the future and we look at the past by assuming that such changes have already happened. This (...) radical theory of history challenges narrative conceptualizations of history which assume a past potential of humanity unfolding over time to reach future fulfillment and seeks new ways of conceptualizing the altered socio-cultural concerns Western societies are currently facing. By creating a novel set of concepts to make sense of our altered historical condition regarding both history understood as the course of human affairs and historical writing, History in Times of Unprecedented Change offers a highly original and engaging take on the state of history and historical theory in the present and beyond. (shrink)

I begin this article with an increasingly accepted claim: that emotions lend differential weight to states of affairs, helping us conceptually carve the world and make rational decisions. I then develop a more controversial assertion: that environments have non-subjective emotional qualities, which organize behavior and help us make sense of the world. I defend this from ecological and related embodied standpoints that take properties to be interrelational outcomes. I also build on conceptions of experience as a cultural phenomenon, one (...) that coheres around shared environmental contours and public emotional concerns, introducing normative constraints (or what might be called “world grammars”). Endorsing this outlook suggests an argument for the view that cultural spaces have affectively charged, non-subjective, normative openings and closures. These openings and closures engender selectively permeable barriers which cordon space without physically preventing entry, as seen with decorative half walls and elevation changes. An area with such barriers may look emotionally hostile to, say, the dispirited homeless who are in fact less welcome there. Outcomes like these might be thought of as “political affordances.” These affordances can be regarded as normative openings and closures that implicitly filter, and hence segregate, according to various social divisions. Although registering political affordances requires more than the detection of ambient arrays, the notion retains core Gibsonian ideas: that affordances are values, that these values are linked with how a space can be used, and that the existence and nature of such affordances is not a subjective matter. (shrink)

This thesis considers the space of encounter between the quantum mechanical ontology of limited universal holism and the legal system. This space of encounter is identified through an examination of two premises. The first premise is that the ontological structure of limited universal holism has significant legal philosophical and socio-­‐legal implications. The second premise is that the loci of commitment within the ontology of limited universal holism epistemologically coheres with the core ontological notions that underpin the Preamble of the Universal (...) Declaration of Human Rights of 1948,1 specifically the notions of equality, universality and inalienability. Both premises are affirmed in the course of analysis undertaken in this thesis. In addition some novel contributions are posited. Some of the ontological elements of limited universal holism when deployed as heuristic tools show, inter alia, coherence between the way socio-­‐legal constructivists conceptualise the law and the wave-­‐particle duality of quanta. In respect of the second premise, epistemological coherence is shown between the ethos that underpins modern human rights and the loci of commitment within the ontology of limited universal holism. This coherence improves the epistemic stability of monist perspectives on which deep equality may be framed. The thesis concludes with some suggestions for future research. Two particularly exciting areas for future research are uncovered in the course of the analysis. First is the coherence between the work in this thesis and the jurisprudential paradigm of Wild Law. Second is the potential for the monist ontology of limited universal holism derived from scientific research to cohere with many diverse wisdom and ethno-­‐cultural traditions and in so doing increase the epistemic standing of monist ontologies. (shrink)

The societal changes of the last century, especially in the aftermath of World War II, have led thinkers to imagine philosophical anthropology centred on the concept of hope. From very different perspectives, authors such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, and Hannah Arendt understood that hope is deeply connected with the condition and destiny of humanity. Various sociologists have developed concepts closely linked with hope: action, social change, utopia, revolution, emancipation, innovation, and trust. However, a coherent and systematic analysis is yet (...) to emerge. Taking up the threads of this rich but fragmented reflection, this paper intends to outline the traits of a “sociology of hope” as a tool for critically interpreting today’s society and the processes of change crisscrossing it, starting from some crucial questions: Who are the actors and historical bearers of hope? What are the main socio-historical forms of hope? What social, political, and cultural conditions favour the emergence and strengthening of this disposition? What are the effects and consequences on personal and social life? (shrink)

Prior to the nineteenth century, those who are now regarded as scientists were referred to as natural philosophers. With empiricism, science was claimed to be a superior form of knowledge to philosophy, and natural philosophy was marginalized. This claim for science was challenged by defenders of natural philosophy, and this debate has continued up to the present. The vast majority of mainstream scientists are comfortable in the belief that through applying the scientific method, knowledge will continue to accumulate, and that (...) claims to knowledge outside science apart from practical affairs should not be taken seriously. This is referred to as scientism. It is incumbent on those who defend natural philosophy against scientism not only to expose the illusions and incoherence of scientism, but to show that natural philosophers can make justifiable claims to advancing knowledge. By focusing on a recent characterization and defense of natural philosophy along with a reconstruction of the history of natural philosophy, showing the nature and role of Schelling’s conception of dialectical thinking, I will attempt to identify natural philosophy as a coherent tradition of thought and defend it as something different from science and as essential to it, and essential to the broader culture and to civilization. (shrink)

Was bisexuality a widespread feature of ancient Greek society? This question is an instance of cross-cultural projection -- of taking the means through which people are categorized in one culture and applying it to members of another. It’s widely held by those who think that sexual orientation is socially constructed that its projection poses a problem. In this paper, I offer a more careful analysis of this alleged problem. To analyze projection, I adapt Iris Einheuser’s substratum-carving model of conventionalism (...) to fit the specific needs of social construction. Using this model, I show that projection is conceptually coherent, and so does not for that reason pose any problem. Along the way, I identify some of the epistemic difficulties facing projection. While these difficulties are formidable, they are not substantially affected by the constructivist claim. I therefore conclude that there is no unique problem facing the projection of a socially constructed sexual orientation. (shrink)

Abstract: According to the realist about philosophy, the goal of philosophy is to come to know the truth about philosophical questions; according to what Helen Beebee calls equilibrism, by contrast, the goal is rather to place one’s commitments in a coherent system. In this paper, I present a critique of equilibrism in the form Beebee defends it, paying particular attention to her suggestion that various meta-philosophical remarks made by David Lewis may be recruited to defend equilibrism. At the end of (...) the paper, I point out that a realist about philosophy may also be a pluralist about philosophical culture, thus undermining one main motivation for equilibrism. (shrink)

The manner in which individuals hold various nonevidentiary beliefs is critical to making any evaluative claim regarding an individual's autonomy. In this essay, I argue that one may be both justified in holding nonrational beliefs of a nonevidentiary sort while also being capable of leading an autonomous life. I defend the idea that moral instruction, including that which concerns explicitly religious content, may justifiably constitute a set of commitments upon which rationality and autonomy are dependent. I situate this discussion against (...) the backdrop of a minimalist notion of autonomy. I then consider the case for nonrational beliefs, examining the difference between those whose content is objectionable on evidentiary grounds and those that are immune to verification. Next, I consider the indoctrination/moral instruction distinction through examining the various ways in which indoctrination is defined. I also consider the role that value coherence plays in shaping our identities, paying particular attention to fundamental commitments as defined by our respective families, cultures, and communities. Finally, I argue that individual psychology is central to our ability to assess the outcome of an upbringing purported to be indoctrinatory, and I emphasize the important role that experience and agency play in enabling us to evaluate our beliefs. (shrink)

In recent years, calls have been made to address the relative dearth of qualitative sociological investigation into the sensory dimensions of embodiment, including within physical cultures. This article contributes to a small, innovative and developing literature utilizing sociological phenomenology to examine sensuous embodiment. Drawing upon data from three research projects, here we explore some of the ‘sensuousities’ of ‘intense embodiment’ experiences as a distance-running-woman and a boxing-woman, respectively. Our analysis addresses the relatively unexplored haptic senses, particularly the ‘touch’ of heat. (...) Heat has been argued to constitute a specific sensory mode, a trans-boundary sense. Our findings suggest that ‘lived’ heat, in our own physical-cultural experiences, has highly proprioceptive elements and is experienced as both a form of touch and as a distinct perceptual mode, dependent upon context. Our analysis coheres around two key themes that emerged as salient: (1) warming up, and (2) thermoregulation, which in lived experience were encountered as strongly interwoven. (shrink)

The articles in this issue represent the pursuit of a new understanding of the human past, one that can replace the neo-saltationist view of a human revolution with models that can account for the complexities of the archaeological record and of human social lives. The articulation of archaeological, philosophical, and biological perspectives seems to offer a strong foundation for exploring available evidence, and this was the rationale for collecting these particular articles. Even at this preliminary stage there is a (...) class='Hi'>coherence emerging in proposals: the origin and operation of symbolically rich, complexly signaling human social systems was the consequence of the long-term evolution of multiple components of perceiving and negotiating social interactions, a contingent outcome of myriad adaptive shifts rather than a single event. (shrink)

The evolution of human cognitive abilities, despite intensive sociological, psychoanalytic and neurobiological investigations, is poorly understood. The basic events of this evolution: progressive language development, technologization, increased learning aptitude, remain a field of speculations without coherent and consistent explanations. In the recent manuscript, a production of artefacts as a general pre-condition of human being is highlighted, and a key role they played by reshaping of neuro-physiological functions is factually substantiated. • • • -/- German Abstract: Die Evolution menschlicher kognitiver Fähigkeiten (...) ist, trotz vielseitiger Untersuchungensmethoden, bislang kaum verstanden. Die grundsätzlichen Ereignisse dieser Evolution: fortschreitende Sprachentwicklung, Intellektualisierung, Technisierung, Bildung großer Gemeinschaften, werden spekulativ, ohne zusammenhängende und schlüssige Erklärung, diskutiert. In aktuellem Manuskript wird die allgemeine Voraussetzung menschlicher Existenz, die Artefaktenherstellung, hervorgehoben, um auf ihre Schlüsselrolle bei der Neuformung neuro-physiologischer Funktionen hinzuweisen. Im Weiteren werden die Gefahren erörtert, die entstehen, wenn der Schöpfer die Kontrolle über sich selbst verliert, und im Züge der Technisierung und Verwissenschaftlichung die Grundlagen eigener Existenz zerstört. • • • -/- Russian Abstract: Происхождение рассудочной деятельности у вида Homo sapiens, несмотря на интенсивные социологические, психологические, нейробиологические и прочие методы изучения, до сих пор мало понято. Основные события эволюции человека: прогрессивное развитие речевой деятельности, технологизация, повышенная способность к обучению, остаются областью бессвязных спекуляций. В данной работе освящается значение производства артефактов как условие возникновения человека, и доказывается роль, которую артефакты играют в процессе новообразования нейро–физиологических функций. (shrink)

Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik is one of Cassirer’s least known and studied works, despite his own assessment as “one of his most important achievements”. A prominent theme locates quantum mechanics as a yet further step of the tendency within physical theory towards the purely functional theory of the concept and functional characterization of objectivity. In this respect DI can be considered an “update”, like the earlier monograph Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie: Erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtungen, to Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, a seminal (...) work considering only classical and pre-relativistic physics. But how does DI cohere with the three volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms providing a systematic survey of symbolic meanings in diverse aspects of culture, each with its own mode of “objectification” via self-created signs and images? Cassirer’s “phenomenology of cognition” via distinct types of symbolic form locates Dirac’s Principles of Quantum Mechanics as an exemplar within physical theory of purely symbolic thought, a realm of pure relations and their correlated meanings. In particular, Dirac’s characterization of the new notion of “physical state” in quantum mechanics by a “symbolic algebra of observables” severed from particular representations points to a limiting pole of the Bedeutungsfunktion, the third and highest mode of symbolic formation. (shrink)

Formulating the nature of things is one of the oldest subjects addressed in the world and all over the world, because ancient peoples were high-intellect enough to be aware of the issue. -/- To me it’s about resolving indefinite- -dynamic theory potentialities into best effort coherent, true-to-life sense. -/- Ancient Athens addressed the issue. Plato settled on a formulation- -system. It took hold in much of the Western world. It was informed by intellect of the primal senses premises and his (...) ideas about matter as “the four elements”. -/- So he had to theorize Father Supernatural, emanating life and consciousness to matter. -/- Today we are aware of quantum dynamics as a tension of ‘forces’. This tension expresses in the macro world as life and consciousness. -/- This then generated the problem that Father Supernatural and Mother Nature did not cohere. -/- It never made satisfactory sense to specialists as a coherent, true to life system. So, they kept writing for 2,400 years. -/- E-PS emerged informed by high intellect and modern ideas about matter: Effect, through featuring indefinite- -dynamic ‘forces’; one emerges through- -as tension of featuring ‘forces’. -/- So it is quite a contrast to Plato’s categoricalism…. and a coherent, true-to-life world can be shown to develop from that principle … or law of Nature … an indefinite- -dynamic world. -/- For the uninitiated I believe E-PS would serve as a rigorous frame of reference with which to engage with the thoughts of Buddha, Plato and Oriental Sage Wisdom, etc. and to test how coherent and true-to-life the system featuring in your culture is. -/- If one is impacted by a system without a frame of reference, it is likely to imprint. As children in the home and as young adults in ‘the academy’, this happens. Many never transcend it. -/- However, now such transcending is done and is presented here. -/- Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living". -/- Also, through E-PS, convolutions in Physics are corrected! (shrink)

Les approches de la tradition philosophique de la morale reposent principalement sur des concepts et des théories métaphysiques et théologiques. Parmi les concepts éthiques traditionnels, le plus important est la théorie du commandement divin (DCT). Selon la DCT, Dieu donne des fondements moraux à l'humanité par sa création et par la Révélation. Morale et Divinité sont inséparables depuis la civilisation la plus lointaine. Ces concepts plongent dans un cadre théologique et sont principalement acceptés par la plupart des adeptes des trois (...) traditions abrahamiques : le judaïsme, le christianisme et l'islam : la partie la plus considérable de la population humaine. Tenant la foi et la Révélation pour ses fondements, les Théories du Commandement Divin ne sont pas strictement sujettes à la démonstration. Les opposants à la conception de la morale du Commandement divin, fondée sur l'impossibilité de démontrer ses présupposés métaphysiques et religieux, ont tenté pendant de nombreux siècles (mais sans succès) d'en dévaloriser l'importance. Ils ont soutenu l'argument selon lequel il ne montre pas de preuves matérielles et de cohérence logique et, pour cette raison, ne peut pas être considéré à des fins scientifiques ou philosophiques. Ce n'est qu'une croyance et, en tant que tel, doit être compris. Outre ces oppositions extrêmes, de nombreux autres concepts contreviennent aux théories du Commandement Divin, d'une manière ou d'une autre, en partie ou en totalité. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to surface new and puzzling manifestations of the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, especially in the US. One such manifestation is the one centered around mask-wearing as a way to protect others from viral infection. In public spaces, mask-wearing has become a signal as to whether one is a liberal or a conservative. Liberals tend to wear the mask and condemn as immoral conservatives, who tend not to wear it. I argue that the liberal (...) attitude does not cohere with liberal theory. I use the issue of the permissibility of abortion and the liberal consensus about it as the benchmark for what a genuine liberal attitude toward mask-wearing should be. (shrink)

This essay examine Samuel Beckett's *Trilogy to specify the conditions under which we could make sense of practical necessity. Among other things, I will show how Ajax' must is connected to Mol/oy's attempt to visit his mother and to the need to keep talking that both Molloy and the Unnamable share. I will conclude that their dislocated pursuit of certainty reveal - among other things - how the conditions under which practical necessity can be properly experienced have been extirpated from (...) our social and cultural context. Still, the fact that its vestiges nevertheless subsist provide some reason to regard practical necessity as a constitutive aspect of our agency. This will provide a particular sense in which the Unnamable may coherently claim: "I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I will go on.". (shrink)