In recent decades, several authors have claimed that an epoch-making change in the development of science is taking place. A closer examination of this claim shows that these authors take different – and problematic – concepts of an epochal break as their points of departure. In order to facilitate an evaluation of the current development of science, I would like to propose a concept of an epochal change according to which it is not necessarily a discontinuous process that typically begins (...) in a subarea of the sciences, has far-reaching consequences for the entire system of the sciences, and can be observed by contemporaries as early as during its initial phase. Taking this concept as my point of departure, I discuss various candidates for the status of an epochal transformation in the recent development of the sciences. Although there are sound reasons to doubt that an epochal break is currently taking place, one must concede that the sciences are probably in a profound transformation, which could unfold in various directions, perhaps even leading to epoch-making new characterizations of the sciences. (shrink)

When we look back upon people in past societies, such as slaveholders and colonialists, we judge their actions to have been morally atrocious. Yet we should give some thought to how the future will judge us. Here I argue that future people are likely to regard our behavior as no better than that of the past. If these future people are to be believed, then we are morally hopeless; we have little chance of working out the moral truth for ourselves. (...) I argue that we ought to resist this conclusion, and that our best means for doing so it to reject moral objectivity and accept instead a form of time-linked moral relativism. (shrink)

This essay interprets the epoché of ancient scepticism as the perpetual conversion of the love of one into the love of two. The process of one becoming two is represented in Plato’s Symposium by Diotima’s description of the second rung of ‘the ladder,’ by which one ascends to the highest form of philosophical devotion (Pl. Sym. 209e-210e). Diotima’s ladder offers a vision of philosophy as a total conversion of both the lover and the object of love (or philosopher and object (...) of knowledge). I suggest that scepticism, however, is found in the frustration of Platonic ascension, which results in a partial conversion. Because the process of conversion (from the love of one to the love of One) remains suspended midway, the sceptic’s transformation is erotic—this is to say, driven by a desire that is characterised by a split (which may be identified between subject and object, between incompatible objects of desire or knowledge, or within the subject herself). (shrink)

Within the framework of 'Temporalities and the Urban Fabric: Co-Producing Liminal Spaces in Transitional Epochs,' this rigorous examination unravels the multilayered nuances of temporality and its intimate relationship with urban spaces in times of transition. The research delineates the intricate interplay between public exhibitions, urban realms, and socio-political paradigms, particularly within the dynamic settings of the metropolitan entities of Houston and Amsterdam. These cities, as epitomes of temporal urban flux, become fertile grounds for exploring the ephemeral essence of liminal spaces (...) and their transformative manifestations. By weaving together diverse academic domains – from Design Computation and Fabrication to Urban Communities and Spatial Justice – this study underscores the symbiotic fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Gamification within the broader canvas of urban temporalities. Crucially, the research accentuates the transformative potential of Extended Reality (XR) in augmenting the theoretical and methodological contours of urban studies within these transitional epochs. (shrink)

This article considers a novel approach to researching sporting embodiment via what has been termed ‘autophenomenography’. Whilst having some similarities with autoethnography, autophenomenography provides a distinctive research form, located within phenomenology as theoretical and methodological tradition. Its focus is upon the researcher’s own lived experience of a phenomenon or phenomena. This article examines some of the key elements of a sociological phenomenological approach to studying sporting embodiment in general before portraying how autophenomenography was utilised specifically within two recent research projects (...) on distance running. The thorny issues of epoche and bracketing within phenomenological and autophenomenographical research are addressed and some practical suggestions tentatively posited. (shrink)

Husserl (a mathematician by education) remained a few famous and notable philosophical “slogans” along with his innovative doctrine of phenomenology directed to transcend “reality” in a more general essence underlying both “body” and “mind” (after Descartes) and called sometimes “ontology” (terminologically following his notorious assistant Heidegger). Then, Husserl’s tradition can be tracked as an idea for philosophy to be reinterpreted in a way to be both generalized and mathenatizable in the final analysis. The paper offers a pattern borrowed from the (...) theory of information and quantum information (therefore relating philosophy to both mathematics and physics) to formalize logically a few key concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology such as “epoché” “eidetic, phenomenological, and transcendental reductions” as well as the identification of “phenomenological, transcendental, and psychological reductions” in a way allowing for that identification to be continued to “eidetic reduction” (and thus to mathematics). The approach is tested by an independent and earlier idea of Husserl, “logical arithmetic” (parallelly implemented in mathematics by Whitehead and Russell’s Principia) as what “Hilbert arithmetic” generalizing Peano arithmetics is interpreted. A basic conclusion states for the unification of philosophy, mathematics, and physics in their foundations and fundamentals to be the Husserl tradition both tracked to its origin (in the being itself after Heidegger or after Husserl’s “zu Sache selbst”) and embodied in the development of human cognition in the third millennium. (shrink)

Advancements in computing, instrumentation, robotics, digital imaging, and simulation modeling have changed science into a technology-driven institution. Government, industry, and society increasingly exert their influence over science, raising questions of values and objectivity. These and other profound changes have led many to speculate that we are in the midst of an epochal break in scientific history. -/- This edited volume presents an in-depth examination of these issues from philosophical, historical, social, and cultural perspectives. It offers arguments both for and against (...) the epochal break thesis in light of historical antecedents. Contributors discuss topics such as: science as a continuing epistemological enterprise; the decline of the individual scientist and the rise of communities; the intertwining of scientific and technological needs; links to prior practices and ways of thinking; the alleged divide between mode-1 and mode-2 research methods; the commodification of university science; and the shift from the scientific to a technological enterprise. Additionally, they examine the epochal break thesis using specific examples, including the transition from laboratory to real world experiments; the increased reliance on computer imaging; how analog and digital technologies condition behaviors that shape the object and beholder; the cultural significance of humanoid robots; the erosion of scientific quality in experimentation; and the effect of computers on prediction at the expense of explanation. -/- Whether these events represent a historic break in scientific theory, practice, and methodology is disputed. What they do offer is an important occasion for philosophical analysis of the epistemic, institutional and moral questions affecting current and future scientific pursuits. (shrink)

The theme of phenomenology and quantum physics is here tackled by examining some basic interpretational issues in quantum physics. One key issue in quantum theory from the very beginning has been whether it is possible to provide a quantum ontology of particles in motion in the same way as in classical physics, or whether we are restricted to stay within a more limited view of quantum systems, in terms of complementary but mutually exclusive phenomena. In phenomenological terms we could describe (...) the situation by saying that according to the usual interpretation of quantum theory, quantum phenomena require a kind of epoche. However, there are other interpretations that seem to re-establish the possibility of a mind-independent ontology at the quantum level. We will show that even such ontological interpretations contain novel, non-classical features, which require them to give a special role to “phenomena” or “appearances”, a role not encountered in classical physics. We will conclude that while ontological interpretations of quantum theory are possible, quantum theory implies the need of a certain kind of epoche even for this type of interpretations. While different from the epoche connected to phenomenological description, the “quantum epoche” nevertheless points to a potentially interesting parallel between phenomenology and quantum philosophy. (shrink)

The question of whether a proper phenomenological investigation and analysis requires one to perform the epoché and the reduction has not only been discussed within phenomenological philosophy. It is also very much a question that has been hotly debated within qualitative research. Amedeo Giorgi, in particular, has insisted that no scientific research can claim phenomenological status unless it is supported by some use of the epoché and reduction. Giorgi partially bases this claim on ideas found in Husserl’s writings on phenomenological (...) psychology. In the present paper, I discuss Husserl’s ideas and argue that while the epoché and the reduction are crucial for transcendental phenomenology, it is much more questionable whether they are also relevant for a non-philosophical application of phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper argues that Husserl’s method is partially driven by an attempt to avoid certain absurdities inherent in Hume’s epistemology. In this limited respect, we may say that Hume opened the door to phenomenology, but as a sacrificial lamb. However, Hume was well aware of his self-defeating position, and perhaps, in some respects, the need for an alternative. Moreover, Hume’s “mistakes” may have incited Husserl’s discovery of the epoche, and thus, transcendental phenomenology.

This article presents possible answers, and their respective probabilities, to the question, ‘What are the consequences of the present global crisis in the proximate future of the World System?’ It also attempts to describe the basic characteristics of the forthcoming ‘Epoch of New Coalitions’ and to forecast certain future conditions. Among the problems analyzed in this paper are the following: What does the weakening of the economic role of the USA as the World System centre mean? Will there be a (...) leader in the future World System? Will the deficit of global governance and world fragmentation continue to worsen? How can national sovereignty be transformed? (shrink)

L'articolo analizza i fondamenti delle indagini percettive nell'impostazione fenomenologica. In particolare l'ambito uditivo si struttura in modalità, ricezioni ed analisi che, attraverso la critica di vari autori (Husserl, Heidegger, Dufrenne, Ihde, Schaeffer), si mostrano articolate in due direzioni (soggetto-oggetto e oggetto-soggetto). L' analisi delle componenti costitutive porta a riconoscere come ricorrente tra autori differenti quell'impostazione del problema la quale asserisce che, se da un lato non può prescindere dall'attività percettiva, come attività propria del soggetto, dall'altro questa stessa cerca una legittimità (...) emergente dalle cose stesse. La costituzione, una volta riconosciuto il darsi dell'oggetto sonoro, risiede, tuttavia, nelle attività percettive che delineano così il differenziarsi degli ascolti. (shrink)

The present article tries to analyze the role played in Hans Jonas’ ethical reflection by religious—namely, Jewish—tradition. Jonas goes in search of an ultimate foundation for his ethics and his theory of the good in order to face the challenges currently posed by technology’s nihilistic attitude towards life and ethics. Jonas’ ethical investigation enters into the domain of metaphysics, which offers an incomparable contribution to the philosophical endeavour, without undermining its overall independence. In this way, Jewish categories—such as remorse, shame, (...) sacrifice, repentance, and selfrestraint—strengthen the philosopher’s ethical reflection, since he considers them to be essential moral values for the technological epoch. Yet the reference to the Jewish tradition supplies Jonas’ ethical endeavour with a powerful but only hypothetical insight into transcendence. (shrink)

In this paper the ethical problem is discussed how moral judgments of foreign cultures and bygone epochs can be justified. After ruling out the extremes of moral absolutism (judging without any reservations by the standards of one's own culture and epoch) and moral relativism (judging only by the respective standards of the time and culture in question) the following solution to the dilemma is sought: A distinction has to be made between judging the norms and institutions in power at a (...) certain place and time and judging people acting within the social institutions of their time and culture. While the former may be judged rigorously, only taking into account the objective possibilities for having other institutions at a certain development stage, the latter should be judged against the background of the common sense morals of the respective time and culture. (shrink)

The monograph presents the ideas about the main changes that occurred in the development of technologies from the emergence of Homo sapiens till present time and outlines the prospects of their development in the next 30–60 years and in some respect until the end of the twenty-first century. What determines the transition of a society from one level of development to another? One of the most fundamental causes is the global technological transformations. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the (...) most important are three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution; 2) the Industrial Revolution; and 3) the Cybernetic one. The book introduces the theory of production revolutions which is a new valuable explanatory paradigm that analyzes causes and trends of dramatic shifts in historical process. The authors describe the course of technological transformations in history and demonstrate a possible application of the theory to explain the present and forthcoming technological changes. They analyze the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and forecast the main shifts in the next half a century. On this basis the authors present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. They make some predictions about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the twenty-first century and show that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. The authors argue that the transition to the starting final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (in the 2030–2040s) will first occur in the field of medicine (in some its innovative branches). In future we will deal with the started convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MANBRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, additive, nano- and bio- technologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies). The monograph gives an outline of the future breakthroughs in medicine and some other technologies (between the 2010s and 2070s). (shrink)

The main theory at the core of this monograph is that the person is an entity ontologically new, since she is able to perform an act of self-transcendence, which is meant as her critical distancing from her own “self”, understood as subject of social recognition (Anerkennung), in order to open to the encounter with the world (Weltoffenheit). This allows us to consider a person in a new way, different both from confessional interpretations that see her only as a center of (...) the spirit and from reductivistic views. Schelling examines the act of self-transcendence through the concept of ecstasy, whereas Scheler associates it with the phenomenological reduction. The act of self-transcendence, that Schelling sees as originated by the “hunger of being”, is at the roots of the formation process of a person (Bildung): the person takes her shape by exiting from her own self-referential dimension and encountering otherness. If considered from this viewpoint, Plato’s “epimeleia heautou” exceeds an intimistic perspective: the “care” is no more a solipsistic self-care, but rather becomes the care through which the person transcends her own self to open to the relationships with otherness. It turns, therefore, into a care for world-openness (care for Weltoffenheit). The transformation of the individual and of society so becomes the double-faced aspect of the same process. The development of this set of problems occurs through a dialogue with Schelling’s and Scheler’s positions, but it is also supported by a historical-philosophical investigation, that for instance provides evidence of the influences of Schelling’s Berlin period on Scheler’s last theories and on the philosophical anthropology of the 20th century. Schelling was the first to conceive the concept of “eccentricity” in an anthropological sense, since until then the term had been confined to Kepler’s astronomy. Consequently, the planets’ elliptic (eccentric) movement heightens to an emblematic metaphor of human nature and freedom. The monograph also examines a possible convergence between Plato’s epimeleia heautou and Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. The book ends with a chapter on the topic of Vorbild. The exemplary testimony, that is Vorbild, becomes witnessing evidence immune from any pedagogical-moralistic intent: in fact, if it should relapse into the rhetoric of the “wish to give a good example”, it would immediately conform to the opposite logic of the model. A model is universal in so far as it makes everyone more like the others, nullifying the diversity, whereas exemplariness is universal in so far as it makes everyone more unique and motivates each one to follow her own characteristic path of existential trans-formation. Exemplarity doesn’t convey any contents, but rather encourages a kind of solidaristic involvement. Yet there are also negative exemplarities (Gegenbild) that place obstacles in the formation and block the existence of the personal center. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to consider the socio-cultural aspect of the processes of integration and differentiation in the development of the system of education in Russia that undergoes changes in a globalized society.

This is a serious critque of Whitehead's "epochal theory of time." It argues that our human experience of time is more like Whitehead's divine continuous concrescence than it is like temporal atomism. It offers additional arguments against temporal atomism at either the human or divine levels, and arguments for conceiving selves at both the divine and human levels as actual entities.

In this article, following on from earlier debates in the journal regarding the ‘thorny issue’ of epochē and bracketing in sociological phenomenological research, we consider more generally the challenges of engaging in reflexivity and bracketing when undertaking ethnographic ‘insider’ research, or research in familiar settings. We ground our discussion and illustrate some of the key challenges by drawing on the experience of undertaking this research approach with a group of competitive swimmers, who were participating in a British university performance swimming (...) programme at the time of the doctoral study. The primary researcher was highly familiar with the phenomenon of competitive swimming, having been both a competitive swimmer and swimming coach. Some of the key elements of a sociological phenomenological approach to studying physical-cultural embodiment are first delineated, before addressing the considerable challenges of engaging in sustained reflexivity and bracketing, using the swimming research for illustrative purposes. We suggest some practical ways in which researchers in sport and physical cultures might approach epochē and bracketing in ethnographic ‘insider’ research. -/- KEYWORDS: Sociological phenomenology, competitive swimming, insider research, epochē/bracketing. (shrink)

Do the changes that have taken place in the structures and methods of the production of scientific knowledge and in our understanding of science over the past fifty years justify speaking of an epochal break in the development of science? Gregor Schiemann addresses this issues through the notion of a scientific revolution and claims that at present we are not witnessing a new scientific revolution. Instead, Schiemann argues that after the so-called Scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a (...) caesura occurred in the course of the nineteenth century that constituted a departure from the early modern origins of science. This change was characterized by the loss of certainty on the part of the scientists, by the steadily increasing importance of scientific communities (rather than individuals), and by the systematic intertwinement of scientific and societal development. As to present science, Schiemann admits that important changes have occurred, but he denies the conflation of nature and culture: even the OncoMouse is a natural organism, though a seriously damaged one. (shrink)

Information can be considered as the most fundamental, philosophical, physical and mathematical concept originating from the totality by means of physical and mathematical transcendentalism (the counterpart of philosophical transcendentalism). Classical and quantum information, particularly by their units, bit and qubit, correspond and unify the finite and infinite. As classical information is relevant to finite series and sets, as quantum information, to infinite ones. A fundamental joint relativity of the finite and infinite, of the external and internal is to be investigated. (...) The corresponding invariance is able to define physical action and its quantity only on the basis of information and especially: on the relativity of classical and quantum information. The concept of transcendental time, an epoché in relation to the direction of time arrow can be defined. Its correlate is that information invariant to the finite and infinite, therefore unifying both classical and quantum information. (shrink)

A principle, according to which any scientific theory can be mathematized, is investigated. Social science, liberal arts, history, and philosophy are meant first of all. That kind of theory is presupposed to be a consistent text, which can be exhaustedly represented by a certain mathematical structure constructively. In thus used, the term “theory” includes all hypotheses as yet unconfirmed as already rejected. The investigation of the sketch of a possible proof of the principle demonstrates that it should be accepted rather (...) a metamathematical axiom about the relation of mathematics and reality. The main statement is formulated as follows: Any scientific theory admits isomorphism to some mathematical structure in a way constructive. Its investigation needs philosophical means. Husserl’s phenomenology is what is used, and then the conception of “bracketing reality” is modelled to generalize Peano arithmetic in its relation to set theory in the foundation of mathematics. The obtained model is equivalent to the generalization of Peano arithmetic by means of replacing the axiom of induction with that of transfinite induction. The sketch of the proof is organized in five steps: a generalization of epoché; involving transfinite induction in the transition between Peano arithmetic and set theory; discussing the finiteness of Peano arithmetic; applying transfinite induction to Peano arithmetic; discussing an arithmetical model of reality. Accepting or rejecting the principle, two kinds of mathematics appear differing from each other by its relation to reality. Accepting the principle, mathematics has to include reality within itself in a kind of Pythagoreanism. These two kinds are called in paper correspondingly Hilbert mathematics and Gödel mathematics. The sketch of the proof of the principle demonstrates that the generalization of Peano arithmetic as above can be interpreted as a model of Hilbert mathematics into Gödel mathematics therefore showing that the former is not less consistent than the latter, and the principle is an independent axiom. The present paper follows a pathway grounded on Husserl’s phenomenology and “bracketing reality” to achieve the generalized arithmetic necessary for the principle to be founded in alternative ontology, in which there is no reality external to mathematics: reality is included within mathematics. That latter mathematics is able to self-found itself and can be called Hilbert mathematics in honour of Hilbert’s program for self-founding mathematics on the base of arithmetic. The principle of universal mathematizability is consistent to Hilbert mathematics, but not to Gödel mathematics. Consequently, its validity or rejection would resolve the problem which mathematics refers to our being; and vice versa: the choice between them for different reasons would confirm or refuse the principle as to the being. An information interpretation of Hilbert mathematics is involved. It is a kind of ontology of information. The Schrödinger equation in quantum mechanics is involved to illustrate that ontology. Thus the problem which of the two mathematics is more relevant to our being is discussed again in a new way A few directions for future work can be: a rigorous formal proof of the principle as an independent axiom; the further development of information ontology consistent to both kinds of mathematics, but much more natural for Hilbert mathematics; the development of the information interpretation of quantum mechanics as a mathematical one for information ontology and thus Hilbert mathematics; the description of consciousness in terms of information ontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how Husserl, via the method of the epoche, dissolves Merleau-Ponty’s starting point in the gestalt structuralism of primary corporeal intersubjectivity, revealing a more radically temporal foundation that has nothing of gestalt form in it. Whereas for Merleau-Ponty, the dependency of the parts belonging to a whole is a presupposed unity, for Husserl, a whole instantiates a temporal story unfolding each of its parts out of the others associatively-synthetically as the furthering of a continuous progression (...) or enrichment of sense. As a consequence of the deconstruction of the gestalt, Husserl’s notion of the foreign must be understood in different terms than that of corporeal otherness. He offers an otherness to self that manifests itself as a thematic belonging to self whose self-similarity presupposes and is built from this irreducible foreignness. This is not a privileging the same over the different , but rather a situating of the binary in a more insubstantial and therefore more intimate space of relationship than that of corporeal embodiment. (shrink)

The paper aims to capture the fundamental points that suggest that the conceptual system of the Anthropocene is an acknowledgement of an Environ-mental Revolution within human thought, cognition, and action in relation to life-supporting conditions on Earth. The revolutionary change in thought and knowledge is expressed through epochal consciousness, the emergence of which correlates with the coming of environmental thought and later the establishmento f the Earth system science, in which the concept of the Anthropocene for the Earth System was (...) developed. Further, the paper highlights, the fundamental aspects of the Environ-mental Revolution, which should not only help to better understand it but also inspire further discussions on this issue. (shrink)

This article reviews an epochal change in international thinking about physical punishment of children from being a reasonable method of chastisement to one that is harmful to children and troubling to families. In addition, the article suggests shifts in thinking about physical punishment were originally pioneered as part and parcel of the dismantling of national laws granting fathers’ specific rights to admonish children under conventions of patria potestas. A comparative historical framework of analysis involving two case studies of Ireland and (...) Ghana illustrates non-unilinear pathways of international convergence towards the prohibition of physical punishment. The comparative historical analysis highlights the 1930s and 1940s as an era when Ireland began to reject patria potestas and religious or judicial rulings which allowed for children to be given ‘a good beating’ in family and school settings. However, from the same period, Ghana is seen to experience Christian remonstrations not to ‘spare the rod’ leading to the ‘conventional’ tradition of ‘this is how we do it here’. Two case studies serve to illustrate that banning physical punishment was less controversial in Ireland where allied traditions of patria potestas and disciplinarian Christian beliefs had lost their moral hegemony than in Ghana where such beliefs still held influence. The article concludes overall that normative campaigns against physical punishment of children emanate from a coherent paradigm of family policy where childcare, education, and well-being of children are embedded as everyday societal responsibilities rather than privatised or patriarchal familial obligations. The coherent model offers an alternative moral hegemony to neo-liberal and Janus-faced conceptualisations of good or ‘intact’ families versus ‘broken’ or ‘troubled’ families. (shrink)

Along with “epoché” or his “reductions”, Husserl’s “noema” and “noesis”, being neologisms invented by him, are main concepts in phenomenology able to represent its originality. Following the trace of a recent paper (Penchev 2021 July 23), its formal and philosophical approach is extended to both correlative notions, in the present article. They are able to reveal the genesis of the world from consciousness in a transcendental method relevant to Husserl, but furthermore described formally as a process of how subjective temporality (...) appears being isomorphic to objective temporality of the “world by itself” (an abstraction meaning it out of consciousness or transcendental consciousness): thus, it shares the same mathematical structure, which is embodied in the physical process of decoherence by the physical quantity of quantum information. The temporal world is able to appear naturally (rather as a ridiculous effect of the mythical “Big Bang”). The same process translated by formal and mathematical tools as interpreted in terms of “noema”, “noesis”, or transcendental consciousness is isomorphic to how “Self” (including in an individual and psychological sense) appears in virtue of transcendental consciousness. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, machine learning and neural networks represent extremely exciting and powerful machine learning-based techniques used to solve many real-world problems. Artificial intelligence is the branch of computer sciences that emphasizes the development of intelligent machines, thinking and working like humans. For example, recognition, problem-solving, learning, visual perception, decision-making and planning. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning in artificial intelligence that has networks capable of learning unsupervised from data that is unstructured or unlabeled. Deep learning (...) is a technique used to generate face detection and recognize it for real or fake by using profile images and determine the differences between them. In this study, we used deep learning techniques to generate models for Real and Fake face detection. The goal is determining a suitable way to detect real and fake faces. The model was designed and implemented, including both Dataset of images: Real and Fake faces detection through the use of Deep learning algorithms based on neural networks. We have trained dataset which consists of 9,000 images for total in 150 epochs, and got the ResNet50 model to be the best model of network architectures used with 100% training accuracy, 99.18% validation accuracy, training loss 0.0003, validation loss 0.0265, and testing accuracy 99%. (shrink)

In this article, we develop a new approach to integrating philosophical phenomenology with qualitative research. The approach uses phenomenology’s concepts, namely existentials, rather than methods such as the epoché or reductions. We here introduce the approach to both philosophers and qualitative researchers, as we believe that these studies are best conducted through interdisciplinary collaboration. In section 1, we review the debate over phenomenology’s role in qualitative research and argue that qualitative theorists have not taken full advantage of what philosophical phenomenology (...) has to offer, thus motivating the need for new approaches. In section 2, we introduce our alternative approach, which we call Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research (PGQR). Drawing parallels with phenomenology’s applications in the cognitive sciences, we explain how phenomenological grounding can be used to conceptually front-load a qualitative study, establishing an explicit focus on one or more structures of human existence, or of our being in the world. In section 3, we illustrate this approach with an example of a qualitative study carried out by one of the authors: a study of the existential impact of early parental bereavement. In section 4, we clarify the kind of knowledge that phenomenologically grounded studies generate and how it may be integrated with existing approaches. (shrink)

Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration. This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between reading in depth and studying new domains. To study this decision-making process, we examine the reading choices made by one of the most celebrated scientists of the modern era: Charles Darwin. From the full-text of books listed in his chronologically-organized reading journals, we generate topic models to quantify his local (...) (text-to-text) and global (text-to-past) reading decisions using Kullback-Liebler Divergence, a cognitively-validated, information-theoretic measure of relative surprise. Rather than a pattern of surprise-minimization, corresponding to a pure exploitation strategy, Darwin’s behavior shifts from early exploitation to later exploration, seeking unusually high levels of cognitive surprise relative to previous eras. These shifts, detected by an unsupervised Bayesian model, correlate with major intellectual epochs of his career as identified both by qualitative scholarship and Darwin’s own self-commentary. Our methods allow us to compare his consumption of texts with their publication order. We find Darwin’s consumption more exploratory than the culture’s production, suggesting that underneath gradual societal changes are the explorations of individual synthesis and discovery. Our quantitative methods advance the study of cognitive search through a framework for testing interactions between individual and collective behavior and between short- and long-term consumption choices. This novel application of topic modeling to characterize individual reading complements widespread studies of collective scientific behavior. (shrink)

AI is revolutionizing everyone’s life, and it is crucial that it does so in the right way. AI’s profound and far-reaching potential for transformation concerns the engineering of systems that have some degree of autonomous agency. This is epochal and requires establishing a new, ethical balance between human and artificial autonomy.

Methodologically rigorous description, analysis, and critique of postmodern phenomena presuppose a rigorous theory of postmodernity, for which the philosophy of Martin Heidegger holds great untapped promise. This essay explicates the basic content of Heidegger’s “metametaphysics,” since for Heidegger a “metaphysics” is the epochally prevailing projection of the meaning of being in general, and he offers a theory of Western metaphysics. I begin with Heidegger’s analysis of the “regional ontologies” of the sciences in his 1927 magnum opus Being and Time, since (...) the metametaphysical works of the “late middle” Heidegger in the 1930s–1940s extend this analytical framework to metaphysics as global ontology. I then explicate Heidegger’s views on modern metaphysics, focusing on his analyses of modern science and the philosophy of Descartes, before turning to his theory of postmodernity, which I extract from his analyses of modern technology and the philosophy of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar argues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through exactly (...) what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields. (shrink)

Throughout our entire evolutionary history, the physical environment has played a significant role in shaping humans’ subsistence adaptations. As early humans began to colonise novel biomes and construct ecological niches, their behavioural flexibility appeared as an unquestionable fact. During the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition, the shift from foraging to farming radically altered ecosystem services, resulting in increased exposure to zoonotic pathogens and the emergence of structural inequalities that pervade our current human condition in the Anthropocene epoch. The article seeks to use (...) an anthropological biosocial analysis to explore the diverse evolutionary paths humans have taken, which in turn shape their relationships with the natural world. Given the enigmatic nature of human behavior, it is essential to examine it holistically to understand how different subsistence patterns (e.g., intensive agriculture, foraging, and horticulture) have influenced resilience and adaptation to environmental challenges. (shrink)

Chapter 1st of the book. This chapter explores the fundamental ambiguity of the concept of plasticity – between openness and determination, change and stabilization of forms. This pluralism of meanings is used to unpack different instantiations of corporeal plasticity across various epochs, starting from ancient and early modern medicine, particularly humouralism. A genealogical approach displaces the notion that plasticity is a unitary phenomenon, coming in the abstract, and illuminates the unequal distribution of different forms of plasticities across social, gender, and (...) ethnic groups. Taking a longer view of the plastic body as a ubiquitous belief in traditions predating and coexisting with modern medicine will help contextualize the seeming radicalism of today’s turn to permeability and the exceptionalism of Western findings. By highlighting the complex biopolitical usages of plasticity in the past, the chapter warns against simplistic appropriations of the term in contemporary body/world configurations driven by findings in neuroscience, epigenetics and microbiomics. (shrink)

Common sense is on the one hand a certain set of processes of natural cognition - of speaking, reasoning, seeing, and so on. On the other hand common sense is a system of beliefs (of folk physics, folk psychology and so on). Over against both of these is the world of common sense, the world of objects to which the processes of natural cognition and the corresponding belief-contents standardly relate. What are the structures of this world? How does the scientific (...) treatment of this world relate to traditional and contemporary metaphysics and formal ontology? Can we embrace a thesis of common-sense realism to the effect that the world of common sense exists uniquely? Or must we adopt instead a position of cultural relativism which would assign distinct worlds of common sense to each group and epoch? The present paper draws on recent work in computer science (especially in the fields of naive and qualitative physics), in perceptual and developmental psychology, and in cognitive anthropology, in order to consider in a new light these and related questions and to draw conclusions for the methodology and philosophical foundations of the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

There are possible worlds in which time is circular and finite in duration, forming a loop of, say, 12,000 years. There are also possible worlds in which time is linear and infinite in both directions and in which history is repetitive, consisting of infinitely many 12,000-year epochs, each two of which are exactly alike with respect to all intrinsic, purely qualitative properties. Could one ever have empirical evidence that one inhabits a world of the first kind rather than a world (...) of the second kind? We argue for the affirmative answer, contra Quine, Newton-Smith, and Bergström. Our argument for that conclusion differs from an argument for the same conclusion due to Weir. Weir’s argument is probabilistic and explicitly requires having evidence against determinism. Our argument is a direct appeal to the simplicity of laws, and it involves no probabilistic component. It is modeled on Shoemaker’s argument that one could have evidence of time without change. (shrink)

Given the significance of Nicholas of Cusa’s ecclesiastical career, it is no surprise that a good deal of academic attention on Nicholas has focused on his role in the history of the church. Nevertheless, it would also be fair to say that a good deal of the attention that is focused on the life and thought of Nicholas of Cusa is the legacy of prior generations of scholars who saw in his theoretical work an opportunity to define the most salient (...) features of transformations in the habits of thinking leading from the Middle Ages into the epoch of modernity. Thus, although contemporary scholars have not been able to achieve any clear consensus on the question of whether Nicholas belongs to the Middle Ages or to modernity, the field of Cusanus studies has become much more attentive to the possibility that the uniqueness and significance of Nicholas’s vision is a function of his ability to synthesize and redeploy a variety of strands in the Catholic intellectual tradition—strands that are as apt to involve practical matters of canon law and church reform as they are to hinge on a unique and richly developed mystical theology. Given the flourishing of the attention devoted to Nicholas in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the choices about which texts to include in this article were difficult ones. The rationale for this article’s predominant focus on scholarship of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that, insofar as the recent studies listed here enter into the debates that have been shaped by their predecessors, the sources mentioned here will point readers to the prior work in the field not acknowledged here. (shrink)

It has been known for long time that the cosmic sound wave was there since the early epoch of the Universe. Signatures of its existence are abound. However, such a sound wave model of cosmology is rarely developed fully into a complete framework. This paper can be considered as our second attempt towards such a complete description of the Universe based on soliton wave solution of cosmological KdV equation. Then we advance further this KdV equation by virtue of Cellular Automaton (...) method to solve the PDEs. We submit wholeheartedly Robert Kurucz’s hypothesis that Big Bang should be replaced with a finite cellular automaton universe with no expansion. Nonetheless, we are fully aware that our model is far from being complete, but it appears the proposed cellular automaton model of the Universe is very close in spirit to what Konrad Zuse envisaged long time ago. It is our hope that the new proposed method can be verified with observation data. But we admit that our model is still in its infancy, more researches are needed to fill all the missing details. (shrink)

It has been known for long time that the cosmic sound wave was there since the early epoch of the Universe. Signatures of its existence are abound. However, such an acoustic model of cosmology is rarely developed fully into a complete framework from the notion of space, cancer therapy up to the sky. This paper may be the first attempt towards such a complete description of the Universe based on classical wave equation of sound. It is argued that one can (...) arrive at a consistent description of space, elementary particles, Sachs-Wolfe acoustic theorem, up to a novel approach for cancer therapy, starting from this simple classical wave equation of sound. We also discuss a plausible extension of Acoustic Sachs-Wolfe theorem based on its analogue with Klein-Gordon equation to become Acoustic Sachs-Wolfe-Christianto-Smarandache-Umniyati (ASWoCSU) equation. It is our hope that the new proposed equation can be verified with observation data. But we admit that our model is still in its infancy, more researches are needed to fill all the missing details. (shrink)

There is a remarkable trend in contemporary environmentalism that emphasizes ‘accepting responsibility’ for the natural world in contrast to outdated preservationist thinking that shirks such responsibility. This approach is often explained and justified by reference to the anthropocene: this fundamentally new epoch—defined by human domination—requires active human intervention to avert planetary catastrophe. However, in this paper, I suggest this rhetoric encourages a flight from history. This often jubilant, sometimes anxious, yearning for unprecedented human innovation and—ultimately—control in our new millennia mirrors (...) the Futurist movement that took off near the beginning of the last century. Despite the significant differences in the details of how academics have defended this twenty-first-century environmental outlook, they all represent the true flight from history; they too quickly jettison the ideas of historical environmentalists and so misunderstand the environmental values at the heart of preservation that are more salient than ever. (shrink)

The paper is a partly provocative essay edited as a humanitarian study in philosophy of science and social philosophy, reflecting on the practical, “anti-metaphysical” turn taken place since the 20th century and continuing until now. The article advocates that it is about time it to be overcome because it is the main obstacle for the further development of exact and natural sciences including mathematics therefore restoring the unity of philosophy and sciences in the dawn of modern science when the great (...) scientists were philosophers as a necessary condition for their revolutionary achievements, and the physicists were simultaneously mathematicians not less than philosophers and even theologians as Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz were just as their predecessors, Copernicus or Galileo Galilei. The revolution in science accomplished by them needed philosophy since any scientific revolution, then necessarily growing into social, needs philosophy; and if ones wish to prevent social revolutions originating from fundamental scientific discoveries, in turn relying on the close link of sciences and philosophy, they are to cut the link at issue, and just that happened in the 20th centuries therefore implicitly heralding a “brave new world” of eternal normal science without revolutions whether scientific or social. Fukuyama’s “end of history” requires an “end of scientific history” as it is an obligatory premise, and separating sciences from philosophy is sufficient for that, though proclaimed quite otherwise: as overcoming metaphysics preventing sciences and substituting them by quasi-sciences. Particularly, that “anti-metaphysical turn” has established for science to obey society absolutely and thoroughly, obviously a condition contradicting the scientific and social revolutions in Modernity featured by the domination of science over society by the mediation of philosophy able to translate all epochal scientific discoveries as social corollaries. A special attention is paid to quantum mechanics, being the frontier of physics in the 20th century, where that anti-metaphysical turn is discernibly concentrated and may be notated by the famous slogan “Shut up and calculate!” regardless of its authorship. Just the revolutionary discoveries in physics, for example those of “dark mass” and “dark energy” or entanglement force now its rejection therefore restoring the unity of philosophy, mathematics and physics, made ever possible the establishment of modern science by its emancipation from religion, and thus and ind final analysis, from society. (shrink)

“Myth” comprises the first chapter of the book, The Logic of the Imagination, by Miki Kiyoshi. In this chapter Miki analyzes the significance of myth (shinwa) as possessing a certain reality despite being “fictions.” He begins by broadening the meaning of the imagination to argue for a logic of the imagination that involves expressive action or poiesis (production) in general, of which myth is one important product. The imagination gathers in myth material from the environing world lived by the social (...) collectivity. Its formation of images (Bilder) expresses the pathos of a people vis-à-vis their environment, but myth also contains elements of logos in the form of intellectual representations and figures. And their combination becomes expressed externally by stimulating and guiding action. In this way Miki argues that myths contain both emotive and kinetic elements, which by moving people to action, are capable of making history. Thus rooted in the symbiosis between individual and social and between society and environment, myth possesses a “historical creativity.” And he also argues that myths can be present with a sense of reality at any epoch in history, even today, wherever and whenever their primeval power is felt to function, “drawing out” a new reality, a new world, out of the natural world. (shrink)

Aims and Objectives. This article uses the concept of embodiment to demonstrate a conceptual approach to applied phenomenology. -/- Background. Traditionally, qualitative researchers and healthcare professionals have been taught phenomenological methods, such as the epoché, reduction, or bracketing. These methods are typically construed as a way of avoiding biases so that one may attend to the phenomena in an open and unprejudiced way. However, it has also been argued that qualitative researchers and healthcare professionals can benefit from phenomenology’s well-articulated theoretical (...) framework, which consists of core concepts, such as selfhood, empathy, temporality, spatiality, affectivity, and embodiment. -/- Design. This is a discursive article that demonstrates a conceptual approach to applied phenomenology. -/- Method. To outline and explain this approach to applied phenomenology, the Discussion section walks the reader through four stages of phenomenology, which progress incrementally from the most theoretical to the most practical. -/- Discussion. Part one introduces the philosophical concept of embodiment, which can be applied broadly to any human subject. Part two shows how philosophically trained phenomenologists use the concept of embodiment to describe general features of illness and disability. Part three illustrates how the phenomenological concept of embodiment can inform empirical qualitative studies and reflects on the challenges of integrating philosophy and qualitative research. Part four turns to phenomenology’s application in clinical practice and outlines a workshop model that guides clinicians through the process of using phenomenological concepts to better understand patient experience. -/- Conclusion and Relevance to Clinical Practice. A conceptual approach to applied phenomenology provides a valuable alternative to traditional methodological approaches. Phenomenological concepts provide a foundation for better understanding patient experience in both qualitative health research and clinical practice, and therefore provide resources for enhancing patient care. (shrink)

The present article analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal the contradictions of the current unipolar (...) world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. In the paper also explains the strengthening belief that the US leading status will inevitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world without a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coalitions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsibility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coalitions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World System and bring an increasing turbulence and conflict intensity. (shrink)

Decadence in philosophy means evaluating truth claims exclusively in terms of provocation, in terms of how vigorously they generate subsequent thought. The best truth/book/essay/video doesn’t settle questions, but produces still more thought, writing, production. -/- Decadence privileges the history of thinking over the history of truth. Thought’s history runs from base servility (the best thinking eliminates the need for itself by culminating in universal truth, Platonism), to dialectical servility (the ceaseless interplay of interpretation as a verb, and as a noun, (...) Nietzscheanism), to decadence, where thought overthrows truth’s independent value and incorporates assertions into its own expression and acceleration. -/- Decadence is defined as truth serving thought, and practiced when the only reason we have truths is to generate more thinking. While the definition structures well historically, the claim in Decadence of the French Nietzsche is not that there are serial epochs – Platonism followed by Nietzscheanism followed by Decadence – but that an esoteric vein of decadence runs through philosophy’s history. (shrink)

Abstract: Sign language recognition is one of the most rapidly expanding fields of study today. Many new technologies have been developed in recent years in the fields of artificial intelligence the sign language-based communication is valuable to not only deaf and dumb community, but also beneficial for individuals suffering from Autism, downs Syndrome, Apraxia of Speech for correspondence. The biggest problem faced by people with hearing disabilities is the people's lack of understanding of their requirements. In this paper we try (...) to fill this gap. By trying to translate sign language using artificial intelligence algorithms, we focused in this paper using transfer learning technique based on deep learning by utilizing a MobileNet algorithm and compared it with the previous paper results[10a], where we get in the Mobilenet algorithm on the degree of Accuracy 93,48% but the VGG16 the accuracy was 100% For the same number of images (43500 in the dataset in size 64*64 pixel ) and the same data split training data into training dataset (70%) and validation dataset(15%) and testing dataset(15%) and 20 epoch . (shrink)