Scientific sources demonstrate different attitudes of researchers to cryptocurrencies because they treat them as a category of currency, virtual money, commodity, etc. Accordingly, the relation to the valuation and risk of cryptocurrency as an investment object is different. The purpose of the article is to identify cryptocurrency value formation factors and determine the risks of investing in cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is simultaneously considered a currency, an asset with uncertain income, and a specific product, the price of which is determined (...) by the energy costs for mining new cryptocurrency blocks. Thus, the paper examines the risks of investing in cryptocurrency from several positions. First, the study identifies the factors of formation of the value and risk of cryptocurrency as ordinary money based on comparing cryptocurrency with traditional money. Unlike traditional money, cryptocurrency is not tied to the economic performance of a particular country; also, central banks do not control or regulate their mining. Instead, the cryptocurrency emissions depend on the computational capacity of the equipment used for their mining. As a financial asset, cryptocurrency can be a “financial bubble” because their value increasing often exceeds the cost of mining. On the other hand, given the emergence of cryptocurrency as a phenomenon of the information economy, the paper analyses the impact of specific technical features (cryptographic hashing algorithm, the complexity of creating new blocks, the technology of verification of mining operations, etc.) on the risk of investing in cryptocurrency assets. (shrink)

While most discussions of corruption focus on administration, institutions, the law and public policy, little attention in the debate about societal reform is paid to the “internalities” of anti-corruption efforts, specifically to character-formation and issues of personal and corporate integrity. While the word “integrity” is frequently mentioned as the goal to be achieved through institutional reforms, even in criminal prosecutions, the specifically philosophical aspects of character-formation and the development of corporate and individual virtues in a rational and systematic (...) way tend to be neglected. This paper focuses on the “internalities” of anti-corruption work with special emphasis on the pre-requisites that need to be ensured on behalf of the social elites in order for proper individual and collective character- formation to take place throughout the society. The author argues that a systematic pursuit of socially recognised virtues, both those pertaining to society as a whole and those specific to particular professions and social groups, is the most comprehensive and strategically justified way of pursuing anti-corruption policy, while institutional and penal policies can only serve an auxiliary role. The pursuit of institutional and criminal justice policies against corruption in a society that is subject to increasing relativism with regard to values and morality is at best ineffective, and at worst socially destructive. Thus the paper suggests a re-examination of the social discourse on the level of what the author calls “value strategy” and the gradual building of a plan to create and solidify specifically designed features of “corporate character” for key sectors of the society. This approach can serve as the main long-term strategy to improve the public profile of integrity and reinforce morality in both the public and civil sectors. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science, it is a common proposal that values are illegitimate in science and should be counteracted whenever they drive inquiry to the confirmation of predetermined conclusions. Drawing on recent cognitive scientific research on human reasoning and confirmation bias, I argue that this view should be rejected. Advocates of it have overlooked that values that drive inquiry to the confirmation of predetermined conclusions can contribute to the reliability of scientific inquiry at the group level even when they (...) negatively affect an individual’s cognition. This casts doubt on the proposal that such values should always be illegitimate in science. It also suggests that advocates of that proposal assume a narrow, individualistic account of science that threatens to undermine their own project of ensuring reliable belief formation in science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 113-115 [Access article in PDF] Wilhelm Dilthey. The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Edited with an Introduction by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp xiii + 399. Cloth $55.00. The first complete English translation of Wilhelm Dilthey's (1833-1911) most important mature work—a seminal work for hermeneutics, phenomenology, critical theory, and (...) the philosophy of history and the human sciences—is to be greatly welcomed. This excellent translation conveys the subtlety and richness of Dilthey's German. Its innovative translations of key terms will provide renewed stimulus to interpreting Dilthey's works.This edition includes Dilthey's investigation of the structures of consciousness in his three preliminary "Studies toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," his exploration [End Page 113] of the import of the productive systems of historical life for knowledge in The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, and his final and perhaps best formulation of hermeneutics in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life."Although Carnap and others utilized the word Aufbau in the sense of epistemic "construction," Makkreel and Rodi clarify how Dilthey used it in the sense of "formation." The formation of the historical world refers to its articulation in the human sciences which themselves theoretically reflect this historical world (GSW3: 1). They also argue that Dilthey's theory of the human sciences is not merely an epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie), but a theory of knowledge (Theorie des Wissens) that relates knowing to its context. Whereas epistemology seeks to establish the foundations of conceptual cognition (Erkenntnis), Dilthey places the epistemology of the human sciences within a larger context of the knowledge (Wissen) embodied in social practices and historical forms of life. Knowledge encompasses not only the conceptual cognition of reality, but also the values and purposes established about it.Dilthey accordingly situated the human sciences, which are determined by their respective object and how the object is given (SW3: 38), in relation to a pretheoretical life-nexus and its forms of elementary or ordinary understanding. These are tied up with the temporality, historicity, and structures of social life; with an epochal "objective spirit." Objective spirit indicates the ways in which the past has been objectified and continues to shape contemporary practices and it is analyzed in the human sciences as cultural systems and the external organization of society. A significant characteristic of the Formation is the development of the notion of "productive system or nexus." This new translation of Wirkungszusammenhang suggests a historical efficacy or productivity prior to any analysis of it as either causal or teleological (SW3: 4).The human sciences include the study of dynamic interconnected systems that articulate the intersection of meaning, value, purpose, and force. Dilthey interpreted these temporally, such that meaning primarily concerns how humans are determined by their past, value is based on their present feeling of life, and purpose is projective striving into the future in the face of productive forces (Kräfte) which cannot always be predicted or controlled.For Dilthey, understanding (verstehen) is intrinsically interpretive. Humans can cognize themselves and others only indirectly (SW3: 108), since we are conscious and reflective beings who are bound to the facticity of our bodies and world. Given that we know ourselves and others primarily through actions, life-expressions, and their effects—rather than through introspection or intuition—and that everyday understanding can face breakdowns and what seems distant or strange, elementary understanding leads to higher forms of understanding and interpretation; i.e., hermeneutics. Dilthey's project of a critique of historical reason proceeds from the context of life in all of its complexity and concreteness to the conceptual cognition of the sciences and, finally, to reflective awareness (Besinnung). This reflection is made possible by the prereflective reflexivity (Innesein or Innewerden) of the human subject and, with its double meaning of "sense" (Sinn) as meaning and bodily awareness, constitutes the basic movement of Dilthey's thought.Understanding provides more than scientific access to... (shrink)

Accounts of aesthetic valuing emphasize two constraints on the formation of aesthetic belief. We must form our own aesthetic beliefs by engaging with aesthetic value first-hand (the acquaintance principle) and by using our own capacities (the autonomy principle). But why? C. Thi Nguyen’s proposal is that aesthetic valuing has an inverted structure. We often care about inquiry and engagement for the sake of having true beliefs, but in aesthetic engagement this is flipped: we care about arriving at good (...) aesthetic beliefs for the sake of the values that arise in the process of doing so. The engagement is the point, so we must use our own capacities in first-hand encounters. Here I challenge Nguyen’s account. I argue that it misconstrues the value of aesthetic belief; it conflicts with restrictions on aesthetic testimony; and it has trouble harnessing engagement-value for a theory of aesthetic value. A better approach emphasizes the social character of aesthetic valuing. On this view, aesthetic valuing is a social practice structured around the collaborative exercise and improvement of certain special capacities. The autonomy and acquaintance principles tell us to engage these capacities in forming our aesthetic beliefs. Understood aright, and contrary to consensus, these rules are identical. (shrink)

Introduction. The development of legal culture and a culture of human rights in the modern world through media technologies, is acquiring special significance in connection with the processes of globalization and the spread of media in recent decades. The purpose of the article is to study the prospects for the use of media education in the formation of the legal social culture and a culture of human rights. Materials and methods. Based on a study of domestic and foreign sources, (...) issues of media education, media literacy, spiritual and moral education, the legal culture of society, the phenomenon of post-truth and ways of forming critical, creative thinking are considered. The use of general scientific, philosophical, and socio-pedagogical methods has made it possible to study media education as a dialogue of learning, stimulating the development of rational, critical thinking, focused on the search for the value foundations of intellectual and social activity. Results. The development of the field of information and communication technologies determines the principles for the formation of the content and orientation of modern education. Media education is interlinked with the development of democracy and human rights. It influences the formation of a culture of citizen participation, their active social position, civic and political culture. Media education plays a significant role in shaping the legal culture of society since critical media research and information research focuses on the analysis of power structures and structures of dominance in the media. A study of the interpretations of the concepts of "media education" and "media literacy" made it possible to show that media education focuses a person on a critical approach to media content. One of the main issues of media education is teaching a person the skills to critically study media and media technologies, which involves addressing the technological, cultural and historical specifics of specific media used at a specific time and place. Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life, work, communication, and ways of selfpresentation, the formation of values, participation in socially significant events. Therefore, a critical approach to mass media should be based on knowledge of socio-philosophical theories, ethics and research in the field of mass media. Discussion. Mass media are constructing a history of human rights, which updates the topic of the media policy of human rights, combining socio-legal, cultural and media theories. Education in the field of acquiring information perception skills, the ability to correctly understand the importance of audiovisual images, to competently handle and navigate information flows are necessary for the life of a modern person in society. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the permissibility of forming defensive alliances, which is a neglected topic in the contemporary literature on the ethics of war and peace. Drawing on the jus ad bellum criterion of proportionality in just war theory, I argue that if permissible defensive force requires that its expected harms must be counterbalanced by its expected goods, then, permissible defensive alliance formation seems to also require that its expected harms must be counterbalanced by its expected goods, as (...) the latter can result in much the same consequences as the former. Moreover, due to the incommensurability of values in play when making proportionality judgments, I argue for a value pluralist understanding of the criterion. On this view, defensive alliance formation is proportionate if the expected gains in certain values (goods) intuitively justify the expected losses in others (harms) when compared to the alternative expected value trade-offs of not allying. To explore the implications of my theoretical claims I consider them in relation to John Mearsheimer’s influential account of the causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War. On this account, the West’s strategy to assimilate Ukraine and Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership post-annexation of Crimea were disproportionate because the expected harms were unjustified when compared to the alternative expected goods and harms of forgoing Ukrainian membership of NATO. This does not imply that Russia’s aggression is just, but it does imply that the West and Ukraine are partially responsible for the war and that they acted impermissibly in attempting to expand/join NATO. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to formulate an Ingardenian conception of the literary work’s aesthetic value. Following Mitscherling’s lead, I attempt to place Ingarden’s aesthetics within his overall phenomenological-ontological project. That is, I argue that Ingarden’s aesthetics can only be properly fathomed in the context of his ontological deliberations, since, as he himself often enunciated, all his philosophical investigations constitute a realist rejoinder to Husserl’s turn toward transcendental idealism. To this end, I bring together insights from his aesthetics and (...) ontology to establish a coherent account of values, where artistic and aesthetic values are analyzed as they manifest themselves in the literary work of art. By attending to the ontology of its aesthetic (and artistic) values, I argue, the literary work’s stratified formation becomes more explicit. Keywords: Roman Ingarden, aesthetic value, artistic value, the literary work of art, ontology, aesthetics. (shrink)

I defend the claim that fictional narratives provide cognitive benefits to readers in virtue of helping them to understand character. Fictions allow readers to rehearse the skill of selecting and organizing into narratives those episodes of a life that reflect traits or values. Two further benefits follow: first, fictional narratives provide character models that we can apply to real-life individuals (including ourselves), and second, fictional narratives help readers to reflect on the value priorities that constitute character. I defend the (...) plausibility of these cognitive benefits against certain worries raised by Gregory Currie and Peter Goldie. (shrink)

Despite widespread recognition of an emergent politics of data in our midst, we strikingly lack a political theory of data. We readily acknowledge the presence of data across our political lives, but we often do not know how to conceptualize the politics of all those data points—the forms of power they constitute and the kinds of political subjects they implicate. Recent work in numerous academic disciplines is evidence of the first steps toward a political theory of data. This article maps (...) some limits of this emergent literature with an eye to enriching its theoretical range. The literature on data politics, both within political theory and elsewhere, has thus far focused almost exclusively on the algorithm. This article locates a further dimension of data politics in the work of formatting technology or, more simply, formats. Formats are simultaneously conceptual and technical in the ways they define what can even count as data, and by extension who can count as data and how they can count. A focus on formats is of theoretical value because it provides a bridge between work on the conceptual contours of categories and the technology-centric literature on algorithms that tends to ignore the more conceptual dimensions of data technology. The political insight enabled by format theory is shown in the context of an extended interrogation of the politics of racialized redlining. (shrink)

Following Darcy’s concession in 1901, Britain began oil exploration in the southwest of Iran. In 1908, economic oil was discovered, and the Anglo- Persian Oil Company (APOC) was established. This company from its establishment was under the influence of the British Government, to extend that, Britain became its major shareholder in 1917 which continued until the nationalization of Iran’s oil in 1951. In the meantime, the concession and following agreements prepared an almost autonomous status for the company. Generally, Iran had (...) never been a British colony, however; this status had evidence of colonialism and let the company build the artificial environment in Iran’s southwestern, based on its attitudes and values, as well as hierarchical structure, racial-class segregation, and closed society, which experts consider it as a type of social engineering. According to this, the building formed by the company could manifest the upstream ideas, specifically in towns that were completely shaped by it. Therefore, Masjed Soleyman and Abadan, the two main company towns of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which were quite isolated from other parts of Iran, could be suitable platforms for displaying the company’s attitudes and values. Therefore, this research by interpretive-historical methodology, based on both primary and secondary sources from desk research and archival research, investigates the manifestation of the company’s attitudes and values in its quiet a half-century (1901-1951) building in Masjed Soleyman and Abadan, in five periods. These periods were shaped based on the most important happens including periods of exploration (1901-1908), formation (1908-1917), primary development (1917-1933), secondary development (1933-1939), and leading to the nationalization of oil (1939- 1951). In the first period, there is no evidence of architecture or urbanism, in the second and third periods, architecture, specifically bungalows appeared company values and in the fourth and fifth periods, urbanism especially, garden cities represented company values. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose some transfor mations based on the centroid points between single valued neutrosophic numbers. We introduce these trans formations according to truth, indeterminacy and falsity value of single valued neutrosophic numbers. We propose a new similarity measure based on falsity value between single valued neutrosophic sets. Then we prove some properties on new similarity measure based on falsity value between falsity value between single valued neutrosophic sets. Furthermore, we propose similarity measure based (...) on falsity value between single valued neutrosophic sets based on the centroid points of transformed single valued neutrosophic numbers. We also apply the proposed similarity measure between single valued neutrosophic sets to deal with pattern recognition problems. (shrink)

"The Personal is Political": This was an often-heard slogan of feminist groups in the late sixties and early seventies. The slogan is no doubt open to many interpretations. There is one interpretation which touches on the epistemology of social facts, viz. the slogan claims that in assessing the features of a political system, personal experiences have privileged evidentiary value. For instancte, in the face of third person reports about political corruption, I may remain unmoved in my belief that the (...) political powers are morally upstanding, and it is only when I myself am adversely affected, that I come to change my views. There are two standard patterns of explanation of this type of belief formation: (i) We know that third-person reports may be lessreliable than first-person experiences; (ii) If the third-person reports are no less reliable than first-person experiences, we may just be dealing with a standard pattern of epistemic irrationality. However, we argue that there is also a much more surprising pattern of explanation: under certain conditions, a Bayesian argument can be proffered to the effect that it is rational to change one's beliefs in the face of personal experiences and not in the face of third-person reports, even if these experiences and reports are equally reliable. Hence, the feminist slogan (at least on one particular interpretation of it) receives unexpected support from Bayesian comers. We also show that this pattern of explanation has surprising repercussions on the question of the evidentiary value of miracles in philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The article considers the problem of ensuring the economic security of trade enterprises by forming an optimal pricing policy. The methodology of formation the minimum and maximum selling prices of trade enterprise, maintenance of margin of economic security, which is based on research of turnover costs and working capital of trade enterprise is offered. Based on statistical data of trade enterprises, the types of prices by product range are determined, which form a stable economic situation and ensure economic security (...) of trade enterprise. The necessity of forming the optimal price policy and selling prices of trade enterprises with the use of Pareto efficiency tools and construction of single-criteria and multi-criteria tasks, indicators of quality of commodity resources of trade enterprises is substantiated. Using the Excel software processor and the «Regression» function, economic-mathematical models of optimal prices for the product range of trade enterprises are built. The results testified to the effectiveness of the proposed model of the optimal pricing policy of trade enterprises, as the obtained values are within the minimum selling prices, which provides economic security of trade enterprises. The process of forming the pricing policy of trade enterprises to ensure economic security is proposed, which is based on the principles of pricing, appropriate methodological tools and monitoring of market environment factors. Organizational, economic, legal, social and market (marketing) mechanisms for the formation of effective pricing policy of trade enterprises aimed at ensuring economic security are identified. This study is practically interesting for personnel of trade enterprises, regardless of organizationallegal forms of ownership and activities, and theoretically – for researchers dealing with pricing. (shrink)

GLOBALIZATION, ARAB SPRING AND THE CHANGING SOCIAL VALUES By Socrates Ebo, PhD -/- ABSTRACT -/- The tumultuous and eponymous events that set-off socio-political changes in the Maghreb from November 2010 were a confirmation or, better still, manifestation of a lager process which had gradually but steadily emerged a major factor in the socio-economic formation of the globe. This factor is no other than the process of globalization; a process that was heightened by the revolutions in Information and Communication Technology (...) (ICT) and the emergence of the New Media. Until the days of the social media, strong men who held authoritarian sway in the Maghreb carried on without any qualms as to the security of their political formation. But the New Media revolution changed all that. This work captures the role of globalization in the revolutions that swept through the Maghreb which have come to be known as the Arab Spring. -/- . (shrink)

Purpose: The modern development of mass culture is characterized by the growth of the market for graphic narratives, the rapid increase in the segment of digital comics, and the active use of comics as a communication tool in various industries and disciplinary areas. The purpose of the study: to determine the media capabilities of the comics in presenting educational, cross-cultural, problematic, and ethical content of modern organizational culture. Design / Method / Approach: The review nature of the article involves the (...) use of traditional general scientific methods (description, comparison, abstraction, and specification). The interdisciplinary nature of the study actualized the comparative method in presenting the cross-cultural features of organizational/office/corporate comics. Findings: The influence of visual mass culture and the spread of interdisciplinary research tools made it possible to analyze three areas within the stated problematic: adaptive and audience-oriented comics techniques popularized their use for training and educational purposes; the possibility of comparing the typology of world comics with cross-cultural global studies (we relied on the methodology and results of the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) project); the ability of the comics to reproduce, maintain, and spread the tradition of a particular organizational culture. Theoretical value of the study: The work has expanded: (1) the possibilities of a multidisciplinary approach to comics culture in order to clarify the interdisciplinary methodology; (2) the idea of forming and maintaining an authentic organizational culture using comics techniques; (3) the possibilities of using graphic narratives in the process of educational and professional communication. Practical value of the study: The possibilities of using comics in modern organizational culture at the level of self-presentation, training, and maintaining traditions. Originality/value of the study: A multidirectional analysis of the influence of mass culture (comics as a part of it) on the representation of everyday modern business processes is presented. Research limitations / Future research: Analyzing business processes in the language of graphic culture requires valid methods. Further research requires a larger statistical sample and improved interdisciplinary methods. -/- Мета роботи: Сучасний розвиток масової культури характеризується зростанням ринку графічних наративів, стрімким збільшенням сегмента цифрових коміксів, активним використанням коміксу як інструменту комунікації в різних галузях і дисциплінарних напрямах. Мета дослідження: визначити медійні можливості коміксу в представленні освітньо-навчального, кроскультурного та проблемно-етичного контенту сучасної організаційної культури. Дизайн / Метод / Підхід дослідження: Оглядовий характер статті передбачає залучення традиційних загальнонаукових методів (опис, порівняння, абстрагування та конкретизація). Міждисциплінарність дослідження актуалізувала компаративний метод у представленні крос-культурних особливостей організаційних/офісних/корпоративних коміксів. Результати дослідження: Вплив візуальної масової культури та поширення міждисциплінарних інструментів дослідження уможливили в межах заявленої проблематики аналіз трьох напрямів: адаптивні та аудиторноспрямовані коміксові техніки популяризували їх використання з навчальною та освітньою метою; можливість зіставлення типології світових коміксів з кроскультурними глобальними дослідженнями (ми спиралися на методику та результати проєкту GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness); можливості коміксу відтворювати, підтримувати та поширювати традицію певної організаційної культури. Теоретична цінність дослідження: Робота розширила: (1) можливості різновекторного підходу до коміксової культури з метою уточнення міждисциплінарної методики; (2) уявлення щодо формування та підтримки автентичної організаційної культури за допомогою коміксових технік; (3) можливості використання графічних наративів в процесі навчально-освітньої та професійної комунікації. Практична цінність дослідження: Можливості використання коміксу в сучасній організаційній культурі на рівні самопрезентації, навчання та підтримки традицій. Оригінальність/цінність дослідження: Презентовано різновекторний аналіз впливу масової культури (коміксової як її частини) на представлення повсякдення сучасних бізнес-процесів. Обмеження дослідження / Майбутні дослідження: Аналіз бізнес-процесів мовою графічної культури вимагає валідних методів. Подальші дослідження потребують більшої статистичної вибірки та вдосконалення міждисциплінарних методик. (shrink)

Husserl and Cassirer stand, according to their own self-understanding, as key 20th century figures in the cultivation of Enlightenment’s principles and views on humanity, culture, and history. In a word, they both understand European culture and history as a story of progress (§ 1). As I see it, central in a culture and its dynamics is its system of values, and a grounded understanding of the issue of progress presupposes an adequate theory of the standing or constitution as well as (...) of the givenness and transvaluation of values. Neither Husserl nor Cassirer, however, actually advanced any such theory. We are still in need of one in order to account for culture’s formation and dynamics in history. Next, I briefly review Husserl’s and Cassirer’s available problematic views on values (§ 2). Then, in § 3, I examine some of the central problems in the traditional approaches to culture and to values. In § 4, I appeal to Köhler’s very interesting Gestalt theoretical approach to values and pinpoint some of its problems. Next, in § 5, I suggest how we could start the research from below, from the level of the organism, which could eventually shed some new light on the problem of value constitution and givenness. Finally, in § 6, I attempt to sketch an explanation for how we can use this new approach to values in order to understand actual cultural formation and its historicity, in a way that goes further than the whiggish philosophy of history. (shrink)

Ayalon Eidelstein’s Openness and Faith focuses on the centrality of the idea of openness, or open-mindedness, to the educational sphere. The first half presents the challenges in modern ‘divided-consciousness’ and its consequences of egoism, materialism, and hedonism on the one hand, and religious fanatism on the other. Eidelstein’s main audience is the Israeli secular public, to which he proposes an educational and philosophical middle-way rooted in sincere human and inter-human openness. This openness is inspired by the idea of disinterestedness that (...) Kant articulates in his Critique of Judgment. Eidelstein refers to additional authors, including Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, to conceptualize the idea of open-mindedness. In the second half of the book, he engages classical American Pragmatism, specifically that of William James, in order to establish the possibility for, and the validity of, a humane open-mindedness. Pragmatism thus paves the way for accepting beliefs that may otherwise be excluded as superstitions and accords them a legitimate and productive role in the life of a modern individual. The difficulty, however, lies in Eidelstein’s employment of Kantian disinterestedness, for it is in fact seriously dissonant with the worthy pragmatic educational purposes that Eidelstein elaborates in the second half of his book. Pragmatism is opposed to disinterestedness in that it stresses the entanglement of fact and value, viewing interests as playing a necessary and productive part in moral motivation and action, while Kantian deontology eliminates consequentialism from the moral scope. While for pragmatists (for example John Dewey’s Democracy and Education) the human creature is holistically conceived, as made of flesh and blood and not only as ‘spirit’, Kant maintained the dualistic Cartesian tradition. This tension calls for a rigorous address. Since Eidelstein’s book is making an important claim about the place open-mindedness has within the Judaism, it must be noted that the disinterestedness of a presumed human ‘self’ is also not easily compatible with the dominant voices in normative Jewish tradition. The Bible does not deal to a large extent with the ‘self’ or with mental intentions, and its conception of the human is not categorically different in the Talmudic corpus. On the contrary, the rabbis frequently endorse pragmatic and ‘external’ reasons, as the motivational basis for action. The kind of purism associated with disinterestedness (as in Mishnah Avot 5:18-19) is barely represented in rabbinic thought. Openness and Faith: In Search of Cultural Education Here and Now is nevertheless an important contribution to the intellectual discourse over the individual and public virtues. In our ever-more segregated and fenced-off world, there is an urgency to delineating the virtue of openness, hoping that Ecclesiastes is right in contending that “No person has power over the spirit [רוח] to retain it” (8:8). But to make Eidelstein’s point about openness in the second half of his book educationally viable, there a need for a pragmatic refinement of the philosophical anthropology in its first half. One way or the other, Openness and Faith is praiseworthy for its articulateness and depth, which invites its readers to an open-minded conversation about the concept of openness. (shrink)

This paper defends the concept of racialization against its critics. As the concept has become increasingly popular, questions about its meaning and value have been raised, and a backlash against its use has occurred. I argue that when “racialization” is properly understood, criticisms of the concept are unsuccessful. I defend a definition of racialization and identify its companion concept, “racialized group.” Racialization is often used as a synonym for “racial formation.” I argue that this is a mistake. Racial (...) formation theory is committed to racial ontology, but racialization is best understood as the process through which racialized – rather than racial – groups are formed. “Racialization” plays a unique role in the conceptual landscape, and it is a key concept for race eliminativists and anti-realists about race. (shrink)

John Tillson argues, on grounds of children’s well-being, that it is impermissible to teach them religious views. I defend a practice of pluralistically advocating religious views to children. As long as there are no monopolies of influence over children, and as long as advocates do not use coercion, deceit, or manipulation, children can greatly benefit without having their rational abilities subverted, or incurring undue risk to form false beliefs. This solution should counter, to some extent, both perfectionist and antiperfectionist reasons (...) against initiating children into religions. (shrink)

This article is devoted to describing results of conceptualization of the idea of mind at the stage of maturity. Delineated the acquisition by the energy system (mind) of stable morphological characteristics, which associated with such a pivotal formation as the discourse. A qualitative structural and ontological sign of the system transition to this stage is the transformation of the verbal morphology of the mind into a discursive one. The analysis of the poststructuralist understanding of discourse in the context of (...) the dispersion of meanings (Foucault) made it possible to formulate a notion of it as a meaning that is constituted by the relation between the discursive practice and the worldview, regarded as a meta-discourse or a global discursive formation. In consequence of this relationship, a discrete and simultaneous scattering of meanings arises, the procedural side of which is a concrete discourse, and its productive aspect is linked with the creation of a local discursive formation. Based on this view it is proposed a logical formula of discourse, which takes into account the entropy of the language and the entropy of the worldview, as a particular manifestation of the mind entropy. Using this formula and considering the reactive nature of discourse, it was developed a classification, which included such types of discourses as reactive, suggestive, synthetic and creative. In turn, the proposed types of discourses are correlated with the specific characteristics of certain activities, as a psychological category. Also, it was considered the translation of the structure of discourse dissipation from the cognitive plan into the affective sphere because of which it is formed a hierarchy of significances, which performs the sense-forming function. It was analyzed the inverse influence of the hierarchy of significances on the structure of meanings dispersion and for respective account it was introduced a conditional coefficient of the value deviation of the significance of the meanings. This parameter reflects the sense correction of the meaning that occurs in the process of the emergence of discourse from discursive practice. Thus, the discourse is presented as a complex dynamic formation of the mind arising at the maturity stage of the system as a result of the combined effect of entropic dispersion of meanings and the value deviation of their significances. (shrink)

The German phenomenologist Max Scheler, commonly considered one of the most important exponents of value objectivism, does not claim an “absolute” value objectivism, as often asserted. The values are objecttive towards the will of the subject, not towards the creative act of loving. This presupposes a radical new conception of the value. According to Scheler, in fact, the values are no qualities to be attributed to the perceived object but the very first thing grasped on a phenomenon, (...) i.e. the “first messenger” (erste Bote) of the phenomenon: the value is what orients the formation and development of the experience. This paper proposes to deal with the problem of the value objectivism in relation to the self-transcendence and to the self-realization of the person. The value objectivism should be measured by its faculty to orient the act through which a person detaches himself from the proper factual self. The “Good” isn‟t therefore related to an ideal transcendent object, but to the act to transcend the proper self in a creative way. The fundamental thesis is that the personal identity constitutes itself only in a critical distancing from the self. This concrete act of self-transcending cannot be understood merely in the sense of the self-interpretation – of the “strong evaluations” of Charles Taylor – but requires also the presence of the exemplarity of the other. (shrink)

The relevance of the study is the need to reform the educational environment based on the values of inclusion to ensure the accessibility of quality education for all people. The purpose of the study is to justify the need an inclusive culture formation as a culture of acceptance of diversity and mutual understanding. The research problem is the lack of development of an inclusive organizational culture is a barrier to ensuring the availability of quality education in a variety of (...) health limitations and the educational needs of students. The study is based on the analysis of regulatory documents, comparison and generalization of the available approaches in international and Russian theory and practice on the inclusion values issue in the strategy of educational organizations and the formation of an inclusive organizational culture. Results: it was established that the inclusive agenda in education aggravates the problem of the formation of an inclusive organizational culture as a culture of accepting diversity as a value, advantage, significant educational, upbringing, developing resource; staged, the need for a proactive strategy of the formation of intercultural competencies are justified. -/- . (shrink)

Current treatments of cultural heritage as an object of moral concern (whether it be the heritage of mankind or of some particular group of people) have tended to treat it as a means to ensure human wellbeing: either as ‘cultural property’ or ‘cultural patrimony’, suggesting concomitant rights of possession and exclusion, or otherwise as something which, gaining its ethical significance from the roles it plays in people’s lives and the formation of their identities, is the beneficiary at most of (...) indirect moral obligations. In contrast, I argue that cultural heritage, as something whose existence can go well or badly, can itself qualify as a moral patient towards which we may have obligations which need not be accounted for in terms of subsequent benefits to human beings. Drawing inspiration from environmental ethics and suggesting that heritage, like an ecosystem, is a complex network of interrelations which invites a holistic understanding, I develop a framework for thinking about cultural heritage which shows how such a thing can feature in our ethical reflections as intrinsically worthy of respect in spite of its most obvious differences from the ‘natural’ world: the very human origins of cultural heritage and its involvement with human life in all its forms. As part of the development of this framework I consider the epistemic difficulties which arise when for all our holistic sophistication we do find ourselves in the predicament of having to judge the moral worth of some item of heritage, possibly someone else’s heritage and possibly something which we find ourselves disposed to value more because of than despite any mysteries surrounding it. I conclude by offering some tentative illustrations of how such a framework might operate in the practical course of normative moral reasoning about what should be done with items of cultural heritage. -/- [Erratum note: p. 30 conflates the Kumasi palace looting of 1874 with that of 1896.]. (shrink)

This treatise covers the history, now more than 170 years long, of researches and debates concerning the biblical city of Ai. This archetypical chapter in the evolution of biblical archaeology and historiography was never presented in full. I use the historical data as a case study to explore a number of epistemological issues, such as the creation and revision of scientific knowledge, the formation and change of consensus, the Kuhnian model of paradigm shift, several models of discrimination between hypotheses (...) about the past, the interplay between scientists' values and their epistemic beliefs, and the truth-bearing of historiographic reconstruction. I show, in particular, that when scientists share common epistemic values they can modify their beliefs even when such changes go against deeply entrenched biases and preconceptions. Considerations of coherence usually constrain such modifications, and when sufficient data is available the result can be a profound change of beliefs. Several episodes of the "Ai debates" demonstrate, however, that similar change of beliefs will not occur when non-epistemic values take precedence. (shrink)

The article presents the results of a theoretical and empirical study of the process of development of the axiological identity of a future psychologist in the process of his/her professional training in a higher educational institution. The article substantiates the necessity to use the technology of forming the axiological identity of a future psychologist in the process of professional training as a structural component of his/her integral professional value. The axiological identity of a future psychologist is characterized by the (...) integration of personal, professional, and social identities at the level of his/her valuable self-consciousness. The formation of this construct depends on the understanding of its own system of values, understanding of abilities, desires, and capabilities, allows the future psychologist to purposefully build prospects for professional growth, implement informed and responsible choices backed by a sense of integrative integrity, self-esteem, and self-sufficiency. -/- While choosing the direction of the professional activity, a student designs the axiological perspectives of his/her own professional identity, that is, it gives the dominance to the personal, professional, and social values that most closely reflect his/her personal meanings in the professional activity corresponding to preferences and promote self-realization in the future. Difficulties in the vocational education and further professional activity arise under the condition of axiological identification uncertainty, a low level of self-interest and self-understanding, external motivation to the student’s professional activities, etc. Taking into account the above, we have developed and implemented in the process of professional training of students of psychology the technology of “Formation of the axiological identity of a future psychologist”, whose purpose is to support future specialists in the process of becoming a personal, professional, and social value identity on the basis of the student’s awareness of the value of personal “I” as a psychologist and confidence in their own desire and ability to provide psychological help to the Other. (shrink)

Philippine folk dances can be dated back as early as the pre-colonial period which inherited by our forefathers and passed through several generations of Filipinos. These traditional dances are considered treasures of our homeland for they depict the humble beginnings of our native countrymen and serve as a symbol of national identity. The study utilized focused ethnography and was limited on the documentation of the ethnic dance of Ayta Ambala’s tribe, their cultural values along with its cultural heritage situated at (...) Barangay Tubo-Tubo, Dinalupihan, Bataan which were considered unpublished, especially their respective dance patterns or movements. There were ten (10) informants involved in the study. Five (5) were key informants (KIs) who represent the emic perspective while five (5) were general informants (GIs) who represent the etic perspective of the paper. Findings revealed that Dances of Ayta Ambala include: Courtship (Sayaw Magligaw), Ceremonial (Sayaw Talipe), and Occupational (Sayaw Pangangaho). The said dances reflect different activities that are commong among the tribe. It also includes the historical background, costume, time signature, props, structural formation, dance steps, and figures. Although the values are not directly presented, these are still manifesting through the themes of their dances. Included in the cultural values are bravery, respect, and gratitude which are also part of the embodiment of different dances of Ayta Ambala. As observed, the other two emerging themes are also connected to the cultural heritage of Ayta Ambala. This means, their dances mirror their surroundings, their daily activities, and their identity as tribes. The emerging themes on cultural heritage are religious beliefs, courtships, and livelihood. (shrink)

The guiding premise of this chapter is that we, as teachers in higher education, must consider how the content and form of our teaching can foster inclusivity through a responsiveness to neurodiverse learning styles. A narrow pedagogical focus on lectures, textual engagement, and essay-writing threatens to exclude neurodivergent students whose ways of learning and making sense of the world may not be best supported through these traditional forms of pedagogy. As we discuss in this chapter, we, as engineering ethics educators, (...) designed and implemented a new engineering ethics exercise with which we aimed to promote inclusivity at the levels of form and content. At the content level, students were invited to critically engage with inclusivity-undermining ableist assumptions in technology development. This took shape, at the form level, through a hands-on ‘material tinkering’ workshop in which students collaboratively and creatively altered (or ‘hacked’) artifacts used in contexts of disability and healthcare, so as to operationalize values of inclusivity and accessibility. Our hunch was that this hands-on tinkering workshop would simultaneously encourage a meaningful way of engagement with these ethical issues and values, while also enacting a more inclusive learning environment by enriching the range of pedagogical activities and learning formats available to our students.As we aim to show in this chapter, we believe this hunch largely panned out – though there are clear areas for future improvement pertaining to the pilot exercise itself and the research we conducted on the exercise. We begin by offering a description of our tinkering exercise. We discuss the exercise’s source of inspiration (Sect. 16.2.1) and its implementation (Sect. 16.2.2), which is visually captured via photographic documentation. We then discuss (Sect. 16.3) how we utilized a triangulated research method to assess the pedagogical value of the exercise. After we discuss our findings, we conclude by identifying areas for future improvement (Sect. 16.4). (shrink)

The reason for physics’ failure to find a final theory of the universe is examined. Problems identified are: the lack of unequivocal definitions for its fundamental elements (time, length, mass, electric charge, energy, work, matter-waves); the danger of relying too much on mathematics for solutions; especially as philosophical arguments conclude the universe cannot have a mathematical basis. It does not even need the concept of number to exist. Numbers and mathematics are human inventions arising from the human predilection for measurement. (...) Following Aristotle, a single fundamental cause is proposed to explore the efficacy of using pure non-mathematical philosophy to explain the universe, contrary to current quantum physical views. The cause is taken as Time, which is then defined, surprisingly leading automatically to a definition of a three-dimensional space answering the question into what can a universe be placed (space before space seems non-sensical). This enables the philosophical arguments to derive a universal rule giving clear-cut descriptions (definitions) of force (both gravitational and electromagnetic), motion, energy, and particles. The formation of atomic nuclei and atomic properties together with an unexpected role for neutrinos follow. In particular, a Popper-test can be prepared by introducing the concept of measurement to allow the philosophy arguments to be tested in another discipline - mathematics. The solution agrees with human physical observations to a remarkable degree of accuracy, automatically explaining and predicting values for Planck’s and the fine-structure constants. Although mathematical, it is included as confirming the efficacy of philosophy in attaining a final theory. (shrink)

In this volume Axel Honneth deepens and develops his highly influential theory of recognition, showing how it enables us both to rethink the concept of justice and to offer a compelling account of the relationship between social reproduction and individual identity formation. Drawing on his reassessment of Hegel’s practical philosophy, Honneth argues that our conception of social justice should be redirected from a preoccupation with the principles of distributing goods to a focus on the measures for creating symmetrical relations (...) of recognition. This theoretical reorientation has far-reaching implications for the theory of justice, as it obliges this theory to engage directly with problems concerning the organization of work and with the ideologies that stabilize relations of domination. In the final part of this volume Honneth shows how the theory of recognition provides a fruitful and illuminating way of exploring the relation between social reproduction and identity formation. Rather than seeing groups as regressive social forms that threaten the autonomy of the individual, Honneth argues that the ‘I’ is dependent on forms of social recognition embodied in groups, since neither self-respect nor self-esteem can be maintained without the supportive experience of practising shared values in the group. This important new book by one of the leading social philosophers of our time will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology, politics and the humanities and social sciences generally. (shrink)

Mental capacities for perceiving, remembering, thinking, and planning involve the processing of structured mental representations. A compositional semantics of such representations would explain how the content of any given representation is determined by the contents of its constituents and their mode of combination. While many have argued that semantic theories of mental representations would have broad value for understanding the mind, there have been few attempts to develop such theories in a systematic and empirically constrained way. This paper contributes (...) to that end by developing a semantics for a ‘fragment’ of our mental representational system: the visual system’s representations of the bounding contours of objects. At least three distinct kinds of composition are involved in such representations: ‘concatenation’, ‘feature composition’, and ‘contour composition’. I sketch the constraints on and semantics of each of these. This account has three principal payoffs. First, it models a working framework for compositionally ascribing structure and content to perceptual representations, while highlighting core kinds of evidence that bear on such ascriptions. Second, it shows how a compositional semantics of perception can be compatible with holistic, or Gestalt, phenomena, which are often taken to show that the whole percept is ‘other than the sum of its parts’. Finally, the account illuminates the format of a key type of perceptual representation, bringing out the ways in which contour representations exhibit domain-specific form of the sort that is typical of structured icons such as diagrams and maps, in contrast to typical discursive representations of logic and language. (shrink)

While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our “reactive attitudes”—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this paper advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the (...) praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize, etc.), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps render intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships. (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a (...) strong tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly film history scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, André Gaudreault and Benoît Turquety (to name just a few) have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. Considering the heightened attention given to kulturtechnik (Siegert), the database as a dominant symbolic metaphor,1 and the decentered networked tenants of the postmodern global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in increasingly intertextual space. Thus, the term (...) “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that accounts for new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. It was once presaged in 1992 that “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema, of which we are seeing the beginning, human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere.” Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. By locating post-cinema within the semblance of social media, we are allocated a newfound series of theoretical interventions, the most marked of which is that of media archeology vis-à-vis dialectical materialism. This is a lens through which Brian Winston has recently deftly decried Virtual Reality’s “empathy machine” utopic illusionism, bolstered by Chris Milk and a slew of neurohumanities researchers, steadily maintaining that the fundamental myth of “technologies of seeing” is in disguising “their artifice, their cultural formation and their ideological import.” However, this approach, which illuminates the bifurcation between Max Horkheimer/Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, neglects what Benjamin identified as occurring to the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility—a shift from a technology’s “cult value,” associated with the unique work, to its “exhibition value,” associated with the social act of viewing as part of a mass. Speaking to this divarication, Benjamin Barber, in Strong Democracy, foresaw new media’s two-fold potential—as they are organized and networked, new media and communications technologies possess the possibility to both energize citizen information and political participation but, simultaneously, to supplement the deterioration of public debate. As evinced by Mark Adrejevic’s concept of Infoglut, this two-pronged possibility has only been exacerbated by the interlocking relationship between the advent of a “glut” of information, post-truth politics, the demise of symbolic efficiency, and a renewed focus on the role of affect and emotion as “alternative modalities for thinking about the role of communication in a post-referential era.” Manuel Castells qualifies Barber’s pessimism, noting that the Internet can “be an appropriate platform for informed, interactive politics, stimulating political participation.. […] beyond the closed doors of political institutions,” but that the Internet, like any technology, “is shaped by its uses and users.” Thus, if there exists a positive correlation between exposure to post-cinema media artifacts and political participation, then I seek to explore the revelatory political possibilities of “exhibition value” by way of a particular “post-cinema” case study: the Marxist-Leninist Turkish hacktivist group Redhack’s YouTube-circulated documentary RED! (2013), a project that demanded—by way of the moving-image—to galvanize cyberprotest and democratize a “hacktivist commons. (shrink)

In his essay against Eberhard, Kant denies that there are innate concepts. Several scholars take Kant’s statement at face value. They claim that Kant did not endorse concept innatism, that the categories are not innate concepts, and that Kant’s views on innateness are significantly different from Leibniz’s. This paper takes issue with those claims. It argues that Kant’s views on the origin of the intellectual concepts are remarkably similar to Leibniz’s. Given two widespread notions of innateness, the dispositional notion (...) and the input/output notion, intellectual concepts are innate for Kant no less than for Leibniz. (shrink)

The effective functioning of a modern enterprise necessitates the awareness of the owners and managers of its strategic orientations, the state of the internal and external environment, its competitive advantages, entrepreneurial potential and development prospects. A well-built business model of the enterprise helps to face these urgent and permanent challenges. However, the formation of a real business model of the enterprise necessitates mastering of theoretical and methodological bases and implementation of long-term practical measures in the field of assessment, shaping, (...) organization and control. This study offers a comprehensive business model of the enterprise that systematically identifies key factors which influence business activity of the enterprise and provide value logic for doing business in the global economic environment. (shrink)

Contrary to the tendency to harmony, consensus and alignment among stakeholders in most of the literature on participation and partnership in corporate social responsibility and responsible innovation practices, in this chapter we ask which concept of participation and partnership is able to account for stakeholder engagement while acknowledging and appreciating their fundamentally different judgements, value frames and viewpoints. To this end, we reflect on a non-reductive and ethical approach to stakeholder engagement, collaboration and partnership, inspired by the philosophy of (...) Emmanuel Levinas. We contrast a cognitive approach with an ethical approach to stakeholder engagement, collaboration and partnership, and explore four characteristics of this ethical approach. Based on the ethical approach to stakeholder engagement, collaboration and partnership, we also provide a three-stage framework for partnership formation in CSR and RI practices. (shrink)

Context: Philosophical and - more recently - empirical approaches to the study of mind have recognized the research of lived experience as crucial for the understanding of their subject matter. Such research is faced with self-referentiality: every attempt at examining the experience seems to change the experience in question. This so-called “excavation fallacy” has been taken by many to undermine the possibility of first-person inquiry as a form of scientific practice. Problem: What is the epistemic character and value of (...) reflectively acquired phenomenological data? Can the study of experience, despite the excavation fallacy, rely on the act of reflection on lived experience and make sense and use of its results? Method: Through a philosophical discourse, informed by empirical first-person inquiry, we explore the experiential structure of the act of reflection and the formation of the corresponding belief about past experience. Results: We present a provisional first-person model of the experiential dynamics of retrospective reflection, in which the reflective act is characterized as enaction of belief about past experience that co-determines - rather than distorts - its results. From a constructivist perspective on the inevitable interdependence between the act of observing and the observed, the excavation “fallacy” is recognized as an intrinsic characteristic of reflection. Reflection is described as an iterative, self-referential process, guided by a context- and subject-specific horizon of expectations. Implications: Knowing the characteristics of the formation of beliefs about experience is essential for understanding first-person data and for the possibility of their acquisition and use in scientific practice, particularly in the context of second-person approaches to the study of experience. Constructivist content: We relate the proposed understanding of reflection to constructivist epistemology and argue that constructivism provides an epistemological foundation for the empirical study of experience more suitable than the traditional epistemological objectivism of cognitive science. We suggest that the constructive nature of the process of reflection calls for a collaboration between the fields of constructivism, phenomenology, and first-person research, and points towards the potential for their mutual enrichment. (shrink)

This dissertation defends an ideal of democratic citizenship inspired by John Dewey’s theory of human flourishing, or “growth.” In its emphasis on the interrelatedness of individual development and social progress, Deweyan growth orients us toward a morally substantive approach to addressing the important question of how diverse citizens can live together well. I argue, however, that Dewey’s understanding of growth as a process by which conflicting interests, beliefs, and values are integrated into a more unified whole—both within the community and (...) within the self—is inadequate to the radical pluralism characteristic of contemporary liberal democratic societies. Given the pragmatist insight into the crucial role of socialization in identity formation, the problem with conceptualizing the ideal self as an integrated unity is that, for many, the complexity and diversity of our social world presents an insuperable obstacle to sustaining a unified (or always unifying) self. Most of us have multiple “selves” forged by the various groups with whom we identify and the often incongruous roles we play in our personal, professional, and/or public lives. Hence I offer a reconstruction of Deweyan growth that accounts for persistent yet positively valued diversity, both within the self and within the community. On the view I urge, which draws on the work of neopragmatist Richard Rorty and Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldua, divisions within the self and between citizens are not merely problems always to be overcome, but potential resources for creating a stronger, more inclusive democracy. (shrink)

This chapter explores properties that bind individuals, knowledge, and communities, together. Section ‎‎1 introduces Hardwig’s argument from trust in others’ testimonies as entailing that trust is the glue ‎that binds individuals into communities. Section 2 asks “what grounds trust?” by exploring assessment ‎of collaborators’ explanatory responsiveness, formal indicators such as affiliation and credibility, ‎appreciation of peers’ tacit knowledge, game-theoretical considerations, and the role moral character ‎of peers, social biases, and social values play in grounding trust. Section 3 deals with establishing (...) ‎reliability standards for formation and breaching of trust. Different epistemic considerations and their ‎underpinning of inductive risks are examined through various communication routes within a ‎discipline, between disciplines, and to the public. Section 4 examines whether a collective entity can ‎be trusted over and above trust that is given to its individual members. Section 5 deals with the roles ‎technological artifacts play in distributed research and collective knowledge. It presents the common ‎view in which genuine trust cannot, in principle, be accorded to artifacts, so as an opposite view. We ‎show that what counts as a genuine object of trust is relevant to debates about the boundaries of ‎collective agency and as a criterion for extended cognitive systems.‎. (shrink)

Childhood looms large in our understanding of human life as it is a phase through which all adults have passed. Childhood is foundational to the development of selfhood, the formation of interests, values and skills and to the lifespan as a whole. Understanding what it is like to be a child, and what differences childhood makes, are essential for any broader understanding of the human condition. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is an outstanding reference (...) source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into five parts: ¿ Being a child ¿ Childhood and moral status ¿ Parents and children ¿ Children in society ¿ Children and the state. Questions covered include: What is a child? Is childhood a uniquely valuable state, and if so why? Can we generalize about the goods of childhood? What rights do children have, and are they different from adults¿ rights? What gives people a right to parent? What role, if any, ought biology to play in determining who has the right to parent a particular child? What kind of rights can parents legitimately exercise over their children? What roles do relationships with siblings and friends play in the shaping of childhoods? How should we think about sexuality and disabilility in childhood, and about racialised children? How should society manage the education of children, and what values should inform such practices? What is a good school? How are children¿s lives affected by being taken into social care? The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of childhood, political philosophy and ethics as well as those in related disciplines such as education, psychology, sociology, social policy, law, social work, youth work, neuroscience and anthropology. (shrink)

To hold that artworks are valuable for their own sake—regardless of whatever secondary value they may have, such as entertainment, formation, education, or a pleasurable experience—is to hold that their final worth is not derived from external or secondary ends. I call this collective set of views the end-in-itself view. Nicholas Stang recently leveled a twofold charge of reductio ad absurdum and operating from a double standard against the EI view. In this article, I refute Stang by showing (...) that the charges do not obtain for at least one variation of the EI view that holds artworks to be valuable for their own sake as internally purposive ends-in-themselves. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, there is a widespread distinction between authenticity as self-discovery (which is an essentialist model, inspired by Rousseau, Herder and the Romantic tradition) and authenticity as self-creation (an existentialist model, inspired mainly by Kierkegaard and Sartre). In this paper, I would like to propose a threefold classification, which ads another model of authenticity, irreducible to any of the previous two. This third model is authenticity as self-reinvention, that could be reconstructed from Nietzsche’s philosophy. The self-reinvention model rests on (...) three different, yet interrelated, ideas: 1) Vitalism: The authentic individual wholeheartedly embraces every aspect of his existence, even pain and sufferings, thus proving he truly owns himself. 2) Perspectivism: The authentic individual is able to reinterpret his mental states in the utmost personal manner, through the transvaluation of values (Umwertung aller Werte) and the spiritualization (Vergeistingung) of his drives. 3) Experimentalism: Authenticity is an incessant play, a constant process of identity formation, which corresponds to Nietzsche’s hypothesis of “the subject as multiplicity” and to his ideal of existence as a work of art or of becoming the poet of your life. (shrink)

Character education in schools has been high on the UK political agenda for the last few years. The government has invested millions in grants to support character education projects and declared its intention to make Britain a global leader in teaching character and resilience. But the policy has many critics: some question whether schools should be involved in the formation of character at all; others worry that the traits schools are being asked to cultivate are excessively competitive or military. (...) In this pamphlet Randall Curren sets out a robust defence of character education. He welcomes the political support it presently enjoys, but contends that greater clarity about the nature, benefits and acquisition of good character is essential. In particular, he argues that too narrow a focus on traits like perseverance and resilience is a serious mistake: these traits are only virtues when they are part of a wider set of moral and intellectual qualities, and when their exercise is guided by good judgment. Curren offers us a compelling and coherent account of what good character is and how it might be cultivated in schools. He explains why schools must be needs-supporting environments that provide students with opportunities to engage in rewarding activity, and why cultivating good character implies promoting the ‘fundamental British values’ of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance. His groundbreaking pamphlet promises to expand the scope and strengthen the foundations of character education in British schools, and should go a long way towards allaying the fears of its detractors. (shrink)

A certain number of cases suggest that our willingness to ascribe “knowledge” can be influenced by practical factors. For revisionary proposals, they indicate that the truth‐values of “knowledge” ascriptions vary with practical factors. For conservative proposals, on the contrary, nothing surprising is happening. Standard pragmatic approaches appeal to pragmatic implicatures and psychological approaches to the idea that belief formation is influenced by practical factors. Conservative proposals have not yet offered a fully satisfactory explanation, though. In this article, I introduce (...) and defend a third conservative proposal which I call “Refined Invariantism”. The two main claims of this proposal are that (1) we should distinguish between high stakes cases in which the subject does not believe (that he knows) the target proposition and those in which he believes (that he knows) the target proposition and that (2) we should adopt a psychological treatment for the first kind of case and a pragmatic treatment based on the epistemic standards for appropriate assertion and action for the second kind of case. I argue that this new combined approach avoids the main pitfalls of its two conservative rivals and that it gives new life to the generality objection levelled against revisionary views. (shrink)

Imogen Dickie's book Fixing Reference promises to reframe the investigation of mental intentionality, or what makes thoughts be about particular things. Dickie focuses on beliefs, and argues that if we can show how our ordinary means of belief formation sustain a certain connection between what our beliefs are about and how they are justified, we will have explained the ability of these ordinary means of belief formation to generate beliefs that are about particular objects. A worry about Dickie's (...) approach is that the explanation it offers is circular and thus not a genuine explanation of mental aboutness. This article develops a version of that worry in detail and turns it aside. Nonetheless, I argue that the explanatory value of the account remains unclear. While it does promise a dialectical advance over traditional theorizing about aboutness, it does not reveal how our ordinary means of belief formation make beliefs be about what they are about. (shrink)

According to a widespread view, Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific development would relegate rationality to a second plane, openly flirting with irrationalist positions. The intent of this article is to clarify this aspect of his thinking and refute this common interpretation. I begin by analysing the nature of values in Kuhn’s model and how they are connected to rationality. For Kuhn, a theory is chosen rationally when: i) the evaluation is based on values characteristic of science; ii) a theory is (...) considered better the more it manifests these values; and iii) the scientist chooses the best-evaluated theory. The second part of this article deals with the thesis of the variability of values. According to Kuhn, the examples through which epistemic values are presented vary for each person, and for this reason individuals interpret these criteria differently. Consequently, two scientists, using the same values, can come to a rational disagreement over which theory to choose. Finally, I point out the limitations of this notion of rationality for the explanation of consensus formation, and the corresponding demand for a sociological theory that reconnects individual rationality with convergence of opinions. (shrink)

The essay approaches the relationship between education, didactic content and transamazonic geography. Objective to question the sharing of the sensitive present in the current format of geocartographic contents in the textbooks, as well as to express, in an embryonic state, the possibility of another sharing, centered in the emerging geography of the places on the verge of the Transamazonica Paraense, especially students and teachers in vicinal , Valuing localized expressions as paths of educational geocartography. Methodologically, the text is part of (...) the action-research movement inspired by the existential phenomenological atmosphere. I conclude as a suggestion of deepening that: the transamazonic between-places, materialized in the vicinities, is ignored as a space for the creative existence of other regional narratives; Generalizing geographical fictions must be confronted with other fictions, in view of the differentiation and creation of new positions and interpretability criteria of the Amazônia; The corporal engagement and the experiences in the field require description, interpretation and understanding, already begun, but not yet affirmed in terms of the production of dialogical content with what already circulates via didactic books; It is central to focus the subjectivity and corporeality of individuals / collectives as creative powers of the space culture, not just recipients of that culture. (shrink)

Frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures, are a general format for the decomposition of lexical concepts. Attributes assign unique values to objects and thus describe functional relations. Concepts can be classified into four groups: sortal, individual, relational and functional concepts. The classification is reflected by different grammatical roles of the corresponding nouns. The paper aims at a cognitively adequate decomposition, particularly, of sortal concepts by means of frames. Using typed feature structures, an explicit formalism for the characterization of cognitive frames (...) is developed. The frame model can be extended to account for typicality effects. Applying the paradigm of object-related neural synchronization, furthermore, a biologically motivated model for the cortical implementation of frames is developed. Cortically distributed synchronization patterns may be regarded as the fingerprints of concepts. (shrink)

This work has done aiming to find out the effect of Covid -19 on the level of Anxiety and level of depression among the undergraduate students who live and study in urban area. As we know that during pandemic situation all classes for schools and colleges has been performed online .This mode of education has come in practice first time in life of students. Hence a level of depression and anxiety may develop in mind of under graduate college going students (...) who have been preparing for graduation and competitive exam. Going through the literature we found that the Hamilton Depression Scale & Hamilton Anxiety scale are suitable to measure Level of anxiety and depression .Both online and offline mode have been used to collect data from male and female candidate .A sample of 50 students male and 50 students have taken from Gwalior and nearby area . Two tailed T test has been done to analyze significant difference between the mean value of level of anxiety and level of depression as well for male and female candidate .Correlation coefficient has been determined to find the relation of variance between level of anxiety and level of depression between male and female students. SPSS software, Microsoft word and excel is use to arrange data, calculation, Tabulation and formation of chart. After data analysis and result and discussion it has concluded that the level of thinking and condition of living standard is almost same for male and female student in urban area .Hence there is no significant difference pertaining to level of anxiety and level of depression between male and female undergraduate student living in urban area. It is also come out that the There is no significance relation in level of anxiety and level of depression between male and female candidate. As we know that the corona virus has been spread in all over the world and so many people had lost their lives .In view of safety measure the government of India imposed lockdown of around 50 days in each part of country. All college and schools are closed and the final exams have also cancelled and many competitive exams have postponed. During this period of lock down undergraduate students have faced so many problems for continuing their study for their end semester exam and competitive exam as well .Due to uncertainty of their exams and their offline classes they experienced some level of depression and anxiety during this period .This project work is the assessment of level of depression and anxiety induced in male and female undergraduate students staying in urban area . (shrink)