Anger has potential epistemic value in the way that it can facilitate a process of our coming to have knowledge and understanding regarding the issue about which we are angry. The nature of anger, however, may nevertheless be such that it ultimately undermines this very process. Common non-philosophical complaints about anger, for instance, often target the angry person as being somehow irrational, where an unformulated assumption is that her anger undermines her capacity to rationally engage with the issue about which (...) she is angry. Call this assumption the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger. Such a charge is pernicious when levelled at the anger of those in positions of marginalisation or oppression, where it can threaten to silence voices on the very issue of the injustices that they face. In this paper I thus provide a much-needed interrogation of this charge. Firstly, and drawing on empirical literature on the effects of anger on decision-making, I flesh out the charge and why it poses a threat to how the epistemic value of anger has been defended. Secondly, I argue that the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger can nevertheless be unwarranted, at least within a common context of political anger. (shrink)

Where was your soul before you were born? If your soul is immortal, did it have a "life" prior to birth? Did you choose your life and parents? Is reincarnation real? Elizabeth and Neil Carman, the authors of Cosmic Cradle, address these questions through interviews with adults and children who report pre-birth experiences (PBEs) not based on regression, hypnosis, or drugs. Instead, interviewees recall their pre-birth existence completely sober and awake. In contrast to near-death experiences (NDEs), which have been (...) well documented to show us what the soul experiences after death, PBEs throw light upon our lives before birth. People with NDEs sense that they "return home" when their spirits cross to the other side. What is the nature of this place we "return" to? PBEs suggest that we come from the same place we return to: we come from the Light and return to the Light. The same eternal "you" progresses through life before life, human life, and life after death. This new edition of Cosmic Cradle explores your soul's journey into your mother's womb--where your soul comes from, the origin and purpose of your life, and the process by which you entered an earthly body. In pre-birth communications, parents meet a soul seeking to cross over from the heavenly realm to human birth. Persons with pre-birth memories recall existence in a luminous world before birth, in which they preview the upcoming life with a Divine Planner, and recall how they journeyed to their mothers' wombs. Contents Foreword by Bernie Siegel, MD Introduction: Amnesia of Our Spiritual Origins Part One: Pre-Birth Memory 1. Children as Messengers 2. Memories of the Cosmic Cradle 3. “I Was in Your Tummy Twice” 4. Scanning Soul Plans: Contemporary Pre-Birth Memories 5. Welcome to Planet Earth 6. Shirley Temple and the Blue Bird 7. Our Soul as a Tiny Spaceship 8. I Saw All My Costumes Part Two: Pre-Birth Communications 9. Souls Waiting in the Wings for Birth 10. Soul as a Sphere of Light 11. Cosmic Conception 12. Miscarriages and Stillbirths in the Light of Pre-Birth Plans 13. Conversations with Unborn Children Part Three: Pre-Birth Wisdom down through History 14. Spirit-Children Down Under 15. Lodge of the Great Manitou 16. The Cosmic Designer 17. Travelers from the Light 18. Journey from Forgetting to Remembering. (shrink)

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble problems and must be abandoned. This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

Calls to decolonise the university and revise what we research and teach is a challenge that ought to be taken up by those working in African philosophy and philosophy in Africa, more generally. Often, the thought is that such decolonisation will involve a complete subversion, destruction or deconstruction of colonial attitudes, processes and concepts. A more moderate proposal for decolonisation of philosophy can be found, however, which is Kwasi Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonisation. In this paper, I defend the project (...) from two categories of objection, what I call the decolonisation and methodology objections. I argue that the objections are misdirected and unfair because they fail to recognise the theoretical backing of Wiredu’s wider work. The critical reflection central to Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonisation can be a genuinely helpful and viable route to take when tackling the challenges of decolonising philosophy. (shrink)

Anscombe guides us through the Tractatus and, thereby, Wittgenstein's early philosophy as a whole. She shows in particular how his arguments developed out of the discussions of Russell and Frege. This reprint is of the fourth, corrected edition.

The intentionality of sensation -- The first person -- Substance -- The subjectivity of sensation -- Events in the mind -- Comments on Professor R.L. Gregory's paper on perception -- On sensations of position -- Intention -- Pretending -- On the grammar of "Enjoy" -- The reality of the past -- Memory, "experience," and causation -- Causality and determination -- Times, beginnings, and causes -- Soft determinism -- Causality and extensionality -- Before and after -- Subjunctive conditionals -- "Under a (...) description" -- Analysis competition--tenth problem -- A reply to Mr. C.S. Lewis's argument that "naturalism" is self-refuting. (shrink)

I IT is often declared or evidently assumed that causality is some kind of necessary connexion, or alternatively, that being caused is — non-trivially ...

It has long been recognized that cancer onset and progression represent a type of reversion to an ancestral quasi‐unicellular phenotype. This general concept has been refined into the atavistic model of cancer that attempts to provide a quantitative analysis and testable predictions based on genomic data. Over the past decade, support for the multicellular‐to‐unicellular reversion predicted by the atavism model has come from phylostratigraphy. Here, we propose that cancer onset and progression involve more than a one‐off multicellular‐to‐unicellular reversion, and are (...) better described as a series of reversionary transitions. We make new predictions based on the chronology of the unicellular‐eukaryote‐to‐multicellular‐eukaryote transition. We also make new predictions based on three other evolutionary transitions that occurred in our lineage: eukaryogenesis, oxidative phosphorylation and the transition to adaptive immunity. We propose several modifications to current phylostratigraphy to improve age resolution to test these predictions. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/3unEu5JYJrQ. (shrink)

Many ethical frameworks require artificial intelligence (AI) systems to be explainable. Explainable AI (XAI) models are frequently tested for their adequacy in user studies. Since different people may have different explanatory needs, it is important that participant samples in user studies are large enough to represent the target population to enable generalizations. However, it is unclear to what extent XAI researchers reflect on and justify their sample sizes or avoid broad generalizations across people. We analyzed XAI user studies (N = (...) 220) published between 2012 and 2022. Most studies did not offer rationales for their sample sizes. Moreover, most papers generalized their conclusions beyond their target population, and there was no evidence that broader conclusions in quantitative studies were correlated with larger samples. These methodological problems can impede evaluations of whether XAI systems implement the explainability called for in ethical frameworks. We outline principles for more inclusive XAI user studies. (shrink)

This little book provides basic 7-minute yoga exercises for each day of the week. The exercises are organized by the mythological and planetary significances of each particular day.

For synergistic interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, AI outputs often need to be explainable to people. Explainable AI (XAI) systems are commonly tested in human user studies. However, whether XAI researchers consider potential cultural differences in human explanatory needs remains unexplored. We highlight psychological research that found significant differences in human explanations between many people from Western, commonly individualist countries and people from non-Western, often collectivist countries. We argue that XAI research currently overlooks these variations and that (...) many popular XAI designs implicitly and problematically assume that Western explanatory needs are shared cross-culturally. Additionally, we systematically reviewed over 200 XAI user studies and found that most studies did not consider relevant cultural variations, sampled only Western populations, but drew conclusions about human-XAI interactions more generally. We also analyzed over 30 literature reviews of XAI studies. Most reviews did not mention cultural differences in explanatory needs or flag overly broad cross-cultural extrapolations of XAI user study results. Combined, our analyses provide evidence of a cultural bias toward Western populations in XAI research, highlighting an important knowledge gap regarding how culturally diverse users may respond to widely used XAI systems that future work can and should address. (shrink)

Past and Present brings together almost two dozen newly collected essays by the distinguished American historian and cultural critic, Gertrude Himmelfarb. Their common theme is the intriguing, often unexpected ways in which the past illuminates the present. The novelist William Faulkner wrote that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In these essays, Himmelfarb shows the truth of this statement. She helps us find a new perspective on contemporary issues by bringing to bear a trenchant analysis of (...) debates and thinkers of the past. She allows the past to inform the present without distorting either past or present. The essays, unified by the common theme of present and past, are varied. The topics range from the disorders of modern democracy to the challenges of postmodernism, from the Victorian ethos to the Jewish question. The thinkers range from Edmund Burke to Leo Strauss, from Cardinal Newman to Lionel Trilling. The political figures range from Benjamin Disraeli to Winston Churchill, from the American founders to Queen Elizabeth II. The underlying premise and principle of the essays is the conviction that the pursuit of knowledge and truth, however difficult or discomforting, eminently matters, in the "practical life,"as Trilling put it,as in the "moral life."Past and Presentis a notable contribution to this endeavor-to understanding where we have been, where we are now, and where we may be-or should be-going. (shrink)

The eclipse predictor (or Saros dial) of the Antikythera mechanism provides a wealth of astronomical information and offers practically the only possibility for a close astronomical dating of the mechanism. We apply a series of constraints, in a sort of sieve of Eratosthenes, to sequentially eliminate possibilities for the epoch date. We find that the solar eclipse of month 13 of the Saros dial almost certainly belongs to solar Saros series 44. And the eclipse predictor would work best if the (...) full Moon of month 1 of the Saros dial corresponds to May 12, 205 BCE, with the exeligmos dial set at 0. We also examine some possibilities for the theory that underlies the eclipse times on the Saros dial and find that a Babylonian-style arithmetical scheme employing an equation of center and daily velocities would match the inscribed times of day quite well. Indeed, an arithmetic scheme for the eclipse times matches the evidence somewhat better than does a trigonometric model. (shrink)

A critical review of Martha Nussbaum's 2016 book, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice.

In this article, we aim at presenting a thorough and comprehensive explanation of the mathematical and theoretical relation between all the aspects of Ptolemaic planetary models and their counterparts which are built according to Kepler’s first two laws. Our article also analyzes the predictive differences which arise from comparing Ptolemaic and these ideal Keplerian models, making clear distinctions between those differences which must be attributed to the structural variations between the models, and those which are due to the specific parameters (...) Ptolemy determined in the Almagest. We expect that our work will be a contribution for a better understanding not only of the Ptolemaic theories for planetary longitudes through a clearer perception of the way in which Keplerian features are present—or absent—in Ptolemy’s models, but also for a more balanced judgement of different aspects of the contribution of the first two laws of Kepler to the modern astronomical revolution. (shrink)

Der Dialog ist als Mittel und direkter Ausdruck zwischenmenschlicher Kommunikation in unserer Gesellschaft wichtiger denn je. Zugleich ist er aber zunehmend von Gewalt, von medialen Auswüchsen und von der Schnelllebigkeit unserer Zeit bedroht. Angesichts dieser Entwicklung ist Martin Bubers „dialogisches Prinzip“ hochaktuell. Sein Verständnis des Dialogs unterscheidet sich fundamental vom heutigen medialen Diskurs. In seinem Hauptwerk Ich und Du beschreibt Buber die Grundbedingungen für einen guten Dialog. Ein solcher kann nur gelingen, wenn zwei Menschen bereit sind, sich voll und ganz (...) aufeinander einzulassen und dem anderen ohne Vorbehalte oder Vorurteile zu begegnen. Ausgehend von einer Werk- und einer Werkgeschichtsanalyse von Ich und Du reflektiert Gertud Arnold das Potenzial des Buberschen Dialogkonzepts und dessen praktischer Anwendung im Hier und Heute. (shrink)

Excerpt from Schellings Politische Anschauungen Wirklichkeit, was in Europa in der Verbindung von Sieg im Geisti gen und Niederlage im Politischen kein Beispiel hat. Die geistige Erneuerung aber findet zwar Anerkennung und Beifall, doch keine Nachfolge und stellt uns insofern gerade die deutsche Entwicklung in ihrer ganzen Eigenart und Einzigartigkeit lebendig vor Augen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. (...) Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Parmenides, mystery and contradiction -- The early theory of forms -- The new theory of forms -- Understanding proofs : Meno, 85d₉-86c₂, continued -- Aristotle and the sea battle -- The principle of individuation -- Thought and action in Aristotle -- Necessity and truth -- Hume and Julius Caesar -- "Whatever has a beginning of existence must have a cause" : Hume's argument exposed -- Will and emotion -- Retraction -- The question of linguistic idealism.

-- v. 2. Metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.

Cognitive values like simplicity, broad scope, and easy handling are properties of a scientific representation that result from the idealization which is involved in the construction of a representation. These properties may facilitate the application of epistemic values to credibility assessments, which provides a rationale for assigning an auxiliary function to cognitive values. In this paper, I defend a further rationale for cognitive values which consists in the assessment of the usefulness of a representation. Usefulness includes the relevance of a (...) representation regarding the investigation of a given problem and its practicability for the users. This rationale builds on the claim that any evaluation of scientific representations should pursue two aims: providing information about their credibility and providing information about their usefulness. Cognitive values relating to the usefulness of a representation and epistemic values relating to its credibility both perform a first-order function. Cognitive values are abstract, and several values with first-order functions may conflict in their application. Thus, in order for cognitive values to account for the sort of problem that is to be investigated by means of a representation, they need to be appropriately specified and weighed. Comprehensiveness, complexity, high resolution, and easy handling, for instance, may be required in a first-order function for model-based prediction of regional climate impacts but not for explaining how the global climate system works. Specifying and weighing cognitive and epistemic values relative to a given problem is a legitimate second-order function of social values. (shrink)

Resumen: Usualmente se ha asumido que una única distinción puede dar cuenta del rol que cumplen los conceptos en una teoría respecto de la contrastación y respecto de la explicación. Intentaremos mostrar que esta asunción es incorrecta. Por una parte, no hay razones para considerar que esta coincidencia deba darse, y por otra, como se intentará mostrar a partir de varios ejemplos, de hecho, no se da. La base de contrastación de una teoría no tiene por qué coincidir con el (...) explanandum de la teoría. Para defender este punto se asumirá el estructuralismo metateórico. Se extraerán consecuencias para la concepción metateórica presupuesta. Palabras claves: Explicación; contrastación; T-teoricidad; Estructuralismo metateórico; Distinción teórico observacional -/- Title: Explain and test Abstract: It is usually held that one distinction can account for the role that concepts play in a theory regarding both test and explanation. We will demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect. On the one hand, there is no reason to think that this coincidence should exist. On the other, this is not the case, as we will show analysing several examples. The testing basis of a theory does not have to coincide with the explanandum of the theory. To defend this point we will endorse de metatheoretical structuralism. In addition, we will consider some repercussions that this discussion has for the assumed metatheoretical framework. Key-words: Explanation; Test; T-theoreticity; Metatheoretical Structuralism; Theoretical observational distinction . (shrink)