In "The View from Above," Jeanne Haffner traces the evolution of the science of social space from the interwar period to the 1970s, illuminating in particular the role of aerial photography in this new way of conceptualizing socio-spatial ...

By reading a novel by George Eliot alongside a novel by her Indian contemporary Fakir Mohan Senapati, this essay offers a cross-cultural comparison of fictional realisms. In The Mill on the Floss , Eliot used a learned narrator and extended forms of free indirect discourse to examine humble life with unprecedented sympathy and complexity, but the formal dissonance between the authoritative narrative voice and class-marked forms of represented speech construct a view of the lower classes from “above”—that (...) is, from the vantage point of the educated middle-class readers whom Eliot implicitly constructs as the agents of history. By contrast, Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third , written in the demotic Indian language of Oriya, achieves a view from “below” through an ironic narrator who parodies the very type of learned discourse that Eliot deploys as the instrument of liberal humanism. By thus evacuating a discursive cultural authority, Senapati produces a dialogic interplay of voices that brings the reader into the lives of his impoverished villagers without sentimentality or condescension—an achievement that in some ways resembles later European modernism as much as the realism of Eliot. (shrink)

Cambridge, Massachusetts usw.: MIT Press 2013. 208 S., geb., € 32,00. ISBN 978‐0262‐0187‐91.

I show that what Quine calls 'pressing from above' is an argument for indeterminacy of translation that is generated by assuming the partial interpretation view of scientific theories. Furthermore, I argue that Quine's thesis should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of partial interpretation and/or the view that the meaning of a term determines a unique extension for the term.

This paper addresses the question as to whether the methodology followed in building/assessing string theory can be considered scientific in the same sense, say, that the methodology followed in building/assessing the Standard Model of particle physics is scientific, by focussing on the "founding" period of the theory. More precisely, its aim is to argue for a positive answer to the above question – there is no real change of scientific status in the way of proceeding and reasoning in fundamental (...) physical research – in the light of a historical analysis of the early developments of the string theoretical framework. (shrink)

When searching for justification for music education, researchers often make an analytical distinction between ends and means as well as between intrinsic and extrinsic values as related to them. These distinctions are often combined with a view in which ends with stable intrinsic values are seen as above means as extramusical. The article examines how John Dewey’s theory of experience and valuation challenges these distinctions by taking use-value and different aspects of quality in experience as part of the (...) process in which valuation is born. Pedagogical actions of the teacher, social interaction between the students, the questions of how, as well as desires and shared interests become constituting elements of valuation in the means-ends continuum of learning music. The article argues that for justifying its practices, the value of music education ought to be more strongly anchored in the learner’s experience and the question of how educational practices create the attitude for lifelong learning. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude of consciousness that leads to an understanding of improvised music making as an obligation to explore the unknown, to search for freedom through the responsibility to attend to the uniqueness of irrevocable (...) musical acts. Moreover, emphasis is given to the potential of improvisation to create a music-making context that counters monologic musical discourses, providing a site of resistance to fixity and closure. It is argued that improvisation is dialogic exactly because it creates a very special sense of interaction, which is characterized by unfinalizability and openness. At the same time, improvisation is in need of temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians' struggle to raise their minds 'above' their playing, looking at their music from outside and getting 'back in' again. It is hoped that such a perspective might provide the necessary theoretical tools for re-thinking the role of improvisation in music education. A Bakhtinian view on the experience of improvisation would, it is suggested, be educationally valuable exactly because it regards improvisation not as a problem-solving method but a problem-positing approach: as a musical practice that involves children and young people in the experiential pursuit of freedom and the understanding of the "ought" of imagining ways forward, countering monologue by allowing the flourishing of a polyphony of unmerged voices, constituting a distinctive chronotope which provides the possibility of an enactment of everyday living in musical terms. The decision to improvise marks the initiation of a search for a public musical space which is marked by the absence of fear, where exploration of musical freedom is pursued, where everything might happen but not anything goes. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude of consciousness that leads to an understanding of improvised music making as an obligation to explore the unknown, to search for freedom through the responsibility to attend to the uniqueness of irrevocable (...) musical acts. Moreover, emphasis is given to the potential of improvisation to create a music-making context that counters monologic musical discourses, providing a site of resistance to fixity and closure. It is argued that improvisation is dialogic exactly because it creates a very special sense of interaction, which is characterized by unfinalizability and openness. At the same time, improvisation is in need of temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians' struggle to raise their minds 'above' their playing, looking at their music from outside and getting 'back in' again. It is hoped that such a perspective might provide the necessary theoretical tools for re-thinking the role of improvisation in music education. A Bakhtinian view on the experience of improvisation would, it is suggested, be educationally valuable exactly because it regards improvisation not as a problem-solving method but a problem-positing approach: as a musical practice that involves children and young people in the experiential pursuit of freedom and the understanding of the "ought" of imagining ways forward, countering monologue by allowing the flourishing of a polyphony of unmerged voices, constituting a distinctive chronotope which provides the possibility of an enactment of everyday living in musical terms. The decision to improvise marks the initiation of a search for a public musical space which is marked by the absence of fear, where exploration of musical freedom is pursued, where everything might happen but not anything goes. (shrink)

Computer-supported collaborative learning has a history of being interdisciplinary from its conception. Its beginnings have included computer scientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and educational researchers. These collaborations have been fruitful but have also posed challenges. This article builds on the authors’ extensive review of the CSCL literature to examine the nature of interdisciplinary collaboration in CSCL research as well as an interdisciplinary CSCL workshop. Using a corpus of more than 700 CSCL articles, we reported an updated analysis for the theories (...) and methods used in CSCL research. In addition, bibliometric analyses examined journals that publish CSCL research and are cited by CSCL research. CSCL research is published in journals that are aligned with interdisciplinary research with large contributions from educational research followed by technology related fields and social sciences. The contributions from domain knowledge journals are relatively weak. These analyses revealed disciplinary influences and uptakes of CSCL research and how they might differ across CSCL research clusters. Lastly, we provide a case example of a CSCL workshop to further demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Through these analyses we aim to characterize the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in CSCL research. Interdisciplinarity has helped CSCL research to adopt multiple theories and methods to understand CSCL. While cultivating diversity, we also need to be mindful that research outcomes are exchanged and appropriated actively across participating disciplines so that our understanding of CSCL rises above individual disciplines. (shrink)

We discuss the difficulty of measuring the perceptual experience of colour, supporting Palmer's assertion that neuropsychological disorders of colour processing can be informative in this respect. We point out that some disorders seem to affect the perceptual experience of colour over and above the perceptual processing of colour, providing direct insights into the neural mechanisms supporting perceptual experience.

Kant's anthropological works represent a very different side of his philosophy, one that stands in sharp contrast to the critical philosophy of the three Critiques. For the most part, Kantian anthropology is an empirical, popular, and, above all, pragmatic enterprise. After tracing its origins both within his own writings and within Enlightenment culture, the Element turns next to an analysis of the structure and several key themes of Kantian anthropology, followed by a discussion of two longstanding contested features - (...) viz., moral anthropology and transcendental anthropology. The Element concludes with a defense of the value and importance of Kantian anthropology, along with replies to a variety of criticisms that have been levelled at it over the years. Kantian anthropology, the author argues, is 'the eye of true philosophy'. (shrink)

In recent years, scientists have increasingly taken to investigate the predictive nature of cognition. We argue that prediction relies on abstraction, and thus theories of predictive cognition need an explicit theory of abstract representation. We propose such a theory of the abstract representational capacities that allow humans to transcend the “here-and-now.” Consistent with the predictive cognition literature, we suggest that the representational substrates of the mind are built as ahierarchy, ranging from the concrete to the abstract; however, we argue (...) that there are qualitative differences between elements along this hierarchy, generating meaningful, often unacknowledged,diversity.Echoing views from philosophy, we suggest that the representational hierarchy can be parsed into:modality-specificrepresentations, instantiated on perceptual similarity;multimodalrepresentations, instantiated primarily on the discovery of spatiotemporal contiguity; andcategoricalrepresentations, instantiated primarily on social interaction. These elements serve as the building blocks ofcomplex structures discussed in cognitive psychology (e.g., episodes, scripts) and are the inputs for mental representations that behave like functions, typically discussed in linguistics (i.e.,predicators). We support our argument for representational diversity by explaining how the elements in our ontology are all required to account for humans’ predictive cognition (e.g., in subserving logic-based prediction; in optimizing the trade-off between accurate and detailed predictions) and by examining how the neuroscientific evidence coheres with our account. In doing so, we provide a testable model of the neural bases of conceptual cognition and highlight several important implications to research on self-projection, reinforcement learning, and predictive-processing models of psychopathology. (shrink)

The article offers a reading of the famous tale by Kafka focused on the consequences triggered by the sudden transformation of Gregor Samsa into an insect. This event constitutes the starting point of a shift that involves phases and components of perception both of the self and of the world as well as the relations among the inner and the external world, the most elementary awareness and feelings and the most complex ones, which are affective, cognitive and related to interactions, (...) expressed with particular emphasis by the dynamics of the spatial dimension of the story. Two discursive paths intersect above all: on one side, the traveling salesman wakes up with the/in the body of cockroach while his soul is the same as always. He will have to try to become cockroach, that is to assume its perceptions and then, slowly, its tastes, its impressions and any other animal sentiment. At the same time, the becoming of Gregorio’s family will be antiphrastic to the one experienced by him: from inept, passive parasites of their akin, as they are depicted at the beginning of the story, his family members will gradually turn into active bourgeoisies full of projects, rejecting Gregory up to eliminate him: they are the ones dehumanizing themselves, while Gregory refines his sensitivity in suffering, even to the sacrifice. (shrink)

In 1920 Łukasiewicz published a two-page article whose title was “On Three-valued Logic”. The paper proposes a semantic characterization for the logic that has been later called Ł3 . In spite of the shortness of the paper, all the important points concerning the semantics of Ł3 are already there and can be naturally generalized to the case of a generic number n of truth-values . The conclusion of the article is quite interesting:The present author is of the opinion that three-valued (...) logic has above all theoretical importance as an endeavour to construct a system of non-aristotelian logic. Whether the new system of logic has any practical importance will be seen only when the logical phenomena, especially those in the deductive sciences, are thoroughly examined, and when the consequences of the indeterministic philosophy, which is the metaphysical substratum of the new logic, can be compared with empirical data. (shrink)

Casati and Varzi have developed a theory of boundary based on extensional mereotopology and the distinction between fiat and bona fide boundaries. Firstly, I point out some problems in their theory that are related to the contact of bodies. Next, I propose a way of classification of boundaries into four kinds based on substance ontology and an alternative distinction between potential and actual boundaries. Finally, I will show that my way of classification makes it possible to solve the problems (...) class='Hi'>above. (shrink)

This paper investigates what choices teachers made and what rationales they offered related to the inclusion and exclusion of primary source photographs for a hypothetical unit about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in order to better understand teachers’ curricular decision-making as it relates to representing the histories of oppressed people. Elementary and secondary social studies/history teachers from three different in-service and pre-service cohorts ( n=62) selected and discarded images from a bank of 25 famous and lesser-known photographs. Their (...) decisions and explanations were coded for emergent themes. Findings reveal that these teachers tended to be guided by criteria both technical (how they might teach using a particular photograph) and philosophical (why they might teach about a particular photograph), with narrow definitions of what they deemed relevant and appropriate for their students. Their choices constructed a sanitized narrative of the Civil Rights Movement that largely avoided a discussion of racism. (shrink)

In 2014, American doctor Ian Crozier chose to travel to Sierra Leone to help fight the West African Ebola epidemic. He contracted Ebola himself and was evacuated to the US, where he received hospital treatment for 40 days. Crozier knowingly chose to expose himself to a risk of contracting Ebola, and thus appears to be at least somewhat morally responsible for his infection. Did this responsibility weaken his justice-based claim to publicly funded treatment? On one influential view—luck egalitarianism—the answer (...) is ‘yes’. Or so Albertsen and Thaysen suggest in this issue.1 According to luck egalitarianism, justice requires the elimination of inequalities between people, but only when the relative harm borne by those on the wrong end of the inequality is a matter of luck. Albertsen and Thaysen understand luck egalitarianism to entail that, when one is responsible for befalling a harm, one has no claim in justice to the mitigation of that harm. On this view, they suggest, Crozier’s claim to treatment would be similar to that of a reckless Alpine skier who is injured in a skiing accident, and would be weaker than that of those with a normal claim to treatment—those who bear no responsibility for their illness. Both of these implications seem implausible, however. Intuitively, Crozier’s claim to treatment is no weaker than those with normal claims, and certainly stronger than the reckless skier’s. Can luck egalitarianism be ‘adjusted or interpreted’ so as to avoid these implausible implications? The authors suggest that it can. Their innovation is to distinguish heroic doctors like Crozier from reckless skiers by invoking a distinction between being responsible for creating harm and for incurring harm. Their thought is that one creates harm when one brings harm on oneself without also preventing at least as much harm to others. Thus, the harm that …. (shrink)

The purpose of this survey was to gather individual’s attitudes and feelings towards privacy and the selling of data. A total (N) of 1,107 people responded to the survey. -/- Across continents, age, gender, and levels of education, people overwhelmingly think privacy is important. An impressive 82% of respondents deem privacy extremely or very important, and only 1% deem privacy unimportant. Similarly, 88% of participants either agree or strongly agree with the statement that ‘violations to the right to privacy are (...) one of the most important dangers that citizens face in the digital age.’ The great majority of respondents (92%) report having experienced at least one privacy breach. -/- People’s first concern when losing privacy is the possibility that their personal data might be used to steal money from them. Interestingly, in second place in the ranking of concerns, people report being concerned about privacy because ‘Privacy is a good in itself, above and beyond the consequences it may have.’ -/- People tend to feel that they cannot trust companies and institutions to protect their privacy and use their personal data in responsible ways. The majority of people believe that governments should not be allowed to collect everyone’s personal data. Privacy is thought to be a right that should not have to be paid for. (shrink)

Codes of ethics and conduct typically demand the highest standard of ethical behaviour from every single employee. This implies a democratic or lobbyist understanding of ethics in business. The contrasting view would argue that business ethics is an elitist undertaking that can only be instigated from the top, by managing directors or owner managers. This article looks at three types of ethical businesses, three types of approaches to ethical problem‐solving, and three possible incentives for ethical business to (...) see which of the above is more convincing. It will be argued that the impulse for value‐driven business has to come from the top. Only top management and owner managers have the opportunity to foster major change in business practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 26 (2006) 213-216 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byJohn Berthrong Boston University School of TheologyDialogues at One Inch Above the Ground: Reclamations of Belief in an Interreligious Age. By James W. Heisig. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003. 215 pp.Few scholars are better prepared than James W. Heisig to write about the current state of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and few have written more insightfully about the historical, (...) theological, religious, and spiritual factors that have made Buddhist-Christian dialogue so intriguing for the last four decades. Heisig is the director of the Nanzan Institute, one of the premier institutions in the world dedicated to cultivating dialogue primarily between Christians and Buddhists, but also with people of other traditions and no religious belief at all.The title of the book is taken from the writings of the famous medieval poet Saigyō, who said that he tried to live at "one inch above the ground." Heisig follows Saigyō's advice by focusing many of his articles on themes such as health and ecology rather than abstruse metaphysical discussions of the intricacies of Buddhist and Christian doctrines, although, as one would expect, he shows a deft hand at explaining the philosophical and theological dimensions of living life at one inch above the ground.The opening two chapters on how we can collectively view the current ecological crisis demonstrate Heisig's sure hand at moving between profound meditations on current events and demonstrating how these problems can be even better understood in terms of spiritual and religious insights. Heisig argues that having two eyes, one Buddhist and one Christian, might just help us walk better on the ground, especially a ground that is being harmed on a daily basis by human disregard for the natural environment. His essay on the interpretation of the Buddhist principle of sufficiency is based on the injunction that we should learn to "consider how much is enough." The following essay demonstrates how hard-headed he can be with his call for us not to move from an uncaring contempt for nature to an equally ill-conceived sentimentalization of nature.There are so many insightful and clever features to the essays in the book that it is hard to pick out any one essay for special comment, but one of my favorites, high-lighting [End Page 213] Heisig's rhetorical powers, is "Six Sūtras on Dialogue" (pp. 139–157). This essay demonstrates what a Christian theologian might learn from engaging in interreligious dialogue. Moreover, it even takes the form, as Heisig explains, of the traditional Buddhist sūtra of six teachings on the nature of dialogue. Dialogue, according to Heisig (echoing Alfred North Whitehead), "is an adventure of ideas" (p. 141). The first teaching is "The spirit of interreligious dialogue need not be born of traditions in order to be reborn there" (p. 145). One of the strong points Heisig makes over and over again is that we now live with increasing self-awareness in a religiously pluralistic world. Actually, we always have, though various theological traditions have been adept at either ignoring or rejecting the notion that there could be anything positive about religious pluralism. At its worst, pluralism simply demonstrated the spiritual depravity and turbidity of humankind, and at best, it could simply be ignored as unworthy of serious comment. With the growing social, political, economic, military, and cultural interconnections of the modern world, no one can ignore pluralism. Theologians and religious leaders, in particular, need to think about religious pluralism even if this dialogue is not something that was "born" within their traditional theological discourse.The second teaching is a corroloary of the first: "Dialogue is primarily a minority enterprise that stands free of the obligations of institutional religion" (p. 147). Now, the leaders of institutional religion might dispute this point, but again Heisig is correct in noting that people are going to talk to their neighbors regardless of what they are told to do by worried religious authorities. He makes the... (shrink)

This article seeks to show that the views on time and eternity of Plotinus and Boethius are analogous to those implied by the block-time perspective in contemporary philosophy of time, as implied by the mathematical physics of Einstein and Minkowski. Both Einstein and Boethius utilized their theories of time and eternity with the practical goal of providing consolation to persons in distress; this practice of consolatio is compared to Pierre Hadot’s studies of the “Look from Above”, of the (...) importance of concentrating on the present moment, and his emphasis on ancient philosophy as providing therapy for the soul, instead of mere abstract speculation for its own sake. In the first part of the article, Einstein’s views are compared with those of Plotinus, and with the elucidation of Plotinus’ views provided in the Arabic Theology of Aristotle. The second part of the article studies Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, which, contrary to recent interpretations, is indeed a genuine consolation rather than a parody thereof. The Consolation shows how the study of the Neoplatonic philosophical curriculum can lead the student along the path to salvation, by awakening and elaborating his innate ideas. To illustrate this doctrine, a passage from the little-known PseudoBoethian treatise De diis et praesensionibus is studied. Finally, after a survey of Boethius’ view on fate and providence, and Aristotle’s theory of future contingents, I study Boethius’ three main arguments in favor of the reconcilability of divine omniscience and human free will: the distinction between absolute and conditional necessity, the principle that the nature of knowledge is determined by the knower, and finally the doctrine that God lives in an eternal present, seeing past, present, and future simultaneously. This last view, developed primarily from Plotinus, is once again argued to be analogous to that advocated by contemporary block-time theorists on the basis of Eisteinian relativity. God’s supratemporal vision introduces no necessity into contingent events. Ultimate, objective reality, for Boethius as for Plotinus and Einstein, is atemporal, and our idea that there is a conflict between human free will and divine omniscience derives from a kind of optical illusion, caused by the fact that we cannot help but think in terms of temporality. (shrink)

Plato's paradigm for statesmanship in the Statesman, the weaving of temperate and courageous properties, provides the contemporary business ethics theorist with an aid for determining certain problems and solutions with regard to business leadership. The history of American business values manifests the destructive, and especially unethical, effects of deviating from this paradigm by over-emphasizing one or the other of the above types of qualities. However, with the aid of Plato's model for leadership in the Statesman and suggestions (...) class='Hi'>from Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence, progress can be made towards constructing an adequate model for corporate leadership, especially from an ethical standpoint. (shrink)

For Situationist, theorist and film-maker Guy Debord, the aerial view reproduced the falsely objective world-view he called ‘the spectacle’. To counter its myth of an infinitely expandable, omniscient perspective, Debord focused on reducing views from above to ‘derisory documents’ of the social and the environmental through détournement in the two films he made while the Situationist International was in existence. The films engage critically with aerial photography as a hegemonic mode of indexical media, with the aerial (...) view’s application as information image and ornament, and with the formal phenomenon of ciné-mapping. This analysis suggests that the détournement Debord performs in and across these films can be best conceptualized as a critical optic that constitutes a practice of seeing, a mode of reception and a call to action in the social space beyond its aesthetic employ. As such, the optic of détournement is the contestational counterpart to the optic of the aerial view. This remains the case despite the contemporary complexity of photographic views from above and their increased abstraction of social agents and spaces. An alternative to the testimonial function of embodied photographic views, détournement as optic represents an indexical civil contract founded upon representational inadequacy. (shrink)

Does life have meaning? What is flourishing? How do we attain the good life? Philosophers, and many others of us, have explored these questions for centuries. As Eva Feder Kittay points out, however, there is a flaw in the essential premise of these questions: they seem oblivious to the very nature of the ways in which humans live, omitting a world of co-dependency, and of the fact that we live in and through our bodies, whether they are fully abled or (...) disabled. Our dependent, vulnerable, messy, changeable, and embodied experience colors everything about our lives both on the surface and when it comes to deeper concepts, but we tend to leave aside the body for the mind when it comes to philosophical matters. Disability offers a powerful challenge to long-held philosophical views about the nature of the good life, what provides meaning in our lives, and the centrality of reason, as well as questions of justice, dignity, and personhood. These concepts need not be distant and idealized; the answers are right before us, in the way humans interact with one another, care for one another, and need one another--whether they possess full mental capacities or have cognitive limitations. We need to revise our concepts of things like dignity and personhood in light of this important correction, Kittay argues. This is the first of two books in which Kittay will grapple with just how we need to revisit core philosophical ideas in light of disabled people's experience and way of being in the world. Kittay, an award-winning philosopher who is also the mother to a multiply-disabled daughter, interweaves the personal voice with the philosophical as a critical method of philosophical investigation. Here, she addresses why cognitive disability can reorient us to what truly matters, and questions the centrality of normalcy as part of a good life. With profound sensitivity and insight, Kittay examines other difficult topics: How can we look at the ethical questions regarding prenatal testing in light of a new appreciation of the personhood of disabled people? What do new possibilities in genetic testing imply for understanding disability, the family, and bioethics? How can we reconsider the importance of care, and how does it work best? In the process of pursuing these questions, Kittay articulates an ethic of care, which is the ethical theory most useful for claiming full rights for disabled people and providing the opportunities for everyone to live joyful and fulfilling lives. She applies the lessons of care to the controversial alteration of severely cognitively disabled children known as the Ashley Treatment, whereby a child's growth is halted with extensive estrogen treatment and related bodily interventions are justified. This book both imparts lessons that advocate on behalf of those with significant disabilities, and constructs a moral theory grounded on our ability to give, receive, and share care and love. Above all, it aims to adjust social attitudes and misconceptions about life with disability. (shrink)

The Church at all times of human existence occupied an important place in the life of society. Under modern conditions, people often feel unprotected, uncertain, and therefore forced to seek support and faith in their happy future. One way of creating a sense of inner peace for a believer is to communicate with God, and the Church acts as an intermediary in this process. Therefore, in our opinion, the Church, as a social institution, is to a large extent responsible for (...) the cultivation of those values ​​which it preaches and which consciously and subconsciously assimilates the citizens. Therefore, we believe that the Church should not be alienated from the problems of society, but, on the contrary, its activities should be oriented towards its modernization and, above all, in the spiritual aspect. For the Ukrainian society in its spiritual life Christian faith was and remains the leading one. In this article, we aim to justify the role of the Christian Churches in shaping the sense of responsibility of our believers. (shrink)

This essay explores whether ontology is internal to traditional Chinese culture from the perspective of the view from above. Ancient Chinese philosophy, poetry, and art abound with all kinds of descriptions of viewing from above. Such views from on high, as illustrated by famous works discussed in this essay, usually admit of no fixed focus; that is, there is no ontic being, concealed or disclosed, controlling the perceiving eyes. The gaze from (...) class='Hi'>above, which is either fluid or decentered, in some cases does not even focus on any real object. It merely reveals an abstract historical review or an attitudinal stance. As such, the fushi gaze, devoid of any concrete object of perception or any central point of reference, always points to the absence of ontology. (shrink)

The academic path of Jean Gayon (1949–2018) follows in the wake of the “French style” in epistemologyEpistemology, but he is also one of the first representatives of philosophy of biology in France. In the light of this double philosophical heritage, this chapter re-examines the relations between the works of Gayon, the tradition in which he first studied, and the one he later adopted, but not without reservations. Tracing his intellectual journey, this article explores why he naturally appears as a Canguilhemian, (...) a view against which he defends himself. Attending to the connexions that he established with the philosophers of biology will bring to light the growing tension that inhabits him, from the middle of the 1980s onwards, and which led him to identify some of the limits inherent to theHistorical epistemology matrix of historical epistemologyGayon, JeanOn historical epistemology, without disowning his first philosophical tradition. Finally, in an attempt to reconcile two approaches, I will underline the emergence in the thought of Jean Gayon of a third way seeking to overcome the opposition between a “unitarian” style that seeks to make a clear break with the history of scienceHistory of science and its philosophical past, and the “dualist” style which tends to stay above scientific debates, and which accepts a clear distinction between the work of science and the work of philosophy. Reuniting the history and the philosophy of the sciences, privileging the long durée and depths of history, where the problems of biology unfold, while also recognizing the value of analysing the conceptual puzzles which structure the contemporary life sciences, the oeuvre of Jean Gayon illustrates the complementary character of these disciplines. (shrink)

The Qurʾān states that it is the last link in the chain of divine books, such as the Torah, Psalms, and the Gospel, and that it is also the approval and regulator of these books. As a result, there are some mutual narratives with other holy books, as well as some issues that differ from them and bring different explanations from them. These issues have been the subject of polemics, especially with Judaism and Christianity throughout the history. The (...) crucifixion of Jesus Christ formed the foundation of Christianity theology. However, the subject of ‘the cross’ has also been one of the most important issues by which Christian communities have made different explanations and interpretations since the 1st century, and have diverged accordingly. Although the docetists, who are our subject, are divided into many groups with different views, they generally accept that Jesus Christ was of a different nature from other people, had a divine nature, and therefore, it was not possible for him to be crucified. In the only verse in the Qurʾān that deals with the cross of Jesus Christ, it is mentioned that Jesus was not crucified. For this reason, a significant part of the interpretations in the commentaries have some similarities with the views of the docetics at first glance. It is possible to see more of the similarities mentioned in the commentaries, especially in the so-called “substitutionary interpretation”, in which it is stated that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus. In the Christian world, it is often claimed that Islam emerged in the Arabian Peninsula, where Christian heretics are abundant, and that it was influenced by the views of some heretic Christians. In this context, starting with John of Damascus in the 8th century, based on the above-mentioned similarities, many Christian researchers throughout the history claimed that the Qurʾān took this view from docetics. In this study, there has been an attempt to examine all of these claims. In this context, first, the docetics were researched, and as a result, it was revealed that Christians named groups with very different views from the early times as “docetic”, and that there was no standart use of the concept of “docetic” in the Christian World for centuries. It appears that it was determined that the concept would be used as a kind of umbrella concept for groups considered heretical. Then in the article, the different translations and interpretations of the verse in the Qurʾān and certain sources from the classical and modern Islamic literature were selected and identified. This led to the examination of how the said verse was understood in the Islamic world throughout the history. In this context, all types of substitutionary interpretations in the commentaries were made into a list by mentioning the sources of these interpretations, and then, these interpretations and the views of the docetics were compared. After revealing the similarities and differences in the explanations and interpretations in the commentaries and the views of the docetics, a new perspective on the subject was attempted by trying to explain the verse outside of its traditional interpretation throughout the history, considering the context of this verse and the Jewish literature. Considering that various Jewish claims about Jesus and Mary were responded to at the beginning of Qurʾānic the verse and just before the verse that mentions the cross, information in the Jewish religious literature was consulted about the allegations that Jews killed Jesus as mentioned in this verse. In this context, Jewish claims about the end of the life of Jesus in the Talmud, that they first killed him and then crucified him, were adressed and researched. Furthermore, an attempt is made to explain that the use of wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu in the verse may be an answer to the claims of the Jews that they first killed Jesus and then crucified him. These claims of the Jews in the Talmud are further explored, and considering the context of the Jews of that time, it is explicated that these actions would not have been possible due to the political conditions in that period. Taken together, this study has attempted to address that the view claiming that docetics have an impact on the Quran via the related verse is not validand that the actual recipient of the verse is the Jews. (shrink)

ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING EPISODES in Schelling’s philosophical development is the transition from the System des transzendentalen Idealismus to the Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, the starting point of the identity system. Looking back on that latter text, Schelling in 1805 declares that “then to me the light went on in philosophy.” This sounds as if the preceding years of philosophical investigation, including the System des transzendentalen Idealismus that was written one year earlier, had to be considered merely (...) propaedeutic and that the Darstellung was his real entry into philosophy. Schelling maintained this view of his philosophical development and in the contemporary Schelling-Forschung scholars widely agree that the Darstellung, being the outset of the identity system, marks the birthplace of so-called absolute idealism—to which Hegel’s system of philosophy probably still is the most spectacular and successful heir. But if this common interpretation is true—and I would not deny it in the generality in which it is stated—then the question inevitably arises: what happened in the transition from the System des transzendentalen Idealismus to the Darstellung, and above all, what made this transition possible? What, in other words, caused the constitution of absolute idealism? (shrink)

This article argues that in the quest for global bioethics in its relation to the promotion of women's health and women's rights, the main challenge is to, first, rise above the relativist trap and second, to solve the false dilemma between individualism and collectivism. Particularly in order to improve women's position and advance their well‐being in many developing countries with patriarchal cultural practices, there is an urgent need to introduce modern medicine and to share more evenly and efficiently the (...) health care resources of the industrialized societies. This presumes that we can find a normative bioethical approach that promotes the rights of individuals without striving for cultural assimilation and disrespect.From the philosophical point of view this means that we have to overcome the debate between the rival views of justice, and rather find the shared features of the various approaches, thus diminishing the exaggerated polarizations between them. The author claims that despite its importance in women's rights protection, feminist bioethics cannot remain as a normative alternative that can replace either liberal or communitarian approaches. Instead feminism needs to be part of both liberal and communitarian ethical thinking. Communitarianism, for its part, cannot offer an alternative to either liberalism or feminism, but it can function as an essential critical balancing force within these approaches. Individualist liberalism, on the other hand, has to find its way into collective social structures and accept their maintenance, instead of exhausting itself in its attempts to lift individuals above or beyond their social contexts. (shrink)

Besides geographical boundlessness, the claim to totality that characterizes universal histories comprises a temporal horizon, which reaches from the Creation to the end of the world predestined to Christians. The article examines the role of religious approaches on the one hand and secular points of view on the other in the transformation of eschatology into the idea of an open future shapeable by humans. The analysis focusses first on works by Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). While the above-mentioned (...) transformation is usually interpreted as a process of secularization, this article reveals a reliance on religious hopes for the afterlife, also and especially where progressistic expectations for the development of the individual as well as of humanity were articulated. A second step leads back into the early eighteenth century. A frontispiece of 1717 already expressed the idea of an “open future” conceived secularly as a “space of time” to be shaped by human beings according to their own interests and guided by the experiences of the past. The article closes with a discussion of the reasons for the return of religious ways of thinking in the late Enlightenment, which becomes particularly apparent in universal- historical expectations of the future. (shrink)

Bachelard regarded the scientific changes that took place in the early twentieth century as the beginning of a new era, not only for science, but also for philosophy. For him, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics had shown that a new philosophical ontology and a new epistemology were required. I show that the type of philosophy with which he was more closely associated, in particular that of Léon Brunschvicg, offered to him a crucial starting point. Brunschvicg never considered scientific (...) objects as independent of the mind, and as a consequence questions such as the existence of particles independently of the mind, theory or apparatus, were absent from his philosophy, which was rather aimed at analyzing the mind critically, and above all historically. Bachelard accepted the fundamental ideas of Brunschvicg’s philosophy; however, his own reading of contemporary science enabled him to go beyond it, as shown by his emphasis on the social production of knowledge, and by his removal of the distinction between ideas and technologically produced objects of knowledge. For him, modern science teaches philosophy that knowledge is not a phenomenology but rather a ‘phenomenotechnique’. I argue that Bachelard’s view that philosophy ‘should follow science’ stems from moral considerations.Keywords: Gaston Bachelard; Léon Brunschvicg; Phenomenotechnique; Chosisme; Theory of relativity; Quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The Washington National Cathedral, set on the highest hill in the capital city of the world's greatest economic and military power, is an iconic location for an examination of the intersection of immaterial faith, material power, and human conscious experience. It is a location made even more symbolic due to the fact that surrounding the Cathedral on three sides are three private schools -- an elementary school (Beauvoir) to the east, a boys' school (St. Albans) to the south, and a (...) girls' school (National Cathedral School) to the north. The students at these private schools include children of persons who wield the secular power headquartered in the City below the Cathedral Tower. Every day these students study and compete upon a hill giving them panoramic views over the great monuments and symbols of American power: the Capitol Dome, the Washington Monument, the entire City. And the Cathedral that marks their spot upon this globe is visible from all over the region, high above the City. These students are intelligent and informed, and thus for purposes of a dramatic-oriented form of exploration of interesting issues, provide a persuasive characterization for participants in a dialog of two iconic children, older teenagers, a boy and a girl, students at these schools and worshippers in the Cathedral, to develop an examination of themes of faith, power, and the experience of sentience in the material world, walking within and around the Washington National Cathedral, two of its affiliated schools, and the gardens and forests surrounding. The approach recalls the form of the dialogs of Plato, in which persons of elite educational and cultural status encounter each other within a specific building or location, and proceed to discuss such matters as are provoked to mind by the encounter of those minds in that place. The major character of the piece, Merian Validus, is, among other things, a bell-ringer of the Cathedral, a denizen of its highest tower -- as are in reality a group of the girls of NCS. She is an Esmeralda performing the role of Quasimodo. After reading this, think of that the next time you land at Reagan National Airport and catch your cab, looking right at the Cathedral as you speed north into the City. (shrink)

Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point that is, in Nagel's words, "nowhere in particular". At the same time, each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his own "personal" view of the world, a view that we can recognize as just (...) one aspect of the whole. How do we reconcile these two standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated? Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as: the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death. Excessive objectification has been a malady of recent analytic philosophy, claims Nagel, it has led to implausible forms of reductionism in the philosophy of mind and elsewhere. The solution is not to inhibit the objectifying impulse, but to insist that it learn to live alongside the internal perspectives that cannot be either discarded or objectified. Reconciliation between the two standpoints, in the end, is not always possible. (shrink)

The use of intuition abounds in modern analytic philosophy. In particular, intuition is considered evidence that is used in the analysis of concepts, often in an attempt to find the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of the concept under consideration. Alternatively, intuition is used as evidence that one or more of the proposed necessary conditions is unacceptable, as in Gettier counterexamples to the classical analysis of knowledge. This view of intuition can be thought of as a form of (...) rationalism. However, in the middle part of the 20th century intuition cam under attack through the influence of Quine's project of naturalizing philosophy. The two very general positions on intuition are: intuition provides evidence, but only of necessary truths or intuition does not provide evidence at all. ;I critically analyze the philosophical positions on intuition of many modern philosophers. I pay particular attention to the defense of moderate rationalism presented by Bealer and Bonjour, who place intuition at the heart of rationalism. I criticize their respective views by arguing that their defenses are viciously circular because they overtly appeal to intuition in order to defend intuition as a source of evidence. I further criticize the inability of the moderate rationalists to defend their stipulation that intuition must be of apparent necessary truths. ;On the positive side, I defend that intuition is best thought of as a basic source of evidence that provides evidence for both necessary and some contingent truths. This is how I split the difference between and from above. This view has many virtues, with one if its primary virtues being its ability to account for contingent, grammatical intuitions of he sort used in modern day linguistics. Finally, I argue that my view is more amenable to modern evolutionary psychology by giving a genealogy of intuition. (shrink)

This paper was motivated by reflections on what makes our argument convincing and persuasive. The substantive answer in my view suggests the examination of the cognitive grounds of argumentation. In the introductory section, I consider various approaches to identifying the cognitive component in argumentation. That way, I briefly observe recent relevant publications, which I classify into two groups: those directly addressing cognitive grounds of argumentation; and papers on formal models of argumentation that take cognitive nature of persuasion as a (...) premise. In the second section, I argue for phenomenologicaly inspired approach to cognitive activity as one which provides an adequate cognitive interpretation of the latter. In so doing, I touch upon key some phenomenological concepts and focuses on an analogizing apperception (appresentation). The third section accumulates all the above. I proceed from the interpretation of the argumentation as discursive activity aimed at a deliberate change in an opposite party’s position, which may not be explicitly presented in the course of arguing. It makes us turn to cognitive procedure of appresentation as it was presented by Husserl for an adequate interpretation of transfer and grasping of argumentative message’s meaning. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;This thesis traces endeavours in the twentieth century to provide the 'intellectual' foundations for general medical practice as an independent, autonomous clinical discipline. The empirical focus of the study is upon the application of psychological and 'person-centred' approaches to general practice; above all, in the work of Michael Balint, and the Royal College of General Practitioners in the post-war period. The thesis is guided by two predominant theoretical concerns. First, (...) to highlight the complex strategies and the wide range of means and resources that have been required to give substance to the claim that general practice is 'by nature' a person-centred endeavour. Second, to consider--and to question--certain influential approaches to medical power in general, and to the social consequences of 'emancipatory'--person-centred--forms of medicine in particular. Specifically, the 'power/knowledge' approach to medical sociology is contested both with regard to its empirical findings and in relation to its basis in the work of Michel Foucault . ;The study which follows is intended neither as a narrative history of general practice nor as a history of ideas about general practice. Its empirical concern is more specific than either of these. Focusing upon the twentieth century and above all the post-war period, it seeks to analyse some of the ways in which general practitioners have sought to autonomise their discipline by giving it an 'intellectual' basis. If the 'general practitioner' has long existed as a professional label then nevertheless notions of what unifies the general practitioner's activities have undergone a degree of mutation. It is these 'models' of general practice--physiological, epidemiological, psychological--which will be investigated here. As such, the purpose behind the study is partly of a 'methodological' order. The study seeks to show that what counts in evolving a coherent model of general practice is not just the provision of a 'representation' of the general practitioner's activities but a construction on several levels. (shrink)

Drawing textual evidences from the Analects and other Confucian classics, this article attempts to clarify the contents, methods, and ultimately the nature of learning in the eyes of Confucius. The paper set out to argue that a better understanding of the concept of learning by Confucius must be angled on: Confucius’s political aspiration and life pursuit rather than his teaching; The personal preference of Confucius along with his zhi that has motivated his study and practice of the finer aspects (...) of the Zhou legacies. And on the above basis, the paper suggests that: TO BE one’s mandate self is at the core of Confucius’s concept of learning and that naturally determines the methods and characteristics of learning; the three opening lines of Lunyu in fact made a statement on the way Confucius learns. (shrink)

The act of dance appears as a pattern of conscious movements in space and time, but a dancer who has the ability to go beyond the limits of space and time (experientially) can bring about a non-local experience of oneself and the audience making it an ecstatic communion. In this paper, we are interested in examining the extent of subjective experience of a dancer and his audience; hence, we take up a case study in first-person to understand the performer-audience interaction. (...) For this purpose, we chose Indian contemporary dancer Astad Deboo, an artist who is known to create such a magical two-way interaction consigning his audience as well as himself to a state of being mesmerized. The art of creating a non-localexperience seems to be his forte, where the audience can feel him within, while he feels his audience within. To explain this phenomenon, we propose the resonance of inner experiential states of the performer and audience as the underlying mechanism that creates a non-local interaction between them. To validate the present hypothesis, one must subject both the performer and observer to experimental studies, which involve simultaneous tracking and monitoring of the active zones in the brain associated with performing and performance viewing. In the above context, it would also be interesting to see if there exists a point of time during the performance event, where both these subjects report similar active zones in the brain. (shrink)

Between 1648 and 1652, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a small satirical work entitled The Other World, a fictional account of his imaginary epic voyage to the Moon.* The story not only describes “The States and Empires of the Moon,” (its subtitle in the original edition), it provides a critical view of his own civilization as well. The narrator's position in his depiction of the radically different, “other” entity allows him to maintain opinions which, however whimsical, still include elements of (...) social and philosophical examination. In the early stages of world migration, Europe was beginning to see the Other as a place for the expression, if not the transposition, of its ancient dreams; Cyrano, however, takes a different approach. He looks at ways the Other might be used to gain perspective on the Self. Looking down at Earth from above, he proclaims: “People, I declare that this moon is not a moon, but a world, and that world over there is not a world, but a moon.”. (shrink)