An important function in all scholarly and academic activities is the participation in the peer review system. One aspect of this peer review evaluation is service on committees judging candidates for important awards, prizes and fellowships. Some reflective observations on this process are made in which a number of factors determining the final choice are identified. It is pointed out that the decisions of such committees are based not only on relevant and objective criteria but are also influenced by a (...) number of irrelevant criteria; caution must be exercised to minimize the effect of the latter factors in order to maintain the highest ethical standards in the selection process. The ranking practices of awards committees, national academies and learned societies are briefly reviewed by pointing out some ethical pitfalls, anecdotal incidents, and the ways to avoid the tarnishing of the selection process. (shrink)

Explores intellectual and philosophical evolution of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, focusing on period after World War II. Analyzes how Heidegger s ideas, particularly his notion of being, influenced and were influenced by postwar context, including confrontation with Nazism and emergence of new philosophical currents. Argues that Heidegger s work offers relevant insights for contemporary philosophical debates and calls for a critical dialogue with his legacy. Discusses Heidegger s philosophy in the context of French and German philosophical schools, highlighting relevance of (...) his ideas and impact they had on contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Social suffering commands increasing public attention in the wake of several historical processes that have changed the ways victims are perceived. In making suffering eloquent by rendering it in conceptual form, philosophy runs the risk of muting suffering, thereby neutralizing its ability to mobilize responses. In the experience of suffering philosophy finds a limit it must recognize as its own. Yet only by fulfilling its duty towards suffering - only by having the abolition of suffering as its ultimate goal - (...) can philosophical thinking withstand a tacit complicity with injustice. (shrink)

Warne's original study provides an insightful analysis of the role of contemplation and creation in the thought of Josef Pieper, illustrating the importance of this practice to earthly happiness and human flourishing. What is the relationship between creation, contemplation, human flourishing, and moral development? Nathaniel Warne's Josef Pieper on the Spiritual Life offers a sophisticated answer to this question through a systematic analysis of philosopher Josef Pieper's (1904-1997) thought. Warne's examination centers on the role of contemplation and creation in Pieper's (...) thinking, arguing that contemplation of the created order is a key feature of earthly happiness. By emphasizing the importance of contemplation, Pieper illustrates the deep interconnections between ethics, creation, and spirituality. For Warne, to posit a binary between the contemplative life and active life creates a false dichotomy. Following Pieper, Warne claims that theology and spirituality cannot be bracketed from ethics and social action--indeed, our lived experience in the world blurs the lines between these practices. Contemplation and action are closer together than are typically assumed, and both have important implications for both our spiritual development and our engagement with the world around us. Ultimately, Warne's emphasis on creation and contemplation represents an attempt to resist a view of ethics and the spiritual life that is divorced from our environment. In response to this view, Warne argues that we need a renewed sense that creation and place are important for self-understanding. Contemplation of creation is, at bottom, a form of communion with God--we thus need a more robust sense of how ethics and politics are rooted in God's creative action. Taking Pieper as a guide, Warne's study helps to deepen our thinking about these connections. (shrink)

Arguments concerning divine conservation and concurrence often assume that actions of certain descriptions would be superfluous if God were to perform them, and it is then concluded that God does not perform such actions. In particular, it often seems that atomic actions cannot be the result of cooperative activity between God and creatures since there is no apparent way to divide the labor between the two. However, the actions that are atomic in one model of divine action may not be (...) atomic on another. On fine-grained models there may be unexpected prospects for nonredundant divine action. (shrink)

This paper examines the perceived ethical values of Malaysian managers. It is based on the opinions of 15 hypothetical ethical/unethical business situations from the 81 managers who agreed to participate in the survey. The findings of this study showed that these Malaysian managers have high ethical values. However 53% of the respondents believed that the ethical standards of today are lower than that of 15 years ago. Apparently, this is related to the existence of many unethical business practices prevalent in (...) the modern business world. The behavior of one's immediate superior is the most important factor in influencing managers to commit unethical practices. The results also indicate only a slight variation among the managers in terms of perceived ethical values by virtue of job position, job specialization, type of business activity or the size of the business organization. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers on Vedic theory of creation, philosophy and science.

Discussion of issues related to theories of justice and statehood.

We prove a strong boundedness theorem for dilators: if A ⊆ DIL is Σ 1 1 , then there is a recursive dilator D 0 such that ∀ D ∈ A.

This paper is a survey of V.A. Smirnovs main results in modern logic.

Public speakers like politicians carefully craft their words to maximize the clarity, impact, and persuasiveness of their messages. However, these messages can be shaped by more than words. Gestures play an important role in how spoken arguments are perceived, conceptualized, and remembered by audiences. Studies of political speech have explored the ways spoken arguments are used to persuade audiences and cue applause. Studies of politicians’ gestures have explored the ways politicians illustrate different concepts with their hands, but have not focused (...) on gesture's potential as a tool of persuasion. Our paper combines these traditions to ask first, how politicians gesture when using spoken rhetorical devices aimed at persuading audiences, and second, whether these gestures influence the ways their arguments are perceived. Study 1 examined two rhetorical devices—contrasts and lists—used by three politicians during U.S. presidential debates and asked whether the gestures produced during contrasts and lists differ. Gestures produced during contrasts were more likely to involve changes in hand location, and gestures produced during lists were more likely to involve changes in trajectory. Study 2 used footage from the same debates in an experiment to ask whether gesture influenced the way people perceived the politicians’ arguments. When participants had access to gestural information, they perceived contrasted items as more different from one another and listed items as more similar to one another than they did when they only had access to speech. This was true even when participants had access to only gesture (in muted videos). We conclude that gesture is effective at communicating concepts of similarity and difference and that politicians (and likely other speakers) take advantage of gesture's persuasive potential. (shrink)

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed (...) new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

The total ideology of the revolutionary-political themes of Ukrainian consciousness of the twentieth century, the poetization of the absurdly inverted hierarchy of values, was opposed by the new generation of artists with their philosophical and ethical orientation of their creativity. As I.Franko notes, they "... sought a completely modern European way to portray the peculiarity of the life of the Ukrainian people," revealing the unique collisionality of human existence, the diversity of psychological types, ideological orientations, and the human experience of (...) its existence on the background of this difficult time. However, Ukrainian writersphilosophers who talently laid the foundations of national culture, but are now returning to the generations of the Shattered Renaissance, filling black and bloody spots of troubled history of Ukraine. Among them are V. Pidmogylny, B. Antonovenko-Davidovich, G. Kosinka, D. Falkivsky, M.Ivchenko, T.Osmachka, E.Pluzhnik. This is a non-exhaustive list of the leading figures of the post-revolutionary period who were removed from the creative field, whose works are the golden fund of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

The problem of human religious consciousness can be attributed to the category of "eternal" philosophical problems, which have never been removed and cannot be removed from the agenda of humanity. The world outlook of a person is updated throughout history as the person, conditions and content of his life, his goals, ideals and perspectives are constantly changing. In each era, this problem retains its fundamental importance, and, being part of all significant philosophical systems, means not a simple continuation of a (...) particular tradition, but the identification of the changing aspects and historical perspectives of human existence. The question of what consciousness, which is its nature and essence, is of great ideological, ideological and practical importance, since it touches upon the foundations of human existence, content and purpose of life. (shrink)

Christian preaching, the main purpose of which is to educate a person in the spirit of the Christian worldview, should answer the questions of the present, give believers concrete recommendations and patterns of behavior in life situations. At the same time, the sermon is based not on the personal opinion of a priest or pastor, but expresses a confessional point of view on one or another problem of modern life facing believers. This point of view, as a rule, is formulated (...) in special documents of confessions, the totality of which is called "Social doctrine of the church". (shrink)

The article provides, for the first time in the philosophical literature, a general description of the Konigsberg Kant studies as a special local direction in the history of philosophy. Core activities in this direction formed the Society of Kant’s Friends, as well as "archival Kant studies" — the work of collecting, annotating and publishing the manuscript heritage, correspondence and lecture notes Kant. Given the large volume of primary and secondary sources, we propose a variant of specification of structure of Kant (...) Studies in Königsberg — four lines of activity: popularization; biographical research and publications; collection and publication of manuskript heritage and conspects of lectures; the interpretation and reception of Kant's ideas. Detailed presented is the history of the first line — popularization of Kants philosophy. The activities of K. Rosenkranz and Society of Kant’s Friends, as well as history of creation of books of J. Schulz and K. Stavenhagen, articles, reports and brochures of R. Brückmann and O. Schöndörffer are described, their content is characterized. There are formulated some conclusions about the main value of this work for Kant studies, for the birth and development of the Kantianism, about the relationship of popularization with other lines of Kant studies in Königsberg, about cooperation of Königsberg researchers of Kant's life and philosophy with each other, and about continuity in their work. It is shown that the popularization work in all its forms has been conducted to date and the first to the last years of this trend, has played a major role in the emergence and development of other lines of activity. An author's translation of a number of fragments of the above publications. The prospects of the development of indepth and detailed analysis of the described compositions, for which this article can serve as a reference point. (shrink)

Purpose. To examine the existential anthropology of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in order to demonstrate the necessity of distinguishing the universal-spiritual, as human in human being, apart from the individual-existential in him, and to reveal the hierarchical correlation of biosocial, existential and spiritual spheres in personality. Theoretical basis. Within existential philosophy the author differentiates two separate traditions and proceeds from the insufficiency of the distinction of existential sphere, proposed by phenomenological tradition, showing the necessity of its correlation with the (...) spiritual sphere as a sphere of humanity, proposed by non-phenomenological tradition of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski. Originality. The author presents the anthropological conception of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in which human personality is understood as unity of individual-existential and universal-spiritual, which requires a special trans-empirical field of culture, which contains senses, images and symbols of humanity. Also, the author presents the recent developments of existential thinkers in distinguishing existential and spiritual dimensions, both not reducible to the physical and social dimensions. Conclusions. In both existential traditions, the specifically human was founded as a trans-biological and trans-social phenomenon, which appears as indefinable and non-predetermined. But in first tradition, humanity is understood as an existence, as a unique individuality, "project", variant of humanity, equivalent to other variants, and universal is understood as a community of human condition in the world. While in the second tradition, the universal is understood as spiritual. Thus, horizontal level of our private existence, as the process of movement from birth to death, is supplemented by vertical of human, universal ideals and images. Humanity appears as a task, on the way to which human being transcends beyond the limits of his individual "self" to the "super-individual", through inclusion into spiritual community, into universal culture. (shrink)