Philosophy lacks criteria to evaluate its philosophical theories. To fill this gap, this essay introduces nine criteria to compare worldviews, classified in three broad categories: objective criteria (objective consistency, scientificity, scope), subjective criteria (subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality), and intersubjective criteria (intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity). The essay first defines what a worldview is and exposes the heuristic used in the quest for criteria. After describing each criterion individually, it shows what happens when each of them is violated. From the (...) criteria, it derives assessment tests to compare and improve different worldviews. These include the is-ought, ought-act, and is-act first-order tests; the critical and dialectical second-order tests; the mixed-questions and first-second-order third-order tests; and the we-I, we-it, and it-I tests. The essay then applies these criteria and tests to a concrete example, comparing the Flying Spaghetti Monster deity with Intelligent Design. For another application, it draws more general fruitful suggestions for the dialogue between science and religion. (shrink)

I discuss some of the speculations proposed by Stewart ( 2010a ). These include the following propositions: the cooperation at larger and larger scales, the existence of larger scale processes, the enhancement of the tuning as the universe cycle repeats, the transmission between universes and the motivations to produce a new universe.

An important challenge when creating automatically processable laws concerns open-textured terms. The ability to measure open-texture can assist in determining the feasibility of encoding regulation and where additional legal information is required to properly assess a legal issue or dispute. In this article, we propose a novel conceptualisation of open-texture with the aim of determining the extent of open-textured terms in legal documents. We conceptualise open-texture as a lever whose state is impacted by three types of forces: internal forces (the (...) words within the text themselves), external forces (the resources brought to challenge the definition of words), and lateral forces (the merit of such challenges). We tested part of this conceptualisation with 26 participants by investigating agreement in paired annotators. Five key findings emerged. First, agreement on which words are open-texture within a legal text is possible and statistically significant. Second, agreement is even high at an average inter-rater reliability of 0.7 (Cohen’s kappa). Third, when there is agreement on the words, agreement on the Open-Texture Value is high. Fourth, there is a dependence between the Open-Texture Value and reasons invoked behind open-texture. Fifth, involving only four annotators can yield similar results compared to involving twenty more when it comes to only flagging clauses containing open-texture. We conclude the article by discussing limitations of our experiment and which remaining questions in real life cases are still outstanding. (shrink)

La philosophie de Rosset n'a cessé, pendant près de soixante ans, de voir dans la morale l'un des lieux privilégiés du refus de la réalité, ou du tragique. Dès La philosophie tragique, et jusqu'à ses dernières productions, Rosset a montré comment la morale, plutôt qu'une réflexion, n'exprimait qu'une certaine affectivité. Les jugements moraux ne sont, d'après lui, que des désirs déguisés, ayant tous comme objectif commun de récuser la réalité à laquelle est confronté l'homme. Ce texte, rédigé entre 1960 et (...) 1961, offre, à l'étonnement des lecteurs de Rosset, une "éthique tragique" de la force qui s'oppose avec vigueur à la morale de la faiblesse. Cet inédit est suivi d'une réédition de Le monde et ses remèdes, publié aux Puf en 1964 et réédité en 2014, suite logique et chronologique du Dialogue avec la faiblesse."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The first part of this paper proposes a precise definition of what a worldview is, and why there is a necessity to have one. The second part suggests how to construct integrated scientific worldviews. For this attempt, three general scientific approaches are proposed: the general systems theory as the endeavor for a universal language for science, a general problem-solving approach and the idea of evolution, broadly construed. We close with some remarks about limitations of scientific worldviews.

Intellectual character education has been primarily expressed in terms of educating for intellectual virtues (EFIV). This aim of teaching intellectual virtues has received some challenges, such as how it fails to articulate adequate action guidance through exemplarist pedagogy, and how it neglects the pervasiveness of intellectual vice among students. To respond to these challenges, this paper considers the aim of educating against intellectual vices (EAIV) – teaching students not to develop intellectual vices or weakening those that they have already developed (...) – which comes with the emergence of vice epistemology. More specifically, I look at how negative epistemic exemplars can be used as a classroom strategy for EAIV, and demonstrate how this could address the aforementioned weaknesses of EFIV. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1106, Page 536-553, July 2022.

In this paper, we point out that explainability is useful but not sufficient to ensure the legitimacy of algorithmic decision systems. We argue that the key requirements for high-stakes decision systems should be justifiability and contestability. We highlight the conceptual differences between explanations and justifications, provide dual definitions of justifications and contestations, and suggest different ways to operationalize justifiability and contestability.

Teilhard de Chardin developed an evolutionary vision of our planetary future, currently developing from a sphere of life, or biosphere towards a sphere of mind, or noosphere. As a visionary, Teilhard was not only on the brink of formulating the internet, but he also anticipated current academic efforts to understand globalization, as well as human, cultural and technological evolution. However, his ideas are sources of enduring controversies in both scientific and theological circles. Here I uncover some of the core reasons (...) why his ways of thinking and writing are often problematic, and propose a way forward. This note aims to introduce Teilhard’s central article about the noosphere, but can also be read as an independent introduction to Teilhard’s system of thought. A detailed exegesis of Teilhard’s article is available as a supplementary document. (shrink)

of the nineteenth century. To confine ourselves to that of England, the poetry of Swinburne is full of it : Glory to Man in the highest, for Man is the ...

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

A sample of 703 Spanish psychologists completed an online survey containing 114 behaviors related to professional practice in different areas. The aim of the study was to learn which professional behaviors create ethical dilemmas most often for psychologists and how they respond to these issues. Findings suggest that psychologists who have actually faced a particular dilemma are less strict on judging the inappropriateness of a possible ethical transgression than those psychologists who have not experienced it. Also, four clusters can be (...) identified according to the attitude of respondents toward the dilemmas, namely ?rejection,? ?aprioristic,? ?utilitarian,? and ?no conflict.? (shrink)

Cette recherche apporte des repères majeurs pour mieux saisir la place de Nietzsche dans une phénoménologie de la vie, tout en éclairant le rapport des deux philosophes à la Grèce et au christianisme. Si Nietzsche est tout particulièrement l’auteur qui sert de point d’appui à M. Henry pour remettre en question l’approche grecque de la phénoménalité, c’est parce que le philosophe allemand incarne précisément le retour à la Grèce tragique de l’époque archaïque, si bien que l’exception que ce dernier représente (...) dans la philosophie occidentale tient au fait qu’il met en œuvre des présupposés phénoménologiques différents de ceux de la Grèce idéaliste. La référence positive à Nietzsche chez M. Henry est toutefois suivie d’une période dans laquelle M. Henry prendra ses distances avec le philosophe allemand. Certes, ces deux penseurs de la vie consacrent leur dernière philosophie au christianisme, mais ils le font selon des logiques bien différentes. (shrink)

Slavery and slave trade gave birth to racism and society has been struggling towards its prevention and possible elimination with little success. Martin Luther King Jr wrote in his letter from the Birmingham jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Until this undeniable fact is understood and emphasized our contemporary society is heading towards a state of an uncontrollable wildfire of anarchy. It (...) is obvious that all fingers are not equal but that does not negate the fact that all men irrespective of colour or race are created equal—configured with brain, flesh, water, and blood. Racial discrimination is a moral and systemic sin that must be confronted and vehemently condemned. The main thrust of this paper is to expose various forms of racial discrimination ravaging the contemporary society with a view to postulating ideas geared towards its prevention and possible elimination. Relying on observational and historical methods, relevant data required will be elicited. The paper identified among other things that racism is resurging in the 21st century to a threatening dimension that if a coordinated action is not urgently taken, it will result into an uncontrollable wildfire of anarchy. The researcher therefore recommends the need to reemphasize respect and tolerance for all humanity. (shrink)

Après avoir rappelé quelques éléments de l’histoire de la police et décrit ses fonctions administratives et judiciaires, l’auteur souligne les évolutions de nos modes de vie, de l’insécurité, et leurs réponses institutionnelles massivement répressives, punitives et onéreuses qui ont prévalu jusqu’à présent. Le sentiment d’insécurité est à la croisée de l’insécurité réelle et de l’insécurité subjective liée à des facteurs autres, tels l’effritement des liens sociaux, la précarité du travail ou l’aménagement urbain. Face à ces bouleversements, la police doit négocier (...) avec les populations mais aussi avec les contraintes institutionnelles et les réformes successives des organisations. Dans le même temps, elle subit un virage technologique important autour des numéros d’appels centralisés et du recours aux véhicules d’intervention. Ces réformes éloignent la police de la population et des lieux sensibles où les patrouilles à pied marquaient la présence de la force publique. La police communautaire ou la police de proximité tentent de remédier au problème. On attend d’elles polyvalence, responsabilité et résultats. Généralisée, présentée comme le remède à tous les maux, cette mise en œuvre fait pourtant face à de multiples difficultés techniques, comme au sein des partenariats locaux, et à des résistances internes. Désarçonnée, la police a besoin d’une vision politique qui lui permette de situer sa mission et ses fonctions dans une société complexe en perpétuel mouvement. (shrink)

(1993). Evolutionary competence in the postmodern family: An idealized design approach. World Futures: Vol. 36, Evolutionary Consciousness, pp. 81-105.

Thanks to his unsurpassed eye and his fearless willingness to take a stand, Clement Greenberg (1909 1994) became one of the giants of 20th century art criticism a writer who set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays Avant Garde and Kitsch (1939) and Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940). In this work, which gathers previously uncollected essays and a series of seminars delivered at Bennington in 1971, Greenberg provides his (...) most expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art, arguing for an esthetic that flies in the face of current art world fashions. Greenberg insists despite the attempts from Marcel Duchamp onwards to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged that taste is inexorable. He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. (shrink)

Much of the recent scholarship on the problem of political accountability in Africa leans toward the proposition that it is largely a post-colonial phenomenon that was caused by the destruction of the democratic institutions that were inherited by Africa's political elites. By replacing the democratic institutions they inherited from European colonial powers with quasi-democratic and downright despotic structures, it is argued that African elites became increasingly unaccountable and, in the process, destroyed their otherwise robust economies and impoverished the vast majority (...) of their citizens. In reality, however, the problem of political accountability in Africa is far more complex than that in its origins, character and manifestations. This paper critically examines notions and models of political accountability to demonstrate that the sources of the problem of accountability in Africa are both domestic and external. I argue that, contrary to widespread perception that African states suffer from impunity and lack of accountability, African governments have demonstrated a remarkable degree of responsiveness or accountability in their external relations while remaining virtually unaccountable to their own citizens. Therefore, the solution to the problem of political accountability in Africa should include a combination of internal reforms as well as the concerted support of the international community to generate a robust and sustained demand for accountability of African governments to their citizens. (shrink)

Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, Daniel Dennett asserts in this first full scale presentation of...

This article will examine some theses that Badiou developed in the first period of his philosophy, when he was close to the theoretical horizon of Althusserianism. The article traces a route back from the Manifesto for Philosophy to some yet unpublished notes, dating from the late Sixties, on an aborted collective project on materialist philosophy. While, according to the later Badiou – who is also the most well-known – contemporary philosophical discourse should recover the Platonic gesture after Heidegger, it will (...) be shown that the early Badiou, by debating the nature of the Platonic gesture with Macherey, seems to conceptualise philosophical discourse and its function under the inseparable link of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. The article ends with some open questions for a possible theory of discourse that would build on Badiou’s theoretical insights. (shrink)

This article argues for a more diverse approach to the appearance of enslaved persons in Greek historiography through an analysis of the Persian navy's battlefield tour of Thermopylae in Book 8 of Herodotus’ Histories. Previous approaches to slavery in Greek historiography have rightly commented on the cultural awkwardness to Greek authors of slaves’ extensive involvement in ancient warfare. However, this is only one aspect of how slaves featured in historiographical narrative. Herodotus continually problematizes the methods of enquiry and many characters (...) within his work engage in enquiry-like activities. Book 8 itself is no different, with much of the action involving errors in human perception. The appearance of helots amongst the heroic dead at Thermopylae is intended both as a narrative reveal, since their presence has not previously been known to the reader, and as a comment on the contestation of Greek identity, which is framed at the start of Book 8 with a series of direct addresses to different groups of Greeks, all of whom take a different approach to their participation in the Persian Wars. Hence what appears to be an incidental detail can in fact be understood in the wider, thematic context of the Histories and especially that of the books concerning the Persian Wars. (shrink)

Para o autor, o tema das relações entre ciência e espiritualidade merece renovado espaço ante o grande público e, não menor, no ambiente escolar ou familiar. Para ele, pessoas sábias, e não apenas letradas, partem para a aventura de desbravar tanto o mundo exterior da ciência quanto o mundo interior do espírito humano. Clemente acredita que na sociedade do conhecimento e da informação em que se vive, aprendem-se tantas coisas, muitas das quais de parco sentido e propósito. Mas é preciso (...) atravessar o rio da vida com segurança. Ciência e transcendência, para o autor, quando integradas, constituem a via disponível ao ser humano para conhecer a verdade e o bem, anseios maiores que, no íntimo, todos têm. (shrink)

Newcomers and more experienced feminist theorists will welcome this even-handed survey of the care/justice debate within feminist ethics. Grace Clement clarifies the key terms, examines the arguments and assumptions of all sides to the debate, and explores the broader implications for both practical and applied ethics. Readers will appreciate her generous treatment of the feminine, feminist, and justice-based perspectives that have dominated the debate.Clement also goes well beyond description and criticism, advancing the discussion through the incorporation of a (...) broad range of insights into a new integration of the values of care and justice. Care, Autonomy, and Justice marks a major step forward in our understanding of feminist ethics. It is both direct and helpful enough to work as an introduction for students and insightful and original enough to make it necessary reading for scholars. (shrink)

Using Demographic and Health Survey datasets from Ghana and Nigeria, this study examined whether the protective effects of breast-feeding are greatest where the poorest sanitation conditions prevail. It was found that mixed-fed infants aged between 0 and 11 months tend to have a higher risk of diarrhoea than fully breast-fed children, while the risk of diarrhoea among weaned infants is twice that of mixed-fed infants. The probit regression models employed in the analysis were used to predict the probability of diarrhoea (...) associated with each breast-feeding pattern for both ‘poor’ and ‘good’ sanitation areas. It was found that the risk of diarrhoea among mixed-fed infants in the poor sanitation areas tends to be high while the same risk among fully breast-fed infants tends to be minimal. In essence, the health risks of mixed feeding are real, particularly for infants aged less than 7 months, and are even worse for those weaned before 6 months of age. (shrink)

This paper aims at bridging a gap between the history of American animal behavior studies and the history of sociobiology. In the post-war period, ecology, comparative psychology and ethology were all investigating animal societies, using different approaches ranging from fieldwork to laboratory studies. We argue that this disunity in “practices of place” explains the attempts of dialogue between those three fields and early calls for unity through “sociobiology” by J. Paul Scott. In turn, tensions between the naturalist tradition and the (...) rising reductionist approach in biology provide an original background for a history of Edward Wilson’s own version of sociobiology, much beyond the William Hamilton’s papers usually considered as its key antecedent. Naturalists were in a defensive position in the geography of the fields studying animal behavior, and in reaction were a driving force behind the various projects of synthesis called “sociobiology”. (shrink)

In November 1996, Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva began a correspondence exploring the subject of the sacred. In this collection of those letters Catherine Clément approaches the topic from an anthropologist's point of view while Julia Kristeva responds from a psychoanalytic perspective. Their correspondence leads them to a controversial and fundamental question: is there anything sacred that can at the same time be considered strictly feminine? The two voices of the book work in tandem, fleshing out ideas and blending together (...) into a melody of experience. The result is a dialogue that delves into the mysteries of belief -- the relationship between faith and sexuality, the body and the senses -- which, Clément and Kristeva argue, women feel with special intensity. Although their discourse is not necessarily about theology, the authors consider the role of women and femininity in the religions of the world, from Christianity and Judaism to Confucianism and African animism. They are the first to admit that what they have undertaken is "as impossible to accomplish as it is fascinating." Nevertheless, their wide-ranging and exhilarating dialogue succeeds in raising questions that are perhaps more important to ask than to answer. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

Kirby and Paris have exhibited combinatorial algorithms whose computations always terminate, but for which termination is not provable in elementary arithmetic. However, termination of these computations can be proved by adding an axiom first introduced by Goodstein in 1944. Our purpose is to investigate this axiom of Goodstein, and some of its variants, and to show that these are potentially adequate to prove termination of computations of a wide class of algorithms. We prove that many variations of Goodstein's axiom are (...) equivalent, over elementary arithmetic, and contrast these results with those recently obtained for Kruskal's theorem. (shrink)

There is currently a gap between assessment and intervention in the literature concerned with climate change and food. While intervention is local and context dependent, current assessments are usually global and abstract. Available assessments are useful for understanding the scale of the effects of climate change and they are ideal for motivating arguments in favor of mitigation and adaptation. However, adaptation projects need assessments that can provide data to support their efforts. This requires the adoption of a more local and (...) context-sensitive approach to assessments. I suggest that Community-Based Participatory Research has the potential to be a tool for such an approach. (shrink)

This paper argues that the definition of food justice must be defined in more participatory terms. Current accounts of food justice tend to emphasize distributional inequalities. However, there is broad recognition that these distributional inequalities are the result of participative inequalities and that the participation of marginalized groups in advocacy plays an important role in creating just food systems. In addition, thinking of food justice in more participative terms also suggests a more well-rounded and comprehensive approach to dealing with inequalities (...) within the food system. One manner in which the concept of food justice can be redefined to better capture the importance of participative justice is by considering what is required for informed consent. (shrink)

The field of computational law has increasingly moved into the focus of the scientific community, with recent research analysing its issues and risks. In this article, we seek to draw a structured and comprehensive list of societal issues that the deployment of automatically processable regulation could entail. We do this by systematically exploring attributes of the law that are being challenged through its encoding and by taking stock of what issues current projects in this field raise. This article adds to (...) the current literature not only by providing a needed framework to structure arising issues of computational law but also by bridging the gap between theoretical literature and practical implementation. Key findings of this article are: (1) The primary benefit (efficiency vs. accessibility) sought after when encoding law matters with respect to the issues such an endeavor triggers; (2) Specific characteristics of a project—project type, degree of mediation by computers, and potential for divergence of interests—each impact the overall number of societal issues arising from the implementation of automatically processable regulation. (shrink)