[Aristotle and Theophrastus as creators of Milesian philosophy].

[The “Parmenides” and Plato’s theory of ideas].

[Parmenides in the context of the oral culture of antiquity].

[Did Parmenides hold that thinking and being are identical?].

Anaximenes is usually considered to be a material monist recognizing transparent atmospheric air as a principle (ἀρχή). In the cosmogonic explanation of the origin of the earth and the heavenly bodies, the Greek term ἀήρ turns out to mean rather ‘opaque damp mist’. However, Not only does it accord with archaic usage, but also with how it was used in his mentor, Anaximander. Yet, in cosmology ἀήρ means ‘air’ serving as stuff on which the earth and the heavenly bodies float. (...) Hence, in keeping with contemporary usage, Anaximenes recognised two kinds of ἀήρ, distinguishing them functionally. Whereas mist is conceived of as a generating substance, air functions only as carrying stuff. (shrink)

[The conception of the earth in Anaximander’s cosmology].

[ Abbreviations used of the titles of ancient authors].

Pavel Dmitrievich Tishchenko, one of the founders of Russian bioethics, turned 75 on January 10, 2022. Joining the numerous congratulations, journal “Bioethics” publishes the text of the discussion dedicated to this event. The discussion was initiated by the question of the history of Russian bioethics formation in the perspective of its simultaneous emergence in Moscow, Volgograd, St. Petersburg, Kazan. The participants exchanged opinions on the significance of I.T. Frolov's ideas for the formation of the Moscow School of Bioethics. The (...) influence of the concept of "frontier" proposed by Tristram Engelhardt Jr. on the formation of distinctive features of Russian bioethics was revealed during the discussion. It is emphasized that at the early stages of its formation Russian bioethics was more concerned with the problems of clinical trials than with the moral dilemmas arising from medical practice. An important stage for self-understanding of bioethics was the events of the Afghan company, which exposed the imperfection of the healthcare system in the USSR. The discussion touches a critical examination of the traditional principles of bioethics. The conversation of the philosophical foundations of modern bioethics allowed to formulate two theoretical opinions. The firs assertion determines that philosophical theories delay with revolutionary changes in the field of medical and scientific practice. The second one determines the need for the formation of stable teacher-student relations sufficient for enculturation with the tradition of thinking. The participants noted the undoubted humanizing influence of these principles on clinical practice and scientific research. At the same time the risks associated with an attempt to transfer the principles that was established in the Western tradition into the practices of Russian medicine and science were identified. Speakers claimed the idea of harmonization the principles to the traditions of Russian philosophy and ethics. Thus, the medical art should be conceived as an active mercy, and many bioethical problems as social challenges that require solidarity. It was noted, that bioethics is transforming from type of value-based communication of specialists to a formalized procedure. (shrink)

The philosophical implication that guides the issue addressed here is the following: how does the principle of the common constitute a frontal apophasis to the principle of property in contemporary democracies? I do not pretend to offer an exhaustive answer to this problem. However, I use the argumentative strategy of dividing this paper into three sections: (i) theoretically investigate the dialectical tension between the principle of the common and the principle of property; (ii) analytically observe the premise that the behavioral (...) practices of exacerbated individualism contribute as an act of aversion to the principle of the common and (iii) dwell on the articulation of the notion of the principle of the common as a factor that is present on the threshold between the philosophical vulgar and philosophical universal. Finally, I form some considerations that problematize the naturalized notion of the principle of property in current democracies, in view of the constituent power that the principle of the common holds in the perspective of achieving the well-being of human agents in contemporary community life. (shrink)

This paper finds out whether a higher degree matters in school performance, and in demonstrating leadership and core behavioral competencies among school heads. This was conducted to support the existing and future policies of the Department of Education and interested funders for the scholarship and advanced studies of school heads. Using a cross-sectional method, it involved 192 randomly selected participants. Data on school performance was obtained at the office of Surigao del Sur Division, while data on competencies were gathered through (...) the self-administered assessment tools developed by the Department of Education. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Results revealed that there was no significant difference in the school performance of school heads. This implies that the highest degree obtained is not a guarantee for better school performance. As found, those with doctorate degrees had a very high and consistent demonstration in all dimensions of leadership and core behavioral competencies. As unveiled, there were significant differences in the demonstrated competencies based on the highest educational qualifications. These imply that obtaining the highest degrees can allow school heads to acquire, develop, and demonstrate the competencies consistently better than their counterparts. Results have implications for DepEd officials, funders, and policy-makers. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to discover the ambivalent nature of the idea of optiman in the concept of the problem of new humanism. The essence of ecological and anthropological crises is the subject of analysis by the authors of this article. The given problematics is revealed through the reference to the analysis of the idea of optiman. Methodology of research are general lofical research methods, method of historical and philosophical reconstruction, method of comparative analysis, method of system analysis. (...) The scientific novelty of the research is the synthetic approach to solving the anthropological crisis, taking into account both ecological, biological and existential problems. Anthropological crisis has shown not only existential, but also biosocial problems of human existence and preservation of his biological bases. In this context, the idea of the possibility of purposeful intervention in human genetics and creation of an optiman or a superman dominates. The concept of «optiman» implies an attempt of harmonization of human innings, but not the replacement of natural givenness with something else. The «control over evolution» in such transcription assumes conscious work of many generations on creation of an opriman. However, technocratic attitudes of modern society demarcate this sense, emphasizing that the nature of an individual is determined not so much by the natural capabilities of the organism as by the technological achievements of modern civilization, which allow overcoming the natural barriers. The ambivalent nature of the idea of optiman appropriately constituents the search for new meanings in the notions of human nature. In this article two approaches to understanding optimen: transhumanism and existentialism are considered. The first approach is based on the positions of the expediency of transformation of human nature by technology, the second understands the ideal of the human as his ability to self-overcome. Conclusions. It is noted that transhumanism without recourse to the existentials of human existence can lead to increased alienation of a person and his technical suppression. The authors of the article conclude that a new humanism should be established. (shrink)

Adequate reprogramming of cellular metabolism in response to stresses or suboptimal growth conditions involves a myriad of coordinated changes that serve to promote cell survival. As protein synthesis is an energetically expensive process, its regulation under stress is of critical importance. Reprogramming of messenger RNA (mRNA) translation involves well‐understood stress‐activated kinases that target components of translation initiation machinery, resulting in the robust inhibition of general translation and promotion of the translation of stress‐responsive proteins. Translational arrest of mRNAs also results in (...) the accumulation of transcripts in cytoplasmic foci called stress granules. Recent studies focus on the key roles of transfer RNA (tRNA) in stress‐induced translational reprogramming. These include stress‐specific regulation of tRNA pools, codon‐biased translation influenced by tRNA modifications, tRNA miscoding, and tRNA cleavage. In combination, signal transduction pathways and tRNA metabolism changes regulate translation during stress, resulting in adaptation and cell survival. This review examines molecular mechanisms that regulate protein synthesis in response to stress. (shrink)

Some believe that evidence for the big bang is evidence for the existence of god. Who else, they ask, could have caused such a thing? In this paper, I evaluate the big bang argument, compare it with the traditional first-cause argument, and consider the relative plausibility of various natural explanations of the big bang.

Linear arithmetics are extensions of Presburger arithmetic () by one or more unary functions, each intended as multiplication by a fixed element (scalar), and containing the full induction schemes for their respective languages. In this paper, we construct a model of the 2‐linear arithmetic (linear arithmetic with two scalars) in which an infinitely long initial segment of “Peano multiplication” on is ‐definable. This shows, in particular, that is not model complete in contrast to theories and that are known to satisfy (...) quantifier elimination up to disjunctions of primitive positive formulas. As an application, we show that, as a discretely ordered module over the discretely ordered ring generated by the two scalars, does not have the NIP, answering negatively a question of Chernikov and Hils. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the SubjectJames J. Brown Jr. and Joshua GunnActs of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject by Thomas Rickert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Pp. x + 252. $24.95, hardcover.Thomas Rickert had a falling-out with his brother, and this distresses him so much that his disrupted relation is described as “traumatic.” Rickert reports that while listening (...) to a portable CD player during a run on an unexpectedly warm winter day, a song by the now defunct jazz/rock band Morphine reminded him of a happy time at a pool hall with his brother (24). Mediated—or better, medicated—by music, the homological happiness of running in the sun and a positive past memory also resurfaced a painful relational rupture, the reason of which Rickert omits to underscore that mysterious, “little detail or object” of the Real that marks his singular finitude as a writing subject (216 n. 11). We’ll want to come back to this curiously deliberate omission, but for the present we note Rickert is not simply an undead author but a human being with relations and feelings. He is not just a gifted scholar or a bundle of reflections, but a nexus of body and movement and words and affect. If there is anything that Rickert’s study can be said to work through with brilliance, humor, and grace, it is the reality of complex personhood.Rickert’s brotherly confession comes in Chapter 1 as a way to introduce a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, and more specifically, to help illustrate how trauma works itself out as an afterwardness or “belatedness” ( Nachträglichkeit ): traumatic events from the past are not reckoned with or worked-through until some coincidence or reminder, such as a similar [End Page 183] sensory experience, reintroduces the event in doubled re-presentation (18–27). This implies the “subject” (a paradigm person) is a kind of timedelay, a self-conscious temporal moving that becomes this way through re-presentation. The rhetorical subject is analogously a retrojected reckoning with events past (not all traumatic) that Rickert identifies as a scene of writing, a locus that has important implications for rhetorical studies in general and writing pedagogy in particular. Rickert’s logic is as follows: if we agree that the subject is a belated one in the psychoanalytic sense, then how we teach rhetoric needs to change. Rickert opens the book with the observation that his students are producing excellent cultural critiques but that such critiques do not lead the students to change their actions (1–7), perhaps evidence enough that something is not quite right in a classroom grounded by “cultural studies pedagogy” and ideology critique—or at the very least, proof that something has changed. The opening gambit is simply that a “postpedagogy” premised on an understanding of rhetorical subjectivity as belatedness is better than a status quo rooted in the rational subject of the Enlightenment.Mostly through a Žižek-filtered, Lacanian lens, Acts of Enjoyment then undertakes a retake of the rhetorical field, frequently scanning from the traumatic ontology of the rhetorical subject to that domain of knowledge that we hold dear, the subject of rhetoric. In Chapter 2, the (primal) scene thus shifts from the slo-mo subject to rhetorical studies, initially through a reassessment of Kinneavy’s “communications triangle,” but ultimately in response to the shock treatment of poststructuralism. The initial theoretical traumas introduced by Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and others discussed in Chapter 1 are threaded into an account of “poststructural” redress in Chapter 2: as is true of all forms of trauma, the initial poststructural jolt delivered to the concept of subjectivity was deadened; poststructural theory was eventually used to “shore up rather than challenge Kinneavy’s triangle” (37). To truly work-through our traumatized subject in both senses, we need a second trauma: Lacanian psychoanalysis. Presumably, “poststructuralist thought” is to be opposed because it has no account of the subject (21–24); “Lacan,” after all, “is not a poststructuralist” (48). The remainder of the chapter is then used to deploy Lacan’s conceptual lexicon.Just as... (shrink)