The teaching of John Paul II clearly articulates the strain of human rights. The Pope initiates a dialogue with the Enlightenment tradition and develops the theological and philosophical foundations of the culture of human rights. Karola Wojtyła’s personalistic thought appears to be a very coherent and reliable key to understand the doctrine of human rights. Wojtyła stresses subjectivity and non-reducibility of the person as a concrete human „I.” It is both autonomy and transcendence that constitute dignity of the person towards (...) other personal and impersonal beings. (shrink)

[t. 1.] Filosofii︠a︡ -- [t. 2.] Mifologii︠a︡--religii︠a︡-- [t. 3]. Literatura. I︠A︡zyk i pisʹmennostʹ -- [t. 4]. Istoricheskai︠a︡ myslʹ. Politicheskai︠a︡ i pravovai︠a︡ kulʹtura -- [t. 5]. Nauka, tekhnicheskai︠a︡ i voennai︠a︡ myslʹ, zdravookhranenie i obrazovanie -- [t. 6]. Iskusstvo.

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

It has been noticed by several authors that the colloquial understanding of anonymity as mere unknown-ness is insufficient. This common-sense notion of anonymity does not recognize the role of the goal for which the anonymity is sought. Starting with the distinction between the intentional and unintentional anonymity (which are usually taken to be the same) and the general concept of the non-coordinatability of traits, we offer a logical analysis of anonymity and identification (understood as de-anonymization). In our enquiry, we focus (...) on the intentional aspect of anonymity and develop a metaphor of “anonymity game” between “perpetrator” and “detective”. Beginning from common-sense intuitions, we provide a formalized, critical notion of anonymity. (shrink)

This paper is an update of the documents we have concerning the Acts of the Christian martyrs, focused on three main aspects: 1) the kind of acts we know of and their classification from the point of view of their historic value; 2) the versions or editions of the texts that are most accepted by scholars; 3) the relevance of the different parts that make up these documents in order to discern the original text from passages that were rewritten or (...) underwent later variations. In this way, the article offers an exhaustive list of the documents for use in researching Christian martyrs in the Roman period. (shrink)

Ibn al-ʻArabī, 1165-1240; views on freedom; Sufism; Islamic philosophy.

Even though Slavoj Žižek has written many words about music without really saying much about it, his work nevertheless contains much that for the philosophically minded musicologist, or for the musically minded philosopher, can stimulate thinking. For the author of this article, for example, some of the ideas presented in Žižek’s 2006 The Parallax View have stimulated thinking about the possibilities of taking a comparable approach—that is, a metaphorically ‘parallax’ approach that involves considering an object of attention alternately from more (...) than one perspective—not just to music but to sounds in general. Along with summarizing Žižek’s views on music per se, “Focused Listening: The Aesthetics of Parallax” explores various ways in which persons in the presence of a single ‘sound object’ might listen to, and thus perceive and hear, that sonic phenomenon. (shrink)

The paper presents comments of a technologist, consciously representing a technological cognitive perspective. It is stressed that technology is interested recently in the interplay of tacit, emotive and intuitive knowledge with explicit knowledge, expressed by micro-theories of knowledge creation. Between many results of such theories, two fundamental principles are of basic, also metaphysical importance: multimedia principle and emergence principle. Important is also the fact that these principles are not only intuitive generalizations, they are also justified scientifically, rationally and pragmatically in (...) relation to diverse parts of human knowledge. These principles go beyond and are in a sense opposed to fashionable trends of postmodernism and poststructuralism. In relation to these principles, the importance of objectivity—understood not as an absolute condition, because such is not attainable, but as a goal and value emerging accordingto the principle of emergence—is shown by an evolutionary argument. A general spiral of the evolutionary knowledge creation with an objectifying feedback is proposed. (shrink)

The paper presents comments of a technologist, consciously representing a technological cognitive perspective. It is stressed that technology is interested recently in the interplay of tacit, emotive and intuitive knowledge with explicit knowledge, expressed by micro-theories of knowledge creation. Between many results of such theories, two fundamental principles are of basic, also metaphysical importance: multimedia principle and emergence principle. Important is also the fact that these principles are not only intuitive generalizations, they are also justified scientifically, rationally and pragmatically in (...) relation to diverse parts of human knowledge. These principles go beyond and are in a sense opposed to fashionable trends of postmodernism and poststructuralism. In relation to these principles, the importance of objectivity—understood not as an absolute condition, because such is not attainable, but as a goal and value emerging accordingto the principle of emergence—is shown by an evolutionary argument. A general spiral of the evolutionary knowledge creation with an objectifying feedback is proposed. (shrink)

Ever since Lessing’s 1776 “Laocoön: An Essay upon the Limits of Poetry and Painting” aestheticians have been debating the essential differences between the temporal and the visual arts. Pace Lessing and his twentieth-century philosophical descendants, this essay explores the idea that the musical style cultivated by the American composer Elliott Carter in the years following World War II and the “action paintings” produced ca. 1947–53 by his compatriot Jackson Pollock in fact have quite a bit in common. The commonality, the (...) essay argues, is not so much anything contained in the works themselves as something perceived – perhaps even viscerally felt – by persons who experience the paintings and the musical compositions. Although their musical and painterly efforts are in most ways as different as night and day, both Carter and Pollock managed in their postwar works – perhaps uniquely – to create the potent illusion of multiple times that seem to pass at the same time. (shrink)

“Postmodern” is an elusive concept that embraces a wide range of critical theories and attitudes. To borrow the assessment that the American poet Walt Whitman offered of himself, the concept is large and contains multitudes, various aspects of which often seem to be at odds with one another. Postmodern art likewise contains multitudes; indeed, it would seem that one of postmodern art's chief characteristics is the comfortable integration of apparently contradictory stimuli that, importantly, are sited less in the “work” itself (...) than in the eye/ear/mind of the beholder. Grounded on the idea that postmodern music is defined not by composers but by listeners, this essay challenges musicological writing that since the early 1990s has sought both to illuminate an ideology of postmodernism and to identify elements of a postmodernist style. In particular, it counters the much-repeated statement that the first, and perhaps quintessential, example of musical postmodernism is the eclectic yet thoroughly linear and discursive 1972 Third String Quartet of the late American composer George Rochberg; the essay suggests that, if a prototype of the postmodern in music must be named, a better candidate would be Rochberg's palimpsest-like 1965 Music for the Magic Theater. (shrink)

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended by appeal (...) to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

Greek text, english translation and commentary on the surviving fragments of Empedocles (fragments as known in 1981, does not include more recent finds).

The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive (...) field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data. (shrink)

There are obvious benefits to be gained from the study of logic: heightened ability to express ideas clearly and concisely, increased skill in defining one's terms, enlarged capacity to formulate arguments rigorously and to analyze them critically. But the greatest benefit, in my judgment, is the recognition that reason can be applied in every aspect of human affairs.

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

This paper is devoted to the study of some subvarieties of the variety Qof Q-Heyting algebras, that is, Heyting algebras with a quantifier. In particular, a deeper investigation is carried out in the variety Q 3 of three-valued Q-Heyting algebras to show that the structure of the lattice of subvarieties of Qis far more complicated that the lattice of subvarieties of Heyting algebras. We determine the simple and subdirectly irreducible algebras in Q 3 and we construct the lattice of subvarieties (...) (Q 3 ) of the variety Q 3. (shrink)