ABSTRCTIn recent times, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hasbeen developed and widely spread around world. ICT is used in various sectorsand considered a basis in the emergence of some important technologies such asvirtual reality technology. Virtual Reality (VR) is a special technology as anadvanced technology connected to several fields, e.g. training, learning, science,engineering, medicine, military, etc. VR has great potentials which enabled toperform several phenomena and experiments. Hence, several scenarios havebecome available. The purpose of this study is to shed light (...) on virtual realitytechnology and list a glimpse of common publications and studies involved. (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the major developments in the philosophical understanding of suicide in 19th Century Western thought. Two developments in particular are considered. The first is a widespread shift towards thinking about suicide in medical terms rather than moral terms. Deploying methods initiated by a number of French and German thinkers in the preceding century who worked at the then emerging interface between the social and biological sciences, a number of 19th century thinkers ejected what they took to (...) be old metaphysical superstitions about ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and replaced them with (allegedly) hard-nosed scientific diagnoses of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. Dismissing traditional moral arguments against the permissibility of suicide, the phenomenon came to be viewed as a symptom of decline or degeneration. How variations of this view, in biological and social contexts, reorientated practical responses to suicide in terms of treatment rather than moral condemnation is explored. The second 19th century development in philosophical thought with respect to suicide the chapter considers concerns its place in one of the most significant controversies in Germany from 1860 to the turn of the century: the Pessimismusstreit or ‘pessimism dispute’. While philosophical pessimism might be thought to vindicate or even entail suicide, many of the most prominent pessimists—including Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann—denied that this was the case, and perhaps surprisingly took suicide to involve a special kind of moral and/or epistemic failing. The chapter aims to elucidate the different arguments which pessimists appealed to in order to ground this position. (shrink)

In this comparative survey of 191 Egyptian and 92 U.S. executives, we explore the relationship between national culture and ethical decision-making within the context of business. Using Reidenbach and Robin’s (1988) multi-criteria ethics instrument, we examine how differences on two of Hofstede’s national culture dimensions, individualism/collectivism, and power distance, are related to the manner in which business practitioners make ethical decisions. Egypt and the U.S. provide an interesting comparison because of the extreme differences in their economies and related business development. (...) Our results indicate that respondents from the U.S, individualistic and low in power distance, were likely to view the decision making outcome in ethics scenarios as more unethical than the more collectivistic and high power distance Egyptians, when applying ethical criteria based on justice, utilitarianism, relativism, and (contrary to our predictions) egoism. However, we also found that both Egyptians and Americans rely on justice, utilitarianism, and relativism in predicting their intentions to behave ethically, and that Americans substitute egoism for justice, when the behavioral intentions of peers are examined. (shrink)

Currie’s (2010) argument that “i-desires” must be posited to explain our responses to fiction is critically discussed. It is argued that beliefs and desires featuring ‘in the fiction’ operators—and not sui generis imaginings (or "i-beliefs" or "i-desires")—are the crucial states involved in generating fiction-directed affect. A defense of the “Operator Claim” is mounted, according to which ‘in the fiction’ operators would be also be required within fiction-directed sui generis imaginings (or "i-beliefs" and "i-desires"), were there such. Once we appreciate that (...) even fiction-directed sui generis imaginings would need to incorporate ‘in the fiction’ operators, the main appeal of the idea that sui generis imaginings (or "i-beliefs" or "i-desires") are at work in fiction-appreciation dissipates. [This is Chapter 10 of Explaining Imagination (OUP, 2020)]. (shrink)

If we are free to imagine what we choose, this is likely because our intentions determine what we are imagining. However, in a recent article, Munro and Strohminger (2021) argue that, in some cases of imagistic imagining, our intentions do not determine what we are imagining. They offer examples where, intuitively, a person intends to imagine one thing but, due to the causal source of the image used, imagine another. This paper acknowledges the challenge posed by these cases while arguing (...) on several grounds that, when present, intentions nevertheless always suffice to determine the object of one’s imaginings. I conclude by explaining how intentions could fix the objects of episodic rememberings in much the same way as they do for imaginings, thereby bolstering the case that remembering is a kind of imagining. (shrink)

Pretense is a topic of keen interest to philosophers and psychologists. But what is it, really, to pretend? What features qualify an act as pretense? Surprisingly little has been said on this foundational question. Here I defend an account of what it is to pretend, distinguishing pretense from a variety of related but distinct phenomena, such as (mere) copying and practicing. I show how we can distinguish pretense from sincerity by sole appeal to a person's beliefs, desires, and intentions – (...) and without circular recourse to an ‘intention to pretend’ or to a sui generis mental state of ‘imagining.’. (shrink)

It is often observed that images—including mental images—are in some sense representationally ambiguous. Some, including Jerry Fodor, have added that mental images only come to have determinate contents through the contribution of non-imagistic representations that accompany them. This paper agrees that a kind of ambiguity holds with respect to mental imagery, while arguing (pace Fodor) that this does not prevent imagery from having determinate contents in the absence of other, non-imagistic representations. Specifically, I argue that mental images can represent determinate (...) types of outlays of properties without help from any non-imagistic representations, yet can only become involved in the representation of particular objects through pairing with a non-imagistic representation of the right sort. These points are defended through reflection on the “Picture Principle,” the nature of depiction, and general principles for typing and individuating mental states. (shrink)

The (dis)continuism debate in the philosophy and cognitive science of memory concerns whether remembering is continuous with episodic future thought and episodic counterfactual thought in being a form of constructive imagining. I argue that settling that dispute will hinge on whether the memory traces (or “engrams”) that support remembering impose arational, perception-like constraints that are too strong for remembering to constitute a kind of constructive imagining. In exploring that question, I articulate two conceptions of memory traces—the replay theory and the (...) prop theory—that return conflicting answers to whether remembering is constructive imagining. The prop theory’s vision of traces is suggestive of continuism, while the replay theory’s is a natural fit for discontinuism. Which view of traces is in fact correct remains undetermined by current empirical work. Nevertheless, it may already be possible to reach a compromise in the (dis)continuism debate, through the development of a conciliatory continuist causal theory. This view—only outlined here—accepts the continuism-friendly prop theory of traces, while still requiring that genuine remembering fulfills an appropriate causation condition, as required by the kinds of causal theories of remembering typically favored by discontinuists. (shrink)

It is widely held that introspection-based self-ascriptions of mental states are immune to error through misidentification , relative to the first person pronoun. Many have taken such errors to be logically impossible, arguing that the immunity holds as an “absolute” necessity. Here I discuss an actual case of craniopagus twins—twins conjoined at the head and brain—as a means to arguing that such errors are logically possible and, for all we know, nomologically possible. An important feature of the example is that (...) it is one where a person may be said to be introspectively aware of a mental state that occurs outside of her own mind. Implications are discussed for views of the relation between introspection and mental state ownership, and between introspection and epistemic criteria for the “mark of the mental.”. (shrink)

In reply to Daniel Hutto’s “Getting Real About Pretense,“ I defend my theory of pretense against his claim that it is subject to counterexamples by clarifying wherein the value of the analysis lies. Then I argue that the central challenge still facing Hutto’s “primacy of practice” approach, as well as other 4E approaches to pretense, is to explain the link between pretense and deception.

Abstract: How it is that one's own thoughts can seem to be someone else's? After noting some common missteps of other approaches to this puzzle, I develop a novel cognitive solution, drawing on and critiquing theories that understand inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia as stemming from mismatches between predicted and actual sensory feedback. Considerable attention is paid to forging links between the first-person phenomenology of thought insertion and the posits (e.g. efference copy, corollary discharge) of current cognitive (...) theories. I show how deficits in the subconscious mechanisms regulating inner speech may lead to a 'fractured phenomenology' responsible for schizophrenic patients' reports of inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations. Supporting work on virtual environments is discussed, and lessons concerning the fixity of delusional belief are drawn. (shrink)

Cats and dogs are the same kind of thing in being mammals, even if cats are not a kind of dog. In the same way, remembering and imagining might be the same kind of mental state, even if remembering is not a kind of imagining. This chapter explores whether episodic remembering, on the one hand, and future and counter-factual directed imagistic imagining, on the other, may be the same kind of mental state in being instances of the same cognitive attitude. (...) I outline a continuist position where all three involve the same judgment-like attitude and compare its advantages to a discontinuist alternative where remembering requires use of its own distinctive attitude. Reasons are given for favoring a version of the continuist position, though this chapter’s focus is on the metatheoretical questions of how to go about understanding remembering in terms of a content and attitude pair, and which considerations are relevant when deciding among competing content/attitude pairs. (shrink)

Visual imagination (or visualization) is peculiar in being both free, in that what we imagine is up to us, and useful to a wide variety of practical reasoning tasks. How can we rely upon our visualizations in practical reasoning if what we imagine is subject to our whims? The key to answering this puzzle, I argue, is to provide an account of what constrains the sequence in which the representations featured in visualization unfold—an account that is consistent with its freedom. (...) Three different proposals are outlined, building on theories that link visualization to sensorimotor predictive mechanisms (e.g., efference copies, forward models ). Each sees visualization as a kind of reasoning, where its freedom consists in our ability to choose the topic of the reasoning. Of the three options, I argue that the approach many will find most attractive—that visualization is a kind of off-line perception, and is therefore in some sense misrepresentational—should be rejected. The two remaining proposals both conceive of visualization as a form of sensorimotor reasoning that is constitutive of one’s commitments concerning the way certain kinds of visuomotor scenarios unfold. According to the first, these commitments impinge on one’s web of belief from without, in the manner of normal perceptual experience; according to the second, these commitments just are one’s (occurrent) beliefs about such generalizations. I conclude that, despite being initially counterintuitive, the view of visualization as a kind of occurrent belief is the most promising. (shrink)

To some it is a shallow platitude that inner speech always has an auditory-phonological component. To others, it is an empirical hypothesis with accumulating support. To yet others it is a false dogma. In this chapter, I defend the claim that inner speech always has an auditory-phonological component, confining the claim to adults with ordinary speech and hearing. It is one thing, I emphasize, to assert that inner speech often, or even typically, has an auditory-phonological component—quite another to propose that (...) it always does. When forced to argue for the stronger point, we stand to make a number of interesting discoveries about inner speech itself, and about our means for discriminating it from other psycholinguistic phenomena. Establishing the stronger conclusion also provides new leverage on debates concerning how we should conceive of, diagnose, and explain auditory verbal hallucinations and “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia. (shrink)

Contrary to common misconceptions, today's logic is not devoid of existential import: the universalized conditional ∀ x [S→ P] implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction ∃ x [S & P], not in all cases, but in some. We characterize the proexamples by proving the Existential-Import Equivalence: The antecedent S of the universalized conditional alone determines whether the universalized conditional has existential import, i.e. whether it implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction.A predicate is an open formula having only x free. An existential-import predicate (...) Q is one whose existentialization, ∃ x Q, is logically true; otherwise, Q is existential-import-free or simply import-free.How abundant or widespread is existential import? How abundant or widespread are existential-import predicates in themselves or in comparison to import-free predicates? We show that existential-import predicates are quite abundant, and no less so than import-free predicates. Existential.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to elucidate Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy in terms of an ethics of virtue. This paper consists of four sections. In the first section I outline three major objections Schopenhauer raises for Kant’s moral philosophy. In section two I extract from these criticisms a framework for Schopenhauer’s own position, identifying how his moral psychology underpins a unified and hierarchical conception of virtue and vice. I then ascertain some strengths of this view. In section three I (...) focus in upon the issue of fixed character and moral education as at least one major point of divergence between Schopenhauer’s virtue ethics and typical trends within the tradition. In the fourth and final section, I consider and respond to this ethical framework’s possible susceptibility to the charge of egoism, and adjudicate among competing solutions in the secondary literature. I conclude that refined forms of Schopenhauer’s ethical views offer rich and plausible insights into both virtue and vice which have received less attention than they deserve. Hence, Schopenhauer warrants more serious concern in contemporary discussions of virtue ethics alongside the likes of Aristotle, Hume and Nietzsche. (shrink)

There are two main camps in 20th-century philosophy of time: A-theorists who believe in the dynamic model of reality, and B-theorists who maintain a static model of reality. After the publication of Putnam’s influential article, “time and physical geometry”, the implications of the Special Theory of Relativity became serious in metaphysical discussions about temporal reality. Some philosophers argued that this theory contradicts the dynamic model and implies the ontology of the static model, namely, the objective reality of the present, past (...) and future events. In response, some advocates of the dynamic model argued that there can be dynamic models in relativistic setting, though they are different, radically, from old theories of dynamic reality. In this paper, first, I shall discuss how special relativity contradicts the traditional dynamic model and, then, how new dynamic models imply a relative concept of reality, in contrast to its old absolute concept and, so, why these strategies are very unintuitive. Finally, I shall argue that this radical conceptual shift about reality is, not only unintuitive, but unwarranted and, in some sense, inconsistent as well. (shrink)

The chapter considers the “paradox of fiction,” understood as the claim that it is in some sense irrational or inappropriate to respond emotionally to mere fictions. Several theorists have held that special features of imagination, or other “arational” mental reflexes, play a role in its resolution. I argue, to the contrary, that imagination need not enter into the solution, and that the paradox can be resolved in a way that shows our responses to fictions to be reasonable and warranted, even (...) if our emotional reactions to fiction are caused by beliefs and desires. Coming to terms with the paradox requires both properly understanding the “rug-pull” structure of the examples used to motivate it, and appreciating the specific emotional norms relevant to fiction appreciation. Related proposals by Livingston & Mele (1997) and Gilmore (2011) are discussed; their relevance to and coherence with the present account are explained. [This is Chapter 11 of Explaining Imagination.]. (shrink)

This chapter (from Routledge's forthcoming handbook on the philosophy of pain) considers the question of whether people are always correct when they judge themselves to be in pain, or not in pain. While I don't show sympathy for traditional routes to the conclusion that people are "incorrigible" in their pain judgments, I explore--and perhaps even advocate--a different route to such incorrigibility. On this low road to incorrigibility, a sensory state's being judged unpleasant is what makes it a pain (or not).

It has previously been argued that Schopenhauer is a distinctive type of virtue ethicist (Hassan, 2019). The Aristotelian version of virtue ethics has traditionally been accused of being fundamentally egoistic insofar as the possession of virtues is beneficial to the possessor, and serve as the ultimate justification for obtaining them. Indeed, Schopenhauer himself makes a version of this complaint. In this chapter, I investigate whether Schopenhauer’s moral framework nevertheless suffers from this same objection of egoism in light of how (...) he conceives of the relationship between morality and ascetic 'salvation'. Drawing upon his published works and letters, I argue that Schopenhauer has the resources to avoid the objection. Because of his idiosyncratic metaphysics, I argue that Schopenhauer can also avoid the problem of self-effacement which may result from the way in which he avoids the egoism objection. The discussion thus intends to establish further nuance to Schopenhauer’s conception of virtue and its value. (shrink)

This paper presents a unique manuscript copy of a fifth/eleventh-century Maghribī commentary on al-Bāqillānī’s Kitāb al-Tamhīd. The work, entitled al-Tasdīd fī sharḥ al-Tamhīd, was written by ‘Abd al-Jalīl b. Abī Bakr al-Dībājī —also known as Ibn al-Ṣābūnī— who had studied the Kitāb al-Tamhīd with al-Bāqillānī’s disciples in Qayrawān. The present study first reviews the transmission of al-Bāqillānī’s work to the Islamic west. It then continues to present the author of the commentary, to reconstruct the work’s genesis and to describe its (...) content. The final section focuses on a sample chapter and argues that al-Dībājī follows al-Bāqillānī’s later position on a specific theory —the so-called theory ofaḥwāl— of which the Tamhīd strongly disapproved. The Tasdīd is one of the oldest texts of Maghribī Ash‘arism that has come down to us and provides valuable new insights into the school’s early history in the Islamic west. (shrink)

The construction of railways has been one of the symbols of advanced technology and modernity in various societies and is known as a means of expanding and transferring goods, men, and their ideas. During the political-economic circumstances of the second half of the 19th century, the first rail line of Iran was built under the Qajar rule. This was an 8 km railway to connect Tehran to Rey with some small wagons, most local people tended to call it Mashin-Doodi, which (...) translates as Smokey Machine. The railway then appeared in southwest Iran as a means of transport for the oil industry which was booming after oil discoveries in Khuzestan. The intercity railway started to operate in 1923 and was 57 km long, connecting Masjed-i-Soleyman to Dar-i-Kahzineh. It was established for exploitative purposes of foreign states resulting in a few small-scale and temporary projects, but the idea of constructing and expanding rail lines based on national investments finally materialized with the first national railroad. (shrink)

In response to its current crisis, scholars call for the revitalisation of democracy through democratic innovations. While they make ample use of life metaphors describing democracy as a living organism, no comprehensive understanding of ‘life’ has been established within democratic theory. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement articulates the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice. This article employs a grounded theory approach, enriched with participatory methods, to develop a radical democratic concept of life in (...) conversation with BLM. It conceptualises life as the existence of a perspective that constantly transforms through its fundamental interconnectedness. Building on this concept, the article outlines four principles of a living democracy that go beyond the revitalisation discourse. A living democracy (1) safeguards the existence of all humans and nonhumans, (2) nurtures a diversity of perspectives, (3) fosters social and planetary connectivity, and (4) enables self- and collective transformation. (shrink)

Smith has argued that moral realism need not be threatened by apparent moral disagreement. One reason he gives is that moral debate has tended to elicit convergence in moral views. From here, he argues inductively that current disagreements will likely be resolved on the condition that each party is rational and fully informed. The best explanation for this phenomenon, Smith argues, is that there are mind-independent moral facts that humans are capable of knowing. In this paper, I seek to challenge (...) this argument—and more recent versions of it—by arguing that historical convergence in moral views may occur for various arational reasons. If such reasons possibly result in convergence—which Smith effectively concedes—then the moral realist would require an additional a posteriori argument to establish that convergence in moral views occurred for the right reasons. Hence, Smith-style arguments, as they stand, cannot be mobilised in support of moral realism. Rather, this investigation demonstrates the necessity of a genuine history of morality for any convergence claim in support of a meta-ethical view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Negative Capability Reclaimed: Literature and Philosophy Contra PoliticsIhab HassanI began a few years ago to try to make space in my reckoning and imagining for the marvellous as well as the murderous.Seamus HeaneyTwo concerns cross in this essay: the first, explicit, regards the current condition of the academic humanities, their idioms and axioms, especially in America; the second, implicit, regards my own need to confront criticism, its abstractions that (...) now enable, now disable, the profession and even more the experience of literature. Such concerns must mix speculation and autobiography, mix the pride with the pathos of mind.But I should admit it from the start: my title cries paradox. Negative capability reclaimed? Can reclamation dwell in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” as Keats thought, and can a critic aspire to the condition of a poet, in whom the “sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates consideration”? 1Mine, I repeat, is a hybrid critical discourse, touched by exasperation more than mystery. Yet negative capability can still serve us as emblem of certain qualities, attitudes, dispositions that we bring to literature, without turning that happy phrase into yet another slogan. Beyond the arrogance of transient ideologies, beyond the mawkishness of self-regard, negative capability may offer us a kind of patience, perhaps ascesis, the intellectual and, yes, spiritual equivalent of discipline in our moment. [End Page 305]IStated baldly, my proposition, which I will need continually to texture and qualify, is this: the prevalence of politics, the obsession with power, the unrelieved pressure of both in the university, skew our language, thought, values. Thus the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, between Homer and Plato, now cedes the field to a nastier agon between both and politics as GRIM (my acronym for the Great Rumbling Ideological Machine) grinds on. These are no abstractions; the clamorous evidence is all about, indicative even in its triviality, banality.Take a book blurb. Kathy Acker endorses a new, and quite intelligent work, entitled Male Matters, thus: “Calvin Thomas is able to hint at a way out of the prisonhouse of straight male identity.” Granted, this is but an ad in a university press catalogue. But what does the language reveal about the assumptions of academic discourse? “Prisonhouse,” really, for all unfortunate, straight males? Is a generalization of this kind permissible when blander generalizations about other groups raise such a hue and cry? Will straight African-American or Native American males feel “offended” by the statement? Or is it all a matter of restitution, categorical loyalty, political commitment? And when will that supreme fiction, the white, straight, bourgeois, rational male “subject” cease to prop up every ideological complaint?Thought blends into hype; words writhe; stereotypes become as transparent as the stereotypes they once repugned. But let us consider an example worthier of criticism. In his Inaugural Lecture as Robert Wallace Professor at the University of Melbourne, entitled “The Departure of English?” (the question mark risks disingenuousness), Professor Simon During inelegantly states: “The academic appropriation of the avant-garde transfiguration of values is happening as what I am calling the departure of English—in the relative decline of literary studies and cultural studies’ emergence.” 2 Professor During thus assumes, on behalf of cultural studies, the mantles of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Hugo Ball—where is Antonin Artaud?—and Walter Benjamin, though none really had a mantle to bequeath. For a moment, the mind reels: Nietzscheans and poètes maudits, Pataphysicians and Dadaists, as apostles of cultural studies, of political correctness, group think, and GRIM? Involuntarily, the lines of William Butler Yeats, in “The Scholars,” sing out: “Lord, what would they say / Did their Catullus walk that way?” [End Page 306]We are all free, of course, to reinvent our ancestors and to derive later authority from what an earlier generation derided—free, this side of ludicrousness. But Professor During’s argument, a sort of academic conceit, discourages mere ridicule; it has pedagogical consequences. Thus he continues: “I am certainly not claiming a causal relation between modernism circa 1900 and academic cultural studies today. Rather I want to argue that cultural studies... (shrink)

The prevailing discourse in Israeli academia on justifying the values of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” takes the form of a debate involving questions of group rights of a national minority, as in any liberal democracy. The framework of this discourse relies on three interconnected, hegemonic assertions. These assertions assume the applicability of equal individual rights, put aside the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as irrelevant for the “Jewishness” of the state as it belongs to a (...) different rule of recognition, and conceptualize the Green Line based on majority-minority relations with Jewish group rights, including the Law of Return, as not leading to discrimination against individuals. I contend that these assertions are invalid and that colonialism is the relevant framework of Israel’s constitutional identity in Palestine (the Green Line, the West Bank including Jerusalem and Gaza). I argue there is one Constitution in Palestine based on one conception of sovereignty, regardless of any rules of recognition where the Law of Return, together with the value of “preserving a Jewish majority,” constitutes its very essence that targets the Palestinians as such. The Article presents a case-law study regarding family life between spouses and their children in Palestine. This case-law reveals an unfamiliar phenomenon. Unlike the plurality of written laws that characterize colonial regimes, the Israeli legal system introduces a unique model in which racial domination is created mostly by decisionism of the Court, out of the written laws and regardless of any rule of recognition. (shrink)

One of the greatest philosophical disputes in Germany in the latter half of the 19th century concerned the value of life. Following Arthur Schopenhauer, numerous philosophers sought to defend the provocative view that life is not worth living. A persistent objection to pessimism is that it is not really a philosophical theory at all, but rather a psychological state; a mood or disposition which is the product of socio-economic circumstance. A developed and influential version of this view was advanced in (...) the 1870’s by the English psychologist James Sully. Yet, as important as Sully’s critique was for the pessimism dispute, it has been almost entirely overlooked in the history of philosophy. With some growing recent attention to 19th century pessimism, this paper aims to reconstruct Sully’s view, and what I argue is his primary argument for it in terms of the best explanation for an alleged historical correlation between pessimistic belief and social hardship in the form of frustrated ideals. The paper then presents and analyses some challenges to this argument, some of which are argued to have been at least partially anticipated in the 19th century by the likes of Schopenhauer and Olga Plümacher. (shrink)

In this paper, I take it to be uncontroversial that increasingly into his philosophical career, Nietzsche believed human greatness to be an appropriately valuable goal, at least for certain types of people. But while Nietzsche's repeated paradigms of greatness include figures as seemingly diverse as Beethoven, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cesare Borgia, Julius Caesar, it is unclear precisely what great-making property (or properties) Nietzsche considers these figures to share. I consider two possible approaches which have shaped the terrain of the secondary literature (...) on this controversial matter: greatness as a matter of internal properties (character traits); or external properties (achievements). I discuss the arguments for each view here, resulting with my own view being that both achievements and traits of character are at least necessary for what Nietzsche understands greatness to consist in. I then consider a distinction between actual and potential greatness in order to explore further necessary and perhaps sufficient conditions of Nietzsche's positive ideal. While my aim in this paper is primarily exegetical, I hope to draw upon contemporary issues in value theory surrounding the nature of achievement which are of interest to ethicists more broadly. (shrink)

Postmodernism once more—that breach has begun to yawn! I return to it by way of pluralism, which itself has become the irritable condition of postmodern discourse, consuming many pages of both critical and uncritical inquiry. Why? Why pluralism now? This question recalls another that Kant raised two centuries ago—“Was heist Aufklärung?”—meaning, “Who are we now?” The answer was a signal meditation on historical presence, as Michel Foucault saw.1 But to meditate on that topic today—and this is my central claim—is really (...) to inquire ‘Was heist Postmodernismus?”Pluralism in our time finds itself in the social, aesthetic, and intellectual assumptions of postmodernism—finds its ordeal, its rightness, there. I submit, further, that the critical intentions of diverse American pluralists—M. H. Abrams, Wayne Booth, Kenneth Burke, Matei Calinescu, R. S. Crane, Nelson Goodman, Richard McKeon, Stephen Pepper, not to mention countless other artists and thinkers of our moment—engage that overweening query, “What is postmodernism?,” engage and even answer it tacitly. In short, like a latter-day M. Jourdain, they have been speaking postmodernism all their lives without knowing it.But what is postmodernism? I can propose no rigorous definition of it, any more than I could define modernism itself. For the term has become a current signal of tendencies in theater, dance, music, art, and architecture; in literature and criticism; in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and historiography; in cybernetic technologies and even in the sciences. Indeed, postmodernism has now received the bureaucratic accolade of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in the form of a Summer Seminar for College Teachers; beyond that, it has penetrated the abstractions of “late” Marxist critics who, only a decade ago, dismissed postmodernism as another instance of the dreck, fads, and folderol of a consumer society. Clearly, then, the time has come to theorize the term, if not define it, before it fades from awkward neologism to derelict cliché without ever attaining to the dignity of a cultural concept. 1. “Maybe the most certain of all philosophical problems is the problem of the present time, of what we are, in this very moment,” writes Michel Foucault in “The Subject and Power,” reprinted as “Afterword” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow : 777-96. Ihab Hassan is Vilas Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. He is the author of, among other books, Radical Innocence , The Dismemberment of Orpheus , Paracriticisms , and The Right Promethean Fire . His latest work, Out of Egypt, is forthcoming in 1986. (shrink)

Background: Many people with aphasia and people without brain injury talk to themselves in their heads, i.e., have “inner speech.” Inner speech may be more preserved compared with spoken speech for some people with aphasia and may serve a variety of functions (e.g., emotion regulation), which motivates us to provide a high-fidelity characterization of it. Researchers have used multiple methods to measure this internal phenomenon in the past, which we combine here for the first time in a single study. -/- (...) Aims: We compare performance between individuals with and without aphasia on inner speech tasks that assess inner speech “inthe- moment” to general subjective impressions of inner speech to tease apart the relationship of aphasia severity to inner speech. Methods and Procedures: Twenty people with mild-moderate aphasia and twenty neurotypical controls completed several inner speech tasks, including objective silent rhyme judgements (picture, written, and auditory), subjective reports of inner speech during naming, and subjective rating scales about inner speech experience more generally. -/- Outcomes and Results: In-the-moment inner speech during silent rhyming tasks was associated with aphasia severity only for picture and written rhyming but not auditory rhyming. In-the-moment inner speech reports during silent naming were not associated with aphasia severity, nor were the subjective ratings about general inner speech experience. Individuals with and without aphasia demonstrated a variety of subjective general inner speech experiences, demonstrating heterogeneity of this phenomenon more broadly. -/- Conclusions: Methods of measuring inner speech complement each other and speak to different facets of the inner speech phenomenon, and clinicians and researchers must carefully choose the method(s) that will provide the information about inner speech that they desire. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Schopenhauer’s a priori argument for pessimism and, to an extent, rescue it from standard objections in secondary literature. I argue that if we separate out the various strands of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, we hit upon problems and counterexamples stemming from psychology. For example, instances where striving does not appear to equate to suffering, which puts pressure on the Schopenhauerian claim that human life, qua instantiation of the will, is painful. Schopenhauer’s sensitivity to the complexities of human (...) psychology means that he may be able to stave off such concerns. However, this reveals that true force of Schopenhauer’s argument lies in the manner in which he combines an a priori formulation with empirical observation. I conclude that, though not unproblematic, Schopenhauer’s argument in its most refined forms offers a deep articulation of the human condition, and warrants serious consideration. (shrink)

Pervasive digitality reveals us as analogue creatures that are unprepared for a world and a logic generated increasingly through automation. Promulgated by capitalism, digitality has created a new form of alienation, one far more powerful and comprehensive than that envisaged by either Marx or Lukács in the analogue-industrial age. Digital alienation-through-automation is the central process in our digital post-modernity. The effects reach increasing registers and spheres of culture, economy and politics. This essay considers the effects within the production of knowledge (...) within higher education. Through a critique of Clayton Christensen’s concept of ‘disruptive technologies’, it develops the argument that knowledge produced in our higher institutions of learning suffer from two forms of ‘knowledge capture’. The first and most comprehensive is knowledge increasingly oriented toward instrumental outcomes, generated in vocationally oriented and market-pressured contexts, and produced by the general-sector institutions; second is knowledge, much of it profound and potentially world-changing—in economics and climate science in the cases discussed here. These are generated in both prestigious general-sector universities, and in the elite Ivy League and Russell Group universities but are unable to gain traction with an ascendant and alien post-Westphalian, post-modern and post-Enlightenment political context—created by a globalising digitality. I argue that unless we recognise our analogue essence, and that this has been alienated by digital automation, then the aporias of digitality, with knowledge production an important element, then our institution of higher learning will continue to produce much valuable knowledge that has diminishing practical (political) effect. (shrink)

Pervasive digitality reveals us as analogue creatures that are unprepared for a world and a logic generated increasingly through automation. Promulgated by capitalism, digitality has created a new form of alienation, one far more powerful and comprehensive than that envisaged by either Marx or Lukács in the analogue-industrial age. Digital alienation-through-automation is the central process in our digital post-modernity. The effects reach increasing registers and spheres of culture, economy and politics. This essay considers the effects within the production of knowledge (...) within higher education. Through a critique of Clayton Christensen’s concept of ‘disruptive technologies’, it develops the argument that knowledge produced in our higher institutions of learning suffer from two forms of ‘knowledge capture’. The first and most comprehensive is knowledge increasingly oriented toward instrumental outcomes, generated in vocationally oriented and market-pressured contexts, and produced by the general-sector institutions; second is knowledge, much of it profound and potentially world-changing—in economics and climate science in the cases discussed here. These are generated in both prestigious general-sector universities, and in the elite Ivy League and Russell Group universities but are unable to gain traction with an ascendant and alien post-Westphalian, post-modern and post-Enlightenment political context—created by a globalising digitality. I argue that unless we recognise our analogue essence, and that this has been alienated by digital automation, then the aporias of digitality, with knowledge production an important element, then our institution of higher learning will continue to produce much valuable knowledge that has diminishing practical (political) effect. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Postmodernism:A Self-InterviewIhab HassanThe following interview did not take place in Ihab Hassan's study in Milwaukee, with a view of Lake Michigan, rippling turquoise, blue, and mauve under a sky of fluffy paratactical clouds.Interviewer: You are sometimes known as the Father...Hassan: Please! At most, the Godfather of Postmodernism, though I don't know who the Godmother is. Maybe Madam Hype?I: Why hype?H: Because postmodernism began as a genuinely contested (...) idea and is fading as a form of media hype.I: Can you define it, however tentatively?H: I would prefer not to. In fact, I cannot, no more than I can define romanticism or modernism in a sentence or paragraph. Such definitions are best left to some onomastic genius. Once, I offered a table of features contrasting modernism with postmodernism. Once is quite enough.I: Why is that?H: Because it was as widely cited as pounced upon, nearly everyone ignoring my pointed disclaimer: "Yet the dichotomies this table represents remain insecure, equivocal. For differences shift, defer, even collapse; concepts in any one vertical column are not all equivalent; and inversions and exceptions, in both modernism and postmodernism, abound."I: Well, if we can't define postmodernism, how can we talk about it? [End Page 223]H: The way we talk about everything else: say, freedom, justice, love, spirit, happiness.... We talk about postmodernism by using the word in various verbal contexts—Wittgenstein would have said "language games"—and seeing what happens.I: What happens?H: Some discussions engage postmodernism and clarify it in certain perspectives, without actually defining it: for instance, the works of Hans Bertens, Charles Jencks, Andreas Huyssen, even Fredric Jameson....I: Why even Jameson?H: Because Marxism has a tenuous relation to contemporary reality, as everyone knows except some Western academics.I: Some would say that the entire phenomenon of postmodernism is an exercise of Western academics.H: That's a bit of a non sequitur but true enough, true up to a point. Remember, the phenomenon has overflowed its theoretical origins to become a kind of ironic cultural awareness, a mode of historical reflexivity—if you wish, a perpetually anxious exercise in self-definition.I: But Western, always Western, right?H: Japan has contributed vigorously to postmodernism, especially in art and architecture. So, instead of saying "Western," let's say high-tech, mass-media, omni-consuming societies.I: That, in effect, excludes four fifths of the world, wouldn't you say?H: Yes—and no. You see, cultural postmodernism has mutated into geopolitical postmodernity. By the latter, I mean both globalization with its thousand faces (multinational capitalism, cyber technology, cultural imperialism, "Americanization"), and counter-globalization with as many masks (local knowledge, old cultural traditions, postcolonial ideologies, anti-Western resentments). It's the monster phenomenon of our time.As I have written a good deal about this phenomenon, most recently in Angelika, I won't repeat myself here. The point, however, is that postmodernity is a planetary process, postmodernism is not.I: That suggests a political dimension, which some say you have slighted in your work. How would you respond to that criticism?H: Writing in the late sixties and early seventies about postmodernism, I lacked the benefits of hindsight. For instance, I focused on high culture, Beckett and Borges and Nabokov and Barthelme and Barth. I did not foresee then that postmodernism would become a media phenomenon, involving pop and kitsch. And I recognized the emergent process of globalization only in the Seventies, in Paracriticisms (1975).But I "slighted" the political only in the sense that I did not give it [End Page 224] priority, did not make it an "absolute horizon." In fact, I believe that a primary emphasis on politics flattens, impoverishes our lives. The current paradigm in the humanities ignores the inner cost of "politics."I: Forgive me, but that's another example of what some colleagues in the profession perceive as your contrary or cross-grained character. Can you explain why politics impoverishes our lives?H: Conformists—remember Harold Rosenberg's quip about "the herd of independent minds"?—are quick to discover perversity everywhere. But never mind that. The gravamen is that politics... (shrink)

It has been argued that the standard formulation of the Special Theory of Relativity is not only incompatible with presentism, but also strongly indicates the truth of eternalism. We should, however, distinguish two claims concerning the ontological implications of STR: STR is inconsistent with every ontology which requires an absolute relation of simultaneity; and STR implies that eternalism is the only possible ontology of time. There have been a wide range of responses designed to reject these claims, both jointly and (...) independently. For example, one way of rejecting claim is by rejecting claim : thus, one would argue that STR can be revised or interpreted in such a way that it allows an absolute relation of simultaneity. Another way of rejecting claim is by questioning the equivalency of the relation ‘being real as of’. The main purpose of this paper is to raise a new line of objection against concluding eternalism from the relativity of simultaneity. I argue that there is a way to deny claim without denying claim and also without denying the equivalency of relation R. The argument which I present rests on a metaphysical assumption concerning the relation of simultaneity : the assumption that the SIM holds basically between space–time points as opposed to holding basically between events. (shrink)

This article considers the four eyewitness threshold for zinā’ in Islamic criminal law. In some Muslim-majority countries where zinā’ remains an offence, judiciaries have by-passed the threshold by accepting singular confessions from male fornicators or, otherwise, inferring fornication from pregnancy outside of marriage. As a result, a disproportionate number of women have been prosecuted, convicted, and even punished for zinā’. I assert that the four-eyewitness threshold allows for an alternative way to view zinā’ that can result in a different set (...) of consequences. If the threshold is taken seriously such that it becomes the only evidentiary basis upon which a zinā’ conviction can be entered, it will create an effective or de facto exemption where alleged perpetrators can never be convicted, except in the rarest cases where four independent eyewitnesses can be corralled. If adopted, this approach would provide a principled basis to reject opportunistic confessions that deflect punishment to accused female fornicators. And as an ‘internal’ solution that arises within the framework of the sharī’a, a de facto exemption approach is more likely to be perceived as legitimate when compared with proposed solutions that find their basis in international human rights legal instruments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 1-13 [Access article in PDF] From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: The Local/Global Context Ihab Hassan I What Was Postmodernism? What was postmodernism, and what is it still? I believe it is a revenant, the return of the irrepressible; every time we are rid of it, its ghost rises back. Like a ghost, it eludes definition. Certainly, I know less about postmodernism today than I (...) did thirty years ago, when I began to write about it. This may be because postmodernism has changed, I have changed, the world has changed.But this is only to confirm Nietzsche's insight, that if an idea has a history, it is already an interpretation, subject to future revision. What escapes interpretation and reinterpretation is a Platonic Idea or an abstract analytical concept, like a circle or a triangle. Romanticism, modernism, postmodernism, however, like humanism or realism, will shift and slide continually with time, particularly in an age of ideological conflict and media hype.All this has not prevented postmodernism from haunting the discourse of architecture, the arts, the humanities, the social and sometimes even the physical sciences; haunting not only academic but also public speech in business, politics, the media, and entertainment industries; haunting the language of private life styles like postmodern cuisine--just add a dash of raspberry vinegar. Yet no consensus obtains on what postmodernism really means.The term, let alone the concept, may thus belong to what philosophers call an essentially contested category. That is, in plainer language, if you put in a room the main discussants of the concept--say Leslie Fiedler, Charles Jencks, Jean-François Lyotard, Bernard Smith, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, Marjorie Perloff, Linda Hutcheon and, just to [End Page 1] add to the confusion, myself--locked the room and threw away the key, no consensus would emerge between the discussants after a week. But a thin trickle of blood might appear beneath the sill.Let us not despair: though we may be unable to define or exorcise the ghost of postmodernism, we can approach it, surprising it from various angles, perhaps teasing it into a partial light. In the process, we may discover a family of words congenial to postmodernism. Here are some current uses of the term: 1. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain), Ashton Raggatt McDougall's Storey Hall in Melbourne (Australia), and Arata Isozaki's Tsukuba Center (Japan) are considered examples of postmodern architecture. They depart from the pure angular geometries of the Bauhaus, the minimal steel and glass boxes of Mies van der Rohe, mixing aesthetic and historical elements, flirting with fragments, fantasy, and even kitsch. 2. In a recent encyclical, titled "Fideset Ratio," Pope John Paul II actually used the word postmodernism to condemn extreme relativism in values and beliefs, acute irony and skepticism toward reason, and the denial of any possibility of truth, human or divine. 3. In cultural studies, a highly politicized field, the term postmodernism is often used in opposition to postcolonialism, the former deemed historically feckless, being unpolitical or, worse, not politically correct. 4. In Pop culture, postmodernism--or PoMo as Yuppies call it insouciantly--refers to a wide range of phenomena, from Andy Warhol to Madonna, from the colossal plaster Mona Lisa I saw advertising a pachinko parlor in Tokyo to the giant, cardboard figure of Michelangelo's David--pink dayglo glasses, canary shorts, a camera slung across bare, brawny shoulders--advertising KonTiki Travel in New Zealand. What do all these have in common? Well, fragments, hybridity, relativism, play, parody, pastiche, an ironic, anti-ideological stance, an ethos bordering on kitsch and camp. So, we have begun to build a family of words applying to postmodernism; we have begun to create a context, if not a definition, for it. More impatient or ambitious readers can consult Hans Bertens' The Idea of the Postmodern, the best and fairest [End Page 2] introduction I know to the topic. But now I must make my second move or feint to approach postmodernism from a different perspective. II Postmodernism/Posmodernity. I make this move by... (shrink)

The first essay of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals seeks to uncover the roots of Judeo-Christian morality, and to expose it as born from a resentful and feeble peasant class intent on taking revenge upon their aristocratic oppressors. There is a broad consensus in the secondary literature that the ‘slave revolt’ which gives birth to this morality occurs in the 1st century AD, and is propogated by the inhabitants of Roman occupied Judea. Nietzsche himself strongly suggests such a view. (...) However, in a telling later passage from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche claims that the hsitorical Zarathustra—a Bronze age iranian religious thinker—was the first to consider the opposite of Good vs. Evil; that “Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality” (EH, 'Destiny', §3). However, Nietzsche does not discuss Zarathustra or Zoroastrianism in his critique of moral values and their origin. This creates a prima facie tension. If at least part of what essentially characterises 'morality' preceded Judeo-Christianity, are moral values only contingently related to the feelings of ressentiment essential to Nietzsche’s story of the slave revolt? If the answer is 'yes', then the scope of Nietzsche's critique of morality may be somewhat limited. If the answer is 'no', then we require an answer as to why Nietzsche's genealogy—if it is an exercise in ascertaining the “real history of morality” (GM, Pref: §7)—does not extend further back in history. In this paper, I explore how the extent of Nietzsche's knowledge of Zoroastrianism informs his critique of slave morality in On the Genealogy of Morals. I argue that Nietzsche views the historical Zarathustra—like Socrates and Plato—as a forerunner of ‘morality’ in his creative conception of good and evil in metaphysical terms. From here, it is argued that the proposed tension can be dissolved by viewing Judeo-Christian morality merely as the latest and paradigmatic expression of slave morality. (shrink)

The current study aims to construct and validate a measure of research misconduct for social science university students. The research is comprised of three studies; Study I presents the scale construction in three phases. In Phase I, the initial pool of items was generated by reviewing the literature and considering the results of semi-structured interviews. Phase II involved a psychometric cleaning of items, after which 38 items were retained. In Phase III, those 38 items were proposed to 652 university students, (...) and data were exposed to exploratory factor analysis, which extracted a one-factor structure with 15 items and 55.73% variance. Study II confirmed the factorial structure of the scale using an independent sample of university students. Confirmatory factor analysis of the scale demonstrates a good model fit to the data with the one-factor structure established through the exploratory factor analysis. The scale exhibits good internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.95. Study III involves validation of the scale, with evidence for convergent validity collected from a sample of university students. The results reveal that the research misconduct scale has significant positive correlations with academic stress and procrastination and a significant negative correlation with academic achievement. The obtained convergent validity testifies that the scale can be considered a psychometrically sound instrument to measure research misconduct among social science university students. (shrink)

In Finnegans Wake, the uncouth portmanteau word "Janglish" suggests a jangled kind of English. Joyce, of course, lived and died before that other uncouth word, "globalization," rode the waves of cyberspace. By resorting to a dubious conceit, I use "Janglican" to invoke American letters on the tongue of writers like Junot Diaz, Amy Tan, Aleksander Hemon, Ha Jin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee, among many others (including this writer, who speaks every language with an accent, a literary feat of sorts.)There's no (...) conceit in my subtitle, which moots the central question of this essay: can we still speak of national literatures—say, of American or Australian literature—in the age of globalization? (Concepts germane to .. (shrink)

The path of religious pluralism starts with the fact that our world contains a number of religious faiths having different ideas of the nature of divinity as the main and fundamental principle of religions and therefore, different and various dogmas, rites, and rituals.Despite the claim that the idea of religious pluralism is a product of modern philosophical schools, specifically new epistemological principles, I have attempted to demonstrate that what I have called "pluralistic religion," as a part of a necessary and (...) substantial distinction that has to be drawn between this hypothesis and John Hick's classic theory of "religious pluralism," is strongly rooted in the principle of "ultimate truth and uniqueness of .. (shrink)

This essay argues that through a new and radical relationship with digital technologies that are oriented towards networking and automaticity, humans have become estranged from what philosopher Arnold Gehlen termed the ‘circle of action’ that expressed our ancient adaptation to tool use and constituted the basis for our capacity for reflective consciousness. The objectification of the material and analogue relationship that enabled humans to ‘act’ upon the world and to construct the basis for our collective endeavours, this paper shows, is (...) beginning to redirect the social orientation that tool use enabled, back to a form of individualism I term a ‘post-modern vanity’. Computer-driven automation on a networked and global scale is engendering a new illusion regarding our relationship with technology. Greek philosophy, later religion, and then the Enlightenment all saw our relation to technology as evidence of either our ‘specialness’ or our inherent ‘mastery over nature’. These perspectives resulted in our acquiring a ‘reasoned self-delusion’ wherein for the individual life had meaning and was ontologically tolerable—we thought ourselves to be of a realm beyond raw nature. Automation, however, to an unprecedented degree, objectifies and exteriorizes the processes of technology use, alienating the individual from the ‘circle of action’. This process is throwing us back to another form of what this essay terms a ‘reasoned self-delusion’ where we increasingly believe that we no longer need each other so much. The cult of computer efficiency and the virtual sphere of the network that it has spawned, I argue, is a largely barren sphere of radical individualism, a post-modern vanity, where we exist at a borderland closer to nature and to the animals than we have been for thousands of years. (shrink)

Despite the universal similarities of antidevelopment problems, the problems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are unique, intense, and multifaceted. They oscillate from incompetent and corrupt government plagued with violent conflict, to the lack of provision for social needs, to ethno-religious bigotry, and result in the lack of conditions and expanded opportunities for people to pursue their well-being. Though these problems have links to the colonial era, I argue, using qualitative and historical approach methods, that the bulk of them are with postcolonial (...) and contemporary state actors; here the search for solutions must begin. I proposed a target-approach strategy that blends Amartya Sen’s capability approach and Catholic social teaching to facilitate an integral human development in SSA. (shrink)

Fakhr al-Dın al-Razı’s final theological treatise, al-Matalib al-‘Aliya min al-‘Ilm al-Ilahiyya, is sufficient justification for the assertion of his towering significance as interpreter of Ibn Sına and in the development of new theological paradigms. Yet such is its richness and subtlety that al-Razı’s views in the Matalib on key doctrinal issues such as the creation of the world require much further study. Previously, scholars have maintained that al-Razı refrains from affirming any one doctrine of creation. I argue to the contrary, (...) that despite al-Razı’s epistemological caution on matters pertaining to the action of God, he ultimately deems creation ex nihilo most probable on the balance of evidence, and therefore the doctrine that is to be believed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Resilience and the Narratives of Parents of Adults with Autism Spectrum DisordersNabil Hassan El-GhorouryThe prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) is on the rise; the most recent report from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (2012) indicated a prevalence of ASDs of one in 88 children. This was a 78% increase from reported prevalence rates in 2002, when the rate was one in 150. Major health organizations (...) have been emphasizing the importance of early identification (Johnson, Myers, & Council on Children with Disabilities, 2007) to increase access to early intervention services, which are most effective when implemented before age three (Rogers & Vismara, 2008).The bulk of autism research has been focused on children, particularly young children. Given the growing identification and prevalence of ASDs, there will be more and more adolescents and adults with ASDs in the near and long term future. This issue of Narrative Inquiries in Bioethics is important because of its focus on an underrepresented area in the literature. The constraints of current health care delivery systems do not allow for providers to spend significant amounts of time with their patients. Furthermore, hearing first person narratives can be valuable by informing health care professionals about the experiences that parents (and by extension, the individual with an ASD) have experienced.As a licensed clinical psychologist with over two decades of experience with children, adolescents, and adults with ASDs in a variety of settings, I have a professional perspective on autism. As the older brother of Omar, a 38–year–old adult male with autistic disorder, I also have a lifetime of personal experiences of autism. As long as I can remember, I have had a brother with autism. I hope this unique perspective as both a behavioral health care provider and a family member of an adult with an ASD allows me to comment on these narratives in a thoughtful manner.Seeing Beyond Autism: Multiple IdentitiesMany parents commented on how their child was more than just autism or Asperger’s; they reflected on the strengths, unique experiences, and perspectives of their child. The narratives are rich in their desire to see the whole being of their children. Anonymous One writes:Another thing, and I think every parent will agree with this—teachers, school staff, health care industry staff, doctors and every one that comes into contact with an ASD individual—take the time to get to know them. It may be difficult and some may appear non–caring and rude. You must overlook this and look to the person underneath. They are great people. They have been through stuff and it means so much to them. Like I said—parents, you know this. Please remember it when times get tough. [End Page 189]Mark Osteen wrote about his son Cameron as they were making the decision to place their son in a residential placement: “I felt proud. It was like he was being recruited for college. And I am just as proud of him, and love him just as much, as if he were. What I hate is talking only about his ‘disability.’ I hope they see his good qualities. How smart he is. How funny he is. How charming he is. How strong he is.”Understanding the multiple identities of individuals with ASDs is important for parents so that they are not solely focused on the autism diagnosis. The talents and skills of the young adults described are remarkable. Anonymous One’s son David became a computer engineer at 13, reportedly “he was the youngest person in the United States to do so at such a young age.” Lori Centineo’s son Nathaniel is a poet, a rock climber, and skilled at sailing. Virginia Clapp’s son Nathaniel is a “chess genius”, a talented juggler “with the ability to juggle seven balls, which he told me is ‘insanity in a nutshell’,” and an origami expert. David McDonald’s nephew grew from a teenager who spoke only 30 words to speaking thousands of words and ultimately becoming a world traveler. Anonymous Four’s son Sam is “practically an expert” in earth sciences.Seeing beyond the autism is not always easy. Given the serious challenges... (shrink)

Contrary to the general and common idea that Islam etymologically means submission, surrendering, servitude or even slavery, this paper tries to prove just the opposite, that Islam is a protest, an opposition and a revolution. The term Aslama, in fact, is ambiguous. It means to surrender to God, not to yield to any other power. It implies a double act : first, a rejection of all non-Transcendental yokes; and second, an acceptance of the Transcendental Power. Islam, by this function, is (...) a double act of negation and affirmation. This double act is expressed in the utterance “I witness that there is no god except the God.”. (shrink)