Past anatomical dissection practice has received recent attention in the humanities and social science literature, especially in a number of popular format books. In these works, past ethically dubious dissection practices are again revisited, including stealing the dead for dissection. There are extremely simple, yet very important, lessons to be had in these analyses, including: do not exploit the dead and treat the dead with dignity, respect, and reverence. In this paper, we highlight that these principles apply not just to (...) anatomists but to all parties concerned with bodies for dissection, including journalists and authors from the humanities writing on anatomical dissection whether in the historical or modern-day context. Not too infrequently these same authors/publishers resort to sensationalist language in titles, text, and/or promotion blurbs in a bid to grab attention and sell books. These actions, yet again, exploit dissection subjects for commercial purposes. The use of insensitive and sensationalist language that is designed to shock, fails to set good precedent for young impressionable students and paints an entirely backward picture of modern-day anatomy for intending or existing donors and their families. We suggest that all who participate in anatomical endeavours should strive to do so with reverence toward the dead, including armchair journalists and humanities authors who, just like their hands-on anatomical colleagues, should employ dignified, sensitive, and respectful language that is not sensationalist. (shrink)

An “objectified God” does not satisfy. On this point, surely all will agree with Doctor Marti. To seek an “objectivie essence” behind God’s presence is implicitly to deny the reality of that presence. In subjecting the idea of God to ratiocination, the absoluteness and infinity of God are compromised, for a God-object must assume a particular existence over against the divine essence, and thereby abandon God’s freedom to be, the divine essence as pure relation. On this, reason and faith are (...) in perfect harmony: when God is reduced to an object, it is no longer God that is in view. (shrink)

Libertarian opponents of anarchy are attacking a straw man. Their arguments are usually utilitarian in nature and amount to "but anarchy won’t work" or "we need the (things provided by the) state." But these attacks are confused at best, if not disingenuous. To be an anarchist does not mean you think anarchy will "work" (whatever that means); nor that you predict it will or "can" be achieved. It is possible to be a pessimistic anarchist, after all. To be an anarchist (...) only means that you believe that aggression is not justified, and that states necessarily employ aggression. And, therefore, that states, and the aggression they necessarily employ, are unjustified. It’s quite simple, really. It’s an ethical view, so no surprise it confuses utilitarians. (shrink)

Interpretation pervades human thinking. Whether perception or experience, spoken word or written theory, whatever enters our consciousness must be interpreted in order to be understood. Every area of inquiry—art and literature, philosophy and religion, history and the social sciences, even many aspects of the natural sciences—involves countless opportunities to interpret the object of inquiry according to very different paradigms. These paradigms may derive from the language we speak, the nature of our education, or personal preferences. The abundance and diversity of (...) paradigms make interpretation both fascinating in its complexity and often frustrating for the conflicts it generates. In _Dialectical Readings_, Dunning distinguishes three types of interpretation, each defined in terms of a distinctive dialectical way of thinking: theoretical interpretation, which assumes binary oppositions; transactional interpretation, which seeks reciprocal relations; and transformational interpretation, which discerns paradoxical meanings. Dunning offers new and insightful readings of familiar texts by B. F. Skinner, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lee Benson, Roland Barthes, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault and sheds new light on works by Thomas Kuhn, Joseph Campbell, Reinhold Niebuhr, Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Paul Ricoeur. _Dialectical Readings _enables readers to recognize diverse dialectical approaches to understanding—their own as well as those of others—in a way that provides new and helpful insights into a wide variety of subjects in which conflicting interpretations abound. (shrink)

Interpretation pervades human thinking. Whether perception or experience, spoken word or written theory, whatever enters our consciousness must be interpreted in order to be understood. Every area of inquiry—art and literature, philosophy and religion, history and the social sciences, even many aspects of the natural sciences—involves countless opportunities to interpret the object of inquiry according to very different paradigms. These paradigms may derive from the language we speak, the nature of our education, or personal preferences. The abundance and diversity of (...) paradigms make interpretation both fascinating in its complexity and often frustrating for the conflicts it generates. In _Dialectical Readings_, Dunning distinguishes three types of interpretation, each defined in terms of a distinctive dialectical way of thinking: theoretical interpretation, which assumes binary oppositions; transactional interpretation, which seeks reciprocal relations; and transformational interpretation, which discerns paradoxical meanings. Dunning offers new and insightful readings of familiar texts by B. F. Skinner, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lee Benson, Roland Barthes, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault and sheds new light on works by Thomas Kuhn, Joseph Campbell, Reinhold Niebuhr, Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Paul Ricoeur. _Dialectical Readings _enables readers to recognize diverse dialectical approaches to understanding—their own as well as those of others—in a way that provides new and helpful insights into a wide variety of subjects in which conflicting interpretations abound. (shrink)

It is an irony that Kierkegaard would have relished that Marilyn Piety’s review in The Owl, 21, 2 : 205–208, of my book, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness, was published in a journal dedicated to Hegel studies and read by Hegel scholars. For her criticisms are typical of those for whom Kierkegaard is the David who slew forever the Goliath of Hegelianism. Thus it is not really, as she states, a lack of “substance” that disturbs her about my book; it is (...) the entire project, the very effort to show how much Kierkegaard continued to write books susceptible to Hegelian dialectical analysis long after he had turned his rhetorical weapons in Hegel’s direction. I am grateful to the editors of The Owl for this opportunity to try to convey to Hegel scholars a bit of my own excitement over what I believe is indeed a substantial discovery within the vexed field of Kierkegaard scholarship. (shrink)

In a pair of articles published in Faith and Philosophy, C. Stephen Evans argues that Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, understands religious experience as the transforming power of an encounter with the love of God. However, in a book published under his own name, Kierkegaard gives a quite different picture of Christian experience. For Self-Examination makes clear that the reception of God’s love is a rebirth that can occur in the believer only insofar as he or she has died to the (...) world - to all possessions, even to the possession of God’s love. According to Kierkegaard, this “dying to” is the truly transforming experience that characterizes Christian spirituality, and that provides the condition for a life infused with faith, hope, and love. (shrink)

In a pair of articles published in Faith and Philosophy, C. Stephen Evans argues that Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, understands religious experience as the transforming power of an encounter with the love of God. However, in a book published under his own name, Kierkegaard gives a quite different picture of Christian experience. For Self-Examination makes clear that the reception of God’s love is a rebirth that can occur in the believer only insofar as he or she has died to the (...) world - to all possessions, even to the possession of God’s love. According to Kierkegaard, this “dying to” is the truly transforming experience that characterizes Christian spirituality, and that provides the condition for a life infused with faith, hope, and love. (shrink)

We show that van Lambalgen's Theorem fails with respect to recursive randomness and Schnorr randomness for some real in every high degree and provide a full characterization of the Turing degrees for which van Lambalgen's Theorem can fail with respect to Kurtz randomness. However, we also show that there is a recursively random real that is not Martin-Löf random for which van Lambalgen's Theorem holds with respect to recursive randomness.

We give several characterizations of Schnorr trivial sets, including a new lowness notion for Schnorr triviality based on truth-table reducibility. These characterizations allow us to see not only that some natural classes of sets, including maximal sets, are composed entirely of Schnorr trivials, but also that the Schnorr trivial sets form an ideal in the truth-table degrees but not the weak truth-table degrees. This answers a question of Downey, Griffiths and LaForte.

To those who would classify Hegel either as an atheist or as a pantheist, Joachim Ringleben’s study of his theory of sin provides a clear and comprehensive challenge. The theme of sin in Hegel’s thought is prima facie an important one, notwithstanding the fact that no other book on Hegel’s philosophy of religion has treated it in depth. This lacuna may account for Ringleben’s omission of the customary review of scholarship. Aside from a few footnotes, his study deals exclusively with (...) Hegel’s writings, interrupting its exposition only several times to discuss criticisms put forward by Kierekgaard and Müller in the 19th century. Accordingly, this review will first indicate the general thrust of the expository chapters, noting highlights rather than attempting summaries, and then turn to the question of critical evaluation of Hegel’s theory. (shrink)

To those who would classify Hegel either as an atheist or as a pantheist, Joachim Ringleben’s study of his theory of sin provides a clear and comprehensive challenge. The theme of sin in Hegel’s thought is prima facie an important one, notwithstanding the fact that no other book on Hegel’s philosophy of religion has treated it in depth. This lacuna may account for Ringleben’s omission of the customary review of scholarship. Aside from a few footnotes, his study deals exclusively with (...) Hegel’s writings, interrupting its exposition only several times to discuss criticisms put forward by Kierekgaard and Müller in the 19th century. Accordingly, this review will first indicate the general thrust of the expository chapters, noting highlights rather than attempting summaries, and then turn to the question of critical evaluation of Hegel’s theory. (shrink)

The task of comparing and contrasting philosophical opponents is perhaps more difficult methodologically than any other enterprise in the historiography of thought. If the historian attempts to suppress his or her own opinions, the resulting illusion of impartiality will immediately arouse the suspicions of critical readers. If, on the other hand, the writer openly confesses a preference for one of the subjects, then all those who gravitate toward the other will certainly be offended - and it is usually to them (...) that editors will send the book for “review”! This is not simply a matter of straightforward confessions of agreement: the interpreter’s orientation will affect every decision of organization and style, of method in the fullest sense of the word. As Stephen Crites pointedly commented at the end of his own fine work on Hegel and Kierkegaard. (shrink)

The task of comparing and contrasting philosophical opponents is perhaps more difficult methodologically than any other enterprise in the historiography of thought. If the historian attempts to suppress his or her own opinions, the resulting illusion of impartiality will immediately arouse the suspicions of critical readers. If, on the other hand, the writer openly confesses a preference for one of the subjects, then all those who gravitate toward the other will certainly be offended - and it is usually to them (...) that editors will send the book for “review”! This is not simply a matter of straightforward confessions of agreement: the interpreter’s orientation will affect every decision of organization and style, of method in the fullest sense of the word. As Stephen Crites pointedly commented at the end of his own fine work on Hegel and Kierkegaard. (shrink)

Language research has come to rely heavily on large‐scale, web‐based datasets. These datasets can present significant methodological challenges, requiring researchers to make a number of decisions about how they are collected, represented, and analyzed. These decisions often concern long‐standing challenges in corpus‐based language research, including determining what counts as a word, deciding which words should be analyzed, and matching sets of words across languages. We illustrate these challenges by revisiting “Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication” (Piantadosi, Tily, & Gibson, (...) 2011), which found that word lengths in 11 languages are more strongly correlated with their average predictability (or average information content) than their frequency. Using what we argue to be best practices for large‐scale corpus analyses, we find significantly attenuated support for this result and demonstrate that a stronger relationship obtains between word frequency and length for a majority of the languages in the sample. We consider the implications of the results for language research more broadly and provide several recommendations to researchers regarding best practices. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright is one of the most distinguished and influential contemporary philosophers of science. Despite the profound impact of her work, there is neither a systematic exposition of Cartwright’s philosophy of science nor a collection of articles that contains in-depth discussions of the major themes of her philosophy. This book is devoted to a critical assessment of Cartwright’s philosophy of science and contains contributions from Cartwright's champions and critics. Broken into three parts, the book begins by addressing Cartwright's views on (...) the practice of model building in science and the question of how models represent the world before moving on to a detailed discussion of methodologically and metaphysically challenging problems. Finally, the book addresses Cartwright's original attempts to clarify profound questions concerning the metaphysics of science. With contributions from leading scholars, such as Ronald N. Giere and Paul Teller, this unique volume will be extremely useful to philosophers of science the world over. (shrink)

Background: Prejudices against minorities can be understood as habitually negative evaluations that are kept in spite of evidence to the contrary. Therefore, individuals with strong prejudices might be dominated by habitual or “automatic” reactions at the expense of more controlled reactions. Computational theories suggest individual differences in the balance between habitual/model-free and deliberative/model-based decision-making.Methods: 127 subjects performed the two Step task and completed the blatant and subtle prejudice scale.Results: By using analyses of choices and reaction times in combination with computational (...) modeling, subjects with stronger blatant prejudices showed a shift away from model-based control. There was no association between these decision-making processes and subtle prejudices.Conclusion: These results support the idea that blatant prejudices toward minorities are related to a relative dominance of habitual decision-making. This finding has important implications for developing interventions that target to change prejudices across societies. (shrink)

History and development of Buddhism in general and Tibet in particular; includes comparative philosophy of Buddhism with Hinduism.

Study on fundamental of Buddhist logic and dialectical studies explaining the difficult points.

Elementary Buddhist logic and dialectical studies.

Il faut saluer, je pense, et avec bonheur, la parution récente de l’ouvrage Patriotisme constitutionnel et nationalisme. Sur Jürgen Habermas de Frédérick-Guillaume Dufour, un jeune auteur québécois qui semble plein de promesses. L’ouvrage s’inscrit à l’intérieur d’une vague de fond observable depuis quelques années déjà chez les chercheurs universitaires, tant au Canada qu’au Québec, qui s’intéressent de plus en plus aux travaux récents du philosophe allemand sur le droit et la démocratie délibérative, et tentent d’en tirer les implications pour l’analyse, (...) la compréhension, voire la mise en question, aussi bien du nationalisme québécois que du nationalisme canadienLe livre est d’autant plus pertinent qu’il n’existe pas, dans la littérature produite jusqu’ici, d’ouvrage systématique en langue française consacré à l’application des réflexions politiques de Habermas à la situation canadienne et québécoise. Il s’agit là, sauf erreur, du premier ouvrage d’une certaine ampleur consacré à la question. (shrink)

Study on the commentary of seven pramāṇaśastra (Buddhist logic) by Acharya Dharmakīrti, 7th century.

Le processus d'hominisation n'est ni plus ni moins que la solution à la violence engendrée par l'imitation des désirs.