Building on research demonstrating relationships between well being and perceptions of aspects of life as sacred, this study describes the rationale for and development of a scale measuring perceiving sacredness in life. It then explores associations between perceptions of sacredness in life and these four domains: religious/spiritual, personal, social, and situational. Participants responded to a mailing to a national random sample within the United States, completing 16 scales pertaining to the religious/spiritual, personal, social, and situational domains. While many variables were (...) correlated with perceiving sacredness in life, there were three overall predictors: intrinsic religiosity, mysticism, and community service attitude. (shrink)

Aristotle was the founder not only of logic but also of modal logic. In the Prior Analytics he developed a complex system of modal syllogistic which, while influential, has been disputed since antiquity--and is today widely regarded as incoherent. Combining analytic rigor with keen sensitivity to historical context, Marko Malink makes clear that the modal syllogistic forms a consistent, integrated system of logic, one that is closely related to other areas of Aristotle's philosophy. Aristotle's modal syllogistic differs significantly from modern (...) modal logic. Malink considers the key to understanding the Aristotelian version to be the notion of predication discussed in the Topics--specifically, its theory of predicables and the ten categories. The predicables introduce a distinction between essential and nonessential predication. In contrast, the categories distinguish between substantial and nonsubstantial predication. Malink builds on these insights in developing a semantics for Aristotle's modal propositions, one that verifies the ancient philosopher's claims of the validity and invalidity of modal inferences. While it acknowledges some limitations of this reconstruction, Aristotle's Modal Syllogistic brims with bold ideas, richly supported by close readings of the Greek texts. (shrink)

Plato's _Republic _is perhaps the most significant and important work of philosophy and is Plato's most famous work. No other work has made such an impact on the history of western thought. In this second edition of the highly successful Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Plato and the _Republic_, Nickolas Pappas extends his exploration of the text to include substantial revisions and new material. In addition to the existing text, the chapters on Plato's ethics and politics have been revised and (...) enlarged to include two brand new sections. There is further discussion of Plato on aesthetics including a section of Aristotle's criticism of Plato on beauty. Plato and the Republic, second edition assesses and introduces: Plato's life and the background to the _Republic _The text and ideas of the _Republic _Plato's continuing importance to Western thought Ideal for students coming to Plato for the first time, this GuideBook will be vital for all students of Plato in philosophy, politics and classics at all levels. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the influence of senior leadership on firms’ corporate social responsibility. We integrate upper echelons research that has investigated either the influence of the CEO or the top management team on CSR. We contend that functional experience complementarity between CEOs and TMTs in formulating and implementing CSR strategy may underlie differentiated strategies in CSR. We find that when CEOs who have predominant experience in output functions are complemented by TMTs with a lower proportion of members who (...) have experience in output functions, there is a pronounced effect on the community, product, and diversity dimensions of CSR. In turn, when output-oriented CEOs are complemented by output-oriented TMTs, we observe an effect on the employee relations dimension of CSR. Interestingly, we find no influence of CEO-TMT complementarity on the environment dimension of CSR. In general, our empirical results support the relevance of the interaction between CEOs and their TMTs in defining their firms’ CSR profile. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article examines the possible roots of the sixth-century astrologer/astronomer, Varāhamihira. Ritual instructions from astrological texts on the yātrā are compared with the preliminary services of the Atharvaveda Śāntikalpa to demonstrate that much of the astrological ritual system can be seen as an adaptation of Atharvan śānti ritual. This analysis illuminates both the possible interchange between Vedic and Jyotiḥśāstric ritual systems and Varāhamihira’s considerable expertise as a ritualist.

Śaiva Rites of Expiation: A First Edition and Translation of Trilocanaśiva’s Twelfth-Century Prāyaścittasamuccaya. Edited and translated by R. Sathyanarayanan, with an introduction by Dominic Goddall. Collection Indologie, vol. 127. Pondicherry: Institut Française de Pondichéry; École Française d’Extrême Orient, 2015. Pp. 651.

In "Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth: Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal", nineteen renowned scholars offer a collection of essays addressing the persisting question of how to approach religion and myth as academic categories. Taking their cue from the work of Robert A. Segal, they discuss how to theorize about religion and myth from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. With cases from ancient Greece and Mesopotamia to East Asia and the modern world by and large, and engaging (...) with diverse disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, history, film, theology, and religious studies among others, the volume establishes a synthesis that demonstrates the pervasiveness as well as the pitfalls of the categories "religion" and "myth" in the world. (shrink)

examines theoretical discourses on the specificity, origin, and function of ''religion'' in antiquity, broadly defined here as the period from the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE.

This essay considers P. J. Ivanhoe's critical challenge to Slingerland's analysis of wuwei(‘effortless action’). While I agree with Ivanhoe that we should do more work to embody and understand the concept of wuwei, I will defend Slingerland's notion that wuwei involves paradox—particularly in the cases of Zhuangi and Laozi. The present essay is not a defense of the specifics of Slingerland's analysis. Nonetheless, this essay focuses on defending the notion of paradox. Ivanhoe offers an alternative view of wuwei, one that (...) sees the paradox as a riddle. I argue that this kind of formulation would frame the problem of wuwei in an unhelpful manner. I offer several novel ways of overcoming, or at least qualifying, the experience of paradox that seems to be at play in nondoing. (shrink)

Both G.F.W. Hegel and Carl Schmitt took seriously the problem of political sovereignty entailed by liberal political theories. In Dictatorship (1919) and Political Theology (1922), Schmitt rejects liberal political theories that argue for the immediate unity of democracy and legality i.e., popular sovereignty, because he thinks they cannot secure political sovereignty. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel denounces popular sovereignty for similar reasons. Yet given Schmitt’s negative assessment of Hegel their positions are seldom related to one another. I argue in (...) this paper that Schmitt’s analysis of liberal political theories is similar to Hegel’s analysis of Rousseau’s liberal ideas. I contend, however, that Schmitt’s solution, which collapses the distinction between the executive and the legislative power in favor of the former, fails to secure political sovereignty. Contrary to Schmitt, Hegel conceives of the liberal predicament as a basic determination of any political state that rests on the division of the legislative and executive power. Hegel argues that the constitutional monarchy is a genuine instantiation of political sovereignty that can maintain not only the division of these powers, but also their unity. In this regard, I argue that Hegel’s conception of the division of powers provides a more convincing theory of the problem afflicting modern states than Schmitt’s and at least deserves to be taken more seriously by critics of Schmitt’s solution such as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Jurgen Habermas, Andreas Kalyvas and Chantal Mouffe. (shrink)

Plato is one of the most important figures in Western thought; the _Republic_ is his most important, and most widely studied, work. This GuideBook will steer the reader clearly through this work. _Plato and the Republic_ will introduce and assess: * Plato's life and the background to the _Republic_ * The text and ideas of the _Republic_ * Plato's continuing importance to Western thought Ideal for students coming to Plato for the first time, this GuideBook will be vital for all (...) students of Plato in philosophy, politics and classics at all levels. (shrink)

The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has disrupted many sectors of normal life, including the communal worship of religious bodies. This essay first looks at the recent case of the Minnesota Catholic bishops and the Governor of Minnesota which came close to civil disobedience. Then the essay will consider the thought of John Courtney Murray on when it is legitimate for the coercive powers of the state to be used to limit religious freedom, including the right to worship. (...) Finally, those standards are applied to the Minnesota case, arguing that the initial actions of the Governor failed to meet Murray’s test, while the revised executive order succeeded in meeting Murray’s standards. (shrink)

This article intends to identify and construct a Wesleyan perspective of business and entrepreneurship, drawing on how Wesley viewed and used business and entrepreneurship in relation to poverty in England, in order to identify helpful implications for the church which seeks to engage with poverty-related issues. Wesley did not repudiate or underestimate business and entrepreneurship in believers’ lives; rather, he provided believers with practical guidance and theological foundations for business and entrepreneurship particularly in the context of poverty. We argue that (...) Wesley should be viewed as a compassionate entrepreneur—with the compassion of a liberator and the practice of an entrepreneur, as he encouraged believers to actively participate in economic activities, and recognized entrepreneurship as a sustainable and significant way to empower the poor. Wesley’s example challenges the church today as his case study serves as a radical and faithful application of biblical economic teachings on business and entrepreneurship. (shrink)

In this new book, Marko Zlomislić argues that Slavoj Žižek's work does not contain any sort of radical emancipatory project, especially as it passes through the ideology of communism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The evidence for the failure of communism is vast and includes the more than six hundred mass graves recently located in Žižek's homeland of Slovenia. Zlomislić demonstrates that the way out of the capitalist dilemma is not a repetition of communism but a return to the late medieval notion (...) of haecceity or "individual thisness" that was rejected by modernity. Haecceity, or the indescribable and indefinite here and now of the person, shows that the late medieval Franciscans were already "postmodernists." It is no wonder that the totalitarianism of the modernist Hegel is embraced by thinkers such as Žižek, Badiou, Hardt, Negri, and Laclau and was already rejected by Leibnitz, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Levinas, Deleuze, and Derrida. This important book shows that Žižek's work must be rejected because it does not uphold the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of the person. (shrink)

Attempts to explain behavior genetically face two major problems: the application of the concept of genetic coding and the theoretical possibility of decomposing behavior. This paper argues that using the notion of genetic coding is appropriate in explanations of protein synthesis but inadequate and even misleading in the context of explanations of behavior. Genes should be regarded as disparate components of mechanisms that account for behavior rather than as codes for behavioral phenotypes. Such mechanistic explanations, however, presuppose the possibility of (...) decomposing behavioral phenotypes, which is strongly disputed by researchers holding an interactionist view of behavior. It is argued that these researchers fail to distinguish etiological from constitutive decomposition, and that their objections apply to the former but not to the latter kind. Constitutive decomposition might identify genes as disparate components and open up the possibility of explaining behavior mechanistically by isolating causal paths from genes to behavior. Finally, research on the single gene disorder phenylketonuria is introduced to illustrate and test these views. With respect to this disorder it is demonstrated that applying the concept of genetic coding would be inappropriate and misguiding, while nonetheless the phenotype is decomposable and can be explained mechanistically by singling out a genetic causal path.t is demonstrated that applying the concept of genetic coding would be inappropriate and misguiding, while nonetheless the phenotype is decomposable and can be explained mechanistically by singling out a genetic causal path. (shrink)

Regress arguments have convinced many that reasoning cannot require beliefs about what follows from what. In this paper I argue that this is a mistake. Regress arguments rest on dubious (although deeply entrenched) assumptions about the nature of reasoning — most prominently, the assumption that believing p by reasoning is simply a matter of having a belief in p with the right causal ancestry. I propose an alternative account, according to which beliefs about what follows from what play a constitutive (...) role in reasoning. (shrink)

We examine topological pairs (\Delta, \Sigma) which have computable type: if X is a computable topological space and f:\Delta \rightarrow X a topological embedding such that f(\Delta) and f(\Sigma) are semicomputable sets in X, then f(\Delta) is a computable set in X. It it known that (D, W) has computable type, where D is the Warsaw disc and W is the Warsaw circle. In this paper we identify a class of topological pairs which are similar to (D, W) and have (...) computable type: we prove that (\Delta, \Sigma) has computable type if \Delta can somehow be approximated by a 2-cell whose boundary circle approximates \Sigma. Moreover, we examine higher-dimensional analogues of such pairs. (shrink)

: One of the outcomes from low self-confidence of basketball is aggressive behavior. Helpless feeling caused by low self-confidence could turn an athlete using aggressive behavior as alternate behavior in the interaction with the opponent during a game. The level of the aggression can be seen in the injury rate in that particular sport. This research objective is to find out the relation between self-confidence and the appearance of the aggressive behavior in basketball player. It involves 64 athletes in West (...) Jakarta between 17 to 28 years old. Data that was measured by questionnaires has shown there is a negative association between self-confidence and aggressive behavior in basketball athlete.  . (shrink)

Immersive virtual environments can produce a state of behaviour referred to as ‘presence’, during which the individual responds to the virtual environment as if it were real. Presence can be arranged to scientifically evaluate and affect our consciousness within a controlled virtual environment. This phenomenon makes the use of virtual environments amenable to existing and in-development forms of therapy for various conditions. Delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU) is one such condition for which virtual reality (VR) technology has not (...) been evaluated to date. We are currently assessing the feasibility and utility of a delirium prevention and treatment system, which implements VR to improve quality of sleep, reduce pain, lower usage of sedatives, and stimulate cognition. The proposed system will consist of 3-axis wearable accelerometers, 6-DOF position trackers, a VR system and apps designed to promote sleep quality and mindfulness. Our a priori hypothesis is that our VR therapy system would lower the occurrence of delirium in patients admitted to ICUs. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that certain neuropsychological findings on the decision-making, instrumental learning, and moral understanding in psychopathic offenders offer reasons to consider them not criminally responsible, due to certain epistemic and volitional impairments. We reply to this family of arguments, that collectively we call the irresponsibility of the psychopath argument. This type of argument has a premise that describes or prescribes the deficiencies that grant or should grant partial or complete criminal exculpation. The other premise contends that neuropsychological (...) evidence shows that psychopaths have incapacitates that are sufficient to ascribe complete or partially exculpatory deficiencies. The focus of our criticism is this latter premise. We argue that it requires that psychopathy should correlate significantly with certain rational incapacities that manifest across contexts. We show that the available neuropsychological data do not support the claim that psychopaths have such general exculpatory incapacities. (shrink)

We prove, by a probabilistic argument, that a class of ω-categorical structures, on which algebraic closure defines a pregeometry, has the finite submodel property. This class includes any expansion of a pure set or of a vector space, projective space or affine space over a finite field such that the new relations are sufficiently independent of each other and over the original structure. In particular, the random graph belongs to this class, since it is a sufficiently independent expansion of an (...) infinite set, with no structure. The class also contains structures for which the pregeometry given by algebraic closure is non-trivial. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 218-219 [Access article in PDF] David Roochnik. Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 159. Cloth, $35.00. Plato makes no general assertions, certainly none about "universals" (108). The Republic does not advocate the creation of an ideal state (78, 93) but transcends utopias to acknowledge the merits of democracy and democratic diversity (...) (92). Nor does Plato hold the tripartite psychological theory associated with the Republic (18-20). Such theories are impossible for human souls with their essentially temporal natures (104). The Republic is a dialectical work (2). Its movement shows without Plato's saying it that diversity is a social good; that the psychological theory of Book 4 "is preserved in its partiality as a moment of the dialectical development of the dialogue" (3); and so on.David Roochnik belongs in the tradition of Leo Strauss, unearthing an odd and unknown Republic from beneath the dialogue familiar to hordes of readers (beginning with Aristotle) who evidently read it wrongly. Roochnik brings intelligence to his project, clear writing, and a mind inclined toward originality. Nevertheless Strauss's influence is everywhere. E.g.: The Republic is "a conversation that twists and turns, develops, and at times revises what was earlier said. In its totality it gives voice to the truth about the human soul" (131).Roochnik's main subject is that truth about the soul. He says that the Republic corrects Book 4's tripartite analysis with the temporally oriented psychology told in the anecdotes of Books 8 and 9. The wise reader respects both approaches. The soul is "erotic and therefore necessarily diverse, but... desires arithmetical simplicity," and both diversity and simplicity "must be included in an adequate psychology" (120). "Our souls are... suspended between... time and eternity, the divine and the beastly" (108). The erotic and the arithmetical serve as poles between which Plato navigates. Book 4 proposes a mathematical psychology, but Eros increasingly dominates the Republic and the rigid arithmetic designed to harness Eros fails. Book 4's arithmetical account of the soul is "inadequate, and... it is meant to be inadequate" (19). One should see the soul as arithmetical in one respect, irrepressibly erotic in another.Number plays a defining role in the Platonic city, too (38). Kallipolis battles Eros with an arithmetical ideal but loses (44-45). The failure of arithmetic amounts to the failure of utopia. The Republic "teaches that perfect justice is neither possible (the marriage number fails) nor desirable (we don't really want to exile everybody over ten)" (93). Notice: because "we"—Roochnik and his friends?—don't want to found a city among impressionable children, the Republic teaches that Kallipolis is not desirable.To similar effect: "if Kallipolis were to come into being, then the Republic could not. But since Kallipolis requires the Republic in order to come into being, it contains in itself the seeds of its dissolution" (69). Nonsense! Kallipolis needs the Republic in order to come into existence but not to remain existent. The dialogue's disappearance implies nothing about the city's dissolution.Straussians routinely deny that the Republic constructs its city. Though typical, Roochnik claims not to be (7 n. 4, 75). His reading "is not ironic": "the... revisions I have discussed take place on the surface of the dialogue itself, and the kinds of negations that follow are dialectical ones which... preserve what is negated in its partiality" (91).But garble about surfaces and dialectic will not rescue a hermeneutical method if one begins (Roochnik does, all Straussians do) by calling every flaw in a Platonic argument intentional. That Platonolatry is implausible in itself; it is methodologically shoddy for other reasons too. In the first place, it yields meager results. When every argumentative failure is intentional the Republic becomes platitudinous. Thus Roochnik's dialectical meaning is less memorable than the laziest reader's understanding of the Republic (Forms, cave, archons). He dismisses radical claims as unworthy of Plato but replaces them with the mealy... (shrink)

This paper deals with the problem of the subject in Bachelard?s concept of surrationalism. Focusing on the epistemological character of surrational creativity, the issue of the subject is approached through the analysis of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in the surrational act. Comparing the character of novelty in surrealism and surrationalism, the paper introduces Bachelard?s distinction between formal and material imagination, with the latter further discussed through the prepositions?against? [contre] and?in? [dans]. Bachelard?s theory of the internal dialectic - the (...) theory of subdivision of the subject - is analyzed through his concept of reverie. The last chapter deals with the dialectic between the apodictic and the assertoric subject, aiming to reconsider the idea of interiority and repose. (shrink)

Background and Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to radical and unexpected changes in everyday life, and it is plausible that people’s psychophysical health has been affected. This study examined the relationship between COVID-19 related knowledge and mental health in a Croatian sample of participants.MethodsAn online survey was conducted from March 18 until March 23, 2020, and a total of 1244 participant responses were collected. Measures included eight questions regarding biological features of the virus, symptoms, and prevention, the Hospital Anxiety (...) and Depression Scale, and Optimism-Pessimism Scale. According to the answers given on the questions on COVID-19 related knowledge, participants were divided in two groups: informed and uninformed on each question. They were then compared in the expressed levels of anxiety, depression, pessimism, and optimism. Full vs. partial mediation models with optimism/pessimism as a mediator in the relationship between anxiety/depression and the accuracy of responses for questions about handwashing and ways of transmission were estimated.ResultsParticipants who responded correctly on the question about handwashing had higher levels of anxiety, depression, and pessimism than those participants whose answer was incorrect, while participants who answered correctly on the question about the percentage of patients who develop serious breathing problems had higher levels of depression than those who answered incorrectly. Lower levels of anxiety and pessimism were observed in the participants who answered correctly about ways of transmission. Higher levels of pessimism were found in participants who scored incorrectly on questions about the efficiency of antibiotics, most common symptoms, and the possibility of being infected by asymptomatic carriers. Higher levels of knowledge about handwashing were predicted by higher levels of anxiety and pessimism. Higher levels of knowledge about ways of transmission were predicted by lower levels of anxiety and lower levels of pessimism. The examined relationships between anxiety/depression and knowledge were mediated by pessimism.ConclusionThe findings of this study suggest that knowledge about COVID-19 may be useful to reduce anxiety and depression, but it must be directed to the promotion of health behaviors and to the recognition of fake news. (shrink)

Effective and specifically targeted social and therapeutic responses for antisocial personality disorders and psychopathy are scarce. Some authors maintain that this scarcity should be overcome by revising current syndrome - based classifications of these conditions and devising better biocognitive classifications of antisocial individuals. The inspiration for the latter classifications has been embedded in the Research domain criteria approach (RDoC). RDoC - type approaches to psychiatric research aim at transforming diagnosis, provide valid measures of disorders, aid clinical practice, and improve health (...) outcomes by integrating the data on the genetic, neural, cognitive, and affective systems underlying psychiatric conditions. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the benefits of such approaches in comparison to the dominant syndrome-based ones and review recent attempts at building biocognitive classifications of antisocial individuals. Other researchers, how ever, have objected that biocognitive approaches in psychiatry are committed to an untenable form of explanatory. (shrink)

The issue whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions on moral psychology and in those concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability for transferring the motivation by means-ends reasoning. In fact, we defend the different claim that these experiments (...) appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue. (shrink)

The paper highlights shortcomings in the public consultation practices on the deliberate release and placing on the market of GMOs in the European Union and in one of its member countries, Finland. It is argued that current GMO consultation practices do not meet the aims and objectives on which their introduction is typically justified. Specifically, they do not serve democracy, increase consensus, enable better decisions to be made, or establish trust. We conclude that there is a clear need for the (...) active development of the GMO consultation practices and for a further critical discussion on the ethical and socio-political foundation of public engagement. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to show, first of all, how landscape cannot but stand out on the horizon of a cognitive flux that affects every aspect of our being in the world (or, better said, of our being in the world) world). A special role will be reserved for aesthetic mediation, to be understood as a n act that regulates the epistemic negotiation between what is in the center and what is ”in the surroundings”. In this sense, the (...) work will start from bio cognitive assumptions on the species specific ways in which an organism circumscribes and enriches its world, and will then finally arrive at considerations that should, in our hopes, demonstrate how aisthesis is, in fact, the conceptual category that best lends itself to describing this process, in virtue of the particular gnoseological value it assigns to the se nsitive body and its extension extension. (shrink)

What exactly is reasoning? While debate on this question is ongoing, most philosophers seem to agree on at least the following: reasoning is a mental process operating on contents, which consists in adopting or revising some of your attitudes in light of others. In this paper, I argue that this characterisation is mistaken: there is no single mental phenomenon that satisfies both of these conditions. Instead, I characterise two distinct mental phenomena, which I call ‘deducing’, on the one hand, and (...) ‘reasoning’ or ‘inference’ on the other, to play each of these roles. Recognising this division of labour is essential to developing a better understanding of our rational economy. (shrink)