The article examines space as a hierarchy of differences and as a basic phenomenon of the world, while calling into question the existence of time as a natural process and basis for human experience. It analyses the functionality of time in connection with various types of individual spaces and reveals the correlativity of space and consciousness.

This project explored what constitutes “ethical practice of mathematics”. Thematic analysis of ethical practice standards from mathematics-adjacent disciplines (statistics and computing), were combined with two organizational codes of conduct and community input resulting in over 100 items. These analyses identified 29 of the 52 items in the 2018 American Statistical Association Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice, and 15 of the 24 additional (unique) items from the 2018 Association of Computing Machinery Code of Ethics for inclusion. Three of the 29 items (...) synthesized from the 2019 American Mathematical Society Code of Ethics, and zero of the Mathematical Association of America Code of Ethics, were identified as reflective of “ethical mathematical practice” beyond items already identified from the other two codes. The community contributed six unique items. Item stems were standardized to, “The ethical mathematics practitioner…”. Invitations to complete the 30-min online survey were shared nationally (US) via Mathematics organization listservs and other widespread emails and announcements. We received 142 individual responses to the national survey, 75% of whom endorsed 41/52 items, with 90–100% endorsing 20/52 items on the survey. Items from different sources were endorsed at both high and low rates. A final thematic analysis yielded 44 items, grouped into “General” (12 items), “Profession” (10 items) and “Scholarship” (11 items). Moreover, for the practitioner in a leader/mentor/supervisor/instructor role, there are an additional 11 items (4 General/7 Professional). These results suggest that the community perceives a much wider range of behaviors by mathematicians to be subject to ethical practice standards than had been previously included in professional organization codes. The results provide evidence against the argument that mathematics practitioners engaged in “pure” or “theoretical” work have minimal, small, or no ethical obligations. (shrink)

In multiple essays, CLR James lays out what a theory of subjectivity must account for to resolve issues stemming from reducing subjectivity to a singular identity. Most proposals for a theory of subjectivity do so by making the subject the object of another’s propositions or claims about the world. I argue that this is an identity claim. The converse of this process is also true, that the subject who claims another as the object of their proposition must also be the (...) object of a proposition themselves, leaving the capacity to form these expressions untouched. In Black Cultural studies, there has been a lot of attention paid to the capacity for one to become the object of their own propositions due to the conception that Black identity overdetermines Black subjects’ expressions prior to their articulation. Our reorientation to the study of subjectivity posits an entity whose operation functions to mobilise as well as implement identity claims. Subjectivity is a capacity while identity becomes the object of that capacity, an object shared between subjects that are known by becoming the object of propositions regarding the world, including their own. This essay attempts to resolve the conflicts that arise once the mistake of conflating subjectivity with identity claims is made and proposes a model whereby the concept of Black subjectivity can be explained. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Forms of Life and Cultural EndowmentsVictor Peterson IIYou know, honey, us colored folk is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways.—Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God 15)what does it mean when we speak of a form of life? When speaking of a form of life, we consider one different from others by way of its mode of expression, that is, by its (...) means of construction. This interpretation lends itself to a functional analysis of the material put to use and whose operations jointly express the concept we are after. Modes of expression can be plotted between a rhetorical and semantic axis (Gates 48). As such, "[t]he level of connotation of the visual sign, of its contextual reference and positioning in different discursive fields of meaning and association, is the point where already coded signs intersect with the deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional more active ideological dimensions" (Hall 56). Coordinates within this domain encode signifying practices, revitalizing the traditional concept of signification as a function of what's signified with respect to a signifier. The content of a syntagm in this coordinate system, a point in this plane, indexes its function with respect to others. As such, we will conceive of the content of modes of expression functionally.A function is defined by pairing an element from a domain and another from a sub/co-domain whereby that pair is an element of that function. In this way, we can treat functions as abstract objects. If we treat a domain as what determines the availability of an expression, and a sub/co-domain as representative of its range of application, then the function of applying some proposition maps a movement from a domain of selection to one of composition, that is, its use with respect to others. The function of an expression, then, represents an operation over the possible worlds of its appropriate application (Taylor 201–02, 269, 276). This becomes more interesting when considering assertions whereby one subject is known to be the case for another, a concept that's modeled when a proposition from one is appearing in the object position of another (Fara 65–73). Resultingly, a proposal for an [End Page 26] ontology constituted by modes of interaction rather than identity stipulations to physical entities arises. It follows that if a form of life is understood by way of its mode of expression, then its content is expressed as an ensemble of the functions of its operations. Let this ensemble of functions be called an endowment.There is a pervasive debate in cultural studies that obsesses over proprietary notions as well as the ability to locate an origin. With that in mind, let us consider a coordinate system where there are two perpendicular axes, and we define positions within the space provided at the intersection of lines drawn from each. Each axis is represented by an ordered series of markers. A line drawn from each axis indicates that the coordinates indexed at their intersection is a function of these two markers. This locates an individual at a point in that domain, indexing a relation between the axes framing that space. Therefore, that coordinate-wise space, here a domain of possible expression, is not "empty" as pessimists would claim, but is filled with functional-content, albeit functions yet applied and marked by a point in that plane.Although we are currently speaking of two-dimensional space, the same follows for as many dimensions as we want. A point's location is a function of three values in three dimensions, four in four dimensions, and so on. Forms of life, then, will be comprised of four dimensions. This allows for a space-time conception, wherein joint expressions bend space-time and that space dictates those individuals' possible movements. From this, we construct a geometrical model of space-time represented as a cube composed of two-dimensional slices with these slices extending in a particular direction like cards stacked one on top of the other to model time.We want our conception of a form of life to be spatial. After all, it... (shrink)

This essay discusses a core tenet of pessimism, Afropessimism, in particular. Pessimism claims to be a metatheory analyzing the assumptive logics of the system it critiques. Afropessimists hold that a logical treatment of pessimism is unwarranted because pessimism does not employ a logical treatment of its object. We’ll discuss Afropessimism and, by extension, pessimism, in general, on their own terms as metatheory. We’ll see that a metatheory indirectly follows the logic its object follows directly. From this, a metatheory must hold (...) an assumptive logic of its own, even if superficially disavowed. Consequently, we’ll arrive at a puzzling result when, in this particular case, the metatheory’s claims empty its object of its content, hence the pessimism. (shrink)

Abstract:How might reading fiction allow a victim of the deadly sin of pride to escape? Your fictive imagination uses the transworld exemplification of performance props playing the somaesthetic role of your avatar, a character whom you are not simply acting or identifying with but "being." You avoid the epistemic glitch of a point of view from nowhere. You play the fictive role of your avatar either in the make-believe world of sport and art without time past or in the rhetorical (...) activity of communication learning about history in that fictional world complete with moral judgment and the judgment of taste. (shrink)

One of the most basic functions of human language is to convey who did what to whom. In the world's languages, the order of these three constituents (subject [S], verb [V], and object [O]) is uneven, with SOV and SVO being most common. Recent experiments using experimentally elicited pantomime provide a possible explanation of the prevalence of SOV, but extant explanations for the prevalence of SVO could benefit from further empirical support. Here, we test whether SVO might emerge because (a) (...) SOV is not well suited for describing reversible events (a woman pushing a boy) and (b) pressures to be efficient and mention subjects before objects conspire to rule out many other alternatives. We tested this by asking participants to describe reversible and non‐reversible events in pantomime, and we instructed some participants to be consistent in the form of their gestures and to teach them to the experimenter. These manipulations led to the emergence of SVO in speakers of both English (SVO) and Turkish (SOV). (shrink)

Contents I Introduction II Subalternation and Theology III Theology and Dogmatic Declarations IV The Mixed Principles of Theology V Virtual Revelation: The Unity of Theology VI Theology as a Natural Science VII Theology’s Certitude VIII Conclusion Notes Bibliography All the contents are fully attributable to the author, Doctor Victor Salas. Should you wish to get this text republished, get in touch with the author or the editorial committee of the Studia Poinsotiana. Insofar as possible, we will be happy to (...) broker your contact. (shrink)

In this article I give a unified account of three phenomena: bullshit, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. My aims are partly conceptual, partly evaluative. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's seminal analysis of bullshit, I give an account of the three phenomena and of how they are related, and I use this account to explain what is bad about all three. More specifically, I argue that what is defective about pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy is precisely that they are special cases of bullshit. Apart from raising (...) interesting philosophical issues, gaining a clearer understanding of these phenomena is also of practical importance, in that it bears on how best to tackle the threat that they pose. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also (...) renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection. (shrink)

A core tenet of metanormative non-naturalism is that genuine or robust normativity—i.e., the kind of normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements, and perhaps also of prudential, epistemic and even aesthetic requirements—is metaphysically special in a way that rules out naturalist analyses or reductions; on the non-naturalist view, the normative is sui generis and metaphysically discontinuous with the natural. Non-naturalists agree, however, that the normative is modally as well as explanatorily dependent on the natural. These two commitments—discontinuity and dependence—at least (...) initially pull in opposite directions, and one of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile them. In this paper I spell out the most pressing version of this discontinuity problem, as I propose to call it, and I go on to offer a novel solution. Drawing on the ideology of reasons-firstism, I formulate an account of normative explanation which reconciles the two commitments, and I argue that competing accounts either do not solve the problem or are implausible on independent grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss two different metaethical challenges based on population ethical impossibility results. According to the anti-realist challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the existence of objective moral facts. According to the skeptical challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the reliability of our moral intuitions. My aim is to systematically explore and evaluate these challenges. In addition to clarifying the issues, I argue that population ethical impossibility results do not in fact support any anti-realist (...) or skeptical conclusions. (shrink)

University finance curricula have been criticized in the financial press in the wake of the GFC for ignoring the ethical dimensions of financial decision-making in practice. Many practitioners experience moral dilemmas about whether the broader “public interest” objectives of legal or accounting regulation, for example, should at times be sacrificed in favour of fulfilling an inconsistent upper management objective. Moreover, many propositions in finance are both positive and normative. For example, financial maxima and optima can be discussed only for a (...) given distribution of wealth between relevant parties: shareholder wealth can be maximized, but only subject to a “given” constraint determined by the ethical norms of the society in which the firm operates. Assuming students’ sensitivity to ethical issues can be enhanced, ethics should be embedded within finance curricula, together with a final year, capstone course on “Ethical Investing” in the degree. (shrink)

I INTRODUCTION: RESPECT, EQUALITY AND THE AUTONOMY OF MORALITY We often invoke a notion of respect to express our sense of human equality. ...

Collective apologies on behalf of governments to historically mistreated minorities have become more common. It is unclear, however, how we should respond to these apologies and other practices that invoke collective responsibility for oppression (chapter 1). I review the current literature on collective responsibility to better understand the obstacles facing an account of collective responsibility for oppression (chapter 2). I then argue that we can make sense of these practices by holding powerful organized collectives (chapter 3) and privileged disorganized collectives (...) (chapter 4) responsible for oppression. These practices then can be what I call “morally legitimate” if they are confessions of self-blame, and this self-blame contains an element of collective-self protest (chapter 5). (shrink)

In this essay I argue that moral judgment is a natural kind by developing an empirically grounded theory of the distinctive conceptual content of moral judgments. Psychological research on the moral/conventional distinction suggests that in moral judgments right and wrong, good and bad, praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, etc. are conceptualized as serious, general, authority-independent, and objective. After laying out the theory and the empirical evidence that supports it, I address recent empirical and conceptual objections. Finally, I suggest that the theory uniquely (...) accounts for the possibility of genuine moral agreement and disagreement. (shrink)

In this article I argue that there are two different types of understanding: the understanding we get from explanations, and the understanding we get from unification. This claim is defended by first showing that explanation and unification are not as closely related as has sometimes been thought. A critical appraisal of recent proposals for understanding without explanation leads us to discuss the example of a purely classificatory biology: it turns out that such a science can give us understanding of the (...) world through unification of the phenomena, even though it does not give us any explanations. The two types of understanding identified in this paper, while strictly separate, do have in common that both consist in seeing how the individual phenomena of the universe hang together. Explanations give us connections between the phenomena through the asymmetric, ‘vertical’ relation of determination; unifications give us connections through the symmetric, ‘horizontal’ relation of kinship. We then arrive at a general definition of understanding as knowledge of connections between the phenomena, and indicate that there might be more than two types of understanding. (shrink)

In resultant moral luck, blame and punishment seem intuitively to depend on downstream effects of a person’s action that are beyond his or her control. Some skeptics argue that we should override our intuitions about moral luck and reform our practices. Other skeptics attempt to explain away apparent cases of moral luck as epistemic artifacts. I argue, to the contrary, that moral luck is real—that people are genuinely responsible for some things beyond their control. A partially consequentialist theory of responsibility (...) justifies moral luck. But this justification is no mere rationalization of the status quo. Recent experimental and evolutionary work on punishment and learning suggests that the very same reasons that justify moral luck have also shaped the evolution of our luck-sensitive moral practices. (shrink)

Disgust originated as an evolutionary adaptation for avoiding disease, but it has since infiltrated morality. Many philosophers are skeptical of moral disgust. Skeptics argue that disgust is unreliable and harmful, and that we should eliminate or minimize feelings of disgust in moral thought. However, these arguments are unsuccessful. They do not show that disgust is more problematic than other emotions implicated in morality. Moreover, empirical research suggests that disgust supports important norms and values. Disgust is frequently elicited by “reciprocity violations,” (...) i.e., acts of cheating, dishonesty, and exploitation. The emotion is a fitting response because it accurately reflects the ability of these moral wrongs to pollute and to circulate. Repurposing its original functions, moral disgust motivates social exclusion, tracks the spread of immorality, and acts as a signaling system to coordinate sanctioning. Instead of expunging ourselves of moral disgust, then, we should seek to understand its virtues and its vices. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the existence of human reason gives us good reason to suppose that God exists. If the world were as the materialist supposes it is, then we would not be able to reason to the conclusion that this is so. This contention is often challenged by the claim that mental and physical explanations can be given for the same event. But a close examination of the question of explanatory compatibility reveals that the sort of explanation (...) that would have to be given for the event of, say, inferring that atheism is true, is incompatible with the event being explicable as a purely physical product of a purely physical universe. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical analysis of the Price equation and its role in evolutionary theory. Traditional models in population genetics postulate simplifying assumptions in order to make the models mathematically tractable. On the contrary, the Price equation implies a very specific way of theorizing, starting with assumptions that we think are true and then deriving from them the mathematical rules of the system. I argue that the Price equation is a generalization-sketch, whose main purpose is to provide a unifying (...) framework for researchers, helping them to develop specific models. The Price equation plays this role because, like other scientific principles, shows features as abstractness, unification and invariance. By underwriting this special role for the Price equation some recent disputes about it could be diverted. (shrink)

I argue that moral judgement is a natural kind on the grounds that it plays a causal/explanatory role in psychological generalizations. I then develop an empirically grounded theory of its identity as a natural kind. I argue that moral judgement is a hybrid state of moral belief and moral emotion. This hybrid theory supports the role of moral judgement in explanations of reasoning and action and also supports its role in a dual process model of moral cognition. Although it is (...) composed of moral belief and moral emotion, moral judgement is unified, like other natural kinds, in virtue of underlying mechanisms that generate homeostasis among its components. Finally, this theory about the unity of moral judgement resolves a longstanding puzzle about moral motivation. The view explains how it is that moral judgements motivate all on their own but not all the time. (shrink)

As a senior physicist colleague and our friend, Robert N. Boyd, wrote in a journal (JCFA, Vol. 1,. 2, 2022), Our universe is but one page in a large book [4]. For example, things and Beings can travel between Universes, intentionally or unintentionally. In this short remark, we revisit and offer short remark to Neil’s ideas and trying to connect them with geometrization of musical chords as presented by D. Tymoczko and others, then to Escher staircase and then to Jacob’s (...) ladder which seems to point to possibility to interpret Jacob’s vision as described in the ancient book of Genesis as inter dimensional or heavenly staircase, e.g. an inter dimensional bridge between heaven and earth (see also classic book: Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach). Jacob’s vision of angels going down to earth from that staircase has been depicted for instance in William Blake art etc. In our communication with others via physics literature and discussions etc, we came to several conclusions as follows: Firstly, possibility of quantum wormhole effect to mirror particle universe, which sometimes it is termed non-orientable wormhole. While such mirror particles effect have been more than 50 years predicted with the so-called parity violation (cf. Lee & Yang, 1950s), and that is called symmetry breaking. Secondly, a series of extended experiments on laser irradiated cold water may suggest possible transition from a phase of water to be at least partially fourth phase of water, which may be composed of crystalline water (see e.g. Gerald Pollack, and also Harold Aspden on liquid crystalline). If we can imagine laser cooling effect can be done in protracted time, then we can achieve a physical representation of Aspden’s liquid crystalline. Therefore, in subsequent article (Part II) we outlined simple model of such an effect of tunneling via quantum liquid crystalline Universe, which may likely be modeled with iced-water. It is interesting to remark here that certain experiments by Stockholm University scientists have shown that X-ray triggered water can exhibit properties just like liquid crystal (cf. PRL, 2020). That is why we consider it possible that there can be quantum phase transition where liquid water (comprised of iced cubes and water) can exhibit effects such as tunneling in quantum liquid crystalline Universe. Last but not least, we admit that what we outlined here is just an initial phase; and if you wish, perhaps we can call such experiments as “wormhole-at-lab” experiments (abbreviated: WHALE). (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that unification is neither necessary nor sufficient for explanation. Focusing on the versions of the unificationist theory of explanation of Kitcher and of Schurz and Lambert, I establish three theses. First, Kitcher’s criterion of unification is vitiated by the fact that it entails that every proposition can be explained by itself, a flaw that it is unable to overcome. Second, because neither Kitcher’s theory nor that of Schurz and Lambert can solve the problems of asymmetry (...) and accidental generalizations, it follows that unification is not sufficient to ground explanation. Third, some good explanations are disunifying, which entails that unification is not necessary for explanation either. (shrink)

Although it might be argued that the social drama is a story in [Hayden] White's sense, in that it has discernible inaugural, transitional, and terminal motifs, that is, a beginning, a middle, and an end, my observations convince me that it is, indeed, a spontaneous unit of social process and a fact of everyone's experience in every human society. My hypothesis, based on repeated observations of such processual units in a range of sociocultural systems and in my reading in ethnography (...) and history, is that social dramas, "dramas of living," as Kenneth Burke calls them, can be aptly studied as having four phases. These I label breach, crisis, redress, and either reintegration or recognition of schism. Social dramas occur within groups of persons who share values and interests and who have a real or alleged common history. The main actors are persons for whom the group has a high value priority. Most of us have what I call our "star" group or groups to which we owe our deepest loyalty and whose fate is for us of the greatest personal concern. It is the one with which a person identifies most deeply and in which he finds fulfillment of his major social and personal desires. We are all members of many groups, formal or informal, from the family to the nation or some international religion or political institution. Each person makes his/her own subjective evaluation of the group's respective worth: some are "dear" to one, others it is one's "duty to defend," and so on. Some tragic situations arise from conflicts of loyalty to different star groups. Victor Turner is professor of anthropology and a member of the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia. His many publications include Schism and Continuity in an African Society, The Forest of Symbols, The Ritual Process, and, with Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. (shrink)

Naturalists who conceive of knowledge as a natural kind are led to treat ‘knowledge’ as a natural kind term. ‘Knowledge,’ then, must behave semantically in the ways that seem to support a direct reference theory for other natural kind terms. A direct reference theory for ‘knowledge,’ however, appears to leave open too many possibilities about the identity of knowledge. Intuitively, states of belief count as knowledge only if they meet epistemic criteria, not merely if they bear a causal/historical relation to (...) the term. I will develop this objection and show that it is grounded in modal considerations central to Kripke’s work on reference. I will also argue that a more plausible externalist semantics for natural kind terms disarms the objection. (shrink)

The contemporary proliferation of “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” seems to render obsolete the notion of a public sphere in the singular. In my article, I would like to argue against this view: Following Jürgen Habermas, “the public sphere” can be understood as the concomitant horizon of communicative action, while the latter permeates society as a whole. On the basis of this socio-philosophical approach, the omnipresent tendencies toward fragmentation appear as reactive attempts to ward off this socially established and context-transcending (...) context of discussion. Habermas himself, however, has never adopted this perspective. Instead, he interprets the various symptoms of the decline of the public sphere—including its fragmentation—as the result of a “colonization of the lifeworld” by economic, bureaucratic, and technological system logics. However, on the basis of the concept of “systematically distorted communication,” which was still crucial for Habermas’s early work, it is possible to reconstruct how the lifeworld context of communicative action, out of which the public sphere emerges, is not only corroded and cut through from the outside by system logics but also exhibits its own dialectic of the refusal of discourse and the overcoming of this refusal. The fragmentation of the public sphere that we are confronted with today can be theoretically interpreted and politically addressed as a precarious standstill of this dialectic. (shrink)

Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women’s entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women’s religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study employs a combination of uniquely rich and diverse data to examine women’s formal religious authority in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. I first use survey data to (...) test hypotheses regarding the prevalence and patterns of women’s formal leadership across different denominational groups. I then support and extend the quantitative results with insights on pathways and consequences of women’s ascent to formal congregation authority drawn from qualitative data. The analysis illustrates how women’s religious authority both defies and reasserts the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing context. (shrink)

I argue that people are sometimes justified in participating in unjust wars. I consider a range of reasons why war might be unjust, including the cause which it is fought for, whether it is proportionate, and whether it wrongly uses resources that could help others in dire need. These considerations sometimes make fighting in the war unjust, but sometimes not. In developing these claims, I focus especially on the 2003 Iraq war.

Sensorimotor Theory is the claim that it is our practical know-how of the relations between our environments and us that gives our environmental interactions their experiential qualities. Yet why should such interactions involve or be accompanied by experience? This is the ‘absolute’ gap question. Some proponents of SMT answer this question by arguing that our interactions with an environment involve experience when we cognitively access those interactions. In this paper, I aim to persuade proponents of SMT to accept the following (...) three claims. First, that appeals to cognitive access fail to answer the absolute gap question. Second, that SMT can be read in a way that rejects the gap question. Third, that if proponents of SMT are prepared to read SMT in a way that rejects the absolute gap question, then they can also reject the claim that cognitive access is needed to explain experience. (shrink)

On the face of it, On Tyranny is a straightforward commentary on Xenophon's dialogue Hiero or Tyrannicus. As such it is a very model of thoroughness and learning. It amply repays careful study, and it goes a long way toward explaining Strauss's influence in training a generation of scholars. The dialogue proper takes up just under 20 pages. Its analysis runs to 90-odd pages, followed by another 30 pages of tightly packed notes that are largely devoted to parallels between the (...) Hiero, Xenophon's teaching as a whole, and the teachings of Plato, of Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, of Cicero. What at first appears as an exercise in textual analysis soon reveals itself as a much broader undertaking: the delineation of the main features of classical political philosophy. Strauss does not mean to deny that differences in perspective, procedure, and even conclusions separate the major representatives of classical political philosophy. He does want to maintain, however, that their agreements are more fundamental than are their differences. But even this is incidental to his main purpose: to understand classical political philosophy for the guidance it might provide in understanding the great moral and political problems that confront us here and now. He conceives of these problems in large measure as the consequence of modern philosophy, of what he calls "the modern project." But modern philosophy cannot be understood on its own terms alone any more than it can be understood by directly confronting it with the phenomena. For it does not owe its most characteristic features to such a confrontation. It owes them, rather, to the fact that, from its very outset, it defined itself in explicit contrast to classical philosophy. Modern philosophy is essentially derivative. It presupposes the tradition it opposes. Classical philosophy, and in particular classical political philosophy, on the other hand "... belongs to the fertile moment when all political traditions were shaken, and there was not yet in existence a tradition of political philosophy." Hence "only in the light of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns can modernity be understood. By rediscovering the urgency of this quarrel we return to the origins of modernity." It further follows from this line of reasoning that the quarrel must be re-kindled if we are once again to gain access to the phenomena themselves. To this end historical studies become necessary which do not presuppose that the whole issue has, for all intents and purposes, been settled in favor of the moderns. The most basic and most constant assumption of Strauss's historical studies is, therefore, the assumption that classical philosophy is truer than are any of the teachings that criticize or reject it. The passion and the inventiveness with which he defends this assumption sufficiently prove that he does not put it forward merely for reasons of method or of rhetoric. Yet it seems to fall short of being his settled belief. By stressing his agreements with the ancients and his disagreements with the moderns, by holding the moderns responsible for the great problems that face us while calling for a restoration of classical political philosophy, he fosters the impression that his own views coincide fully with those of classical political philosophy. But even if classical political philosophy spoke with a single clear voice, the fact remains that "no competent man of our age would regard as simply true the complete teaching of any thinker of the past." Presumably only someone who thinks himself competent would issue such a warning. (shrink)

Scanlonian contractualism rejects the consequentialist assumptions about morality, value, and rationality in virtue of which deontological constraints appear paradoxical. And yet, Jeffrey Brand-Ballard and Robert Shaver have claimed that it cannot succeed in defending the said restrictions. That is because they see Scanlon’s tie-breaking argument as threatening to justify aggregation in paradox of deontology cases. I argue that this claim rests upon a failure to appreciate contractualism’s relational character. Once we take this feature of the view into account, it becomes (...) clear that the tie-breaking argument is ruled out in cases where the only way for us to prevent several killings would be to commit one ourselves. To show this, I provide a contractualist explanation of why our duty not to harm persons is stricter than our duty to help them when they are threatened with harm. I conclude by distinguishing two ways in which this defense of deontological restrictions might bring contractualism objectionably close to absolutism. (shrink)

Intellectualist theories attempt to assimilate know how to propositional knowledge and, in so doing, fail to properly explain the close relation know how bears to action. I develop here an anti-intellectualist theory that is warranted, I argue, because it best accounts for the difference between know how and mere “armchair knowledge.” Know how is a mental state characterized by a certain world-to-mind direction of fit (though it is non-motivational) and attendant functional role. It is essential of know how, but not (...) propositional knowledge, that it makes possible performance errors and has the functional role of guiding action. The theory is attractive, in part, because it allows for propositional, non-propositional and perhaps even non-representational varieties of know how. (shrink)

To emphasize what we have outlined in a preceding paper, we consider the following: that human consciousness model should take into consideration “spirit” role, i.e. the mind-body-spirit as integral aspect, which view is neglected in the so-called Freudian mental model. In this paper, we consider two approaches to cancer treatment derived from such an integral triune view of human consciousness, including (a) healing frequency approach as advised by Royal Rife and David Hawkins, and also (b) relational therapy, based on recent (...) research on the healing role of love and compassion. (shrink)

In a recent paper, we describe how a model of quantum communication based on combining consciousness experiment and entanglement can serve as impetus to stop 5G-caused diseases. Therefore, in this paper we will discuss how entanglement can be explained in terms of quantum theory. This short review may be considered as an effort to bring QM into real problem solving, i.e. telecommunication.

While it is known that Euclid’s five axioms include a proposition that a line consists at least of two points, modern geometry avoid consistently any discussion on the precise definition of point, line, etc. It is our aim to clarify one of notorious question in Euclidean geometry: how many points are there in a line segment? – from discrete-cellular space (DCS) viewpoint. In retrospect, it may offer an alternative of quantum gravity, i.e. by exploring discrete gravitational theories. To elucidate our (...) propositions, in the last section we will discuss some implications of discrete cellular-space model in several areas of interest: (a) cell biology, (b) cellular computing, (c) Maxwell equations, (d) low energy fusion, and (e) cosmology modelling. (shrink)

It is known that the Big Bang theory was based on the concept of creation ex nihilo, after ancient Greek philosophers. In this paper, we will make few remark on the concept of creatio ex nihilo (as a commentary to a recent paper by Kalachanis, Athanasios Anastasiou, Ioannis Kostikas, Efstratios Theodossious and Мilan S. Dimitrijevi), as well as two other approaches, i.e. Intelligent Design and Emergence Theory by Clayton/Yong. As continuation of our recent paper to appear in forthcoming issue of (...) J. Asia Mathematika, we argue that beside the above three approaches, a new concept called creatio ex-rotatione offers a resolution to the long standing disputes between beginning and eternity of the Universe. In other words, in this respect we agree with Vaas, i.e. it can be shown: “how a conceptual and perhaps physical solution of the temporal aspect of Immanuel Kant’s „first antinomy of pure reason“ is possible, i.e. how our universe in some respect could have both a beginning and an eternal existence. Therefore, paradoxically, there might have been a time before time or a beginning of time in time.” By the help of computational simulation, we also show how a model of early Universe with rotation can fit this new picture. (shrink)