We examine the Dual Ramsey Theorem and two related combinatorial principles VW(k,l) and OVW(k,l) from the perspectives of reverse mathematics and effective mathematics. We give a statement of the Dual Ramsey Theorem for open colorings in second order arithmetic and formalize work of Carlson and Simpson [1] to show that this statement implies ACA 0 over RCA 0 . We show that neither VW(2,2) nor OVW(2,2) is provable in WKL 0 . These results give partial answers to questions posed by (...) Friedman and Simpson [3]. (shrink)

red and round. According to common sense, the red, round thing we see is the tomato itself. When we have a hallucinatory vision of a tomato, however, there may be present to us no red and round phys- ical object. Still, we use the words 'red' and 'round' to describe that situation as well, this time applying them to the visual experience itself. We say that we have a red, round visual image, or a visual experience of a red (...) disk, or some such. Because we see physical objects far more often than we hallucinate, we apply terms for color and shape to physical objects far more often than to visual experiences. Moreover, different theories of perception explain in different ways the applications such terms have to physical objects and to visual experiences. But whatever their frequency and explanation, it seems clear that both sorts of application occur. (shrink)

The sensory colors that figure in visual perceptual experience are either properties of the object of consciousness (naïve realism, sense-data theory), or properties of the subject of consciousness (adverbialism) (Section 1). I consider an argument suggested by the work of A. D. Smith that the existence of certain kinds of perceptual constancies shows that adverbialism is correct, for only adverbialism can account for such constancies (Section 3). I respond on behalf of the naïve realist that naïve realism is compatible with (...) the existence of such constancies, so long as naïve realism adopts the view that sensory colors are relational properties of physical objects, not intrinsic properties (Section 4). In other words, the naïve realist should adopt the theory of appearing (Section 5). (shrink)

Despite the moral gravity and far-reaching consequences of ethical judgment, evidence shows that such judgment is surprisingly malleable, prone to bias, informed by intuition and implicit associations, and swayed by mere circumstance. In this vein, this research examines how mere colors featured in logos can bias consumers’ ethical judgments about a retailer. Exposure to a logo featuring an eco-friendly color makes an ethically ambiguous practice seem more ethical; however, exposure to a logo featuring a non-eco-friendly color makes the same practice (...) seem less ethical. This effect is due to the embodied meaning of color, not referential meanings associated with the names of colors, and it is mediated by perceptions of a retailer’s eco-friendliness. Furthermore, although the word “green” appears to influence ethical ratings of retail practices more than the word “blue,” visual exposure to either color evokes similar perceptions of eco-friendliness and influences ethical judgments. Study 2c assesses and rules out alternative explanations for this effect. Critically, an eco-friendly color can skew judgments even when the practices judged are not ethically ambiguous. Individual differences in ethical sensitivity moderate the observed effect, such that individuals who are less ethically sensitive are less influenced by color. The article concludes with a discussion on how logo colors shape consumers’ perceptions of retailer ethicality. (shrink)

The analogy between colors and values is strongly interlinked with the idea that these properties are by nature dispositions or response-dependent properties. Indeed, that colors are essentially visible, and values are inherently motivational, cries out for a dispositional or a response-dependent account. Recently, Primitivism has challenged the viability of the dispositional account of colors, taking the apple, for instance, to be “gloriously, perfectly, and primitively red.” Unsurprisingly, the attack on the dispositional account of colors has found a moral analogue in (...) the view that values are sui generis irreducibly primitive properties. The question this article addresses is whether given Primitivism the analogy between colors and values is preserved; or in other words, whether Primitivism breaks the bond between the dispositional account and the analogy between colors and values. (shrink)

When asked to identify objects having unique shapes and colors among other objects, English speakers often produce redundant color modifiers (“the red circle”) while Spanish speakers produce them less often (“el circulo (rojo)”). This cross‐linguistic difference has been attributed to a difference in word order between the two languages, under the incremental efficiency hypothesis (Rubio‐Fernández, Mollica, & Jara‐Ettinger, 2020). However, previous studies leave open the possibility that broad language differences between English and Spanish may explain this cross‐linguistic difference such that (...) English speakers may generally produce more modifiers than Spanish speakers, including redundant ones, irrespective of word order. Here, we test the incremental efficiency hypothesis in a language production task crossing language (English, Spanish) with modifier type (color, number). Critically, number words occur on the same side of the noun in both English and Spanish. If broad language differences are responsible for the higher rate of color word production in English compared to Spanish, then the same effect should hold for number words. In contrast, the incremental efficiency hypothesis predicts an interaction between language and modifier type, due to different ordering for color words but identical ordering for number words. Our pre‐registered analyses offer strong support for the incremental efficiency hypothesis, demonstrating how seemingly small differences in language can cause us to describe the world in surprisingly different ways. (shrink)

Both Bakhtin and Vygotsky, as we have seen, responded directly or indirectly to the challenge of Freud. Both attempted to account for their data without resorting to postulating an unconscious in the Freudian sense. By way of contrast, it is instructive here to recall Jacques Lacan—who, among others, has been a beneficiary of Bakhtin’s “semiotic reinterpretation” of Freud.17 Lacan’s case is intriguing, for he retains the unconscious while at the same time submitting Freudian psychoanalysis to rigorous criticism along the lines (...) of Bakhtin. By focusing attention on the dialogic word, he encourages a rereading of Freud in which the social element is crucial. As Lacan opens his essay “The Empty Word and the Full Word”:Whether it sees itself as an instrument of healing, of formation, or of exploration in depth, psychoanalysis has only a single intermediary: the patient’s Word….And every word calls for a reply.I shall show that there is no word without a reply, even if it meets no more than silence, provided that it has an auditor: this is the heart of its function in psychoanalysis.18The word is conceived as a tool not only in the external world but also of an autonomous internal world as well. And what emerges, it would seem, is a reinterpretation of the role of dialogue in the painful maturational process of the child. For Vygotsky, the child’s realization of his separateness from society is not a crisis; after all, his environment provides both the form and the content of his personality. From the start, dialogue reinforces the child’s grasp on reality, as evidenced by the predominantly social and extraverted nature of his earliest egocentric speech. For Lacan, on the contrary, dialogue seems to function as the alienating experience, the stade du miroir phase of a child’s development. The unconscious becomes the seat of all those problems that Bakhtin had externalized: the origin of personality, the possibilities of self-expression. The je-moi opposition in the mirror gives rise to that permanent for “a locus where there is constituted the je which speaks as well as he who has it speak.”19 And consequently, the Word takes on an entirely different coloration: it is no longer merely an ideological sign but a potent tool for repressing knowledge of that gap, the face in the mirror, the Other. Lacan’s celebrated inversion of Saussure’s algorithm, with the line between signifier and signified representing repression, created a powerful but ominous new role for language. The child is released from his alienating image only through discovering himself as Subject, which occurs with language; but this language will inevitably come to him from the Other. Thus speech is based on the idea of lack, and dialogue, on the idea of difference. 17. See Ivanov, “The Significance of M. M. Bakhtin’s Ideas,” p. 314.18. Jacques Lacan, “The Empty Word and the Full Word,” in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, ed. and trans. Anthony Wilden , p. 9.19. Lacan, from “La Chose freudienne” , quoted in Wilden, “Lacan and the Discourse of the Other,” in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, p. 266. Caryl Emerson, assistant professor of Russian literature at Cornell University, has translated The Dialogic Imagination, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics . She is currently at work, on a study of Boris Godunov in Russian cultural history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gary Shapiro THE OWL OF MINERVA AND THE COLORS OF THE NIGHT Hegel is known to many readers mainly for a few striking figurative passages which he himself excluded from the central structures of his major texts as extrinsic remarks. His mature system justifies this exclusion by claiming that philosophy operates in the realm of the pure concept, having surpassed the sensuous narrative images of art and religion. Nevertheless, (...) the very forcefulness of the passages themselves indicates that the mature Hegel may never have peacefully aufgehoben the young man who believed in 1796 that philosophy, in order to resume its original role as educator of mankind, must become aesthetic, mythological, and poetic. (I am assuming that Hegel either wrote "the earliest system-program of German idealism" or endorsed its principles.) A reading of the famous elegiac passage in the "Preface" to the Philosophy of Right suggests not only problems of meaning, but of philosophical rhetoric: One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed. The teaching of the concept, which is also history's inescapable lesson, is that it is only when actuality is mature that the ideal first appears over against the real and that the ideal apprehends this same real world in its substance and builds it up for itself into the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.1 The first focus of attention here is usually on the mood of philosophical resignation in which completion of a rational development leaves no room for action or advice. Theory must necessarily give up any Utopian 276 Gary Shapiro277 or activist pretentions it may have harbored once it sees that it can only describe what has been. Despite the fact that Hegelian actuality (Wirklichkeit) is the result of a rational and dialectical process, ascetic renunciation of any relation to action puts Hegel in the strange company of nineteenth century positivists and empiricists; it also establishes a tone fundamentally different from classical European political philosophy of thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, a tone which Marx, provoked by Hegel, was to revive. The statement can also be read on a scale much larger than the political, in which it suggests a resigned acceptance of the completion of Western philosophy and civilization. Hegel is notorious for his view that spirit (Geist), the fundamental reality, has completed itself through the self-knowledge which it attains in his system of philosophy. That he sometimes speaks of his enterprise as a Wissen or Wissenschaft (knowledge, science, or wisdom) suggests how far he has come from the Socratic conception of philosophy as always characterized by a lack of that which it loves. It would be intriguing to explore these themes. Such exploration would involve a more thorough knowledge of what Hegel understands by end, completion, and fulfillment when he speaks of political life and the higher forms of spirit—art, religion, and philosophy. We might even be led by such an inquiry into Hegel's meaning to see his claims as historically and philosophically plausible and to reconsider our own resistance to believing that we live in a deepening twilight. What I wish to do, however, is to call attention to the manner in which Hegel speaks of Minerva's owl and to juxtapose both the manner and the substance of his thought about the twilight of philosophy and civilization with some of Hölderlin's dichterisch and Heidegger's denkerisch meditations on similar themes. For if Hegel has announced the coming of the night, Hölderlin and Heidegger have sought to make the night their very own territory and to comprehend it from within. If Hegel has rather gingerly allowed himself to lapse into that famous figurative discourse of the... (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

In two experiments, we examined the impact of color on cognitive performance by asking participants to categorize stimuli presented in three different colors: red, green, and gray (baseline). Participants were either asked to categorize the meaning of words as related to the concepts of “go” or “stop” (Experiment 1) or to indicate if a neutral verbal stimulus was a word or not (lexical decision task, Experiment 2). Overall, we observed performance facilitation in response to go stimuli presented in green (...) (vs. red or gray) and performance inhibition in response to go stimuli presented in red. The opposite pattern was observed for stop‐related stimuli. Importantly, results also indicated that color might also be used to categorize neutral stimuli. Overall, these findings provide support to the green‐go and red‐stop color associations and test the potential functional autonomy acquired by these colors and the boundary conditions to their effects on stimuli categorization. (shrink)

This beautiful introduction to art and language features some of the world's most beloved masterpieces as it entices children to discover art, language, objects, and colors. First pictures, first words--this familiar and time-proven book concept for young children is incorporated brilliantly in this multi-lingual art book. The works of Renoir, Kandinsky, Dürer, Rousseau, Franz Marc, and others are featured in beautiful full-page reproductions. Opposite each image is a word that helps describe the painting--for instance "play," "bunny," "horse," "train." The (...) words are presented in twelve different languages, each with their phonetic pronunciation. Organized thematically, the book touches on a child's everyday experience through simple and comforting images that will invite further investigation: What are the men playing with? What does the bunny's fur feel like? How many teddy bears do you see? Together adults and children can explore great works, planting the seeds for an appreciation of the world's masterpieces and the words to describe them."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

The history of the concept of “religion” in Western tradition has intrigued scholars for years. This important collection of eighteen essays brings further light to the ongoing debate. Three of the invited participants, W.C. Smith, M. Despland and E. Feil, has each previously written impressive books treating this subject; the last two acknowledged the impact and continuing influence of Smith’s work, The Meaning and End of Religion. An introduction and a recapitulation of Smith’s contribution as a scholar set the stage (...) for a retrospective look at the published literature. Contributors then examine the transformation of words (the classical religio to the modern religion), particularities of religion in nineteenth-century France, Troeltsch’s concept of religion, the study of religion from an Asian point of view and the categorization of “World Religions.” The concluding essays elaborate contemporary anthropological, cross-disciplinary, semiological, deconstructive and psychoanalytical methodological approaches to the concept and study of “religion.” Exploring critically different aspects of the concept and study of religion, these provocative essays typically reflect the methodological pluralism currently existing in the field of Religious Studies. Of interest to scholars and students alike, this collection also contains a complete bibliography of W.C. Smith’s publications. (shrink)

In Hurrian, timer/timar ‘dark’ appears exclusively in the phrase timerre eženi “the dark earth”. It has been suggested that this phrase and its reflexes in Hittite and Greek derive from the common religious trope of “the devouring earth” originating in northern Mesopotamia, with Hurrian providing the first attestation. However, the atypical morphology of the adjective, which cannot be derived from a noun and does not have the normal VC root pattern of Hurrian, and the semantic field, with Hurrian having borrowed (...) many words for colors, make a native Hurrian origin for timer/timar unlikely. It is suggested instead that the adjective, as well as its counterpart timiraš ‘a dark/black color ’ in the Kassite language, was borrowed from Indo-Aryan *tam-[e]r, probably as a result of a shared Indo-Aryan cultural superstratrum. While no alternatives are offered, such an etymology calls into question a Hurrian origin for the religious concept of “devouring earth.”. (shrink)

Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says Dawkins--Newton's unweaving is the key too much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mystery. (The Keats who spoke of "unweaving the rainbow" was a very young man, Dawkins reminds (...) us.) With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made his books worldwide bestsellers, Dawkins addresses the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, and combines them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. This is the book that Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and what it isn't), a tribute to science "not because it is useful (though it is), but but because it is uplifting, in the same way as the best poetry is uplifting.". (shrink)

This paper begins with the idea that there are sometimes gaps in our shared linguistic/ conceptual resources that make it difficult for us to understand our own social experiences, and to make them intelligible to others. In this paper, I focus on three cases of this sort, some of which are drawn from the literature on hermeneutical injustice. I offer a diagnosis of what the gaps in these cases consist in, and what it takes to fill them. I argue that (...) these gaps are filled in, at least initially, by labels of a particular kind. Specifically, these are labels that allow us to see the experiences in question as novel instances of phenomena with which we are already normatively familiar. Further, I also show that these labels bring with them important downsides: they introduce distortions into our understandings of these experiences. Using a pair of case studies (‘statutory rape,’ ‘sexual harassment’), I illustrate these distortions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Place for Healing:A Hospital Art Class, Writing, and a Researcher's TaskJulia Kellman (bio)Introduction[O]bjects transform the top of our chest into a site of memory. I think of private landscapes like this one as querencias, places that hold the heart. The word has been translated as homing instinct and affection. Expatriate Alastair Reid introduced me to it in 1965, writing about the Spanish bullfight in The New Yorker. After (...) the first wound the bull chooses his querencia, the place in the ring where he returns for a moment to rest before the fight goes on, and where he finally dies. Querencia comes from the common Spanish verb querer; among its many meanings are to love, to want, to hold, and to command. Reid spoke of hometowns and native countries as querencias; exiles cling to their memories of them.1Place, "space that has the capacity to be remembered and to evoke what is most precious,"2 by its nature orients us to a particular perspective, to a way of looking at the world. Each place has its own local accent, its own constellation of habits, its own rhythm of language and thought. We are grounded in landscape in the same manner that we are situated in our social world, imprinted like other creatures on a typography, pattern of weather, cycle of seasons, scents, and colors.3Our hearts, too, are embedded in such places; and in this article, through this "act of personal witness," this "inscription of a self and a description of an object" as the anthropologist and writer Ruth Benhar4 describes it, we will see how the members of an art class for people with HIV/AIDS at a local hospital have similarly become grounded in their art space and in the tiny art community that has grown up around it. Additionally, we will discover the importance of a more descriptive style of writing as means for examining the role of art in the lives of people who are ill, for their various difficult [End Page 106] situations call for particular clarity and empathy that both honors and relates the stories of their lives. It will become clear as this article proceeds that the personal engagement of a researcher/writer in such a situation is critical as well. For not only must she be open—vulnerable, as Behar suggests—to the people with whom she works as a means of spanning the chasm between a life of illness and a life of health, but she must also be sensitive to the reader's needs, for she is the reader's guide and surrogate.5 This role as guide and alter-ego demands that the researcher tell the story of other lives in a manner that enables the reader to empathetically and eagerly undertake a journey with the researcher into a world unlike her own.6Personal Engagement: The Researcher/WriterHoward Brody, doctor and medical ethicist, explains the necessity for stories of illness to be descriptive.7 He asserts that the stories in which we are most interested are not merely factual recitations; they are about what the illness means to the individual—they include how that person understands events. "It is far too simple-minded" he writes, to assume that "the writer of literature presents to us a world of fantasy that never existed whereas the author of a nonfictional pathography has some special insight into the world as it really exists, even if the relevant world is nothing but his own subjective experiences."8 He concludes "in stories of that sort (stories of the meaning of things) the line between so-called truth and fiction becomes more blurred and ceases to affect the uses we make of the stories for the deeper understanding of the human response to illness."9 Further, Brody continues, one must understand stories of sickness in order to truly develop a philosophical understanding of what it means to be ill. Such an understanding, Brody suggests, not only provides ethical guidance for health care workers and others but also will lead to improved care for patients and better education of health professionals.10 This view of... (shrink)

A little-known movie by Alfred Hitchcock, Torn Curtain — admittedly not one of his best — tells a story of spying and science. It features a strange scene, where two physicists confront one another on some theoretical question. Their “discussion”, if it may be so called, consists solely in one of them writing some equations on the blackboard, only to have the other angrily grabbing the eraser and wiping out the formulas to write new ones of his own, etc., without (...) ever uttering a single word. This picture of theoretical physics as an aphasic knowledge entirely consisting of mathematical symbols, as common as it may be in popular representations, we know to be wrong, of course, and we have to acknowledge that, far from being mute, we are a very talkative kind; physics is made out of words. What I wish to question here, however, is the very nature of our relationship with language, particularly as concerns quantum theory. My thesis will be that we have been somewhat offhand and rather indifferent with respect to the words we use, or rather without respect for them, and that this attitude has reinforced, and sometimes perhaps even produced some of the persisting epistemological and pedagogical difficulties in our field — not to speak of the new cultural problems that we are facing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Focusing on The Experience:Exploring Alternative Paths for ResearchEleanor Stubley, Anneli Arho, Päivi Järviö, and Tuomas MaliWriting and speaking are essential means of understanding, studying, and sharing music in the Western art music tradition. As a group of researchers, our story begins with the gap that seemingly exists between theoretical definitions or accounts of music and our experience of it as music makers—that is to say as composers, performers, conductors, (...) and teachers. Poignantly sensitive to the ways in which our musical experience and knowledge is embodied, we found ourselves one day four years ago sitting around an electrically-charged dinner table where ideas, questions, and the joy of having found someone like-minded seemed to be the main entrée. Since then, we have been working as a group, [End Page 39] experimenting with different ways of collaborating, using writing as a means of exploring and sharing our experiences across long distances. At first, the goal was simply to find a common ground, a platform for developing an extended dialogue that would draw on our unique backgrounds and divergent ways of our thinking. But, in the absence of a common language, both linguistic and theoretical, there were problems. We had, for example, to come to understand what each of us meant by the word experience and the role it could play as the ground of research, not as a series of defining moments or events but as the largely invisible flow of human life. We also had to deal with the inter-wovenness of mind and body, individual, and culture, not to mention our individual musical sensitivity and artistry. Confronted by these larger issues, our differences soon became the means to explore gaps or openings that could be entered to reveal the continuous becoming of music and language, the places where they intersect and diverge, and our own being in relationship to both.The papers presented in this symposium were the outgrowth of our dialogue during the summer of 2004. Each of us worked independently, yet each of us was also aware of the direction, the themes, and the ways of the others. The result is kaleidoscopic, each author starting from a different place, but seemingly working from the same palette of colors.Eleanor Stubley writes as a philosopher and conductor. Her work here is part of a larger on-going study that examines the way in which the body fills both language and our experience of music, with a particular focus on the way in which an interest in the body renews our understanding of music, language, and thought. Through a series of inter-connecting meditations inspired by the letter A, she challenges the practice of grounding research and practice in definitions of music as "organized sound." Her writing makes visible the habitual of a variety of educational practices, asking us to think anew about instructional technologies such as the alphabet, scale, and taxonomies of musical form, and to find in what we have traditionally thought of as practices of the mind, the omnipresence of the body. It also offers a new perspective on the hand, not as a tool or muscle to be trained as a skill, but as the very ground from which to develop an aesthetics of music that combines and recognizes the multiple ways in which we know and encounter music, through sight, sound, movement, and touch.Anneli Arho writes as a composer, educator, and philosopher/researcher. She explores the power of working from within the factical situation of a musician making music, focusing in particular on the embodiedness of music, questions of meaningfulness, and the ways in which phenomenological reflection on her own musical experiences has allowed her to move beyond traditional research discourses. Her writing asks us as educators to re-think curricular definitions of [End Page 40] composition, not simply as a collection of skills to be acquired or languages to be learned, but rather as embodied ways of living in and through sound. Using notation as an example, she argues that composing generates its own practical and existential questions distinct from those of listener, performer, and researcher, and which can never be totally shared with others... (shrink)

The human propensity for casting our social worlds as "us against them" is perhaps the primary impediment to deep and broadly inclusive understandings of the workings of rhetoric. Many decades ago, Kenneth Burke assailed that barrier with regard to Adolf Hitler. Surrounded by the satisfactions of vituperation against the leader of one of the world's most heinous social movements, Burke begged his readers to make space for understanding how Hitler's rhetoric brought about what it did. Philippe-Joseph Salazar's Words Are (...) Weapons makes a similar contribution for our era. He asks us to resist the gratifications generated by dismissing as "Islamaphobic" any critical analysis of what he calls "caliphal"... (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers routinely talk about phenomena, and the ways in which they relate to explanation, theory and practice in science. However, there are very few definitions of the term, which is often used synonymously with "data'', "model'' and in older literature, "hypothesis''. In this paper I will attempt to clarify how phenomena are recognized, categorized and the role they play in scientific epistemology. I conclude that phenomena are not necessarily theory-based commitments, but that they are what explanations are called (...) to account for, which are not presently explained. (shrink)

In this paper, I create philosophical space for the importance of how we say things as an adjunct to attending to what is said, drawing on Stanley Cavell's discussions of moral perfectionism and passionate utterance. In the light of this, I assess claims made for the contribution drama makes to moral education. In Cities of Words, Cavell gestures towards Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates asks what kind of disagreement causes hatred and anger. The answer is disagreement on moral questions. (...) The consequent ethical conditioning of such speech might demand that our seriousness is marked by calm, respectful and open conversation. I argue this might fail to fully reflect how an individual takes his/her life seriously and how passionate speech such as we find in dramatic dialogue could convey this. I develop the register of moral perfectionism that Cavell identifies in Ibsen's A Doll's House in relation to moral seriousness. I argue that the drama classroom can help, not simply by bringing out the inhere.. (shrink)

Addiction is a puzzle for popular understandings of human action. An addicted person may not simply choose to quit, nor can an addiction be reduced to a physiological predisposition to consume. After demonstrating some of the complexities of addiction that confound these misconceptions, I rely on Kent Dunnington’s Addiction and Virtue to situate addiction within the category of ‘habit.’ Then, I turn to John Calvin's brilliant description of the human person to further categorize an addiction as a religious habit. I (...) point to the rituals and routines that mark addiction as the poignant fulfillment of Calvin’s prediction of what a misdirected religious habit would look like. (shrink)

Motivated by Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, but with one eye on any possible future legislation, I consider the justifications that might be offered for limiting assistance in dying to those who are suffering unbearably from terminal illness. I argue that the terminal illness criterion and the unbearable suffering criterion are not morally defensible separately: that a person need be neither terminally ill (or ill at all), nor suffering unbearably (or suffering at all) to have a (...) right to assisted dying. Indeed: I shall suggest that the unbearable suffering criterion undermines the Bill (or any proposal like it) wholesale. On the other hand, the criteria taken together are defensible, and this defence would be built on a concern for the protection of the vulnerable. However, I also claim that this implies that the law might justifiably—and maybe even properly—aim to prevent a person from gaining access to that to which they have a serious moral right. This seems paradoxical, and, towards the end of the paper, I seek to tease apart the paradox. (shrink)

In his World Culture and the Black Experience Professor Ali Mazrui states that “by being left behind scientifically African languages gradually became incapable either of coping with or stimulating new areas of reflection and analysis”. He agrees with Professor Mohammed Hyder of Nairobi that “if a serious attempt were made to develop a ‘technical limb’ to Swahili, this would indeed be possible” by the simple device of writing redioaktivu for radioactive and thairodi for thyroid and so forth. He thinks, however, (...) that “the majority of African languages have too few speakers to warrant a serious undertaking to convert them into scientific and technological languages.” In any case such an attempt “would be an extreme form of cultural autarchy”. (shrink)

In this paper, a special type of polysemantic words, that is, words with multiple meanings for the same part of speech, are analyzed under the name of neutrosophic words. These words represent the most dif cult cases for the disambiguation algorithms as they represent the most ambiguous natural language utterances. For approximate their meanings, we developed a semantic representation framework made by means of concepts from neutrosophic theory and entropy measure in which we incorporate sense related (...) data. We show the advantages of the proposed framework in a sentiment classification task. (shrink)

An account of the conflict between our positive and negative emotional relationships to the Earth and how they will be resolved for the Symbiocene, the next period in the history of the Earth.

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann's complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler's model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon's notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show that the Shianbei word for ‘paper’ was *qaɣVdu, which is cognate to Written Mongolian qaɣudasu ‘tree bark, sheet of paper’, and that *qaɣVdu was subsequently borrowed into other languages as Sogdian kāγaδā, Persian kaġad, kaġid, Old Turkic qaɣat/qaɣaz and Turkish kâğĭd. The etymology of Greek Séres “China” is also discussed.

Socially responsible publishers, such as the BMJ Publishing Group, have demonstrated a commitment to health equity and working towards rectifying the structural racism that exists both in healthcare and in medical publishing.1 The commitment of academic publishers to collecting information relevant to promoting equity and diversity is important and commendable where it leads to that result.2 However, collecting sensitive demographic data is not a morally neutral activity. Rather, it carries with it both known and potential risks. Among these are issues (...) around privacy or data misuse, as well as more basic concerns about how, when or why people should be categorised in certain ways and/or prompted to conceive of themselves or their identities in certain terms.3 If such data are to be collected, therefore, their effectiveness in achieving the stated ends must have a sufficiently compelling evidence base so as to justify the various risks involved. And where possible, these risks must also be identified and minimised. As Varcoe et al 4 argue, > While most leaders and healthcare workers and some patients [in their study] envisioned potential benefits associated with having ethnicity data, these benefits were seen as largely contingent upon action being taken to [actually] ameliorate inequities. Overwhelmingly, however, leaders from ethno-cultural communities and patients of diverse identities anticipated potential harm arising both from having ethnicity data and the process of collection. The analysis illustrates that in today’s sociopolitical context, collecting ethnicity data in clinical contexts may engender considerable harm, particularly for racialized, vulnerable patients. (p1569) Varcoe et al refer to ‘ethnicity’ data, which as they note is an ambiguous concept, potentially encompassing such diverse notions as ancestry, language, religion or culture. It is also a term that is in some contexts—for example, the USA—often used interchangeably with a different, more highly charged term: ‘race’. Data …. (shrink)