During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system. Without using the term 'globalization,' they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a 'globalist' ideology to reflect this new postwar reality. The Emergence of Globalism examines the competing visions of world order that shaped these debates and led to the (...) development of globalism as a modern political concept. Shedding critical light on this neglected chapter in the history of political thought, Or Rosenboim describes how a transnational network of globalist thinkers emerged from the traumas of war and expatriation in the 1940s and how their ideas drew widely from political philosophy, geopolitics, economics, imperial thought, constitutional law, theology, and philosophy of science. She presents compelling portraits of Raymond Aron, Owen Lattimore, Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Curtis, Richard McKeon, Michael Polanyi, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Maritain, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. G. Wells, and others. Rosenboim shows how the globalist debate they embarked on sought to balance the tensions between a growing recognition of pluralism on the one hand and an appreciation of the unity of humankind on the other."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

Quantum physics is believed to be the fundamental theory underlying our understanding of the physical universe. However, it is based on concepts and principles that have always been difficult to understand and controversial in their interpretation. This book aims to explain these issues using a minimum of technical language and mathematics. After a brief introduction to the ideas of quantum physics, the problems of interpretation are identified and explained. The rest of the book surveys, describes and criticises a range of (...) suggestions that have been made with the aim of resolving these problems; these include the traditional, or 'Copenhagen' interpretation, the possible role of the conscious mind in measurement, and the postulate of parallel universes. This new edition has been revised throughout to take into account developments in this field over the past fifteen years, including the idea of 'consistent histories' to which a completely new chapter is devoted. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study in Peirce's early metaphysics embedded in his writings between 1859 and 1867, which have received scant attention. Its purpose is to unravel his concept of reality and some relevant epistemological notions. Peirce's early metaphysical speculations can be divided into two parts. One is a system which covers thought between 1859 and 1862. The other manifests in lectures and writings between 1863 and 1867. The present study, consisting of five chapters, includes both of them. (...) ;Murray G. Murphey is one of the very few scholars who have attempted to take Peirce's early theories of knowledge and reality seriously. Thus the first chapter delineates his general interpretation of Peirce's first system, as a base for further discussions in the next two chapters. The second chapter clarifies Peirce's notion of metaphysics and then criticizes Murphey's understanding of Peirce's view of metaphysics. Similarly, the task of the third chapter is twofold: on the one hand, focusing on the epistemological and metaphysical issues, it provides an exposition of Peirce's system in detail and shows that some of his philosophical doctrines can be traced back to that system; on the other hand, it critically examines Murphey's interpretations of Peirce's texts and demonstrates that they involve misunderstandings or are one-sided. The fourth chapter scrutinizes Peirce's early writings on logic, which is regarded as a branch of semiotic and the foundation of metaphysics. It first elucidates Peirce's unpsychological view of logic as well as his notion of symbol and then discloses his theory of individual and diachronic view of knowledge therein embedded. Furthermore, Peirce's thesis that the function of a proposition is to reduce the impression to unity is investigated. Finally, it sums up the epistemological and metaphysical significance of Peirce's logical theory above expounded and, especially, specifies the fundamental tenets of Peirce's concept of reality implicitly involved in his early semeiotical approach to logic. The last chapter is simply a brief conclusion, roughly adumbrating Peirce's later doctrine of reality and how, in many aspects, it is foreshadowed by his early thought. (shrink)

Do concepts exist independently of the mind? Where does objective reality diverge from subjective experience? John Burbidge calls upon the work of some of the foremost thinkers in philosophy to address these questions, developing a nuanced account of the relationship between the mind and the external world. In Ideas, Concepts, and Reality John Burbidge adopts, as a starting point, Gottlob Frege's distinction between "ideas," which are subjective recollections of past sensations, and "concepts," which are shared by many and (...) make communication possible. Engaging with Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and many others, the book argues that concepts are not eternal and unchanging, as Frege suggested, but open to revision. We can move from ideas to thoughts, Burbidge suggests, that can be refined to the point where they acquire independent and objective status as concepts. At the same time, they are radically connected to other concepts which either complement or are differentiated from them. Ideas, Concepts, and Reality offers a fresh perspective on the ways in which rigorous thought differs from other operations of the mind. Daringly inventive and accessibly written, the book will appeal to philosophers at all levels of interest. (shrink)

In any attempt to present an overview of the conceptions of reality and divinity in classical Indian (Hindu) civilization, it is helpful, first of all, to highlight some of the basic cultural and intellectual presuppositions that appear to be operative in classical Indian thought (which, for the purposes of this article, will be taken as consisting of the so‐called six classical schools of Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, and Advaita Vedānta during the classical period, from the first centuries of (...) the Common Era up to the coming of Islamic traditions in the eleventh century). This can be accomplished in various ways, but perhaps the simplest way is to articulate some basic questions to which classical Indian thought provides some interesting, albeit unusual, answers. The questions can be framed as follows: (1) What truly is? (2) How does one know what truly is? (3) Who knows what truly is? (4) With whom does one know what truly is? And, finally: (5) What does God have to do with what truly is? The questions have to do, respectively, with (1) ontology, (2) epistemology, (3) psychology, (4) social anthropology, and (5) theology. Classical Indian thought, of course, provides a variety of answers to all of these questions, and there was much vigorous debate and polemic through the centuries about precisely how to form satisfactory answers. Generally speaking, however, it appears to be the case that the classical Indian philosophical schools tended to deal with these basic questions in a manner quite different from the way these questions have been dealt with in traditional or modern Western thought, and it is important to understand some of these differences if one wishes to appreciate the unique conceptual frameworks in classical Indian thought. (shrink)

The problem that Tallis attempts to address in Freedom: An Impossible Reality (2021) is that science appears to describe the entire world deterministically and that this seems to leave no room for free will. In the face of this threat, Tallis defends the existence of free will by arguing that science does not explain our intentional awareness of the world; and it is our intentional awareness that makes both science and free will possible. Against Tallis, it is here argued (...) that his argument is vulnerable to two criticisms. Firstly, his characterisation of science as apparently deterministic is inaccurate. Secondly, he has not solved the problem he has set himself but rather recast it, so that his conclusion leaves us having to account for free will, not in a deterministic universe, but either as a product of chance or as a miracle. It is here suggested that when we set aside the illusory threat of scientific determinism, we also set aside the temptation of free will (as its spurious answer). That done, we may better focus upon agent’s freedom of action – as discussed by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Hume – the rational capability of an agent to act upon their wishes, given the constraints under which they find themselves. (shrink)

The philosophers of the Vienna circle once made quite a stir by proposing to show not merely that certain metaphysical propositions were false, but that metaphysical propositions as such were meaningless, except for a possible emotive or poetic significance. The manifesto of the group, the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung der Wiener Kreis, published in 1929, had it that the task of the adherent of the scientific world–outlook was “to clear out of the way the metaphysical and theological debris of the centuries.” A (...) non–metaphysical view of the nature of philosophy was subsequently propounded by the members of the circle in such essays as Schlick’s “Die Wende der Philosophie,” published in the first number of Erkenntnis in 1930, Carnap’s “Die alte und die neue Logik,” also published in the first issue of Erkenntnis, and his “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprach,” published in Erkenntnis in 1931. Ayer picked up the theme in his “Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics,” published in Mind in 1934, and in his Language, Truth, and Logic, published in 1935. Such radical interpretations of the nature of traditional metaphysics were highly provocative in philosophical circles for a decade. (shrink)

The discussion is based around these issues, history of Human Rights, timeline for Human Rights history, question asked in this regard and enemy and friend of ‘human rights’. Describing the problems and its resolve from logical reasoning perspective; intellectual argumentation based on logical reason of, what is universal human right, democracy and illegal wars in the world by super powers as example America? Attempt to describe the inner construction of a human being-perfection-. Introduction to the concept of infallibility in (...) different parts in the article, purify yourself and being purified. What is it, is it possible for a creation named human to be not fallible, is the idea or practicing it impossible or there is a great sphere of being able to practicing it and reaching the status if one finds guidance for the right way with peace and human rights prevailed in the world. Majority of the thought in the text, based on hadith-tradition- from the Prophet of Islam Peace upon Him and His family Ahl al-Bait Peace upon Them. (shrink)

The discussion is based around these issues, history of Human Rights, timeline for Human Rights history, question asked in this regard and enemy and friend of ‘human rights’. Describing the problems and its resolve from logical reasoning perspective; intellectual argumentation based on logical reason of, what is universal human right, democracy and illegal wars in the world by super powers as example America? Attempt to describe the inner construction of a human being-perfection-. Introduction to the concept of infallibility in (...) different parts in the article, purify yourself and being purified. What is it, is it possible for a creation named human to be not fallible, is the idea or practicing it impossible or there is a great sphere of being able to practicing it and reaching the status if one finds guidance for the right way with peace and human rights prevailed in the world. Majority of the thought in the text, based on hadith-tradition- from the Prophet of Islam Peace upon Him and His family Ahl al-Bait Peace upon Them.Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2015 Vol.6 (1):15-21. (shrink)

The main aim of this essay is to show that, for Stevens, the concept of reality is very fluctuating. The essay begins with addressing the relationship between poetry and philosophy. I argue, contra Critchley, that Stevens’ poetic work can elucidate, or at least help us to understand better, the ideas of philosophers that are usually considered obscure. The main “obscure” philosophical work introduced in and discussed throughout the essay is Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism. Both a (shellingian) philosopher (...) and a (stevensian) poet search for reality. In order to understand Stevens’ poetry better, I distingush several concepts of reality: initial reality (the external world of the common sense), imagined reality (a fiction, a product of one’s mind), final reality (the object of a philosopher’s and a poet’s search) and total reality (the sum of all realities, Being). These determinations are fixed by reason (in the present essay), whereas in Stevens’ poetic works, they are made fluid by the imagination. This fluidity leads the concept of reality from its initial stage through the imagined stage to its final stage. Throughout this process, imagined reality must be distinguished from both a mere fancy and its products. Final reality is, however, nothing transcendent. It is rather a general transpersonal order of reality created by poetry/the imagination. The main peculiarity of final reality is that it is a dynamic order. It is provisional at each moment. Stevens (and Schelling too) characterizes this order as that of a work of art which is a finite object, but has an infinite meaning. Stevens calls this order “the central poem” or the “endlessly elaborating poem”. If ultimate reality is a poem created by the imagination, one may ask who is the imagining subject. I argue that this agent is best to be thought as total reality, that is, as Being. Stevens, however, maintains that if there were such an agency, it would be an inhuman agency, “an inhuman meditation”. The essay concludes, in a Derridian manner, with the claim that this agency cannot have any name; it is the “unnamed creator of an unknown sphere, / Unknown as yet, unknowable, / Uncertain certainty” (OP: 127). It is best thought as an X, as an unknown variable. Being has no name. (shrink)

This essay focuses on realism in ontology and on the problem of defining reality. According to the definition given by many realists, reality is independent of our thoughts, conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, etc. Yet, this merely negative definition of reality has some disadvantages: it implies a dualistic view, and it is incompatible with scientific realism. As an alternative, I introduce and discuss the traditional definition of reality as effectiveness, or capability of acting. I then attempt to (...) determine to what extent this definition can be helpful in the debate concerning ontological realism. (shrink)

Like many of his contemporaries, Hegel considered Spinoza a modern reviver of ancient Eleatic monism, in whose system “all determinate content is swallowed up as radically null and void”. This characterization of Spinoza as denying the reality of the world of finite things had a lasting influence on the perception of Spinoza in the two centuries that followed. In this article, I take these claims of Hegel to task and evaluate their validity. Although Hegel’s official argument for the unreality (...) of modes in Spinoza’s system will turn out to be unsound, I do believe there is one crucial line in Spinoza’s system – Spinoza’s rather weak and functional conception of individuality – which provides some support for Hegel’s reading of Spinoza. (shrink)

Race was once thought to be a real biological kind. Today the dominant view is that objective biological races don't exist. I challenge the trend to reject the biological reality of race by arguing that cladism (a school of classification that individuates taxa by appeal to common ancestry) provides a new way to define race biologically. I also reconcile the proposed biological conception with constructivist theories about race. Most constructivists assume that biological realism and social constructivism are incompatible views (...) about race; I argue that the two conceptions can be compatible. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider what is commonly referred to as Leibniz’s argument for primitive concepts. After presenting and criticizing (in sections 1 and 2) one recent rather straightforward way of interpreting this argument, by Paul Lodge and Stephen Puryear, which takes the argument to be merely about the structure of concepts, we offer an alternative way of looking at the argument. We think it is best seen as being fundamentally about the relation between thought and reality. In order (...) to prepare the ground for our reconstruction (which we present in section 5), we have to introduce his view of ideas or concepts (section 3), as well as some metaphysical principles concerning reality-dependence (section 4). (shrink)

Haslanger (2000) has argued that we should ameliorate concepts of race or gender to better capture existing structural inequalities. Her analysis was criticized by Simion (2018a), who argued that a concept should be ameliorated only if doing so preserves epistemic accuracy. But, as I argue, this criticism misses Haslanger's target. In response, Podosky (2018) and McKenna (2018b) have argued that conceptual revisions need not preserve "epistemic accuracy" since concepts can "shape reality", not just represent it. Here I argue (...) that social kind concepts need not "shape" the corresponding social kinds: neither causally nor constitutively. This raises doubts about the function of ameliorative projects for social kind concepts as means to change social reality. (shrink)

Referring to basic Weberian notions of rationalization and secularization, I try to find a more accurate sense of the term “secularization”, intending to describe adequately the position of religion in modernity. The result of this query is—or at least should be—a new, original conceptualization of religion as one of finite provinces of meaning within one paramount reality of the life-world, as defined by Alfred Schutz. I proceed by exposing a well known, major oversimplification of the Weberian concept of (...) secularization, very well outlined in Peter Berger’s The sacred canopy, in order to point to the genuine, much more differentiated position of Max Weber in this matter (especially from the period of Foundations of social economic and Economy and society), and, consequently, to return to the roots of Berger’s thought: phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, an attempt to assure the philosophical foundations of Weber’s sociological theory. At a closer glimpse, transformation of religion in the modern process of rationalization does not consist—according to Weber—in eliminating religion and thus depriving society of the religious source of meaning, but in parallel emancipation of many different domains of rationality, including religion itself. Using Schutz’s analysis of the social world as a complex structure of many different final provinces of meaning, I describe religion as such a province and show what does the process of rationalization of this province consist and what it should consist in: a complex, ongoing exchange of cognitive relevances and contents, combined with growing autonomy of many different sub-worlds. Schutz’s theory of symbol, rooted in Edmund Husserl’s description of constitution of complex objects in mono- and polythetic acts of consciousness, moves the analysis to the epistemological level, pointing to a chance of intensifying our cognitive relation to reality through increasing interpenetration of various sub-universes of meaning. (shrink)

Most jurisdictions require that a mental capacity assessment be conducted using a functional model whose definition includes several abilities. In England and Wales and in increasing number of countries, the law requires a person be able to understand, to retain, to use or weigh relevant information and to communicate one’s decision. But interpreting and applying broad and vague criteria, such as the ability ‘to use or weigh’ to a diverse range of presentations is challenging. By examining actual court judgements of (...) capacity, we previously developed a descriptive typology of justifications used in the application of the Mental Capacity Act criteria. We here critically optimise this typology by showing how clear definitions—and thus boundaries—between the criteria can be achieved if the ‘understanding’ criterion is used narrowly and the multiple rationales that fall under the ability to ‘use or weigh’ are specifically enumerated in practice. Such a typology-aided practice, in theory, could make functional capacity assessments more transparent, accountable, reliable and valid. It may also help to create targeted supports for decision making by the vulnerable. We also discuss how the typology could evolve legally and scientifically, and how it lays the groundwork for clinical research on the abilities enumerated by the MCA. No data are available. This paper does not report any original data. (shrink)

"The papers are marked by a high degree of intellectual perspicacity and help us to reformulate certain "alien" concepts to our indigenous needs.... Oommen gives us a competent analysis of the extant situation. His "reformulation" could act as the springboard of fresh political thinking to resolve the present crises." --The Tribune "The attempt to re-examine some of the prevalent social science theories is a very relevant exercise. It is a book which should be of interest not only to social scientists (...) but also social activists." --Social Action Traditionally, third world countries have been viewed as being useful only in determining the hegemony of either capitalism or socialism. Alien Concepts and South Asian Reality takes a giant leap forward in establishing independent Indian social science thought. Basing his concepts on empirical evidence from Asia, Author T. K. Oommen thoughtfully reformulates various well-known theories and assertively shakes off the "intellectual colonialism" that third-world countries have been subject to in the past. Innovative and bold, this volume offers a synthesis of information for social scientists and scholars all over the world. Recommended for studies in the following subject areas: sociology, social anthropology, social and political thought, political science, psychology, and social movements. (shrink)

Western civilization was built on the concept of God. Today modern science, based on the critical method and so-called objective facts, denies even the existence of our soul. There is only matter: atoms, molecules, and DNA sequences. There is no freedom; there are no well-grounded beliefs. The decline of Western civilization is not the simple consequence of decadence, hedonism, and malevolence. Modern critical science has liberated us from the old dogmas but failed to establish our freedoms, values, and beliefs. (...) However, human knowledge is not objective but personal. We are the children of evolution. Everybody sees the world from his own personal point of view anchored into his/her body. We use our billions-of-years-old evolutionary skills and thousands-of-years-old cultural heritage to recognize and acknowledge the personal facts of our reality, freedom, and most important natural beliefs: respect and speak the truth. In reality, even science itself is based on our personal knowledge. Only our false conceptual dichotomies paralyze our thinking. God or matter?—there is a third choice: the emergence of life and human persons. This is the only way to defend our freedoms and the Christian moral dynamism of free Western societies. (shrink)

This volume examines an often taken for granted concept-that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how (...) they constitute the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language. Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip. Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal. (shrink)

The article attempts to show that Hegel’s concept of “civil society” is characterized by a deep ambivalence about the value of the new market economy. On the one side, Hegel believed that the economic system represented by “civil society” succeeded like no other in simultaneously giving free reign to the desires of individual subjects and integrating them into a stable structural framework. On the other side, Hegel’s reflections are growingly overtaken by doubts as to whether, in light of its (...) self-destructive tendencies, the market system can be as successful in guaranteeing individual freedom as he first envisaged it to be. In the course of this essay, it will ultimately become clear that Hegel’s attempt to redefine “civil society” reveals considerably more conceptual indecision and inner conflict than one might have suspected from the great system builder. (shrink)

When we hear the word logic, we tend to think of arguments, premises and conclusions, claims and evidence for claims. But this is only half of it. Arguments are made of words, and words are symbols or signs of concepts, the building blocks of human thought. The study of the concept, the most fundamental aspect of logic, was once an essential part of liberal education, and to aid in its recovery is the goal of this book. This is a (...) must-have for any introductory logic course. (shrink)

The history of the idea of progress and the history of the concept of progress are two different things, not least because they emanate from considerably different intellectual traditions. In anglophone history of ideas, progress has typically been viewed as a belief. Historians of ideas explore the past evaluating the extent to which a given society met certain conditions of belief. By contrast, in the history of concepts as developed by Reinhart Koselleck, progress has occupied the dual role of (...) a ‘basic concept’ that grasps modern sociopolitical reality and a ‘collective singular’ that aggregates previous and adjacent meanings in the one linguistic unit. This article compares these two historical research programmes, highlights their merits and deficiencies, and concludes by offering a new approach to the history of concepts as suggested by R.G. Collingwood’s theory of a scale of forms. In each of the approaches to the history of ideas and concepts addressed, particular attention is given to the problem of what qualifies as progress, and thus to a longstanding problem concerning the attribution of progress to past societies routinely excluded from its history, including those left out by Koselleck’s conventional secular-modern thesis. (shrink)

What should philosophical theology look like after the critique of Onto-theology, after Phenomenology, and in the age of Speculative Realism? What does Kabbalah have to say to Philosophy? Since Kant and especially since Husserl, philosophy has only permitted itself to speak about how one relates to God in terms of the intentionality of consciousness and not of how God is in himself. This meant that one could only ever speak to God as an addressed and yearned-for holy Thou, but not (...) to God as infinite creator of all. In this book-length essay, the author argues that reality itself is made up of the Holy Name of God. Drawing upon the set-theoretical ontology of Alain Badiou, the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram, the physics of Frank Tipler, the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, and the genius of Georg Cantor, the author works to demonstrate that the universe is a computer processing the divine Name and that all existence is made of information (the bit). As a result of this ontic pan-computationalism, it is shown that the future resurrection of the dead can take place and how it may in fact occur. Along the way, the book also offers compelling critiques of several significant theories of reality, including the phenomenological theologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, Process Theology, and Object-Oriented Ontology. Reality in the Name of God explores how the concepts of Jewish mysticism can be articulated and deployed as philosophical theses within current metaphysical debates. It provides a new and dynamic Structural Realist ontology of information. Ultimately, the book aims to deal a death blow to the restriction of philosophy and theology in relation to elaborations of a how a believer relates to a God outside the mind and to return thought to a direct encounter with the divine nature of reality itself and its creator"--Website of the publisher, October 19, 2020. (shrink)

In this concluding chapter, Allan and Keller posit that Just Peace should be defined as a process resting on four necessary and sufficient conditions: thin recognition whereby the other is accepted as autonomous; thick recognition whereby identities need to be accounted for; renouncement, requiring significant sacrifices from all parties; and rule, the objectification of a Just Peace by a ‘text’ requiring a common language respecting the identities of each, and defining their rights and duties. This approach, based on a language-oriented (...) process amongst directly concerned parties, goes beyond liberal and culturalist perspectives. By moving beyond the idea of a peace founded on norms claiming universal scope, each side of a conflict has a place at the negotiating table to present their own perspective on what justice might entail. This inclusion into the decision-making process helps create the feeling of personal investment in the final negotiated product. In addition, negotiators need to work towards building a novel shared reality as well as a new common language to help foster an enduring harmony between previously clashing peoples. (shrink)

In this paper we examine how English and Mandarin speakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking in the two groups relate to patterns in linguistic and cultural experience. In Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are in English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers’ temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, including (...) the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals’ representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient in Mandarin were more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested in Mandarin than when they were tested in English (an effect of immediate linguistic context). (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to examine information and communication science, knowledge and power in relation to a TV “docu‐fiction”. In particular, it will look at the decision‐making processes of individuals and groups.Design/methodology/approachCore information behaviour such as selection and evaluation are examined.FindingsSome concepts from the fields of information or communication studies are critically examined, e.g. “gatekeeper” or “classification” and re‐analysed in a TV and multi‐channel broadcasting environment.Practical implicationsPositive conclusions show the possible impact of expanding information culture, competence and selection skills, whereby attention (...) is paid to the ethical consequences of information mise en scène.Originality/valueThe obvious, popular and close example of the RTBF “docu‐fiction” can be a model to re‐think and reflect many information programmes and narratives. (shrink)

In his new book Origins of Order: Project and System in the American Legal Imagination, Paul Kahn uses a conceptual array that consists of two concepts: system and project. These two concepts are c...

Destructive arguments such as Zeno’s against the reality of motion and McTaggart’s against the reality of time often provoke an intellectual unease. One reason, perhaps, is that arguments of this sort necessarily throw us into company with something counterfeit. In the case of McTaggart, either his argument is unsound or our perception of the world as temporally ordered is illusory. Thus, we may feel an immediate need to identify the counterfeit alternative, to agree or disagree with the argument (...) and to show why. However, this usually means that we are not primarily engaged with McTaggart in a discussion about time; rather, we are involved in arguing about an argument. The more interesting and significant responses emerge not until we move beyond the impulse to accept or reject the argument. For example, we may hold that McTaggart fails to prove the unreality of time, and yet think that his argument can teach us something important about time. And this is the view to be developed here. (shrink)

Modern times are an arena for two opposing trends: the liberalization of mores and laws, and the distancing of changes and adoption of a conservative position against those that occur. Polish family law clearly fails to keep pace with the changes taking place and does not perceive new phenomena. Is this an intentional act of the legislator leading to the preservation of traditional values, or the expression of disapproval and belief in the transitoriness of new phenomena? It comes together with (...) the introduction of new terminology or new interpretations of already existing concepts. Hence the meaning of some of the current concepts in everyday language differs significantly from their meaning arising from legal instruments. The article is an attempt to deal with this problem. (shrink)

Postpartum mood disorders develop shortly after childbirth in a significant proportion of women and have severe effects. Two evolutionary explanations are currently available. The first is that poor postpartum mental health is a consequence of an evolutionary trade-off – a compromise of neurological changes in the maternal brain during pregnancy which, on the one hand, maintain pregnancy, and on the other, increase the likelihood for postpartum women to develop psychopathology. The second explanation is that poor postpartum mental health is a (...) disease of civilization. This theoretical paper demonstrates that both explanations ignore the crucial event of childbirth. I elaborate on environmental features of childbirth, a physiological process that is substantially different in the current versus evolutionary childbirth and postpartum setting, and argue that maternal brain neuroplasticity and biochemical alterations are not an evolutionary trade-off, but an adaptation. Additionally, the incidents of poor postpartum mental health are better viewed as a maladaptation of the typical modern environments – an evolutionary mismatch. Thus, the potential to suffer from poor mental health in postpartum is an external, contingent happening, dependent on contemporary childbirth and postpartum environments, and not due to any essential property women possess as a result of evolutionary compromise. In fact, women are probably adapted to feel like superwomen right after birth, a state of mind that is an aid in adapting to motherhood. Distinguishing between evolutionary concepts in the context of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood is vital for developing more accurate preventions and interventions. (shrink)

The success of a few theories in statistical thermodynamics can be correlated with their selectivity to reality. These are the theories of Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Einstein. The starting point is Carnot’s theory, which defines implicitly the general selection of reality relevant to thermodynamics. The three other theories share this selection, but specify it further in detail. Each of them separates a few main aspects within the scope of the implicit thermodynamic reality. Their success grounds on that selection. (...) Those aspects can be represented by corresponding oppositions. These are: macroscopic – microscopic; elements – states; relational – non-relational; and observable – theoretical. They can be interpreted as axes of independent qualities constituting a common qualitative reference frame shared by those theories. Each of them can be situated in this reference frame occupying a different place. This reference frame can be interpreted as an additional selection of reality within Carnot’s initial selection describable as macroscopic and both observable and theoretical. The deduced reference frame refers implicitly to many scientific theories independent of their subject therefore defining a general and common space or subspace for scientific theories (not for all). The immediate conclusion is: The examples of a few statistical thermodynamic theories demonstrate that the concept of “reality” is changed or generalized, or even exemplified (i.e. “de-generalized”) from a theory to another. Still a few more general suggestions referring the scientific realism debate can be added: One can admit that reality in scientific theories is some partially shared common qualitative space or subspace describable by relevant oppositions and rather independent of their subject quite different in general. Many or maybe all theories can be situated in that space of reality, which should develop adding new dimensions in it for still newer and newer theories. Its division of independent subspaces can represent the many-realities conception. The subject of a theory determines some relevant subspace of reality. This represents a selection within reality, relevant to the theory in question. The success of that theory correlates essentially with the selection within reality, relevant to its subject. (shrink)

Manipulating sensory and motor cues can cause an illusionary perception of ownership of a fake body part. Presumably, the illusion can work as long as the false body part’s position and appearance are anatomically plausible. Here, we introduce an illusion that challenges past assumptions on body ownership. We used virtual reality to switch and mirror participants’ views of their hands. When a participant moves their physical hand, they see the incongruent virtual hand moving. The result is an anatomically implausible (...) configuration of the fake hand. Despite the hand switch, participants reported significant body ownership sensations over the virtual hands. In the first between-group experiment, we found that the strength of body ownership over the incongruent hands was similar to that of congruent hands. Whereas, in the second within-group experiment, anatomical incongruency significantly decreased body ownership. Still, participants reported significant body ownership sensations of the switched hands. Curiously, we found that perceived levels of agency mediate the effect of anatomical congruency on body ownership. These findings offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between anatomical plausibility and assumed body ownership. We propose that goal-directed and purposeful actions can override anatomical plausibility constraints and discuss this in the context of the immersive properties of virtual reality. (shrink)

Processuality as refusal to “freeze,” “eternize,” and fragment reality is an attempt to deconstruct the I’s main mechanism, which is, as it was named in psychoanalysis, the compulsion of repetition. Through this deceit and illusion fabrication mechanism, the knowing I tries to “freeze”, to “fixate” and to fragment reality, through “catching” it in different images, formulae, dogmas, theories, ideologies, symbols and systems which become just as many “icons” or graven images of reality. This attempt of deconstruction is (...) made from the perspective of a philosophy/vision of process, quite sporadic in the Western space, bringing arguments from the perspective of Henri Bergson and Emil Cioran’s intuitionist philosophy, as well as from that of the new scientific paradigm of quantum mechanics. All these philosophies could be seen as philosophies of process, demanding as it were an understanding of reality in terms of process, and not of result. This understanding of process takes place with the help of intuition, the only one which can grasp, beyond the static, rigid and artificial concepts or categories of the intellect, the movement, “verb” or interior pulsation of things within the framework of an integration process which reveals the unity, non-separability, intercorrelation and mutual interconnectivity of things. (shrink)

Information, entropy, probability: these three terms are closely interconnected in the prevalent understanding of statistical mechanics, both when this field is taught to students at an introductory level and in advanced research into the field’s foundations. This paper examines the interconnection between these three notions in light of recent research in the foundations of statistical mechanics. It disentangles these concepts and highlights their differences, at the same time explaining why they came to be so closely linked in the literature. In (...) the literature the term ‘information’ is often linked to entropy and probability in discussions of Maxwell’s Demon and its attempted exorcism by the Landauer-Bennett thesis, and in analyses of the spin echo experiments. The direction taken in the present paper is a different one. Here we discuss the statistical mechanical underpinning of the notions of probability and entropy, and this constructive approach shows that information plays no fundamental role in these concepts, although it can be conveniently used in a sense that we shall specify. (shrink)

Flat Physicalism is a theory of through and through type reductive physicalism, understood in light of recent results in the conceptual foundations of physics. In Flat Physicalism, as in physics, so-called "high level" concepts and laws are nothing but partial descriptions of the complete states of affairs of the universe. "Flat physicalism" generalizes this idea, to form a reductive picture in which there is no room for levels, neither explanatory nor ontological. The paper explains how phenomena that seem to be (...) cases of multiple realization of special sciences kinds by physical kinds are fully explains in a reductive physicalist way. Finally, the paper exemplifies the fruitfulness of this reductive approach by showing how it can account even for a case of high-level anomaly in a deterministic universe (for example anomaly of the mental, should this turn our to be a fact about the world) - a result that may be called Anomalous Physicalism. (shrink)

The work below is the resume of my forthcoming book which I hope to complete in a year or two. As a matter of fact, this is the synthesis of five previous papers of mine, An Endeavor of New Concept of Being and Non-Being, Non-Being and Nothingness, Reality as Being and Nothingness, Presence in Reality, and God and Reality, or to be more correct, the integrity of them, as only in this connection do they acquire their (...) genuine meaning and significance. I would ask the reader to try to catch what I would call the core of the views stated below, regardless of how controversial or unconventional they may seem at the first sight. (shrink)

Art shows something of reality as a whole, a reality that exists above or below the directly perceptible world. There is a first reality, or empirical reality, which can be mapped and captured through sense perception and is characterized by immediacy; and then there is a second or imagined reality that unfolds beyond direct empirical and experiential observation. While the animal intellect is attracted to the surface, to mere appearances, the human intellect is drawn to (...) what lies beyond the surface. The ability to imagine is a condition of human intellect, being characterized, in Schopenhauer’s terms, by a power of “seeing in things not what nature has actually formed but what she endeavored to form, yet did not bring about”. For Schopenhauer, this capacity can be fully engaged not by the “ordinary man, that manufactured article of nature”, but by the man of genius. In contrast, John Ruskin holds that the power of art consists precisely in allowing us to regain what can be called the innocence of the eye, in other words, a kind of childlike perception which remains blind to the meaning of perceived things. This paper seeks a possible answer to the question of how art ties us to reality. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to analyze the concept of quantum probability within quantum computation and quantum computational logic. While the subjectivist interpretation of quantum probability explains it as a reliable predictive tool for an agent in order to compute measurement outcomes, the objectivist interpretation understands quantum probability as providing reliable information of a real state of affairs. After discussing these different viewpoints we propose a particular objectivist interpretation grounded on the idea that the Born rule provides information about (...) an intensive realm of reality. We then turn our attention to the way in which the subjectivist interpretation of probability is presently applied within both quantum computation and quantum computational logic. Taking as a standpoint our proposed intensive account of quantum probability we discuss the possibilities and advantages it might open for the modeling and development of both quantum computation and quantum computational logic. (shrink)

The Pneumatist school of medicine has the distinction of being the only medical school in antiquity named for a belief in a part of a human being. Unlike the Herophileans or the Asclepiadeans, their name does not pick out the founder of the school. Unlike the Dogmatists, Empiricists, or Methodists, their name does not pick out a specific approach to medicine. Instead, the name picks out a belief: the fact that pneuma is of paramount importance, both for explaining health and (...) disease, and for determining treatments for the healthy and sick. In this paper, we re-examine what our sources say about the pneuma of the Pneumatists in order to understand what these physicians thought it was and how it shaped their views on physiology, diagnosis and treatment. (shrink)

Abstract The idea of ?election? cannot be approached, it seems, through traditional or classical philosophical conceptuality. This idea requires another type of discourse. Not simply because this idea refers to an entirely other body of texts, that of the Biblical tradition, but more radically since it commands another modality of thought which must at once suspend and pursue philosophical concepts to the point where they express themselves otherwise than according to the rationality of their own deployment. In truth, the idea (...) of ?election? calls thus for a redefinition of the rapport between singularity and universality, one no longer structured and circumscribed by ?truth?, but rather inspired by a novel and irreducible modality of ?justice?. A ?justice? which opens to the possibility for an ?ethics?, not as ?communicative dialogue?, ?mutual recognition? or a series of established and rationally grounded laws, but a ?place? of incessant and irresolute, non-intentional and unconditional exposition to the Other. (shrink)

In recent years the magnificent world of fractals has been revealed. Some of the fractal images resemble natural forms so closely that Benoit Mandelbrot's hypothesis, that the fractal geometry is the geometry of natural objects, has been accepted by scientists and non-scientists alike. The present paper critically examines Mandelbrot's hypothesis. It first analyzes the concept of a fractal. The analysis reveals that fractals are endless geometrical processes, and not geometrical forms. A comparison between fractals and irrational numbers shows that (...) the former are ontologically and epistemologically even more problematic than the latter. Therefore, it is argued, a proper understanding of the concept of fractal is inconsistent with ascribing a fractal structure to natural objects. Moreover, it is shown that, empirically, the so-called fractal images disconfirm Mandelbrot's hypothesis. It is conceded that the fractal geometry can be used as a useful rough approximation, but this fact has no bearing on the physical theory of natural forms. (shrink)

Can we think of a task in a distinctively practical way? Can there be practical concepts? In recent years, epistemologists, philosophers of mind, as well as philosophers of psychology have appealed to practical concepts in characterizing the content of know-how or in explaining certain features of skilled action. However, reasons for positing practical concepts are rarely discussed in a systematic fashion. This paper advances a novel argument for the psychological reality of practical concepts that relies on evidence for a (...) distinctively productive kind of reasoning. (shrink)

The notion of reality in the physical world has become, during the last century, somewhat problematic. The contrast between the simple and obvious reality of the innumerable instruments, machines, engines, and gadgets produced by our technological industry, which is applied physics, and of the vague and abstract reality of the fundamental concepts of physical science, as forces and fields, particles and quanta, is doubtlessly bewildering. There has already developed a gap between pure and applied science and between (...) the groups of men devoted to the one or the other activity, a separation that may lead to a dangerous estrangement. Physics needs a unifying philosophy, expressible in ordinary language, to bridge this gulf between "reality" as thought of in practice and in theory. I am not a philosopher but a theoretical physicist. I cannot provide a well balanced philosophy of science that would take due account of the ideas developed by differing schools, but I shall endeavor to formulate some ideas which have helped me in my own struggle with these problems. (shrink)

Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)

Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)