The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are treasured today--as they have been over the centuries--as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient religion and philosophy. Yet the clarity and ease of the work's style are deceptive. Pierre Hadot, eminent historian of ancient thought, uncovers new levels of meaning and expands our understanding of its underlying philosophy. Written by the Roman emperor for (...) his own private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations set forth principles for living a good and just life. Hadot probes Marcus Aurelius's guidelines and convictions and discerns the hitherto unperceived conceptual system that grounds them. Abundantly quoting the Meditations to illustrate his analysis, the author allows Marcus Aurelius to speak directly to the reader. And Hadot unfolds for us the philosophical context of the Meditations, commenting on the philosophers Marcus Aurelius read and giving special attention to the teachings of Epictetus, whose disciple he was. The soul, the guiding principle within us, is in Marcus Aurelius's Stoic philosophy an inviolable stronghold of freedom, the "inner citadel." This spirited and engaging study of his thought offers a fresh picture of the fascinating philosopher-emperor, a fuller understanding of the tradition and doctrines of Stoicism, and rich insight on the culture of the Roman empire in the second century. Pierre Hadot has been working on Marcus Aurelius for more than twenty years; in this book he distills his analysis and conclusions with extraordinary lucidity for the general reader. (shrink)

Winner of the Wolf Prize for his contribution to our understanding of the universe, Penrose takes on the question of whether artificial intelligence will ever ...

We discuss cases where subjects seem to enjoy conscious experience when the relevant first-order perceptual representations are either missing or too weak to account for the experience. Though these cases are originally considered to be theoretical possibilities that may be problematical for the higher-order view of consciousness, careful considerations of actual empirical examples suggest that this strategy may backfire; these cases may cause more trouble for first-order theories instead. Specifically, these cases suggest that (I) recurrent feedback loops to V1 are (...) most likely not the neural correlate of first-order representations for conscious experience, (II) first-order views seem to have a problem accounting for the phenomenology in these cases, and either (III) a version of the ambitious higher-order approach is superior in that it is the simplest theory that can account for all results at face value, or (IV) a view where phenomenology is jointly determined by both first-order and higher-order states. In our view (III) and (IV) are both live options and the decision between them may ultimately be an empirical question that cannot yet be decided. (shrink)

This paper argues that the new metaphysics of powers, also known as dispositional essentialism or causal structuralism, is an illusory metaphysics. I argue for this in the following way. I begin by distinguishing three fundamental ways of seeing how facts of physical modality — facts about physical necessitation and possibility, causation, disposition, and chance — are grounded in the world. The first way, call it the first degree, is that the actual world or all worlds, in their entirety, are the (...) source of physical modality. Humeanism is the best known such approach, but there are other less well-known approaches. The second way, the second degree, is that the source of physical modality lies in certain second-order facts, involving a relation between universals. Armstrong’s necessitarianism and other views are second-degree views. The third way, the third degree, holds that properties themselves are the source of physical modality. This is the powers view. I examine four ways of developing the third degree: relational constitution, graph-theoretic structuralism, dispositional roles, and powerful qualities. All these ways are either incoherent, or just disguised versions of the first-degree. The new metaphysics of powers is illusory. With the collapse of the third degree, the second degree, the necessitarian view of law, collapses as well. I end the paper with some reflections on the first degree, on the problem of explaining necessary connections between distinct existences, and on the dim prospects of holist ontology. (shrink)

In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating roller-coaster ride through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.

The Swedish welfare debate increasingly focuses on market liberal notions and its healthcare perspective aims for more patient‐centered care. This article examines the new Swedish Patient Act describing and analyzing how the patient is constructed in government documents. This study takes a Foucauldian discourse analysis approach following Willig's analysis guide. The act contains an entitlement discourse for patients and a requirement discourse for healthcare personnel. These two discourses are governed by a values‐based healthcare discourse. Neo‐liberal ideology, in the form of (...) New Public Management discourse, focusing on the value of efficiency and competition, is given a hegemonic position as laws and regulations are used to strengthen it. The new Swedish Patient Act seems to further strengthen this development. The Act underlines the increased entitlement for patients, but it is not legally binding as it offers patients only indirect entitlement to influence and control their care. To safeguard the patient's entitlement under the Patient Act, healthcare personnel should be made aware of the contents of the Act, so that they can contribute to the creation of systems and working methods that facilitate respect of the Act's provisions in daily healthcare work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Emperor’s Daughter, the Wise Rabbi, and the Realtor’s FaceliftJohn Davidson and Ruhama WeissFour decades ago during the clinical years of medical school, my (JD) first patient–care efforts included serendipitous contacts with three non–physician mentors. Each a rabbi. Each a Texan. Each of a different generation. Each acting in a pastoral care role in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. By sharing with all–comers their command of the two–millennia–old rabbinic (...) literary corpus, especially its aggadic, or nonlegal texts, they changed me forever. Theological dogma was not their passion. Caregiving for their hospitalized congregants was. And in so doing, they opened gates of discovery to rabbinic stories (aggadot) as articles of faith to be put into action for patients, staff, students, and doctors alike. These unexpected gifts have catalyzed and sustained my medical career and personal life ever since.The most influential of those stories was the famous Talmudic tale of the eminent Rabbi Eliezer (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b) using every conceivable means to support his view in a dispute, including miracles and a voice of approval from Heaven. His colleagues refused to assent to the singularity of his methods or arrival. They insisted on reasoning their way through to a majority decision based on consideration of the evidence at hand with the tools available. The tale ends with a joyous, proud, yet defeated parental deity declaring, “My children have bested Me, my children have bested Me.”The legend empowered me as a student to speak my mind in seeking to value the methodical, collaborative process of clinical decision–making over the sometimes ferocious voices of “the experts.” It continues to resurface decades later in daily efforts at finding common ground with both patients and other clinicians as we try to figure out, “what to do.” For more on this topic see my article, “Empathy and Integrative Thinking: Talmudic Paradigms for the Essentials of a Medical Interview” found in Medical Humanities.Just as those rabbis in the 1970’s told their stories in order to make sense of worldly and spiritual matters, so have I come now to appreciate the value of similar narratives for my patients and myself. Sometimes stories are shared in a near prescriptive fashion. Sometimes they are recalled silently as a compass suggesting the next step in an interview or treatment process. These rabbinic tales come to mind during clinical encounters after years of personal reflection on favorite texts and even more often in the midst of weekly if not daily textual study as a central element of my Jewish religious life. This practice has led to a realization that recalling rabbinic texts in contemporary clinical contexts is neither far–fetched nor irrelevant. At times it is uncannily helpful. Two millennia are not so long ago.During the past year, an Israeli colleague (RW) and I have revisited various Talmudic passages on a regular basis. Unlike Texas four decades ago, now I have learned with a pastoral care clinician who is a “hevruta,” or study partner, from the same Hebrew root as “haver,” meaning “friend.” Ours is a centuries–old way of study consisting of a pair of learners conversing freely on equal footing as they wrestle with interpreting a chosen, often familiar, text in a new way. My hevruta and I parse verbs. We examine articles. We question redundancy and grammatical reversals. We search for allusions. We read closely. We do all of this for its sake alone. It is part of our spiritual journey. It is one way we search for God. We engage the words on the page or screen and talk to each other.It is also a dyadic effort whose process and content bear a likeness to that of a doctor and a patient as they try to dialogue together regarding a patient’s concerns and the doctor’s capacity to help. Here, too, there is give and take, an attention to details, a reinterpretation of the past, and a reconsidering of the present. It is not surprising that the fruits of an ongoing dialogue on one stage with a hevruta, related to rabbinic stories and grammatical puzzlements, is of use on another... (shrink)

When I examine contextualism there is much that I can doubt. I can doubt whether it is a cogent theory that I examining, and not a cleverly stated piece of whacks. I can doubt whether there is any real theory there at all. Perhaps what I took to be a theory was really some reflections; perhaps I am even the victim of some cognitive hallucination. One thing however I cannot doubt: that there exists a widely read pitch of a round (...) and somewhat bulgy shape. (shrink)

The free energy principle, an influential framework in computational neuroscience and theoretical neurobiology, starts from the assumption that living systems ensure adaptive exchanges with their environment by minimizing the objective function of variational free energy. Following this premise, it claims to deliver a promising integration of the life sciences. In recent work, Markov blankets, one of the central constructs of the free energy principle, have been applied to resolve debates central to philosophy (such as demarcating the boundaries of the mind). (...) The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we trace the development of Markov blankets starting from their standard application in Bayesian networks, via variational inference, to their use in the literature on active inference. We then identify a persistent confusion in the literature between the formal use of Markov blankets as an epistemic tool for Bayesian inference, and their novel metaphysical use in the free energy framework to demarcate the physical boundary between an agent and its environment. Consequently, we propose to distinguish between “Pearl blankets” to refer to the original epistemic use of Markov blankets and “Friston blankets” to refer to the new metaphysical construct. Second, we use this distinction to critically assess claims resting on the application of Markov blankets to philosophical problems. We suggest that this literature would do well in differentiating between two different research programmes: “inference with a model” and “inference within a model.” Only the latter is capable of doing metaphysical work with Markov blankets, but requires additional philosophical premises and cannot be justified by an appeal to the success of the mathematical framework alone. (shrink)

"The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose has received a great deal of both praise and criticism. This review discusses philosophical aspects of the book that form an attack on the "strong" AI thesis. Eight different versions of this thesis are distinguished, and sources of ambiguity diagnosed, including different requirements for relationships between program and behaviour. Excessively strong versions attacked by Penrose (and Searle) are not worth defending or attacking, whereas weaker versions remain problematic. Penrose (like Searle) regards the (...) notion of an algorithm as central to AI, whereas it is argued here that for the purpose of explaining mental capabilities the architecture of an intelligent system is more important than the concept of an algorithm, using the premise that what makes something intelligent is not what it does but how it does it. What needs to be explained is also unclear: Penrose thinks we all know what consciousness is and claims that the ability to judge Go "del's formula to be true depends on it. He also suggests that quantum phenomena underly consciousness. This is rebutted by arguing that our existing concept of "consciousness" is too vague and muddled to be of use in science. This and related concepts will gradually be replaced by a more powerful theory-based taxonomy of types of mental states and processes. The central argument offered by Penrose against the strong AI thesis depends on a tempting but unjustified interpretation of Goedel's incompleteness theorem. Some critics are shown to have missed the point of his argument. A stronger criticism is mounted, and the relevance of mathematical Platonism analysed. Architectural requirements for intelligence are discussed and differences between serial and parallel implementations analysed. (shrink)

This paper examines the modes of imperial interactions with Church councils, focusing on the emperor’s participation in episcopal meetings and its representation in late antique sources, both literary and documentary. The author argues that the availability and strategic dissemination of conciliar records could affect, for better or worse, the understanding of the imperial religious policy and attitude towards Church institutions. This is most clearly illustrated by Marcian’s behaviour at Chalcedon, and by the active steps he took to produce an (...) official and imperially endorsed edition of the conciliar acts. The significance of Marcian’s initiatives emerges more clearly when placed in the context of developing practices with respect to conciliar procedure and the circulation of conciliar information. After considering possible precedents in both these fields, the article reconstructs the early circulation and reception of the Chalcedonian acts, focusing particularly on the records of the sixth session, which was presided by the emperor himself. The author discusses the role played by the imperial initiative at the council and in its aftermath, and how it contributed to shape the reception of Marcian’s image as a Christian ruler. (shrink)

While we applaud Bruineberg et al.'s analysis of the differences between Markov blankets and Friston blankets, we think it is not carried out to its ultimate consequences. There are reasons to think that, once Friston blankets are accepted as a theoretical construct, they do not do the work proponents of free energy principle (FEP) attribute to them. The emperor is indeed naked.

“The Emperor’s Old—and Perennial—Clothes: Two Spanish Fine-Tunings to Andersen’s Received Wisdom” There are two Spanish versions of the famous story of the Emperor’s new clothes. They differ from Andersen’s version--the one that most people know about—in significant ways. Žižek has often used the story to illustrate the Lacanian, complex, and paradoxical nature of ideology. But nobody has used these two versions to speak of these isues. The Spanish versions maintain the core of the story but offer illuminating deviations, (...) including one in which the result of the supposed revelation of the truth results not in the unveiling, but in the further veiling of reality. The article focuses on two occasions in which Žižek has referred to the story, and its aim is simply to offer the readers of IJZS these two alternative accounts of how ideology works. (shrink)

With AI permeating our lives, there is widespread concern regarding the proper framework needed to morally assess and regulate it. This has given rise to many attempts to devise ethical guidelines that infuse guidance for both AI development and deployment. Our main concern is that, instead of a genuine ethical interest for AI, we are witnessing moral diplomacies resulting in moral bureaucracies battling for moral supremacy and political domination. After providing a short overview of what we term ‘ethics washing’ in (...) the AI industry, we analyze the 2021 UNESCO Intergovernmental Meeting of Experts (Category II) tasked with drafting the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and show why the term ‘moral diplomacy’ is better suited to explain what is happening in the field of the ethics of AI. Our paper ends with some general considerations regarding the future of the ethics of AI. (shrink)

For many decades, the proponents of `artificial intelligence' have maintained that computers will soon be able to do everything that a human can do. In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating roller-coaster ride through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.

There is a simple joy in finding that the emperor has positively no clothes and especially when the finger is pointed in ribald good English. Donald McCloskey does this service in “The Rhetoric of Economics”, where he argues with force and wit that “modernism” (meaning, roughly, positivism, as in “Positive Economics”) will do as an account neither of what economists do nor of what it makes philosophical sense for them to attempt. Instead they should recognize that models are always (...) metaphors and should make a virtue of the literary devices, which they in fact rely on. Armed with the craft of rhetoric and a new “poetics of economics,” they will achieve better writing, better teaching, better foreign relations, better science and better dispositions. (shrink)

Among the four reading-levels, the textual and exegetical levels of Zhuangzi ’s Hundun-story are problem-free, and so we focus expository-wise on its conspicuous hospitality with nine implications. Then, hermeneutically, we see Hundun instructing us against clarity toward unclarity—cosmological, self-composing, cognitive, and communal—of kindly humus, in cosmic confusion, sleep and idleness, mist and pond-dragonfly, and non-ruling people-sovereignty. Pan-hospitality is our Emperor Hundun’s non-arbitrary imperative to nurture life.

This article defends my claim, first presented in "identity and trinity," "journal of religion" (1978), that the doctrine of the trinity is consistent. drawing upon tertullian's defense of the doctrine in "adversus praxean", i argue that the logic of the trinity is similar to the logic of emperorship. at various times, two persons, for example, diocletian and maximian, were the same emperor of the roman empire, just as three persons are the same god.

The 35 commentaries cover a wide range of topics and take many different stances on the issues explored by the target article. We have organised our response to the commentaries around three central questions: Are Friston blankets just Pearl blankets? What ontological and metaphysical commitments are implied by the use of Friston blankets? What kind of explanatory work are Friston blankets capable of? We conclude our reply with a short critical reflection on the indiscriminate use of both Markov blankets and (...) the free energy principle. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis is enjoying a resurgence. Despite its well documented failures in the past to cope with the environmental damage caused by major transport projects, and despite lack of progress in resolving the causes of these failures, Britain's Department of the Environment now proposes to apply it not just to projects, but to the formulation of policy. Curious.

The opening pages of the annals of the Roman monarchy tell of long-lived rulers and thriving families. Augustus lived to the ripe age of seventy-six, survived by his wife of fifty-one years, Livia, who died at eighty-six, while her son Tiberius bettered his predecessor's record by two more years. Augustus’ sister Octavia gave birth to five children, all of whom lived long enough to get married; Agrippa left at least half a dozen children, and perhaps more; Germanicus, despite his tender (...) age at death, was survived by no fewer than three sons and three daughters. At the same time, longevity and abundant offspring went hand in hand with early death and misery. More than a few luminaries of Augustus’ court were less fortunate than their elders: Marcellus died at twenty-three, the elder Drusus at twenty-nine, Augustus’ heirs Gaius and Lucius Caesar at twenty-three and eighteen. Drusus had lost a number of children save three that survived; Germanicus buried three of his six sons as infants. (shrink)

The emperor's new mind (hereafter Emperor) is an attempt to put forward a scientific alternative to the viewpoint of according to which mental activity is merely the acting out of some algorithmic procedure. John Searle and other thinkers have likewise argued that mere calculation does not, of itself, evoke conscious mental attributes, such as understanding or intentionality, but they are still prepared to accept the action the brain, like that of any other physical object, could in principle be (...) simulated by a computer. In Emperor I go further than this and suggest that the outward manifestations ofconscious mental activity cannot even be properly simulated by calculation. To support this view, I use various arguments to show that the results of mathematical insight, in particular, do not seem to be obtained algorithmically. The main thrust ofthis work, however, is to present an overview ofthe present state of physical understanding and to show that an important gap exists at the point where, quantum and classical physics meet, as well as to speculate on how the conscious brain might be taking advantage ofwhatever new physics is needed to fill this gap to achieve its nonalgorithmic effects. (shrink)

The British government's White Paper on science together with government research council reports are used as a basis for critiquing current science policy and its intensifying orientation, British and worldwide, towards industrial and military development. The critique draws particulary on Plato and Bacon as yardsticks to address who science is for, what values it honours and where current policy departs from imperatives of socio-ecological justice. Metaphors of the ' Emperor 's new clothes' and incremental spectral shift in attitude help (...) illuminate both the problems and ways forward. The paper calls for a re-integration of classical perspectives with added insights, often ecofeminist, from philosophy, poetics and a theology of reverence. Predication on the values of love, interconnectedness and orientation towards childrens' all-round development should be central to curricular reform. Consistent with the views of Plato, the original founder of the Academy, the utilitarian role of science ought to be balanced with a contemplative role of science as the art of knowing ourselves in relation to nature. Only with such a holistic academic approach can it adequately rise to providing a pedagogy of authentic human development, service to the poor and remedies, rather than contribution, to the ongoing destruction of nature. (shrink)

One of Hans Christian Andersen's most beautiful tales is "The Emperor's Nightingale." Its message—an exceptionally sobering one in the present context—is that nature is altogether finer and more enduring than art. It tells how a Chinese emperor, beguiled by a precious imitation bird that had been given him, forsook a natural songster he had once favored. But when that glittering counterfeit broke down, its clockwork sound silenced, the now aged ruler found welcome solace in the real bird's return, (...) in its more reliable and spiritually healing song. . . . Despite the artist's foregone defeat in any contest with nature , over the ages artists have been irresistibly drawn to the challenge of imitating nature. The persistence of these claims upon their skills and the inventive flight that have been elicited in the process testify to the extraordinary hold that the desire to mirror nature, or better still, to capture something of its essence, can exert over artists and their public. Accounts of imitative prowess go back to the most ancient days, beyond the fabled skills of Zeuxis and Apelles. There is no need here to summarize the complicated but almost domestically familiar history of illusionism. Rather, it is my present intention to reflect upon some contradictions inherent in the conception of art as illusion and to review some of the more exaggerated forms in which efforts have been made to break down the boundaries between art and nature. Frank Anderson Trapp, William Rutherford Mead Professor of Fine Arts, chairman of the department of art, and director of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, is the author of The Attainment of Delacroix and a number of essays on the history of art. (shrink)

This paper studies Suetonius's depiction of the appearance of Emperors through what I call Bodily or Corporeal Ecphrasis. Suetonius's ecphrasis of the Emperor's body directs the readers' gaze over the corpus principis in a way that deconstructs the ontology of the princeps. I will show that Suetonius's construction of emperors' corpora includes an amalgamation of referents to heavenly and animal bodies that upsets a reader's ability to interpret these radically unique images through a purely human criterion.

As we await the Second Coming of President Donald Trump, it is important to understand that his conservative Evangelical supporters view him not as a new Christ but as a new Constantine, a guardian of Western Civilization in a crucial period when we face threatened conquest by foreign enemies and infiltrators, Postmodern Neo-Marxism, and Militant Islam Thus he should be seen also as a new Charles Martel. He need not be a Bible-reading pietist to fulfill these roles, so Christians need (...) not be ashamed of him if he isn’t. (shrink)

Summary The article examines unofficial imperial nicknames, sobriquets and appellatives, from Octavian Augustus to Julian the Apostate, in the light of traditions of Roman political humour, and argues that in the political field during the Principate there were two co-existing competing modes of emperors’ naming: along with an official one, politically loyal, formalised and institutionally legitimised, there existed another – unofficial, sometimes oppositional and even hostile towards individual emperors, frequently licentious, humorously coloured and, in this regard, deeply rooted in Roman (...) Republican traditions of political humour. Many of the known imperial nicknames and appellatives belong to a specific kind of folklore and express popular public opinion. They survived for us because of ancient authors’ interest in using such material for their literary and ideological intentions, particularly to express better the individual characteristics of the historical personages. But, for the very same purposes, Greek and Roman writers could invent some names and sobriquets, following special rhetorical and moralising principles, or mere love of ridicule. All in all, most imperial nicknames, both authentic and made-up, reveal a rather good quality of humour and mockery constructed by expressive linguistic devices and various rhetorical tropes. An apt derisive nickname marked anti-values, mocked the ruler’s badness and could vilify his reputation to the extreme, stigmatise his personality, or else become a widely-used quasi-cognomen. Many nicknames and appellatives were of ephemeral, ad hoc nature, their sense and effect largely dependent on the particular context; but, taken as a whole, they demonstrate the possible scope of and common trends in naming practice. The political system of the Principate and its very atmosphere of hypocrisy did promote double meaning and double thinking reflected in the double system of the rulers’ nomenclature. Imperial nicknames were a counter-hegemonic transcript and a weapon in the struggle for symbolic capital. All the efforts which many emperors took to control their nomina were ultimately powerless against the strength of the inevitable humorous counter-naming by the ruled. (shrink)

With the publication of The God Delusion Richard Dawkins became enthroned as the unofficial ‘Emperor’ for a cadre of writers advancing a rhetorically robust form of anti-theism dubbed ‘The New Atheism’ by Wired Magazine contributing editor Gary Wolf. Many have cheered Dawkins and his court, seeing in their writings just what they long to see. For, after the fashion of the fairy-tale Emperor's fabled new clothes, the ‘new atheism’ has seen naturalism wrapping itself in a fake finery of (...) counterfeit meaning and purpose. (shrink)

‘Spirituality’ is an old word which throughout history has been given different meanings. Over the last two decades, it has successively become an increasingly frequent concept in scientific studies, none the least in psychosocial oncology. Advocates of ‘spirituality’ regard it as a human dimension and state that since all humans have ‘spiritual needs’ it is urgent to develop ‘spiritual care’. With the focus on recent publications, this article critically scrutinizes aspects of scientific soundness in this growing research tradition, foremost problems (...) of the lack of conceptual clarity and reliance on interconnected instruments that imply circular findings. It is concluded that the concept adds more confusion than clarity if it is not put into a meaningful theoretical and cultural context, and subsequently it is important to guard against preconceptions and vague meanings in this research field. (shrink)