The summer semester had just begun at Austrian and German universities when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thus, in March 2020, all universities closed their campuses, switching to distance learning within the span of about a single day. How did lecturers handle the situation? Were they still able to turn the situation into a positive one? What were the main obstacles with this difficult situation, and where there conditions which helped them to overcome the (...) new challenges? These are research questions of the present survey with a sample of 1,152 lecturers at universities in Austria and Germany. The survey focuses on the lecturers’ appraisals of the novel situation as challenging or threatful. These appraisals are important for approaching a situation or shying away from it. However, how well a person adjusts to a novel situation is also influenced by personal and environmental resources which help to overcome the situation. The present survey focused on four possible sources of influence: internal assessments of the situation determining it to be threatening and/or challenging, personal resources, attitudes, and support by the organization. It was investigated to which degree these sources of influence could contribute to the lecturers’ satisfaction with their teaching processes. A multiple regression with three criterion variables describing university lecturers’ perceived satisfaction with distance teaching was carried out. Predictor variables were the lecturers’ appraisals of challenge and threat, perceived support by the university and sense of belonging to the university, temporal resources, proficiency in using digital technologies, length of teaching experience, and gender. Lecturers were mostly satisfied with their teaching activities. Together with the perception of a low threat potential, challenge appraisals contributed strongest to satisfaction. In comparison, assessments of actual personal resources, skills in the use of digital technologies, teaching experience, and temporal resources were important but contributed less to satisfaction than challenge appraisals. It seems that lecturers were only able to use these resources when the technological resources were available and when the lecturers were confident in their technical abilities. (shrink)

In a new and accessible look at the philosophy of Sigmund Freud, learn how the great thinker's ideas are still relevant today.

Editorial independence is a bedrock principle of academic publishing. The growing domination of academic publishing by large, for-profit corporations threatens this independence. There is alarming evidence that large companies too often serve their own business interests and those of powerful clients rather than serving the scientific community and the general public. This evidence includes the publication of infelicitous commercial science and concealing scientific misconduct. We present two case studies in which the UK-based publisher Taylor & Francis interfered in the editorial (...) process by blocking publication of legitimate criticism that had been reviewed and approved for publication by its specialized editors. The integrity of science depends in part on the transparency and intellectual honesty of all stakeholders. The widely acknowledged inadequacies of English libel law are reviewed as context for some of Taylor & Francis’s fearful decisions. (shrink)

As is well known, the Kāśikāvṛtti is the oldest extant rule-by-rule commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini. Two major commentaries on it are available, the Nyāsa from the eighth century and the Padamañjarī, most likely from the eleventh century. In this article we focus on the term pradeśa, which is a familiar feature of the printed editions of the Kāśikāvṛtti on the sañjñā sūtras of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. A closer examination, however, shows that the sentence “Xpradeśāḥ — X... ity evamādayaḥ” is (...) not met with in either of the two commentaries. This has consequences for our understanding of the textual transmission of the Kāśikāvṛtti. (shrink)

The defining principle of evolutionary biology is that all species, extant and extinct, evolved from ancient prokaryotic cells. Their initial appearance and adaptive evolution are proposed to have been accompanied by a cellular sentience, by feelings, subjectivity or, in a word, 'consciousness'. Prokaryotic cells, such as archaea and bacteria, have natural unitary, valence-marked 'mental' representations. They process and evaluate sensory information in a context-dependent manner. They learn, establish memories, and communicate using biophysical fields acting on excitable membranes. Symbiotic eukaryotic cells, (...) which evolved much later, initiated a compound cellular subjectivity utilizing 'senomic' and 'ephaptic' principles that evolved into the varieties of consciousness seen in multicellular species. This Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model provides a novel framework within which to approach fundamental issues such as the origins of life and the emergence of mind. (shrink)

On the philosophy of recognition in Kashmir Saivism.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially fatal infectious disease that, in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), inequitably affects Asian, Pacific, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African (MELAA), and Māori people. Medical research involving genome sequencing of TB samples enables more nuanced understanding of disease strains and their transmission. This could inform highly specific health interventions. However, the collection and management of TB isolate samples for research are currently informed by monocultural biomedical models often lacking key ethical considerations. Drawing on a qualitative kaupapa (...) Māori–consistent study, this paper reports on preliminary discussions with groups of Māori, Pacific, and Afghan people in NZ, whose communities have been harmed by TB and TB stigma. Participants’ discussions highlight key concerns and meanings that ought to inform the development of guidelines and a more robust consultative process for the governance of how TB isolate samples are collected and used both retrospectively and in future research. We argue for ethical processes to be culturally nuanced and community-generated, flexible and meaningful, and situated in relation to the physical and symbolic effects of TB. We discuss the significance of Indigenous data sovereignty, rights, and kāwanatanga (governorship) in shaping a multicultural data sovereignty model. (shrink)

Ṣadr, Muḥammad Bāqir; Islamic philosophy; 20th century.

A lógica não contém teoremas puramente existenciais: as únicas sentenças existenciaisválidas são aquelas com análogas universais válidas. Aqui, mostramos que istorealmente é assim quando corretamente interpretado: toda validade ex- istencial possuiuma análoga universal simples, que também é válida. Também caracterizamos validadesuniversais e existenciais em termos de tautologias.

Line 24 on page 218 in the July number of this volume of Philosophy should read as follows: naturally out of matter itself lifeless or that consciousness and intelli-.

This is clearly meant to ‘speak’, and offer thereby some clue to the interpretation. But what it ‘says’ is debatable. Most modern edd. settle for Ipsitilla as the least badly attested form. The prominence of bidding in the poem best accords with the assumptions that the stem is indeed ipsa connoting ‘mistress of the establishment’ and that the denotation is something facetious like ‘Miss Bossy-wossy’, ‘Imperia’, ‘Your nibsy-wibsy’.

My purpose in this paper is, firstly, to investigate the relationship of the three passages printed below, and, secondly, to illustrate in passing the curious chain of historical accidents which have prevented the truth about that relationship from becoming common lore long ago.

Features of the older Attic alphabet, which was officially replaced by the Ionic alphabet in the archonship of Eukleides, are still found sporadically in the Hellenistic period, although some cases are most probably explicable on grounds of analogy: written for 1324. 26. U 2 This perhaps shows the influence of the noun.

I print the text as given in Pearson. I agree with Jebb and Sheppard that the strophe is sound, and therefore I would retain at 866–7. The problem now lies with the antistrophe, where with the manuscript reading at 877 we lack either or-to give proper responsion with 867. The manuscript text can be vindicated if we detect that simplest of scribal errors, haplography. Thus for 876–7 I would read.