Although significant literature and jurisprudence has amassed on rights-based climate litigation over recent years, less research and case law has emerged on poverty-related court cases and the fulfilment of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) in Canada. Fewer still are studies exploring the interlinkages between these areas of inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to explore, using Canada as a case study, rights-based developments in climate litigation cases and how these could impact the innovative advancement of ESCR (e.g. to (...) food, housing and water). Typically, issues of justiciability and standing emerge, impeding the realization of such rights. Given the grave threats we now face, climate cases and social movements must be brought together to better hold state actors accountable for their rights obligations. We implore the legal community to explore ways to traverse juridical obstacles to realize the interdependencies of human rights and protect the planet from calamitous climate change. (shrink)

Few contemporary philosophers discuss the ways in which the emotion of shame may be gendered. This paper addresses this situation, examining Gabriele Taylor's account of genuine vs. false shame. 1 argue that, by attending to the social pressures placed on many women to conform to a certain vision of femininity, an analysis of the shame to which women may be prone shows that Taylor's account of shame remains incomplete.

In contrast to many hypermediated texts that are poorly designed and are not geared to specific instructional needs, this paper describes the use of “Plato’s Apology: A Hypermediated Learning Environment” (HMLE), an instructional tool capable of meeting the challenge of building an instructionally sound environment for philosophy courses. In addition to providing a description of the interface, the underlying theory-based design principles used to create this HMLE are described, feedback concerning its first two implementations is discussed, and further implications for (...) its use in learning, assessment, and teaching are considered. (shrink)

In the late thirteenth century, western Europe suffered the notable disgrace of losing the last of the Christian strongholds in mainland Syria with the fall of Acre in 1291, and yet throughout the early fourteenth century Western powers were unable to launch a crusade to recover the Holy Land despite repeated and costly attempts. Until not long ago, historians of the crusades had interpreted the inaction of the fourteenth century as a sign that the age of true crusading was over (...) and that both disillusionment with the machinery of the papal indulgence and increasing local strife effectively removed the possibility of international cooperative action that a crusade to the Holy Land required. Recent scholarly work on the late Middle Ages has shown that this interpretation ignores both historical reality and late-medieval attitudes toward crusading. Acre's loss in many respects crystallized issues regarding crusade reform, and, though no new crusade to the Holy Land ever materialized, crusading in its various guises experienced renewed vitality throughout the fourteenth century—notably in Iberia, Italy, and the Baltic—in spite of the ravages of the Black Death, the suppression of the Templars, the collapse of prominent Italian banking houses that supported crusade finance, and the Anglo-French conflict. While the Holy Land may have remained in heathen hands, crusading remained a diverse, multifaceted, and vibrant set of practices that continued to be contested and redefined by various social groups despite the papacy's sophisticated descriptions of it in papal bulls and in canon law. In this study I hope to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion of crusade theory and practice by examining literary evidence—specifically, the Middle English romance Sir Isumbras—with a more broadly conceived notion of crusade discourse that includes connections among propaganda, chronicle, religious ritual, and popular romance. As I argue, Sir Isumbras critiques certain knightly behavior following Acre's loss and at the very least imagines, if not outright promotes, crusading reform and action for a mixed audience of lesser knights and non-nobles. The topicality of the poem's critique, however, is fully intelligible only when considered in light of other facets of crusade discourse; hence, I discuss below how features of popular fourteenth-century crusading movements, chronicle histories, and literary history are appropriated and reconfigured by the text. By reading these various sources as part of a connected, evolving discussion, we effectively expand our definition of the genre of the crusading romance in a way that not only incorporates historians' recent insights regarding the range of crusading practices but also reveals that crusading's personal and political aspects, in addition to its mass military campaigns, continued to shape a complex medieval outlook that found literary expression. (shrink)

In the past decade, the notion of a neural correlate of consciousness has become a focal point for scientific research on consciousness. A growing number of investigators believe that the first step toward a science of consciousness is to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. Indeed, Francis Crick has gone so far as to proclaim that ‘we need to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. For this task the primate visual system seems especially attractive. No longer need one spend time (...) attempting to endure the tedium of philosophers perpetually disagreeing with each other. Consciousness is now largely a scientific problem’. Yet the question of what it means to be a neural correlate of consciousness is actually far from straightforward, for it involves fundamental empirical, methodological, and philosophical issues about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the brain. Even if one assumes, as we do, that states of consciousness causally depend on states of the brain, one can nevertheless wonder in what sense there is, or could be, such a thing as a neural correlate of consciousness. (shrink)

It is often claimed that Brentano’s rediscovery of intentionality has been strongly influenced by Aristotle. Brentano himself stressed repeatedly his affinity to Aristotle and this self-interpretation was by no means restricted to the theory of intentionality. In fact, Brentano seemed to believe that almost all of what he had discovered during his most influential years (1874–1895) has its more or less remote roots in the philosophy of Aristotle. Yet if we carefully compare the picture of intentionality that is to be (...) found in Aristotle’s De Anima with Brentano’s theory of immanent objects, we find more differences than similarities. The truth is that Brentano developed a quite different ontology of intentionality, and his references to Aristotle should be seen as a conventional homage to his master rather than as something of substance that could help us to understand better Brentano’s own theory. What Brentano in fact took from Aristotle was rather his way of doing philosophy and certain isolated ideas, but certainly not theories in their entirety. (shrink)

A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms (...) are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings. (shrink)

This book argues for the use of nonideal theory in social ontology. The central claim is that a paradigm shift is underway in contemporary social ontology, from ideal to nonideal, and that this shift should be fully followed through. To develop and defend this central claim, the first step is to show that the key questions and central dividing lines within contemporary social ontology can be fruitfully reconstructed as a clash between two worlds, referred to as ideal and nonideal social (...) ontology. Ideal social ontology is characterized by consensus and cooperation, while nonideal social ontology is characterized by conflict and contestation. The second step is to show that, when taken together, objections to the standard model of ideal social ontology (the dominant version of ideal social ontology) imply that this model needs to be given up in favor of nonideal social ontology. In other words, we should look to nonideal rather than ideal social ontology for core concepts. The third step is to offer a positive account, called the power view, of nonideal social ontology. This account places the concept of social power at the core of a general theory of the social world and replaces the flat and narrow conception of power in ideal social ontology with a richer and more extensive conception. In addition, it rectifies a shortcoming in nonideal social ontology by attending to class, which has been notably and oddly overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

The book contains information about the illustrious individuals who have made a mark on the sociological structure of India. It would thus be extremely beneficial to all those interested in the social structure and conditions in India through time.

Answers of Svāmī Indraveśa, 1937-2006, great social worker, Arya Samaj leader and member of parliament from Rohtak, India, questions by his disciple Āryaveśa, chiefly spiritual and philosophical.

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed (...) new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

Trope theory is a leading metaphysical theory in analytic ontology. One of its classic statements is found in the work of Donald C. Williams who argued that tropes qua abstract particulars are the very alphabet of being. The concept of an abstract particular has been repeatedly attacked in the literature. Opponents and proponents of trope theory alike have levelled their criticisms at the abstractness of tropes and the associated act of abstraction. In this paper I defend the concept of a (...) trope qua abstract particular by rejecting arguments that purport to show that tropes should not be understood as abstract and by arguing that the abstractness of tropes plays an indispensable role in one of our more promising trope-theoretic analyses of universals and of concrete objects. (shrink)

I. Ókor -- II. A középkor és a reneszánsz -- III. Az újkor.

On fundamentals of Vedanta and science; a study.

Desde la aparición, en 1927, de su obra central Ser y tiempo, Martin Heidegger ha sido y sigue siendo considerado por amplios sectores de opinión como el filósofo más importante del siglo XX. Frente a esta sobrevaloración del filósofo de los Bosques Negros, Heleno Saña procede, en su documentadísimo libro, a una crítica de la filosofía heideggeriana, intentando demostrar que está basada en una tergiversación e instrumentalización sistemáticas de la terminología y los conceptos esenciales de la filosofía clásica. El resultado (...) final de sus ejercicios hermenéuticos y sus continuos malabarismos lingüísticos, es un irracionalismo de índole claramente nihilista, por su culto implícito y explícito a la muerte. En este sentido es altamente significativo que a la biografía y a la filosofía heideggerianas pertenezcan su adhesión al nacionalsocialismo y la glorificación de Alemania como la “raza de los señores” por excelencia, tema al que Heleno Saña dedica la debida atención. Uno de los signos distintivos de este ensayo es el de la claridad con que expone sus tesis, de manera que el libro no está pensado solo para eruditos, sino para todas las personas interesadas en ampliar sus conocimientos culturales y filosóficos. (shrink)

La admirable riqueza cultural y artística del Renacimiento esconde una desoladora miseria y aquella "edad de la abundancia" contrasta con una inmensa pobreza. Lejos de ser una broma o una pesadilla, la celebrada Utopía de Tomás Moro fue antes que nada un desafío insoslayable, pues proponía que ninguna sociedad merece tal nombre si tolera la miseria de un solo pobre. Rico y pobre explora la cuestión en ese libro de 1516 y en otros del escritor londinense para concluir con un (...) esbozo de su vida a la luz de la pobreza como virtud indispensable y libertadora. He aquí un hombre afortunado que no fue indiferente ante el infortunio de tantos y que vio en la humanitas la virtud por excelencia que lleva a una constante atención y cuidado del prójimo. Inspirado por un cambio de actitud en su época, así como por su fe cristiana y la mejor tradición estoica, mostró una robusta preocupación sobre el tema subrayando el valor social que debe tener toda riqueza, tanto a nivel estatal como individual, destacando la grave obligación cívica de los ricos y la necesidad que tienen todos, ricos y pobres, de empeñarse en la práctica de cierto desprendimiento y generosidad si no quieren mermar su propia humanidad y fallecer en su avaricia. La percepción de la miseria había cambiado de tal manera que su remedio ya no podía estar en una u otra limosna en plazas e iglesias, sino en la acción bien pensada y perentoria de todo gobierno que se tenga por justo. Sir Tomás Moro, privilegiado desde la cuna y seguro en su trabajo profesional, vio la pobreza de tantos como un desastre social, pero uno que, al mismo tiempo, debería llevar a todo ser humano a ver en el desprendimiento y generosidad una excelencia o virtud que alumbra la "otra" libertad, y tan íntima y valiosa que en su caso brilló aun en la prisión y ante el horror de una muerte injusta y atroz." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)