Direct Realism is the view that human perception takes physical entities and their mind-independent properties as immediate objects. Although this thesis is supported by common sense, many argue that it can be dismissed on philosophical or quasi-scientific grounds. This essay attempts to defend Direct Realism against one such argument, which I call the “Problem of Secondary Qualities,” using the ideas of Scottish Common Sense philosopher Thomas Reid. The first chapter of this work offers a detailed introduction to the Problem of (...) Secondary Qualities. The Problem of Secondary Qualities arises from the claim that science has shown that physical objects do not possess secondary qualities. This is a problem for Direct Realism because secondary qualities are certainly possessed by at least some perceivable objects. As I present it, the Problem rests on three commitments: that an analysis of secondary quality perceptions should extend to perception in general, that we perceive secondary qualities, and that physical objects do not possess secondary qualities without our perceptions of them. I conclude that Direct Realism requires an account of secondary qualities on which secondary qualities are perceiver-independent but identifiable with other causally relevant properties. In Chapter Two, I introduce Thomas Reid’s doctrine of primary and secondary qualities, in the context of his theory of perception, as a viable response to the Problem of Secondary Qualities. On Reid’s view, secondary qualities are both perceiver-independent and identical to scientific properties, and Reid offers many useful conceptual resources for responding to objections. Most important are Reid’s claims that sensation or sense experience is casually related to, but not essential for, perception and that our perceptions of secondary qualities give us very little knowledge concerning their natures. The final chapter shows how the Reidian theory holds up against four key objections to accounts of secondary qualities on which they may be identified with perceiver-independent, scientific properties. In most cases, the Reidian approach finds solutions without compromising our intuitions or received opinions. (shrink)

Abed Azzam offers a fresh interpretation of Nietzsche's engagement with the work of Paul the Apostle, reorienting the relationship between the two thinkers while embedding modern philosophy within early Christian theology. Paying careful attention to Nietzsche's dialectics, Azzam situates the philosopher's thought within the history of Christianity, specifically the Pauline dialectics of law and faith, and reveals how atheism is constructed in relation to Christianity. Countering Heidegger's characterization of Nietzsche as an anti-Platonist, Azzam brings the philosopher closer to Paul through (...) a radical rereading of his entire corpus against Christianity. This approach builds a compelling new history of the West resting on a logic of sublimation, from ancient Greece and early Judaism to the death of God. Azzam discovers in Nietzsche's philosophy a solid, tangible Pauline structure and virtual, fragile Greek content, positioning the thinker as a forerunner of the recent "return to Paul" led by Badiou, Agamben, Žižek, and Breton. By changing the focus of modern philosophical inquiry from "Nietzsche and philosophy" to "Nietzsche and Christianity," Azzam initiates a major challenge to the primacy of Plato in the history of Western philosophy and narrow certainties regarding Nietzsche's relationship to Christian thought. (shrink)

When an agent suffers in their capacity as a knower, they are a victim of epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustices have been theorised. A salient feature across these theories is that perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice belong to different social groups. In this paper, I argue for a form of epistemic injustice that could occur between members of the same social group. This is a form of epistemic injustice where the knower is first a victim of historical and (...) continuing oppression. Secondly, they internalise and appreciate the systems that harm them as a knower. This is possible because the victim subscribes to perniciously formed epistemic systems. This form of epistemic injustice is a valuable explanatory tool for non-standard and obscure instances of epistemic injustice where the victim a) accepts and appreciates the injustice they experience and b) is even the seeming perpetrator of the injustice against themselves. (shrink)

As we understand them, dispositions are relatively uncontroversial 'predicatory' properties had by objects disposed in certain ways. By contrast, powers are hypothetical 'ontic' properties posited in order to explain dispositional behaviour. Chapter 1 outlines this distinction in more detail. Chapter 2 offers a summary of the issues surrounding analysis of dispositions and various strategies in contemporary literature to address them, including one of our own. Chapter 3 describes some of the important questions facing the metaphysics of powers including why they're (...) worth positing, and how they might metaphysically explain laws of nature and modality. (shrink)

This paper assembles a unifying framework encompassing a wide variety of mathematical instruments used to compare different theories. The main theme will be the idea that theory comparison techniques are most easily grasped and organized through the lens of category theory. The paper develops a table of different equivalence relations between theories and then answers many of the questions about how those equivalence relations are themselves related to each other. We show that Morita equivalence fits into this framework and provide (...) answers to questions left open in Barrett and Halvorson [4]. We conclude by setting up a diagram of known relationships and leave open some questions for future work. (shrink)

Paul Wood’s edited volume, Thomas Reid and the University, exceeds the bounds of its title. This last instalment of The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid, collects artifacts from Reid’s pedagogical...

: Lately there is more attention paid to technological development in intelligent tutoring systems. This field is becoming an interesting topic to many researchers. In this paper, we are presenting an intelligent tutoring system for teaching DES Information Security Algorithm called DES-Tutor. The DES-Tutor target the students enrolled in cryptography course in the department Information Technology in Al-Azhar University in Gaza. Through DES-Tutor the student will be able to study course material and try the exercises of each lesson. An evaluation (...) of the DES-Tutor was carried out and the results were promising. (shrink)

This book puts forth the concept and practice of hip-hop mindfulness as a way for minoritized communities to take creative risks in the face of cultural oppression within educational institutions. Written for students of social justice and diversity education, foundations of education, and ethnic studies, this book introduces the hip-hop mindset as a professional practice that holds relevance for ambitious leaders in any profession who seek to innovate, trailblaze, and create so much professional magic, that they appear to walk on (...) air. (shrink)

Plato’s Ion is primarily ethical rather than epistemological, investigating the implications of transgressing one’s own epistemic limits. The figures of Socrates and Ion are juxtaposed in the dialogue, Ion being a laughable, comic, ethically inferior character who cannot recognize his own epistemic limits, Socrates being an elevated, serious, ethically superior character who exhibits disciplined epistemic restraint. The point of the dialogue is to contrast Ion’s laughable state with the serious state of Socrates. In this sense, the dialogue’s central argument is (...) performative rather than demonstrative. (shrink)

This paper argues against Pierre Hadot's view that Thoreau in Walden displays Epicurean and Stoic traits in roughly equal proportion. Of the two schools, he is much closer to the latter. However, the similarities between Thoreau and the Stoic are practical or generic. In terms of ethical practices, Thoreau exhibits many of the qualities found in the Stoic school. However, the theoretical discourse used to justify those practices is different in each case. If one is to say that Thoreau is (...) a Stoic, it is not a very profound sense. Thoreau shares with both the Stoics and the Epicureans an interest in what Hadot calls "spiritual exercises" or philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

If one has Humean inclinations, what account should one provide for idealization laws? I introduce the currently most popular Humean approach to laws of nature, the best systems account, along with some basic requirements for how to be Humean. I then show why idealization laws are unlikely to be accommodated within this account of laws. Finally, I offer an alternative approach that takes idealization laws to be meta-laws, placing requirements on the theorems of the best system.

In this book, Toby Svoboda develops and defends a Kantian environmental virtue ethic, challenging the widely-held view that Kant's moral philosophy takes an instrumental view toward nature and animals and has little to offer environmental ethics. On the contrary, Svoboda posits that there is good moral reason to care about non-human organisms in their own right and to value their flourishing independently of human interests, since doing so is constitutive of certain virtues. Svoboda argues that Kant’s account of indirect duties (...) regarding nature can ground a compelling environmental ethic: the Kantian duty to develop morally virtuous dispositions strictly proscribes unnecessarily harming organisms, and Svoboda argues that this duty compels us to act in ways that benefit non-human organisms, given that doing so can enhance one’s virtues. Svoboda’s argument engages the recent literature on environmental virtue and provides an original argument for an environmental virtue ethic firmly rooted in Kant’s moral philosophy. (shrink)

Humanity stands at a precipice. -/- Our species could survive for millions of generations — enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice; to reach new heights of flourishing. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, gaining the power to destroy ourselves, without the wisdom to ensure we won’t. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence. If we do not (...) act fast to reach a place of safety, it may soon be too late. -/- The Precipice explores the science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies we can take today to safeguard humanity’s future. (shrink)

With a new reading of Thomas Reid on primary and secondary qualities, Christopher A. Shrock illuminates the Common Sense theory of perception. Shrock follow's Reid's lead in defending common sense philosophy against the problem of secondary qualities, which claims that our perceptions are only experiences in our brains, not of the world.

A Kantian approach can establish that non-human natural entities are morally considerable and that humans have duties to them. This is surprising, because most environmental ethicists have either rejected or overlooked Kant when it comes to this issue. Inspired by an argument of Christine Korsgaard, I claim that both humans and non-humans have a natural good, which is whatever allows an entity to function well according to the kind of entity it is. I argue that humans are required to confer (...) normative value on the natural good of all entities that have a natural good. This is so because, as a matter of fact, humans confer normative value on their own natural good simply because it is a natural good, which commits humans to the position that any natural good deserves to have normative value conferred on it. Since non-human natural entities have a natural good, their natural good deserves to have normative value conferred on it as well, and this is sufficient to make non-human natural entities morally considerable such that humans have duties to them. (shrink)

I’ll argue that one particular argument of Nāgārjuna’s against causation in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā deserves careful consideration from the perspective of contemporary western metaphysics. To show why this is the case, I’ll offer an interpretation of the key passages which differs from at least one popular reading. I’ll then aim to show that a whole swathe of metaphysical views about causation are problematic in light of Nāgārjuna’s argument, so interpreted. I’ll conclude, however, that one contemporary view in metaphysics has the means (...) to respond to this argument: Ontic Structural Realism. (shrink)

Recognizing the importance of health‐promoting relationships in engaging people who are experiencing homelessness in care, most research on health clinics for homeless persons has involved some recognition of client–provider relationships. However, what has been lacking is the inclusion of a critical analysis of the policy context in which relationships are enacted. In this paper, we question how client–provider relationships are enacted within the culture of community care with people who are experiencing homelessness and how clinic‐level and broader social and health (...) policies shape relationships in this context. We explore these questions within a critical theoretical perspective utilizing a critical ethnographic methodology. Data were collected using multiple methods of document review, participant observation, in‐depth interviews and focus groups. The participants include both clients at a community health clinic, and all clinic service providers. We explore how clients and providers characterized each other as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For providers, this served as a means by which they policed behaviours and enforced social norms. The means by which both providers’ and clients’ negotiated relationships are explored, but this is couched within both local and system‐level policies. This study highlights the importance of healthcare providers and clients being involved in broader policy and systemic change. (shrink)

“I suppose I still hold on to a shred of hope that being independent-minded and having the intellectual equipment to analyse ideas properly will lead to better practice. But ultimately, it must just be that being able to see the world clearly and knowing how to go about discovering the truth about ideas is reward enough in itself.”.

As a response to climate change, geoengineering with solar radiation management has the potential to result in unjust harm. Potentially, this injustice could be ameliorated by providing compensation to victims of SRM. However, establishing a just SRM compensation system faces severe challenges. First, there is scientific uncertainty in detecting particular harmful impacts and causally attributing them to SRM. Second, there is ethical uncertainty regarding what principles should be used to determine responsibility and eligibility for compensation, as well as determining how (...) much compensation ought to be paid. Significant challenges loom for crafting a just SRM compensation system. (shrink)

Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of...

The study aimed to identify the relationship between correcting the deviations in the measurement of performance and achieving the objectives of control and the performance of the job at the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip. To achieve the objectives of the research, the researchers used the descriptive analytical approach to collect information. The questionnaire consisted of (20) statements distributed to three categories of employees of the Islamic University (senior management, faculty members, their assistants and members of the administrative board). (...) A random sample of 314 employees was selected and 276 responses were retrieved with a recovery rate of 88.1%. The Statistical Analysis Program (SPSS) was used to enter, process, and analyze the data. The results of the study showed a positive relationship between correcting deviations in performance measurement and achieving the control objectives represented by the functional performance in the Islamic University from the point of view of the members (senior management, faculty and their assistants, and the administrative board), where the relative weight of all the paragraphs was (74.25%). The study recommended the need to ensure that the actual performance of the planned performance is matched and decisions are taken to correct the serious deviations and take the necessary measures in terms of retraining and change in regulations, wages and bonuses and punishment of the culprit, neglect and negligence by mistake. (shrink)

As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the continuing (...) coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The rise of social media has correlated with an increase in political polarization, which many perceive as a threat to public discourse and democratic governance. This paper presents a framework, drawing on social epistemology and the economic theory of public goods, to explain how social media can contribute to polarization, making us collectively poorer, even while it provides a preferable media experience for individual consumers. Collective knowledge and consensus is best served by having richly connected networks that are epistemically (...) integrated: individuals with diverse levels of expertise should be relatively well connected to each other. In epistemically segregated networks, by contrast, we have reason to predict collective epistemic failures. Expert knowledge will be isolated from the majority, leading average opinion to be less informed than is socially optimal, and entrenching disagreements. Because social media enables users to very easily adopt homophilous network connections – connections to those with similar opinions, education levels, and social backgrounds – it is likely to have increased epistemic segregation compared to older media platforms. The paper explains the theoretical foundations of these predictions, and sketches regulatory measures – such as taxes – that might be employed to preserve the public good of a well integrated social media network. (shrink)

The emerging field of comparative political theory (CPT) seeks to expand our understanding of politics through intercultural dialogues between diverse systems of political thought. CPT acknowledges diverse modes of political understanding, yet the field is still methodologically focused on textual forms of political practice and learning. I argue that the privileging of political literature in CPT has been inherited from orthodox political theory and the history of political thought and that the prioritizing of text over oral and enactive practices places (...) constraints on intercultural dialogue. First, methodological focus on texts inhibits dialogue with Indigenous traditions that do not prioritize text in the same way or to the same extent in the reproduction of political culture. Second, the incorporation of oral traditions tends to conflate orality with text in ways that obfuscate the contribution of enactive performance. One result of these methodological oversights is that CPT risks recapitulating some of the historical exclusionary logics that it seeks to overcome. (shrink)

I develop a new schema for analysis of dispositions in terms of structural equations. This schema provides the means to respond to a host of problems that have been posed for other proposals, including the problem of masks, alters, mimickers, tricks, conjunctive multi-track dispositions and dispositional degrees. In the development of this new schema, I will employ structural modelling techniques to highlight features of the problem cases, thereby revealing the utility of these techniques to ongoing discussion.

Abe Kobo (1924-1993) was one of Japan's greatest postwar writers, widely recognized for his imaginative science fiction and plays of the absurd. However, he also wrote theoretical criticism for which he is lesser known, merging literary, historical, and philosophical perspectives into keen reflections on the nature of creativity, the evolution of the human species, and an impressive range of other subjects. Abe Kobo tackled contemporary social issues and literary theory with the depth and facility of a visionary thinker. Featuring twelve (...) essays from his prolific career--including "Poetry and Poets (Consciousness and the Unconscious)," written in 1944, and "The Frontier Within, Part II," written in 1969--this anthology introduces English-speaking readers to Abe Kobo as critic and intellectual for the first time. Demonstrating the importance of his theoretical work to a broader understanding of his fiction--and a richer portrait of Japan's postwar imagination--Richard F. Calichman provides an incisive introduction to Abe Kobo's achievements and situates his essays historically and intellectually. (shrink)

Necessitarian accounts of the laws of nature meet an apparent difficulty: for them, counterlegal conditionals, despite appearing to be substantive, seem to come out as vacuous. I argue that the necessitarian may use the presuppositions of counterlegal discourse to explain this. If the typical presupposition that necessitarianism is false is made explicit in counterlegal utterances, we obtain sentences such as 'If it turns out that the laws of nature are contingent, then if the laws had been otherwise, then such and (...) such would have been the case', which are non-vacuous and very often true. This goes a long way towards resolving the difficulty for necessitarianism. (shrink)

Can the desire for efficiently systematised theories in science be explained from within a powers metaphysics? It is plausible that the traditional ‘Powers Theory of Laws’, endorsed by many friends of powers, does not alone provide such an explanation. This has led a number of recent authors to argue that a ‘Powers Best System Account’ of laws would be a preferable alternative. This account borrows a method for determining laws from the Humean and applies it to a reality of powers. (...) Here I claim, to the contrary, that this account is both internally unworkable and, anyway, completely undermotivated when compared with the traditional view. Apart from some brief suggestions for alternative accounts, I’ll conclude that the powers theorist still has their work cut out to explain systematising in science. (shrink)

Some authors have called for increased research on various forms of geoengineering as a means to address global climate change. This paper focuses on the question of whether a particular form of geoengineering, namely deploying sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere to counteract some of the effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations, would be a just response to climate change. In particular, we examine problems sulfate aerosol geoengineering (SAG) faces in meeting the requirements of distributive, intergenerational, and procedural justice. We argue (...) that SAG faces obstacles to meeting the requirements of all three considered kinds of justice, because its impacts can harm some persons and communities much more than others; it poses serious risks to future generations; and SAG is especially prone to unilateral implementation. While we do not claim that SAG ought not to be implemented, we argue that it is the responsibility of proponents of SAG to recognize and address these ethical obstacles before advocating its implementation. (shrink)

We think we know what healers do: they build on patients' irrational beliefs and treat them in a 'symbolic' way. If they get results, it's thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all. In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this (...) commonly posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don't listen to patients, using techniques of 'divination' rather than 'diagnosis'. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer, and in this regard African healers are virtuosos. Though it may claim otherwise, modern medicine, for its part, is characterised by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment. Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom. It will be of great interest to those working in medicine and healthcare, as well as anthropologists, social scientists and those in the humanities more broadly. (shrink)

This paper surveys a wide range of proposed hypermachines, examining the resources that they require and the capabilities that they possess. 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The spectrum argument purports to show that the better-than relation is not transitive, and consequently that orthodox value theory is built on dubious foundations. The argument works by constructing a sequence of increasingly less painful but more drawn-out experiences, such that each experience in the spectrum is worse than the previous one, yet the final experience is better than the experience with which the spectrum began. Hence the betterness relation admits cycles, threatening either transitivity or asymmetry of the relation. This (...) paper examines recent attempts to block the spectrum argument, using the idea that it is a mistake to affirm that every experience in the spectrum is worse than its predecessor: an alternative hypothesis is that adjacent experiences may be incommensurable in value, or that due to vagueness in the underlying concepts, it is indeterminate which is better. While these attempts formally succeed as responses to the spectrum argument, they have additional, as yet unacknowledged costs that are significant. In order to effectively block the argument in its most typical form, in which the first element is radically inferior to the last, it is necessary to suppose that the incommensurability is particularly acute: what might be called radical incommensurability. We explain these costs, and draw some general lessons about the plausibility of the available options for those who wish to save orthodox axiology from the spectrum argument. (shrink)

In J Philos Logic 34:155–192, 2005, Leitgeb provides a theory of truth which is based on a theory of semantic dependence. We argue here that the conceptual thrust of this approach provides us with the best way of dealing with semantic paradoxes in a manner that is acceptable to a classical logician. However, in investigating a problem that was raised at the end of J Philos Logic 34:155–192, 2005, we discover that something is missing from Leitgeb’s original definition. Moreover, we (...) show that once the appropriate repairs have been made, the resultant definition is equivalent to a version of the supervaluation definition suggested in J Philos 72:690–716, 1975 and discussed in detail in J Symb Log 51(3):663–681, 1986. The upshot of this is a philosophical justification for the simple supervaluation approach and fresh insight into its workings. (shrink)

Settler colonialism is structured in part according to the principle of civilizational progress yet the roots of this doctrine are not well understood. Disparate ideas of progress and practices related to colonial dispossession and domination can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and as far back as ancient Greece, but there remain unexplored logics and continuities. I argue that civilizational progress and settler colonialism are structured according to the opposition between politics governed by reason or faith and the figure of (...) the child as sinful or bestial. Thus, it is not contingent, but rather necessary that justificatory frameworks of European empire and colonialism depict Indigenous peoples as children. To illustrate how the theoretical link between Indigenous peoples and children emerges not as a simple analogy, but rather, as the source of the premodern/modern and savage/civilized binaries, I trace the various historical iterations of the political/childhood opposition through the classical, medieval, enlightenment, and modern eras. I show how the model of civilizational progress from a premodern and savage state of childhood continues to serve as the model for settler colonial exclusion and domination of Indigenous peoples. (shrink)

In providing a good foundation for mathematics, set theorists often aim to develop the strongest theories possible and avoid those theories that place undue restrictions on the capacity to possess strength. For example, adding a measurable cardinal to $ZFC$ is thought to give a stronger theory than adding $V=L$ and the latter is thought to be more restrictive than the former. The two main proponents of this style of account are Penelope Maddy and John Steel. In this paper, I’ll offer (...) a third account that is intended to provide a simple analysis of restrictiveness based on the algebraic concept of retraction in the category of theories. I will also deliver some results and arguments that suggest some plausible alternative approaches to analyzing restrictiveness do not live up to their intuitive motivation. (shrink)

It has often been noted that there is some tension between engaging in decision-making and believing that one’s choices might be predetermined. The possibility that our choices are predetermined forces us to consider, in our decisions, act-state pairs which are inconsistent, and hence to which we cannot assign sensible utilities. But the reasoning which justifies two-boxing in Newcomb’s problem also justifies associating a non-zero causal probability with these inconsistent act-state pairs. Put together these undefined utilities and non-zero probabilities entail that (...) expected utilities are undefined whenever it is a possibility that our choices are predetermined. There are three ways to solve the problem, but all of them suffer serious costs: always assume that, contrary to our evidence, the outcome of our present decision-making is not predetermined; give up the reasoning that justifies unconditional two-boxing in Newcomb’s problem; or allow epistemically impossible outcomes to contribute to expected utility, leading to the wrong results in a series of cases introduced by Ahmed :665–685, 2014a, Evidence, decision and causality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014b). However they choose to respond, causal decision theorists cannot remain silent: the intuitive tension between decision-making and the possibility of predetermination can be made precise, and resolving it will require giving up something. Causal decision theorists have a predetermination problem. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is the moral view that a fixed improvement in someone's well-being matters more the worse off they are. Its supporters argue that it best captures our intuitions about unequal distributions of well-being. I show that prioritarianism sometimes recommends acts that will make things more unequal while simultaneously lowering the total well-being and making things worse for everyone ex ante. Intuitively, there is little to recommend such acts and I take this to be a serious counterexample for prioritarianism.

Gaia, the grand idea -- Good citizens or selfish genes? -- Life at the edge : lessons from extremophiles -- Temperature paces life -- Icehouse earth -- Given enough time -- Evolutionary innovations and environmental change -- A stable or an unstable world? -- The puzzle of life's long persistence -- Conclusions.

Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that happens (...) when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative. (shrink)

Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation are said to aim for “contentless” experiences, where mental content such as thoughts, perceptions, and mental images is absent. Silence is understood to be a central feature of those experiences. The main source of information about the experiences is texts by experts from within the three traditions. Previous research has tended not to use an explicit scientific method for selecting and reviewing expert texts on meditation. We have identified evidence synthesis as a robust and transparent (...) method that is suitable for this purpose. In this paper we use evidence synthesis based on expert texts to examine silence/quietness as a feature of the contentless experiences in the three practices. Objective criteria were used to select a sample of 135 expert texts. A database containing the expert descriptions of the meditation techniques and experiences was produced by extracting the relevant material from the publications and coding that material to differentiate individual features. The database, which forms part of the supplementary material for this paper, identifies each feature of the contentless experiences referred to in the expert texts, including silence/quietness. Our key finding is that the experts indicate silence/quietness has a particular connection with stillness, and the absence of concepts, mental activity/noise, thoughts, and disturbance. Further analysis leads to the following insights. The silence/quietness reflects the absence of thoughts and sounds, and this fits neatly with a conception of silence/quietness as the absence of internal and external noise. In some cases the terms silence and quietness may also reflect the absence of other disturbances such as non-auditory perceptions, mental images, and negative feelings. That would fit with a conception of silence/quietness as complete calm or absence of disturbance. It is not clear from the expert texts how silence/quietness is distinct from other features such as stillness that also reflect the absence of disturbances. As a separate matter, silence/quietness has connections with all the other features of the contentless experiences, but the closeness of the connections varies. Our work uncovers fine distinctions and ambiguities which lead to new research questions that can be explored in future studies. (shrink)

On this paper, signed by Soren Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Constantin Constantius, author of Repetition (Gjentagelse), despite never being published, the Danish philosopher takes on Professor Heiberg’s critique of his book with irony, and deepening the matter of the spirit in the concept of repetition. In this translation, it was chosen to keep the notes from the manuscript.