The purpose of the study is to reveal the stages and content of experimental work on the spiritual and moral education of contract servicemen in the army environment. The article focuses on the presence of certain patterns in the assimilation of spiritual and moral qualities by contract servicemen, which formed the basis of the tested method of spiritual and moral education. The scientific novelty lies in the substantiation and experimental verification of the methodology for the spiritual and moral education of (...) contract servicemen in the socio-cultural army environment, based on the consistent formation of the ideals and values of their centuries-old domestic and military culture. As a result of the study, a positive dynamics of the level of formation of spiritual and moral qualities among contract servicemen at the control stage was revealed, which proves the effectiveness of the developed methodology. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze and reject two versions of the content‐argument against animal beliefs, namely, the ontological argument from Davidson and the epistemological argument from Stich. One of the main defects of the strongest version of the argument is that it over‐intellectualizes belief ascriptions in humans and thus sets the comparative bar for belief ascriptions in animals too high. In the second part of the article, we develop a gradualist notion of belief which captures basic beliefs as well as (...) Davidsonian linguistic beliefs, and we specify the conditions under which belief ascriptions to nonlinguistic animals are justified. (shrink)

« Qu'est-ce qu'un homme révolté? Un homme qui dit non. Mais s'il refuse, il ne renonce pas : c'est aussi un homme qui dit oui, dès son premier mouvement. »[réf. nécessaire] D'apparence, il existe une limite à la révolte. Cependant, la révolte est un droit. La révolte naît de la perte de patience. Elle est un mouvement et se situe donc dans l'agir. Elle se définit par le « Tout ou Rien », le « Tous ou Personne ». En premier, (...) elle soumet l'idée d'égalité : position d'égal à égal entre le maître et l'esclave. Mais le révolté finit par imposer cette égalité qui se traduit souvent par une inversion des rôles (dialectique hégélienne). Suivant le raisonnement de Scheler, l'homme révolté n'est pas l'homme du ressentiment, c'est-à-dire qu'il ne baigne ni dans la haine ni dans le mépris. La révolte enfante des valeurs. De fait, « pour être, l'homme doit se révolter ». La révolte extirpe l'homme de la solitude puisqu'elle est collective, c'est l'« aventure de tous ». Néanmoins, faire l'expérience de la révolte, c'est faire l'expérience de l'ascèse. Les mythes de Prométhée, d'Achille (avec Patrocle), d'OEdipe et d'Antigone, sont des archétypes de révoltes antiques au même titre que la révolte de Spartacus. La révolte est souvent légitime, elle est l'expression la plus pure de la liberté et semble revêtir le visage de l'espoir. De surcroît, la révolte impose une tension, elle refuse donc formellement le confort de la tyrannie ou de la servitude. Le révolutionnaire a la volonté de « transformer le monde » (Marx) alors que le révolté veut « changer la vie » (Rimbaud). (shrink)

In this paper we study proofs of some general forms of the Second Incompleteness Theorem. These forms conform to the Feferman format, where the proof predicate is fixed and the representation of the set of axioms varies. We extend the Feferman framework in one important point: we allow the interpretation of number theory to vary.

By building on work by Kit Fine, we develop a sound and complete truthmaker semantics for Lou Goble’s conflict tolerant deontic logic BDL.

L'absurde, le suicide, etc. Premier essai philosophique (1942) de l'auteur. Indispensable (ou presque) à tout apprenti philosophe.

Pierce challenges the argument that economic sanctions are always morally preferable to the use of military force. He argues that such sanctions inflict suffering and physical harm on noncombatants and that small-scale military operations are sometimes preferable.

We live in the anthropocene, the era of global warming. How are Americans responding to this predicament? To answer the question we need a philosophical concept of a collective mood and then empirical support to make it concrete. The result is a collective ground state. It has gone through the stages of confident prosperity, the dissolution of that confidence, the present state of anxious disorientation, and the hopeful prospect of grounded responsibility.

The Internet has become a field of dragon teeth for a person’s identity. It has made it possible for your identity to be mistaken by a credit agency, spied on by the government, foolishly exposed by yourself, pilloried by an enemy, pounded by a bully, or stolen by a criminal. These harms to one’s integrity could be inflicted in the past, but information technology has multiplied and aggravated such injuries. They have not gone unnoticed and are widely bemoaned and discussed. (...) The government and private watchdogs are working to protect the identity of citizens though at least in the United States both the government and individuals all too often side with prosperity when it conflicts with privacy. Still, these information-technological threats to identity have been recognized and can be reasonably met through legislation, regulation, and discretion. There is another kind of danger to our identity that is more difficult to define and to meet, for it has no familiar predecessors, has no criminal aspects, and exhibits no sharp moral or cultural contours. Still that threat to our identity haunts us constantly and surfaces occasionally in conversations and the media. It makes us feel displaced, distracted, and fragmented at the very times when to all appearances we seem to be connected, busy, and energetic. At the same time, the culture of technology, and of information technology particularly, has opened up fields of diversity and contingency that invite us to comprehend our identities in newly responsible, intricate, and open-minded ways. (shrink)

What does it look like when an organization tentatively steps away from an exclusively rules-based regime and begins to attend to both rules and principles? What insights and guidance can ethicists and ethical theory offer? This paper is a case study of an organization that has initiated such a transition. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has begun a turn toward the promotion of ethical principles and best practices by adding a “conceptual framework” to its existing Code of Professional (...) Conduct. This conceptual framework calls upon its members to intentionally increase their awareness of significant threats to their compliance with its rules of conduct and to establish safeguards to offset or eliminate those threats. To this end, each member is required to regard every questionable situation, circumstance, transaction or relationship by attempting to view it through the eyes of an imagined reasonable third party. This paper examines this protocol theoretically and practically. First, we frame this analysis within the principles and ethical concepts that inform the professional ethics of accountants. Second, we critique the AICPA’s long-standing rules-based approach to its Code. Third, we examine the new conceptual framework with a view toward its potential for the promotion of a more principles-based approach to the professional ethics of the accounting profession. Fourth, we give attention to the notion of the “reasonable and informed third party,” which has been embedded in the new conceptual framework, and consider how two schools of thought—Adam Smith’s modernist “impartial spectator” concept and Emmanuel Lévinas’ postmodern phenomenology in regard to “the Other”—may offer theoretical support and clarity for this epistemic exercise. Finally, we point out several ways in which the AICPA’s commitment to its new conceptual framework could be strengthened and enhanced. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Vincent Scully, writing from very different positions, agree that the enclosure of human life and the disclosure of a moral universe are the chief functions of architecture, and they agree further that the traditional house best exemplifies the first function and the Greek temple the second. The culture of technology has emptied the home of many substantial engagements, and it has reduced the monumental structures, the high-rises and expressways, to instrumental status. Architects need to understand the cultural (...) force of technology, the ways buildings shape the conduct of our lives, and the responsibilities that follow from the comprehension of contemporary culture. (shrink)

(2013). A Cigarette is Sometimes Just a Cigarette. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 311-331.

Life, and therefore evolution, is a creative process; creativity is not an attribute of a few gifted people. The way we think obscures this truth. Three ways of dealing with a problem are creativity, calculation, and choice. Creativity can occur when a single idea is held in two contradictory frames of reference. Thus to be creative we have to put aside our usual ways of thinking, which are based on either/or. When we put aside this way of thinking we will (...) see that things do not change: they are change. (shrink)

INDIAN THOUGHT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT by ALBERT SCHWEITZER.Originally printed in 1936. PREFACE: I HAVE written this short account of Indian Thought and its Development in the hope that it may help people in Europe to become better ac quainted than they are at present with the ideas it stands for and the great personalities in whom these ideas are embodied. To gain an insight into Indian thought, and to analyse it and discuss our differences, must necessarily make European thought (...) clearer and richer. If we really want to understand the thought of India we must get clear about the problems it has to face and how it deals with them. What we have to do is to set forth and explain the process of develop ment it has passed through from the time of the Vedic hymns down to the present day. I am fully conscious of the difficulty of describing definite lines of development in a philosophy which possesses in so remarkable a degree the will and the ability not to perceive contrasts as such, and allows ideas of heterogeneous character to subsist side by side and even brings them into connection with each other. But I believe that we, the people of the West, shall only rightly comprehend what Indian thought really is and what is its significance for the thought of all mankind, if we succeed in gaining an insight into its processes. Like every European who studies Indian philo sophy, I am deeply indebted to the scholars who have published the texts and been responsible for the fundamental work of research. I am specially grateful to Professor Moriz Winternitz of Prague, not only for what I have learnt from his great work on Indian Literature, but also because he has allowed me a share in the wealth of his knowledge by giving me a fund of information in response to my questions. I have also found it a great advantage to have been able to discuss the problems of Indian thought with my friend Mr C. F. Andrews. I found Romain Hollands penetrating studies on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda very inspiring. And I have to thank my friend Mr A. B. Ashby for valuable help in connection with the English edition. Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the be haviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society. But the closer my acquaintance with the docu ments of Indian thought the more I was assailed by doubts as to whether the view made familiar to us Europeans by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Paul Deussen and others the view namely that Preface vii Indian thought is completely governed by the idea of world and life negation is right. I was compelled to admit the fact that world and life affirmation is present at the back of this thought from the very dawn of its history, and that the existence and inter fusion within it of world and life negation and world and life affirmation constitute its special character istic and determine its development. I am not merely describing the thought of India, but at the same time I am making a critical examina tion of it... (shrink)

Hans Albert is the leading critical rationalist in the German-speaking world and the main critic of the hermeneutic tradition. He is well-known for applying the idea of critical reason to various kinds of human practice, including economics, politics, and law. But he has also improved on Popper's methodology by introducing the idea of rational heuristics. This collection of essays presents the core of his work on epistemology, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of law. Most (...) of Albert's works have not been available in English. It is enormously useful to have these articles collected in a single volume. (shrink)

The royal house of Pontus claimed to be descended from the cream of the old Persian nobility, the Seven Families, and to have received its lands as the gift of Darius I. The claim is first attested by Polybius, and it became common currency in the reign of Mithridates Eupator. Since Théodore Reinach wrote his magisterial history of the Pontic kingdom, the royal pretensions of the regime have been dismissed as apocryphal.

Excerpt from Aristoteles und Kant Bezüglich der Idee der Theoretischen Erkenntnis Meine Vorarbeiten uber Aristoteles und Kant bestimmten mich, die Bearbeitung einer Preisaufgabe zu versuchen, die von der kant-gesellschaft in folgender Form gestellt worden war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present (...) in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)