Resumo: A prática de 70 anos da Nova China mostra que nosso Partido tem, de forma permanente, valorizado e fortalecido a liderança do trabalho ideológico, fator essencial para que a nação chinesa consiga o salto de rica e poderosa, e consolide continuamente a posição dominante do partido. As sucessivas lideranças coletivas do partido exploraram e inovaram a teoria da ideologia socialista em diferentes períodos da história da China, em vista da situação internacional e doméstica, fornecendo ao PCCh uma base teórica (...) científica e diretrizes de ação para romper as barreiras ideológicas em sua regra de longo prazo. Mao Tsé-Tung fez contribuições históricas significativas para explorar o caminho para o novo socialismo chinês, projeto institucional, inovação teórica e construção ideológica. O objetivo deste estudo é combinar os princípios básicos marxismo com a realidade específica da China, apresentar de forma criativa os princípios básicos e as direções básicas da construção da ideología nacional e elaborar sistematicamente a conotação essencial, a ideologia orientadora, os objetivos primários, a natureza fundamental e o camino de realização da construção da ideología socialista. Este estudo mostra que o primeiro salto teórico da localização da ideología marxista na China lançou uma base sólida para construir um país científico e completo e um sistema ideológico nacional científico e completo. (shrink)

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

Hylomorphists hold that substances are, in some sense, composites of matter and form. The form of a substance is typically taken to play a fundamental role in determining the unity or identity of the whole. Staunch hylomorphists think that this role is of a kind that precludes the ontological reduction of form to the physical and thus take their position to be inconsistent with physicalism. Forms, according to staunch hylomorphism, play a fundamental role in grounding their bearers’ proper parts and (...) that, it seems, rules out the physical grounding of form itself. I shall develop a physicalist version of hylomorphism that treats form as geometric structure and which, I shall argue, entails many of the central theses endorsed by staunch hylomorphists. Based on Shoemaker’s notion of conditional powers, I shall argue that the geometric structures of complex wholes are the conditions on at least some of the conditional powers of their bearers’ proper parts, transforming those powers into powers simpliciter. Thus, forms play a fundamental role in the dynamical evolution of the physical world, but without bestowing causal powers themselves and hence without violating the causal closure of the physical domain. If a substance’s proper parts are taken to be individuated by their powers simpliciter, then they derive their identities from their places in the substantial whole, which thus determines the identities of its proper parts without changing their intrinsic natures. (shrink)

Since the announcement and establishment of the Oversight Board (OB) by the technology company Meta as an independent institution reviewing Facebook and Instagram’s content moderation decisions, the OB has been subjected to scholarly scrutiny ranging from praise to criticism. However, there is currently no overarching framework for understanding the OB’s various strengths and weaknesses. Consequently, this article analyses, organises, and supplements academic literature, news articles, and Meta and OB documents to understand the OB’s strengths and weaknesses and how it can (...) be improved. Significant strengths include its ability to enhance the transparency of content moderation decisions and processes, to effect reform indirectly through policy recommendations, and its assertiveness in interpreting its jurisdiction and overruling Meta. Significant weaknesses include its limited jurisdiction, limited impact, Meta’s control over the OB’s precedent, and its lack of diversity. The analysis of a recent OB case in Ethiopia shows these strengths and weaknesses in practice. The OB’s relationship with Meta and governments will lead to challenges and opportunities shaping its future development. Reforms to the OB should improve the OB’s control over its precedent, apply OB precedent to currently disputed cases, and clarify the standards for invoking OB precedent. Finally, these reforms provide the foundation for an additional improvement to address the OB’s institutional weaknesses, by involving users in determining whether the OB’s precedent should be applied to decide current content moderation disputes. (shrink)

To explain why, in scientific problem solving, a diagram can be “worth ten thousand words,” Jill Larkin and Herbert Simon (1987) relied on a computer model: two representations can be “informationally” equivalent but differ “computationally,” just as the same data can be encoded in a computer in multiple ways, more or less suited to different kinds of processing. The roots of this proposal lay in cognitive psychology, more precisely in the “imagery debate” of the 1970s on whether there are image-like (...) mental representations. Simon (1972, 1978) hoped to solve this debate by thoroughly reducing the differences between forms of mental representations (e.g., between images and sentences) to differences in computational efficiency; to carry out this reduction, he borrowed from computer science the concepts of data type and of data structure. I argue that, in the end, his account amounted to nothing more than characterizing representations by the fast operations on them. This analysis then allows me to assess what Simon’s approach actually achieves when transported from psychology to the study of scientific representations, as in Larkin and Simon (1987): it allows comparing, not representations in and of themselves, but rather the computational roles they play in particular problem-solving processes—that is, representations together with a particular way of using them. (shrink)

As neurotechnologies continue to develop and diffuse, this fast-paced field must be guided by robust governance frameworks in order to promote responsible innovation. The article by Bublitz (2024)...

I point out a radical indeterminism in potential-based formulations of Newtonian gravity once we drop the condition that the potential vanishes at infinity. This indeterminism, which is well known in theoretical cosmology but has received little attention in foundational discussions, can be removed only by specifying boundary conditions at all instants of time, which undermines the theory's claim to be fully cosmological, i.e., to apply to the Universe as a whole. A recent alternative formulation of Newtonian gravity due to Saunders (...) pp.22-48) provides a conceptually satisfactory cosmology but fails to reproduce the Newtonian limit of general relativity in homogenous but anisotropic universes. I conclude that Newtonian gravity lacks a fully satisfactory cosmological formulation. (shrink)

Interpretation -- Introduction -- Interpreting Plato -- The political culture of Plato's early dialogues -- Dialogue -- Character and history -- The mouthpiece principle -- Forms of evidence -- Desire -- Socrates and eros -- The subjectivist conception of desire -- Instrumental and terminal desire -- Rational and irrational desires -- Desire in the critique of Akrasia -- Interpreting Lysis -- The deficiency conception of desire -- Inauthentic friendship -- Platonic desire -- Antiphilosophical desires -- Knowledge -- Excellence as wisdom (...) -- The epistemic unity of excellence -- Dunamis and technê -- Goodness and form -- The epistemological priority of definitional knowledge -- Ordinary ethical knowledge -- Method -- The Socratic fallacy -- Socrates' pursuit of definitions -- Hupothesis -- Two postulates -- The geometrical illustration -- Geometrical analysis -- The method of reasoning from a postulate -- Elenchus and hupothesis -- Knowledge and aitia -- F-conditions -- Cognitive security -- Aporia -- Forms of aporia -- Dramatic aporia -- The example of Charmides -- Charmides as autobiography -- The politics of Sôphrosunê -- Critias' Philotimia -- Self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge -- Knowledge of knowledge and knowledge of the good -- Philosophy and the polis. (shrink)

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The article discusses retributive justice and punitive restraint in response to the worst types of crime. I take the Breivik Case as a starting point. Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention for killing 69 people, mainly youths, at Utøya and 8 people in Oslo on July 22nd, 2011. Retributivist theories as well as commonly held retributive intuitions suggest that much harsher punishment is required for such crimes. According to some retributivist theories, most notably on the (...) influential theories of Kant and Hegel, the death penalty is warranted for murderers like Breivik. This suggests that the rationale for punitive restraint in a case like the Breivik Case can only be found in forward- looking, consequentialist theories of punishment, or by adding to retributivist theories a side-constraint in the form of a principle of parsimony. However, I argue that if we look closer at the function of punishment in the retributivist theories of Kant and Hegel, they too imply a rationale for punitive restraint, even for such horrific crimes as here discussed. Against Kant and Hegel’s own views on the death penalty, I argue that their broader “freedom theories” of retributive justice do not imply the justice of the death penalty or life imprisonment. In the last part of the article, I explore differences in the concepts of freedom entailed by Kant and Hegel’s theories, and I relate these to some of the background factors relevant to the Breivik Case. (shrink)

I develop an account of how mathematized theories in physics represent physical systems, in response to the frequent claim that any such account must presuppose a non-mathematized, and usually linguistic, description of the system represented. The account I develop contains a circularity, in that representation is a mathematical relation between the models of a theory and the system as represented by some other model --- but I argue that this circularity is not vicious, in any case refers in linguistic accounts (...) of meaning and representation, and is simply a consequence of the fact that we have no unmediated, representation-independent access to the world. (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis has recently excited renewed interest, especially in the physics and philosophy communities. However, the hypothesis specifically concerns {computers} that simulate physical universes, which means that to properly investigate it we need to couple computer science theory with physics. Here I do this by exploiting the physical Church-Turing thesis. This allows me to introduce a preliminary investigation of some of the computer science theoretic aspects of the simulation hypothesis. In particular, building on Kleene's second recursion theorem, I prove (...) that it is mathematically possible for us to be in a simulation that is being run on a computer \textit{by us}. In such a case, there would be two identical instances of us; the question of which of those is ``really us'' is meaningless. I also show how Rice's theorem provides some interesting impossibility results concerning simulation and self-simulation; briefly describe the philosophical implications of fully homomorphic encryption for (self-)simulation; briefly investigate the graphical structure of universes simulating universes simulating universes, among other issues. I end by describing some of the possible avenues for future research that this preliminary investigation reveals. (shrink)

I criticise the view that the relativity and equivalence principles are consequences of the small-scale structure of the metric in general relativity, by arguing that these principles also apply to systems with non-trivial self-gravitation and hence non-trivial spacetime curvature (such as black holes). I provide an alternative account, incorporating aspects of the criticised view, which allows both principles to apply to systems with self-gravity.

Moore's paradox is a paradox in which certain kinds of belief or assertion, such as a belief that ?it is raining and I do not believe that it is raining?, are irrational despite involving no obvious contradiction in what is believed. But is there a parallel paradox involving other kinds of attitude, in particular desire? I argue that certain kinds of desire would be irrational to have for similar, distinctive reasons that having Moorean beliefs would be irrational to have. Hence, (...) I argue that such desires, a desire that ?one have a particular desire that was frustrated? or a desire that ?some state of affairs obtain about which one was indifferent?, are a parallel Moorean paradox of desire. I further argue that this analogous paradox has implications for practical reasoning, in particular by presenting a problem for instrumentalism about the objects of desire. (shrink)

The Discovery of Evolution explains what the theory of evolution is all about by providing a historical narrative of discovery. Some of the major puzzles that confront anyone studying living things are discussed and it details how these were solved from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the emergence of the early naturalists in the seventeenth century, the scientific discoveries that led up to and then flowed from Darwin and Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection are then discussed, and finally (...) the modern evolutionary studies at the close of the twentieth century are detailed. This new edition of The Discovery of Evolution is fully updated and contains a new chapter on the evolutionary studies of the twentieth century. By approaching the topic of evolution in this way, it is made accessible to the non-specialist and no previous study of biology is required in order to read and understand this book. (shrink)

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction explores the core topics of philosophy of physics through three key themes: the nature of space and time; the origin of irreversibility and probability in the physics of large systems; how we can make sense of quantum mechanics. Central issues discussed include: the scientific method as it applies in modern physics; the distinction between absolute and relative motion; the way that distinction changes between Newton's physics and special relativity; what spacetime is and how (...) it relates to the laws of physics; how fundamental physics can make no distinction between past and future and yet a clear distinction exists in the world we see around us; why it is so difficult to understand quantum mechanics, and why doing so might push us to change our fundamental physics, to rethink the nature of science, or even to accept the existence of parallel universes. (shrink)

This is the first sustained, whole-Bible treatment on the theme of meeting God face to face. Starting with Genesis and ending with Revelation, the author systematically covers the major events in salvation history, all of which reveal the beauty of encountering God's grace in abundance.

This book argues that Western studies of East-Asian politics are generally flawed due to their adherence to the premise that liberal democracy is the best form of governance. The book rejects the three main schools of the Western interpretation of Oriental politics and instead examines the border-transcending powers of Confucianism that have, over more than twenty-two centuries, transformed the politics of East Asia. By circumventing the fundamental methodical and ethical assumptions of the Anglophone hegemonic discourse on the politics of the (...) non-Western world, it effectively presents an alternative to traditional Western interpretations of East Asian politics. Written in an erudite and engaging way this book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of Asian studies, Asian politics and political philosophy. (shrink)

We introduce a framework that can be used to model both mathematics and human reasoning about mathematics. This framework involves stochastic mathematical systems (SMSs), which are stochastic processes that generate pairs of questions and associated answers (with no explicit referents). We use the SMS framework to define normative conditions for mathematical reasoning, by defining a “calibration” relation between a pair of SMSs. The first SMS is the human reasoner, and the second is an “oracle” SMS that can be interpreted as (...) deciding whether the question–answer pairs of the reasoner SMS are valid. To ground thinking, we understand the answers to questions given by this oracle to be the answers that would be given by an SMS representing the entire mathematical community in the infinite long run of the process of asking and answering questions. We then introduce a slight extension of SMSs to allow us to model both the physical universe and human reasoning about the physical universe. We then define a slightly different calibration relation appropriate for the case of scientific reasoning. In this case the first SMS represents a human scientist predicting the outcome of future experiments, while the second SMS represents the physical universe in which the scientist is embedded, with the question–answer pairs of that SMS being specifications of the experiments that will occur and the outcome of those experiments, respectively. Next we derive conditions justifying two important patterns of inference in both mathematical and scientific reasoning: (i) the practice of increasing one’s degree of belief in a claim as one observes increasingly many lines of evidence for that claim, and (ii) abduction, the practice of inferring a claim’s probability of being correct from its explanatory power with respect to some other claim that is already taken to hold for independent reasons. (shrink)

Early Greek Ethics is the first volume devoted to philosophical ethics in its "formative" period. It explores contributions from the Presocratics, figures of the early Pythagorean tradition, sophists, and anonymous texts, as well as topics influential to ethical philosophical thought such as Greek medicine, music, friendship, and justice.

As David White explains in the Introduction to Tantra in Practice, Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience--Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even (...) Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative. The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black Goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice; a seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty. The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Readings in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra. (shrink)

Abstract I argue that meaning in life is importantly influenced by bioloical ties. More specifically, I maintain that knowing one's relatives and especially one's parents provides a kind of self-knowledge that is of irreplaceable value in the life-task of identity formation. These claims lead me to the conclusion that it is immoral to create children with the intention that they be alienated from their bioloical relatives?for example, by donor conception.

What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw (...) that will concern me in this paper is that the story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his proper role. (shrink)

This book argues against the common view that there are no essential differences between Plato and the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, on the issues of mysticism, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning by examining the ways in which Plato and Plotinus claim that it is possible to have an ultimate experience that answers the most significant philosophical questions, David J. Yount provides an extended analysis of why we should interpret both philosophers as mystics. The book then moves on to demonstrate that both (...) philosophers share a belief in non-discursive knowledge and the methods to attain it, including dialectic and recollection, and shows that they do not essentially differ on any significant views on ethics. Making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology and Ethics shows the similarities between the thought of these two philosophers on a variety of philosophical questions, such as meditation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, truth, happiness and love. (shrink)

In the twenty-first century, the debate about life on other worlds is quickly changing from the realm of speculation to the domain of hard science. Within a few years, as a consequence of the rapid discovery by astronomers of planets around other stars, astronomers very likely will have discovered clear evidence of life beyond the Earth. Such a discovery of extraterrestrial life will change everything. Knowing the answer as to whether humanity has company in the universe will trigger one of (...) the greatest intellectual revolutions in history, not the least of which will be a challenge for at least some terrestrial religions. Which religions will handle the discovery of extraterrestrial life with ease and which will struggle to assimilate this new knowledge about our place in the universe? Some religions as currently practiced appear to only be viable on Earth. Other religions could be practiced on distant worlds but nevertheless identify both Earth as a place and humankind as a species of singular spiritual religious importance, while some religions could be practiced equally well anywhere in the universe by any sentient beings. Weintraub guides readers on an invigorating tour of the world's most widely practiced religions. It reveals what, if anything, each religion has to say about the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe. (shrink)

In Christ the Light, Whidden argues that illumination is a critical systematic motif in Aquinas' theology, one that involves the nature of truth, knowledge, and God; at the root, Aquinas' theology of light, or illumination, is Christological, grounding human knowledge of God and eschatological beatitude. This volume establishes the theological network formed by the crucial motif of light/illumination in Aquinas, from how theology operates to the systematic, sacramental, and moral coordinates in Aquinas' theology.

Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion.

In Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision, theologian David Wells argues that the Church is in danger of losing its moral authority to speak to a culture whose moral fabric is torn. Although much of the Church has enjoyed success and growth over the past years, Wells laments a "hollowing out of evangelical conviction, a loss of the biblical word in its authoritative function, and an erosion of character to the point that today, no (...) discernible ethical differences are evident in behavior when those claiming to have been reborn and secularists are compared." The assurance of the Good News of the gospel has been traded for mere good feelings, truth has given way to perception, and morality has slid into personal preference. Losing Our Virtue is about the disintegrating moral culture that is contemporary society and what this disturbing loss means for the church. Wells covers the following in this bold critique: how the theologically emptied spirituality of the church is causing it to lose its moral bearings; an exploration of the wider dynamic at work in contemporary society between license and law; an exposition of the secular notion of salvation as heralded by our most trusted gurus -- advertisers and psychotherapists; a discussion of the contemporary view of the self; how guilt and sin have been replaced by empty psychological shame; an examination of the contradiction between the way we view ourselves in the midst of our own culture and the biblical view of persons as created, moral beings. Can the church still speak effectively to a culture that has become morally unraveled? Wells believes it can. In fact, says Wells, no time in this century has been more opportune for the Christian faith -- if the church can muster the courage to regain its moral weight and become a missionary of truth once more to a foundering world. - Publisher. (shrink)