Hypatia and Synesius lived in a highly divisive time with religious extremism on the rise and the meaning and role of Classical cultural fixtures like paideia, philosophia and manteia being questioned and redefined. I examine Synesius’ Letters, Dion, and De Insomniis to tease out the universalizing and harmonizing tendencies between pagan and Christian, theoria and paideia, philosophia and manteia that Synesius’ writings, life and career embody. I look at Synesius’ synthesis of Iamblichean and Plotinian tendencies, a binary found in (...) modern scholarship, to show that theurgy was likely part of Hypatia’s teaching within a well-rounded curriculum that included classical paideia and philosophical theoria. Synesius advocates for the importance of paideia, including rhetoric and philosophia as aids in the step-by-step approach to the spiritual ascent, while also acknowledging the value and universal accessibility of theoria reached by desert monks and the dream-divination that everyone can experience in sleep. Paideia makes the fall from the heights of theoria more pleasant, while philosophia is essential for purifying the pneuma and making it receptive to divinely inspired dreams. I propose that it was in Hypatia’s school that Synesius internalized a quote that reconciles the two approaches to the ascent. While society at large was obsessed with ever widening opposites and binaries, Hypatia’s Synesius both overtly and covertly emphasized harmonization and unity that are at the heart of philosophia. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of (...) 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

Growing interest in Pacific issues has meant a surge in Pacific research across the globe. Sadly, some research on Pacific people has been done without Pacific knowledge, wisdom and culture. As Pacific researchers, we understand the importance of outputs that interweave our ancestral and cultural wisdom, whilst centring and privileging our people’s narratives. Through the birth of our Moanaroa Pacific Research group, we explore the importance of a research collective which decolonises and re indigenises research as we know it.

The aim of this book is to deepen our understanding of financial crimes as phenomena. It uses concepts of existential philosophies that are relevant to dissecting the phenomenon of financial crimes. With the help of these concepts, the book makes clear what the impact of financial crimes is on the way a human being defines himself or the way he focuses on a given notion of humankind. The book unveils how the growth of financial crimes has contributed to the increase (...) of the anthropological gap, and how the phenomenon of financial crimes now distorts the way we understand humankind. Using the existential philosophies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Buber, Heidegger, Marcel, Tillich, and Sartre, the book sheds light on how these philosophies can help to better perceive and describe financial crimes. The book provides readers with existential principles that will help them be more efficient when they have to design and implement prevention strategies against corporate crime. (shrink)

Partie 1. Le contexte scientifique et le langage de Spinoza -- I. Bref apercu du corpus spinozien -- II. Le contexte scientifique du XVIIe siecle -- Partie 2. Spinoza, une arme contre la superstition et les charlatans de la foi -- I. Le refus de la superstition -- II. Contre les charlatans de la foi ou l'actualité de la préface du Traité théologico-politique -- III. L'Ethique ou la connaissance comme arme de libération -- Conclusion.

This book examines the unlikely conversion stories of fifty former atheists as they move from belief in naturalistic atheism to strong belief in God and conservative Christianity. Their own perspectives and journeys provide deep insight for those who are interested in why and how such dramatic change is possible.

Canonical extension has proven to be a powerful tool in algebraic study of propositional logics. In this paper we describe a generalisation of the theory of canonical extension to the setting of first order logic. We define a notion of canonical extension for coherent categories. These are the categorical analogues of distributive lattices and they provide categorical semantics for coherent logic, the fragment of first order logic in the connectives ∧, ∨, 0, 1 and ∃. We describe a universal property (...) of our construction and show that it generalises the existing notion of canonical extension for distributive lattices. Our new construction for coherent categories has led us to an alternative description of the topos of types, introduced by Makkai in [22]. This allows us to give new and transparent proofs of some properties of the action of the topos of types construction on morphisms. Furthermore, we prove a new result relating, for a coherent category C, its topos of types to its category of models. (shrink)

A Primeira carta de Paulo aos Tessalonicenses tem como tema principal a escatologia, a parusia do Senhor. Paulo para esclarecer as dúvidas da comunidade acerca do destino dos mortos e da realização do encontro definitivo com Cristo, evidencia também alguns aspectos trinitários da pregação primitiva da comunidade cristã, pois toda obra de salvação, desde a criação até a escatologia, é trinitária. O presente artigo parte de uma análise dos termos relacionados às três pessoas da Trindade em 1Ts para enfatizar, assim, (...) uma visão global acerca da Trindade no mais antigo escrito cristão, evidenciando também a visão antropológica tripartida apresentada por Paulo no final da carta. (shrink)

This book provides a fresh look at one of the most enduring, absorbing, and universal questions human beings face: What happens to us after we die? In secular thought, the standard answer is simple: we disappear into oblivion. David Harmon takes us in a different direction, by making the case that a nonconscious portion of our personality survives death-literally, not figuratively-and explains how this kind of naturalistic afterlife can be emotionally relevant to us while we are still living. Combining (...) insights from the arts, history, philosophy, and science, a compelling argument takes shape for an afterlife without God.. (shrink)

BackgroundThe overwhelming scarcity of organs within renal transplantation forces researchers and transplantation teams to seek new ways to increase efficacy. One of the possibilities is the use of personalized medicine, an approach based on quantifiable and scientific factors that determine the global immunological risk of rejection for each patient. Although this approach can improve the efficacy of transplantations, it also poses a number of ethical questions.MethodsThe qualitative research involved 22 semi-structured interviews with nephrologists involved in renal transplantation, with the goal (...) of determining the professionals' views about calculating the global immunological risk and the attendant ethical issues.ResultsThe results demonstrate a general acceptance of this approach amongst the participants in the study. Knowledge of each patient's immunological risk could improve treatment and the post-graft follow-up. On the other hand, the possibility that patients might be excluded from transplantation poses a significant ethical issue. This approach is not seen as something entirely new, given the fact that medicine is increasingly scientific and evidence-based. Although renal transplantation incorporates scientific data, these physicians believe that there should always be a place for clinical judgment and the physician-patient relationship.ConclusionsThe participants see the benefits of including the calculation of the global immunological risk within transplantation. Such data, being more precise and rigorous, could be of help in their clinical work. However, in spite of the use of such scientific data, a place must be retained for the clinical judgment that allows a physician to make decisions based on medical data, professional expertise and knowledge of the patient. To act in the best interests of the patient is key to whether the calculation of the global immunological risk is employed. (shrink)

With technological advances in reproduction no longer confined to the laboratory or involving only the isolated individual, women and men are increasingly resorting to a variety of technologies unheard of a few decades ago to assist them in becoming parents. The public at large, and feminists as a group, are confused and divided over how to view these technologies and over what positions to take on the moral and legal dilemmas they give rise to. Farquhar argues that two perspectives have (...) tended to dominate feminist discussions of these issues. She labels these: "fundamental feminism" and "market liberalism." By linking a theoterical approach with a practical set of issues, Farquhar's The Other Machine provides a rigorous analysis of contemporary feminist debates. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that transnational as well as national political demands and expectations on the educational field are contributing to produce four ideological-based educational leadership discourses in the literature. In order to conceptualize these discourses, we turn to the work of Schmidt and Zizek. On that basis we identify four dominant educational leadership discourses: a personhood-based discourse, a profession-based discourse, a standard-based discourse, and a resource-based discourse. These discourses have—as we will show—various consequences for the way we think (...) and talk about education and educational leadership in our age. Using examples that stem from a project about educational leadership in Danish upper secondary school, we will illustrate how educational leaders’ beings and doings are ‘regulated’ by these discourses, which place them in a tension field where different and conflicting fantasies seem to be played out. Then, we will discuss how these fantasies can be challenged and how we can think and speak more intellectually about education and educational leadership. By using the term intellectual we are referring to educational leaders’ ability as human beings to critically reflect on their contemporary doings and beings within and beyond the existing social order. Hopefully this can help them to establish new ways for discussing not only what educational leadership is and should be about, but also what it could be about. (shrink)

With technological advances in reproduction no longer confined to the laboratory or involving only the isolated individual, women and men are increasingly resorting to a variety of technologies unheard of a few decades ago to assist them in becoming parents. The public at large, and feminists as a group, are confused and divided over how to view these technologies and over what positions to take on the moral and legal dilemmas they give rise to. Farquhar argues that two perspectives have (...) tended to dominate feminist discussions of these issues. She labels these: "fundamental feminism" and "market liberalism." By linking a theoterical approach with a practical set of issues, Farquhar's ____The Other Machine__ provides a rigorous analysis of contemporary feminist debates. (shrink)

Southeast Asia has numerous religions and diverse forms of state-governance, so the populations largely have the freedom to express themselves within the context of their society. Expressing oneself can occur within the context of their religion, using the language they have been cultured within, if they remain in their cultural-context. This paper explores the context of Buddhist nations using militarized-language, seen as problematic by Dr. Matthew Kosuta, who professes in his masters-thesis that it is a contradiction. A portion of my (...) article refutes his position, on the grounds that Buddhism developed within the Hindu-Brahmanism context and caste was normalized in regions influenced by such culture. Equally, it could be noted, the Buddha also used a language that was suitable for agriculturalists, merchants, Brahmins, so a militarized-language was just one way to speak to some people within their own social context, which was understandable not just to them, but to anyone interested in attaining Nibbāna. (shrink)

This article contains four criticisms against Jacques Rancière's philosophy of education, insofar as his philosophy is written in his work The Ignorant Schoolmaster. In the first criticism, Rancière's presupposition of equality of intelligence would be framed as a truth claim and to the extent that it can be treated as such, Rancière's argument contains a number of defects. The second criticism underscores the distinction between inequality of intelligence and inequality of knowledge Rancière confuses. The third criticism concerns the contradiction between (...) what Rancière has written and what he practiced and also the weakness of the defense provided by his supporters on this point. Fourth, Rancière's redefinition of “emancipation” as verification of the equality of intelligence turns out to strip away the very idea of emancipation of what makes it meaningful for many people. Abstrak: Tulisan ini berisi empat kritik terhadap filsafat pendidikan Jacques Rancière sebagaimana tertuang dalam karyanya The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Dalam kritik pertama, pengandaian kesetaraan akal budi Rancière akan dikemas sebagai klaim kebenaran dan sejauh itu dapat diperlakukan sebagai klaim kebenaran, argumen Rancière mengandung sejumlah kecacatan. Kritik kedua menggarisbawahi perbedaan antara ketidaksetaraan akal budi dan ketidaksetaraan pengetahuan yang dirancukan Rancière. Kritik ketiga berkaitan dengan adanya kontradiksi antara apa yang Rancière tuliskan dan apa yang ia praktikkan serta kelemahan pendukung Rancière dalam membela butir ini. Keempat, pendefinisian ulang Rancière atas “emansipasi” sebagai verifikasi atas kesetaraan akal budi justru melucuti ide emansipasi dari apa yang membuatnya bagi banyak orang berarti. (shrink)

This article argues for a rediscovery of a theology of work in South Africa that is based on the Protestant notion of calling and vocation. Such a view has the primary intention of emphasising obedience and faithfulness to God rather than self-fulfilment or achievement as the intentions of work. Such an approach can empower and equip the church and individual Christians for effective and faithful living in all spheres of life – both private and public. The article shows that the (...) influences of theological dualism, an unbalanced view of the clergy as primary agents of ministry and mission, and a structures-centred view of ministry and mission detracted from the importance of the church’s ministry in numerous spheres of society. A consequence of this was the introduction of a subtle dualism between faith and work. In response to this, the article considers how the church could become an agent of mission and transformation in the world of work. The conclusion of this article is that the South African church could benefit from revisiting and rediscovering a theology of work that is based on the Protestant emphasis of calling and vocation in the public sphere.Contribution: While this article engages the traditional protestant theological notions of calling and vocation, it argues that reconsidering these notions in relation to the contemporary world of work can renew a theology of work and ministry for South African churches to serve their members in achieving God’s will in society. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology is a science in the making, working toward the goal of showing how psychological adaptation underlies much human behavior. The knee-jerk reaction that sociobiology is unscientific because it tells just-so stories has become a common charge against evolutionary psychology as well. My main positive thesis is that inference to the best explanation is a proper method for evolutionary analyses, and it supplies a new perspective on the issues raised in Schlinger's (1996) just-so story critique. My main negative thesis (...) is that, like many nonevolutionist critics, Schlinger's objections arise from misunderstandings of the evolutionary approach.Evolutionary psychology has progressed beyond telling just-so stories. It has found a host of ingenious special techniques to test hypotheses about the adaptive significance and proximate mechanisms of behavior. Naturalistic data using the comparative method combined with controlled tests using statistical analyses of data provide good evidence for a variety of hypotheses about behavioral control mechanisms — whether in nonhumans or in humans. For instance, the work of Gangestad and Thornhill on evolved mate preferences and fluctuating asymmetry of body type (FA) is a model of success. As the quantity and quality of evidence increase, we are entitled not just to regard such evolutionary hypotheses as preferable, but also as true. Such studies combine to show that the best explanation of the psychic unity of humankind — common patterns across societies, history, and cultures exposed by evolutionists — is the gendered, adapted, evolved species-typical design of the mind. (shrink)

Thousands of youth suffering from acquired brain injury or other early-life neurological disease live, mature, and learn with only limited communication and interaction with their world. Such cognitively capable children are ideal candidates for brain-computer interfaces. While BCI systems are rapidly evolving, a fundamental gap exists between technological innovators and the patients and families who stand to benefit. Forays into translating BCI systems to children in recent years have revealed that kids can learn to operate simple BCI with proficiency akin (...) to adults. BCI could bring significant boons to the lives of many children with severe physical impairment, supporting their complex physical and social needs. However, children have been neglected in BCI research and a collaborative BCI research community is required to unite and push pediatric BCI development forward. To this end, the pediatric BCI Canada collaborative network was formed, under a unified goal to cooperatively drive forward pediatric BCI innovation and impact. This article reflects on the topics and discussions raised in the foundational BCI-CAN meeting held in Toronto, ON, Canada in November 2019 and suggests the next steps required to see BCI impact the lives of children with severe neurological disease and their families. (shrink)

This article briefly review the fundamentals of structural equation modeling for readers unfamiliar with the technique then goes on to offer a review of the Martin and Cullen paper. In summary, a number of fit indices reported by the authors reveal that the data do not fit their theoretical model and thus the conclusion of the authors that the model was “promising” are unwarranted.

Medthics is an online graphic novel series comprising of six issues . What is often viewed as pop culture escapism, this "comic book" series tackles the complex world of medicine and its moral/ethical intricacies. From topics about physician identity formation to humane patient care, Medthics brings to the forefront subject matter essential to clinical practice. The art of medicine is depicted through stylized characters as they live their lives through a fictional world inspired by true events.

We discuss some research that has examined approach motivational urges and how this research clarifies the definition of approach motivation. Our research and that of others have raised doubts about the commonly accepted definition of approach motivation, which views it as a positive affective state triggered by positive stimuli. We review evidence that suggests: (a) that approach motivation is occasionally evoked by negative stimuli; (b) that approach motivation may be experienced as a negative state; and (c) that stimuli are unnecessary (...) to evoke approach motivation. (shrink)

Alienation and Connection addresses social constructs that perpetuate alienation through suffering. The contributors discuss how alienation through suffering in a variety of contexts can be transformed into connection and reconnection: human relationship with the environment, economic and social systems that disconnect and reconnect, cultural constructs that divide or can heal, encountered difference that brings opportunity, and various manifestations of personal pain that can be survived and even overcome.

This paper is meant to show why the introduction of probation in the capital punishment act of the new Code of Criminal Law is a change we should appreciate. This change will expectedly lead Indonesia to be a nation that de facto no longer employs capital punishment. This is a desirable consequence given that, in my view, capital punishment cannot be ethically justified. In this paper, I will show why arguments in defense of capital punishment by appealing to the deterrence (...) effect, the risk of recidivism, the sense of justice, and the principle of retributive justice do not stand up to scrutiny. The irreversible nature of capital punishment further points to the unjustifiability of this form of punishment. Abstrak Tulisan ini hendak menunjukkan mengapa diintroduksikannya masa percobaan dalam pasal hukuman mati KUHP terbaru merupakan perubahan yang layak diapresiasi. Perubahan tersebut berpotensi mengantar Indonesia menjadi negara yang de facto tidak lagi menerapkan hukuman mati. Menurut penulis, konsekuensi semacam ini layak disambut baik lantaran hukuman mati itu sendiri secara etis tidak dapat dibenarkan. Dalam tulisan ini, penulis akan menunjukkan mengapa argumen-argumen yang ditujukan untuk menjustifikasi hukuman mati dengan merujuk pada efek jera, risiko residivis, rasa keadilan, dan prinsip keadilan retributif tidak dapat dipertahankan. Sifat hukuman mati yang tidak membuka ruang bagi koreksi yang berarti juga meneguhkan tidak dapat dibenarkannya bentuk hukuman tersebut. Kata-kata Kunci: hukuman mati, KUHP, efek jera, keadilan retributif, ruang koreksi. (shrink)

This volume moves beyond ethics as problem-solving or ethics as etiquette to offer a look at ethics in primary care—as opposed to life-or-death—medical care. Professional Ethics and Primary Care Medicine deals with the ethics of routine, day-to-day encounters between doctors and patients. It probes beneath the hard decisions to look at the moral frameworks, habits of thought, and customs of practice that underlie choices. Harmon Smith and Larry Churchill argue that primary care, far from being merely a setting for (...) the rendering of care, provides a new understanding of both physician and patient, and thereby offers a fresh basis for medical ethics. (shrink)

In this essay, I defend the following two claims: reflective, critical reasoning is essential to the process of self-deception; and , the process of self-deception involves a certain characteristic error of self-knowledge. By appeal to and , I hope to show that we can adjudicate the current dispute about the nature of self-deception between those we might term "traditionalists," and those we might term "deflationists.".

An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists’ theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argued that knowing how to do something is importantly (...) different from knowing that something is the case. Hence, in this paper we turn our attention to people’s concept of knowledge-how. We present data from two experiments that employed a sentence recognition task as an implicit measure of conceptual activation. The data from this implicit measure suggest that, contrary to prominent intellectualist theories of know-how, according to which know-how is a species of propositional knowledge, people’s concept of know-how more closely aligns with anti-intellectualism, the view that knowing how to perform some task consists in having the appropriate skills or abilities. (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine whether the reflexivity thesis of David Bloor’s Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge is self-refuting. I will argue that even though the relativism in the Strong Programme is self-refuting, I do not think Bloor’s reflexivity thesis implies relativism. By looking at the case of determinism, I intend to show that we can and should treat the reflexivity thesis independently of relativism. Therefore, the reflexivity thesis is not necessarily subject to self-refutation objection. Abstrak Dalam (...) tulisan ini, saya akan membahas apakah tesis refleksivitas dalam Program Kuat Sosiologi Pengetahuan yang diusung oleh David Bloor mengimplikasikan penyanggahan diri. Saya hendak berargumen bahwa kendati relativisme yang diimplikasikan Program Kuat menyanggah dirinya sendiri, saya tidak melihat tesis refleksivitasyang diusung Bloor per se mengimplikasikan relativisme. Dengan merujuk pada contoh determinisme, saya ingin menunjukkan bahwa tesis refleksitivitas dapat dan semestinya diperlakukan secara terpisah dari relativisme. Dengan demikian, tesis refleksivitas tidak dapat serta-merta menjadi sasaran argumen yang menyoal penyanggahan diri. (shrink)

I characterize a notion of internal irrationality which is central to hard cases of self-deception. I argue that if we aim to locate such internal irrationality in the _process of self-deception, we must fail. The process of self-deception, I claim, is a wholly arational affair. If we are to make a place for internal irrationality we must turn our attention to the _state of self-deception. I go on to argue that we are able to offer an account of this peculiar (...) form of irrationality only if we recognize the role the self-deceiver's own efforts at self-explanation play in the generation of internal irrationality. (shrink)

In The Adapted Mind (1992), Cosmides and Tooby argue for the thesis that biological evolution endowed the human mind with a system of content‐specific computational mechanisms designed to solve long‐standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter‐gatherers, and not just a generalized "capacity for culture" or all‐purpose "learning capacity". I analyze three types of arguments they offer: historical arguments for the rise of content‐Specific psychology; programmatic arguments for the aims, theory, concepts, and methods of their evolutionary approach; and experimental arguments for (...) the content‐dependence of reasoning. Their arguments stand or fall on the claim that functionally specialized adaptations must be richly structured in a content‐specific way. (shrink)