This paper argues that we should take into account the process of historical transmission to enrich our understanding of material culture. More specifically, I want to show how the rewriting of history and the invention of tradition impact material objects and our beliefs about them. I focus here on the transmission history of the mechanical calculator invented by the German savant Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz repeatedly described his machine as functional and wonderfully useful, but in reality it was never finished (...) and didn't fully work. Its internal structure also remained unknown. In 1879, however, the machine re-emerged and was reinvented as the origin of all later calculating machines based on the stepped drum, to protect the priority of the German Leibniz against the Frenchman Thomas de Colmar as the father of mechanical calculation. The calculator was later replicated to demonstrate that it could function ‘after all’, in an effort to deepen this narrative and further enhance Leibniz's computing acumen. (shrink)

The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth is a world map in eight panels created in 1603 by the Ming dynasty military official Li Yingshi 李應試. The map is a variant of the known work by the Italian Jesuit savant Matteo Ricci and the scholar Li Zhizao 李之藻. This essay focuses on one copy of this 1603 world map, which was in the possession of the Manchus of the Later Jin state, the precursor of the Qing. (...) This essay argues that the map was used in the Shenyang palace before 1644, the year when the Manchus conquered Beijing and established the Qing, China’s last ruling imperial dynasty, and that it was inscribed with selective translations of the map’s cosmological elements and place-names in a version of the Old Manchu script. The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth matters because it prompts us to rethink the process of knowledge circulation between China and early modern Europe. The map shows that the Manchus accessed and used the products of Western learning even before their conquest of China and sought to adapt them to their needs through translation. (shrink)

In this paper it is analyzed from the informational perspective the relation between mind and body, an ancient philosophic issue defined as a problem, which still did not receive up to date an adequate solution. By introducing/using the concept of information, it is shown that this concept includes two facets, one of them referring to the common communications and another one referring to a hidden/structuring matter-related information, effectively acting in the human body and in the living systems, which determines the (...) dynamic inter-change of information between specific structures of the organism by electric/electronic/chemical agents and genetic/epigenetic processes. It is shown that the maintenance of body, permanently and obligatory depending on the external matter (foods, air, water) resources, needed to provide both the structuring/restructuring basic material and energy, determines the necessary existence of an info-managing system, administrating the internal mechano-chemical/physical processes. As a natural consequence, such a system should organize and assure own survival by an effective informational operability to detect the external food resources, to select the appropriate interest information and to decide as a function of circumstances. One important component in such an informational system is memory, allowing to dispose of the reference informational data for analysis/comparison and the selection between good and bad binary possible decisions. The memory receives and stores therefore signals from external reality and from the body itself, referring to the emotional reaction, digestion status, creation, and inherited predilections, within specific info-neural communication circuits between the brain and body execution/sensitive organs, the human body appearing as an integrated info-matter self-managed dynamic system. The specific body components memorize information with different degrees of info-integration: short/long-term integration, emotive/action reaction, info-abilities, culminating with the integration in the chromosomal structures by epigenetic processes. The new acquired information is transgenerationally transmissible, and is manifested as new traits, showing the adaptation capability of the human and close relation between mind and body. Analyzing the results of such a mind-body informational model in comparison with the earlier assumed/proposed/asserted archaic, Greek and Occidental philosophies, which represent only partial aspects of this relation, it is shown that this informational model, elaborated in terms of information on the basis of scientific reasons and arguments, constitutes a general, realist, and coherent model of the mind-body relation, able to integrate and/or explain most of the others. (shrink)

"Reflections on Freedom and Movement During the First Christian Centuries. Freedom and movement are two concepts that appear to have a shared destiny. Common sense tells us that freedom means being able to move freely and at will. Philosophers have long been interested in the concept of movement, as evidenced by Aristotle’s Physics. Freedom, on the other hand, is thought to be a later concern by some scholars. The ancient Greeks exercised freedom in the public sphere without thinking about it. (...) However, over time, Early Christian authors, influenced by Stoics, have radically changed the ancient paradigm regarding freedom and movement. Keywords: movement, freedom, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Christianity, Christology". (shrink)

Debates about obesity in bioethics tend to unfold in predictable epicycles between individual choices and behaviours and the oppressive socio-economic structures constraining them. Here, we argue that recent work from two cutting-edge research programmes in microbiology and social psychology can advance this conceptual stalemate in the literature. We begin in section 1 by discussing two promising lines of obesity research involving the human microbiome and relationship partners. Then, in section 2, we show how this research has made viable novel strategies (...) for fighting obesity, including microbial therapies and dyad-level interventions. Finally, in section 3, we consider objections to our account and conclude by arguing that attention to the most immediate features of our biological and social environment offers a middle ground solution, while also raising important new issues for bioethicists. (shrink)

Deleuze and Foucault had a long, complicated and productive relationship, in which each was at various times a significant influence on the other. This collection combines 3 original essays by Deleuze and Foucault, in which they respond to each other's work, with 16 critical essays by key contemporary scholars working in the field. The result is a sustained discussion and analysis of the various dimensions of this fascinating relationship, which clarifies the implications of their philosophical encounter.

Les espaces urbains de Belfast sont encore aujourd’hui marqués par des murs de sécurité construits, pour les premiers, après les violents affrontements civils de la fin des années 1960. Cet article se penche sur les paradoxes de la construction et de la pérennisation de ces dispositifs, notamment le décalage apparent entre la multiplication des murs et le processus politique de résolution du conflit dans les années 2000.Belfast’s urban areas still bear the marks of division created by the walls that were (...) first erected after the violent civil conflicts of the late 1960s. This article explores the paradoxes that emerge from the construction and perpetuation of these security barriers, and especially the obvious discrepancy between the increasing number of walls and the political process of conflict resolution since the year 2000. (shrink)

Information was a frequently used concept in many fields of investigation. However, this concept is still not really understood, when it is referred for instance to consciousness and its informational structure. In this paper it is followed the concept of information from philosophical to physics perspective, showing especially how this concept could be extended to matter in general and to the living in particular, as a result of the intimate interaction between matter and information, the human body appearing as a (...) bipolar informed-matter structure. It is detailed on this way how this concept could be referred to consciousness, and an informational modeling of consciousness as an informational system of the human body is presented. Based on the anatomic architecture of the organism and on the inference of the specific information concepts, it is shown that the informational system of the human body could be described by seven informational subsystems, which are reflected in consciousness as corresponding cognitive centers. These results are able to explain the main properties of consciousness, both the cognitive and extra-cognitive properties of the mind, like that observed during the near-death experiences and other similar phenomena. Moreover, the results of such a modeling are compared with the existing empirical concepts and models on the energetic architecture of the organism, showing their relevance for the understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

Discussions about brain data and privacy, particularly those advocating for human rights frameworks, at times, have embodied problematic undercurrents of, if not overt appeals to, neuro-exceptional...

Emotions can have both enhancing and impairing effects on various cognitive processes, from lower to higher level processes. The present article discusses emerging brain imaging evidence linking these opposing effects of emotion, which points to overlapping and dissociable neural systems involving both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms. The link between the enhancing and impairing effects is also discussed in a clinical context, with a focus on posttraumatic stress disorder, where these opposing effects tend to co-occur, are exacerbated, and are detrimental. Overall, (...) the present review highlights the need to consider together enhancing and impairing effects of emotion on cognition in studies investigating emotion–cognition interactions. (shrink)

The view we defend is that in virtue of its nature, disgust is not fit to do any moral or social work whatsoever, and that there are no defensible uses for disgust in legal or political institutions. We first describe our favoured empirical theory of the nature of disgust. Turning from descriptive to normative issues, we address the best arguments in favour of granting disgust the power to justify certain judgements, and to serve as a social tool, respectively. Daniel Kahan (...) advances a pair of theses that suggest disgust is indispensable (Moral Indispensability Thesis), and so has an important part to play in the functioning of a just, well-ordered society (Conservation Thesis). We develop responses and show how they rebut the arguments given in support of each thesis. We conclude that any society free of social disgust would be more just, reasonable and compassionate. (shrink)

I first attempt a taxonomy of meditation in traditional Indian Buddhism. Based on the main psychological or somatic function at which the meditative effort is directed, the following classes can be distinguished: (1) emotion-centered meditation (coinciding with the traditional samatha approach); (2) consciousness-centered meditation (with two subclasses: consciousness reduction/elimination and ideation obliteration); (3) reflection-centered meditation (with two subtypes: morality-directed reflection and reality-directed observation, the latter corresponding to the vipassanā method); (4) visualization-centered meditation; and (5) physiology-centered meditation. In the second part (...) of the essay I tackle the problem of the epistemic validity and happiness-engendering value of Buddhist meditation. In my highly conjectural view, the claim that meditation represents an infallible tool for realizing the (Supreme) Truth as well as a universally valid method for attaining the highest forms of happiness is largely based on the crēdō effect, that is, a placebolike process. I do not deny that meditation may have some positive effects on mental and physical health or that its practice may bring changes to the mind. Meditation may be a valuable alternative approach in life and clinical treatment, but it is far from being a must or a panacea. (shrink)

The advent of CRISPR has drastically moved the possibility of genetically modifying human genomes from the space of science fiction into nearby reality. Whether one considers the positive results f...

ABSTRACTEvaluative conditioning procedures change people’s evaluations of stimuli that are paired with pleasant or unpleasant items. To test whether influence awareness allows people to resist such...

Il semble que la question des responsabilités dans le mal communiste s’est évanouie en Roumanie avec l’exécution du pic de la pyramide communiste, les époux Ceausescu, le 25 décembre 19891. Mais le symbole de la fin physique des chefs et du régime qu’ils incarnaient ne suffit pas pour rendre compte de la disparition subite de tout sentiment de repentir et de responsabilité, comme..

Dominant views about the nature of health and disease in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine have presumed the existence of a fixed, stable, individual organism as the bearer of health and disease states, and as such, the appropriate target of medical therapy and ethical concern. However, recent developments in microbial biology, neuroscience, the philosophy of cognitive science, and social and personality psychology (Ickes...

The rapid development of large language models (LLM’s) and of their associated interfaces such as ChatGPT has brought forth a wave of epistemic and moral concerns in a variety of domains of inquiry...

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Focusing mainly on a number of unpublished texts by Collingwood, especially his “Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God,” the study examines the English philosopher’s innovative interpretation of the Anselm’s main contribution to the philosophical-theological tradition. Collingwood insightfully shows how the ontological argument can be used in (...) analyzing and discussing the religious experience, not in trying to formulate a logical proof of God’s existence. When abstracted from the individual’s practical religious life, that is, from the experience of prayer, worship, and the like, mind’s awareness of God cannot be understood. Resorting mainly to Anselm, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, Collingwood argues that the externality of the Platonic absolute is that of an absolute transcendent whereas the Christian God is not only conceived as the transcendent cause of all things, but also as the immanent spirit in them. By asserting the unity of the mind—regarded as identical with its acts—this interpretation is meant to serve both as a means towards self-knowledge, and as a starting point for a future conceptual unification of religion and philosophy. (shrink)

The present study represents a preliminary theoretical attempt to analyse the socio-political influence and impact of the Romanian Orthodoxy within the Romanian public life and political culture since 1990, both through the relation between the Orthodox Church and the state, and its impact on the wider society. An open-ended reflection on a constantly unfolding reality, the approach focuses on demonstrating the profound “modernity”—not backwardness—of Orthodoxy’s implicit political theology and derived ideologies and their “modern” destructiveness. The pivotal segment of the study (...) is the relation between modernity and a theory of exclusion derived from a rather unorthodox (brief) interpretation of its emergence from the main carriers of modernity, namely Enlightenment and humanism. Instead of conclusion, the final section compiles and comments a few reformist initiatives and some possible philosophical-theological ways out of the deadlock of ideological self-centrism that still dominates our Orthodoxy. (shrink)

Vasile Pârvan and Mircea Eliade, two front-rank personalities of the Romanian intellectuality and the proto-history issue from two perspectives. There are taken into account also the problem of the Romanian people’s intellectual legacy and the influences it was subjected to along the time.

Un des grands quotidiens roumains – Adev£rul – publiait il y a trois ans à la Une un reportage réalisé dans une petite ville des Carpates, VÃlenii de Munte. Connue en Roumanie surtout parce que l’historien Nicolae Iorga, figure quasi mythique de l’historiographie et du nationalisme roumains, assassiné par la Garde de Fer1 en 1940, y avait.

A quarter of a century ago, a group of scientists and conservationists introduced ‘biodiversity’ as a media buzzword with the explicit intent of galvanizing public and political support for environ...

Starting from an unorthodox account of conceptual idealism as represented (going backwards historically) by Thomas Hofweber, Nicholas Rescher and Robin George Collingwood (mainly with regard to its potential use in historical understanding), this short study attempts to couple it with the important cognitive finding that emotions inform judgment and regulate thought.1 In my search for a bridge between the cognitive and emotional contents of conceptual understanding, LBT appears to offer the long sought after interfacing, through its take on emotional and (...) behavioral reasoning. Although this study is in its early stages, the idea can gain pace and produce evidence that LBT is not only a beneficiary of academic achievements but also an important provider of solutions to crucial philosophical puzzles such as the nature of understanding in epistemology of history. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Millennium Jahrgang: 10 Heft: 1 Seiten: 145-214.

With the purpose to understand better the role of information not only in communication systems, but actually in our environmental reality, this paper presented the model of Universal Triangle of Reality, composed by Matter, Energy and Information, as fundamental constitutive components of this reality. Arguments coming from the field of physics, both at the cosmic and microparticles scale are presented, showing undoubtable conclusions that information is a fundamental component of reality in our material world. At the cosmic level, where the (...) unusual high concentration of mass in the black holes constitutes a special state of matter, suitable for analysis of their special properties, the problem of the conservation principle of information is discussed. At the quantum level, the special unusual characteristics derived from the non-localization principle are also highlighted, together with information-involved problems and solutions. The Universal Triangle of Reality in the living systems reveals the high role of the involved information, both as the informational common organization on the entire evolution scale, and as the info-dynamics processes inside of own structure and resulted from interaction with the environment. The relevant advances in the approaching and understanding of the functionality of the living systems from informational point of view are highlighted, showing the high contribution of information concepts in understanding/solving of various older/recent problems in philosophy, neuroscience/neurology/psychiatry, neuro-physics/neuropsychology/behavior sciences, geriatrics/gerontology, biology and life sciences. Keywords: information-matter-energy, universal triangle of reality in non-living and living systems, informational system of human body and living structures, neurosciences and life sciences. (shrink)

Peer commentary on: Blumenthal-Barby, J. S. (2016). Biases and heuristics in decision making and their impact on autonomy. The American Journal of Bioethics, 16(5), 5-15.

The nature and role of the patient in biomedicine comprise issues central to bioethical inquiry. Given its developmental history grounded firmly in a backlash against 20th-century cases of egregious human subjects abuse, contemporary medical bioethics has come to rely on a fundamental assumption: the unit of care is the autonomous self-directing patient. In this article we examine first the structure of the feminist social critique of autonomy. Then we show that a parallel argument can be made against relational autonomy as (...) well, demonstrating how this second concept of autonomy fails to take sufficiently into account an array of biological determinants, particularly those from microbial biology. Finally, in light of this biological critique, we question whether or to what extent any relevant and meaningful view of autonomy can be recovered in the contemporary landscape of bioethics. (shrink)

Involvement in sustainable development is a voluntary activity. Organizations apply the principles of sustainable development only when they identify several benefits. These benefits are identified, especially with the financial ones. The involvement of organizations in sustainable organizations has different intensity levels. These intensity levels are influenced by psychosocial factors, attitudes toward organizational risks, and organizational and urban policies. The present paper identifies the key psychological factors involved in applying organizational sustainability principles within organizations. For this research, five groups were created (...) for in-depth interviews with key people from Romania’s innovative companies. To identify the importance of the framework analysis factors, the Delphi method was used, in which 20 experts from different fields of activity were involved. Following the rounds involved in the Delphi method, the ranking of PF on four levels of importance was accepted, based on planned behavior and reasoned action theory. These levels were correlated with the intensity levels of involvement in sustainable development. The entire market study was conducted during COVID-19, which significantly impacted specific directions. As a result, it could be observed that motivation, learning attitude, behavior, and intention to take precedence are essential in the organizational sustainability approach. (shrink)