In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick Ferré. These essays, informed by the insights of Ferré and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick FerrZ. These essays, informed by the insights of FerrZ and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

Macphail’s comparative approach to intelligence focused on associative processes, an orientation inconsistent with more multifaceted lay and scientific understandings of the term. His ultimate emphasis on associative processes indicated few differences in intelligence among vertebrates. We explore options more attuned to common definitions by considering intelligence in terms of richness of representations of the world, the interconnectivity of those representations, the ability to flexibly change those connections, knowledge, and individual differences. We focus on marine mammals, represented by the amphibious pinnipeds (...) and the aquatic cetaceans and sirenians, as animals that transitioned from a terrestrial existence to an aquatic one, experiencing major changes in ecological pressures. They adapted with morphological transformations related to streamlining the body, physiological changes in respiration and thermoregulation, and sensory/perceptual changes, including echolocation capabilities and diminished olfaction in many cetaceans, both in-air and underwater visual focus, and enhanced senses of touch in pinnipeds and sirenians. Having a terrestrial foundation on which aquatic capacities were overlaid likely affected their cognitive abilities. Vocal and behavioral observational learning capabilities in the wild and in laboratory experiments suggest versatility in group coordination. Empirical reports on aspects of intelligent behavior like problem-solving, spatial learning, and concept learning by various species of cetaceans and pinnipeds, suggest rich cognitive abilities. The high energy demands of the brain suggest brain-intelligence relationships might be fruitful areas for the study when specific hypotheses are considered, e.g., brain mapping indicates hypertrophy of specific sensory areas in marine mammals. Modern neuroimaging techniques provide ways to study neural connectivity, and the patterns of connections between sensory, motor, and other cortical regions provide a biological framework for exploring how animals represent and flexibly use information in navigating and learning about their environment. At this stage of marine mammal research, it would still be prudent to follow Macphail’s caution that it is premature to make strong comparative statements without more empirical evidence, but an approach that includes learning more about how animals flexibly link information across multiple representations could be a productive way of comparing species by allowing them to use their specific strengths within comparative tasks. (shrink)

Através desse diálogo tivemos o objetivo de propor uma compreensão do homem através da explicitação do sentido ético de edificação. Apresentamos a cidadania do mundo como uma finalidade moral do homem, que estava presente e oculta na fundamentação metafísica do humanismo. Agora, se o antropológico se fortalece por meio da realização ética do mundo, defendemos que o dever do melhor não é uma finalidade moral que se realiza em um infinito separado da finitude humana. O antropológico só é cidadão se (...) ele se compreende como uma finitude sem infinito separado, ou seja, como um fim em si, como um lugar de chegada. (shrink)

Saímos da leitura ortodoxa da obra de Merleau-Ponty para lhe sermos mais sinceros e fiéis. Neste sentido, apresentamos as consequências para a filosofia que, de modo heroico e dramático, recupera a natureza trágica do transcendental como revelação e engajamento na contingência eterna. Mostramos que o tema privilegiado para esta filosofia, seu verdadeiro solo, é a ausência de limites precisos da fenomenologia e da ontologia. Nesses termos, analisamos de que maneira a fenomenologia estende e fortalece as fronteiras ordinárias do Logos, que (...) jamais foi humano, mas, desde sempre uma Natureza que manifesta o Ser. (shrink)

It’s no wonder descriptions of riding often resemble the words of Asian mystics and Jedi knights: The ride causes your senses to open completely. You experience only the present, the now. Readers who prefer revving a Harley to meditating in a Zen garden know that biking is just as contemplative as chanting in the lotus position. Here, philosopher-bikers explore this seeming dichotomy, expounding on intriguing questions such as: Why are the motorcycles the real stars of Easy Rider? What would (...) Marx and Foucault say about Harley riders’ tight leather garb? What’s it like to live a dual life as a philosophy professor who wrenches his own 1965 Electra Glide? Would Jesus hang out in a biker bar or a coffeehouse? And more importantly, would He ride a Harley or a Honda? These witty, provocative essays give readers and riders a new appreciation of what it means to become one with the road. (shrink)

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agency voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agencies, displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement sleep, non-REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap (...) sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep-onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic-pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

Constraints on the types of speech errors observed can be accounted for by a frame/content distinction, but connectionist modeling shows that they do not require this distinction. The constraints may arise instead from the statistical properties of our language, in particular, the sequential biases observed in the vocabulary. Nevertheless, there might still be a role for the frame/content distinction in syntactic planning.

I examine four core aspects of WEAVER ++. The necessity for lemmas is often overstated. A model can incorporate interaction between levels without feedback connections between them. There is some evidence supporting the absence of inhibition in the model. Connectionist modelling avoids the necessity of a nondecompositional semantics apparently required by the hypernym problem.

The Problem of Consciousness This chapter will introduce you to consciousness and its most important characteristics. We will look at definitions of consciousness, and examine what it means to say that consciousness is a private experience. We will look at the idea that it is like something to be you or me. The chapter mentions ideas and themes that will be covered in more detail in the rest of the book, and explains why the topic is an important one. Research (...) on consciousness is big on questions but shorter on answers. Nevertheless these questions are central to what it means to be human, or indeed at the heart of what it's like to be anything - what it's like to be conscious. Think of yourself just now. What does it feel like you to be you right at this moment? Think of a loved one. What do you think it is like to be them? Do they know exactly what they're feeling, and do you know just what they're feeling? We might have some idea, but the answer in both cases is no, and not only "no", we can't see how we ever could know for sure. It's my consciousness and your consciousness. (shrink)

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences (“hearing voices”) and auditory verbal agency (inner speech, and specifically “talking to (imaginary) voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences (VE) and auditory verbal agencies (VA), displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, (...) non‐REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep‐onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic‐pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

The manuscripts of Cicero's De oratore divide into two families: mutili and integri. The oldest representatives of the mutilated family are Avranches 238 , Erlangen 380 , and London, Harley 2736 . A and H are independent of each other, and the best witnesses to the text of the lost archetype . E too is considered to be an independent witness. Since the work of E. Ströbel, dating from the early eighties of the last century, the view has been (...) generally held that E, though closely related to A, is not a descendant of it but a copy of a ‘gemellus’ of A. The stemma devised by Ströbel has remained essentially the same to the present day. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the formal aspects of the political power. It examines the nature of power on the basis of the analysis of dreams of her media: Russian statesmen of XIXth and early XXth centuries. The relevance of the topic due to the dynamism of a modern political culture, the inability to identify formal sources of legitimacy of authority. The results indicate the mythologization and mystification of power. Components reviewed in historical Retrospect discourses were inherited from the past (...) sacred images of power, which could not rid ourselves of its carriers. (shrink)

One of the annoying habits of philosophers is to substitute without warning a normative for a descriptive theory of the topic they are discussing—that is, in what purports to be a statement of how the subject actually presents itself they tell us instead how it ought to present itself. Current treatments of the elusive topic “meaning” seem to me to supply capital instances of this vice. Defenders of a positivist or an operational theory of meaning often give us no hint (...) that their conclusions are conclusions about how the meaning of words ought to be interpreted, not about how, by and large, it is interpreted. Without such a hint their readers naturally suppose that it is the latter problem with which they are concerned, but this is rarely the case; were it so, emphasis could hardly fail to fall on determinants of meaning that are too often neglected by philosophical analysts. (shrink)