In this contribution, I will focus on Chogyam Trungpa's presentation of the basic practice of samatha-vipassana sitting meditation, assuming that his description is almost scientifically meticulous, similarly to Husserl's phenomenological descriptions, and allows the latter to be endowed with concrete richness and practical operability. Meditation is an activity that develops attentional qualities which are extremely accurate, i.e. both very well-defined and remarkably embodied. I will first detail the different forms of attention inherent to meditation, then show how they surprisingly echo (...) some of the gestures specific to the phenomenological Husserlian reduction. In other words, I will adopt a circular method of random comings and goings between the two, in order to gradually create, in the reader's mind, echoes and resonances between practices that reveal experiential relationships between them. (shrink)

The period between 1945 and 1952 marked the development of Professor Ryle's conception of the principles of inference as performance rules. This development has paralleled that of his now well-known distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that. Indeed, the former is a corollary to the latter. Beginning with the inaugural address to the Aristotelian Society in 1945 and reaching full fruition in The Concept of Mind in 1949, it finds its most detailed and illuminating expression in “‘If’, ‘So’, and ‘Because’,” which appeared (...) in 1950. The present essay will attempt to explore this conception of rules in some detail, in the hope of clarifying the nature of Professor Ryle's views on classical logic and on certain problems within the philosophy of logic. Professor Ryle belongs, if his views may be so labeled, to the school of informal language analysts. On the other hand, we incline more toward formalism. We tend to agree with those philosophers who consider certain schemata indispensable tools for the solution of philosophical problems. Logic and the philosophy of logic are, as everyone knows, the areas in which the formalists’ technique originated. In these areas it is accepted by virtually everybody. The only recent exception is a group of English writers, many of whom take their inspiration from Ryle. One may hope, then, that the present criticism of Ryle's view from the other standpoint will throw some light on both positions. What follows falls naturally into two parts. The first deals mainly with Ryle's objections to current logical theory, the second with his own philosophy of logic. (shrink)

In this article, Deleuze & Guattari (D+G)’s conception of democracy will be approached with regard to art’s envisagement of “becoming-democratic” as a mode of thinking through percepts and affects. For D+G, democracy is, by no means, a desirable political goal or the name of a type of governance appropriate for the world. On the contrary, as long as it is a representation mechanism, democracy has negative connotations since it promotes the dominance of majority. For this reason, the only way of (...) affirming democracy is to cleanse and subtract the governmental layers which fix it as a system of social measurement, and re-associate it with “multiplicity” & “becoming”. In this respect, democracy can only be affirmed if it is paired with the notions of becoming-democratic, becoming-revolutionary and becoming-minor. Nevertheless, it is not the case that mainstream political philosophy or professional politics are the only methods for formulating opinions on democracy. “Politics of art” would provide means of thinking upon becoming democratic since art—being a mode of thinking by itself—may place many issues about which one could talk only theoretically (or which would hardly become a part of daily life) on a living plane, even though that plane would solely exist in the world of the work of art. In brief, on the condition that it is not an apparatus of representation, art may turn into a medium of thinking upon becoming-democratic, in addition to all the other becomings that it is related to. (shrink)

Reports from antiquity — two factual and another based on myth — claim that Ptolemy I was a son of the Macedonian king Philip II. If so, Ptolemy was a half-brother of Alexander the Great. Scholars suppose that this rumour was promoted by Ptolemy I. But this cannot be confirmed. It seems rather that Arsinoë, the mother of Ptolemy I, was a concubine at the court of Philip II and that a rumour existed that Ptolemy I was illegitimately born. This (...) rumour developed in two separate ways. In Macedon, probably in the late 280's BCE, it was claimed that the father of Ptolemy was Philip II. The story may have been inspired by Ptolemy Keraunos in the course of his quest for the Macedonian throne. In Egypt, however, in spite of an apparent reluctance of Ptolemy I to link Lagos with his name, it was officially proclaimed in the reign of his son that Lagos was the father of Ptolemy I. It is possible thereby that Ptolemy II removed the stigma of bastardy from the first Ptolemaic king. (shrink)

We introduce Kripke models for propositional substructural logics with strong negation, and show the completeness theorems for these logics using an extended Ishihara's canonical model construction method. The framework presented can deal with a broad range of substructural logics with strong negation, including a modified version of Nelson's logic N$^-$, Wansing's logic COSPL, and extended versions of Visser's basic propositional logic, positive relevant logics, Corsi's logics and M\'endez's logics.

Higher-order theories of consciousness come in many varieties, but all adopt the 'transitivity principle' as a central, explanatory premise. The transitivity principle states that a mental state of a subject is conscious if and only if the subject is aware of it. This higher-order awareness is realized in different ways in different forms of higher-order theory. I argue that empirical studies of metacognition have falsified the transitivity principle by showing that there can be awareness of a mental state without that (...) state's becoming conscious. I present two such studies in detail and argue that the measures they employ cannot be interpreted in a way that would make the results compatible with higher-order theory. Since all versions of the theory rely on the transitivity principle, this entails that all forms of higher-order theory are false. (shrink)

Structural changes in the spiritual life of the world and Ukraine reflect the paradigmatic directions of the development of society at the global and local, community and individual levels. In this unique dynamics of transformation processes, special attention is given to issues related to the peculiarities of modern consciousness, including religious, which in the conditions of socio-cultural changes acquires new qualitative traits in all forms of expression. After all, the world, which is undergoing large-scale globalization transformations, is in search of (...) new meanings of its existence, a new humanistic image, a new holistic multidimensional anthropological concept. The problem of youth religious consciousness, which our research is aimed at, has recently become one of the most urgent ones. Therefore, the inner world of man, his ideological maxims and moral values, determine the direction of transformation not only of a particular individual, but of all humanity. (shrink)

It is not objectionable in modern science that the woman was deified earlier than her husband, and the sacred books of religions of the Abrahamic tradition capture the next stage of society's development: the transition to a new way of farming and the rule of man in all spheres of life. Judaism and Islam did not recognize the cult of the goddesses and always struggled with it. For the Jews, Yahweh was both a patron of women. In Judaism, a woman (...) does not actively participate in religious life. It is not necessary here, because its vital activity is itself a religious one. The functions of a woman in a family are identical to religious service. Each Jewish woman is a Goddess. Like God, she creates a man and she is unnecessary intercessor to the outside world. A man has to pray for her, for she is, by his very nature, the leader of the will of God. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the nature of Kierkegaard’s commitment to God’s loving providence as it shows itself in his writings in general, and in his remarks on Governance’s Part in his Authorship in particular. I argue that, for Kierkegaard, God’s loving providence is not an objective fact that he discovers as intervening in nature, history or in his private life and authorship. Rather, God’s loving providence is fundamentally hidden in the wretchedness of existence. God is like a hidden experimenter (...) who does not intervene in his experiment. Thus, the passion of faith determines the issue, for Kierkegaard. God’s loving Governance is realized in inwardness, in loving the neighbor, and in living this love in self-denial, obedience and suffering. (shrink)

As is known, the specifics of the domestic philosophy is, firstly, in its inextricable connection with the public-political life, and secondly, in the form of its existence, when the philosophical problems are not solved in philosophical treatises by the means of the classical wise man, but in literary works through the creation of artistic images, through the deepening of human psychology and, as a conclusion, the formation of values and ideals of personality and through personalities - the whole society.

On Buddhist philosophies and forecasting.

According to Anselm, all Divine qualities are tightly interrelated: they are implied by the unique central property of being absolutely perfect. In the second chapter of the Proslogium , Anselm claims that it is the essence of our concept of God that He is a being greater than which nothing can be conceived. From this, he argues, it is possible to infer that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and so on. In other words, given an absolutely perfect being we (...) can derive all the attributes commonly ascribed to Him. (shrink)

El mérito principal de este libro es la audacia de la perspectiva escogida: la disyuntiva, por decirlo sumariamente, “entre Dios y la nada”. Fiel a ella, y elevándola a condición de eje hermenéutico, Vicente Serrano reconstruye los hitos fundamentales del proceso, atendiendo especialmente al propio Jacobi, pero también a los “grandes” del Idealismo Alemán, así como a Nietzsche, a Heidegger, a Michel Foucault, a las diversas teorizaciones “posmodernas” —o no— de los últimos tiempos. Es posible, en efecto, que haya más (...) teología en la filosofía contemporánea, allí donde su presencia lo es bajo la forma de una abrasadora ausencia, que allí donde se ofrece a rostro abierto… ese es, en cualquier caso, el desafío hermenéutico de este trabajo memorable. Memorable también por su materialismo crítico de fondo. (shrink)

Molla Halil’e göre insanların bu dünyada yaptıkları iyiliklere karşılık Yüce Allah onları ahirette lütfuyla nimetlendirecek ve Cennetine koyacaktır. Bu, Allah’ın insanlara bir va‘didir. Allah va‘dinden asla dönmez. Çünkü Allah’ın va‘dinden dönmesi, O’nun hakkında bir eksiklik sayılır. Ancak bu durum O’nun için vucûbiyet ifade etmez. Vucubiyet kavramı çeşitli anlamlarda kullanıldığı için anlam kargaşasına yol açabilir. Buna sebebiyet vermemek için kelamda özellikle de bu makalede “zorunluluk” anlamına kullanılacak olup bazen gereklilik anlamı da ihtiva edebilir. Allah, kötülük yapanları ise adaletiyle cezalandıracaktır. Bu da (...) Allah’ın va‘îdi olup, va‘îdi’nden dönebilir. Bu, O’nun hakkında bir noksanlığa sebebiyet vermez. Çünkü cezalandırmaktan vazgeçmesi Allah’ın merhametinin ve lütfunun bir sonucudur. Bununla birlikte ne va‘d ve ne de va‘îd Allah’a vacip değildir. Molla Halil’e göre, büyük günah insanı imandan çıkarmaz. Mu‘tezile’ye göre büyük günah işleyen kimse dünyada ne mümin olur ne de kâfir ikisinin arasında bir yerde durur. Buna da fasıklık denir. Haricîlere göre ise, ister büyük, isterse küçük olsun, her türlü günah sahibini iman dairesinden çıkarır ve küfür dairesine dahil eder. Molla Halil’e göre, ahiret hayatı ruh ve cesetle birlikte olacaktır. Bu üm-metin günahkârlarına peygamberler, şehitler ve salih kimseler şefaat edecek-tir. Mu‘tezile‘ye göre şefaat sadece iyilerin derecesinin yükselmesi içindir. Günahkârlar için şefaat olmayacaktır. Günahkâr müminler Cehenneme girseler de ebedi kalmayacaklar. Kâfirlerin azapları ise devamlı olacak ve bunlar ebedi olarak Cehennemde kalacaklardır. Biz bu makalede önce sevap ve İkâb kelimelerinin lügat ve ıstılah anlamları üzerinde duracak, sonra bu bağlamda ayet ve hadislerde verilen bilgileri ve bunların açıklamalarını ele alacağız. Daha sonra Molla Halil’in bu konulara dair görüşlerini sunmaya çalışacağız. Onun sevap ve İkâb ile ilgili tanımlarını, bunların sonuçlarına dair yaşanacakları ve varılacak yerleri ele alan yaklaşımlarını sunmaya çalışacağız. Burada farklı görüşlere sahip olmaları nedeniyle çoğunlukla Mu‘tezile’nin ve az da olsa Haricilerin görüşlerine de mukayese oluşturması için değineceğiz. Burada sadece Molla Halil’in görüşlerini değil, onun içinden geldiği Ehli Sünnetin görüşlerini, sünni kaynakları temel alarak aktarmaya çalışacağız. (shrink)

Islamic ethics. ; Christian ethics. ; Ethics, Comparative.

On evidence of ancient cosmology found in Khmer temple ruins in Sakon Nakhon Province, Thailand.