In this essay I want to focus on a quality inherent in that range of feelings we associate with an experience described as ‘flow’. Csíkszentmihályi describes it as a state that arises in people involved in some skilled activity who become fully immersed in it; they reach a state of ‘intrinsic motivation’ and loss of self-awareness; their actions seem to occur spontaneously so that they seem to become simultaneously a passive witness to their own highly skilled agency. There are skilled (...) movements and manoeuvres in sailing in which the equipment becomes, as we say, “an extension of oneself”. Under these conditions the sailor has usually reached such a level of proficiency that the state of flow just described may obtain. Moments of flow are relatively rare, and are highly prized by those who know what to look for. Losing oneself in the activity in this way is one of its highpoints, a point which makes it thereby significant and meaningful. Excellence in sailing confers a kind of fulfilment we rarely attain. It is, for this reason, an ideal worth striving for. (shrink)

Should society intervene to prevent the risky behavior of precocious teenagers even if it would be impermissible to intervene with adults who engage in the same risky behavior? The problem is well illustrated by the legal case of the 13-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker, who set out in 2009 to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone, succeeding in January 2012. In this paper we use her case as a point of entry for discussing the fundamental (...) question of how to demarcate childhood from adulthood. After summarizing the case, we identify a ‘demarcation dilemma’ that frames much of the public and expert debate. On the one hand, it seems morally imperative ‘to treat like alike’, which means that both children and adults should be allowed to undertake all actions for which they have the relevant competences. On the other hand, requiring proportional treatment of children and adults seems to neglect the special nature of childhood as a distinct stage in life that ends at a specific age. We introduce the notion of a ‘regime of childhood’ to deal with this problem. This regime includes several dimensions, including the limited liability for children, the supervisory responsibilities of parents, the role of age-based thresholds, and the overarching purpose of childhood as a context for developing autonomy. We argue that, all things considered, there are good reasons not to shift to a regime that offers individual children the option of qualifying for adulthood on the basis of age-neutral criteria. (shrink)

This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to sailing and the profound lessons (...) it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike. (shrink)

The Starz series Black Sails, while serving as a prequel to Treasure Island and thus providing intriguing backstories for such characters as James Flint, Billy Bones, and (of course) Long John Silver, portrays a realistic account of early eighteenth century pirate life in the Caribbean. In doing so, the show conveys intriguing insights into and applications of social contract theory reasoning, and both explicitly and implicitly asks questions about how those applications, especially as they pertain to the nature of government, (...) democracy, equality, tolerance, and justice, help us understand our own society more fully. (shrink)

This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to sailing and the profound lessons (...) it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Phenomenology of Moral Presence at Sea Tragic Comedy (or Comic Tragedy): The Paradox of Sailing.

The history of science is increasingly directing its attention to the diachronic examination of women's involvement within spaces dedicated to scientific inquiry. While this field of study boasts rich and meticulous historiography, delving into the sixteenth century leaves the impression of encountering either a noticeable absence of women in the realm of natural history or an underexplored period in this regard. Undoubtedly, within the Italian context of the time, the cultural milieu shaped by the Counter-Reformation further heightened the social challenges (...) faced by women.Notwithstanding these challenges, a noteworthy female figure emerges in the latter half of the sixteenth century – Francesca Fontana, the second wife of the natural history scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605). From an overall view of the sources, Fontana seems to assume a pivotal role in the realization of collections and works attributed to the eminent naturalist. This study aims to delineate the role played by Fontana within Aldrovandi's ‘officina naturale.’ By examining the available documents in a chronological order, my aim is to provide insights into the evolution of her education and her practical and technical skills, harnessed in the pursuit of her husband's enterprises and scholarly contributions. (shrink)

This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to sailing and the profound lessons (...) it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike. (shrink)

This thesis examines necessary truth and defends a normative, or linguistic, account of it. Roughly, it holds that necessary truths state or follow from conceptual norms (i.e., norms that determine patterns of correct concept use). While the thesis touches upon logical and mathematical truth, its primary focus are those necessary truths typically expressed using natural language. The thesis has three parts. In Part I, I criticise metaphysical accounts of necessity and present and defend a normative account of it. At no (...) point do I give a history of normative accounts, but clearly their roots are to be found in the first half of the twentieth century – in the works of Wittgenstein and Carnap, for example. In Part II, I consider whether language can sustain the normative account. Some argue that the account requires language to be regimented in a way that it is not. I show that while it requires a distinction in kind between empirical and conceptual principles, it nevertheless makes room for indeterminacy regarding whether a given statement is an empirical claim or follows from conceptual norms. Finally, in Part III, I consider the relationship between the world and our conceptual scheme. I argue that denying our concepts answer to the world does not mean that they cannot be justified. The normative account does not say that we have no reasons for categorising things in a certain way, but rather that natural facts, in combination with our interests, are fit to provide them. The purpose of the thesis is to show that normative accounts of necessity can be much more robust than they are often given credit for and needn’t have the malign implications often associated with them. (shrink)

This paper deals with the deuteros plous, literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s Phaedo, the key passage being Phd. 99e4-100a3. I argue that (a) the ‘flight into the logoi’ can have two different interpretations, a standard one and a non-standard one. The issue is whether at 99e-100a Socrates means that both the student of erga and the student of logoi consider images (‘the standard interpretation’), or the student of logoi does not consider images but (...) that “consistency should suffice for truth” (‘the non-standard interpretation’); (b) the non-standard one implies the problem of the hypothesis, a problem analogous to the problem of the elenchus; (c) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’ ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th Meditation and the final proof for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. (shrink)

This book scrutinizes the practice of sailing and its relation to philosophy of mind. Sailing brings about a peculiar human-artifact interaction which can lead to unexplored research paths. The idea behind this collection is that this interaction is better scrutinized by sailor scientists/philosophers to open up new possible pathways in research. Fascinating theoretical breakthroughs have been provided by observing sailing practices with the most well-known being Hutchins’ introduction in cognitive science of the concept of “distributed cognition.” However, in times past, (...) sailing has both fueled philosophical metaphors, from Theseus’ ship to Plato’s image of the intellect as the boatperson of the soul, and inspired philosophers’ views. The ecology of sailing is highly constrained: sailboats move at the surface between a compressible fluid and an uncompressible fluid. Wind originates in certain specific circumstances. Only certain sequences of actions are possible to take advantage of this ecology. The ontology of sailing is both of the boat and of the ocean/wind system. It highlights the fact that sailboats have been for centuries arguably the most complex technological artifacts in each culture that developed them, precisely because the environment they are engaging is so peculiar and demanding - almost the precise dual of Sapiens’ adaptive environment. This volume will appeal to philosophers of mind, cognitive psychologists, and marine professionals. (shrink)

BackgroundMoral case deliberation is one form of clinical ethics support, and there seems to be different ways of facilitating the dialogue.PurposeThis paper aimed to explore Swedish facilitators' experiences of their role in moral case deliberations.MethodThis study had a qualitative approach with explorative design. Semi-structured interviews with eleven MCD facilitators were conducted. Their experiences were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultBeing a facilitator was understood through the metaphor of sailing: against the wind or with it. The role was likened to a sailor's set (...) of skills: to promote security and well-being of the crew, to help crew navigate their moral reflections, to sail a course into the wind against homogeneity, to accommodate the crew's needs and just sail with the wind, and to steer towards a harbour with authority and expertise. Balancing the disparate roles of being accommodative and challenging may create a free space for emotions and ideas, including self-reflection and con... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Key: Losing Oneself Windsurfing Performance, Psychology, and Embedded Cognition Windsurfing and Flow.

Contemporary analytic philosophy is dominated by metaphilosophical naturalism, the view that philosophy ought to be continuous with science. This naturalistic turn is for a significant part due to the work of W. V. Quine. Yet, the development and the reception of Quine’s naturalism have never been systematically studied. In this paper, I examine Quine’s evolving naturalism as well as the reception of his views. Scrutinizing a large set of unpublished notes, correspondence, drafts, papers, and lectures as well as published responses (...) to Quine’s work, I show how both internal tensions and external criticisms forced him to continuously develop, rebrand, and refine his metaphilosophy before he explicitly decided to label his view ‘naturalism’ in the late 1960s. (shrink)

Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitchy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles (...) of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions as they are relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and related concepts. I go on to contend that these concepts, properly understood, serve as helpful test cases concerning some important issues in contemporary aesthetics, such as the paradox of negative art and the contentious debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists. (shrink)

It is tempting to see in the life of Archimedes an event that could serve as a foundational moment to the myth of the Archimedean point, where the promised firm point from which to move the earth is itself given a basis and physical context for exposition. As earthbound as Archimedes himself, this foundation is not celestial – not a point in the far reaches of space – but rather terrestrial in nature, located in proximity to the border of land (...) and sea. It is the moment when Archimedes the mathematician launches a half-built ship with the aid of one of his inventions. Further details and further interpretations are open to debate. The ship in question, the Syracusan, seems to have been no ordinary one. The .. (shrink)

This paper focuses on segmenting digital movie and TV series pirates and on investigating the effectiveness of piracy-combatting measures i.e., legal and educational strategies, in light of these segments. To address these research objectives, two online studies were conducted. First, 1277 valid responses were gathered with an online survey. Four pirate segments were found based on differing combinations of attitude toward piracy, ethical evaluation of piracy and feelings of guilt. The anti-pirate, conflicted pirate, cavalier pirate, and die-hard pirate can be (...) placed on a continuum of increasing pirating frequency, subjective norm, pirating self-efficacy, habit, and decreasing in perceived harm, respectively. The segments also differ in deontological and teleological orientations. Second, in an experimental mixed design, we find that the educational strategy is more effective than the legal strategy in lowering pirating intentions for the conflicted and cavalier pirate. However, both strategies fail at lowering intentions of the die-hard pirate, although perceived harm and perceived impunity were significantly influenced. These findings offer a more profound understanding of pirate segments and how they react differently to piracy-combatting measures. As a result, better strategies can be developed to control digital piracy. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had far-reaching effects on public health around the world. Attempts to prevent the spread of the disease by quarantine have led to large-scale global socioeconomic disrup- tion. During the outbreak, public authorities and politicians have struggled with how to manage widespread ignorance regarding the virus. Drawing on insights from social epistemology and the emerging interdisciplinary field of ignorance studies, this article provides evidence that the temporality of non- knowing and its intersection with knowing is (...) a force that leads political decision-making during a crisis. Illuminating the epistemic analysis with statements given by the Finnish government to the media in decision- making documents and in press conferences, this paper proposes that a crisis situation, itself, seems to demand from political decision-makers dynamic action while simultaneously knowing little (‘non-knowing’) about the different fronts of tackling the pandemic. We conclude that non-knowing must be recognized explicitly as an enduring and central condition in deci- sion-making, which we call ‘epistemic humility.’. (shrink)

Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitschy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles (...) of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions, relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and related concepts. I go on to contend that these concepts, properly understood, serve as helpful test cases concerning some important issues in contemporary aesthetics, such as the paradox of negative art, and the contentious debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists. (shrink)

The archipelago context of Maluku represents the living dynamics of Christian communities in that area, which becomes an ecclesiological foundation of the Gereja Protestan Maluku. Christianity, the embryo of the GPM, is the fruit of the evangelical works by European missionaries, particularly Dutch missions from the 18th century onwards. The Dutch-type Christianity had been adapted into models so that the form of institution and Protestant teachings in Maluku moved dynamically following socio-political and cultural changes along with the colonial and the (...) post-colonial history of Indonesian and Malukan society. It attempts to describe the manifestation of the Calvinism-model of Christianity that is continuously being contextualised through absorbing various elements of worldview, tradition, and the religiosity of the archipelago society. Cultural hermeneutics is used to interpret the socio-cultural phenomena in which the church lives in and to construct its theological understanding about Christian identity. The ecclesiological construction of GPM, in turn, is structured by plural social orders. The reality also influences the perspective about GPM from many different worldviews of the Malukan archipelago society. The contextual ecclesiological perspective, therefore, is constructed based on intermingled understandings that theology of the church can only be built by considering multifold dimensions of a particular society. The result of this research pertains to the constructive understanding of a specific ecclesial context of the GPM in their struggles for theologising their existence as God’s people and, at the same time, as an integral part of certain society in Maluku and Indonesia.Contribution: As the living contextual church that struggles for proclaiming God’s love, the GPM has a theological responsibility to conduct its church mission based on its ecclesiological understanding and practices contextually. The article contributes to the enrichment of the theological discourse on the crucial roles of a church in Maluku, in the eastern part of Indonesia. (shrink)

"Both superb and essential... Succi, with clarity and wit, takes us from quarks and Boltzmann to soft matter - precisely the frontier of physics and life." Stuart Kauffman, MacArthur Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Gold Medal Accademia Lincea We live in a world of utmost complexity, outside and within us. There are thousand of billions of billions of stars out there in the Universe, a hundred times more molecules in a glass of water, and another hundred times (...) more in our body, all working in sync to keep us alive and well. At face value, such numbers spell certain doom for our ability to make any sense at all of the world around and within us. And yet, they don't. Why, and how - this book endeavours to provide an answer to these questions with specific reference to a selected window of the physics-biology interface. The story unfolds over four main Parts. Part I provides an introduction to the main organizational principles which govern the functioning of complex systems in general, such as nonlinearity, nonlocality and ultra-dimensions. Part II deals with thermodynamics, the science of change, starting with its historical foundations laid down in the 19th century, and then moving on to its modern and still open developments in connection with biology and cosmology. Part III deals with the main character of this book, free energy, and the wondrous scenarios opened up by its merger with the modern tools of statistical physics. It also describes the basic facts about soft matter, the state of matter most relevant to biological organisms. Finally, Part IV discusses the connection between time and complexity, and its profound implications on the human condition, i.e. the one-sided nature of time and the awareness of human mortality. It concludes with a few personal considerations about the special place of emotions and humility in science. (shrink)

Propositions 1. The assumption that innovation can be regulated towards societally desirable outcomes cannot be maintained. 2. The inclusion of society in innovation requires active involvement of individual citizens beyond representative stakeholders. 3. The most urgent priority for science is to restore societal trust in its practice. 4. In the current research system, the pursuit of science conflicts with the pursuit of profit. 5. The commodification of personal data is morally indefensible. 6. The inclusion of philosophy as a mandatory part (...) of the education system will contribute to the creativity and resilience of the next generations. Propositions belonging to the thesis, entitled "Raising the Sail of Innovation: Philosophical Explorations on Responsible Innovation". (shrink)

Edward S. Casey offers a phenomenology of memory and imagination in his book Spirit and Soul, which provides a unique opportunity for thinking about the very ethereal and aqueous activity of sailing. Imagination and memory are as much a part of everyday life as most forms of mentation; but sailing, as much as it is a physical activity, is just as much a suitable analogy for engaging with these particular psychic forms. In their collaboration, memory and imagination are a means (...) for balancing the sails with the wind just as much as they provide equilibrium to the temporal expanse of conscious unification. But perhaps mostimportantly, in their spiritual and soulful employment, imagination and memory provide a place and a home for dwelling and sailing. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Appendix: Analysis of the Wind‐Powered Boat.