We prove that modal definability with respect to the class of all structures with two commuting equivalence relations is an undecidable problem. The construction used in the proof shows that the same is true for the subclass of all finite structures. For that reason we prove that the first-order theories of these classes are undecidable and reduce the latter problem to the former.

Fitouchi et al.'s moral disciplining approach highlights the significant role social evaluations of self-control appear to play in human moral judgment. At the same time, attributing the wide range of puritanical concerns to a singular focus on self-control seems unwarranted. A more pluralistic approach would enrich understanding of moral judgment in all its cultural and historical diversity.

У статті досліджено взаємозв'язок проблеми самотності та самогубства. Встановлено, що причиною виникнення самотності є втрата почуття єдності людини зі світом та нерозв'язність екзистенційних потреб людського буття. Визначено, що умовою подолання стану самотності й запобігання самогубству є формування почуття єдності людини зі світом.

Individuals with heavy paid and unpaid work burdens may experience time deprivations that restrict their well-being and put them at risk of becoming or remaining income poor. Because unpaid work outside of the market is not captured in most large survey-based datasets, time poverty is rarely recognized in policy and practice. Yet income poverty and time poverty are mutually reinforcing; they can sap energy and impede effective decision-making, thus perpetuating the state of poverty. This essay offers a five-step approach to (...) conceptualizing and measuring time poverty and it compares time poverty rates by gender across a range of developing countries. Results show that women have higher time poverty rates than men in most cases, with the main exception being countries with low rates of female labor force participation. Policies that strengthen physical and social infrastructure, thereby decreasing the time needed for unpaid household work, have demonstrable effects on reducing time poverty. (shrink)

The article examines the earliest evidence of transmission of Indian and Buddhist ideas. The aim is to outline a schematic mental “map” of the first contacts between Ancient Greece and Europe during the early Middle Ages and India in a socio-cultural and religious-philosophical aspect, without claiming absolute comprehensiveness. The historical-philosophical method was used in order to establish the lines of reception, to discover the specifics of the changes during its transmission and, accordingly, the differences that appeared, and to indicate the (...) historical-philosophical connections and moments of “intersection” of the two traditions under consideration. The proposed article is the beginning of a series of articles that will explore in a similar manner the development of the “Indian thread” in Europe until the flowering of mature Indology in the 18th century, as until now there is no similar presentation in the Bulgarian language. The aim is not to bring to the fore a supposed influence on Christianity, nor to debate which came first, but only to show that familiarity with Indian philosophy-religious reality is not something that appears 'suddenly'. The study of the historical-philosophical context of each of the periods would provide clarity on the level of familiarity and the method of reception and interpretation of the "new knowledge" on which to base texts on East-West dialogue in modern times. (shrink)

The current state of Ukrainian society is characterized by socio-economic instability, there are dynamic, unique processes in which each person is involved. In this connection, there are increasing demands on the professionalism of specialists in the field of practical psychology, their philosophical counseling in the context of postmodernism, aimed at helping people become the subject of their life, work, social and value relationships, to teach them to find meanings and maximize self-actualization. This is represented in the change of priorities in (...) the professional development of practical psychologists, its focus on the development of specialists' subjectivity, their ability to independently solve professional and life tasks. An important role in enhancing the development of professionalism is the understanding of the essential characteristics of existential professional activity, expressed most often in professional meanings and values. The basis of a meaningful professional and personal life is the key ability of the practical psychologist to see and accept the needs of the profession and life and to find the most correct explanations for them. The purpose of the article is to investigate the importance and necessity of the activity of a practical psychologist, its peculiarities, the study of types of psychological aid: counseling, psychological rehabilitation, correction, psychotherapy, training, education and prevention; as well as the need to identify the main areas of professional activity of practical psychologists in the context of postmodernism. (shrink)

From the beginning of the scientific revolution, scientists, philosophers, and laypersons have been concerned about the effects of knowledge on social relations. Although views differ about the details of this knowledge-society interface, most observers have understood that the kind of knowledge that emanates from establishedscience can indeed be quite powerful in practice. In exploring both the nature of race science discourse and selected features of the practical context within which it resonates effectively, the authors' investigationsof this field and its contribution (...) to the Holocaust represent an effort to specify some of the things that make knowledge powerful. (shrink)

Physicians have an ethical responsibility to their patients to offer the best available medical care. This responsibility conflicts with their role as gatekeepers of the limited health care resources available for all patients collectively. It is ethically untenable to expect doctors to face this trade-off during each patient encounter; the physician cannot be expected to compromise the wellbeing of the patient in the office in favour of anonymous patients elsewhere. Hence, as in other domains of public policy where individual and (...) collective interests conflict, some form of collective solution is required. Collective solutions may take the form of placing explicit resource constraints on resources available to physicians, or clinical practice guidelines that recognise cost-effective care as acceptable. Such solutions will be politically and ethically sustainable only if patients as citizens of the larger population accept the need for rationing of limited resources in health care. (shrink)

The author tries to find a place of religious education in religious traditions of the Baha'i Faith. The main objectives of the research are: 1. to clarify the meaning of terms "education", "learning", "upbringing" and limits of their application in the field of education of the Baha'i faith; 2. to clarify the meaning of terms "religious education", "religious learning", "religious upbringing" and limits of their application in the field of education of the Baha'i faith; After the analysis of the main (...) terms of research the author introduced two concepts to describe the educational issue in the Baha'i Faith: "Pedagogy of the Baha'i", which is further used in the value system that combines the processes of education, learning and upbringing in the confessional tradition of the Baha'i faith; "Religious pedagogy Baha'i" as a system that combines the processes of religious education, religious learning, religious upbringing. Pedagogy Baha'i is used in schools, colleges, universities and other social and educational projects, created on the initiative of the Baha'i believers and religious principles of this religious tradition. Religious pedagogy Baha'i describes the processes of providing religious knowledge, skills and abilities (the study of the Scriptures and the sacred history of the Baha'? faith, learning the rules of the confession of religious traditions and religious activities, etc.), and upbringing in the spirit of the Baha'i believers - inculcation of religious virtues. The author comes to the conclusion that religious pedagogy Baha'i originates from the main purpose of religious revelation of Baha'u'llah - teaching people the rules of life, the Laws of God, the faith. (shrink)

Over the past years, various accounts of ethical consumption have been produced which identify certain concepts as central to mediating the ethical relationship between the consumer and the consumed. Scholars across disciplinary fields have explored how individuals construe their ethical consumption responsibilities and commitments through the notions of identity, taking care and doing good, proximity and distance, suggesting the centrality of these themes to consumer engagement in ethical practices. This paper contributes to the body of research concerned with unravelling consumers’ (...) conceptually mediated relationship to moral and ethical issues in the sphere of consumption by revealing a new set of ideas through which people interpret and relate to consumption ethics. Drawing upon findings from an empirical study on self-perceived ethical food consumers, I demonstrate that people’s perceptions and views of ethical problems around consumption are bound up with notions of vulnerability, suffering, and harm, and that these notions permeate and impact all aspects of ethical consumer behaviour. The paper concludes by arguing that we need to further explore the conceptual underpinnings of ethical consumer commitments and practices, and expand the conceptual toolkit of research on ethical consumption to account for a wider range of ideas and notions that shape individual as well as collective motivations, intentions, and actions throughout the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. Finally, the paper suggests a specific analytical framework to facilitate such research. (shrink)

In this study, we analyze the development conditions of and trends in Ukrainian scientific art during the ongoing war with the Russian Federation. Based on our own experience, we demonstrate how the emphasis, values, and goals of scientific art shift under martial law. We also highlight the challenges and difficulties faced by Ukrainian artists and researchers who found themselves in the occupied territories. Our own experience involves the promotion of the scientific and artistic project “Nanoart. Science is art” and its (...) transformation into a socio-patriotic project “Nanoart. New symbolism of science.” We use this example to show how trends in art, culture, and science change very quickly under critical conditions. Art during the war has military and liberation themes, while artists and scientists during the war are warriors on the cultural and scientific fronts. (shrink)

In the following paper, Annemiek Richters of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands addresses the dilemmas faced by health professionals who are asked to evaluate and provide supporting documentation for those refugees who seek political asylum in the countries of Europe. It is in the politically charged arena of asylum applications, government regulations, and public policy where bioethics, human rights, and health converge. Despite the 1951 Convention on Refugees, a treaty signed by nations around the world to safeguard the (...) rights of those who are displaced, and other treaties that protect the rights of vulnerable populations, refugee and asylum policies have become increasingly strict in an effort to deter those who would seek safety. This tightening of borders in the countries of the West challenges physicians who find themselves caught between obligations to treat, to advocate, and to challenge policies that make treatment a potentially dangerous proposition. Unfortunately, the World Trade Center attacks have exacerbated the problem by labeling asylees and refugees as potential terrorists and subject to deportation. (shrink)

In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego Freud addresses the problem of how groups are formed or of how society is possible. The question of the possibility of society presupposes that in some sense human beings are not thoroughly social beings, that they must agree to or be made to participate in a common life in which they submit to general principles regulating their conduct towards one another. The notion that the grounds for social order cannot be taken (...) for granted originates in the beginnings of modern thought, particularly in Hobbes’ Leviathan, in which the classical idea that human beings are essentially social and political animals is rejected in favor of the view that the individual is in a basic sense independent of society and opposed to it, and that society is merely a conventional unity. For Hobbes, society is primarily a defensive alliance guaranteed by fear of a sovereign who constitutes a legal order. Social order, then, is imposed externally on the individual, who submits to regulation only on the basis of prudence. The history of thought about the problem of order after Hobbes’ initial attempt to resolve it is a development of more refined motives for obedience, which culminates in Kant's notion of a self-legislated moral law. The importance of Kant's solution is that it provides a positive ground for society. Human beings do not merely submit to standards because they are inclined to, either out of fear or out of desire, but because they acknowledge a rational principle to which they give their voluntary assent. For Hobbes, society is at least an imposition and at most an expedient. For Kant, society may, indeed, be both an imposition and an expedient, but it is also an order of life that might be perfected. In Kant's view, human beings are imperfectly rational beings, not organisms entirely ruled by pleasure and pain, as they were for Hobbes. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 2 Seiten: 893-902.

This article addresses concerns about the relationships between practice and theory in today's theatre and examines the discipline's analytical methodology. This contribution re-introduces Yuri Lotman's concept of semiosphere as an anthropological and social space of communication, in which every participant maintains their existence concurrently across temporal, linguistic, and cultural zones. Finally, by launching the notion of a theatrical semiosphere that embraces the dynamics of cognitive impulse in the tripartite proximity of the space of the stage, the space of the audience, (...) and the space of the “in between,” this study seeks to demonstrate how the transitory nature of theatrical communication directed at the multiple audio-visual, cognitive, and cultural sensors of actors and spectators can still be considered and studied from the perspective of semiotic exchange as the primary device of human cognition. (shrink)

This paper provides a detailed comparison between discourse representation theory and dependent type semantics, two frameworks for discourse semantics. Although it is often stated that DRT and those frameworks based on dependent types are mutually exchangeable, we argue that they differ with respect to variable handling, more specifically, how substitution and other operations on variables are defined. This manifests itself in two recalcitrant problems posed for DRT; namely, the overwrite problem and the duplication problem. We will see that these problems (...) still pose a challenge for various extended compositional systems based on DRT, while they do not arise in a framework of DTS where substitution and other operations are defined in the standard type-theoretic manner without stipulating any additional constraints. We also compare the notions of contexts underlying these two kinds of frameworks, namely, contexts represented as assignment functions and contexts represented as proof terms, and see what different predictions they make for some linguistic examples. (shrink)

The essay offers lyrical and philosophical-aesthetic reflections on the power and unpredictability of the feeling of love, as celebrated in different times in the “Song of Songs,” in Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev's sophiology, and in the poetic work of Oscar Wilde and Russian religious poet Nikolai Klyuev.

This paper engages with two contrasting approaches to conceptualising and studying consumer behaviour that appear to dominate existing research on consumption. On one hand, agency-focused perspectives take an individual consumer to be the primary author of practice and a basic unit of analysis. On the other hand, socio-centric paradigms focus on the social roots of consumption activities and the wider societal contexts in which they take place. The need to provide a more balanced view of consumption phenomena has been acknowledged, (...) yet not adequately acted upon. This paper begins to fill this gap through relevant theoretical and empirical contributions. First, we provide a critical review of the dominant theoretical perspectives on consumption in general and ethical consumption in particular, highlight their key ontological assumptions and explain how they preclude a fuller understanding of the ways in which consumer practices are moulded and shaped. Taking a critical realist approach, we then present the findings from qualitative analysis of consumers' ethical food practices to empirically demonstrate the role of human agency and social structure in creating and shaping ethical consumption. Thus, by means of theoretical analysis and empirical research this paper responds to the call for a more comprehensive understanding of consumption and provides a consolidated account of consumer behaviour which acknowledges and explains the complex ensemble of individual and systemic powers in which consumer practices are contained. (shrink)

The article reveals the peculiarities of spreading Reformation ideas in Slovakia during the first half of the sixteenth century. It is emphasized that Reformation ideas were being distributed on the territory of Slovakia in three ways; the Quirinal, in particular, Queen Mary played a significant role in these processes. Leonard Stöckel, a distinguished teacher, theologian, humanist, nevertheless, contributed greatly to the development of these processes. He is the author of «Confessio Pentapolitana», which is one of the oldest documents on the (...) history of Hungarian Protestantism serving as the basis for accepting the forthcoming Symbols of Faith. Stöckel’s outlook was formed under the influence of the European Enlightenment. He established new contacts: Stöckel made friends with an eminent European humanist – Philipp Melanchthon, who was his teacher. The proof of it is a joint edition of Melanchthon’s «Loci communes» and Comments on «Loci communes», which was published posthumously in Basel in 1561. Consequently, at the request of residents of Bardejov L. Stöckel became the headmaster of the town school. In the summer of 1539 he left Wittenberg. L. Stöckel’s return to his hometown Bardejov marked the beginning of a new period in his life. He deceased in 1560. (shrink)

For both its enthusiastic adherents as well as its more generous opponents, liberalism commands considerable ethical appeal but at a price. And that price is its lack of systematic integrity or coherence. The charm of its ethical appeal stems from the great values which it celebrates. But for many these very values seem fatally incommensurable, seem to be forever colliding with and thwarting one another. As Isaiah Berlin has never tired of reminding us, liberty and equality continue to defy our (...) best efforts to reconcile them, to weave them together in some kind of orderly and compelling way. Liberalism, in other words, is flawed, if not tragically flawed. For those who nevertheless remain charmed by its ethical appeal, the tragedy of the incommensurability of its basic values is disappointing and disturbing. (shrink)

This paper examines the undervalued role of Herbert Spencer in Sidgwick's thinking. Sidgwick recognized Spencer's utilitarianism, but criticized him on the ground that he tried to deduce utilitarianism from evolutionary theory. In analysing these criticisms, this paper concludes that Spencer's deductive methodology was in fact closer to Sidgwick's empiricist position than Sidgwick realized. The real source of Sidgwick's unhappiness withSpencer lies with the substance of Spencer's utilitarianism, namely its espousal of indefeasible moral rights.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionAnthropocene Feminisms: Rethinking the UnthinkableClaire Colebrook and Jami WeinsteinIn her recent lecture on the Anthropocene (to which she adds the Capitalocene and the Chthulucene), Donna Haraway expresses some alarm that after two major insights into what counts as thinkable, it was “anthropos” that became the term for the post-Holocene (Haraway 2014). Haraway declares, with emphasis, that it is “literally unthinkable” to work with the individual unit of “man” if (...) one is to do good intellectual work. For Haraway, the two knowledge events that ought to have precluded the use of the figure of the “anthropos” are: first, the acceptance that any seeming individual is the outcome of a series of complex relations and must be studied as such (so there would be no epoch with anything, let alone “man,” as its first cause), and, second, intellectual inquiry has acknowledged a general becoming-with, such that in order to be anything at all, “one” must be in a dynamic relation. Haraway’s work is exemplary of post-liberal feminist resistance to the figure of man—as subject, agent, and center of knowing. Terms like “Woman” or “the feminine” do not extend the field occupied by man; they instead create a different intensity. So when Haraway questions the “anthropos” of the Anthropocene she neither asks that women, too, be included in those who have scarred the planet, nor does she claim that “Woman” would occupy some innocent outside. Instead, she proposes that one think of the “anthropos” as untimely, as out of sync with an intellectual milieu that theorizes the death of the subject and the eclipse of the human, and has even begun to renounce the notion of life in itself. It is odd that in the face of this destruction of any possibility of thinking by [End Page 167] way of individualism, the epic gesture of the present deploys the figure of the “anthropos,” as it should be unthinkable today to return to the figure of man.When Haraway invokes what is literally unthinkable, and then gestures to the Anthropocene, she suggests that perhaps the figure of the Anthropocene is a form of unthinking, and that it is precisely when complexities, timescales, predictions, manageability, and any form of sustainability ought to disturb and trouble our logics that we cease to think and ask for a single cause for an entire epoch. If this is so, and the “anthropos” of the Anthropocene is a reaction formation, then we might see the skirmishes and turf wars that surround the golden spike1 as diversions. If we spend our time disputing just when it was that man started to change the planet, then we allow a contested point in time to pass itself off as thinking, all the while allowing the intensive multiplicity of what has come to be known as the Anthropocene to remain unthought. By asking when the Anthropocene began, we revive a modified version of the time of man; once again, man is placed as the agent of history, albeit unwittingly, and he can look back upon and assess the past of his own making. Haraway is not alone in suggesting that such conceptions of a single line of time, and a conception of first cause, are highly gendered and racialized. The figure of “man” who creates his own history and recognizes himself as having come into being through a time that is readable is bound up with hegemonic conceptions of modernity, and has long been the target of feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critique (e.g., Foucault 1970; Amin 1989; Grosz 2004). If it is literally unthinkable to do good work from the premises of a methodological individualism, then asking who or what caused the Anthropocene, or when it began, would amount to a form of un-thinking or not-thinking. At the same time, perhaps the Anthropocene is literally unthinkable in a sense that marks a more positive and profound absurdity. Let us accept, following Haraway, that all “good work” both acknowledges the impossibility of accounting for the complexity of life by way of bounded, individual singularity, and dispenses with the exceptional man of reason as its foundation. If we do, what the Anthropocene... (shrink)

Compilation of lectures and letters on Buddhism.

Spinoza's heritage has been occluded by his incorporation into the single, western, philosophical canon formed and enforced by theologico-political condemnation, and his heritage is further occluded by controversies whose secular garb shields their religious origins. By situating Spinoza's thought in a materialist Aristotelian tradition, this book sheds new light on those who inherit Spinoza's thought and its consequences materially and historically rather than metaphysically. By focusing on Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein explores the manner in which Spinoza's radical (...) critique of religion shapes materialist critiques of the philosophy of history. Dobbs-Weinstein argues that two radically opposed notions of temporality and history are at stake for these thinkers, an onto-theological future-oriented one and a political one oriented to the past for the sake of the present or, more precisely, for the sake of actively resisting the persistent barbarism at the heart of culture. (shrink)

At the end of his writing, “La Différance,” Jacques Derrida deconstructs his text by taking on an authoritative rhetorical tone. Reflecting back on his discussion of metaphysics, Derrida announces that “(t)here will be no unique name, even if it were the name of Being”. And then he takes a surprising phenomeno-logical turn and advocates a privileged attitude or disposition towards his reflection:And we must think this without nostalgia, that is, outside the myth of a purely maternal or paternal language, a (...) lost native country of thought. On the contrary, we must affirm this, in the sense in which Nietzsche puts affirmation into play, in a certain laughter and a certain step of the dance. (shrink)

This essay examines D. G. Ritchie's claim that Principally, it endeavours to determine what Ritchie means by and what kind of utilitarianism he thinks evolutionary theory vindicates. With respect to the kind of utilitarianism vindicated, I will show how he tries to fortify Millian liberal utilitarianism with new liberal values such as self-realization and common good. Ritchie's intellectual debts were eclectic and included mostly Mill, T. H. Green, Hegel and Herbert Spencer.