"Few of Randall's nearly 1800 photographs were seen or even printed until 1998, when he donated the negatives to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. The following year, more than 100 of the photographs were exhibited on that campus as part of a commemoration of the 35th anniversary of Freedom Summer. Those photographs are now presented in this book, enhanced by Bobs Tusa's extensive introduction. Faces of Freedom Summer offers a rare and moving visual record of a remarkable era (...) in American history."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

"This is the most thorough architectural 'crit' of a hut ever set down, the justification for which is that the hut was the setting in which Martin Heidegger wrote phenomenological texts that became touchstones for late-twentieth-century architectural theory."--from the foreword by Simon SadlerBeginning in the summer of 1922, philosopher Martin Heidegger occupied a small, three-room cabin in the Black Forest Mountains of southern Germany. He called it "die Hütte". Over the years, Heidegger worked on many of his most famous writings (...) in this cabin, from his early lectures to his last enigmatic texts. He claimed an intellectual and emotional intimacy with the building and its surroundings, and even suggested that the landscape expressed itself through him, almost without agency. In Heidegger's Hut, Adam Sharr explores this intense relationship of thought, place, and person.Heidegger's mountain hut has been an object of fascination for many, including architects interested in his writings about "dwelling" and "place." Sharr's account--the first substantive investigation of the building and Heidegger's life there--reminds us that, in approaching Heidegger's writings, it is important to consider the circumstances in which the philosopher, as he himself said, felt "transported" into the work's "own rhythm." Indeed, Heidegger's apparent abdication of agency and tendency toward romanticism seem especially significant in light of his troubling involvement with the Nazi regime in the early 1930s.Sharr draws on original research, including interviews with Heidegger's relatives, as well as on written accounts of the hut by Heidegger and his visitors. The book's evocative photographs include scenic and architectural views taken by the author and many remarkable images of a septuagenarian Heidegger in the hut taken by the photojournalist Digne Meller-Markovicz.There are many ways to interpret Heidegger's hut--as the site of heroic confrontation between philosopher and existence; as the petit bourgeois escape of a misguided romantic; as a place overshadowed by fascism; or as an entirely unremarkable little building. Heidegger's Hut does not argue for any one reading, but guides readers toward their own possible interpretations of the importance of "die Hütte.". (shrink)

The Collegium Phaenomenologicum has met in Umbria, Italy every summer since 1976; only COVID made it pause, and hopefully only temporarily. It has been a forum for deep and broad discussion of the phenomenological tradition; it has also been a place where that tradition has itself been broadened and deepened by generations of thinkers who came to study the classical texts and to do phenomenology. In 2019, over the course of three weeks in July, in three lecture courses, several talks (...) by visiting faculty, twelve text seminars sessions, art workshops, and very many informal talks over dinner, on the terrace, and on long walks through the town of Città di Castello and beyond, the Collegium worked on the question of critical phenomenology. (shrink)

This article integrates the history of military theory – and the practical history of military campaigns and battles – within the broader history of knowledge. Challenging ideas that the new natural philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the so-called Scientific Revolution) fostered attempts to make warfare mathematically calculated, it builds on work showing that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy was itself much more subjective than previously thought. It uses the figure of King Frederick II of Prussia (reigned 1740–1786) to (...) link theoretical with practical military knowledge, placing the military treatises read and written by the king alongside the practical example of the Prussian army’s campaign against the Russians in summer 1758 at the height of the Seven Years War (1756–1763), which culminated in the battle of Zorndorf. This article shows that both the theory and practice of war – like other branches of knowledge in the long eighteenth century – were fundamentally shaped by the contemporary search for intellectual order. The inability to achieve this in practice led to a reliance on subjective judgment and individual, local knowledge. Whereas historians have noted attempts in the eighteenth century to calculate probabilities mathematically, this article shows that war continued to be conceived as the domain of fortune, subject to incalculable chance. Answering Steven Shapin’s call to define concretely “the subjective element in knowledge-making,” the examples of Frederick and his subordinate, Lieutenant General Count Christoph zu Dohna, reveal sharply different contemporary ideas about how to respond to uncertainty in war. Whereas Dohna sought to be ready for chance events and react to them, Frederick actively embraced uncertainty and risk-taking, making chance both a rhetorical argument and a positive choice guiding strategy and tactics. (shrink)

The European Summer Schools in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) have been organised every year since 1989 under the auspices of the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI) in different cities around Europe. The 24th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2012) took place at the University of Opole, Poland, during August 6-17, 2012. The organisation committee was chaired by Janusz Czelakowski and Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Opole) and the programme committee (...) was chaired by Andreas Herzig (University of Toulouse and CNRS). During two weeks, over 340 participants from 36 countries were offered a rich academic program of their choice from 9 foundational, 16 introductory and 17 advanced courses and 6 workshops. Just as in the previous years, the 17th conference on Formal Grammar collocated with ESSLLI. Besides the regular courses, a traditional highlight of the summer school were the 4 evening lectures by distinguished academics: - Johan van Benthem (Institute for Logic, Language & Computation (ILLC), Amsterdam and Department of Philosophy, Stanford University), "Computation as Agency''; - Melvin Fitting (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, City University of New York), "Reasoning About Games''; - Jonathan Ginzburg (UFR Études anglophones, Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7)), "False starts, jokes, and music:semantics in the 21st century''; - Adam Przepiórkowski (Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), "Secret life of corpora''. Another traditional event was the student session, organised by a student programme committee chaired by Rasmus K. Rendsvig (University of Copenhagen): master and doctoral students presented 16 papers and 5 posters, and Michał Zawidzki obtained the best paper award and Raul Fervari obtained the best poster award. Moreover, the Beth Dissertation Prizes were announced at the FoLLI General Meeting and went to Andreas Kapsner (University of Barcelona) and Daniel R. Licata (Carnegie Mellon University). Apart from the busy academic programme, participants of the summer school were offered an exciting social program as well. In addition to the traditional ESSLLI Party and the famous Students vs. Lecturers Soccer Match (also called `Johan van Benthem Cup'), kayaking, and excursions to Kraków and Wrocław were offered. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response 4: The Summer of Our DiscontentCaroline EdwardsI write this response on the eve of another wave of industrial action in the UK in November 2022—the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) “UCU Rising” campaign, the latest in a series of regular disputes over pay and working conditions, the gender and ethnicities pay gap, and casualisation that has been ongoing since 2018. In 2022’s “summer of discontent,” we’ve seen our (...) rail, maritime and transport workers, airport staff, bus drivers, telecommunications workers, postal workers, nurses, refuse workers, and higher and further education staff engage in ongoing industrial disputes with intractable bosses. Even criminal barristers continue with an indefinite, uninterrupted strike after years of government cuts and chronic underinvestment. Everywhere you look, there is a palpable sense of a country on its knees. It’s nearly 100 years since the last General Strike of 1926 and in the UK it’s looking increasingly likely that we will have another General Strike on our hands soon. In “Two Cheers for Blueprints, or, Negative Reasons for Positive Utopianism” Antonis Balasopoulos contextualizes this within the longer economic durée of the shift from Fordist production to so-called flexible accumulation after 1972, writing in this issue that “the turn of capital to the faster and higher [End Page 554] profits involved in financialization rather than infrastructural and industrial investment, form much of the objective, structural ground for what can only be described as the rapid rise of a dystopian structure of feeling in western societies since the early 1970s.” Antonis’s brilliant summary reminds us of the monumental scale of the challenges facing utopian thought and praxis in our current moment. Make no mistake—the “crisis ordinariness” of everyday life under late capitalism that Lauren Berlant identified in Cruel Optimism (2011) has intensified in the years following the Global Financial Crisis (2007–8), the wave of Occupy protests in 2011, and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–). “For some time now,” as Antonis writes, the utopian goals of “happiness, fulfilment, [and] emancipation... have been out of the question altogether.”It’s hard not to agree with this assessment, given the current chaos of life in the UK. Adam Stock’s roundtable contribution “Funding Utopia: Utopian Studies and the Discourse of Academic Excellence” focuses on the academy’s complicity with the neoliberal financialization of what were previously protected as public goods (education, our health service, transport infrastructure, and so on) over the past three decades. As Adam notes, the rhetoric of “excellence” that has come to dominate all areas of university life—teaching, research, public engagement, and the quantifiable “impact” of university research beyond the academy—is really just another way of using competition to mask the market logic of scarcity. Swingeing cuts to publicly funded research have led to a scarcity of resources in scholarly knowledge production, which is legitimated through the discourse of “excellence” and “prestige.” Only a handful of elite research leaders are granted awards and the value of all research becomes judged by its proximity to this distribution (concentration) of wealth within a small number of institutions. Defending education as a public good has long given way to the desperate, existential struggle for survival at UK universities. Numerous institutions are on the brink of bankruptcy, which was the goal all along for the ideologically driven Office for Students (OfS). Market exit, as they euphemistically term it, proves market efficiency.At my own institution, Birkbeck, University of London, the challenge to utopian thinking is all too violently clear. Birkbeck has a special place in the UK higher education system—a university founded nearly 200 years ago in the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand (it was called the London Mechanics’ Institution back then) to offer education to working-class Londoners that [End Page 555] fitted around their busy working lives. As my colleague Joanna Bourke writes in Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People (2022), life expectancy in the poorest parts of London was just twenty-nine years; cholera, typhoid, and typhus were major killers; and illiteracy was widespread. At Birkbeck, we are the only university to teach evening classes and offer the requisite support... (shrink)

In the summer of 2016, the University of Dallas and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México organized a conference to discuss the topic of the middle class and its continued decline—recognizing that, despite some historical, political and cultural differences, healthy democracies throughout the hemisphere depend upon a strong and prosperous middle class. This volume brings together contributions by nine scholars from both institutions. The chapters reflect diverse disciplinary perspectives that are historical, political, economic, anthropological, and philosophical. Despite this diversity, the (...) volume possesses a conceptual unity that stems from its foundation in Aristotle’s approach to the middle class. On this basis, the topic is given a rigorous study that is both theoretical and data-driven. The chapters include treatments of Aristotle, Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart, Catholic social teaching, the problem of inequality in the US, the definition and measurement of the middle class in Mexico, as well as its values and political attitudes, the rise of middle-class politics in early-twentieth-century Latin America, and a comparative analysis of healthcare for the middle class in North America. (shrink)

Researchers have raised concerns about teachers’ ability to embed nature of science in their science instruction, a complicated situation that is certainly impacted by the availability of adequate resources to assist K-12 science teachers. In light of the implementation of the ideas from the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards in the USA, this study sought to identify and evaluate resources aimed at guiding NOS instruction. A search of the National Science Teachers Association database for (...) Next Generation Science Standards -aligned instructional resources resulted in an analytical sample of eight lessons. All materials accompanying these lessons were analyzed for their representations of 10 NOS aspects. The evaluation of these materials revealed a prevalence of implicit, naïve representations in the sample lessons. Examination of the connections to NOS in these lessons leads to a set of recommendations to improve the quantity and quality of NOS representations in future NGSS-aligned instructional resources. The analytical approach used and the issues raised about the presentation and treatment of NOS in precollege lessons are of interest to the broader science education community. (shrink)

People with Scrupulosity have rigorous, obsessive moral beliefs that lead to extreme and compulsive moral acts. These fascinating outliers raise profound questions about human nature, mental illness, moral belief, responsibility, and psychiatric treatment. Clean Hands? Uses a range of case studies to examine this condition and its philosophical implications.

One way in which information about the unknown is socialized to children is through adult testimony. Sharing false testimony about others with children may foster inaccurate perceptions and may result in prejudicially based divisions amongst children. As part of a larger study, mothers were instructed to read and discuss an illustrated story about Arab-Muslim refugees from Syria with their 6- to 8-year-olds. Parent-child discourse during two pages of this book was examined for how mothers used Islam as a talking point. (...) Results indicated that only 50% of mothers and 13% of children shared accurate testimony about Islam. However, while 35% of children admitted uncertainty in their knowledge, only 3% of mothers admitted uncertainty. These results highlight the importance of parents sharing the confidence in their knowledge. If parents teach inaccurate information about other religions, it may create a greater divide between children of different religious backgrounds. (shrink)

This paper considers the implications of precautionary restrictions against technologies, in the context of the potential for creating and sustaining rumours. It focuses on the restriction against mobile phone use at petrol stations, based on the rumour that a spark might cause an explosion. Rumours have been substantiated by precautionary usage warnings from mobile phone manufacturers, petrol station usage restrictions, and a general lack of technical understanding. Petrol station employees have themselves spread the rumour about alleged incidents, filling the information (...) gap about the basis for the restriction. (shrink)

Natural ecosystems provide important services upon which humans depend. Unfortunately, some people tend to believe that these services are provided by nature for free; therefore, the services have little or no value. One nearly forgotten ecosystem service is ecotherapy – the ability of interaction with nature to enhance healing and growth. While we do not pay for this service, its loss can result in a cost to humans resulting in slower recovery times, greater distress and reduced well-being. Losses in these (...) images of nature can diminish our basic happiness. Little is understood or, at least, appreciated concerning the potential ecotherapy benefits of the natural environment and its ecosystem services. The complex and interactive relationship of ecosystems, their services and human well-being is poorly acknowledged in the broad social, philosophical, psychological and economic well-being literature. In this article, we examine the role of nature and its ecosystem services in ecotherapy and its associated enhancement of recovery from physical and mental illness through a review of studies evaluating this ecosystem service-recovery connection. (shrink)

A simple argument suggests that we can fruitfully model advanced AI systems using expected utility theory. According to this argument, an agent will need to act as if maximising expected utility if they’re to avoid exploitation. Insofar as we should expect advanced AI to avoid exploitation, it follows that we should expected advanced AI to act as if maximising expected utility. I spell out this argument more carefully and demonstrate that it fails, but show that the manner of its failure (...) is instructive: in exploring the argument, we gain insight into how to model advanced AI systems. (shrink)

It is commonly held that political ignorance is rational, a response to the high costs and low benefits of acquiring political information. But many recent critics of the claim that political ignorance is rational instead urge that it is a simple consequence of agents not concerning themselves with the acquisition of political information whatsoever. According to such critics, political ignorance is inadvertent radical ignorance rather than a rational response to the incentives faced by agents in democracies. And since political ignorance (...) is not a response to incentives, these critics urge, it cannot be ameliorated by incentivizing the acquisition of political information. This paper has two goals. First, I show that these seemingly competing accounts of political ignorance are in fact complementary, together explaining much political ignorance. Indeed, there is a sense in which political ignorance can be both rational and radical at the same time. Second, I more closely examine the relationship between incentives, kinds of political ignorance, and the acquisition of political information. On the one hand, from the fact that political ignorance is rational it does not follow that it can be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. On the other hand, from the fact that political ignorance is radical it does not follow that it cannot be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. Lastly, the complexity of the information in question is more relevant to determining whether ignorance can be overcome than whether such ignorance is rational or radical. (shrink)

An argument for the inclusion of the human perspective within science and how it makes science possible.

This article uses behavioral theories to develop an ethical decision-making model that describes how psychological factors affect the development of unethical intentions to commit fraud. We evaluate the effects of the dark triad of personality traits on fraud intentions and behaviors. We use a combination of survey results, an experiment, and structural equation modeling to empirically test our model. The theoretical insights demonstrate that psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism affect different parts of the unethical decision-making process. Narcissism motivates individuals to act (...) unethically for their personal benefit and changes their perceptions of their abilities to successfully commit fraud. Machiavellianism motivates individuals not only to act unethically, but also alters perceptions about the opportunities that exist to deceive others. Psychopathy has a prominent effect on how individuals rationalize their fraudulent behaviors. Accordingly, we find that the dark triad elements act in concert as powerful psychological antecedents to fraud behaviors. (shrink)

In 2021, the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (hereafter, BICS) sponsored an essay competition (hereafter, the Contest) designed to solicit the best evidence for the hypothesis that human consciousness survives bodily death, and more specifically, evidence that would prove this hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt. The summer 2022 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration featured a special subsection on the BICS contest and its winning essays. Robert Bigelow and Colm Kelleher outlined the motivation, design, and judging criteria for the (...) competition. Keith Augustine provided an extensive critical commentary on the contest design and eight of its prominent winning essays. Stephen Braude and several coauthors responded to Augustine’s criticisms, and Augustine provided a reply to Braude and his collaborators. Finally, the subsection concluded with a collaborative paper in which Etienne LeBel, Adam Rock, and Augustine proposed a more rigorous experimental design for testing the survival hypothesis. Augustine presented important criticisms of the Contest and several of its prominent winning essays. Moreover, many of his criticisms apply to survival literature in general and so are instructive for the wider survival debate. And Braude, one of the most important contributors to the survival debate since C.D. Broad and C.J. Ducasse, was at the helm of the reply to Augustine. Although the response to Augustine raised important concerns about skeptical assessments of the evidence for survival, it was hamstrung with several defects. 1. Preliminaries 2. Problematic Aspects of the Reply to Augustine 3. What is the Question? Honing in on the Actual Disagreement 4. Inference to Best Explanation 5. Confirmation Approaches to Evidential Support -- 5.1 Evidential Justification -- 5.2 When Does an Observation Favor One Hypothesis Over Another Hypothesis? The Law of Likelihood -- 5.3 When Should We Up Our Confidence in a Hypothesis? Incremental Confirmation -- 5.4 How Can We Determine the Net Plausibility of a Hypothesis? Bayes’ Theorem and Posterior Probabilities -- 5.5 Which of Two Hypotheses is More Probable than the Other? Principle of Contrastive Posterior Probabilities -- 5.6 When Does Evidence Justify Believing a Hypothesis? Principle of Absolute Confirmation -- 5.7 Survivalist Confusions about Bayesian Analyses -- 5.8 The Washing Out of Priors -- 5.9 The Subjectivism Objection -- 5.10 Summing Up Insights from Confirmation Theory -- 6. Back to Braude 7. Varieties of Skepticism 8. Neurophysiological Evidence and the Survival Hypothesis 9. The Data from Mediumship 10. The Alleged Improbability of Fraud and Other Counterexplanations 11. Mediumship and the Logic of Confirmation 12. The Significance of Failed Tests 13. Survivalist Rescues and Contrastive Confirmation 14. Evidential Support without Predictions -- 15. The Testability Problem -- Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

We study logics determined by matrices consisting of a De Morgan lattice with an upward closed set of designated values, such as the logic of non‐falsity preservation in a given finite Boolean algebra and Shramko's logic of non‐falsity preservation in the four‐element subdirectly irreducible De Morgan lattice. The key tool in the study of these logics is the lattice‐theoretic notion of an n‐filter. We study the logics of all (complete, consistent, and classical) n‐filters on De Morgan lattices, which are non‐adjunctive (...) generalizations of the four‐valued logic of Belnap and Dunn (of the three‐valued logics of Priest and Kleene, and of classical logic). We then show how to find a finite Hilbert‐style axiomatization of any logic determined by a finite family of prime upsets of finite De Morgan lattices and a finite Gentzen‐style axiomatization of any logic determined by a finite family of filters on finite De Morgan lattices. As an application, we axiomatize Shramko's logic of anything but falsehood. (shrink)

Beginning with a critical examination of the humanist assumptions of critical ethnography, this article interrogates and surfaces problems with the ontological and epistemological orientations of this research methodology. In drawing on exemplar empirical data from an arts‐based project, the article demonstrates the limitations in the humanist‐based qualitative research approach and advances a postdualist, postrepresentationalist direction for critical ethnography called entangled ethnography. Using data from a larger study that examined the perspectives of racialized mad artists, what is demonstrated in this inquiry (...) is that the entanglement of bodies, objects, and meaning‐making practices is central to working with the ontologically excluded, such as those who find themselves in various states of disembodiment and/or corporeal and psychic distribution. We propose the redevelopment of critical ethnography, extended by entanglement theory (a critical posthuman theory), and suggest that for it to be an inclusive methodology, critical ethnography must be conceptualized as in the process of becoming and always in regeneration, open to critique, extension, and redevelopment. (shrink)

This artists’ text examines the relationship between photographic images and Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) environments. We note that such scripted image worlds necessitate a fundamental reconsideration of the capacities of image, its formation, reproduction, storage and circulation. As an archaeologist would document an excavation, extending conventional methods through 3D visualization technology to work in new ways with the archaeological record, we chose to document a world built and razed digitally by a now dormant group of anonymous gamers called the Yung (...) Cum Bois (YCBs). We turn to some definitions of griefer as a subcultural phenomenon within online culture to attempt to contextualize our involvement some more, thinking through the forms of image-gathering that grief play has generated, such as scripted object attacks where image-objects spawn and self-replicate, continually spurting out copies of themselves, lagging the region, slowing down frame rates, consuming land resources. Here we witness images blockading network logistics. This was active fieldwork. We got involved. We applied visualization technology learnt from archaeological computing research to the avatars, temporary structures and abandoned ruins of an online world, Second Life (SL). We patched together a kind of virtual photogrammetry, enabling the monumentalization of avatars, objects and scenarios, recompiling these into new configurations and uploading them freely to be reused, detourned and weaponized by our virtual friends. We situate this endeavour within a cobbled history of imaging technology, the networked self and its pathologies, riffling through our own image dump. Here. (shrink)

& The functional equivalence of overt movements and dynamic imagery is of fundamental importance in neuroscience. Here, we investigated the participation of the neocortical motor areas in a classic task of dynamic imagery, Shepard and Metzler's mental rotation task, by time-resolved single-trial functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The subjects performed the mental-rotation task 16 times, each time with different object pairs. Functional images were acquired for each pair separately, and the onset times and..

What do horror films reveal about social difference in the everyday world? Criticism of the genre often relies on a dichotomy between monstrosity and normality, in which unearthly creatures and deranged killers are metaphors for society's fear of the "others" that threaten the "normal." The monstrous other might represent women, Jews, or Blacks, as well as Indigenous, queer, poor, elderly, or disabled people. The horror film's depiction of such minorities can be sympathetic to their exclusion or complicit in their oppression, (...) but ultimately, these images are understood to stand in for the others that the majority dreads and marginalizes. Adam Lowenstein offers a new account of horror and why it matters for understanding social otherness. He argues that horror films reveal how the category of the other is not fixed. Instead, the genre captures ongoing metamorphoses across "normal" self and "monstrous" other. This "transformative otherness" confronts viewers with the other's experience-and challenges us to recognize that we are all vulnerable to becoming or being seen as the other. Instead of settling into comforting certainties regarding monstrosity and normality, horror exposes the ongoing struggle to acknowledge self and other as fundamentally intertwined. Horror Film and Otherness features new interpretations of landmark films by directors including Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Stephanie Rothman, Jennifer Kent, Marina de Van, and Jordan Peele. Through close analysis of their engagement with different forms of otherness, this book provides new perspectives on horror's significance for culture, politics, and art. (shrink)

There are 1,000 of us and one victim. We each increase the level at which a ‘discomfort machine’ operates on the victim – leading to great discomfort. Suppose that consecutive levels of the machine are so similar that the victim cannot distinguish them. Have we acted permissibly? According to the ‘no-difference argument’ the answer is ‘yes’ because each of our actions was guaranteed to make the victim no worse off. This argument is of interest because, if it is sound, similar (...) arguments threaten intuitive moral verdicts about many cases in which a large number of individual choices cumulatively make a great difference, while each choice seems to make no difference on its own. But the argument is not sound, as is shown by a simple objection based on a plausible dominance principle – an objection that avoids challenges that have been brought against previous criticisms of the no-difference argument. (shrink)

In The Birth of Ethics, Philip Pettit carefully argues that Erewhonians would develop concepts that closely resemble our normative concepts – including our moral concepts – and that this reveals a great deal about the nature of normativity in general and morality in particular. The purported revelations about morality include: Thesis #1: Moral concepts ascribe natural properties. Thesis #2 “Full-scale” moral realism is true. Thesis #3: There is a sufficiently good answer to the question, “Why be moral?”In this paper, I (...) do not question Pettit's ingenious argument that the Erewhonians' conceptual repertoire would expand in the way described in his narrative. I instead question whether this narrative supports these metaethical theses. I argue that if our moral concepts were expressively equivalent to Erewhonian moral concepts, that would not ground a “full-scale” moral realism, nor would it give us a sufficiently compelling answer to the question “Why be moral?” Furthermore, I argue that our moral concepts are not expressively equivalent to Erewhonian moral concepts, which puts pressure on the argument that our moral concepts ascribe natural properties. Finally, contra Pettit, I argue that moral concepts do not play the same function in our lives as the analogous concepts play in Erewhonians' lives. (shrink)

Political writings of eighteenth-century France have been so far mostly overlooked as a source of republican thought. Philosophers such as Condorcet actively promoted the ideal of republicanism in ways that can shed light on current debates. In this paper, I look at one particular source: Le Republicain, published in the summer 1791, focusing on previously unattributed articles by Condorcet’s wife and collaborator, Sophie de Grouchy. Grouchy, a philosopher in her own right, is beginning to be known for her Letters on (...) Sympathy, a response to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment, which she published at the same time as her translation of that text into French. I argue, further, that in the texts, which I attribute to Grouchy, we can find the early development of a commercial republican theory, a belief, which is reflected in her discussion of the ‘cost’ of tyranny. (shrink)

Many viruses evolved mechanisms for capping the 5′‐ends of their plus‐strand RNAs as a means of hijacking the eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA) splicing/translation machinery. Although capping is critical for replication, the RNAs of these viruses have other essential functions including their requirement to be packaged as either genomes or pre‐genomes into progeny viruses. Recent studies indicate that human immunodeficiency virus type‐1 (HIV‐1) RNAs are segregated between splicing/translation and packaging functions by a mechanism that involves structural sequestration of the 5′‐cap. Here, (...) we examined studies reported for other viruses and retrotransposons that require both selective packaging of their RNAs and 5′‐RNA capping for host‐mediated translation. Our findings suggest that viruses and retrotransposons have evolved multiple mechanisms to control 5′‐cap accessibility, consistent with the hypothesis that removal or sequestration of the 5′ cap enables packageable RNAs to avoid capture by the cellular RNA processing and translation machinery. (shrink)

1 października 2019 roku dotychczasowa Sekcja Filozofii Przyrody, składająca się z Katedry Filozofii Przyrody, Katedry Filozofii Przyrodoznawstwa oraz Katedry Metodologii Nauk Systemowo-Informacyjnych, została przekształcona w Katedrę Filozofii Przyrody (KFP). W okresie od utworzenia Katedry Filozofii Przyrody do końca 2022 roku aktywność naukowa jej pracowników obejmowała: realizację indywidualnych i wspólnych programów badawczych i związaną z nimi działalność publikacyjną; udział w konferencjach naukowych; spotkania w celu omówienia bieżących spraw organizacyjnych; spotkania tematyczne, poświęcone prezentacji realizowanej problematyki badawczej oraz dyskusji nad prezentowanymi treściami. -------------------------- (...) Zgłoszono: 20/02/2023. Zrecenzowano: 28/03/2023. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 30/03/2023. (shrink)

Those who occupy positions of authority such as public officials and corporate executives frequently find themselves in contexts in which their choices can be expected to have consequences regarding the distribution of benefits and burdens among various stakeholders. How should such people reason in such contexts so as not to be biased? Herein I set forth and critically examine two answers to this question. The first is based on the work of John Rawls and is intuitively attractive. Nevertheless, I argue (...) that there is reason to question its plausibility. The second is based on the work of John Finnis and is initially not intuitively attractive. Nevertheless, I develop a defense of it. If my defense of the second answer is plausible, what those who occupy positions of authority should do so as not to be biased when making choices in contexts of distributive choice is quite different than what is commonly supposed. (shrink)

In 1929, Martin Heidegger announced a new fundamental term in his thinking: Wal- ten. Heidegger uses Walten to designate the primal ontological force of nature, but also brings it into connection with administration (Verwalten), specifically linking it to university administration. The article argues that in the Black Notebooks Heidegger develops a philosophical conception of administrative practice in the midst of his own administrative practice as university Rector in the era of Gleichschaltung.

Philosophical counseling helps people see issues in their lives more clearly by making them the subject of philosophical conversations. For the most part, the language used during such conversations is phenomenologically transparent to the interlocutors, which means that it exists only at the background of their attention. However, there are exceptions. Sometimes, especially when dealing with particularly deep or elusive issues, some counselors find it appropriate to bring the language itself to the forefront of the client’s attention. This way of (...) speaking may be called opaque. The present paper argues that the use of opaque language in philosophical counseling allows people to disclose truth in a special, intimate manner. Philosophical counselors should master the art of switching between transparent and opaque language, in response to the needs of a given client and the pragmatics of a particular conversation. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of the possible applicability of the ideas of Karl R. Popper’s social and political philosophy in the contemporary political life of postcolonial countries. Through reference to the reception of Popper’s philosophy in Central and Eastern Europe, I argue that Popper’s writings were effective in catalysing the political wholesale transformation by undermining Marxists’ pretensions to scientific status rather than through his anti-utopian and anti-revolutionary political recommendations. In the context of attempts to apply Popper’s ideas (...) in postcolonial countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, I claim that the influence of Popper’s social thought on the politics of those countries may not be as effective as expected or desired. (shrink)

The Self is the first Polish translation of an excerpt from Shaftesbury’s notebooks entitled Askêmata. The text proves that these notebooks not only complement the contents of his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, the three-volume set which made Shaftesbury a famous and influential philosopher but is to be seen mainly as a kind of moral exercises and soliloquies in which Shaftesbury comments the works of the stoics: Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In one of the previous issues of „Folia Philosophica” (...) three other excerpts from the same set were published: Character and Conduct, Attention and Relaxation, and Improvement; the present one is a continuation of the series. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It's Not Always Just a RashAdam BossertI looked at the emergency department track board and saw a patient waiting for a provider who was "roomed" in a hallway stretcher with a chief complaint of a rash. I briefly considered his ultimate disposition, "He's probably fine. He can't be that sick if he was triaged as safe for the hallway." I was tired and close to the end of an (...) overnight shift and thought he would be a quick turnaround, likely discharged, since rashes are typically benign. I walked over to his stretcher after a quick chart biopsy that highlighted his mildly increased heart [End Page 24] rate on arrival as well as his history of polysubstance use and homelessness."Hey doc, I don't feel so good.""I'm sorry to hear that. What's specifically bothering you?""I am itching all over with these bumps. My skin is red, and I also think I'm withdrawing since I have body aches and chills."The interview continued.I discovered his last heroin use was approximately eight hours prior to arrival. I thought he was an ideal candidate for buprenorphine since he was actively withdrawing. I was recently licensed to prescribe this medication and excited to use my license for the first time. He declined the suggestion, however, preferring methadone instead. Buprenorphine can precipitate withdrawal if not given long enough after opioid use or if an incorrect dose is given; thus, many patients are hesitant to take it. He also stated he was predominantly here for his rash and did not want rehabilitation placement. I ordered our initiation methadone dose as well as a screening COVID-19 test and a urine drug screen test, which are both needed for rehabilitation placement in case he changed his mind.His rash was highly suspicious for scabies. He was covered with red bumps that spared only his face, some in linear distributions, and was actively scratching his arms and legs during the interview. I prefer oral ivermectin over topical permethrin for the homeless population simply for ease of administration, lower cost, and increased compliance. He received ivermectin for his scabies and knew he could return to the emergency department for a repeat dose if he was unable to fill a prescription.What happened next is, in my experience, an all-too-common scenario.The patient told me that the methadone is "doing nothing." I explained he could no longer take buprenorphine since he already received methadone, which only made him more frustrated. Unfortunately, I am restricted with the amount of methadone I can give in the emergency department, largely due to the drug's long half-life, and thus I was unable to give him more, let alone attempt titrating to his tolerance.Opioid withdrawal is not a life-threatening diagnosis; these patients are not typically admitted to the hospital. The management consists of initiating either methadone or buprenorphine, symptomatic treatment and then outpatient referral or rehabilitation placement. I explained the options to him, and he requested to be discharged since he was deferring rehabilitation. He was discharged. I was able to treat his rash but his chronic illness, opioid use disorder, was not controlled.I discharge a patient in opioid withdrawal or who has opioid use disorder almost every day, and I think most emergency medicine physicians would echo that statement. The disposition is not wrong from the perspective of the individual physician, but it feels like the system has failed these patients when I think of the frequency that they return and their baffling risk of overdose. The latter can be reduced by giving patients Narcan, the drug to reverse opioid overdose, upon discharge but this is just placing a bandage over the problem and not all emergency departments can fund this risk-reduction tool.I saw my patient's COVID-19 result return as I wrapped up my shift. It was positive. And, of course, he was in our department's hallway the whole time, only intermittently using his mask. I suddenly realized that while yes, he was withdrawing, he also may have had a symptomatic COVID-19 infection! I quickly reopened his chart, only to... (shrink)

1831 was a momentous year for Charles Darwin. He passed his BA examination on 22 January, stayed up in Cambridge for two further terms and returned to The Mount, his home in Shrewsbury, in mid-June. On 6 August he left Shrewsbury with Adam Sedgwick for a geological field trip to North Wales, and after his lone traverse over the Harlech Dome returned to The Mount on Monday 29 August to find letters from John Stevens Henslow and George Peacock inviting (...) him to joint HMS Beagle. This geological field trip was crucial for his work on the Beagle. For example, when he began his first geological work of the voyage on Quail Island, he was by that time a competent geologist. Though others have studied the North Wales tour in some detail, there is also another earlier and much briefer episode to consider. Darwin appears to have geologized on his own at Llanymynech in July. The contrast between his first recorded attempts at Llanymynech in July 1831 and then elsewhere in North Wales in August 1831 is most instructive, as his development as a geologist can be followed in his field notes. Retracing his steps today, and comparing his measurements and observations with new ones, throws light on what he might have learnt at different points during that summer. (shrink)