Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected students’ attendance in the universities and causes universities to close down in more than 190 countries. On the other hand, novice engineers studied only a few lectures related to highway engineering. Their lectures have included very little knowledge about asphalt pavement construction as highway engineering consists of many areas that are not studied in detail during their studying years subject to their traditional education. Due to all mentioned, (...) a new drive to promote online learning paves the way to evaluate our future approach to curriculum development and delivery of educational materials for engineering courses. However, experts can offer solutions to these problems using their past experience. Hence, a system that allows experts to share their experience with other engineers after completing a project is needed. Nevertheless, the web-based expert system for maintaining flexible pavement problems in tropical regions designed in this study is a novel concept. Prior to developing this system, the need for such a system was determined through literature review and validated through a questionnaire survey. Experts were interviewed, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to construct the knowledge base of the system. Knowledge was presented as rules and coded in software through PHP programming. Web pages that support the user interface were designed using a framework that consists of CSS, HTML, and J-Query. Furthermore, the system was tested by an array of users engaged in highway engineering, namely, experts, teaching experts, novice engineers, and students. The mean values of the overall system evaluation performed by 20 users using a five-point Likert scale were 4, 4.5, 3.75, 4.25, 5, 4, and 3.5. Expert and user satisfaction prove the effectiveness of the proposed system. (shrink)

Clark (2018) worries that predictive processing accounts of perception introduce a puzzling disconnect between the content of personal-level perceptual states and their underlying subpersonal representations. According to PP, in perception, the brain encodes information about the environment in conditional probability density distributions over causes of sensory input. But it seems perceptual experience only presents us with one way the world is at a time. If perception is at bottom probabilistic, shouldn’t this aspect of subpersonally represented content show up in consciousness? (...) To address this worry, Clark argues that representations underlying personal-level content are constrained by the need to provide a single action-guiding take on the environment. However, this proposal rests a conception of the nature of agency, famously articulated by Davidson (1980a,b), that is inconsistent with a view of the mind as embodied-extended. Since Clark and other enactivist PP theorists present the extended mind as an important consequence of the predictive framework, the proposal is in tension with his complete view. I claim that this inconsistency could be resolved either by retaining the Davidsonian view of action and abandoning the extended-embodied approach, or by adopting a more processual, world-involving account of agency and perceptual experience than Clark currently endorses. To solve the puzzle he raises, Clark must become a radical enactivist or a consistent internalist. (shrink)

Perception, according to advocates of the predictive processing (PP) framework in cognitive science, is a kind of controlled hallucination. Philosophers interested in PP, however, differ on how best to interpret this slogan. Does it suggest a new kind of idealism about perceptual objects or is it just a useful metaphor, illustrating something about how PP systems work without entailing a radical shakeup of mainstream realist views in the philosophy of perception? In this paper, I take a historically informed approach to (...) this question, drawing on the Kantian roots of the contemporary framework. What perception reveals, according to PP, is a world shaped by the neurocomputational capacities and limitations of perceiving creatures. This means that the properties of perceived objects are, in an important and surprising sense, perceiver-dependent. Nonetheless, thanks to the integration of perceptual and agential capacities envisioned by PP, we should also accept a central claim of realism: in encountering this world we also encounter—come to be acquainted with—mind-independent particulars. PP thus supports a promising next step in the development of a Kantian argument linking the unity of agency to the objectivity of perception. The argument was advanced in its modern form by P.F. Strawson and has later been developed by Susan Hurley and others. In the revised form presented here, it says that PP-perceivers must be practically self-aware agents and that practically self-aware agents embedded in an environment can be acquainted with objects it contains. (shrink)

The hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) casts human cognition as constitutively dependent on its bodily and environmental context. Drawing on recent empirical work on ‘cognitive offloading’, HEC’s defenders claim that information processing offloaded onto such brain-external resources is sometimes ‘genuinely’ cognitive. But while debates about offloading have a high profile in philosophy of cognitive science, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the fact that paradigm cases of offloading are intentional actions. As a result, opposition to HEC is driven in (...) part by unarticulated intuitions about the metaphysics of human agency. Thinking of action as a kind of interface between separately constituted intentions and bodily movements can make HEC look problematic. But while this view of agency has been popularised – most prominently by Donald Davidson – as analytic philosophy of action’s ‘standard story’, it has come under pressure from philosophers influenced by Elizabeth Anscombe’s very different account. According to this, actions express an agent’s intention only in so far as they fit into the right kind teleologically structured worldly context. In this paper, I’ll argue that HEC’s supporters should adopt an Anscombean model of action. That is, they should understand cognitive offloading as a manifestation of human agency’s general dependence on its bodily and environmental setting. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the musical work of classical composer Benjamin Britten as a lasting legacy for public music education. Our starting point is the contemporary urgency to rethink both public music education in general, and the public-educational significance of Western classical music in particular, in the face of the dual threats posed by anti-educational tendencies of “functionalization” and “hobbyfication.” Relating this situation to concerns already voiced by Britten in his time, we consider in what ways aspects (...) of Britten’s musical work can be shown to reveal a highly original, post-critical answer to these threats. While his pedagogical musings remain riddled with ambiguities, which readily invite critical deconstruction, our paper argues for the more affirmative option of reconceptualizing these ambiguities as constitutive tensions of a public-educational love for (classical) music. To gauge the practical implications of such a post-critical music-educational love, we analyze the concrete case of the Aldeburgh Festival, perhaps Britten’s most full-fledged effort to reclaim music as a public affair. Thinking about this case, we reflect on how Britten’s legacy could lastingly impinge on the publicness of Western classical music, as well as on ongoing and future practices of public music education in general. (shrink)

While Billy Budd's beauty has often been connected to his innocence and his moral goodness, the significance of the musical character of his beauty—what I will argue is the site of a struggle for political expression—has not been remarked upon by commentators of Melville's novella. It has, however, been deeply explored by Britten's opera. Music has often been situated at, or just beyond, the limits of communication; it has served as a medium of the ineffable, of unsaid and unsayable (...) truths (and lies), of an expressive power beyond language and reason. It is this expressive but communicatively problematic role that Billy embodies and that Billy Budd sets into political motion. In this essay, I would like to suggest that Billy's musical beauty can only be fully appreciated, and assumes full significance, when considered within the context of the various conceptions of beauty, and corresponding conceptions of authority, presented in the novella and in the opera. In particular, I will argue that Billy's beauty is a modern one that calls for the active participation of its audience. (shrink)

Islamic environmentalism is an intellectual movement whose representatives discuss contemporary environmental problems in the language of Islamic theology. This field includes Shariah-based environmental law, environmental activism, and environmental philosophy. This article is an overview of the genealogy of this philosophical trend: key names will be listed and their contributions to the development of this movement will be analyzed. For example, the legacy of Sayyid Hossein Nasr, considered the founding father of Islamic environmentalism, will be examined in detail. The religious and (...) ethical program of this philosophical movement will be analyzed in detail. The categorical apparatus to which Islamic eco-activists, philosophers, and ulema turned as the Islamic environmental agenda expanded will also be examined, such as how the concepts of khalifa, hima, and misan were conceptualized. Philosophers whose writings we will turn to include Iraqi philosopher and jurist Mawil Izzi Dien, British eco-activist Fazlun Khalid, Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Jumaa, and representatives of so-called “Western Islam” Ziauddin Sardar and Tariq Ramadan. The example of Indonesia will be used to examine how Islamic eco-theology has formed the basis of a multilevel environmental policy. The thesis of the fundamental contradiction underlying Islamic environm entalism is put forward. On the one hand, this movement in its present form genetically dates back to the European protest movements of the 1960s and 70s, which opposed the culture of mass consumption, impersonal materialism, and overproduction. On the other hand, an equally important part of the rhetoric of a number of Islamic modernists, including on ecology, is the emphasis on the break with Western neoliberal values. The special role of social media in the promotion of Islamic eco-activism is noted separately. (shrink)

The paper tries to show that an evolutionary perspective helps us to address what is called the adaptation problem, that is, the remarkable coherence, and seemingly successful design, existing between our cognitive tools and the phenomena of the material world. It argues that a fine-grained description of the structure and function of experimental techniques—as a special type amongst evolving scientific practices—is a condition for a better understanding and, ultimately, an explanation of how adaptation among the heterogeneous elements of experimental knowledge (...) is attained. Some apparently contradictory features of techniques, such as their high context-dependency and their capabilities to reproduce and diversify outside their original contexts, are addressed with the help of the concepts of technical variation and the historical entrenchment of phenomena in techniques. In order to do so, a case-study on the construction of satellite-DNA and the evolution of nucleic acid hybridization, a research project carried out by Roy J. Britten and his colleagues in the 1960s, is presented in detail. This case illustrates the close relationship existing between the evolution of techniques and the stabilization of phenomena in experimental biology. (shrink)

Cognitive science is a child of the 1950s, the product of a time when psychology, anthropology and linguistics were redefining themselves and computer science and neuroscience as disciplines were coming into existence. Psychology could not participate in the cognitive revolution until it had freed itself from behaviorism, thus restoring cognition to scientific respectability. By then, it was becoming clear in several disciplines that the solution to some of their problems depended crucially on solving problems traditionally allocated to other disciplines. Collaboration (...) was called for: this is a personal account of how it came about. (shrink)

Published in 1913, Thomas Mann's _Death in Venic_e is one of the most widely read novellas in any language. In the 1970s, Benjamin Britten adapted it into an opera, and Luchino Visconti turned it into a successful film. Reading these works from a philosophical perspective, Philip Kitcher connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. In Mann's story, the author Gustav von Aschenbach becomes captivated by an adolescent boy, first seen on the lido (...) in Venice, the eventual site of Aschenbach's own death. Mann works through central concerns about how to live, explored with equal intensity by his German predecessors, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Kitcher considers how Mann's, Britten's, and Visconti's treatments illuminate the tension between social and ethical values and an artist's sensitivity to beauty. Each work asks whether a life devoted to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements can be sustained and whether the breakdown of discipline undercuts its worth. Haunted by the prospect of his death, Aschenbach also helps us reflect on whether it is possible to achieve anything in full awareness of our finitude and in knowing our successes are always incomplete. (shrink)

The late Daniel Albright was one of the preeminent scholars of musical and literary modernism, leaving behind a rich body of work before his untimely passing. In the essays contained in Music's Monisms, he shows how musical phenomena, like literary ones, can be fruitfully investigated through the lens of monism, the philosophical belief that things that appear to be two are actually one. Albright shows how, in music, despite its many binaries-diatonic vs. chromatic, staccato vs. legato, major vs. minor, tonal (...) vs. atonal-there is always a larger system at work that aims to reconcile all tension and resolve all conflict. Albright identifies a "radical monism" in the work of modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and musical works by Wagner, Debussy, Britten, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, and also delves into figures such as Maeterlinck, Rimbaud, and Yeats along the way. Through a series of close readings of musical and literary works, Albright advances powerful philosophical arguments that not only shed light on these specific figures but also aesthetic experience in general. (shrink)

On average, “young” people underestimate whereas “old” people overestimate their chances to survive into the future. Such subjective survival beliefs violate the rational expectations paradigm and are also not in line with models of rational Bayesian learning. In order to explain these empirical patterns in a parsimonious manner, we assume that self-reported beliefs express likelihood insensitivity and can, therefore, be modeled as non-additive beliefs. In a next step we introduce a closed form model of Bayesian learning for non-additive beliefs which (...) combines rational learning with psychological attitudes in the interpretation of information. Our model gives a remarkable fit to average subjective survival beliefs reported in the Health and Retirement Study. (shrink)

A detailed theoretical analysis is presented of what five utility representations – subjective expected utility (SEU), rank-dependent (cumulative or Choquet) utility (RDU), gains decomposition utility (GDU), rank weighted utility (RWU), and a configural-weight model (TAX) that we show to be equivalent to RWU – say about a series of independence properties, many of which were suggested by M. H. Birnbaum and his coauthors. The goal is to clarify what implications to draw about the descriptive aspects of the representations from data (...) concerning these properties. The upshot is a sharp rejection of SEU and RDU and no clear choice between GDU and TAX, but a list of 8 properties is given that should receive more attention to discriminate between the latter two models. (shrink)

El presente artículo resume los fundamentos de la teoría estética formulada por Luigi Pareyson. La materia y la forma constituyen la obra y en ellas se da una unión entre lo espiritual y lo material mostrando la esencia de lo bello-verdadero en la trascendencia. La percepción de los sentidos y la interacción materia-espíritu nos llevará a las fuentes de la experiencia estética en tanto que experiencia del ser. Arvo Pärt lo manifestará así en Berliner Messe y Cantus in memoriam of (...) Benjamin Britten. La forma abre la materia al espíritu y el espíritu abre el arte a la trascendencia. (shrink)

Excerpt from Wirklichkeiten: Beitrge zum Weltverstndnis Cdie erften hrei 9 uffhe geben eine allgemeine hiftorifche @in eitnng unb gegen -c$nhe he? britten einen turg, en berbiicf her 23e tanfchauung, hie ha' Q3uch naher begrunhen (R)iefe entmi e ich im 8ufammenhange bi' 3um g'man5igften Q bfchnitt. (R)ie Iet3ten ?qftg'e enthalten in freierer ?infniipfung weitere 'j u'fiihrungen einiger chemata, hie, toie ich hoffe, g'ur @rluterung her beruhrten $ragen nicht unmillfommn fein wethen; man mirh ihnen hoher biefleicht nachfehen, haf3 ihre (c)chreibart mehr (...) feuiiietoniftifch gehalten ift; e'5 erfchien mir fein C5ehier, menu hiefeiben (c)runhgehanfen unter berfchiehener Qieleuchtung geaeigt werben. (R)en 2 rtifei ber aufere ?rume habe ich aufgenommen, weil mir hie harin enthaltenen (c)e bfb beobachtungen nicht ohne pfhchoiogifchecs' $ntereffe fchienen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.2 (2005) 142-145 [Access article in PDF] The Doing of Philosophy in the Music Class: Some Practical Considerations. Response to Bennett Reimer Mary J. Reichling University of Louisiana at Lafayette How I respond to Bennett Reimer's challenge depends in part on how we define philosophy in this context. We might think of philosophy as a subject of study, that is, philosophy in itself such (...) as epistemology, metaphysics, and so on. Or we may conceive it as philosophy of music, better designated as aesthetics. Or we may consider philosophy as a verb in the sense of "doing" philosophy where our goal is to assist students in developing their thinking skills. It seems that Reimer is placing focus on the last, the doing of philosophy, not that these other views of philosophy are mutually exclusive; they are not.Yet even this distinction is not sufficient for discussion. I am reminded of a little book edited by Eunice Boardman, titled Dimensions of Musical Thinking and published by MENC in 1989. It is a real gem with many fine ideas. In particular it stresses the relationship of content-area knowledge to thinking, and that is what I want to do. Developing thinking skills does not take place in a vacuum: "Now I am going to think." It occurs with respect to a subject area. We have philosophy of science, philosophy of history, philosophy of art, and so on, and philosophy of music.Further, our thinking about music occurs in at least two different ways. I suggest that music possesses both instrumental and intrinsic value with respect to philosophical analysis, as well as instances where the two values are combined. In pondering these values we bring together several so-called philosophical 'methodologies': the search for meaning or understanding, analysis, criticism, [End Page 142] and synthesis. In the process we build arguments that are consistent, coherent, and correspond with the musical evidence.1And further, in our field, students, whether it be through course content itself or through performance classes, have the advantage of gaining both propositional knowledge, learning that, for example, the rhythmic value of eighth notes, and procedural knowledge or learning how, for example, performing eighth notes vocally or instrumentally.2Both of which challenge the students' thinking skills.It is also important to articulate several assumptions if we aspire to "doing" philosophy within the teaching of music. These include a belief that it is worthwhile to develop such thinking skills as I have outlined; that we are willing to take the time for dialogue within the music class or rehearsal hour; and that we as teachers are willing to be facilitators of questions rather than experts with answers.I shall attempt with a few examples to show how these thinking processes might be integrated into the music curriculum following Jerome Brunner's view that children can be taught anything if done so at their level of understanding.The first example relates to the instrumental value of music as it supports text or programmatic conceptions. Let us consider the text of a particular song such as "Blowing in the Wind" or the "Kookaburra" song, the subject of an opera such as Berg's Wozzeck, or the topic of war as exemplified in Britten's War Requiem or some of the protest songs. We ask students how the extra musical subjects are established musically, how the music communicates the ideas, why one musical setting is preferred or better than another, and so forth. In dialoging about these examples, students must first of all be perceptive listeners or participants, then analyze at their level of ability. For an elementary child such analysis might be as simple as pointing out the tempo, mood, rhythms, dynamics, or other expressive elements. Advanced students will have a more extensive musical background to draw upon. Through the analysis students come to a synthesis of these factors that leads to greater understanding of the meaning of the music as they approach questions of value and beauty. If the teacher... (shrink)

If opera had existed in Elizabethan London, the world's Top Bard, as W.H. Auden called him, might have become the world's Top Librettist. As Gary Schmidgall shows in this illuminating study, Shakespeare's expressive ways and dramaturgical means are like those of composers and librettists in numerous and often astonishing ways. No wonder that well over two hundred operas have been based on Shakespeare's plays. Ranging widely through the Shakespearean canon and the standard operatic repertory, Schmidgall presents a fascinating comparison, focusing (...) on similarities of expressive style, scenic structure, staging, and performance practice. Shakespeare and Opera offers extended discussions of issues central to both theatrical genres, including their shared demand for virtuoso display, the comparable functions of set speeches and arias, and the similarities of verbal and musical rhetoric, and the charges of unreality and melodrama that have dogged them both. In addition, Schmidgall provides concise essays on the most intriguing Shakespeare-based operas, including works of Verdi, Wagner, Bellini, Rossini, Berlioz, Thomas, Vaughan Williams, Barber, and Britten. He enriches his argument with the insights of the great composers who never set Shakespeare (Mozart, Puccini, and Strauss among them), major observers of the legitimate stage (from Samuel Johnson to Eric Bentley) and the musical stage (from Joseph Addison to Joseph Kerman), as well as the incisive views of influential artists, critics, and performers as diverse as Walt Whitman, H.L. Mencken, and Laurence Olivier. For all who love the stage, Shakespeare and Opera offers endless insight and fascination. Schmidgall's extended comparison of the two dramaturgies provides a fresh perspective on Shakespeare, musical theater, comparative drama, and theater history. (shrink)

Articles on the life and works of Āraja Ālī Mātubbara, 1901-1986, Muslim philosopher and author from Bangladesh.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the figure of the end of the world in the final lecture of Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign seminar series (the last seminar series he gives). The author argues that Derrida uses the final line of a Paul Celan poem (“The world is gone. I must carry you.”) as a valedictory refrain in order to show the political and existential stakes of his ontological investigations. The article situates these stakes within Derrida’s fictionalism, his belief that (...) (1) ideal entities are irreal but also (2) the way in which the meanings of ideal entities work is like the way that the meaning of fictional discourse works. Using Derrida’s own example of Celan, as well as examples from Benjamin Britten and Skeeter Davis, the author argues for the importance of aesthetic experience in tying together these political, existential, and ontological themes. (shrink)

El artículo expone dos visiones acerca de la legitimidad del castigo en contextos de exclusión social. En la primera parte, uno de los autores defiende la idea de que los Estados que incumplen con obligaciones legales previas no pueden inculpar a quienes cometan delitos vinculados con ese incumplimiento. No pueden hacerlo porque no tienen el estatus moral para hacerlo de acuerdo a dos objeciones: la de complicidad y la de hipocresía. En la segunda parte, la segunda autora critica esta solución (...) al sostener que la falta de reciprocidad que caracteriza a la relación política vuelve inaplicables las objeciones de hipocresía y complicidad al ámbito del castigo penal estatal. (shrink)

v. 1. Edinyĭ i︠a︡zyk chelovechestva. --.

Articles, on metaphysics, originally published in Siḷumiṇa, weekly Sinhalese newspaper and written by Ven. Baḷangoḍa Ānandamaitreya.

The paper proves that a historical method in Marxism is not identified to a dialectical method. The logic of history and the logic of its analysis in Marxism do not always coincide. The Logical coincides with the Historical only in eternity as it actually occurs in the works by G.V.F. Hegel. Eternity which has already witnessed everything does not know history any more. In the same way, history also begins there where the eternity comes to an end. Therefore, artificial identification (...) of the Logical with the Historical in Marxism led sometimes to actual mistakes. It is no wonder that it has always caused discussions in Marxism. They are mainly explained by the fact that the deductive, abstract-to-concrete method in which the “General” appears before the “Concrete” is an anti-historical method in its Nature. In real human history the “General” which is generalization of many “Concrete” could not appear before the latter in any way. For this reason, the real historical materialism needs an inductive method of knowledge. Only in that case historical materialism will cease to remain the soviet “histmat” and becomes the real form of a new world outlook. The author is of the opinion that the Party spirit of the Soviet philosophy promoted preservation of the anomalies mentioned in Marxism. The open discussion could help to find valid but not inherited from Hegel relation of historical and logical methods in Marxism. (shrink)

In this paper I hope to show that Geach misunderstands the nature of Plato's argument in the Euthyphro and more importantly the reasoning behind the dialectical strategy adopted by Socrates. Furthermore I shall argue that Geach's reading of the Euthyphro engenders serious difficulties, that stand in the way of understanding the manner in which Plato construes the problem of determining the nature of, and relationship between universal and particulars, which is of great significance because it is precisely this problem, in (...) relation to piety, that is central to the Euthyphro. In the appendix I shall sketch the outline of an argument in order to justify the assumption that the theory of Forms is present in the Euthyphro. (shrink)

Business schools are frequently blamed for corporate ethical scandals by failing to develop integrity and critical ethical thinking skills in managers. What should business schools teach to address this? The paper proposes a framework for the development and evaluation of a business ethics curriculum, which is grounded on the AACSB learning goals of ethical understanding, reasoning abilities, managerial knowledge and ethical capacities. The framework is two building blocks in the form of tests, which together provide quality measures for business ethics (...) content and a definition of the scope and depth of knowledge an ethics curriculum should contain. Overall, the framework is a supplement to the AACSB guidelines and its purpose is to be a curriculum development tool. (shrink)