fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

The study explored the motivations behind Australian wool producers’ intentions regarding mulesing; a surgical procedure that will be voluntarily phased out after 2010, following retailer boycotts led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Telephone interviews were conducted with 22 West Australian wool producers and consultants to elicit their behavioral, normative and control beliefs about mulesing and alternative methods of breech strike prevention. Results indicate that approximately half the interviewees intend to continue mulesing, despite attitudes toward the act of (...) mulesing being quite negative. This indicates that attitudes alone are unlikely to be good predictors of this goal directed behavior. Most respondents believed mulesing was more effective and involved less cost, time, and effort than the currently available alternatives to prevent breech strike. Further, they felt relatively little social pressure, as they believed few consumers were concerned about mulesing. However, they noted that if consumer sentiment changed they would likely change their practices. Thus, attitudes are likely to be only one of several factors influencing intentions to change farm practices to address societal concerns about animal welfare. Further, mulesing appears to be goal - directed behavior , suggesting that other factors depicted by the Model of Goal-directed Behavior (MGB; Perugini and Bagozzi In: Br J Soc Psychol, 40: 79–98, 2001 ) may be worth exploring in this context. Finally, these results provide insight into how policy makers may influence farmers to change practices in response to societal pressure for improving farm animal welfare. (shrink)

It is often assumed that pet ownership improves peoples’ wellbeing, but evidence of this pet effect has been mixed. We extended past research on pet personality, the pet effect, and value congruence to examine whether people perceive their pets to have humanlike values and if owner-pet values similarity has a positive effect on owners’ life satisfaction. In a large and diverse sample of Australian dog and cat owners, we find that people imbue their dogs and cats with humanlike values in (...) a way that reflects the theoretical circular structure of values. Importantly, perceptions of the values of dogs and cats differed in that dogs were perceived to prioritize more social-focus values, whereas cats were perceived to prioritize more personal-focus values. Additionally, we find that similarity in the values profile of dog owners and their dogs is positively associated with life satisfaction, but this was not the case for cats. However, when we examined associations between individual values similarity and life satisfaction, our results suggest a more complex and nuanced picture of both direct and indirect similarity effects. (shrink)

Whether due to simplicity or hypocrisy, the question of access to patient data for biomedical research is widely seen in the public discourse only from the angle of patient privacy. At the same time, the desire to live and to live without disability is of much higher value to the patients. This goal can only be achieved by extracting research insight from patient data in addition to working on model organisms, something that is well understood by many patients. Yet, most (...) biomedical researchers working outside of clinics and hospitals are denied access to patient records when, at the same time, clinicians who guard the patient data are not optimally prepared for the data’s analysis. Medical data collection is a time- and cost-intensive process that is most of all tedious, with few elements of intellectual and emotional satisfaction on its own. In this process, clinicians and bioinformaticians, each group with their own interests, have to join forces with the goal to generate medical data sets both from clinical trials and from routinely collected electronic health records that are, as much as possible, free from errors and obvious inconsistencies. The data cleansing effort as we have learned during curation of Singaporean clinical trial data is not a trivial task. The introduction of omics and sophisticated imaging modalities into clinical practice that are only partially interpreted in terms of diagnosis and therapy with today’s level of knowledge warrant the creation of clinical databases with full patient history. This opens up opportunities for re-analyses and cross-trial studies at future time points with more sophisticated analyses of the same data, the collection of which is very expensive. (shrink)

Scaling ecosystem-wide flourishing, organizational impact, and the total value generated across an organization’s ecosystem of stakeholders is a manifestation of love in action. Many organizations are figuring out how. With a large, longitudinal dataset this research is uncovering the agreements enabling that scaling. This research note highlights the research design and early findings. The research design is based on interviews, surveys, and systemic strategy. Strategic systems assessment, stakeholder interviews, workshops with leadership, calibration with functional leaders were used to determine what (...) to measure. Wave 1 of data collection was completed in 2021. Wave 2 is in progress, with following waves every 6 months. With survey responses from 70,700 clients and 9,554 collaborators in Wave 1, the mean level of flourishing and organizational impact is high, relative to the levels found in over 164,000 groups surveyed in 126 countries. While the mean level is high, there is a distribution from high to low across the hundreds of service offices of the business, highlighting significant differences in how the offices work, such as putting the person at the center in everything they do, and the quality of the relationships within the company and with their clients. The survey uses established measures. The Total Value Generated framework is new. (shrink)

According to a prominent family of theories of blameworthiness, quality of will theories, a person is blameworthy for an action if and only if, and to the degree that, her will manifested in that action is bad. A puzzle for such theories is that (the degree of) blameworthiness appears to be affected by several factors beyond how bad the manifested will is. Among such factors are certain types of incompetence of the agent, the outcome of the action, the developmental history (...) of the agent (e.g., an unfortunate upbringing), and the time between action and blame. I defend a novel account of the nature of blame by appeal to its unique capacity to explain away these puzzling intuitions in a unified way. I argue that the account, in addition to being independently plausible, allows us to view those intuitions as products of a systematic yet understandable confusion between the issue of blameworthiness and some other separate issue. (shrink)

Drawing on decades of research found in his Case for... series, as well as new interviews and insights, investigative journalist and former atheist Lee Strobel presents clear and compelling evidence to help seekers and believers answer life's ultimate question: Is God Real?

This study explores the potential of contemporary large language models (LLMs) to achieve Gilles Deleuze’s goal of integrating art into daily life. Deleuze’s philosophy, with its focus on creative repetition, finds a parallel in LLMs, which replicate and innovate artistic styles by transforming text prompts into various artistic expressions. Although LLMs can very effectively blend and mimic these styles, they remain mere tools – as suggested by the metaphor of a stochastic parrot; the true creative force remains the human artist. (...) Currently, these models are experimental, and their artistic outputs, while impressive, are still viewed as pastiches rather than genuine art. Nonetheless, we can expect advances that may soon enable artists to use LLMs to create genuine artworks. (shrink)

The principle of cultural nationalism holds that every national community, simply by being a national community, has a prima facie right to self-government. Given that national communities are singled out as the right-holder, proponents must explain why this particular type of group is entitled to the right to self-government. In this paper, I analyze the strategies that a cultural nationalist may adopt to demand the right to self-government. We can distinguish between four types of arguments for cultural nationalism–the Argument from (...) Historical Injustice, the Argument from Inequality, the Instrumental Value Argument, and the Intrinsic Value Argument. I consider the merits and limitations of each. After critically examining these arguments, I conclude that none of the arguments successfully justifies the generalized claim that every national group enjoys a prima facie right to self-determination. Proponents of cultural nationalism may respond to my objections by suggesting that, even assuming that all my objections are sound, this only shows that existing arguments in favor of cultural nationalism are unsound. That is, they can find new ways to defend the principle and I have not proven that cultural nationalism must be rejected. To this, I discuss further three reasons to reject cultural nationalism: it lends moral support to colonialism, undermines inter-group cooperation, and is incompatible with a deep and genuine commitment to multiculturalism. Therefore, although we should embrace multiculturalism—policies that support different national heritages—cultural nationalism ought to be rejected. (shrink)

The notion of Ivan Illich as a social critic, philosopher, or historian is seen as secondary to the principal thrust and purpose of his life and work. To understand Illich, it is more important to see his journey into apophatic expression. After his period as a churchman in the Catholic Church, he developed a unique series of books and articles characterized above all as apophatic theology. The author explains the meaning of the term and examines the different ways in which (...) Illich used this approach. Illich studied technological artifacts, whether individual devices or institutional structures, in terms of their relationship to Christian belief in the Incarnation. His work is interpreted in terms of its consonance with the thought of Jacques Ellul. Having known Illich for more than 40 years, and having lived with him for extended periods, the author also draws on comments Illich made to the author. (shrink)

Murray N. Rothbard argued that there are many philosophic and non-philosophic arguments that provide a satisfactory basis for individual liberty. Rarely, however, did he discuss the claims of Christianity to be a suitable foundation for individual freedom. By looking at the Christian libertarians of the Old Right, between 1950 and 1971, the article contends that religious values were the most important reason for libertarians pursuing a society composed of free individuals during that period. By examining the journals Faith and Freedom, (...) Christian Economics, and the Freeman, and the positive views of Rev. Carl McIntire, the author explains the philosophy of Christian libertarianism. It is the belief that individual freedom is only the highest political end; the necessary means for God’s Creation to develop unhindered their conscience and the full ‘sacredness of their personality.’ Christian libertarians maintain that individuals cannot be coerced by government to lead a virtuous life. They must instead be persuaded, by a true understanding of the life of Jesus especially, to choose to follow the moral life sanctioned by the Bible. The desire to follow the Golden Rule voluntarily, Christian libertarians explain, is the God-given template that allows a society of individuals to live in freedom. It was this Christian ethic, Christian libertarians insist, couched in terms of the Natural Law, that inspired the founding fathers to establish a system of government where the individual is free to enjoy their ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The article concludes by discussing Frank S. Meyer’s ‘fusionist’ attempt to find a uniting theme for traditionalists and libertarians, and suggests that it was the Christian libertarian philosophy in all but name. It also suggests that if America has any valid claim to be ‘Exceptional,’ then it is based on the nation’s traditional defence of individual freedom as a God-given grant. (shrink)

Résumé Sans négliger les autres documents pertinents dans un tour d’horizon final et comparatif, cette étude s’efforce de dépeindre l’enseignement universitaire de la philosophie tel qu’il se reflète dans le miroir des textes didascaliques artiens de Paris jusqu’au mitan du xiiie siècle, tout en fournissant en annexe un premier répertoire, encore partiel, de ce corpus, avec ses éditions et ses traductions. Malgré son caractère généralement pratique et institutionnel, certains de ses éléments théoriques — comme la mise en relief de la (...) liaison intime, trame sapientielle de ces écrits de maîtres ès arts, entre théologie cosmique et éthique philosophique — permettent d’espérer que cet article apporte une véritable contribution à l’Histoire de la philosophie.Without neglecting the other relevant documents in a final comparative survey, this study tries to depict the university teaching of philosophy as reflected in the mirror of the Parisian didascalical texts of the Arts Faculty during the first half of the thirteenth century, while giving in appendix a first repertory, still partial, of this corpus, with its editions and translations. Notwithstanding its generally practical and institutional character, some of its theoretical elements — such as the highlighting of the close relationship between cosmical theology and ethical philosophy, a sapiential thread in those arts masters writings — it is hoped that this article may prove a genuine contribution to the History of philosophy. (shrink)

About half of Americans who live past age 65 will develop a long-lasting severe disability associated with aging and will require long-term services and supports for an average of two years. This eventuality is surprising to most Americans, despite the increasingly common experience of neighbors and family needing long-term assistance with self-care and daily tasks. Many people believe that serious disability simply won't happen to them or their family, and they avoid making plans to deal with the caregiving or financing (...) challenges associated with long-term disability. Of course, wealthy people can pay for the services they need, provided they can identify and... (shrink)

Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health brings together scholars working in disability studies, mad studies, feminist theory, Indigenous studies, postcolonial theory, Jewish literature, queer studies, American studies, trauma studies, and comics to create an intersectional community of scholarship in literary disability studies of mental health. The collection contains essays on canonical authors and lesser known and sometimes forgotten writers, including Sylvia Plath, Louisa May Alcott, Hannah Weiner, Mary Jane Ward, Michelle Cliff, Lee Maracle, Joanne Greenberg, Ann Bannon, (...) Jerry Pinto, Persimmon Blackridge, and others. The volume addresses the under-representation of madness and psychiatric disability in the field of disability studies, which traditionally focuses on physical disability, and explores the controversies and the common ground among disability studies, anti-psychiatric discourses, mad studies, graphic medicine, and health/medical humanities. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of cheap talk on price and participant profits using a repeated Bertrand oligopoly experiment. During the first 10 rounds, participants are not allowed to communicate with each other. Twenty additional rounds are then played in which the participants can text with one another using an instant message system. Some groups are allowed to text before every round, some before every other round, some every third round, some every fourth round, and others only every fifth round. (...) On average, when texting is allowed, groups attempt to collude to raise the price after being allowed to text. In summary, success in collusion with cheap talk is correlated with a combination of how often participants can text, the subject of their texts, and whether participants actually text when they can. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel approach to teaching critical thinking. The approach centers around developing the student’s ability to engage in analytic reasoning. By “analytic” in the previous sentence I mean reasoning about analyticity, i.e., coming to know truths about analytic propositions as opposed to synthetic propositions. I consider the ability to engage in this kind of reasoning to be what some philosophers call “conceptual competence”. I argue that focusing on conceptual competence in critical thinking courses benefits philosophy departments in (...) two ways. First, focusing on conceptual competence distinguishes the content of a critical thinking course from, say, courses on logic or probability/statistics. Second, conceptual competence is a skill that is unique to philosophy. I argue that it is also a fundamentally important skill for all students. Thus, teaching critical thinking as conceptual competence can situate philosophy at the center of any school’s general education plan. (shrink)

The “closeness objection” to the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) has been formulated in various ways in the literature with insufficient attention paid to the differences. Here I survey different formulations of the objection and argue that the strongest one may take the form of a dilemma based on two extant formulations. I argue that the resulting dilemma remains unsolved.

The following thesis is an analysis on the relation between knowledge and reasoning about how to act. It seems fairly intuitive that one is rational to act on what one knows. But unfortunately, the issue is not so simple. In constructing a normative framework for practical reason, one could either require knowledge to be a necessary requirement for practical reason or one might only hold that knowledge is sufficient for reasoning about what to do, though having knowledge is not a (...) necessary requirement. In this thesis, I will defend the latter. (shrink)

Madness Triumphant: A Reading of Lucan’s Pharsalia offers the most detailed and comprehensive analysis of Lucan’s epic poem of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey to have appeared in English. In the manner of his previous books on Virgil and Ovid, Professor Fratantuono considers the Pharsalia as an epic investigation of the nature of fury and madness in Rome, this time during the increasing insanity of Nero’s reign.

Madness Transformed: A Reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is one of the most comprehensive studies available in English of one of the most majestic and perennially appealing of Roman epics. Students and readers of all levels, from high school Latinists through seasoned Ovidians, will find something of use here as Frantantuono analyzes the work scene by scene, guiding the reader to a deeper understanding of this densely allusive poem that rivals even Virgil’s Aeneid.

Th e modern environmental crisis has confronted the news media with a story they are ill equipped to report-events and changes that may happen as opposed to those that have already occurred. This article explores a political and philosophical rationale for a journalism that examines democracy's options for the future. The author then evaluates current media performance in this area, providing suggestions for how that performance might change to make coverage of potential futures a part of journalistic activity.

A book review of Ryynänen, Max and Zoltán Somhegyi (2023) Aesthetic Theory Across the Disciplines. 1st ed. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman_&_Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated.

The book discusses some general methodological problems pertaining to the Meeting of East and West, Confucianism and Kantian moral philosophy, Heidegger, ...

Mit dem oben genannten Thema will ich darstellen, dass Jaspers’ Philosophie, die ehemals in Korea sehr beliebt war, aber heute fast in Vergessenheit geraten ist, mit ihren Ansätzen in Bezug auf die philosophische Praxis ihre philosophische Bedeutung in Korea wieder unter Beweis stellen kann.

This essay discusses the problem of materialism and its relation to politics through readings of Deleuze’s ontology. It recounts the “hidden tradition” of materialism in an Althusserian sense and brings about the idea of materialist politics by investigating the relationship between Alexius Meinong and Gilles Deleuze.

We study relativized Lascar groups, which are formed by relativizing Lascar groups to the solution set of a partial type $$\Sigma$$. We introduce the notion of a Lascar tuple for $$\Sigma$$ and by considering the space of types over a Lascar tuple for $$\Sigma$$, the topology for a relativized Lascar group is (re-)defined and some fundamental facts about the Galois groups of first-order theories are generalized to the relativized context. In particular, we prove that any closed subgroup (...) of a relativized Lascar group corresponds to a stabilizer of a bounded hyperimaginary having at least one representative in the solution set of the given partial type $$\Sigma$$. Using this, we find the correspondence between subgroups of the relativized Lascar group and the relativized strong types. (shrink)

We live in an increasingly global, interconnected, and interdependent world, in which various forms of systemic imbalance in power have given birth to a growing demand for genuine pluralism and democracy. As befits a world so interconnected, this book presents a comparative theological and philosophical attempt to construct new underpinnings for the idea of democracy by bringing the Western concept of spirit into dialogue with the East Asian nondualistic and nonhierarchical notion of qi. The book follows the historical adventures of (...) the idea of qi through some of its Confucian and Daoist textual histories in East Asia, mainly Laozi, Zhu Xi, Toegye, Nongmun, and Su-un, and compares them with analogous conceptualizations of the ultimate creative and spiritual power found in the intellectual constellations of Western and/or Christian thought namely, Whitehead's Creativity, Hegel's Geist, Deleuze's chaosmos, and Catherine Keller's Tehom. The book adds to the growing body of pneumatocentric (Spirit-centered), panentheistic Christian theologies that emphasize God's liberating, equalizing, and pluralizing immanence in the cosmos. Furthermore, it injects into the theological and philosophical dialogue between the West and Confucian and Daoist East Asia, which has heretofore been dominated by the American pragmatist and process traditions, a fresh voice shaped by Hegelian, postmodern, and postcolonial thought. This enriches the ways in which the pluralistic and democratic implications of the notion of qi may be articulated. In addition, by offering a valuable introduction to some representative Korean thinkers who are largely unknown to Western scholars, the book advances the study of East Asia and Neo-Confucianism in particular. Last but not least, the book provides a model of Asian contextual theology that draws on the religious and philosophical resources of East Asia to offer a vision of pluralism and democracy. A reader interested in the conversation between the East and West in light of the global reality of political oppression, economic exploitation, and cultural marginalization will find this book informative, engaging, and enlightening. (shrink)

Many have felt that it is impossible to defend autonomous laws of social science: where the regularities upheld are law-like it is argued that they are not at base social scientific, and where the phenomena to be explained would seem to require social descriptions, it is argued that laws governing the phenomena are unavailable at that level. But is it possible to develop an ontology that supports the dependence of the social on the physical, while nonetheless supporting the explanatory power (...) of genuinely autonomous social scientific laws? The aim of this paper is to show that reductive explanation is not a requirement of a `naturalist' ontology, thereby defending an account of supervenience as a suitable framework within which to recognize a metaphysical relationship between the natural and the social that is consistent with the pursuit of autonomous nomological social scientific explanations. (shrink)

Labyrinths of Love is an interdisciplinary examination of the self, psyche, and soul, providing a comparative analysis from religious, paranormal research and transpersonal theory perspectives. The work creates a unique synthesis that unfolds what it means to be human and demonstrates a visionary epistemology of the self.

Zhi 李贄, also named ( hao 號) Zhuowu 卓吾 (1527–1602), and argues that he articulates a coherent and compelling vision of a good life focused on the expression of genuine feelings distinctive to each individual. Through a study of literary texts and terms of art he refers to in his critical essay “On the Child-like Heart-mind” ( Tongxin Shuo 童心說), as well as the metaphors and images he fleshes out throughout his writings, I characterize Li’s ethical vision and show that (...) it is rooted in a particular loose and accommodating conception of human nature and centered on the simple and intuitive act of daily maintaining the birthright of our “child-like heart-mind.”. (shrink)