Are there qualities of sound and the experience of listening that educators can extrapolate to inform the philosophy and practice of music education? In this essay, I imagine a music education where sound—how it behaves and how we experience it—serves not only as the subject of study, but generates the framework of the pedagogy. A sonic music education is not automatic because ocularcentrism privileges the vision and influences the listening and educational experiences, often in unrecognized ways. I explore two qualities (...) of sounds: they are, first, impermanent and continually changing and, second, diffuse—seemingly inside and outside our bodies. These qualities contrast with the visual experience, which makes objects appear permanent, fixed, and separate from our bodies. Pedagogies based on sound might present truth as impermanent and their aims as multidirectional and might employ social constructivist epistemologies and democratic education. A music education based on sounds may be a corrective to ocularcentric banking pedagogies where knowledge is fixed and progress is unidirectionally measured. (shrink)

Both male ornamentation and male combat result in increased male mortality. Because population sizes are limited by a carrying capacity, increased age-specific adult male mortality will result in decreased age-specific adult female mortality, as well as decreased juvenile mortality. As intersexual competition is one form of intraspecific competition, through choosing to mate with ornamented and/or combative males, females in polygamous systems reduce intraspecific competition. Because average male fitness must exactly equal average female fitness, male fitness will paradoxically rise with increasing (...) male mortality. This theory also offers new perspectives on peripheral problems to sexual theory, such as mate location, resource guarding, leks, harems, and others. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 28-30.

Moral rationalism has long been an attractive position within moral philosophy. However, among empirical-minded philosophers, it is widely dismissed as scientifically untenable. In this essay, I argue that moral rationalism’s lack of uptake in the empirical domain is due to the widespread supposition that moral rationalists must hold that moral judgments and actions are produced by rational capacities. But this construal is mistaken: moral rationalism’s primary concern is not with the relationship between moral judgments and rational capacities per se, but (...) rather with developing a conception objectivity normativity that avoids Platonism. In light of this, I develop an alternative approach to translating moral rationalism into the empirical domain that builds on the common rationalist view that normative requirements are explained by the relationship between agents and the social structures and practices in which they are embedded. I propose that this social conception of normativity can be translated into a scientific framework by interpreting it as a claim about the importance of constraint-based explanation when accounting for norm-governed behavior. In order to develop this point more concretely and show that it is empirically tractable, I turn to research on macaque social organization that highlights the ways in which normative standards are generated by empirically observable social structures. The insights garnered from the macaque case allow me to then locate moral rationalism’s core claims about the relationship between morality and the standards of practical rationality within an empirically plausible framework. (shrink)

In 1908, three years after Einstein first published his special theory of relativity, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski introduced his four-dimensional “spacetime” interpretation of the theory. Einstein initially dismissed Minkowski’s theory, remarking that “since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself anymore.” Yet Minkowski’s theory soon found wide acceptance among physicists, including eventually Einstein himself, whose conversion to Minkowski’s way of thinking was engendered by the realization that he could profitably employ it for the (...) formulation of his new theory of gravity. The validity of Minkowski’s mathematical “merging” of space and time has rarely been questioned by either physicists or philosophers since Einstein incorporated it into his theory of gravity. Physicists often employ Minkowski spacetime with little regard to the whether it provides a true account of the physical world as opposed to a useful mathematical tool in the theory of relativity. Philosophers sometimes treat the philosophy of space and time as if it were a mere appendix to Minkowski’s theory. In this critical study, Joseph Cosgrove subjects the concept of spacetime to a comprehensive examination and concludes that Einstein’s initial assessment of Minkowksi was essentially correct. (shrink)

A notable feature of recent philosophical work on climate ethics is that it makes practically no reference to ‘traditional’ environmental philosophy. There is some irony in this, since environmental ethics arose as part of a broader movement within philosophy, starting in the 1960s, aimed at developing different fields of applied philosophy, in order to show how everyday practice could be enriched through philosophical reflection and analysis. The major goal of this paper is to explain why this branch of practical ethics (...) has, for the most part, failed the test of practicability when it comes to formulating a response to global climate change. The central problem is that debates in environmental philosophy became absorbed by a set of metaphysical questions about the nature of value. The result has been a field dominated by views that provide unsuitable foundations for the development of public policy. (shrink)

My topic is the possibility of acting in the belief that the action is bad and for the reason that it is, as the agent believes, bad. On route, I examine another question – namely whether agents can, without having any relevant false beliefs, perform actions motivated by the badness of those actions. The main worry is the compatibility of action for the sake of the bad with the thesis of the Guise of the Good. The examina-tion is helped by (...) considering the way reason explanations and the more widely understood normative explanations can explain actions, in light of the conditions for the rationality of actions and the bearing of masking beliefs on the explanation of their actions. The discussion leads to consideration of the possibility of various conceptual mistakes. Given the variety of human motivations, I focus on the interpretation of one case: the Luciferian motive, understood, roughly, as the drive to defy the limits of thought or of rational thought. (shrink)

In previous writings, I joined those who take the view that action with an intention is an action for a reason, where whatever value there is in the action is a reason for it. This paper sketches the role of reasons and intentions in leading to action with an intention. Section 1 explains that though belief in the value of the intended action is not an essential constituent of intentions, nevertheless when humans act with an intention they act in the (...) belief that there is value in the action. Section 2 explains the relative role of value and intention in “producing” the action, and relates their role to that of motivation. (shrink)

We welcome Norenzayan et al.’s claim that the prosocial effects of beliefs in supernatural agents extend beyond Big Gods. To date, however, supporting evidence has focused on the Abrahamic Big God, making generalisations difficult. We discuss a recent study that highlights the need for clarity about the causal path by which supernatural beliefs affect the evolution of big societies.

The starting point of Joseph Margolis' last philosophical effort is represented by the problem of the human "gap" in animal continuity: "There appear to be no comparable variants of animal evolution [...] effected by anything like the culturally enabled creation". While we share with other animals more or less refined forms of societal life, acquiring a natural language remains a distinctively human character: although it is grounded in the completely natural favourable changes in the human vocal apparatus and brain, (...) the merely causal emergence of language in humans reacts back into human primates by transforming them into persons or selves. The artifactuality of persons appears to be at the same time a natural and emergent phenomenon, constituting the other side of the process of language acquisition both by early hominids and by human infants. In this perspective the largely informal, mongrel and approximate functionality of ordinary language is interpreted as a good tool for the cultural animal to cope with the world, while the collective dimension of human forms of life appears as the shared context of external and internal constitution of the human selves. (shrink)

In a small portion of The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Walter Benjamin engages in a critique of Nietzsche’s understanding of tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy. He argues that Nietzsche’s account divests individuals of significance in the tragic worldview. The corrective to Nietzsche’s view, according to Benjamin, is a reflective, historical approach to the Greek social and literary phenomenon of tragic poetry. I argue that Benjamin’s approach to tragedy and to The Birth of Tragedy is inherently flawed. The paper (...) has threesections: (1) a presentation of Benjamin’s critique of Nietzsche in The Origin of German Tragic Drama; (2) a refutation of that critique on the basis of a reading of The Birth of Tragedy; and (3) a rejection of Benjamin’s theory of tragedy on the basis of Nietzsche’sinsights into the relation to human significance of both tragedy and the science of history. (shrink)

In the present period of soul-searching, many people are turning to the ancient Indian classics of spiritual development and psychology for illumination and guidance. Prominent among these is this collection which offers a systematic exposition of pr.

Consciousness, subjectivity, and the history of the organism -- Subjectivity considered as the first-person perspective -- Subjectivity and reference -- Unconscious subjectivity -- What subjectivity is not -- Subjectivity in the neurobiological image -- Subjectivity in the neurobiological image -- The science of subjectivity -- Putting the neuro in neurophenomenology -- Neural correlates of consciousness reconsidered -- Neurophilosophy, Darwinian naturalism, and subjectivity.

The relation between reason and the will is explored in reference to the nature of reasons and of normativity. Must we hold beliefs for decisive reasons? Can we be unreflectively motivated by reasons? It is maintained that one need not necessarily be motivated by all the reasons that apply to an agent. Reasons are argued to be optional to the extent that the fact that there are reasons for a certain response make it an eligible response, but not one that (...) is wrong not to adopt. The mediation of the will helps to explain how we are governed by our rationality. (shrink)

This volume collects Keith Donnellan's key contributions dating from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.

Today there are over 90,000 Small Christian Communities in the eight AMECEA countries in Eastern Africa. Kenya alone has over 35,000 SCCs.Increasingly SCCs are promoting reconciliation, justice and peace, the three main themes of 2009 Second African Synod. This essay treats the following headings: “Tracking the Historical Shifts of SCCs,” “SCCs’ Increasing Involvement in Justice and Peace Issues,” “Case Study of SCC Involvement in the Kenya Lenten Campaigns 2009 and 2010,” “Involving Youth in Small Christian Communities,” “SCCs Using the Internet (...) Especially Facebook” and “SCCs as Facilitators of Reconciliation, Justice and Peace in Africa.” One major change is the increasing use of a Pastoral Theological Reflection Process such as the “Pastoral Circle” to help SCCs to go deeper. Now more and more SCCs in Africa are reflecting pastorally and theologically on their experiences, often using the tools of social analysis. (shrink)

Physicists were asked the question, “What do you think are the most important qualities needed to be successful at the type of work you do?” The results demonstrate which qualities physicists value and how values vary among the qualities they identified. The results also show how physicists’ beliefs about success vary by the rank of their department, age, productivity, and gender. More generally, the findings cast light on the moral order of physics by eliciting how members of an occupation construe (...) the structure of success in their line of work. (shrink)

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man – but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point . The hell–fire of life consumes only the select among men. The rest stand in front of it, warming their hands.

Ces deux ouvrages qui font la matière de ce volume se complètent parfaitement, c'est pourquoi ils paraissent sous le même titre. L'auteur analyse dans Esquisse d'une esthétique l'activité gratuite de l'artiste. Le procès de la conscience dénonce d'un côté la conscience de l'autre, reconnaît que les religions et les philosophies ne sont que des issues qui permettent de combler le vide d'être que la conscience a creusé en nous.

ABSTRACTThe paper offers a few reflections on moral implications of making sacrifices and on possible duties to make sacrifices. It does not provide an exhaustive or a systematic account of the subject. There are too many disparate questions, and too many different perspectives from which to examine them to allow for a systematic let alone an exhaustive account, and too many factual issues that I am not aware of. Needless to say, the observations that follow are in part stimulated by (...) the popularity of some views that are mistaken. I will not however examine any specific view or account of these matters. The aim is to provide some pointers that will be helpful when considering specific issues regarding the moral significance of sacrifice. (shrink)

Legitimate authority -- The claims of law -- Legal positivism and the sources of law -- Legal reasons, sources, and gaps -- The identity of legal systems -- The institutional nature of law -- Kelsen's theory of the basic norm -- Legal validity -- The functions of law -- Law and value in adjudication -- The rule of law and its virtue -- The obligation to obey the law -- Respect for law -- A right to dissent? : civil disobedience (...) -- A right to dissent? : conscientious objection -- The purity of the pure theory -- The argument from justice, or how not to reply to legal positivism. (shrink)