This article establishes the benefits of applying renewable energy and analyzes the main difficulties that have stood in the way of more widely successful renewable energy for rural areas in the developing world and discusses why outcomes from these technologies fall short. Although there is substantial recognition of technological, economic, institutional, and other supply-side barriers that have generally interfered with success, the household and other stake-holders have been left outside the scope of evaluation. This article first discusses the usefulness of (...) renewable energy for encouraging sustainability in rural, poor areas, analyzes barriers that have often interfered with the promotion and delivery of expected outputs of installed modern energy technology in remote communities, and finally presents findings from a survey on the actual performance state of the renewable energy technology and degree of satisfaction with it. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.

A look at political ethics covers cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal and misanthropy, and is accompanied by a description of modern public opinion about ...

How should we live? What do we owe to other people? In Goodness and Advice, the eminent philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson explores how we should go about answering such fundamental questions. In doing so, she makes major advances in moral philosophy, pointing to some deep problems for influential moral theories and describing the structure of a new and much more promising theory. Thomson begins by lamenting the prevalence of the idea that there is an unbridgeable gap between fact and (...) value--that to say something is good, for example, is not to state a fact, but to do something more like expressing an attitude or feeling. She sets out to challenge this view, first by assessing the apparently powerful claims of Consequentialism. Thomson makes the striking argument that this familiar theory must ultimately fail because its basic requirement--that people should act to bring about the "most good"--is meaningless. It rests on an incoherent conception of goodness, and supplies, not mistaken advice, but no advice at all. Thomson then outlines the theory that she thinks we should opt for instead. This theory says that no acts are, simply, good: an act can at most be good in one or another way--as, for example, good for Smith or for Jones. What we ought to do is, most importantly, to avoid injustice; and whether an act is unjust is a function both of the rights of those affected, including the agent, and of how good or bad the act is for them. The book, which originated in the Tanner lectures that Thomson delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 1999, includes two chapters by Thomson ("Goodness" and "Advice"), provocative comments by four prominent scholars--Martha Nussbaum, Jerome Schneewind, Philip Fisher, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith--and replies by Thomson to those comments. (shrink)

In my contribution to this volume, I (BHS) comment on on the stultifying rhetoric of contemporary analytic moral theory as illustrated in Judith Jarvis Thomson's Tanner Lectures, with particular reference to Thomson's anxieties about the moral relativism exhibited by college freshman and to her efforts--quite strained, in my view, and inevitably unsuccessful--to demonstrate the existence of objective judgments in matters of morality and taste .

State Violence, Coalitions, Subjects After a consideration of the reception of her work in France , Judith Butler assesses the political contribution of queer movements and minority struggles. She addresses the need for the left to reappropriate the forthright critique of the State and its violence and to examine the way minorities are produced. To do so, her analysis starts from the question of immigrant persons. She highlights the issues and the difficulties which are involved, if there is to (...) be a productive critique of the State, the aim of which is to contest it. As part of a dynamic political perspective, she proposes the creation of coalitions. She outlines the main lines of such a coalition, its dynamics and singularities, its articulation with the subject, but also its limits. In conclusion, she examines the issue of revolution and her relation to Marxist thought, indicating the outlines of her current thinking. (shrink)

Temporal concepts are fundamental constructs of human cognition, but the trajectory of how these concepts emerge and develop is not clear. Evidence of children’s temporal concept development comes from cognitive developmental and psycholinguistic studies. This paper reviews the linguistic factors (i.e., temporal language production and comprehension) and cognitive processes (i.e., temporal judgment and temporal reasoning) involved in children’s temporal conceptualization. The relationship between children’s ability to express time in language and the ability to reason about time, and the challenges and (...) difficulties raised by the interaction between cognitive and linguistic components are discussed. Finally, we propose ways to reconcile controversies from different research perspectives and present several avenues for future research to better understand the development of temporal concepts. (shrink)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) was a colleague of Hegel, Holderlin, Fichte, Goethe, Schlegel, and Schiller. Always a champion of Romanticism, Schelling advocated a philosophy which emphasized intuition over reason, which maintained aesthetics and the creative imagination to be of the highest value. At the same time, Schelling's concerns for the self and the rational make him a major precursor to existentialism and phenomenology. Schelling has exercised a subterranean influence on modern thought. His diverse writings have not given rise (...) to a system or school of thought; rather, individual philosophers have been influenced by the resonance of his ideas and their influence on contemporary ideas and movements. The New Schelling brings together a wide-ranging set of essays which elaborate the connections between Schelling and other thinkers - such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Deleuze, and Lacan - and argue for the unexpected modernity of Schelling's work. (shrink)

HOWARD POOLE ARGUES THAT "THERE IS A RATIONAL NECESSITY LINKING NEGATIVE ATTITUDES TO PORNOGRAPHY WITH A READINESS TO IMPOSE CENSORSHIP." HIS ARGUMENT HAS THREE PREMISES: FIRST, THAT TO CALL SOMETHING OBSCENE IS TO EXPRESS STRONG BUT OFTEN NONMORAL DISAPPROVAL; SECOND, THAT THIS STRONG DISAPPROVAL COMMITS ONE TO SEEK LEGISLATION KEEPING THE MATERIAL FROM CHILDREN; THIRD, THAT SUCH LEGISLATION IS A FORM OF CENSORSHIP. I QUESTION EACH PREMISE.

[85] Les théories de la sexualité qui tendent à attribuer des fins naturelles au désir sexuel font très souvent partie d’un discours plus général sur les lieux légitimes du genre et du désir dans un contexte social donné2. Parler du désir naturel et corrélativement de la forme naturelle des relations sexuelles humaines revient à adopter un dis- cours invariablement normatif, puisque les formes du désir et de la sexualité qui tombent en dehors des paramètres du modèle naturel sont alors compri...

This essay contends that Marx sought to destroy privacy, analyzes his conception of it, and explains why he thought privacy impedes the full development of human beings. Central to his argument is a critique of constitutional states and modern liberalism, which, he maintains, by protecting and justifying individual rights, fail to recognize citizens as species beings.

In this article, I look at some discussions of praising children in contemporary parenting advice. In exploring what is problematic about these discussions, I turn to some philosophical work on moral praise and blame which, I argue, indicates the need for a more nuanced response to questions about the significance of praise. A further analysis of the moral aspects of praise suggests a significant dimension of the parent-child relationship that is missing from, and obscured by, the kind of parenting advice (...) exemplified by the discussions of praise with which I began. (shrink)

This book is for people who are interested in nondual spiritual awakening. It can help people make sense of the various, conflicting theories about nonduality that are currently available to the spiritual seeker and it provides effective practices for recognizing, embodying and stabilizing in nondual realization in one's daily life.

This paper examines the controversy that followed the 1987 publication of Joseph Greenberg's book, Language in the Americas, attending to the role of language and linguistic research within overlapping disciplinary traditions. With this text, Greenberg presented a macro‐level tripartite classification that opposed then dominant fine‐grained analyses recognizing anywhere from 150 to 200 distinct language families. His proposal was the subject of a landmark conference, examining strengths and weaknesses, the unpublished proceedings of which are presented here for the first time. For (...) specialists in the anthropological and comparative‐historical study of Indigenous American languages, Greenberg's intervention highlighted the tension between language, conceived as an abstract object of study, and languages, understood to be carriers of specific cultural knowledge. For physical anthropologists and archaeologists, his theory was initially fortuitous on programmatic, substantive, and methodological grounds. The essay will show how interdisciplinary appeals were figured by supporters as a virtue, and by critics as a vice. The essay further highlights ethical reasons for integrating historical narratives of science and the humanities. (shrink)

Social practices are a key concept in Raimo Tuomela’s work on sociality, they help us understand many aspects of sociality, including customs, traditions, and institutions. The key elements in his analysis of social practices are we-attitudes and pattern-governed behaviors. I am sympathetic to Tuomela’s approach to sociality to the extent that it recognizes and spells out many sufficient and necessary conditions for different types of social activity that together make up sociality. I agree with him that the complexity and multiplicity (...) of human agency, both when acting individually as well as when acting collectively or cooperatively, indeed calls for such an analysis with multiple sufficiency conditions. I especially appreciate his acknowledgement of the role of habits, customs, and the like for sociality. His three most recent books all pay attention to this aspect of human being. In this paper, I will zoom in on this aspect of Tuomela’s work and look at how he integrates habits, customs, and skills. In Tuomela’s words, I will zoom in on pattern-governed behaviors and social practices. On the one hand he gives them an important role and mentions customs often, as the “collective counterpart of habits” (Tuomela, Raimo. The Philosophy of Social Practices: A Collective Acceptance View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487446, 2002, p. 121). At the same time, the analysis of habits and customs left me wanting. I will argue that they are too strongly dependent on and are integrated in a context in which we-attitudes are the key explanatory element. (shrink)

Use this comprehensive framework and developmentally appropriate activities to teach young children compassion, conflict resolution, respect, and other positive, pro-social values as you cultivate a peaceful and supportive learning environment for all children.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Receiving the Gift of Life: My Kidney Transplant StoryJudith W. RyanAs one of three siblings who all inherited an unfortunate gene from our mother, I was born with polycystic kidney disease (PKD). None of us knew of this, however, until later middle age, and my mother not until she was 76. I was the last sibling diagnosed at the age of 56. My brothers had been diagnosed some years (...) before and jokingly started to look at me as a universal donor. Since I had a 50-50 chance of having PKD and with a mother who was one of eight children with none of her siblings known to have the disease, I had not felt an urgency to be tested. Besides, I had no signs or symptoms. But now there was a reason. I made an appointment for a renal ultrasound and while having the procedure, I tipped the screen so that I could see the results. Although the technician was not happy with this, I was repaid with the view of my kidneys looking full of bubbles. Yes, our family was three for three in the genetic game of roulette.I knew immediately how I was going to navigate this health issue. As an adult nurse practitioner I had a very good understanding of what was to come. I knew my blood type “O” was the most common and would mean the longest wait for a deceased donor transplant, at least five years if I were lucky and only after enduring several years of progressing renal failure. In addition, I had cared for dialysis patients and watched my mother endure with difficulty both peritoneal and hemodialysis prior to her death a year before my diagnosis. Knowing I would not choose dialysis left me hoping for a miracle of a living donor or, more realistically, managing my disease as best I could until I died.The next step was managing PKD symptoms and issues as my kidneys continued to fail. One of the errors in my thinking during this time turned out to be that because I had two brothers who had the same disease and were ahead of me in their disease progression, I could follow their lead. It turned out that we manifested our disease very differently. My younger brother, who was diagnosed first, had to deal with significant pain from persistent cyst ruptures, monthly, biweekly then weekly. This continued even after his transplant until he had his native kidneys removed. The other two of us did not have to deal with cyst ruptures. Additionally, anemia was no problem for my younger brother but was for us older siblings. Significant fatigue and weariness were a problem for both of my brothers but not for me.And so it went, as we compared our blood test results, that the idea of a living donor entered the conversation. I knew this would be a problem for me because how do you ask people to consider being a donor? I had difficulty asking friends for a ride to the airport. This is where the grace and kindness of others and divine intervention enter [End Page 107] our story—word about our medical dilemma spread through the visibility of my younger brother, a minister in New England.Fortunately for me, my much beloved younger brother had dozens of people who wanted to be his donor. About 12 of these potential donors were actually tested before finding a match. One of his unmatched donors became the donor for my older brother (our first family transplant). Two years later, my other brother received his transplant. Three years later, after being told he was not a good match for my brother, this dear man came forward to be a possible donor for me. Hence, I got my transplant from an unused donor from my younger brother’s group. Overall, we had living donors from three different churches located within an hour of each other in New England. I even lucked out and acquired the minister of one of the churches as my donor. All three of us received kidneys over five years from living donors who did not know my older brother... (shrink)

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich aus philosophischer Perspektive mit der kontroversen öffentlichen Diskussion zur documenta fifteen. Einigen Stellungnahmen in dieser Debatte liegen implizit Prämissen einer kantisch geprägten ästhetischen Theorie zugrunde; ihnen stehen anders situierte Diskussionsstrategien aus außereuropäischen Kontexten gegenüber. Im Text wird der kantische universalistische Gedanke eines ästhetischen Gemeinsinns kritisch im Sinne einer postkolonialen Kritik gelesen. Gibt es andere universale Annäherungen an künstlerisches Arbeiten, die stärker von einer Haltung des Zuhörens geprägt sind? Entsprechend den in diesem Feld möglichen Differenzen variiert auch (...) das Verständnis, was es bedeutet, in einem Künstler:innenkollektiv zu arbeiten. (shrink)

To many people, the very idea of nationalism smacks of ethnocentrism or even racism. They suspect that violence, hatred, and distrust of the Other, embodied in a sharply divided world of "us" and "them," always lurk within the nationalist's heart. Recent world events have done nothing to allay these suspicions. Nationalism, on this view, is an evil to be overcome by a cosmopolitan stance that denies the significance of national boundaries. Yet positive values have also been associated with the nationalist (...) idea, as some recent accounts remind us.ii Democracy, autonomy, community, pluralism -- these goods have been connected with the development of nationalism over the past several centuries. Some of the values underlying nationalism also manifest themselves today in its dilute and more respectable cousin, multiculturalism. And it goes without saying that whatever its merits, nationalism exerts enormous power on the aspirations of many people around the world. (shrink)

Although many simulations draw upon only one level of abstraction, the process for generating rich simulations requires a dynamic interplay between abstract and concrete knowledge. A complete model of simulation must account for a mind and brain that can bridge the perceptual with the conceptual, the episodic with the semantic, and the concrete with the abstract.

The sea god Poseidon is taken for granted as such in Classical Greek literature and iconography. Yet one does not have to look far in the literary or iconographical sources to find material that conveys a somewhat different impression. This has been noticed, and in the past there have been some interesting attempts to surmise Poseidon's origins and significance from the evidence at hand. This paper is not an attempt to reconstruct a putative Mycenaean deity, but will examine certain episodes (...) of the Homeric Iliad to suggest possible reasons for the inconsistencies and anomalies that appear. (shrink)

The Cambridge Critical Guides series offers cutting-edge research volumes on some of the most important works of philosophy. Each volume presents newly-commissioned essays by an international team of contributors, and will appeal to a scholarly and graduate-level audience. One of the themes that this volume brings out is the endurance and contemporary relevance of some of Schopenhauer’s most pressing concerns. In a sense, he is right to be ahistorical: is it not this reaching out of its time that makes a (...) work a classic, eternal even? Principal among these concerns of course is the question of how to respond as plagues overwhelm us (which is Schopenhauer’s description of existence in a normal state, the plague of existence rather than a plague within existence). His famous answer involves the negation of the will, the ascetic denial and rejection of desire. Of course, this response is more striking than it is clear, and several of the essays tackle the question of what is meant, entailed, and achieved by negation of the will. (shrink)

Existe un auge en la colocación de implantes dentales, dispositivos que mejoran la salud del paciente y restauran su estética y función, lo cual motivó la realización de este trabajo con el objetivo de argumentar la importancia del servicio de implantes dentales en Camagüey desde el enfoque de ciencia, tecnología y sociedad. Cuba es el único país que tiene un servicio de implantología social, que se ha convertido en una herramienta complementaria de los tratamientos protésicos. Desde 2006 se desarrolla en (...) la provincia para mejorar la calidad de vida de la población. There is a huge tendency to put dental implants, devices that increase the patient's health and restore his esthetic and function, and this was the motivation to carry out this study with the aim of supporting the importance of dental implant services from a science technology and society focus. Cuba is the only country that has a service of social implantology, which has become a complementary tool in prosthetic treatments. This has been taking place since 2006 to improve the quality of life of the population. (shrink)

El propósito de la presente comunicación es visualizar la gestación del neoplatonismo cristiano en el pensamiento agustiniano. Para ello nos inspiramos en lo afirmado por Giovanni Reale en su Introducción al Agustín de Werner Beierwaltes: “la cifra emblemática del pensamiento fi osófico de Agustín en sentido global es la expresada por él mismo en la clara fórmula: credo ut intellegam, intellego ut credam”, ‘círculo hermenéutico’ expresado por primera vez en Contra Academicos, III, 20, 43 y en De ordine, II, 9, (...) 26”. Para dar cumplimiento al objetivo propuesto, apelamos a Confessiones, VII y a Ennéadas, I, 6; I, 8. La simultaneidad de la lectura de Plotino y la audición de los Sermones del Obispo Ambrosio, destacadas en la obra de Pierre Courcelle Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin no es compartida por todos los estudiosos, entre ellos O’ Meara. El planteo de Courcelle, ¿viene a zanjar la disputa P. Alfaric, Ch. Boyer? Agustín ¿se convirtió antes al neoplatonismo que al cristianismo? O ¿fue a la inversa? Para concluir nos referiremos explícitamente al balance que el mismo Agustín hace de lo qué encontró y de lo que no encontró en los Libri platonicorum para culminar con la importancia del Misterio del Verbo Encarnado en la vida de Agustín y la luz que proyecta sobre su propuesta filosófica. (shrink)

Utopian literature is fascinating but impossible to summarize. Of course it is easy to see where its charm lies. We enjoy the “play” aspect of the Utopian convention, the common certainty— essential to both the author's intentions and the reader's pleasure—that we are dealing with a supposition described as a fact. In a Utopian text, we enjoy the power we have of imagining, and especially formulating, another overall framework for human experience—a framework which is specifically defined as being different and (...) described as if it had concrete existence. This is the underlying attraction of a mode of expression which permits the author to talk of serious things in the protected and detached manner permitted by play. Why, then, are summaries of utopias so disappointing? Why does a re-transmitted utopia convey only the idea of an insipid world and an arbitrary creation? Why is it so hard to write about works of this type? (shrink)

I borrow this title from an English mystical text written at the end of the fourteenth century, The Veil of Unknowledge, which has long been part of my life. The explicit aim of the book is to tear away this veil of unknowledge, or to give us the means to do it ourselves. The image of the veil invites a reciprocal gesture of raising, tearing, piercing. The desire that motivates this act goes beyond the veil, toward Isis and the truth, (...) the naked figure we're endeavoring to know. Once we have cleared away the obstacles and gained a clear view of her, we—and she—are transformed. (shrink)