Christiansen & Chater propose that language comprehenders must immediately compress perceptual data by “chunking” them into higher-level categories. Effective language understanding, however, requires maintaining perceptual information long enough to integrate it with downstream cues. Indeed, recent results suggest comprehenders do this. Although cognitive systems are undoubtedly limited, frameworks that do not take into account the tasks that these systems evolved to solve risk missing important insights.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and games set a new domain in understanding people’s motivations in gaming, behavioral implications of game play, game adaptation to player preferences and needs for increased engaging experiences in the context of HCI serious games (HCI-SGs). When the latter relate with people’s health status, they can become a part of their daily life as assistive health status monitoring/enhancement systems. Co-designing HCI-SGs can be seen as a combination of art and science that involves a meticulous collaborative process. The (...) design elements in assistive HCI-SGs for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients, in particular, are explored in the present work. Within this context, the Game-Based Learning (GBL) design framework is adopted here and its main game-design parameters are explored for the Exergames, Dietarygames, Emotional games, Handwriting games, and Voice games design, drawn from the PD-related i-PROGNOSIS Personalized Game Suite (PGS) (www.i-prognosis.eu) holistic approach. Two main data sources were involved in the study. In particular, the first one includes qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, involving 10 PD patients and four clinicians in the co-creation process of the game design, whereas the second one relates with data from an online questionnaire addressed by 104 participants spanning the whole related spectrum, i.e., PD patients, physicians, software/game developers. Linear regression analysis was employed to identify an adapted GBL framework with the most significant game-design parameters, which efficiently predict the transferability of the PGS beneficial effect to real-life, addressing functional PD symptoms. The findings of this work can assist HCI-SG designers for designing PD-related HCI-SGs, as the most significant game-design factors were identified, in terms of adding value to the role of HCI-SGs in increasing PD patients’ quality of life, optimizing the interaction with personalized HCI-SGs and, hence, fostering a collaborative human-computer symbiosis. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of novel contributions and reviews by renowned researchers in the foundations of quantum physics, quantum optics, and neutron physics. It is published in honor of Michael Horne, whose exceptionally clear and groundbreaking work in the foundations of quantum mechanics and interferometry, both of photons and of neutrons, has provided penetrating insight into the implications of modern physics for our understanding of the physical world. He is perhaps best known for the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. This (...) collection includes an oral history of Michael Horne's contributions to the foundations of physics and his connections to other eminent figures in the history of the subject, among them Clifford Shull and Abner Shimony. Among the editors and contributors are John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022. (shrink)

What is the relationship between religious belief and the study of nature, between theology and science? This is the fundamental preoccupation of the three different studies brought together in _Einstein, Polanyi, and the Laws of Nature._ By exploring the highly original yet little known thought of Michael Polanyi, Jaeger highlights the inherent personal investment in any quest for knowledge, including the scientific enterprise, thus raising the question of the objectivity of human knowledge. Considered to be the greatest mind (...) of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein saw scientific research as the fruit of the “cosmic religion.” His response to the question of the relationship between faith and science also receives the close analysis it deserves. Finally, Jaeger is interested in science’s propensity to use the concept of laws of nature, a concept also found in the Bible. By examining the similarities and differences, she paves the way for interdisciplinary dialogue. The synthesis of these three complimentary studies brings out the complicity between belief and knowledge, thus establishing a bridge between two noble human activities: faith and scientific research. It will be of interest to all serious followers of the ongoing science and religion dialogue. (shrink)

The 1930s and 1940s marked a period of crisis for liberalism. Authors as diverse as Friedrich Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Lippmann, Michael Polanyi and Louis Rougier came together at two seminal events, the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in 1938 and the creation of the Mont-Pèlerin Society in 1947, to rethink liberalism. This rethinking of the liberal project prompted them to carry out a diagnosis of the crisis of liberalism, which, for the authors mentioned, dated back to the French Revolution. This (...) article seeks to demonstrate the coherence of the neoliberal project from their historical diagnosis in this period of crisis. Indeed, by criticising the French Revolution and its effects as part of a harmful rationalism, which gave rise to both a laissez-faire approach and various collectivisms, neoliberals explicitly took up concepts from critics of the revolution, especially Edmund Burke. The concept of tradition, understood as covering social and legal rules that have slowly evolved to constitute coordination mechanisms that allow our actions, is thus very widely taken up and valued by neoliberals. We, therefore, interpret neoliberal theory on the basis of this recategorisation of the concept of tradition, and point out the affinities between neoliberal positions and philosophical conservatism. This alignment reveals several conceptual tensions between cultural evolutionism on the one hand and the defence of significant Western values on the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL THEORY OF INDIVIDUATION MICHAEL POTTS Methodist Callege Fayetteville, North Carolina I. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW A. The Influence of Plato HE SPATIO-TEMPORAL theory of individuation has long history in the philosophical tradition. Its roots go ack to Aristotle's theory of individuation by matter,1 and ultimately back to Plato. In the Timaeus, Plato struggled with the problem of how forms are instantiated in the phenomenal world. Besides " a (...) model form (paradeigmatos eidos), intelligible and ever uniformly existent" and "the model's copy (mimeta paradeigmatos), subject to becoming and visible," Plato postulated a third thing, a " receptacle " (hupodochen), "the nurse of all becoming." 2 It is wholly indeterminate:... while it is always receiving all things, nowhere and in no wise does it assume any shape similar to any of the things that enter into it. For it is laid down by nature as a moulding-stuff for everything, being moved and marked by the entering figures, and because of them it appears different at different times. And the figures that enter and depart are copies of those that are always existent, being stamped from them...8 1 I recognize that this is a controversial claim. Since I am tracing the spatio-temporal theory of individuation from Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas, for the purposes of this paper I will follow St. Thomas's interpretation of Aristotle and accept the view that Aristotle took matter to be the principle of individuation. 2 Plato, Timaeus 49a. The version used is the Loeb edition by R. G. Bury (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966). a Timaeus 50b-c. 59 60 MICHAEL POTTS The receptacle, then, is like formless wax upon which the forms are stamped. It is " apprehensible by a kind of bastard reasoning (logismo tini notho), barely an object of belief." 4 B. Aristotle It may seem on the surface unusual that the idea of the receptable would later be modified and used to explain individuation. Plato himself was concerned with the universal, the form. The instantiations of the forms in the phenomenal world do not even deserve to be called "this " or " that." 5 With Aristotle, however, the individual gains new importance, since for him forms have their reality only in individuals and individuals are primarily called "substance." If this is the case, then Aristotle has to explain how " humanity " can be the same while " Socrates" and " Callias" are two different individuals. Since form is universal, it cannot individuate, so the source of individuation must be matter-two individuals are different human beings, for example, because they have different lumps of matter.... and when the whole has been generated, such a form in this flesh and these bones, this is Callias or Socrates, and this is distinct from that which generated it because the matter is distinct (hulen, hetera gar), but it is the same in species since the species is indivisible.6 This view raises problems. Matter is indeterminate; it is Aristotle 's modification of Plato's receptacle. How can anything indeterminate itself determine individual substances? More needed to be done to.bring out the meaning of individuation by matter, and St. Thomas Aquinas developed a more detailed and satisfactory position. 4 Timaeus 52b. 5 Timaeus 49d-50a. 6 Aristotle, Metaphyscis 28 (1034a5-8). The Greek text used is Metaphysica, ed. by Werner Jaeger (Oxonii : E Typographaeo Clarendoniano, 1957). The English translation is by Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1979). THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL THEORY OF INDIVIDUATION 61 C. St. Thomas Aquinas Aquinas, recognizing that prime matter is indeterminate and therefore not something that can individuate, argues that the principle of individuation is " signate" or " designated" matter. "Materia signata" is defined as matter as " sub determinatis dimensionibus consideratur," " considered under determinate dimensions." 7 While the exact meaning of this is unclear, it seems to refer to matter under determinate spatial dimensions or coordinates. While the form determines what sort of thing an entity is, what determines it to be this individual is this matter with a particular set of spatial coordinates. Henry Veatch puts Aquinas's view into more modern terms: In fact, matter as determined by dimensive quantity guarantees ontologically nothing more nor less than the... (shrink)

This paper was presented to the Scientific Council of Attac, Paris, September 18, 2014. It derives immediately from a talk of the same title given at the Forum of the International Sociological Association in Buenos Aires, August 1, 2012. Many of the ideas in this paper were developed in dialogue with graduate students in the sociology department at Berkeley – Marcel Paret, Adam Reich, Mike Levien, Julia Chuang, Herbert Docena, Andrew Jaeger, Zach Levenson, Gabe Hetland and Alex Barnard. - (...) Économie et Marxisme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Book Reviewed in this article Metaphysik. Eine methodisch‐systematische Grundlegung. By Emerich Coreth, S. J. Pp. 672, Innsbruck, Vienna and Munich, Tyrolia‐Verlag, 1961, 190 A. Schill., 33 DM.Frederick C. Copleston La preuve de l'Absolu chez Bradley. Analyse et Critique de la Méthode. By J. DE Marneffe. Pp. vii, 127, Paris, Beauchesne, 1961, no price given.Frederick C. Copleston Ancient Israel. Its Life and Institutions. By Roland DE Vaux, O. P. Translated by John McHugh. Pp. xxiii, 592, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961, (...) 55s.Edmund F. Sutcliffe Exodus: a Commentary. By Martin Noth. Pp. 583, London, SCM Press, 1962, 40s.Edmund F. Sutcliffe Rédemption Sacrificielle: une enquête exégétique. By Léopold Sabourin, S. J. Pp. 492, Paris‐Bruges, Desclée de Brouwer, 1961, 280 Belg. Frs.Francis Clark The Jews and the Gospel. By Gregory Baum. Pp. viii, 288, London, Bloomsbury Publishing Co., 1961, 27s. 6d.John Bligh Message évangélique et Culture hellénistique aux IIe et IIIe siècles. By Jean Daniélou. Pp. 486, Tournai, Desclée, 1961, 200 Belg. Fr. Early Christianity and Greek Paideia. By Werner Jaeger. Pp. 156, Belknapp Press : Cambridge, Mass.; London: Oxford University Press, 1962, 21s.Maurice Bévenot Primauté Pontificale et Prérogatives Épiscopales;‘Potestas Ordinaria’au Concile du Vatican. By Gustave Thils. Pp. 104, Louvain, 1961, no price given.Maurice Bévenot L'Abbé Louis Bautain. By Paul Poupard. Pp. x, 404, Paris‐Tournai, Desclée 1961, no price given.Joseph Lebacqz The Christian Churches of the East. By Donald Attwater. Volume I: Pp. xiv, 232, London, Thomas More Books, 1961, 35s.; Volume II: Pp. xii, 260, London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1961, 30s.C. J. L. NapierLondon, N. 14 Beichte und Psychoanalyse. By Andreas Snoeck, S. J. Pp. 168, Frankfurt am Main, Verlag Josef Knecht, 1960, 6.80 DM.Philip Loretz Der Arzt in der Technischen Welt. Edited by Gottfried Roth and Wolfgang Müller Hartburg. Pp. 394, Salzburg, Otto Müller Verlag, 1961, 150 A. Schill.Philip Loretz The Novitiate. By Louis Colin, C. SS. R. Translated by Una Morrissey. Pp. xiii, 447, Tenbury Wells, Fowler Wright Books, 1962, 30s.V. Paul Brassell Deliverance to the Captives. By Karl Barth. Translated by Marguerite Wieser. Pp. 160, London, SCM Press, 1961, 12s. 6d. To Live Is Christ. By R. W. Gleason, S. J. Pp. xii, 180, New York, Sheed & Ward, 1961, $3.00. Le Mystère de la Charité. By Joseph‐Marie Perrin, O. P. Pp. 552,, Paris‐Bruges, Desclée de Brouwer, 1960, 210 Belg. Frs. Histoire de l'Homme, Mystère de Dieu. By Benoict Pruche, O. P. Pp. 452, Paris‐Bruges, Desclée de Brouwer, 1961, 240 Belg. Frs.B. R. Brinkman. (shrink)

This topic was first put on a proper scholarly footing by the late Werner Jaeger and by Charles H. Kahn; earlier scholars tended either to refrain from speculating on the relation to Anaximander of Aristotle's Physics arguments on the infinite, or to deduce the Milesian provenance of one of them simply from its inclusion of a mention of Anaximander's name. It way my original intention in this paper to execute a tidying-up operation after the two well-planned attacks on Anaximander's (...) argument by Jaeger and Kahn. I said some time ago in a footnote that I hoped to strengthen Professor Kahn's case for the unity of the argument concerning the infinite at Physics 203b4-15. If the following remarks achieve anything, it will be the half-fulfilment of that half-promise: instead of strengthening Kahn's reasoning for the unity of Aristotle's argument, what follows will tend to weaken it. But without the materials and the example of Jaeger and Kahn this present operation could never have been mounted, and disagreement with their strategy or tactics indicates no ingratitude and no narrowly polemical intention. (shrink)

The religious and spiritual aspects of Wittgenstein, his understanding of ‘das mystiche’ and his philosophy understood against the background of German mysticism has been commented on by authors to...

A coherent treatment of the flow of ideas throughout Darwin's works, this volume presents a unified theoretical system that explains Darwin's investigations, evaluating the literature from a historical, scientific, and philosophical perspective.

We show that if a countable structure M in a finite relational language is not cellular, then there is an age-preserving $N \supseteq M$ such that $2^{\aleph _0}$ many structures are bi-embeddable with N. The proof proceeds by a case division based on mutual algebraicity.

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive (...) cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist’ response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. (shrink)

Exploring the concepts of Freezing: Theoretical and empirical perspectives. Theoretical advancement. Ur Shlonsky and Luigi Rizzi: Criterial Freezing in small clauses and the cartography of copular constructions -- Angel J. Gallego: Freezing Effects in a free-Merge System -- Gereon Maller: Freezing in complex prefields. Empirical domains. Norbert Corver: The Freezing points of the (Dutch) adjectival system -- Jutta M. Hartmann: Freezing in it-clefts: Movement and focus -- Josef Bayer: Criterial Freezing in the syntax of particles -- Michael S. Rochemont: (...) Only syntax -- Maria Polinsky: Freezing and phi-feature agreement: On the role of [PERSON] -- BalÃízs SurÃínyi and Gerg Turi: Freezing, Topic Opacity and Phase-based Cyclicity in Subject Islands. Interface extensions. Peter W. Culicover and Susanne Winkler: Freezing: Between grammar and processing -- Andreas Konietzko: Heavy NP shift in context: On the interaction of information structure and subextraction from shifted constituents -- Rui P. Chaves: Freezing as a probabilistic phenomenon -- Marion Jaeger: An experimental study on freezing and topicalization in English. (shrink)

This paper raises a problem for the pair of views that universals are immanent in their instantiations and that these instantiations, or states of affairs, are somehow constructed from the instantiated universals. It is argued that the pair is inconsistent. The first view implies that universals are prior to states of affairs, whereas the second view implies that states of affairs are prior to universals. This paper does not attempt to solve this problem, but rather to formulate it precisely. That (...) promises to illuminate how to solve the problem if it can be solved, or why it cannot be solved if it is unsolvable. (shrink)

The paper urges that polysemous phenomena are typically semantic not pragmatic. The part of a message sent by a polysemous expression is typically one of its meanings encoded in the speaker's language and not the result of pragmatic modification. The hearer receives that part of the message by a process of disambiguation, by detecting which item in the lexicon the speaker has selected. This is the best explanation of observed regularities. The paper argues that the experimental evidence from psycholinguistics, particularly (...) that produced in discussions of “underspecification” and “overspecification,” does not undermine this view nor support the pragmatic alternative. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print. How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their (...) individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation. (shrink)

This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students readi...

Does human life have meaning? Ever since Darwin, there has been great skepticism about whether a "meaning of life" was possible outside of religious belief. Is it possible to find meaning in human life? Philosopher of science Michael Ruse examines the question of meaning in life within Darwinian views of human nature. He argues that meaning in the Darwinian age can be found if we turn to a kind of Darwinian existentialism, seeing our evolved human nature as the source (...) of all meaning, both in the intellectual and social worlds. (shrink)

Das anthropologische Konzept der Verletzlichkeit wird seit einigen Jahren als Alternative zu einem autonomie-zentrierten Zugang zur Medizinethik diskutiert. Was aber genau unter Verletzlichkeit bzw. Vulnerabilität zu verstehen ist, und worin die moralische Relevanz derselben besteht, bleibt eine kontrovers diskutierte Frage. In einem dreijährigen Diskursprojekt haben die Autor/-innen dieses Bandes sich in unterschiedlichen Perspektiven mit dem Konzept der Verletzlichkeit des Menschen befasst. Der Band versammelt als Ergebnis dieses gemeinsamen Diskurses unterschiedliche philosophische, theologische und medizinethische Perspektiven, die sich mit anthropologischen und ethischen (...) Grundlagen des Phänomens der menschlichen Verletzlichkeit, sowie mit seiner Funktion und Relevanz für konkrete medizinethische Fragestellungen befassen. (shrink)

However, other leading philosophers of the era--such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J.G. Herder--placed greater emphasis on feeling, seeing moral and political ...

Michael Ruse, a leading expert on Charles Darwin, presents a fictional dialogue among characters with sharply contrasting positions regarding the tensions between science and religious belief.

Crop genetic resources constitute a ‘new’ global commons, characterized by multiple layers of activities of farmers, genebanks, public and private research and development organizations, and regulatory agencies operating from local to global levels. This paper presents sui generis biocultural community protocols that were developed by four communities in Benin and Madagascar to improve their ability to contribute to, and benefit from, the crop commons. The communities were motivated in part by the fact that their national governments’ had recently ratified the (...) Plant Treaty and the Nagoya Protocol, which make commitments to promoting the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities and farmers, without being prescriptive as to how Contracting Parties should implement those commitments. The communities identified the protocols as useful means to advance their interests and/or rights under both the Plant Treaty and the Nagoya Protocol to be recognized as managers of local socio-ecological systems, to access genetic resources from outside the communities, and to control others’ access to resources managed by the community. (shrink)

This book presents the first critical examination of the overlapping ethical, sociocultural, and policy-related issues surrounding disasters, global bioethics, and public health ethics. These issues are elucidated under the conceptual rubric: Public health disasters. The book defines PHDs as public health issues with devastating social consequences, the attendant public health impacts of natural or man-made disasters, and latent or low prevalence public health issues with the potential to rapidly acquire pandemic capacities. This notion is illustrated using Ebola and pandemic influenza (...) outbreaks, atypical drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the health emergencies of earthquakes as focal points. Drawing on an approach that reckons with microbial, existential, and anthropological realities; the book develops a relational-based global ethical framework that can help address the local, anthropological, ecological, and transnational dynamics of the ethical issues engendered by public health disasters. The book also charts some of the critical roles that relevant local and transnational stakeholders may play in translating the proposed global ethical framework from the sphere of concept to the arena of action. This title is of immense benefit to bioethics scholars, public and global health policy experts, as well as graduate students working in the area of global health, public health ethics, and disaster bioethics. (shrink)

Illuminates the influence of 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault, focusing on the notion of genealogy.

Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know provides a balanced look at the topic, considering atheism historically, philosophically, theologically, sociologically and psychologically.

Philosophers of science diverge on the question what drives the growth of scientific knowledge. Most of the twentieth century was dominated by the notion that theories propel that growth whereas experiments play secondary roles of operating within the theoretical framework or testing theoretical predictions. New experimentalism, a school of thought pioneered by Ian Hacking in the early 1980s, challenged this view by arguing that theory-free exploratory experimentation may in many cases effectively probe nature and potentially spawn higher evidence-based theories. Because (...) theories are often powerless to envisage workings of complex biological systems, theory-independent experimentation is common in the life sciences. Some such experiments are triggered by compelling observation, others are prompted by innovative techniques or instruments, whereas different investigations query big data to identify regularities and underlying organizing principles. A distinct fourth type of experiments is motivated by a major question. Here I describe two question-guided experimental discoveries in biochemistry: the cyclic adenosine monophosphate mediator of hormone action and the ubiquitin-mediated system of protein degradation. Lacking underlying theories, antecedent data bases, or new techniques, the sole guides of the two discoveries were respective substantial questions. Both research projects were similarly instigated by theory-free exploratory experimentation and continued in alternating phases of results-based interim working hypotheses, their examination by experiment, provisional hypotheses again, and so on. These two cases designate theory-free, question-guided, stepwise biochemical investigations as a distinct subtype of the new experimentalism mode of scientific enquiry. (shrink)

Often, political theories of the subject detach the subject from nature or else reduce the subject to a mere aggregate of natural features. Consequently, many attempts to articulate theories of the subject purport to preserve political theoretical concepts such as freedom, normativity, or responsibility by means of disjoining the subject from its environment. This article proposes a new theory of the ecologically conditioned subject. Developing the concept of companion ecologies, the article employs three examples – architecture, the human microbiome, and (...) indigenous Amazonian ontologies – to show how theorizing the subject at all necessitates theorizing her ecological conditions, as well. Companion ecologies do not refer merely to our environmental conditions, then. The term also functions as a referent. Ultimately, companion ecologies reveal that the individuation and formation of the subject is a process that takes place, paradoxically, only because of the ecological plurality underlying it. From this, I derive a minimalist theory of the subject for which subjects are materially and temporally extended and causally distributed morphogenetic sites, which emerge only in the context of interactive, multiscalar, and overlapping companion ecologies. (shrink)

Rationalism, Platonism and God comprises three main papers on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It provides a significant contribution to the exploration of the common ground of the great early-modern Rationalist theories, and an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. -/- John Cottingham identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes's cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and 'contemplative', the (...) other modern and 'controlling'. He finds the same tension in Descartes's moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. -/- Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? Michael Ayers argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes's Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology - like the physics - is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. -/- Robert Merrihew Adams focuses on the Rationalists' arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of 'the priority of the perfect', i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. He finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz's for consideration. -/- These papers receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza. (shrink)

In this chapter, I address the two closely related notions of modus vivendi and toleration. Drawing from conceptual clarifications and a distinction between different conceptions of toleration, I argue that an analogous discussion can be provided for the concept of modus vivendi and for a distinction between different conceptions of it. The resulting conceptions of modus vivendi, and especially a distinct ethical conception, allow for a more precise and more promising line of argument when it comes to using the notion (...) of modus vivendi in current debates in political philosophy. (shrink)

Religious Education (RE) currently enjoys the status of a compulsory curriculum subject in state schools in England and Wales. Though it is not part of the National Curriculum, and therefore not subject to a nationally prescribed syllabus, it is part of the basic curriculum to which all children are entitled. The question I raise in this chapter is whether RE merits this status. Is the study of religion sufficiently central to the task of preparing children for adult life to justify (...) the existence of a separate and compulsory curriculum subject? (shrink)

View of future time orientation is a cognitive construct about future time. This view has its unique work of motivation and effect on academic performance. Previous studies have only explored the influence that future time orientation brings to the learning process at a single time, and most of them focus on cross-sectional studies. To further explore the cross-lagged relationship for freshmen between future time orientation and learning engagement during different periods, AMOS 23.0 was performed for cross-lagged analysis in this study (...) to explore the influence and effect among variables of different periods. This research was based on the theory of self-determination to discover the relationship between future time and learning involvement for freshmen in enrollment and the first summer vacation. In this research, there were 1,000 valid samples in the first stage and 840 valid samples in the second stage for the conduction of descriptive statistics, pair t-test, and cross-lagged analysis. The results show that: for learning engagement, freshmen at the end of the first year have a higher average score than at the beginning of the first year. View of students of future time orientation can affect their learning engagement of the future through self-determination of students. At last, we provide some suggestions as references for institutional research and future research. (shrink)

This article uses participant objectivation in sociology and philosophy as two knowledge fields to provide a reflexive comparison of their synced field effect in historical circumstances. Drawing on the philosopher and historian of science Gaston Bachelard, I theorize fielded knowledge as a social relation that combines the prior presence of folk knowledge with a socioanalytic exchange between field and folk that includes positions of either defense, replacement or critique. A comparison of post-Wittgenstein Anglophone philosophy and post-sixties American sociology describes their (...) mutual confrontation with folk psychology as an “epistemological obstacle” that generates a remarkable concern with action as a position-taking on the folk relation. A reflexive objectivation of folk knowledge is therefore necessary for a revised understanding of action that correlates with the distinction of sociology’s knowledge capital and how it fares as an explanatory resource in competitive circumstances. The article concludes by leveraging the synced field effect even further to make a recommendation that sociologists can increase the distinction of their knowledge capital by producing discourse that can recognize, legitimate and officialize experiences that otherwise remain obscure, nameless or impossible within the bounded universe of folk psychology. (shrink)

Starting from an analogy with Quine’s two dogmas of empiricism, I offer a critique of two dogmas of analytic historiography: the belief in a cleavage between the justification of a ph...