The rising tide of corporate scandals and audit failures has shocked the public, and the integrity of auditors is being increasingly questioned. It is crucial for auditors and regulators to understand the main causes of audit failure and devise preventive measures accordingly. This study analyzes enforcement actions issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission against auditors in respect of fraudulent financial reporting committed by listed companies in China. We find that auditors are more likely to be sanctioned by the regulators (...) for failing to detect and report material misstatement frauds rather than disclosure frauds. Further analysis of the material misstatements indicates that auditors are more likely to be sanctioned for failing to detect and report revenue-related frauds rather than assets-related frauds. In sum, our results suggest that regulators believe auditors have the responsibility to detect and report frauds that are egregious, transaction-based, and related to accounting earnings. The results contribute to our knowledge of auditors’ responsibilities for detecting frauds as perceived by regulators. (shrink)

Traditional forms of farming, herding, and fishing are remarkably adapted to African conditions but these traditional approaches are being overtaken by modern pressures, particularly population growth. According to a report published by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a nonpartisan analytical support agency of the U. S. Congress, one promising way to help African farmers and herders would be for development assistance organizations to focus more attention on the various forms of low-resource agriculture that predominate in Africa.In keeping with OTA's (...) mission and primary audience, “Enhancing Agriculture in Africa: A Role for U. S. Development Assistance” (1988) is a policy-oriented synthesis of available technical information. The report provides Congress with a range of options that, if pursued, could help Africans enhance agriculture, increase their food security, and improve their lives.This paper is drawn from the larger OTA report, and it focuses on the role technology might play in enhancing low-resource agriculture. Readers should see the full assessment (OTA, 1988) for more information on policy considerations; the specific technologies mentioned; or a complete list of advisory panel members, workshops and participants, and commissioned papers.OTA's report comes at a critical time: for a variety of reasons—ranging from changing values to increased budget constraints—U. S. foreign assistance policy is undergoing a fundamental reevaluation. This review of the potential of low-resource agriculture, and options the United States might pursue to enhance this approach, was intended to aid in this reevaluation. (shrink)

A sample from the Ubatuba fragment collected in Brazil in 1957 was tested with the intent of examining the isotope ratios of its primary element, magnesium, and the trace elements strontium, barium, copper, and zinc. As background, the history of chemical testing of the Ubatuba fragments during the 1960s-1980s at multiple labs with varying capabilities is reviewed and then the remainder of the paper examines recent tests completed in 2017 and 2018 that for the first time used HR-ICPMS techniques to (...) look at the isotopic ratios of the minor constituents as well as the primary magnesium makeup of the sample. The magnesium isotope ratios were found to fall within terrestrial limits while the results on the isotope ratios of the trace elements was inconclusive. Recommendations are made for improving the process of examining the trace elements. Keywords: Ubatuba, isotope, magnesium, HR-ICPMS, UFO. (shrink)

We show how more general knowledge can be built in information security, by the building of knowledge of mechanism clusters, some of which are multifield. By doing this, we address in a novel way the longstanding philosophical problem of how, if at all, we come to have knowledge that is in any way general, when we seem to be confined to particular experiences. We also address the issue of building knowledge of mechanisms by studying an area that is new to (...) the mechanisms literature: the methods of what we shall call mechanism discovery in information security. This domain offers a fascinating novel constellation of challenges for building more general knowledge. Specifically, the building of stable communicable mechanistic knowledge is impeded by the inherent changeability of software, which is deployed by malicious actors constantly changing how their software attacks, and also by an ineliminable secrecy concerning the details of attacks not just by attackers, but also by information security defenders as they protect their methods from both attackers and commercial competitors. We draw out ideas from the work of the mechanists Darden, Craver, and Glennan to yield an approach to how general knowledge of mechanisms can be painstakingly built. We then use three related examples of active research problems from information security to develop philosophical thinking about building general knowledge using mechanisms, and also apply this to develop insights for information security. We show that further study would be instructive both for practitioners and for philosophers. (shrink)

BackgroundBody image is a subjective concept encompassing a person’s views and emotions about their body. Head and neck cancer (HNC) diagnosis and treatment affects several psychosocial concepts including body image. Large numbers of HNC patients are diagnosed each year in India but there are no suitable measures in regional languages to assess their body image. This study assessed the psychometric properties of the Body Image Scale (BIS), a measure suitable for clinical and research use in HNC populations, translated into Tamil, (...) Telugu and Hindi and compared body image distress between language groups.MethodsTranslated versions of BIS were completed by HNC patients recruited from three cancer centers across India one time only. Psychometric evaluation was conducted including factor analysis using principal component analysis and internal consistency reliability using Cronbach’s alpha. Patients completed the EORTC Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ) C-30 and EORTC QLQ HN-35 measures to enable exploration of convergent and discriminant validity. ANOVA was used to calculate difference in mean values for body image.ResultsOur sample included 621 HNC patients (Tamil = 205, Telugu = 216, Hindi = 200). Factor analysis revealed a one-factor solution and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged between 0.891 and 0.969 indicating good reliability. Hypothesized correlations between similar and different constructs were as expected, supporting construct validity. On the BIS, we found a statistically significant difference (F= 11.0954,P< 0.05) between means of Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi groups, with higher body image scores in Telugu (M= 12.86;SD= 7.65) and Hindi groups (M= 12.52;SD= 7.36) indicating more symptoms/body image distress, when compared to Tamil population (M= 9.28;SD= 10.04).ConclusionThe reliability and validity of the three translated Indian versions of the BIS were maintained, providing a method for assessing body image of HNC population worldwide speaking Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi across the illness trajectory. (shrink)

The provision of standardized hearing aids is now considered to be a crucial part of the UK National Health Service. Yet this is only explicable through reference to the career of a woman who has, until now, been entirely forgotten. Dr Phyllis Margaret Tookey Kerridge (1901–1940) was an authoritative figure in a variety of fields: medicine, physiology, otology and the construction of scientific apparatus. The astounding breadth of her professional qualifications allowed her to combine features of these fields and, (...) later in her career, to position herself as a specialist to shape the discipline of audiometry. Rather than framing Kerridge in the classic ‘heroic-woman’ narrative, in this article we draw out the complexities of her career by focusing on her pursuit of standardization of hearing tests. Collaboration afforded her the necessary networks to explore the intricacies of accuracy in the measurement of hearing acuity, but her influence was enhanced by her ownership of Britain's first Western Electric (pure-tone) audiometer, which she placed in a specially designed and unique ‘silence room’. The room became the centre of Kerridge's hearing aid clinic that, for the first time, allowed people to access free and impartial advice on hearing aid prescription. In becoming the guardian expert and advocate of the audiometer, Kerridge achieved an objectively quantified approach to hearing loss that eventually made the latter an object of technocratic intervention. (shrink)

Sartre posed a problem for himself in his discussion of bad faith: how is it possible to deceive oneself, given the unity and translucency of consciousness? Many critics of Sartre interpret translucency as transparency; some, such as M.R. Haight, conclude that Sartre's account of consciousness makes self-deception impossible.A reply to those critics takes the form of showing that translucent consciousness has a number of dimensions: (a) non-positional versus positional aspects; (b) prereflective versus reflective levels; (c) temporally synthetic flux; and (d) (...) the first-person perspective versus the third-person perspective. These dimensions enable Sartre to succeed in describing subtle and varied patterns of self-deception, based on such strategies as obscuring, evasion, distraction, misdescription and disavowal. The translucency of consciousness is not a barrier to self-deception.However, there is another problem in Sartre's claim that all purposive activity is conscious, including our practice of self-deception. The bodily subject of consciousness performs important purposive activities beyond the range of the most obscure non-positional consciousness. This calls into question Sartre's existentialist claim that we are wholly responsible for all we do. (shrink)

Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform is an invaluable resource for policymakers, faculty, students, and anyone interested in how decisions made about the education system ultimately affect the quality of education, educational access, and social justice.

Phyllis Illari and Jon Williamson propose a formulation for a general mechanistic account, the purpose of which is to capture the similarities across mechanistic accounts in the sciences. Illari and Williamson extract insight from mechanisms in astrophysics—which are notably different from the typical biological mechanisms discussed in the literature on mechanisms—to show how their general mechanistic account accommodates mechanisms across various sciences. We present argumentation that demonstrates why an amendment is necessary to the ontology referred to by the general (...) mechanistic account provided by Illari and Williamson. The amendment is required due to the variability of some components in computing mechanisms: the very same component serves as either entity or activity, both between levels and within the same level of the explanatory hierarchy. We argue that the proper ontological account of these mechanistic components involves disambiguation via explicitly indexing them as entities or activities. (shrink)

The contemporary philosophical literature contains different views on what mechanisms are. All approaches agree on certain central assumptions; but they differ in various respects, some of which are crucial when it comes to analyzing the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic approach. Roughly, the different approaches to mechanisms can be divided into three categories. First, there are Early Approaches to mechanisms and mechanistic explanation, which differ crucially from the new debate in terms of terminology, concepts, and metaphysical implications, despite having (...) also motivated the new mechanistic thinking (see, for example, Glennan 2002 and Campaner 2013 for a comparison). Wesley Salmon (1984a), Phil Dowe (1999), and Peter Railton (1978) are the main figures here. The second category I label Complex System Approaches to mechanisms. Its main defenders are Stuart Glennan (1996, 2002, 2010b), Nancy Cartwright (1999), William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson (1993), and Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen (2005). The central assumption of these approaches is that a mechanism is some kind of a physical object or structure, as exemplified by everyday entities such as hearts, cells, clocks, and toilets. The third category I call Acting Entities Approaches to mechanisms. According to these approaches, mechanisms are not objects but process-like in the sense that they consist of actual manifestations of activities by various entities that causally interact. Most prominently, Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver (2000), and Craver (2007a) defend this version of the mechanistic approach. Phyllis M. Illari and Jon Williamson (2012) can also be identified as defenders of this view. In this chapter I present the three types of approaches, focusing on one exemplar of each category without dwelling on the details of the various different approaches that are grouped together. Indeed, the reader should keep in mind that the assignment of each approach to one of the categories is intended to simplify matters for our presentation, and thus glosses over important differences. My main goal is to highlight the metaphysical differences between the most prominent versions of the complex system approach and the acting entity approach, and evaluate their adequacy with regard to the overall goals of the new mechanistic approach. (shrink)

Thanks to Phyllis Lassner and Danny M. Cohen, this 2019 edition of an out-of-print 1948 memoir by Dr. Gisella Perl, a Rumanian Holocaust survivor, offers much to learn from. Artfully written when a...

The original essays in this volume, while written from diverse perspectives, share the common aim of building a constructive dialogue between two currents in philosophy that seem not readily allied: Wittgenstein, who urges us to bring our words back home to their ordinary uses, recognizing that it is our agreements in judgments and forms of life that ground intelligibility; and feminist theory, whose task is to articulate a radical critique of what we say, to disrupt precisely those taken-for-granted agreements in (...) judgments and forms of life. Wittgenstein and feminist theorists are alike, however, in being unwilling or unable to "make sense" in the terms of the traditions from which they come, needing to rely on other means—including telling stories about everyday life—to change our ideas of what sense is and of what it is to make it. For both, appeal to grounding is problematic, but the presumed groundedness of particular judgments remains an unavoidable feature of discourse and, as such, in need of understanding. For feminist theory, Wittgenstein suggests responses to the immobilizing tugs between modernist modes of theorizing and postmodern challenges to them. For Wittgenstein, feminist theory suggests responses to those who would turn him into the "normal" philosopher he dreaded becoming, one who offers perhaps unorthodox solutions to recognizable philosophical problems. In addition to an introductory essay by Naomi Scheman, the volume’s twenty chapters are grouped in sections titled "The Subject of Philosophy and the Philosophical Subject," "Wittgensteinian Feminist Philosophy: Contrasting Visions," "Drawing Boundaries: Categories and Kinds," "Being Human: Agents and Subjects," and "Feminism’s Allies: New Players, New Games." These essays give us ways of understanding Wittgenstein and feminist theory that make the alliance a mutually fruitful one, even as they bring to their readings of Wittgenstein an explicitly historical and political perspective that is, at best, implicit in his work. The recent salutary turn in philosophy toward taking history seriously has shown how the apparently timeless problems of supposedly generic subjects arose out of historically specific circumstances. These essays shed light on the task of feminist theorists—along with postcolonial, queer, and critical race theorists—to "rotate the axis of our examination" around whatever "real need[s]" might emerge through the struggles of modernity’s Others. Contributors are Nancy E. Baker, Nalini Bhushan, Jane Braaten, Judith Bradford, Sandra W. Churchill, Daniel Cohen, Tim Craker, Alice Crary, Susan Hekman, Cressida J. Heyes, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Christine M. Koggel, Bruce Krajewski, Wendy Lynne Lee, Hilda Lindemann Nelson, Deborah Orr, Rupert Read, Phyllis Rooney, and Janet Farrell Smith. (shrink)

' I heartily recommend it to any philosopher of language interested in the issues. [] Logicians, of course, will want to savour the whole thing.' Australian Journal of Philosophy, 71:3 (1993).

As one of the preeminent philosophers of the twentieth century, W. V. Quine made groundbreaking contributions to the philosophy of science, mathematical logic, and the philosophy of language. This collection of essays examines Quine's views, particularly his holism and naturalism, for their value to feminist theorizing today. Some contributors to this volume see Quine as severely challenging basic tenets of the logico-empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science—the analytic/synthetic distinction, verificationism, foundationalism—and accept various of his positions as potential resources for (...) feminist critique. Other contributors regard Quine as an unrepentant empiricist and, unlike feminists who seek to use or extend his arguments, they interpret his positions as far less radical and more problematic. In particular, critics and advocates of Quine's arguments that the philosophy of science should be "naturalized"—understood and pursued as an enterprise continuous with the sciences proper—disagree deeply about whether such a naturalized philosophy is "philosophy enough." Central issues at stake in these disagreements reflect current questions of special interest to feminists and also bridge the analytic and postmodern traditions. They include questions about whether and how the philosophy of science, as a form of practice, is or can be normative as well as questions concerning the implications of Quine's philosophy of language for the transparency and stability of meaning. In representing feminist philosophy centrally engaged with the analytic tradition, this volume is important not only for what it contributes to the understanding of Quine and naturalized epistemology but also for what it accomplishes in working against restrictive conceptions of the place of feminism within the discipline. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Louise M. Antony, Richmond Campbell, Lorraine Code, Jane Duran, Maureen Linker, Phyllis Rooney, and Paul A. Roth. (shrink)

For more than fifty years, Sterling M. McMurrin served as one of the preeminent intellectual voices of the LDS community. From his beginnings as an Institute of Religion instructor to U.S. Commissioner of Education, and from a professor of philosophy to U.S. Envoy to Iran, he showed by example how personal and institutional morality can be defended.In a series of candid discussions with Jack Newell, McMurrin reveals his ability to reconcile freedom and conscience. In a spirit of repartee and friendship, (...) writes Boyer Jarvis in the foreword, Newell probes, challenges, and constantly draws McMurrin out as he... reflects upon his wide-ranging ideas and experiences. Rich in insight and humor, this remarkable dialogue captures the sweep and depth of McMurrin's thoughts as Newell engages him in discussing his approaches to philosophy, education, and religion.Among the qualities that characterized McMurrin's life and mind, explains Newell, perhaps the most notable is the freedom with which he has spoken his views on both the sacred and the profane. His intellectual integrity -- coupled as it almost always is with his humane instincts and innate fairness -- has simultaneously confounded and earned the respect of critics. (shrink)

Scholars offer several options for Matthew’s value of the leper’s story in his narrative that range from revealing Jesus’ attributes of compassion and sympathy, manifesting God’s empire, to portraying Jesus’ function as a temple. Although these suggestions aptly portray Matthew’s rhetorical use of the leper’s healing in his narrative to address societal concerns of his time, for lack of referring to the social setting of the narrative, they do not capture the holistic healthcare system embodied by Jesus in Matthew’s narrative (...) that portrays Jesus as a superior healer to the rest of the other healers in the Roman Empire. The findings of the research for this article establish the argument that employing ethnomedical anthropology as a lens to read the leper’s healing narrative in Matthew 8:1–4 in the context of Matthew’s social setting reveals Matthew’s ideology for a transcendent and immanent Christology. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the effectiveness of medical anthropological theory in explaining the dynamics of health and healing reflected in biblical texts.Contributions: This article contributes to the interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion by employing a ethnomedical anthropological perspective to read the leper’s healing in Matthew 8.1–4 in reference to the first century CE health systems in the Roman Empire. This approach procured that Matthew’s immanent and transcendent perspectives of Christology is crucial in demonstrating the text’s function in constructing and sustaining the identity of Matthew’s community in antiquity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient WorldMadeleine M. HenryChristopher A. Faraone and Laura K. McClure, eds. Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World. Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. x + 360 pp. Cloth, $65; paper, 24.95.This collection stems from a conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in April 2002. McClure's introduction situates the essays historically from nineteenth-century assemblages of textual references to (...) sexual practice to the present, when attention to prostitution has grown out of interest in women's history, the history of sexuality, and cultural studies. She notes important modern approaches and the vexed question of terminology and its relationship to behavior. As McClure states, "while prostitutes in the ancient world may have been socially marginal, they were symbolically and even socially central" (6). Most of the essays, organized into three categories, concentrate on written evidence; some may wish that illustrations had been included.Section A: "Prostitution and the Sacred"In "Marriage, Divorce, and the Prostitute in Ancient Mesopotamia," Martha Roth concentrates on the impact, especially on marriage, of unmarried women (harı\mtu in Babylono-Assyrian, kar.kid in Sumerian) who had sexual relations with men. She concludes that the documents assign responsibility to the unmarried woman who has sexual relations with a man and that the law codes attempted to prevent or minimize the economic repercussions of such unions on inheritance. Roth finds no evidence of "ritualized or institutionalized sexual intercourse" (23) in Old Babylonian evidence (nineteenth to seventeenth centuries B.C.E.).In "Prostitution in the Social World and Religious Rhetoric of Ancient Israel," Phyllis Bird mainly provides interpretations of references in the Hebrew Bible to prostitution (e.g., the quest for "oriental sacred prostitution") and surveys elite, male religious biases. The prostitute "type" of the Hebrew Bible resembles that of surrounding cultures (41). Bird disentangles the considerable metaphorical uses of prostitutional language from other more literal references in order to concentrate on the differences between one called a prostitute proper (zonah, one who engages in extramarital sexual relations) versus one called qedes=ah ("consecrated woman"). The verb zanah referred to all extramarital sexual relations except adultery, and Bird dissects the problems involved when no one English word can be used to cover the range of meanings that the Hebrew root ZNH carries: raped women are defined by the same word, as are women who lure men [End Page 419] into adultery. In each instance, "an unmarried woman is involved in a sexual act" (45). The city can be personified as a prostitute or bride, and prostitutes symbolize dishonor in narrative texts. ZNH and its derivatives describe illicit political activity and describe Israel herself as a fornicating woman. Bird finds no evidence that prostitution was illegal in ancient Israel; the abundant references to and metaphorical uses of terms derived from ZNH suggest strongly that prostitutes were a feature of life, without establishing that females might engage in prostitution in order to pay religious fines. Bird notes briefly that male prostitution in ancient Israel was homosexual and had its own terminology (49).In "Heavenly Bodies: Monuments to Prostitutes in Greek Sanctuaries," Catherine Keesling examines literary references to votive monuments erected by or commemorating female prostitutes in Greek sanctuaries in the archaic and classical periods. She concentrates on the degree to which Rhodopis' and Phryne's famous monuments were liminal or transgressive, but she incorporates findings about other votives. Keesling observes that Rhodopis' votive stands midway between those that Snodgrass terms "raw" (everyday objects, e.g., weapons) and "converted" (e.g., statues): Rhodopis dedicated a tithe of ox-spits ("raw") but constructed the offering so that the spits could not be removed (thus becoming "converted"). Keesling also discusses the monument, known only from literary sources, supposedly dedicated to Leaina, who was loyal to the tyrannicides. This tongueless statue, if originally dedicated to her, is the only canting-device animal statue found in a sanctuary (64–65). Phryne's portrait statue in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is also singular as the only portrait before the Roman period that was not part of a family group, as one of three pre-Hellenistic gilded bronze portraits, and... (shrink)

In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to (...) address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing. (shrink)

In their paper, “Helpful Lessons and Cautionary Tales: How Should COVID-19 Drug Development and Access Inform Approaches to Non-Pandemic Diseases?” Holly Fernandez Lynch and colleagues have present...

The present study investigates procedural learning of motor sequences in children with developmental coordination disorder and/or developmental dyslexia, typically-developing children and healthy adults with a special emphasis on the role of the nature of stimuli and the neuropsychological functions associated to final performance of the sequence. Seventy children and ten adults participated in this study and were separated in five experimental groups: TD, DCD, DD, and DCD + DD children and adults. Procedural learning was assessed with a serial reaction time (...) task that required to tap on a specific key as accurately and quickly as possible when stimuli appeared on the screen. Three types of stimuli were proposed as cues: the classical version of the SRTT with 4 squares aligned horizontally on the screen, giving visuospatial cues, and two modified versions, with 4 letters aligned horizontally on the screen and letters at the center of the screen. Reaction times during the repeated and random blocks allowed assessing three phases of learning: global learning, specific learning and retention of the sequence. Learning was considered as completed when RT evolved significantly in the three phases. Neuropsychological assessment involved, among other functions, memory and attentional functions. Our main result was that learning and retention were not influenced by the available cues in adults whereas learning improved with specific cues in children with or without neurodevelopmental disorders. More precisely, learning was not completed with L cues in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. For children with DD, learning was completed with the VS and VS + L cues whereas for children with DCD, learning was completed with combined VS + L cues. Comorbidity between DD and DCD had no more impact on procedural learning than DCD alone. These results suggest that learning depends on the nature of cues available during practice and that cues allowing learning and retention depend on the type of disorder. Moreover, selective attention was correlated with RT during retention, suggesting that this neuropsychological function is important for procedural learning whatever the available cues. (shrink)

Resumen El presente ensayo explora el alcance que poseen para la pregunta fundamental por la vida buena las reflexiones que Harry Frankfurt ha elaborado acerca de la importancia que atribuimos a ciertas cosas en general, y acerca del amor como una forma señalada en que alguien o algo puede sernos importante. Comienzo examinando las razones por las que, según el autor, resulta imposible ofrecer una respuesta no circular a dicha pregunta, razones que vuelven necesario un modo indirecto de abordarla. A (...) partir de la noción frankfurtiana de importancia propongo a continuación una crítica a la llamada teoría del deseo, el enfoque más influyente en las discusiones actuales en torno al bienestar o la vida buena. Finalmente, y luego de referirme a la necesidad, apuntada por Susan Wolf, de tomar en cuenta el valor objetivo de aquello que nos importa, presento dos consideraciones mediante las cuales intento, con y contra Frankfurt, destacar lo que me parece más valioso de sus ideas acerca del amor.This essay explores the impact of Harry Frankfurt’s reflections on the importance we attach to certain things in general, as well as on love as a marked way in which something or someone can be important to us, to the fundamental question of the good life. I begin by examining the reasons why, according to the author, it is impossible to offer a non-circular answer to this question, reasons that make necessary an indirect way of approaching it. Starting from the Frankfurtian notion of importance, I then propose a critique of the so-called theory of desire, the most influential approach in current discussions about well-being or the good life. Finally, and after referring to the need, pointed out by Susan Wolf, to take into account the objective value of what matters to us, I present two considerations through which I try, with and against Frankfurt, to highlight what seems most valuable to me of his ideas about love. (shrink)

The very claim of the historical instance of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is increasingly being subjected to critical interrogation from a variety of cultural and ideological perspectives. From an Afrocentric theory of history, this questioning of the ontology of the 4IR is sharpened by Africa’s experience of the claimed progressive mutation of global industrial progress from the “first” to this “fourth” revolution. Africa experienced the first industrial revolution as a European revolution in the exploitation of her natural and human (...) resources, as well as the despoliation of her cultural-epistemic sovereignty. The challenge to fully engage in the theorisation of this 4IR, given the overwhelming and inexorable effects of its digital technologies on the personhood, sociality and geopolitical state of Africa has exposed the critical need for a set of rigorous Africanist analytical tools and epistemological approaches capable of guiding Africa’s appropriation of this techno-social revolution. This essay introduces the collection of research papers that have been selected for their endeavour to meet this challenge. It is highlighted that all of them move from a unique approach that asserts that technological progress is historical-cultural and socially embedded. Some of them address the question of the historico-ontological status of the 4IR innovatively with original African methodological tools, while others demonstrate how an African epistemology can be applied to issues such a digital virtual communities and robotics. This contribution to the bourgeoning field of African Philosophy of Technology is admired as work in progress. (shrink)

In the article the basic procedures for finding of connective elements and resolving conflicts of references is analyzed. On the basis of this, a generalized algorithm is proposed that combines advantages of existing procedures for search for connective elements between phrases. The advantages of the selected procedures and their sequence are described, the formal description of input data and the results of the algorithm are presented. To optimize the procedure for scanning the text, the algorithm is performed as an iterative (...) reduction of the candidates for communication elements. This is achieved through the confirmation of non-conflict links and the gradual resolution of conflicts. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to provide building blocks for a reconciliation of the ethical care for heritage protection and nature restoration ethics. It will do so, by introducing a hermeneutic landscape philosophy that takes landscape as a multi-layered “text” in need of interpretation, and place identities as build upon certain readings of the landscape. I will argue that from a hermeneutic perspective, both approaches appear to complement each other. Renaturing presents a valuable correction to the anthropocentrism of many European (...) rural cultures. Yet, heritage protectionists rightly point to the value of narratives for Old World identities. I will conclude with a short reflection on how such a hermeneutic environmental ethic can be helpful in dealing with environmental conflicts. (shrink)

Purpose. The aim of this article is an analysis of the main versions of the biodeterminist tradition of re­solving the issue of the nature of gender identity, as well as identification of the advantages of the new version of biodeterminism, which involves elements of social constructivism. Theoretical basis. Social norms determine the extent to which a person has the right to independently determine his or her gender identity, and even more so, to change his or her body according to such (...) gender concepts. Social norms regulate gender relations in society and direct the gender behavior of individuals. However, social norms do not create either the human body, or those biological laws, according to which it functions. Originality. The biodetermist theories of the gender were analyzed from the position of "week" social constructivism. The role of social norms as a factor of gender self-certification, as well as a factor of control over social interference in the functioning of human corporeality is considered. The role of modern medicine as an increasingly influential institutional means of control over the functioning of human corporeality, and therefore, indirectly, and for the implementation of gender identity self-identification is revealed. Conclusions. According to the "week" social constructivism the gender emerges as an integral result of biological, psychological and social construction. The role of personality in the design of the gender has historically grown, but this role can never exclude the influence of biological and social factors that are increasingly becoming the nature of biological and social technologies. Personality can become a victim of these technologies, but he/she can program them, or at any rate selectively use, combine, or to some extent adjust existing biological and social technologies. (shrink)

Introduction By the late fifth century BCE Panini had composed the Astadhyayi, consisting of nearly 4000 rules giving a precise and fairly complete ...

'Thought insertion' in schizophrenia involves somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's. Some philosophers try to make sense of this by distinguishing between ownership and agency: one still experiences oneself as the owner of an inserted thought but attributes it to another agency. In this paper, we propose that thought insertion involves experiencing thought contents as alien, rather than episodes of thinking. To make our case, we compare thought insertion to certain experiences of 'verbal hallucination' and show that they (...) amount to different descriptions of the same phenomenon: a quasi-perceptual experience of thought content. We add that the agency/ownership distinction is unhelpful here. What requires explanation is not why a person experiences a type of intentional state without the usual sense of agency, but why she experiences herself as the agent of one type of intentional state rather than another. We conclude by sketching an account of how this might happen. (shrink)

The attention schema theory explains how a biological, information processing machine can claim to have consciousness, and how, by introspection (by assessing its internal data), it cannot determine that it is a machine whose claims are based on computations. The theory directly addresses Chalmers' meta-problem of consciousness, the problem of why we think we have a difficult-to-explain consciousness in the first place.

Bodily experience in dreams should be considered illusory to the extent that they cannot be satisfactorily explained or fruitfully investigated by appealing to brain activity alone; rather, to wholly understand the unique phenomenology of embodied selfhood in dreams, one must understand how the brain processes real-body inputs to produce the phenomenology of embodied selfhood in dreams, and why the brain responds the way it does to external stimuli during sleep.